History Of Torture Research Articles

Humanitarian Obstruction as a Crime Against Humanity: The Example of Sudan

Widespread military violence, much of it targeting civilians, accelerated dramatically this past June in the Soutfi Kordofan region of Sudan, and as of September 1 it had spread to Blue Nile State. Like much of Sudan, South Kordofan and Blue Nile are a highly combustible mix of etiinic animosities, tortured history, and great numbers of heavily armed men (see Small Arms Survey 2011). South Kordofan has the added misfortune of being the Khartoum regime's only oil-producing state following the independence of South Sudan on July 9, 2011. But while geographically in northern Sudan, much of Blue Nile and South Kordofan - and virtually the entire Nuba Mountains area in the center of South Kordofan - identifies with the South culturally, politically, and militarily. Tens of thousands of Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) soldiers are from the Nuba and southern Blue Nile; they refuse to be sent back to the South or disarmed - and if pushed by Khartoum, they will fight to save their lands and cultural heritage. The SPLA-Nordi is now a distinct entity, and considers itself and its political counterpart (the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North) as fighting an aggressive tyranny in their homelands. This is not hard to understand, particularly in the case of the Nuba. In the 1990s, during die first military action undertaken by the National Islamic Front/National Congress Party, the African people of the Nuba were nearly annihilated; hundreds of thousands were killed or displaced from their fertile lands. Though not a widely known event, there is almost no dissent among students of Sudan that this episode of ethnically targeted destruction was in fact genocide. And one of its most notorious and consequential features was a total embargo on humanitarian aid to the region for much of the 1990s, even as South Sudan was the fitful beneficiary of the U.N. umbrella effort known as Operation Lifeline Sudan. This embargo is of central concern here, given the horrific human suffering and destruction that followed direcdy from it. Khartoum's more recent military offensive in South Kordofan and Blue Nile extends die offensive begun on May 20 in die contested border region of Abyei (which lies immediately to the south of South Kordofan). Only belatedly has the international community acknowledged that the incident cited by Khartoum as casus belliwas merely a pretext and that the attack was premeditated. The same is true of the regime's assault in South Kordofan, where on June 5 tanks and military equipment began to pour into Kadugli, die state capital. Within days widespread and clearly planned military actions were underway, again pitting Arab militias and Khartoum's regular armed forces against the African populations of the region, in particular those of the Nuba Mountains. In Kadugli there were authoritative reports of house-to-house searches for Nuba, who were then piled into catde trucks - or summarily executed. Roadblocks reminiscent of Rwanda in April 1994, and serving the same purpose, were also widely observed. Satellite imagery confirmed the existence of mass graves, as did eyewitness accounts from the ground collected by U.N. human rights investigators (who were shordy thereafter expelled by Khartoum). The presence in Kadugli of a U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) peacekeeping team did nothing to deter violence, or even protect African Nuba people who sought protection within the U.N. compound. Moreover, all of South Kordofan is within reach of Khartoum's major military air base at el-Obeid, which is just to the north. This has meant a constant aerial assault on civilian and humanitarian targets, especially in the Nuba Mountains - a continuation of the pattern I've analyzed and detailed for die past thirteen years (see Reeves 2011). The aerial offensive in South Kordofan has been extensive and concerted, and the clear goal has been to eliminate the troublesome populations of the Nuba once and for all. …

Perpetrator Fictions and Transcultural Memory

There has been a turn toward the figure of the perpetrator in recent historical fiction. More precisely, and as Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser (1995, published as The Reader, 1996) and Die Heimkeh...

Neurological disorders in Iraqi refugees in Jordan: data from the United Nations Refugee Assistance Information System

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recognizes 43.7 million forcibly displaced persons and asylum seekers due to conflict and persecution worldwide. Neurological disorders have rarely been described in displaced persons but likely pose a significant burden of disease. We describe the disease spectrum and health service utilization of Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers with neurological disorders using an information system developed by the UNHCR. Neurological disorders were actively monitored among the 7,642 UNHCR-registered Iraqi refugees and asylum seekers who received health and humanitarian assistance using a pilot, centralized, database called the Refugee Assistance Information System (RAIS) in the Kingdom of Jordan in 2010. There were 122 neurological diagnoses reported in 1,328 refugees (mean age 41years, 49% female, 10% disabled, 43% with pending resettlement applications) in 2,659 health visits, accounting for 17% of all refugees who sought health assistance in RAIS. Referral to a neurologist occurred in 178 cases (13.4%). The most frequent ICD-10 neurological diagnoses were dorsalgia (back pain) (29.7% of individuals with neurological disorders), headache (13.1%), and epilepsy (12.6%). Approximately 1 in 20 Iraqi refugees with a neurological diagnosis self-reported a history of torture, which was higher than Iraqi refugees without a history of torture [66/1,328 versus 196/6,314, odds ratio (OR)=1.63, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.21-2.18]. Neurological disease affects a high proportion of Iraqi refugees, including victims of torture and the disabled. Refugees require dedicated care for treatment of neurological disease with a focus on pain disorders and epilepsy.

A Return to a National Origin Preference? Mexican Immigration and the Principles Guiding U.S. Immigration Policy

The provocative question raised by Rogers Smith's “Living in a Promiseland? Mexican Immigration and American Obligations” is whether the tortured history of U.S.-Mexican relations and the racialized context of Mexican immigrant reception can best be ameliorated through targeted immigration policies that would create added opportunities for Mexican migrants relative to others. I argue that the current, more universally-principled system of U.S. immigration policy, supplemented by an inclusive legalization program, can better serve the needs of potential Mexican migrants and Mexican immigrants resident in the United States. Also, I am more skeptical than Smith is about the depths of Mexico's commitment to seeking binational strategies to address the needs of its émigrés abroad.

Whistleblowing and patient safety: the patient's or the profession's interests at stake?

Whistleblowing has a tortured history in the NHS although it has been recognized by authoritative reviewers as making an important contribution to patient safety.1,2 In a highly critical 6th Report the House of Commons Health Committee stated ‘The NHS remains largely unsupportive of whistleblowing, with many staff fearful about the consequences of going outside official channels to bring unsafe care to light. We recommend that the Department of Health (DH) bring forward proposals on how to improve this situation.’3 Encouraging the medical profession to report poor care and to report incidents that occur in their practice has been problematical in modern healthcare although there are notable exceptions.4 This article discusses why a change in the attitude of the profession is required, what the benefits will be and how it can be achieved.

From Haiti to Mississippi: Faulkner and the making of the Southern master-class

William Faulkner had a real, if oblique, relationship to Haiti as a place whose tortured history helped shape the history of the US South. This article examines the way Faulkner's work exemplifies the literary modernism of the interwar years and also put it alongside the explosion of cultural creativity in the Black Atlantic in that same period. In fact, Faulkner's work belongs to the literary history of the Black Atlantic. This study traces the importance of Haiti in the life-story of the central figure in Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Thomas Sutpen, a white slave owner in Mississippi between the 1830s and Reconstruction. Absalom tells the story of how a white master was made out of a young man of poor white origins rather than being descended from Virginian or European aristocracy. The article also explores the ways Hegel's paradigm of domination, the master-slave relationship, is reproduced in, and helps illuminate, Sutpen's story. Thus the Hegelian analysis explains not only how slaves, but also how masters, are produced.

Husband-Killer, Christian Heroine, Victim: The Execution of Madame Tiquet, 1699

AbstractThe case of Angelique-Nicole Carlier Tiquet, convicted of organizing a plot to assassinate her husband in 1699, prompts questions about histories of torture and public execution over the last several centuries. During the two-month trial that followed the assassination attempt against her husband, official inquiry and public opinion coalesced around the idea that Madame Tiquet was guilty. At least some observers came to believe that her crime represented a threat to husbands and paternal authority more generally throughout the kingdom. In the wake of her torture and public execution, which she endured so gracefully that many observers found themselves lamenting her death, male Catholic polemicists argued in print about the meanings of her demise, while one female Protestant writer, Anne Marguerite Petit du Noyer, asserted her innocence. Several years later, in the 1702 edition of his Dictionnaire historique et critique, Pierre Bayle cited the case in the context of a broader secular reflection on ...

Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England (review)

Reviewed by: Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England Ginger Frost (bio) Incest and Influence: The Private Life of Bourgeois England, by Adam Kuper; pp. 304. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2009, $27.95, £20.95. The laws of consanguinity and affinity in Victorian England were notably peculiar. English law prohibited marriages between close kin both by blood and marriage, yet first-cousin marriage was not only legal but positively encouraged. In other words, one could marry one’s first cousin but not one’s deceased wife’s niece. A book-length exploration of this anomaly has long been needed, and Adam Kuper, an anthropologist, has taken on this task. Kuper limits his study to the “upper bourgeoisie,” a group that emerged from the Industrial Revolution. (His definition of this group is largely the same as “upper middle class,” except he excludes landed gentry.) Kuper argues that “marriage within the family—between cousins, or between in-laws—was a characteristic strategy of the new bourgeoisie, and that it had a great deal to do with the success of some of the most important Victorian clans” (27). Twenty years ago, in Family Fortunes (1987), Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall asserted that relationships between brothers- and sisters-in-law and between cousins were vital to the success of the family enterprise, but few subsequent studies have explored this connection in depth. Incest and Influence, based entirely on secondary sources, unfortunately, does not focus exclusively on family marriage and business and is clearly geared toward a popular audience. The first part of the book is a good example of its impressionistic approach. Chapter 1 offers a brief survey of literary descriptions of cousin marriage from Jane Austen to Anthony Trollope; the summaries are well executed but include little analysis. The second is a discussion of the law of incest, which argues in part that the oddities of England’s marital law emerged both from its tortured history (Henry VIII’s marital troubles, for example), and the fact that England continued to have both ecclesiastical and secular control of moral issues for far longer than revolutionary states. Kuper then briefly surveys the arguments for and against marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, the major controversy of the Victorian period, and ends the chapter with the criminalization of incest in 1908. The “greatest hits” approach continues with the next chapter, which discusses the idea of intermarriage and heredity, primarily focusing on the efforts of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton to determine any ill effects from cousin marriages (both found very few). This chapter is the most disappointing of the book. The topic offers an opportunity to analyze the contradictory and overlapping ideas of Victorians on intermarriage, heredity, and degeneration, but Kuper simply describes their various studies superficially. The author does not give a satisfactory explanation of the change from incest as a category that included in-laws and stepfamily to one that was based solely on blood (as in the 1908 Incest Act). Why did this happen? And what does it say about Victorian and Edwardian ideas of family? The rest of the book concentrates on intermarriage as a business strategy, the ostensible focus of the work. This part of the book begins with a chapter that describes the intermarriages of famous banking houses—both Quaker (the Barclays) and Jewish (the Rothschilds). This section clearly demonstrates the interconnection between cousin marriage and business success in the age before corporations and limited liability, though one must wonder how typical the author’s examples are. Both of these family groups had small minority religions as an additional tie, one that excluded them from a large number of possible marriage partners. It is not clear, [End Page 499] however, if such strategies worked in Anglican families who did not have as many reasons for endogamy. Answering this would require a much broader research sample. Kuper then turns to a number of case studies of famous groups of people who intermarried (or had sexual affairs) within a small cadre of like-minded individuals. The Clapham Sect had evangelicalism and reform to bind them together, and remained a strong group for several decades, in part...

Is Regulation of Water a Constitutional Taking?

This article addresses the issue of how the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment should be applied to regulatory restrictions affecting water use. The article contends, contrary to some recent commentary and court decisions, that there is no justification for the view that regulation of water should be viewed as more likely to produce takings liability than regulations involving other natural resources. Indeed, the article contends that, if anything, the extensive and varied “background principles” limiting private property interests in water should make takings liability less likely in the arena of water regulation than in other arenas. The article describes the tortured history of this issue in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit: starting with Judge John Wiese’s 2001 decision in Tulare Lake Basin Water Storage District v. United States, holding that a restriction on water use should be analyzed as a per se physical-occupation taking; proceeding to Judge Wiese’s 2008 decision in Casitas Municipal Water District v. United States, repudiating his Tulare Lake takings theory; and ending with the 2009 Federal Circuit decision in Casitas embracing the novel, relatively narrower theory that a regulatory mandate that water be passed through a fishway should be treated as per se physical taking. The article explains why, in light of precedent and basic principles of takings jurisprudence, Judge Wiese erred in Tulare Lake but corrected his mistake in Casitas. The article then explains why the Federal Circuit erred in adopting the narrower theory that a regulatory mandate to pass water through a fishway should be viewed as a per se physical taking. This part of the article focuses on two aspects of the issue essentially ignored by the Federal Circuit: the longstanding understanding in takings jurisprudence that negative restrictions on action and affirmative mandates to take action are subject to the same basic takings analysis, and the large volume of precedent, mostly dating from the 19th century, rejecting property rights challenges to government orders that dam owners construct fishways to facilitate fish passage.

James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile (review)

Reviewed by: James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile Carol E. Henderson Magdalena J. Zaborowska . James Baldwin's Turkish Decade: Erotics of Exile. Durham: Duke UP, 2008. 379 pp. $24.95. Very rarely does a scholar get the luxury to savor the research s/he is doing. The pressures of the tenure clock, the lack of creative time and/or monetary resources, and the demands of teaching can create an intellectual atmosphere that induces a premature birth for some scholarly projects that can be damaging to the admirable efforts of its academic scholar. This is not the case with Magadalena Zaborowska's James Baldwin's Turkish Decade. As she states in the preface, this project was grown from years of research, writing, and thinking—thinking that has produced a wonderful monument to the complexities of the scholarly process. James Baldwin's Turkish Decade is at once "unapologetically autobiographical" as it is self-reflexive of the genius of the man to which it is dedicated. Zaborowska masterfully brings together scholarship and literary critical readings, and interweaves these perspectives with her primary research in Turkey. As she poignantly states in the conclusion to her volume, before her trips to Turkey, she had seen Baldwin's house in France and had "touched the weathered surface of the welcome table" where Baldwin spoke with such individuals as Josephine Baker and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. She was able as well to visit the room where Baldwin died where she "lingered too long." These spiritual experiences coalesce into the rich and unique critical perspectives Zaborowska offers in her book. An immigrant scholar herself, and in her words, "an outsider-participant in American culture and academy," Zaborowska captures well the perplexities of Baldwin's exile in Turkey from 1961 to 1971. Baldwin wrote some of his most influential work while traveling in the various locales of Turkey, France, and western Europe. It is his sojourns in Turkey, however, that have been grossly undervalued by Baldwin scholars as pertinent to our understanding of Baldwin's Another Country, The Fire Next Time, Blues for Mister Charlie, Going to Meet the Man, Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, One Day When I Was Lost, and No Name in the Street. Zaborowska fills this gap well as she gathers an impressive array of never-published photographs, archival materials, and original interviews from the Turkish artists and intellectuals who influenced Baldwin's creative spirit during this pivotal decade. This rich intellectual tapestry of transnational cross-fertilization builds a dynamic link between Turkey and the United States that destabilizes the privileging of race or sex that have trapped Baldwin's identity as a black and queer man. According to Zaborowska, our readings of his work are haunted: we inherit the black writer from Harlem or the gay writer from Paris. By refocusing the critical lens of Baldwin scholarship to include an assessment of his multiple personas, Zaborowska cultivates an alternative location from which to view Baldwin's personal anguish and prophetic intellectual integrity as these provide better distance from which to see his American roots. Baldwin's often contentious relationship with America and its inability to reconcile [End Page 776] its tortured history with its dark and queer brethren placed his more provocative works on the periphery of America's academic circles. As Baldwin writes in his fourth volume of essays, No Name in the Street, and as Zaborowska reiterates with keen sensitivity, Baldwin realized that to some in America he was viewed as a lonely, sexually dubious, political revolutionary whose outrageous antics made him an "unspeakably erratic freak." Baldwin's words, harsh in their assessment of his perceived artistic "freakishness" in the U. S., are cast in another light in Zaborowska's work as we are provided with a number of intertextual layers that probe the political, social, and cultural landscapes of each country in productive and inventive ways. In the introduction, Zaborowska charts Baldwin's journey from Harlem to Istanbul through a series of dynamic reflections that provide an overview of his polarizing effect on certain members of the black and literary community, such as Eldridge Cleaver, Norman Mailer, and Fern Marja Eckman, and of his love...

Household exposure to violence and human rights violations in western Bangladesh (II): history of torture and other traumatic experience of violence and functional assessment of victims.

BackgroundOrganised crime and political violence (OPV) and human rights violations have marred Bangladesh history since 1971. Little is known about the consequences for the oppressed population. This study describes the patterns of OPV and human rights violations in a disturbed area of Bangladesh and assesses the physical, emotional and social functioning of victims.MethodsA total of 236 of selected participants in a household survey in Meherpur district were recruited for a detailed study. Interviews and physical examinations were used to obtain information about history of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (TCIDTP), and about injuries, pain frequency and intensity. Handgrip strength and standing balance performance were measured. The "WHO-5 Well-being" scale was used to assess the subjective emotional well-being of study participants.ResultsThe majority of the reported cases of TCIDTP occurred in 2000-2008, 51% of incidents occurred during winter; 32.0% between 20:00 and midnight. Police involvement was reported in 75% of cases. Incidents took place at victims' homes (46.7%), or at the police station, military camp, in custody or in prison (21.9%). Participants experienced 1-10 TCIDTP methods and reported 0-6 injury locations on their bodies; 77.5% reported having at least two injuries. Less than half of the participants were able to stand on one leg for 30 seconds. Only 7.5% of males aged 25-44 had handgrip strength in both hands exceeding average values for healthy people at the same age. Over 85% of participants scored low (<13) on the 25-point "WHO-5 Well-being" scale. The number of years since the TCIDTP event, pain frequency, the need to quit a job to take care of an injured family member, political involvement, personal conflicts and the fear of neighbourhood violence strongly affected emotional well-being. Good emotional well-being correlated with increased political and social participation.ConclusionA detailed picture of characteristics of the victimisation is presented. The participants showed poor emotional well-being and reduced physical capacity. The results indicated that the simple and rapid method of assessment used here is a promising tool that could be used to monitor the quality and outcome of rehabilitation.

Answering Torture's Apologists: Recent Work on Torture, Democracy and French History

Two new books by Darius Rejali (Torture and Democracy, PUP, 2007) and Marnia Lazreg (Torture and the Twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad, PUP, 2008) explore the relationship between torture and democratic regimes in the 20th century, with implications not only for French history but also for contemporary debates about the use of torture in other parts of the world. Rejali's international history refutes contemporary apologists for torture by demonstrating both its historical ineffectiveness while also seeking to explain its proliferation among democratic and repressive regimes alike. Lazreg's ethnographic approach complements Rejali's empirical account by exploring the meaning of torture for both victims and perpetrators in French Algeria between 1954 and 1962.

Preface to a History of Psychology and Torture

Preface to a History of Psychology and Torture

Clinical Findings in Men With Chronic Pain After Falanga Torture

To explore clinical findings in men with chronic pain after falanga torture as compared with controls, and to try to understand the nature of the pain mechanisms responsible. Eleven male torture victims from the Middle East with chronic pain after falanga, and 11 age, sex, and ethnically matched controls with no history of torture were recruited. All participants were interviewed regarding pain characteristics in the feet and lower legs at rest and when walking. Structural changes and motor and sensory function were clinically assessed according to a standardized protocol. The walking pattern was observed for compensatory gait patterns. The torture victims had pain in their feet and lower legs and a compensated gait pattern, usually with severe pain during walking. Reduced light touch and thermal sensation, tactile dysesthesia, allodynia, and tenderness on palpation were common findings. Structural changes in the feet were found in more than half of the victims, but did not correlate with pain reports. These clinical findings were nonexistent or seen only rarely in controls. We found clear clinical signs of nerve injury in the feet. The sensory findings indicated 2 neuropathic pain mechanisms, one dominated by a peripheral pain generator and other by irritative phenomena (dysesthesia, allodynia), indicating central sensitization. It is reasonable to assume that these changes are due to the falanga exposure. A nociceptive contribution cannot be excluded. It is important to perform an individual diagnostic analysis to facilitate adequate treatment.

Asylum Seekers Seeking Mental Health Services in the United States

Asylum seekers flee their countries in search of safety due to persecution at home. Characteristics were assessed of 134 consecutive asylum seekers who sought mental health services at a program caring for survivors of torture and refugee trauma, using a chart review of patients seen between January 1999 and December 2002. Two-thirds of the sample were female, and 82% came from Africa. Eighty-four percent of the sample reported a history of torture, and one-half experienced rape or attempted rape. Most common diagnoses included posttraumatic stress disorder and depression. Predictors of torture included: posttraumatic stress disorder [odds ratio (OR) = 4.93, p = 0.03], rape (OR = 4.23, p = 0.035), and political persecution (OR = 9.28, p = 0.006). Most common self-reported health problems were headaches (29.9%), sexual dysfunction (26.1%), chronic pain (12.7%), and gastrointestinal symptoms (11.2%).

Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar by Ellen Kennedy (review)

Book Reviews 247 Kennedy seeks to illuminate the manner in which the sections on the sociology of law related to contemporary legal thinking. That is four essays out of fourteen in which Weber's 'book' is explicated, dissected, or expounded. Apart from Guenther Roth's opening biographical essay, the rest of the contributions belong to the famil iar routine of Weber the sociologist. The editors clearly think differently. 'This volume provides a critical and up-to date introduction to Weber's magnum opus. While much has been published about the various parts of Economy and Society, this is the first book to cover all its major sec tions and themes, as well as to discuss the methodological vision that unites them' we can read on the back cover. Exactly whose methodological vision might that be, one might reasonably ask? And what sort of vision is it? Mommsen is the only contributor who outlines the tortured history of the Grun driss der Sozialökonomik, the delays in its completion, Weber's drafting of the first four chapters, and the assembly of the remaining chapters by Marianne Weber and Melchior Palyi from the various papers left by Weber on his death. But Mommsen's essay was already published in History and Theory in 2000, since when the argument has naturally moved on. The editorial committee of the Gesamtausgabe has taken the view that the corpus of writing published in the early 1920s under the title Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, and subsequently edited by Johannes Winckelmann, was little more than that—a corpus—and publication is proceeding section by section, each with a different editor. In so doing they have also returned to the original edition, consider ing Winckelmann's editorial interventions to have compromised the most recent edi tions to such an extent that they can no longer form the basis of a scholarly edition. All of which might seem bookish pedantry to the sociologist, but it is as well to spend some time considering quite how 'the most important single work in sociology' (the back cover again) has come down to us and gained this eminence. That is what one might reasonably expect of a critical companion—historically-informed analysis of a text presented to us as a structured whole but whose unity, sequence and hence meaning—beyond the first four chapters—is now increasingly questioned. Keith Tribe The King's School, Worcester Ellen Kennedy, Constitutional Failure: Carl Schmitt in Weimar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), xii + pp. 256. ISBN 0-8223-3230-2 (hbk); 0-8223-3243-4 (pbk). Most scholars who are interested in Carl Schmitt have known for some time that Ellen Kennedy has been busy writing a new book on Schmitt's involvement in pol itics and political debate in the Weimar Republic. Many of these scholars have also anticipated that, amidst the recent deluge of books on Schmitt, this might be the out standing one, against which others should be measured. The outcome of Kennedy's research on Schmitt is indeed a very good book. This book contains many deeply intriguing ideas and studies, it throws new light on some of the most constitutive aspects of Schmitt's thought, especially in its theological undercurrents, and it sets out an excellent sequence of dense local analyses of the interdisciplinary debates and controversies which shaped the theoretical horizon of Weimar political debate, and which determined Schmitt's theoretical trajectory in the period of his greatest importance. Moreover, Kennedy's detailed knowledge of Schmitt's professional© Max Weber Studies 2008. 248 Max Weber Studies activities, and of his consultative positions at the fringes of government in the late Weimar interim of 1930-1933 and after 1933, provides the basis for an exceptionally solid and authoritative account of exactly how Schmitt contributed to constitu tional developments and affected constitutional policy in the Weimar Republic and in the first years of Hitler's regime. The discussions of constitutional controversies between the lawyers affiliated to the NSDAP in the early 1930s are also particularly informative (pp. 24-25), and they greatly illuminate some of the murkiest places in twentieth-century theoretical history. Naturally, some of the historical claims which Kennedy makes are...

The Bioethics of War

The Bioethics of War Jonathan H. Marks (bio) The demands of national security can place tremendous pressure on ethics. Since 9/11, professionals of all kinds—from doctors and lawyers to journalists and academics—have felt the need to reconsider and in some cases reformulate accepted understandings of their ethical responsibilities. Yet history shows that the urgent re-framing of ethical norms in order to serve the ends of national security can often be a matter of profound regret once the apparent threat subsides. The recent publication of two books tackling the relationship between medical ethics and national security is therefore to be welcomed. These texts are not alternatives, but counterweights to each other. One, written by an American physician and well-known bioethicist, seeks to reaffirm the therapeutic and caring roles of medical professionals and to resist those who would subvert—and have subverted—those roles in the name of counterterrorism. The other, written by an Israeli political scientist who focuses on bioethics, seeks to challenge perceived wisdom regarding the ethical responsibilities of health professionals in the face of war and terrorism. Steve Miles tells us that he was prompted to write Oath Betrayed by the nagging question: "Where were the doctors and nurses at Abu Ghraib?" To answer this question, however, one must look beyond the walls of the infamous prison. As Miles's book makes clear, the complicity of health care professionals in detainee abuse in the war on terror is not confined to Abu Ghraib, and it raises several legal and ethical questions of substantial import. The book begins with a brief history of torture—both licit and illicit—and draws repeatedly on legal materials such as the Geneva Conventions and the Torture Convention. But Oath Betrayed is an avowedly ethical rather than legal account, albeit one that draws rhetorical force from legal materials as well as codes of medical ethics. Examining the conduct of several military medical personnel through this lens, Miles finds his subjects—many of whom are named—more than wanting. He claims that physicians and psychologists may collaborate with those who torture or abuse prisoners in six ways: by certifying prisoners as fit for harsh interrogation; by monitoring and treating them during interrogation; by concealing evidence of abuse through the design of "nonscarifying techniques" or failure to record injuries in medical documents; by conducting abusive research; by overseeing the systematic neglect of prisoners' basic needs, including health care; and by keeping silent while abuse is ongoing (p. 31). Miles sought evidence of such complicity by perusing thousands of pages of documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, together with press clippings, military reports, and already-published work. With the notable exception of abusive research, he finds incriminating material for most kinds of complicity in his taxonomy. Complicity is, of course, more readily understood in some cases than in others. A physician at Abu Ghraib once told me, for example, that two of his platoon medics initially kept silent about the abuse of a prisoner when thinly veiled threats were made on their lives. (The same physician also described severely limited medical resources at the Abu Ghraib facility—a problem, he claimed, he had not been in a position to remedy.) However, the systematic involvement of health professionals in aggressive interrogation is, for many, the most troubling form of complicity. Acting as behavioral science consultants, psychiatrists and psychologists at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib advised interrogators on how to conduct interrogations that exposed detainees to severe physical and psychological stressors. Miles's description of these techniques as "non-scarifying" is somewhat puzzling, since many psychological stressors were designed specifically to scare the detainees. Preexisting phobias—in one case, fear of the dark (recorded on a detainee's medical records)—were deliberately exploited. Miles reserves some of his harshest criticisms for behavioral scientists. "It is one thing," he observes, for "clinicians to train an interrogator in rapport-building and cross-cultural communication. It is quite another to use psychological, medical and cultural information (especially when obtained in a clinical encounter) to degrade, frighten or inflict physical distress on a person" (p. 67). The Department of Defense has defended physicians acting as behavioral science...

David Hume of Godscroft's The History of the House of Angus (review)

Reviewed by: David Hume of Godscroft's The History of the House of Angus, 2 volumes Arthur Williamson David Hume of Godscroft's The History of the House of Angus, 2 volumes. Edited by David Reid. Pp. xliv, 638 (continuously paginated). IBSN 1 8979 7624 0. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, Fifth Series, no. 4. 2005. £30.00. Poet, historian, religious controversialist, political theorist, David Hume of Godscroft (1558-1630?) was one of the leading intellects of Jacobean Scotland. A close associate of Andrew Melville, Godscroft long served as the most articulate apologist for the Presbyterian cause and was recognized by contemporaries as its most formidable mind. After his death, Godscroft's reputation constricted precipitously. He has remained a familiar figure, however, for since the eighteenth century his vernacular writings of have been continuously mined for the documents and descriptions of the events that they contain. Except for his De familia Humia, published without translation in 1839, his extensive Latin writings have been ignored—as, indeed, has his vernacular correspondence. Only within the past thirty years, as the deeply Calvinist Renaissance in Scotland has started to receive serious attention, has Godscroft become less a source than a subject in his own right. Accordingly, Godscroft's works have begun to appear in modern scholarly editions. David Reid led the way with the publication of a variorum edition of The History of the House of Douglas (1996). Paul McGinnis and I subsequently published a Latin-English edition of the De unione insulae Britannicae (2002). Now Reid has followed up with the second part of Godscroft's great history of the Douglas family, The History of the House of Angus. Based on the 1643/46 edition and helpfully keyed to it, Reid has produced another authoritative volume whose replacement is simply impossible to imagine. The history recounts the House of Angus from the first earl in the fourteenth century to the death of the Godcroft's patron, the eighth earl, in 1588. Reid has provided exceedingly close and detailed notes explicating the individuals and events in Godscroft's text. The notes effectively unravel an extraordinary range of tangled kin relations, political manoeuvring, and ideological commitment. If they mainly offer a narrative rather than an analytical focus, that surely must be the first concern. Nevertheless, Reid also notes the revisions subsequently made by the eleventh earl, preserved in manuscript at Hamilton House—and whose entire purpose was to subvert Godscroft's Presbyterian and radical reading of the Douglas (and Scottish) past. In addition Reid has also included two appendices from the Hamilton MS revision describing the lives of the ninth and tenth earls. The result is an edition of exceptional richness. As Reid has indicated, Godscroft's Douglas-Angus narrative had a tortured history. At least from the early 1580s Godscroft had served as the amanuensis, adviser, and teacher to Archibald Douglas, the eighth earl of Angus, the most powerful and most committed of the Presbyterian lords. Angus' untimely death in 1588 was a major setback for Presbyterian cause. For Godscroft it was disaster. He would long search in vain for another such patron. Godscroft's magnificent Latin poem to the chancellor, John Maitland of Thirlestane, written between 1588 and 1592, must be one of the most elegant job applications on record. It is [End Page 143] in this context that he undertook what would become his great Douglas history. But, most unfortunately, the Douglases of Glenbenie who succeeded the childless eighth earl were Catholic or crypto-Catholic reactionaries—less than ideal patrons, to say the least. Still, the history forms part of Godscroft's larger struggle for Presbyterianism and the civic ideals he saw as inherent within it. Towards the end of his life he apparently became ever more concerned to publish the history and promote values he saw as in decline. In the event, his daughter Anna succeeded in having a truncated and bowdlerized version published in 1633. Only a decade later at the height of the covenanting movement would she finally get the full work to press, and even then the eleventh earl managed to delay its publication. As Reid observes, Godscroft self-consciously wrote the history in Scots rather than English...

Somali and Oromo refugee women: trauma and associated factors

This paper reports a study identifying the demographic characteristics, self-reported trauma and torture prevalence, and association of trauma experience and health and social problems among Somali and Oromo women refugees. Nearly all refugees have experienced losses, and many have suffered multiple traumatic experiences, including torture. Their vulnerability to isolation is exacerbated by poverty, grief, and lack of education, literacy, and skills in the language of the receiving country. Using data from a cross-sectional population-based survey, conducted from July 1999 to September 2001, with 1134 Somali and Oromo refugees living in the United States of America, a sub-sample of female participants with clearly identified parenting status (n = 458) were analysed. Measures included demographics, history of trauma and torture, scales for physical, psychological, and social problems, and a post-traumatic stress symptom checklist. Results indicated high overall trauma and torture exposure, and associated physical, social and psychological problems. Women with large families reported statistically significantly higher counts of reported trauma (mean 30, P < 0.001) and torture (mean 3, P < 0.001), and more associated problems (P < 0.001) than the other two groups. Women who reported higher levels of trauma and torture were also older (P < 0.001), had more family responsibilities, had less formal education (P < 0.001) and were less likely to speak English (P < 0.001). These findings suggest a need for nurses, and especially public health nurses who work with refugee and immigrant populations in the community, to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the range of refugee women's experiences and the continuum of needs post-migration, particularly among older women with large family responsibilities. Nurses, with their holistic framework, are ideally suited to partner with refugee women to expand their health agenda beyond the biomedical model to promote healing and reconnection with families and communities.

Prevalence of torture survivors among foreign-born patients presenting to an urban ambulatory care practice.

The prevalence of torture among foreign-born patients presenting to urban medical clinics is not well documented. To determine the prevalence of torture among foreign-born patients presenting to an urban primary care practice. A survey of foreign-born patients. Foreign-born patients, age > or = 18, presenting to the Primary Care Clinic at Boston Medical Center. Self-reported history of torture as defined by the UN, and history of prior disclosure of torture. Of the 308 eligible patients, 88 (29%) declined participation, and 78 (25%) were not included owing to lack of a translator. Participants had a mean age of 47 years (range 19 to 76), were mostly female (82/142, 58%), had been in the United States for an average of 14 years (range 1 month to 53 years), and came from 35 countries. Fully, 11% (16/142, 95 percent confidence interval 7% to 18%) of participants reported a history of torture that was consistent with the UN definition of torture. Thirty-nine percent (9/23) of patients reported that their health care provider asked them about torture. While most patients (15/23, 67%) reported discussing their experience of torture with someone in the United States, 8 of 23 (33%) reported that this survey was their first disclosure to anyone in the United States. Among foreign-born patients presenting to an urban primary care center, approximately 1 in 9 met the definition established by the UN Convention Against Torture. As survivors of torture may have significant psychological and physical sequelae, these data underscore the necessity for primary care physicians to screen for a torture history among foreign-born patients.