torture 
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SOURCE: Smithsonian
12/6/2021
Was the Legendary Viking "Blood Eagle" Torture Real?
by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele
"The blood eagle’s prominence within Viking society—both during the medieval era and as ascribed in the centuries since—stems from its emphasis on ritual and revenge."
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SOURCE: Boston Review
9/9/2021
9/11 Forever
by Joseph Margulies
"By creating the impression that the stakes were not merely consequential but existential, the attacks of September 11 normalized previously unimaginable cruelty."
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SOURCE: Ars Technica
3/23/2021
Stabbing, Crucifixion, Eaten by Eels: Learn all about Murder the Roman Way
Historian Emma Souther's new book is a mix of the true crime genre and a history of crime and punishment in ancient Rome.
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SOURCE: Rolling Stone
11/19/2020
The Untouchables: An Investigation into the Violence of the Chicago Police
by Paul Solotaroff
Historian Simon Balto is among experts who place the Chicago Police Department's treatment of the city's Black communities in historical perspective.
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SOURCE: New York Times
8/29/2020
C.I.A. Uncensors Memoir of F.B.I. Agent Who Protested Torture of Terrorists
The uncensored memoir makes the claim that torture interrupted and undermined effective interrogations by other means.
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SOURCE: New York Times
6/30/2020
The Scars of Being Policed While Black (video)
by Laurence Ralph
Anthropologist and police violence researcher Laurence Ralph made the film above to explain exactly what it means to be policed in America today. It moves from my own experiences with racial profiling as a teenager to the horrific history of police torture in Chicago.
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11/26/19
Legalize Torture? It’s Tortured Logic
by Sam Ben-Meir
The Report is largely about another single-minded individual, Daniel J. Jones (Adam Driver), lead investigator of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who spent five arduous years doggedly uncovering the CIA’s suspect detention and interrogation program following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
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SOURCE: The Washington Post
9-13-18
France’s Macron admits to military’s systematic use of torture in Algeria war
France will formally acknowledge the French military’s systemic use of torture in the Algerian War in the 1950s and 1960s, an unprecedented step forward in grappling with its long-suppressed legacy of colonial crimes.
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SOURCE: National Security Archives
8/10/18
Gina Haspel CIA Torture Cables Declassified
The CIA director described extended sessions of physical violence and waterboarding.
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5/13/18
The Misleading Rationales for Gina Haspel's Nomination as CIA Director
by John Prados
They include her promise not to torture people.
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SOURCE: NYT
5/10/18
Gina Haspel Says C.I.A. ‘Historically’ Has Not Interrogated Subjects. History Shows Otherwise.
Fact check.
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SOURCE: National Security Archive
4/26/18
Gina Haspel’s CIA Torture File
The Trump administration’s nominee to be CIA director, Gina Haspel, personally supervised the torture of a CIA detainee in 2002 leading to at least three waterboard sessions.
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SOURCE: Newsweek
9-9-17
The CIA's Tortured Historical Amnesia
by Kristie Macrakis
What to do about it.
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2-5-17
To Torture or Not to Torture? Are We Seriously Still Asking this Question?
by James Stejskal
While our new president contemplates the renewed use of enhanced interrogation techniques, we would do well to remember where the discussion of the Law of Land Warfare and torture originated. It was in Washington DC 155 years ago.
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SOURCE: Informed Comment
1-27-17
Torture works . . . to produce Fake News (and that’s how we Got into Iraq)
by Juan Cole
The psychopaths in the White House will be perfectly happy to run with the fake news gained from torture and use it to bamboozle the public for their own nefarious purposes.
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SOURCE: The Cambodian Daily
8-3-16
French Historian Accuses Khmer Rouge Defense Lawyers of "Cold Torture"
Henri Locard, retired academic from the Université Lumière - Lyon, is testifying about the brutality of the regime at a trial in Phnom Penh.
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7-28-15
The History Lesson the American Psychological Association Forgot
by Sarah Bridger
The APA needed a debate about torture just as physicists during the Cold War had to decide if scientists should be held accountable for the consequences of their research.
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SOURCE: Democracy Now
6-15-15
Historian Peter Linebaugh says Magna Carta provisions were violated at Guantanamo Bay (interview)
"You take chapter 39 of Magna Carta, probably the most famous clause. That is, you can still find it on courthouses in the United States. You can still find it in old constitutional books. It prohibits torture."
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SOURCE: TomDispatch
5-31-15
The Secret Origins of the CIA’s Torture Program and the Forgotten Man Who Tried to Expose It
by Barbara Myers
Anthony Russo, the “other conspirator” of the Pentagon Papers, shouldn't be left in history’s trash bin.
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SOURCE: New Historian
5-18-15
Skulls Suggest Violence Used as a Tool of Political Control
Three skulls found in Bolivia have revealed that torture for reasons other than religious rituals and trophy-head taking was not just an iconographic feature of the pre-Columbian cultures in the region, but a very real practice.
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