known psychiatrists, robert jay lifton. for the past five decades, he has written extensively on the psychological dimensions of war, from the u.s. atomic bombing of hiroshima, to doctors who aided nazi crimes, to nuclear war. >> the atrocities produced in situations where ordinary people kill large number's of civilians as occurred in the vietnam war and which i wrote about, that continues to haunt us in our war fighting in iraq and afghanistan. we learned, or should learn from, what we have done and what others have done to us. amy: for the hour. all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. dozens of people were killed across yemen on wednesday in one of the worst days of fighting so far. the heaviest violence was seen in the southern port city of aden where those were killed kind of fleet and to the north 35 civilians were killed by an airstrike. speaking during a visit to saudi arabia, secretary of state john kerry said the situation in yemen is dire. >> we are deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation that is unfolding in yemen, shortages of feud and best food and fuel and medicine. the situation is getting more dire by the day. amy: kerry is expected to ask the saudi arabian government to agree to a humanitarian pause, saying he's already received an indication the houthis will sign on. in a joint statement, the international committee of the red cross and doctors without borders have criticized the saudi-led coalition's attacks on airports, saying they are "obstructing delivery of much the needed humanitarian assistance and movement of humanitarian personnel." the groups also say the coalition's blockade of imports into yemen "have made the daily lives of yemenis unbearable." the mayor of baltimore has asked the justice department to investigate the city's police force in the aftermath of the death of freddie gray. stephanie rawlings-blake said the review should focus on whether police tactics violate civil rights and constitutional protections. >> i am asking the department of justice to investigate if our police department has engaged in a pattern or practice of stops, searches, or arrests the violate the fourth amendment. i am asking that they investigate was systematic changes were systemic changes exist within -- excuse me challenges exist within our police department that can contribute to excessive force and discriminatory policing. at the end of this process, i will hold those accountable if change is not made. amy: justice department reviews of other police forces nationwide have led to consent decrees that mandate changes. rawlings-blake's request came one day after attorney general loretta lynch visited baltimore. the chicago city council has approved a $5.5 million reparations fund for victims of police torture. under the rein of chicago police commander jon burge from 1972 to 1991, more than 200 people, most of them african-american, were tortured with tactics including electric shocks and suffocation. the reparations proposal includes free city college tuition for victims and relatives, counseling services a memorial to victims, inclusion of burge's actions in school curriculum, and a formal apology. a city councilmember and mayor rahm emanuel hailed the move. >> finally -- finally, we have begun to acknowledge this horrible wrong. first of all, we finally settled the lawsuits were brought by the victims -- or many of the victims. and now we have done something that no other city in the united states has ever done. >> this is another step, but in essential step, and writing a wrong. removing a stain on the reputation of this great city in the people who make up this great city. amy: a number of torture victims attended wednesday's council session. burge served a short prison sentence for perjury and obstruction of justice before his release last year. a north dakota town was evacuated wednesday following the derailment of a train carrying crude oil. about 40 residents were force to leave heimdal as emergency crews responded to the fire. it was at least the sixth accident this year involving so-called bomb trains transporting crude oil through north american communities. it comes just days after federal regulators released long-awaited new standards for the trains which environmentalists have criticized as insufficient. french lawmakers have advanced a measure that would greatly increase government surveillance while minimizing judicial oversight. the legislation would allow intelligence agencies to tap phones and computers, install bugs in cars and homes, and monitor anyone associated with surveillance targets. the government agents would also be allowed to sift through bulk data similar to the nsa in the united states. the bill now goes to the french senate, which is expected to vote in favor. the german co-pilot accused of deliberately crashing a passenger plane into the french alps in march reportedly practiced his suicide mission during a previous flight that same day. french authorities say andreas lubitz set the plane's altitude to 100 feet while the plane's captain had briefly left the cockpit. during the flight's return leg it's believed lubitz then locked the co-pilot out of the cockpit before crashing the plane intentionally, killing himself and all 149 others on board. israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu has reached a deal to form a new coalition government just before a deadline was set to expire. the agreement leaves him in control of 61 parliament seats a bare majority of just one vote. a new report says the number of internally displaced people worldwide has increased for the third straight year. the geneva-based internal displacement monitoring center found a 14% increase in those forced to flee their homes inside their own countries. jan egeland of the norwegian refugee council said syria -- unveiled the findings. >> 2014, we have documented was the worst year, certainly my 35 years as humanitarian worker. 38 million people are now the accumulated total of people internally displaced within the country's border. amy: syria accounted for the most displaced. and another 4 million outside the country. in canada, the left-leaning new democratic party has won a historic victory in the traditionally conservative province of alberta. voters elected the ndp to a majority government, ousting the conservative party of canadian prime minister stephen harper after more than four decades in power. alberta has long been known as canada's most right-wing province. the incoming ndp premier, rachel notley, celebrated her victory. >> we might have made a little bit of history tonight. [applause] friends, i believe that change has finally come to alberta. amy: notley has promised to review oversight of alberta's energy sector and the royalty payments paid by its corporations, which extract oil from the carbon-intensive tar sands. the ndp has also vowed to increase corporate tax rates raise the minimum wage, and work cooperatively with the province's indigenous communities. on a national level, the alberta ndp is also expected to pressure the canadian government to change its environmental policy, and will drop the province's lobbying effort for the keystone xl pipeline. the financial giant bank of america has announced it is cutting off financing to companies involved in coal mining. speaking at a annual shareholders meeting, saying the firm will "reduce our credit exposure over time to the coal mining sector globally." the move comes under new policy that says "as one of the world's largest financial institutions, the bank has a responsibility to help educate climate change by leveraging our scale and resources to accelerate the transition from a high carbon to a low carbon society." the change follows years of activism targeting bank of america for its leading role in funding the coal industry including the controversial practice of mountaintop removal coal mining. the rainforest action network said "today's announcement from bank of america truly represents the seachange. it is now just the responsibility that the financial sector bears for profiting from the fossil fuel industry and the climate chaos it has caused." an investigation has revealed new details about the case of u.s. army green beret who confessed during a job interview at the cia to murdering an unarmed afghan man and burying him. and army memo details how in 2011, u.s. army major matthew goldstein admitted he "captured and shot and buried suspected ied bomb maker, then went back out with two others to cremate the body and dispose of the remains." army documents obtained by jeremy scahill show the military investigated the alleged killing and issued a letter of reprimand. after the army concluded gold steyn violated the laws knowingly, he was stripped of his military words but remains in the military and no criminal charges have been filed against him. new york governor andrew cuomo is seeking to raise the pay of the state's fast food workers. writing in "the new york times," cuomo says he will ask the state labor commissioner to convene a panel on increasing the fast food industry's minimum wage. the panel's findings are expected in three months. in his article, cuomo cited new york's spending of $6,800 in public assistance per fast food worker, the most in the country. his announcement comes just weeks after thousands of fast food workers staged a national protest calling for a $15 minimum wage, their largest such action to date. but what the governor recommends is not as high as what the new york mayor is calling for. and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. >> welcome to all our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. as new evidence emerges over the pivotal role of psychologists in the cia's torture program, we are joined by one of the nation's best known psychiatrists, robert jay lifton. for the past five decades, he has written extensively on the psychological dimensions of war from the u.s. atomic bombing of hiroshima to doctors who aided nazi crimes to nuclear war. in 1967, he won a national book award for his work, "death in life: survivors of hiroshima." in 1970, he would testify before a senate committee about the vietnam war. he warned about the need to help re-humanize returning veterans into society. he said the veteran -- "returns as a tainted intruder...likely to seek continuing outlets for a pattern of violence to which they have become habituated." in 1986, he published the seminal book, "the nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide." last night robert jay lifton spoke here in new york at the pen world voices festival about another genocide -- the armenian genocide of 1915 and turkish efforts to rewrite history. amy: for decades, robert jay lifton has also been a leading critic of nuclear weapons and more recently has focused on the global threat posed by climate change. last year, he wrote a piece in "the new york times" comparing the nuclear freeze movement of the 1980's to the climate justice movement of today. he wrote -- "people came to feel that it was deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to engage in nuclear war, and are coming to an awareness that it is deeply wrong, perhaps evil, to destroy our habitat and create a legacy of suffering for our children and grandchildren." well, today robert jay lifton joins us in our studio to talk about these and other issues. welcome back to democracy now. >> happy to be back. amy: the issue of climate change. the issue that you are now focusing on today. a psychiatrist focusing on climate change. why climate change? >> climate change is an all in the living issue. nobody can completely deal with it. it is everything around us. one can't approach it from different perspectives and because i have done so much work on nuclear threat, this seemed to me to be a baseline from which to compare climate change. so in my work on climate change, i bring to bear the psychological approach that i use with nuclear weapons and make comparisons looking for both parallels and differences. i have been doing that now for the last two years. nermeen: what are the parallels you draw between opposition to nuclear weapons and the climate justice movement today? >> the parallel that is all important is that both really involve the destruction of the human habitat. so i call the work "mind and habitat." habitat is that part of nature which we require to really keep going as a human species. in mind is what we are given in an evolutionary way, the hope that we have for combating climate change and nuclear threat as well. they both bring forth apocalyptic images of destroying the entire human habitat and interfering with the future of the human race. they also have a common origin. it is not fully appreciated how much the whole climate movement evolved from the anti-nuclear movement. for instance, greenpeace, civil disobedience at sea, began as an anti-nuclear movement. and some of the early voyages on which later actions were modeled were voyages by people like earl reynolds into nuclear test areas. so there's a relationship and their origins -- in their origins, yet they're very different. they're not the same. because nuclear weapons involve these things, these devices that are genocidal in their dimensions. and climate change involves the environment that we live in on a daily basis and that has been created with threat of altering the temperature from the time of industrialization for a few hundred years. they differ in that incremental side to climate change, but they basically resemble each other in the totality of the threat to the human habitat. amy: we've been covering the development movement across the country and really around the world. last month, democracy now! spoke to a sophomore at harvard college and coordinator of dive st harvard. she of them participating in a blockade throughout harvard heat week. explain what the students decided to take action on climate change. >> our campaign started a few years ago to try to open up conversation with harvard about the impact of its investment in the fossil fuel industry. we have been repeatedly refused open dialogue, the kind we feel this issue deserves, and ostracized by the harvard administration. they refuse to engage on this issue. for a few years, we attended to create a dialogue and inevitably had to resort to civil disobedience to put as much public pressure on the harvard administration as possible. we blockade of the office of the president and a student was arrested after a day and a half. a few months ago, we occupied massachusetts hall for 24 hours. again, received no significant consideration of the issue. so this week called harvard heat week we're a sibling all the constituents of the movement -- assembly all the constituents of the movement to show the range of diverse forces that support this movement and to make sure the administration can no longer ignore this issue of climate justice. amy: she is a sophomore at harvard college and the coordinator of divest harvard. dr. robert jay lifton, utah at harvard medical school for years and you went up for this week? >> i did. of minority involved in the development movement at harvard -- close friends of mine are involved in the divestment movement at harvard. steadily and wisely and strongly. divestment is a movement that has enormous power because it contributes an ethical dimension to the whole climate issue. there are a couple of ceos of fossil fuel groups who are beginning to say, i don't want students of the future to look critically upon our corporation because we use fossil fuels. the development --divestment movement is gathering strength and it has to be looked at not just in terms of what it denies -- we're not about to bankrupt the corporations, but rather what is says in connection in mounting a climate movement, which is taking shape. it is what i call part of the climate's work, meaning the whole tendency toward increased awareness of truths about climate threat and that divestment movement is at the heart of it. amy: you're talking about changing the moral climate. just in our headlines today, i'm wondering your response to bank of america announcing it is cutting off financing to companies involved in coal mining. the ceo of corporate social responsibility, saying speaking at a general shareholders meeting, executive said the firm will "reduce our credit exposure over time to the coal mining sector globally." "as one of the largest financial institutions the bank has responsibility to help mitigate, change by leveraging our scale and resources to accelerate the transition from a high carbon to a low carbon society." >> that is an enormously important event because it shows that right at the heart of society, the corporations that have been so complicit in increasing the danger from fossil fuels are recognizing first, the ethical absurdity of continuing to support fossil fuels, but also, a certain commonality. the large american financial institutions will suffer like the rest of us from climate change because it is an all enveloping threat. this reminds me, incidentally, seems something different, but when i was active in the physician's anti- movement, we met internationally with a soviet delegation and late at night, somebody would give a toast -- either a russian or american doctor. it sounded better with a russian accent, but the toast was always the same. and it was "i drink to you and your health and the health of your leaders in the health of your people, because if you die, we die. if you survive, we survive." the pragmatic is converted or combined with the ethical in recognizing that we're all in this together. nermeen: when you are working on nuclear weapons on opposition to nuclear weapons, you talked about the gap between the actual threat posed by nuclear weapons in the minds perception of that threat. you see something comparable happening on climate change? >> yes. that is an important issue for me. climate change -- the movement against climate change has suffered for a lack of awareness because it's ours around. you know, it is the normality of what we live in. if unaltered, leading us toward catastrophe. increasingly, there has been a change in awareness. it is what i call a change from fragmented to form to awareness. that is, instead of just vague images about climate change, we are now developing a narrative a recognition of what it is what causes it, what we might do about it so that the gap, which we suffered from an still exists , is lessening as we come to a closer awareness of what really confronts us with climate change. that is the hopeful dimension. amy: i want to turn to remarks made by senator james and half of oklahoma, the chair of the senate environment and public works committee. he used a snowball as a prop during his senate address in an attempt to refute that human beings have anything to do with global warming. this is a clip. >> when we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record, i asked the chair, do you know if this is? he would say a snowball. from just outside here. so it is very, very cold out. mr. president, catch this. amy: there is senator james inhofe throwing a snowball on the senate floor saying, this disproves global warming. >> when the senator brought that snowball into the senate, he was a figure of ridiculousness. that is, the climate swerve i mentioned, the increased awareness, has high in a way isolated the direct deniers. it is true that much of the republican party refuses to say overtly that climate change is a real threat, but they are becoming increasingly weaker and their claim. the denial of climate change is the tip of the iceberg. senator inhofe is no longer a threat in terms of what he says. the polls all show the country is moving toward recognition that climate change israel and that it is a threat to us. the real danger with climate change is what i call climate normality. there was nuclear normality. we tried to domesticate the weapons. there was the infamous living with nuclear weapons, which came right out of the kennedy school at harvard. with climate change, the normality is built into the whole world structure. and the difficulty is breaking through that normality and recognizing how the way we live in ordinary routine threatens the whole human future. amy: where talking to robert jay lifton, leading american psychologist -- psychiatrist author of many books distinguished professor at the city university of new york. he is the recipient of numerous national and international awards and honorary degrees. among his books "death in life: , survivors of hiroshima," for which he received the national book award, "the nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide." when we come back, we will talk about the investigation into the american psychological association, the largest association of psychologists in the world. their relationship with torture at guantánamo, abu ghraib. stay with us. ♪ [music break] amy: a shout out to students at the community college bmcc the classes that are here at democracy now! today. this is democracy now! democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. nermeen: the world's largest group of psychologists aided government sanctioned torture under president george w. bush. a group of dissident psychologists have just published a 60-page report alleging the apa secretly coordinator with officials from the cia, white house, and the pentagon to change the apa ethics policy to align it with the operational needs of the cia's torture program. the report also reveals the behavioral scientist researcher working for president bush secretly drafted lynwood at the apa inserted into its ethics policy on interrogations. amy: much of the report is based on hundreds of newly released internal apa e-mails from 2003-2006 that show top officials are in direct communication with the cia. in 2004, for example, the apa secretly took part in a meeting with officials from the cia and other intelligence agencies to discuss ethics and national security. still with us, dr. robert jay lifton, leading american psychiatrist who has spoken out against the apa's practices. the american psychological association has about 150,000 members, the largest association in the world. the little apa is the american psychiatric association, which i assume you are a part of. dr. robert jay lifton, your thoughts on what the apa did? >> what the apa did, and i read that report, is what i call a scandal within a scandal. that is, i have been much concerned with the behavior of professionals and their ethics, not just in terms of how they conduct their everyday profession -- that is important enough -- but the relationship to the world ethically will stop i became interested in working with veterans of the vietnam war . and in that war, military psychiatrist would be in a position when examining a soldier who was brought to them with anxiety and a sense of outrage at what was going on. would be in the position of helping a soldier to be strong enough to return to duty, which meant daily atrocities. i asked myself, how did a psychiatrist find himself in that situation? and it had to do with the military structure of medicine and with the psychiatrist entering into what i called an atrocity-producing situation. in my work with nazi doctors, is even much more extreme, probably the most extreme example of any profession of any country engaging in extremely immoral the heavier engaging directly in killing because nazi physicians were in charge of the killing -- with, that is what i studied in that research. amy: what is interesting, we saw you speak last time on a very different issue on the armenian genocide and you talked about the significance of a doctor dying without acknowledging what he did. >> he was a notorious fanatical nazi, quite unusual in that way among doctors. when he was found to be dead in a lake in argentina survivors of wash with were upset there was not opportunity to bring him to the dock so he could confront his crimes. it wasn't so much a desire for revenge as it was for justice. so i mentioned that survivors of holocaust were genocide or survivors in general are what can be called collectors of justice. they need a sense of justice for their own healing. but now here we have american psychologists -- there were psychologists involved early also in the enhanced interrogation, which spilled over to torture in american use. fortunately, american psychiatric association has slightly more enlightened leadership and we had the advantage of doctors have her credit oath, which is, do no harm. and there could be developed a resolution prohibiting any physician, any psychiatrist from being in the interrogation room. the american psychological association took an opposite tendency. it is one thing -- and there were a couple of psychologists who were well known who helped create the torture and the whole psychological regimen for the torture, crudely and very and scientifically, but with the claim of psychological science. there is still another level when the professional organization supports torture by meeting with the administration and those people who were looking for some legitimation coming from a professional group for torture. and that is what the american psychological association did. and that is all too reminiscent of what the nazis called -- i'm not saying they were nazis, not nazis, still an open society to confront this, criticize this and do something about it my but with the nazis, there is this process meaning reordering or re-gearing all professional organizations -- not destroying them, but breaking them down and reconstructing them -- to serve the nazi project. that is the kind of thing we must and can confront and avoid here. nermeen: last december psychologist james mitchell who was contracted by the cia to design its interrogation program appeared on fox news to talk about his role in the waterboarding of abu zubaydah. he was interviewed by megyn kelly. >> were you the one actually conducting the techniques on zubaydah or were you and more of a background role? >> it depends on when you're talking about. initially, i was in a background role. then after we shut down in the enhanced interrogations were approved, i was in an administration role. >> so did you personally waterboard him? >> yes. >> sticking with abu zubaydah, or all of the methods that were recited in the senate report like nudity, standing sleep deprivation, the attention grab, the insult slap -- were those all used? >> the ones you mentioned were used. >> the facial grab, the kneeling stress position, walling? >> walling was used -- if they showed up on the list, they were used. we didn't typically use a lot of those stress positions -- we didn't use any stress positions with zubaydah because he had an injury. nermeen: that was james mitchell speaking on fox news last december. he was the psychologist who was asked by the cia to design its interrogation program. could you talk about that, in particular, in a context you called earlier and atrocity-producing situation? what enabled this to occur? >> professionals are as prone to being socialized to the norm of a group including being socialized to evil, as are any other groups in american society. what that means is, psychologists, in this case and there are others from other professions, internalize what is considered to be acceptable and appropriate for them in carrying out their profession. so torture exist. there is the not from the administration, go ahead with torture, and psychologists then adapt to that. and in this case become not just participants in torture but the creators of the methods of torture. that is a shocking clip because it shows him kind of slightly reluctantly admitting that they do all of those things. of course, it is denied their torture. that is absurd. they are out and out torture. at the fact that will come on a network program and describe it as something legitimate is another level of scandal. after all, torture has been conducted, you know from the time of the beginning of history. it has always been seen especially in recent centuries as something evil. you can judge a society as to whether it engages in torture. you condemn a society that engages in torture. in our case, looking at the sequence one can praise the obama administration for ending that torture but one must criticize the obama administration for blocking any examination or confrontation of our role in torture. you showed an interesting clip about the city of chicago confronting and at least recognizing that the police had engaged in torture of certain suspects. well, that doesn't undo what they did, but it is a step towards some kind of ethical advance. and for the united states to have engaged in torture on such a widespread dimension, to have legitimated it among professionals like psychologists -- psychologists and others to have created and per dissipated in it -- is something that we have to confront as a nation to move ahead in something like an ethical way. amy: when you talk about confronting, what exactly do you mean? you just given a psychological sociological explanation understanding, for example james mitchell or mitchell and jessen, the company -- the two psychologist that pentagon funneled money into. not to mention others who didn't even work for them, working at guantánamo and abu ghraib. should they be brought up on charges? >> of course they should. there are many situations i can probe psychologically for cycle historically, as we say, but have to be approached politically for some kind of resolution. this is an example of that of proper confrontation of what we did would mean a real investigation that didn't stop as we got to the top. of course, the order for torture being acceptable, advised, comes from above, comes from the highest sources in the administration. that has to be uncovered by an investigation. and there has to be a legal context, whether or not everybody who participated in torture is in some way condemned and put in jail, i don't know. but at minimum, there must be confrontation and revelation of what was done, who did it, what the consequences were and how to prevent in the future. amy: what you think of this comment by cia psychologist, former cia psychologist, kirk hubbard who served as the chief operations of the operational assessment division before he joined mitchell jessen associates? in 2012, hubbard told the constitution project task force and detainee treatment -- "detainees are not patients, nor are they being treated by the psychologists. therefore, the ethical guidelines for clinicians do not apply, in my opinion. psychologists can play many different roles and should not be forced into a narrow doctor-patient role." dr. robert jay lifton, your response? >> what you just recited is a rationalization for torture and for destructive behavior on the part of professionals. all professions require some sort of ethical code, as i said before, not just in everyday practice, but in what they do in society and to weasel out of any such ethical requirement because one is dealing not with patients, but with prisoners -- and of course, that administration didn't even give them prisoner rights, according to geneva conventions -- to do that is simply a rationalization for destructive or even evil behavior. amy: we're talking to dr. robert jay lifton leading psychologist author of many books, including "witness to extreme century." we will be back with him talking about a number of issues including another of his books "who owns death?" stay with us. ♪ [music break] >> amy: this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. our guest is robert jay lifton dr., leading american psychologist. -- psychiatrist. among his books, "who owns death?" dr. lifton, u.s. prisons are feeling the effect of global revulsion against the death penalty. the u.s. is the only industrialized country in the world have it. so when european companies cut off the drug supply to be used in the execution cocktail of her prisoner, states of had to put off executions because they don't have the proper death cocktail. utah just past, as a backup, firing squads -- executions by firing squads. obama just past gassing. not clear exactly how that gassing of her prisoner would be done, if they aren't able to get their hands on the drugs. can you talk about this? you have written this book, "who owns death?" and talked to many people involved in the death chain. >> at issue is the mythology of humane killing. of course, a contradiction in terms. and with each form of killing by the state and caring through a death penalty, whether it is hanging, gas chamber, electric chair or the use of chemicals with each of these shifts from one to the other, there is a claim -- this is more humane. but there's no such thing as humane killing. each of them brings about suffering, cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited according to our laws, and one can't overcome that will stop it is another situation where you judge a society, and many wise writers have focused on judging a whole society in terms of whether it will kill individual people. there is always also the added idea of human culpability or the inability of human beings to be certain about convictions that lead to the death penalty. so with human fallibility, there is always the danger, whether -- whatever the technical tools dna or anything else, there's always the danger and it has happened of executing innocent people. if you have the danger of executing innocent people, there must be no execution carried out by a society. nermeen: dr. lifton, you talked about in the context of research you have done on genocide and war, that you were surprised to find the socialization of evil is all too easy to accomplish. so could you talk about that in the context of both the death penalty in the u.s. as well as the expanding numbers of prisoners here, the incarceration system? >> it is as if even right-wing republicans when experience the prison system sometimes get the urge to reform it. most of these reform movements haven't gone very far. i hear there is a new one that combines right-wing people and the usual people from the left who see the unfairness and cruelty within the prison system . yes, the prison system has become a norm. and it involves selectively enormous numbers of blacks african-americans who are imprisoned, and there are various reasons for that including methods of policing and lack of opportunity in various environments. and that forms a norm that becomes part of the way society runs. then police departments, politicians, people in everyday life simply adjust to it. you know, adaptation is the great human achievement and evolution. -- in evolution. we are the champions of adaptation. so much so i'm a we made the planet our habitat. that is not true of any other species. but adaptation is also a vulnerability because sometimes immediate adaptation is contrary to larger necessities and ethical issues in more extensive adaptation. and that is what we're talking about, and narrow, normalized adaptation to a cruel and unfair prison system. amy: robert jay lifton, you wrote the book "witness to an extreme century: a memoir." explain what you mean by an extreme century. >> you know, there is a group now that wants to say we are making progress because if you look statistically, there seem to be fewer wars and relatively fewer people, according to population size. that has not been my experience. in studying both auschwitz and hiroshima i found these to be defining events of the 20th century. and although they are very different events, they converge and threatening the human future. one has to do with the gas chambers in auschwitz. that was a high technology at the time. it is our capacity to destroy ourselves, in this case, with chemicals or other substances. the other has to do with nuclear threat. and that is the more immediate danger. nuclear weapons still although not thought about much publicly now, certainly, when one looks into it, still a looming threat if anything greater than in recent past. so these are two events that defined the 20th century. and when one looks for ways -- i would be the first one to look for human progress, but when one looks for ways diminishing killing in war, those who make the claim are hard to expand the 20th century, more people killed in that century than any other century. so auschwitz and hiroshima are defining events of the 20 century. still, we can look toward expressions, anti-nuclear expressions, confrontations of the holocaust and weapons of any kind. that we mount as sources of hope and as commitments that we continue to make. that has to do -- that is what i mean by being a witness. when i did my research, on say auschwitz and hiroshima, i was looking to be accurate and what i found psychologically. i also saw that research as a form of witness. a witness is someone who opens himself or herself to experience, takes it in, and retells the story. tells the tale. gives it a new narrative. that is what i saw myself as doing with hiroshima and with auschwitz and with other events of the 20th century. also, to the vietnam war and the vietnam -- the antiwar veterans who admirably found meaning in the meaninglessness of their war. so witness and research become combined. the other thing i would say about it is -- amy: what you mean they found meaning in the meaninglessness of war? >> every soldier who fights a war, and for that matter, those in society that is mounting a war, need to have a sense that there is justification for this war. and every politician must explain to his or her people these soldiers of hours did not die in vain. that becomes harder and harder to say in counterinsurgency is like vietnam with an atrocity producing situation that is psychologically and militarily created. the antiwar veterans developed the insight that this war was wrong and bad. they confronted this insight which is painful -- a very painful thing to do for veteran because one has killed people and one has seen one's buddies dying right next to one. that was a brave and hard thing to do. most veterans groups come home often to victory parades celebration or whatever, and declare the just achievements of the war, the heroic victory for which they are celebrated. of course, the vietnam veterans were not welcomed. they came home individually. at these antiwar veterans came home with no feeling that there was anything like victory or a just cause in relation to their war. they got up and in 1971, the winter soldier hearings and other such events described how they had witnessed and been involved in atrocities. and that was the truth about their war. they found meaning in this political and personal opposition to their war. their war, which cannot be justified. so that is what i meant by the meaning they found in the meaninglessness of their war. nermeen: dr. lifton, i would like to ask you about the armenian genocide, that which you spoke last night at the pen festival. you talked about the significance of cultural genocide and the targeting and genocides of this kind of intellectuals, writers artists and why that is particularly important. could you talk about that? >> yes, when a heroic man came to the concept of genocide, he included what he called cultural genocide. the destruction of the institutions and ritual elements of a culture, which all of us live from. and i talked last night about how intellectuals, professionals of all kinds, are key groups in sustaining these rituals and structures and institutions that we call culture. because we, human beings, are mean and hungry creatures and we don't take in perceptions nakedly. if you sit across the table from you, i don't just see you as you are, but i reconstruct you as people i know, i think about who are doing certain things. we all use this wonderful and dangerous gray matter of our brain in our symbolizing and meaning construction process. the intellectuals and professionals are key because they create words and images and not only sustaining, but in criticizing culture. and when you seek out intellectuals and professionals to put them to death as perpetrators of genocide often do, you are making a wound in the whole spiritual side of culture, which is crucial to human life. and that is another source of great human suffering. and that is what much of the panel was about last night. nermeen: the other point you make is that genocides in fact rely on the participation at one level or another of the professional classes intellectuals, etc. could you explain why? >> yes, when i did my study of nazi doctors, i was very intent on looking at how professionals collude in genocide by this egregious example of nazi doctors. but looking more general and genocide, i came to see that professionals are crucial to carrying out any form of genocide. there will educated and capable of doing the nitty-gritty work of genocide. so they often develop the rationale for the genocide, the technology of some of the science. they often create images or poems or songs which render the genocide heroic. and in that way, professionals are socialized to evil. amy: robert jay lifton, thank you for being with us. we will continue this discussion afterwards and posted online. robert jay lifton leading psychiatrist, author of many books, a distant was professor at city university of new york author of "witness to an extreme century" and much more. this is democracy now! democracy now! is looking for feedback from people who appreciate the closed capt amy: this this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. you have been watching robert j jay lifton. we are offering his latest book. we urge you to call, 866-35 ♪ ba-dam-pa-dam ♪ ♪ pa-tootly-do dam ♪ ♪ pooh! ♪ ♪ i wanna be loved by you ♪ ♪ just you ♪ ♪ and nobody else but you ♪ ♪ it was straight, seven-year contracts and you were owned body and soul. i give you heart soul, blood and guts as much as i can do, the best that i can do it. and that's a lot. if they had the choice would you be more famous in 20 years because you died i am convinced some of them would have said ye