Torture Research Articles

O caso das Bruxas de Salem e a origem do plea bargaining norte-americano: contrapondo o entendimento dicotômico dos sistemas processuais penais

A questão que move o presente artigo é: pode o plea bargainingnorte-americano ter sido originado por meios considerados pela doutrina contemporânea como predominantemente "inquisitórios"? Em caso afirmativo, e considerando que 95% dos casos naquele país se resolvem pelo plea bargaining, faz sentido seguir dizendo que o sistema processual penal dos Estados Unidos da América seja "acusatório"? E mais: desconstruídos os rótulos que predominam na doutrina em torno desse tema, faz sentido insistir no emprego da dicotomia dos sistemas processuais penais, em acusatório versusinquisitório, notadamente na discussão da adoção de modelos processuais inspirados no plea bargainingnorte-americano? Essas perguntas pretendem ser respondidas a partir da reconstrução histórica do plea bargainingnos Estados Unidos, o que remonta à sua colonização puritana, seu apego a disputas econômicas e às práticas introduzidas no século XVII, cuja expressão primitiva se encontra no famoso julgamento das “bruxas de Salem”, em Massachussets. O artigo, então, explora como as coisas se deram nesse caso, identificando a semelhança entre os métodos utilizados no julgamento das bruxas de Salem e no moderno plea bargaining.A tortura física e psicológica, esta vinculada à possibilidade de duras penas, que atemorizavam os acusados de heresia nos processos da inquisição medieval, assim como a sua parca possibilidade de defesa, também foram encontradas nos julgamentos das bruxas de Salem. Assim, o que se percebe é que se perpetuou um modelo de justiça criminal tachado como "inquisitorial" pela transmissão cultural, como uma herança medieval em parcelas do processo penal norte-americano. Isso evidencia que não há rigidez conceitual acerca dos sistemas processuais penais contradizendo significativa parcela da doutrina contemporânea que segue se apegando à dicotomia inquisitório versusacusatório. E permite avançar para, desvinculando-se dessa amarração dicotômica doutrinária, que é própria das pretensões de organização científica do século XIX na Europa, e que de lá para cá vem promovendo uma visão dualista e que não aceita enxergar nada para além dos rótulos antagônicos de inquisitório ou acusatório, indagar se é conveniente, ou não e em que termos à luz da Constituição da República de 1988, adotar-se, no Brasil modelos inspirados no plea bargainingestadunidense.

Does Criminalizing Torture Deter Police Torture?

Does Criminalizing Torture Deter Police Torture?

Belhaj, Justiciability, and the ‘Silhouette-Like’ Act of State Doctrine

This paper discussed the origin of the doctrine of judicial self-restraint where a defence of ‘Act of State’ is raised by a government on grounds of state sovereignty. The older cases raised international boundary and inter-state law issues. These could arise from a dispute over the territorial waters. Lord Wilberforce enunciated the principle as one where, “the courts will not adjudicate upon acts done abroad by virtue of sovereign authority.” But discomfiture in judicial circles with the foreign act of state doctrine nonetheless remained. Writing in 2002, Lawrence Collins has said that: “[t]he idea that some matters are simply not justiciable is not one which comes easily to lawyers and judges. But in the field of foreign affairs it is an idea which has gained much currency .....” It arises because of, “what may be described as sensitivity to foreign policy interests, and certainly not deference to the views or objectives of the executive.” This Paper discussed the question in relation to the case of Belhaj which came before the UK Supreme Court in 2018 , because it raised the timely issue whether, outside of the area of inter-state boundary disputes between nations, the ‘act of state’ doctrine could be invoked for a violation of a fundamental human right – for example an act of state torture. The UK Supreme Court has now given an emphatic and resounding answer to that question. This Paper discusses the implications of this decision, particularly in the context of national security concerns arising from terrorist activities and asks whether the sovereign power of the State to protect its citizens from terrorism has been weakened by this decision.

David Nthubu Koloane (1938–2019)

David Nthubu Koloane (1938–2019)

Pain and Evil: From Local Nociception to Misery Following Social Harm.

Experiencing pain, especially when chronic, is an excruciating condition that should be regarded as a syndrome, if not a disease. People suffering from chronic pain tend to develop psychological discomfort mostly due to lack of acceptance, disbelief, blame. The complexity of pain pathophysiology, plus a wide range of negative psychosocial factors, leads to a more complex suffering that deserves attention and multidisciplinary treatments. The possibility that chronic pain may occur following physical aggression, torture, or persecution raises the issue of evil as a major contributor to pain in its worst representation – when individuals or groups are attacked based on racial, social, gender, religious, political, or other grounds. To explore the complex issue of chronic pain following physical or psychological harm, and to underscore the need for a multidisciplinary approach to reduce the burden of chronic pain, we discuss the biological mechanisms underlying pain state. We seek to clarify those factors leading to pain chronification, as well as personal and social attitudes that confound patients with chronic pain. The importance of family and social environment is also investigated, as well as personality traits of chronic pain patients that may further hamper successful treatment. The presence of chronic pain, modulated by, for example, acceptance of being a victim of premeditated physical and social violence, makes the issue more difficult to comprehend.

Protection of Prisoners of War from Torture with Proper Selection of Soldiers Taking Care of POWs: An Ethical View

Background: Prisoners of War (POWs) undergo different physical and/or psychological tortures. According to the Third Geneva Convention, each government is obliged to protect POWs from any harm, especially torture. Although torture of POWs has been considered in international documents such as the 3rd Red Cross Convention for Prevention of Torture, this issue seems to have been ignored so far. Thus, the current article discusses this issue. Objectives: This review aimed to describe an important, yet neglected, way to protect POWs from torture. Methods: The behaviors of Iraqi and Iranian authorities toward the soldiers that were selected to take care of POWs were compared. This review study is based on a narrative search that included articles published on the Iraq-Iran war (1980-88). Results: According to international laws, there is no ethical justification for the torture of POWs, especially after many years of captivity. During the Iraq-Iran war, Iraqi authorities recruited soldiers who had been harmed in some way by the war to handle Iranian POWs. The presence of war victims as care providers to POWs in detention camps may provide grounds for the torture and maltreatment of POWs. Conclusion: Prohibiting the presence of war victims in detention camps could be one important and effective way to protect POWs from torture and maltreatment.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ФІЗИЧНОГО НАСИЛЬСТВА, ТОРТУР ТА ЖОРСТОКОГО ПОВОДЖЕННЯ ПО ВІДНОШЕННЮ ДО ВІЙСЬКОВОПОЛОНЕНИХ

Introduction. The military conflict which is being carried out in the east of Ukraine, brings forward new requirements to various aspects of the military’s life activity. Aspects of the troops capture by the opposing party become much more important. The questions of survival of the military in captivity in the course of contacts with people who escort soldiers after the capture, guards and local population when traveling on enemy territory in case of escape turn out to be of current interest. The vast majority of prisoners faced the conditions that they could not even imagine in their life environment before war (another level of living, restrictions, humiliation, bullying, violence, beatings, torture, etc.), which encourage them to strive to achieve a common goal - to survive. As a result of non-stop interrogations, constant beatings and abuse soldiers in captivity have changes in the nature of the physiological and psychological activity.In our opinion, the question of the application of torture to prisoners of war is very relevant, especially their impact on the psyche of soldiers and psychological consequences of staying in these conditions.Purpose: to identify the psychological features of torture against prisoners of war in the current military conflict. Methods: content analysis of online resources and interviews.Originality. The article presents data on the use of physical violence, torture and ill-treatment in relation to prisoners of war during the anti-terrorist operation in the East of Ukraine. The description of the circumstances, procedures and methods of getting a soldier into captivity is provided. The procedures that imitated the activities of the bodies of inquiry, investigation or judicial bodies in the occupied territories, namely, detention, interrogation, conviction, are considered. The article reviews the places of illegal detention of prisoners of war and identifies the possibility of using various types of torture, physical or psychological violence or other means of pressure in these conditions. The article analyzes the most common means of violent influence (beatings, simulated shooting, electric current, strangulation, public humiliation, etc.). The most common means of violence is beating: with hands, feet, rubber sticks, pieces of furniture, on various parts of the body. One person as well as and several people participated in the procedure of beating the prisoner. The data on application during interrogations an electric current as a torture, by means of the military telephone device is presented. The article presents data on the use of torture in the form of suppression using a plastic bag. Violent influence due to suppression was carried out until the person lost consciousness. This was repeated several times in a row. In addition to the above types of violence, other methods of influence were applied to the military servants who were in captivity in order to increase physical and psychological suffering (public humiliation, rape, threats against close people and family members, etc.). The article determines that one of the main purposes of the use of violent influence on persons who were in illegal isolation was to force them to participate in the shooting of staged videos according to a pre-prepared scenario.Conclusion. 1. Being a soldier in the psychological environment of "cultural trauma" leads to deformation of the personality of a prisoner, in some cases it can result in personal growth, in others it leads to regressive behaviors and degradation that could be considered as boundaries of this psychological environment.2. In a hybrid war capturing of soldiers has psychological characteristics depending on the type of unit that they are held captive at and has different purposes, for military units it is mainly the need to cease resistance of the enemy, and to demonstrate the strength, skill and intimidate the enemy, beatings of prisoners and depriving them of sleep and food was common among them, interrogations were carried out to prevent escape and induce cooperation. Professional mercenaries intend to intimidate the enemy and demonstrate the strength and skill, interrogations of professional mercenaries were characterized by brutal torture, violence and murders of prisoners of war. Exchanges and buyouts were typical for gangs. The characteristic feature of interrogation, conducted by the gang units, was abuse of prisoners for profit.3. In our opinion, the perspective direction of further scientific research is the study of methods of diagnosis and psychological work with trauma for each particular case (rape, amputation, castration, etc.).

The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955 by Silvan Niedermeier

Reviewed by: The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955 by Silvan Niedermeier Luther Adams The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955. By Silvan Niedermeier. Translated by Paul Cohen. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Pp. [x], 213. Paper, $27.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5297-9; cloth, $90.00, ISBN 978-1-46965296-2.) Translated from German by Paul Cohen, Silvan Niedermeier's The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955 is a history of the NAACP's work to expose police torture in the American South. Police tortured black people "outside the public eye" and "officially denied" any wrongdoing (p. 1). Niedermeier defines torture as "violence used by state and law enforcement officials to acquire information or coerce confessions," basing his definition on the 1984 United Nations Convention against Torture (p. 5). Niedermeier uses fifty-one complaints filed with the NAACP, newspapers, court records, government reports, and records [End Page 747] of the American Civil Liberties Union and the FBI to trace African Americans' efforts to expose and delegitimize police torture. In cases like Brown v. Mississippi (1936), Chambers v. Florida (1940), and those involving the Groveland Four (1949–1955), NAACP lawyers challenged police torture but were "powerless" to stop it (p. 99). It was "difficult … to establish the truth in the courts of the South," and the NAACP had "no immediate impact" (pp. 119, 88). The NAACP failed to curb "the commonplace torture of African American citizens" (p. 88). Failure to acknowledge police torture exposed the "limits of African American testimony in southern courts" (p. 47). White people were reluctant to put police officers, sheriffs, and deputies on trial. White police were acquitted, and allegations of torture were ignored, "in the face of overwhelming evidence against them" (p. 11). Judges, district attorneys, and juries all protected white supremacy. When white people did protest police torture, it was often out of a racist sense of paternalism. According to Niedermeier, the FBI was spurred to act by the growing political pressure applied by black voters during the Cold War and the agency's ethos of "strict rationality" and "neutrality and objectivity" in gathering evidence (p. 112). The black press and the NAACP, through pamphlets, speaking tours, fundraisers, and the courts, positioned police torture as part of a wider pattern of police brutality and its eradication as central to the rights of first-class citizenship. Instead of placing torture in the context of police brutality itself, Niedermeier fixates on a provocative but unproved assertion: "police torture was a dark side to the gradual decline in lynching violence in the South" (p. 16). The Color of the Third Degree could more deeply engage secondary sources on the NAACP and the Groveland Four. Genna Rae McNeil's Groundwork: Charles Hamilton Houston and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Philadelphia, 1983) and Barbara Ransby's Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill, 2003) demonstrate the connection between the early work of building the NAACP into an organization of 500,000 members by the 1950s and the legal groundwork of the 1930s and 1940s. Why did the NAACP win cases on issues relating to housing, voting rights, jury selection, interstate travel, and higher education but was unable to win convictions in police torture cases? And why was that lack of convictions the NAACP's failure? Niedermeier's work neglects the limits of white truth telling, and that the failure of the justice system was the failure of American democracy. Niedermeier does not cite Langston Hughes's "Ballad of Harry Moore" (1952), the PBS documentary Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore (2000), or Gilbert King's Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America (New York, 2012). King's work is instructive on how police torture in the case of the Groveland Four exposed the depth of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida law enforcement. The Color of the Third Degree is a timely and important...

Degraded, beaten, tortured

Degraded, beaten, tortured

What We Don't See in What We See: A Response to Cinema and Fascination

What We Don't See in What We See:A Response to Cinema and Fascination Ackbar Abbas (bio) The world is an enigma, Nietzsche said, but an enigma composed of its various solutions (qtd. in Calasso 3). In much the same way, we can say that fascination in cinema is an enigma made up of its various interpretations. The essays in this special issue of Postmodern Culture, each brilliant in its own very different way, draw on a wide range of disciplines—from psychoanalysis and philosophy to sound art and quantum physics—as if to say that what is fascinating about cinema exists everywhere and not just in cinema alone. However, each essay manages to construct its argument around a reading of one or two films. The arguments are staged in dialogue with Freud or Lacan, Blanchot, Barad, or Bersani, but these canonical figures are not given the last word on the enigma of fascination. (More often than not, they appear like apotropaic gargoyles attaching themselves to an argument.) Rather, the significant emphasis is always on how fascination informs and deforms all the elements in cinema, including words and images—informs by de-forming them, like the sly way Deleuze's "dark precursor" works, or the way Lucretius's clinamen conditions atoms to swerve from the straight and narrow. What emerges from this special issue, then, is not a unified theory of fascination, but something perhaps more valuable: descriptions from the field of how fascination is present in a film and how a viewer or reader experiences it. Taken together, the essays suggest that behind the question "What is fascination?" lies the question "What is cinema?" Let me begin with Kwasu D. Tembo's essay, which raises some key questions about fascination and cinema, including, if only by implication, the question of film form. Tembo notes that fascination is often used today as a term of approbation, especially when we do not know what to say, but he also reminds us that there is a sinister side to it, highlighted by the psychoanalytic study of sexuality. When sex is linked to power, as it always is, we find "aberrations" like sadism and masochism. In the first half of the essay, Tembo brings out the heavy artillery (Freud, Lacan, Gallop, and others) to argue that Steven Shainberg's Secretary (2002) is about psycho-sexual fascination as a form of bondage. The film deals with the affair between Lee Halloway and her boss Edward Grey; Lee has masochistic tendencies, and Grey sadistic. Not unlike the master/bondsman dialectic, psycho-sexual bondage is "bidirectional." Furthermore, it turns around a Lacanian "thing," an objet petit a, a thing that is a no-thing—like the dead earthworm Lee mails to Grey—which Tembo calls in his title "the power of absolute nothing." The work of Jane Gallop, herself a reader of Freud and Lacan, opens the further possibility of a feminist reading. However, it should be obvious that what accounts for the film's fascination is not any scholarly apparatus but its overall tone, the fact that it is not a case study but a romantic comedy given several generic twists. In the film, bondage as "bidirectional exchange" is less a psychological insight than a comic formula whose automatism makes it appropriate for farce: so less a psychoanalytic tour de force than a Schnitzleresque tour de farce. The marriage of true minds takes the farcical form of a sadist and a masochist falling in love. Of course, it will have to be a kinky kind of love, romantic comedy taken to unexpected places. Nevertheless, like more conventional affairs, kinkiness has its own trials and tribulations, as well as its own precise if perverse algorithm of desire, seen most clearly in the minute detail of the fetish. One example is Grey's red pencil. He uses it like an instrument of torture, a red-hot branding iron, to circle Lee's typing errors. Tembo points to an even better example, the dead earthworm that Lee mails to Grey when all else fails to rekindle his passion. She tries enticing him to no avail by placing a sexy photo of herself on his desk or dressing...

Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus

Reviewed by: Bent Heavens by Daniel Kraus Kate Quealy-Gainer, Assistant Editor Kraus, Daniel Bent Heavens. Holt, 2020 [304p] (Dauntless Path) Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-250-15167-4 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-250-15168-1 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9 up Before he went missing three years ago, Liv's father fell from his respected place as a well-known teacher in their small Iowa town to a public embarrassment when he started raving about aliens and abductions. Although she's managed to piece her social status back together since he's been gone, Liv still reluctantly weekly checks the traps Dad had laid out in their nearby forest to capture an alien, and one day, it seems that she and her friend Doug have snared one. They hold it in Liv's shed and over the next few weeks beat and torture it, eventually using tactics Doug finds in a U.S. Army field manual. By the time Liv decides enough is enough, it's clear that Doug has fully accepted and revels in his role as torturer, while a horrific discovery by Liv leads to only more tragedy. While much (but not all) of the physical violence takes place offstage, there are still plenty of gut-churning descriptions of flayed skin, weeping sores, bloody gums, and black bruises to bring horror, and Liv and Doug refer to their instruments of torture in awed, almost loving terms. More disturbing than the violence, however, is Liv's ability to justify the beatings, convincing herself at first that the creature deserves the abuse and then that by staying involved, she can somehow save Doug from himself. A subplot between Liv and a possible love interest only brings fresh horror at the end, and even readers who have guessed the story's major twist will gasp at the full extent of the tragedy. [End Page 264] A chilling author's note about the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" underscores the notion that humans are capable of utterly inhumane behavior if they believe the benefits to them outweigh the moral principles. Copyright © 2020 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South ed. by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring

Reviewed by: Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South ed. by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring Max Felker-Kantor (bio) Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South. Edited by Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. Ring. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2019. Pp. 240. $99.00 cloth; $26.00 paper; $19.95 ebook) Recent attention to the crisis of mass incarceration has led historians to rethink the roots of crime and punishment in American society. The burgeoning field of carceral state studies has produced important scholarship on the convict lease period following Reconstruction in the South and the punitive turn after the uprisings of the 1960s. Yet, the first half of the twentieth century in America’s carceral past, particularly in the Jim Crow South, has largely gone overlooked. Amy Louise Wood’s and Natalie J. Ring’s nine chapter edited collection provides a needed addition that bridges the convict lease era with that of mass incarceration. Framed around two broadly defined features of the criminal justice system, Crime & Punishment in the Jim Crow South presents a nuanced argument about the South’s distinctive criminal justice system in areas of policing, incarceration, and capital punishment. The region’s suspicion of state power meant that centralized criminal justice systems developed slowly over the first half of the twentieth century as the Jim Crow South modernized. As southern progressives managed a modernizing region reform brought greater state centralization to the criminal justice system. Government oversight, however, did not challenge Jim Crow. Rather, “Criminal justice served to bolster the racial hierarchy in the face of these changes associated with modernity” (p. 6). The mechanisms that facilitated entrance into southern criminal justice systems explored in part one offer insights into the contested history of southern policing. Despite legal segregation, southern police forces were not all-white. As K. Stephen Prince shows, Black police officers in New Orleans who joined the force during Reconstruction presented a challenge to white supremacy’s supporters. Would they support the police or racial order? Using the trial and [End Page 532] removal of a Black officer, George Doyle, for the killing of a white bar owner, Prince shows how “the lines of race proved more enduring than respect for the authority of the police” (p. 23). For the police to become a modern instrument of racial control, in short, it had to be made white. Despite the consolidation of white police forces, African Americans routinely tried to make the police arm of the modern state work for them. As Brandon Jett and Silvan Niedermeier reveal in their respective chapters on homicide investigations and police torture, Black residents attempted to use the police to advance their own interests within the confines of Jim Crow. African Americans in Memphis called the police, acted as witnesses, assisted officers in gathering evidence, and, at times, apprehended suspects. In contrast, as Niedermeyer shows, African American challenges to police torture served as a catalyst for organizing and the foundation of the long Black freedom movement. Just as African Americans attempted to make the state work for them, Jim Crow shielded white criminals from prosecution, as Tammy Ingram demonstrates in a chapter on organized crime in Phenix City, Alabama, that mirrors Khalil Muhammad’s description of the disappearance of the white criminal in the urban north. Efforts to root out organized crime did not lead to the arrest of whites but produced a new means of racialized control in the form of law-and-order politics. Modernization and progressive government reforms released the powers of white supremacy to police African Americans with the backing of the state. The modes of incapacitation developed in response to state centralization, modernization, and progressive reforms unique to the Jim Crow South. However, as the authors in part two show, the criminal justice system not only responded to reform but was a causal factor in the consolidation of an updated system of racial control. As Amy Wood suggests, South Carolina governor Cole Blease resisted centralized state power but employed a liberal use of the pardon to push [End Page 533] forward penal reform and reinforce the populist and personal control over African Americans rooted in racial paternalism. Or, more...

Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination: Art, Architecture, and Society by Cynthia Hahn

Reviewed by: Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination: Art, Architecture, and Society by Cynthia Hahn Sarah Luginbill Cynthia Hahn, Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination: Art, Architecture, and Society (Berkeley: University of California Press 2020) 176 pp., 52 ills. Relics of Christ's Passion present scholars of medieval Christianity with a fascinating paradox. According to the New Testament, Christ's body ascended into heaven shortly after his resurrection. Therefore, apart from a few alleged relics of Christ's blood and circumcised foreskin, there are no bones or body of Christ to venerate. In the absence of primary relics, medieval Christians collected and enshrined objects that came into contact with Christ—specifically, those items that interacted with his body during the Passion (the whip, crown of thorns, True Cross, holy nails, sponge, and lance, among others). The medieval dissemination and popularity of these relics are the subject of Cynthia Hahn's latest monograph, which surveys the cult of Passion relics in western Europe from the time of Constantine to the sixteenth century. Hahn's book is taken from two public lectures, given at the Spencer Museum of Art (University of Kansas) and the Nelson-Atkins Museum (Kansas City). Following the division of these lectures, Passion Relics consists of only two chapters, with micro-discussions embedded in each. The first half of the book traces the development of the cult of what Hahn deems the "greatest" Passion relic: the True Cross. Hahn recounts the True Cross's origin story (found by Helena, the mother of Constantine), examines the various medieval records of the dissemination of splinter relics, and analyzes practices of enshrining fragments of the True Cross in Western reliquaries. She discusses the cross as both a material object and as a shorthand for faith, redemption, and sacrifice in text, liturgy, and art. One example of the latter includes the poem "The Dream of the Rood," wherein the True Cross appears to an anonymous viewer as a living tree that has been both attacked and bejeweled by human hands. The second half of the monograph focuses on medieval Passion relics as a group, both in theory and in physical collections. Hahn outlines the major relics, including the holy nails, the lance, and the sponge, and their significance to medieval Christians as [End Page 278] objects that touched Christ's skin, blood, and mouth. Hahn notes that Passion relics appeared to surface in social and political settings in which they served a purpose, emphasizing that the material culture of belief was never far from secular ambitions. In this way, Hahn's second chapter analyzes Passion relics "as holy material but also as social phenomena—as barometers of Christian devotion and its processes" (5). Passion relics were utilized by rulers, such as Constantine and Raymond of Toulouse, to solidify diplomatic ties. Louis IX, Charles IV, and the Savoy dynasty created extravagant architectural works to house their Passion relics and underscore their personal connections to the objects. Passion relics, however, did not just circulate in the elite circles of medieval Europe. While Passion relics first traveled from east to west relatively slowly and mostly through diplomatic channels, the crusades opened up a much broader network for relics of the True Cross, the holy lance, and others to enter western Europe in larger amounts. The lay populace interacted with Passion relics in the context of grand architecture or elaborate civic processions, which further elevated the status and splendor of the items on display. In addition to this kind of public devotion, Hahn explores the role of Passion relics in female spirituality and imagination. She discusses the images in the Passional of Abbess Kunigunde and the devotion of Gertrude of Helfta, a mystic who used the veil of Veronica as a focus in her meditations. Hahn mentions the sexualized nature of some female devotions to Christ's wounds, but does not analyze them in depth. A second paradox regarding Passion relics emerges in Hahn's work: items associated with physical pain and torture also become conduits of spiritual redemption and loving devotion for believers. Hahn notes this juxtaposition manifests itself visually through the contrast between the relics themselves (iron or wood) and the materials of their reliquary...

A Collaborative Method for Protecting Teens Against Online Predators Over Social Networks: A Behavioral Analysis

Online social networks have gained ubiquitous popularity in the last decade but despite the advantages, they have also raised privacy concerns for users. Many people have lost their jobs, relationships, and are stalked because of online privacy breaches. This situation is even more disturbing for young teens as they are in the process of learning emotional, social, and physical behaviors. Online predators take advantage of their immaturity and raise various threats to teens including aggression, rape, abduction, physical and emotional sadistic torture, and even human trafficking. Teens, on the other hand, do not have any mechanism to protect them against such threats. Therefore, this research addresses this overlooked need and proposes a trust model for the teen community, which can evaluate the trustworthiness of a stranger based on teens’ psychological and social needs. This paper first identifies various factors of teen psychology from literature, and then proposes a trust model for teens based on those factors. The model ensures the trustworthiness of a stranger through a two-dimension matrix consists of his reputation in other teens and reliability. The proposed model was simulated through colored Petri nets and implemented as a real-time trust evaluation application over Facebook. A user acceptance testing was also performed by teens, which suggests that 81.77% of teens were overall satisfied with the proposed approach.

Before the ‘Arab Spring’: How challengers pushed counter-issues in Egypt’s hybrid media system

Eight years after the ‘Arab Spring’, literature is still marked by techno-deterministic interpretations. This article contributes to examining the role of agenda-building processes just before the outbreak of the Egyptian uprising in 2011 within authoritarian systems. Using the ‘hybrid media system’ concept, the article not only focuses on new media effects but, by including print media, it takes into consideration the media system in its entirety. Focusing on Khaled Said’s case as a counter-issue, the qualitative content analysis investigates how challengers in Egypt successfully pushed the media salience of police torture onto the mainstream media agenda. By reconstructing the issue cycle and intermedia spill-over effects, the author investigates the agenda-building processes within hybrid media systems in Arab authoritarian contexts.The qualitative content analysis includes 415 articles and posts from 12 diverse print, online and social media outlets between June 2010 and January 2011. The central finding is that successful spill-over effects occurred from online media to private print media, even though state media tried to ignore the issue. The coverage transferred the issue’s salience from new media into mainstream media, thus reaching wider non-politicized audiences. These proven interlinkages between old and new media are often an overlooked aspect in the literature on media and the ‘Arab Spring’.

Caution warranted when torturing data until they confess

Caution warranted when torturing data until they confess

The Third Revolution

The Third Revolution

A escrita como cena substitutiva da Pólis: memória, silêncio e testemunho em Salinas Fortes

resumo A narrativa de memórias pode ser o espaço de articulação entre as vivências do sujeito e o movimento da coletividade. Os dois níveis se sobrepõem especialmente no relato pessoal de eventos históricos traumáticos. A escrita assumiria nesse caso a função de cena substitutiva da pólis. É o caso do livro Retrato calado, de Luiz Roberto Salinas Fortes. Nessa obra sobressaem a articulação de elementos autobiográficos, busca e desencontro de si e testemunho das prisões que enfrentou por motivos políticos durante a ditadura militar brasileira. A tortura física e psicológica que sofreu projeta as suas sombras em todas as páginas, de que resulta a impossibilidade de uma escrita confessional completa e bem-sucedida, seja no plano autobiográfico, seja no político.

A Group Treatment for Displaced Survivors of Persecution: A Reflective Account Through a Psychosocial Lens

Millions of displaced survivors of persecution are navigating the impacts of both human rights violations and being forced to flee their homes, communities and nations. Their broad, pervasive, and complex psychosocial needs can develop into chronic and severe issues if they are not addressed. There is limited literature on clinical interventions and approaches that have a primary goal of promoting psychosocial health of displaced survivors of targeted persecution. The Orientation Group, developed by the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture in New York City, is one brief psychoeducational and skills-based group intervention aiming to support the psychosocial wellbeing of displaced survivors of torture, political oppression and other forms of persecution. Although not yet empirically studied, this group intervention has more than a decade of anecdotal support. This paper provides a reflective account of the Orientation Group and offers recommendations for enhancing the intervention.

Examining repressive and oppressive state violence using the Ill-Treatment and Torture data

The literature on government violence focuses primarily on the repression of dissent. But not all state violence targets groups who oppose the government. Much of it targets criminal suspects, immi...