Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? PDF Author: Julie Mazzei
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs). Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces?

Death Squads or Self-Defense Forces? PDF Author: Julie Mazzei
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898619
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
In an era when the global community is confronted with challenges posed by violent nonstate organizations--from FARC in Colombia to the Taliban in Afghanistan--our understanding of the nature and emergence of these groups takes on heightened importance. Julie Mazzei's timely study offers a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics that facilitate the organization and mobilization of one of the most virulent types of these organizations, paramilitary groups (PMGs). Mazzei reconstructs in rich historical context the organization of PMGs in Colombia, El Salvador, and Mexico, identifying the variables that together create a triad of factors enabling paramilitary emergence: ambivalent state officials, powerful military personnel, and privileged members of the economic elite. Nations embroiled in domestic conflicts often find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place when global demands for human rights contradict internal expectations and demands for political stability. Mazzei elucidates the importance of such circumstances in the emergence of PMGs, exploring the roles played by interests and policies at both the domestic and international levels. By offering an explanatory model of paramilitary emergence, Mazzei provides a framework to facilitate more effective policy making aimed at mitigating and undermining the political potency of these dangerous forces.

Death Squad

Death Squad PDF Author: Jeffrey A. Sluka
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812200489
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271

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Book Description
"There is real personal danger for anthropologists who dare to speak and write against terror; by doing so, they potentially and sometimes actually bring the terror down on themselves."—Jeffrey A. Sluka, from the Introduction Death Squad is the first work to focus specifically on the anthropology of state terror. It brings together an international group of anthropologists who have done extensive research in areas marked by extreme forms of state violence and who have studied state terror from the perspective of victims and survivors. The book presents eight case studies from seven countries—Spain, India (Punjab and Kashmir), Argentina, Guatemala, Northern Ireland, Indonesia, and the Philippines—to demonstrate the cultural complexities and ambiguities of terror when viewed at the local level and from the participants' point of view. Contributors deal with such topics as the role of Loyalist death squads in the culture of terror in Northern Ireland, the three-tier mechanism of state terror in Indonesia, the complex role of religion in violence by both the state and insurgents in Punjab and Kashmir, and the ways in which "disappearances" are used to destabilize and demoralize opponents of the state in Argentina, Guatemala, and India.

Hitler's Death Squads

Hitler's Death Squads PDF Author: Helmut Langerbein
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585442850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
"After the war, the German government investigated 1,770 former Einsatzgruppen members and brought 136 of these men to trial. Helmut Langerbein has systematically examined the trial evidence in search of characteristics shared by these mass murderers. Using a much broader data base than earlier studies, Langerbein identifies a number of factors that could explain their actions, illustrating each with a particular person or group of officers." "Given the extent of its data, its detailed analysis and its careful conclusions, Hitler's Death Squads: The Logic of Mass Murder will push historians and psychologists toward a reappraisal of the Nazi killing machine, the behavior of the men behind the battle lines, and the overwhelming power of circumstances."--Jacket.

Death Squads in Global Perspective

Death Squads in Global Perspective PDF Author: B. Campbell
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230108148
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Death squads have become an increasingly common feature of the modern world. In nearly all instances, their establishment is tolerated, encouraged, or undertaken by the state itself, which thereby risks its monopoly on the use of force, one of the fundamental characteristics of modern states. Why do such a variety of regimes, under very different circumstances, condone such activity? Death Squads in Global Perspective hopes to answer that question and explain not only their development, but also why they can be expected to proliferate in the early 21st century.

Death Squad

Death Squad PDF Author: Alan Hebden
Publisher: Rebellion
ISBN: 9781781087688
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
An all-out all-action, complete-in-one brutal war story from the pages of the classic war comic, Battle, hugely influential on Preacher and The Boys creator Garth Ennis. Meet the deadliest band of fighters on the Eastern Front! During world War Two the Eastern Front was hell on Earth. German Punishment Battalions were thrown into the thick of the conflict where they were expected to fight well and die hard. In these harshest of conditions only the strongest warriors survived. Enter the Death Squad – Grandad, Swede, Licker, Gus and Frankie. Alone they were failures and outcasts, but together they were one of the most formidable combat units the Russians ever faced!

Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror

Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror PDF Author: Oliver Villar
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 1583673075
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Since the late 1990s, the United States has funneled billions of dollars in aid to Colombia, ostensibly to combat the illicit drug trade and State Department-designated terrorist groups. The result has been a spiral of violence that continues to take lives and destabilize Colombian society. This book asks an obvious question: are the official reasons given for the wars on drugs and terror in Colombia plausible, or are there other, deeper factors at work? Scholars Villar and Cottle suggest that the answers lie in a close examination of the cocaine trade, particularly its class dimensions. Their analysis reveals that this trade has fueled extensive economic growth and led to the development of a "narco-state" under the control of a "narco-bourgeoisie" which is not interested in eradicating cocaine but in gaining a monopoly over its production. The principal target of this effort is the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), who challenge that monopoly as well as the very existence of the Colombian state. Meanwhile, U.S. business interests likewise gain from the cocaine trade and seek to maintain a dominant, imperialist relationship with their most important client state in Latin America. Suffering the brutal consequences, as always, are the peasants and workers of Colombia. This revelatory book punctures the official propaganda and shows the class war underpinning the politics of the Colombian cocaine trade.

Vlakplaas

Vlakplaas PDF Author: Robin Binckes
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1526729229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
Faced with the total onslaught by its enemies, in 1979, Apartheid South Africa established Vlakplaas lit. shallow farm, a 100-hectare farm nestling in the hills outside Pretoria on the Hennops River as a secret operation under the arm of C1, a counter-terrorism division of the South African Police headed by Brigadier Schoon.The first phase of Vlakplaas operations, up until 1989, was aimed at fighting the enemy: the armed wings of the liberation movements, the African National Congresss Umkhonto we Sizwe (or MK), the Pan Africanist Congresss Azanian Peoples Liberation Army (or APLA) and the South African Communist Party. The second phase was fighting organized crime in which Vlakplaas itself seamlessly adopted the mantle of organized crime in the notorious downtown area of Johannesburgs Hillbrow. The final phase, the most destructive, was as the murky Third Force that destabilized the country in an orgy of violence in the run-up to its first democratic elections, in 1994.Operating within South Africa as well as beyond the countrys borders, it will never been known how many victims can be attributed to the Vlakplaas agenda with much of the execution taking place on the farm itself but a conservative figure of 1,000 murders and assassinations has been mooted.

Jallad

Jallad PDF Author: Tasneem Khalil
Publisher: Pluto Press (UK)
ISBN: 9780745335704
Category : Death squads
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Throughout South Asia, people live in fear of death squads, from the Rapid Action Battalion of Bangladesh to the "encounter specialists" of India, army units in Nepal, the Frontier Corps of Pakistan, and the "men in white vans" of Sri Lanka. Their tools are disappearance, torture, and summary execution, and their supporters, Tasneem Khalil shows in Jallad, are the governments of these nations--and their patrons, like the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and Israel. An unsparing indictment of an international system of terror that is fully countenanced by the West, Jallad presents close-up, detailed accounts of incidents of state terror and targeted violence throughout South Asia. Khalil, a reporter who himself endured torture at the hands of agents in Bangladesh, and whose remarkable story was featured in the New York Times, draws on countless hours of on-the-ground reporting and a broad network of activists and human rights advocates to build an undeniable portrait of the domination and repression that lies at the very core of statecraft in South Asia. Shielded by their protectors in the developed world, the perpetrators of these abuses deploy them strategically to silence dissent and crush opposition. A brave, essential work of reporting and investigation, Jallad brings these horrific acts to prominence in order to make it impossible for Western governments to continue turning a blind eye to the human rights violations of their erstwhile allies.

The Poison Squad

The Poison Squad PDF Author: Deborah Blum
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0525560289
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book The inspiration for PBS's AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film The Poison Squad. From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. "Milk" might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by "embalmed milk" every year. Citizens--activists, journalists, scientists, and women's groups--began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, "The Poison Squad." Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as "Dr. Wiley's Law." Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying "David and Goliath" tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

Death to the Chief

Death to the Chief PDF Author: Lance McMillian
Publisher: Bond Publishing
ISBN: 1734887745
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
Modern-day Georgia. The state Supreme Court celebrates the opening of its new courthouse, but the Chief Justice—shot dead in his chambers—is late to the party. Enter ex-lawyer Chance Meridian. Pressed into service by an offer he cannot refuse, Chance launches the search for the bold killer. But dirty politics is part of Atlanta’s DNA. The town is full of secrets—secrets too damning to see the light of sunshine. And if Chance cannot crack the case and fast, the next murder on the court’s docket ... could be his own. A standalone follow-up to the best-selling The Murder of Sara Barton, Death to the Chief is a thrilling legal mystery that oozes with intrigue and suspense.