Download or read book Confronting Evils written by Claudia Card and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-22 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this contribution to philosophical ethics, Claudia Card revisits the theory of evil developed in her earlier book The Atrocity Paradigm (2002), and expands it to consider collectively perpetrated and collectively suffered atrocities. Redefining evil as a secular concept and focusing on the inexcusability - rather than the culpability - of atrocities, Card examines the tension between responding to evils and preserving humanitarian values. This stimulating and often provocative book contends that understanding the evils in terrorism, torture and genocide enables us to recognise similar evils in everyday life: daily life under oppressive regimes and in racist environments; violence against women, including in the home; violence and executions in prisons; hate crimes; and violence against animals. Card analyses torture, terrorism and genocide in the light of recent atrocities, considering whether there can be moral justifications for terrorism and torture, and providing conceptual tools to distinguish genocide from non-genocidal mass slaughter.
Download or read book At the Side of Torture Survivors written by Sepp Graessner and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2001-03-22 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An outstanding collection that brings an extraordinary international perspective to the growing literature on the treatment of the survivors of torture." -- New England Journal of Medicine
Download or read book Confronting Terror written by Dean Reuter and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2011-08-23 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the September 11, 2001 attacks the United States went to war. With thousands of Americans killed, billions of dollars in damage, and aggressive military and security measures in response, we are still living with the war a decade later. A change of presidential administration has not dulled controversy over the most fundamental objectives, strategies and tactics of the war, or whether it is even a war. This book clears the air over the meaning of 9/11, and sets the stage for a reasoned, clear, and considered discussion of the future with a collection of essays commemorating the 10th anniversary of the attacks. The contributors include supporters and critics of the war on terrorism, policymakers and commentators, insiders and outsiders, and some of the leading voices inside and outside government.
Download or read book Screening Torture written by Michael Flynn and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 327 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before 9/11, films addressing torture outside of the horror/slasher genre depicted the practice in a variety of forms. In most cases, torture was cast as the act of a desperate and depraved individual, and the viewer was more likely to identify with the victim rather than the torturer. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, scenes of brutality and torture in mainstream comedies, dramatic narratives, and action films appear for little other reason than to titillate and delight. In these films, torture is devoid of any redeeming qualities, represented as an exercise in brutal senselessness carried out by authoritarian regimes and institutions. This volume follows the shift in the representation of torture over the past decade, specifically in documentary, action, and political films. It traces and compares the development of this trend in films from the United States, Europe, China, Latin America, South Africa, and the Middle East. Featuring essays by sociologists, psychologists, historians, journalists, and specialists in film and cultural studies, the collection approaches the representation of torture in film and television from multiple angles and disciplines, connecting its aesthetics and practices to the dynamic of state terror and political domination.
Download or read book Torture and Dignity written by J. M. Bernstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-09-14 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture and rape are only rarely considered by moral philosophers—because they are so indisputably morally atrocious acts and because their specific mode of suffering cannot be accounted for by reigning moral theories. By making them pivotal to the understanding of morality in general, however, Jay Bernstein’s intention is to throw into question the dominant schools of modern moral philosophy and to attempt to restructure moral experience and understanding on the basis of the formations of suffering they make salient. Morals, Bernstein argues, emerge from the experience of moral injury, from the sufferings of the victims of moral harm. For us moderns, morality at its most urgent and insistent is, finally, a victim morality. This can sound hyperbolic; but since all of us are potential victims, it turns out that this perspective is readily available and intrinsic to ordinary ethical experience. One of Bernstein’s pivotal arguments is that trust is a form of mutual recognition; that trust is the ethical substance of everyday life; and that understood aright trust is structured from the perspective of a potential victim of harm rather than from the perspective of a deliberating agent. This book promises to be a major contribution to moral philosophy.
Download or read book Torture and Its Consequences written by Metin Basoglu and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1992-11-05 with total page 562 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic publication in this field which serves as a scholarly yet very practical resource.
Download or read book Civilizing Torture written by W. Fitzhugh Brundage and published by Belknap Press. This book was released on 2020-03-10 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer Prize Finalist Silver Gavel Award Finalist “A sobering history of how American communities and institutions have relied on torture in various forms since before the United States was founded.” —Los Angeles Times “That Americans as a people and a nation-state are violent is indisputable. That we are also torturers, domestically and internationally, is not so well established. The myth that we are not torturers will persist, but Civilizing Torture will remain a powerful antidote in confronting it.” —Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell “Remarkable...A searing analysis of America’s past that helps make sense of its bewildering present.” —David Garland, author of Peculiar Institution Most Americans believe that a civilized state does not torture, but that belief has repeatedly been challenged in moments of crisis at home and abroad. From the Indian wars to Vietnam, from police interrogation to the War on Terror, US institutions have proven far more amenable to torture than the nation’s commitment to liberty would suggest. Civilizing Torture traces the history of debates about the efficacy of torture and reveals a recurring struggle to decide what limits to impose on the power of the state. At a time of escalating rhetoric aimed at cleansing the nation of the undeserving and an erosion of limits on military power, the debate over torture remains critical and unresolved.
Download or read book Kill Boxes Facing the Legacy of US Sponsored Torture Indefinite Detention and Drone Warfare written by Elisabeth Weber and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kill Boxes addresses the legacy of US-sponsored torture, indefinite detention, and drone warfare by deciphering the shocks of recognition that humanistic and artistic responses to violence bring to consciousness if readers and viewers have eyes to face them.Beginning with an analysis of the ways in which the hooded man from Abu Ghraib became iconic, subsequent chapters take up less culturally visible scenes of massive violations of human rights to bring us face to face with these shocks and the forms of recognition that they enable and disavow. We are addressed in the photo of the hooded man, all the more so as he was brutally prevented, in our name, from returning the camera's and thus our gaze. We are addressed in the screams that turn a person, tortured in our name, into howling flesh. We are addressed in poems written in the Guantánamo Prison camp, however much American authorities try to censor them, in our name. We are addressed by the victims of the US drone wars, however little American citizens may have heard the names of the places obliterated by the bombs for which their taxes pay. And we know that we are addressed in spite of a number of strategies of brutal refusal of heeding those calls.Providing intensive readings of philosophical texts by Jean Améry, Jacques Derrida, and Christian Thomasius, with poetic texts by Franz Kafka, Paul Muldoon, and the poet-detainees of Guantánamo Bay Prison Camp, and with artistic creations by Sallah Edine Sallat, the American artist collective Forkscrew and an international artist collective from Pakistan, France and the US, Kill Boxes demonstrates the complexity of humanistic responses to crimes committed in the name of national security. The conscious or unconscious knowledge that we are addressed by the victims of these crimes is a critical factor in discussions on torture, on indefinite detention without trial, as practiced in Guantánamo, and in debates on the strategies to circumvent the latter altogether, as practiced in drone warfare and its extrajudicial assassination program.The volume concludes with an Afterword by Richard Falk.
Download or read book On the Ethics of Torture written by Uwe Steinhoff and published by Suny Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of when, and under what circumstances, the practice of torture might be justified has received a great deal of attention in the last decade in both academia and in the popular media. Many of these discussions are, however, one-sided with other perspectives either ignored or quickly dismissed with minimal argument. In On the Ethics of Torture, Uwe Steinhoff provides a complete account of the philosophical debate surrounding this highly contentious subject. Steinhoff's position is that torture is sometimes, under certain narrowly circumscribed conditions, justified, basing his argument on the right to self-defense. His position differs from that of other authors who, using other philosophical justifications, would permit torture under a wider set of conditions. After having given the reader a thorough account of the main arguments for permitting torture under certain circumstances, Steinhoff explains and addresses the many objections that have been raised to employing torture under any circumstances. This is an indispensible work for anyone interested in one of the most controversial subjects of our times.
Download or read book Contesting Torture written by Rory Cox and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-10-27 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited volume seeks to contest prevailing assumptions about torture and to consider why, despite its illegality, torture continues to be widely employed and misrepresented. The resurgence of torture and public justifications of it led to the central questions that this inter-disciplinary volume seeks to address: How is it possible for torture to be practiced when it is legally prohibited? What kinds of moves do agents make that render torture palatable? Why do so many ignore the evidence that torture is ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique? Who are the victims of torture? The various contributors in the book look to history, the practices of interrogators, artistic representations, documentary films, rendition policies, political campaigns, diplomatic discourses, international legal rules, refugee practices, and cultural representations of death and the body to illuminate how torture becomes permissible. Building from the personal to the communal, and from the practical to the conceptual, the volume reflects the multivalence of torture itself. This framework enables readers at all levels better appreciate how and why torture is open to so many interpretations and applications. This book will be of much interest to students of International Relations, Security Studies, Terrorism Studies, Ethics, and International Legal Studies.
Download or read book Habeas Corpus After 9 11 written by Jonathan Hafetz and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2012-08-20 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the rise of an American-run global detention system, including Guantâanamo Bay, Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, and secret CIA jails, and discusses efforts that are being made to challenge this new prison system through habeas corpus.
Download or read book Confronting Terror written by Dean Reuter and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2011 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents new essays dealing with the September 2001 terror attacks and the subsequent anti-terror laws and policies, featuring authors with a wide variety of viewpoints on the matter.
Download or read book Unjustifiable Means written by Mark Fallon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-24 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book the government doesn’t want you to read. President Trump wants to bring back torture. This is why he’s wrong. In his more than thirty years as an NCIS special agent and counterintelligence officer, Mark Fallon has investigated some of the most significant terrorist operations in US history, including the first bombing of the World Trade Center and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. He knew well how to bring criminals to justice, all the while upholding the Constitution. But in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, it was clear that America was dealing with a new kind of enemy. Soon after the attacks, Fallon was named Deputy Commander of the newly formed Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF), created to probe the al-Qaeda terrorist network and bring suspected terrorists to trial. Fallon was determined to do the job the right way, but with the opening of Guantanamo Bay and the arrival of its detainees, he witnessed a shadowy dark side of the intelligence community that emerged, peddling a snake-oil they called “enhanced interrogation techniques.” In Unjustifiable Means, Fallon reveals this dark side of the United States government, which threw our own laws and international covenants aside to become a nation that tortured—sanctioned by the highest-ranking members of the Bush Administration, the Army, and the CIA, many of whom still hold government positions, although none have been held accountable. Until now. Follow along as Fallon pieces together how this shadowy group incrementally—and secretly—loosened the reins on interrogation techniques at Gitmo and later, Abu-Ghraib, and black sites around the world. He recounts how key psychologists disturbingly violated human rights and adopted harsh practices to fit the Bush administration’s objectives even though such tactics proved ineffective, counterproductive, and damaging to our own national security. Fallon untangles the powerful decisions the administration’s legal team—the Bush “War Counsel”—used to provide the cover needed to make torture the modus operandi of the United States government. As Fallon says, “You could clearly see it coming, you could wave your arms and yell, but there wasn’t a damn thing you could do to stop it.” Unjustifiable Means is hard-hitting, raw, and explosive, and forces the spotlight back on to how America lost its way. Fallon also exposes those responsible for using torture under the guise of national security, as well as those heroes who risked it all to oppose the program. By casting a defining light on one of America’s darkest periods, Mark Fallon weaves a cautionary tale for those who wield the power to reinstate torture.
Download or read book The Subject of Torture written by Hilary Neroni and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considering representations of torture in such television series as 24, Alias, and Homeland; the documentaries Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (2007), and Standard Operating Procedure (2008); and "torture porn" feature films from the Saw and Hostel series, Hilary Neroni unites aesthetic and theoretical analysis to provide a unique portal into theorizing biopower and its relation to the desiring subject. Her work ultimately showcases film and television studies' singular ability to expose and potentially disable the fantasies that sustain torture and the regimes that deploy it.
Download or read book Understanding Torture written by J. Jeremy Wisnewski and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Torture surveys the massive literature surrounding torture, arguing that, once properly understood, there can be no defense of torture in any circumstances.
Download or read book The Torture Letters written by Laurence Ralph and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-01-15 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.
Download or read book Torture and Eucharist written by William T. Cavanaugh and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1998-12-07 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this engrossing analysis, Cavanaugh contends that the Eucharist is the Church's response to the use of torture as a social discipline.
