Violence All Around

John Sifton (Human Rights Watch) , Violence All Around (Harvard Univ. Press, 2015).

"A human rights lawyer travels to hot zones around the globe, before and after the September 11 attacks, to document abuses committed by warlords, terrorist groups, and government counterterrorism forces. Whether reporting on al Qaeda safe houses, the mechanics of the Pentagon’s smartest bombs, his interviews with politicians and ordinary civilians, or his own brush with death outside Kabul, John Sifton wants to help us understand violence—what it is, and how we think and speak about it.

For the human rights community, the global war on terror brought unprecedented challenges. Of special concern were the secret detention centers operated by the CIA as it expanded into a paramilitary force, and the harsh treatment of prisoners throughout Iraq and Afghanistan. In drafting legal memoranda that made domestic prosecution for these crimes impossible, Sifton argues, the United States possessed not only the detainees but the law itself. Sifton recounts his efforts to locate secret prisons and reflects on the historical development of sanctioned military or police violence—from hand-to-hand combat to the use of drones
—and the likelihood that technology will soon enable completely automated killing."
—Publisher's Website

Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture

Ian Cobain. A Secret History of Torture (Counterpoint, 2012).

"Guardian investigator Ian Cobain begins his story with the Second World War, but could easily have gone much further back. A horribly repetitive picture would emerge: of British governments and their agents using systematic brutality against ever-changing categories of opponent, bending and twisting the law, and then lying about it all. His expose prompts a third historical reminder: that if British self-images and stereotypes of national character revolve around ideas of decency and fairness, a strikingly persistent feature of others' images of Britishness has been the charge of endemic hypocrisy."
—Stephen Howe, The Independent