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(I cut out plenty from this script but didn't have time to reorder the sources so there are some redundant citations.)
United Nations. (n.d.). About the 1995 genocide in Srebrenica. United Nations. Retrieved May 22, 2025, from https://www.un.org/en/observances/srebrenica-genocide-commemoration-day/about. “In March 1995, Radovan Karadžić, President and Supreme Commander of the armed forces of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, issued Directive 7, instructing Bosnian Serb forces to create “an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica” (pg10. of the “Directive 7”: Unit Assignments, Drina corps). In early July 1995, General Ratko Mladić and the Bosnian Serb forces he led, launched an offensive codenamed “Krivaja 95”, ultimately capturing Srebrenica on 11 July. After the town’s fall, up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed or went missing (the figure of up to 8,000 men and boys killed and missing is based on judicial findings of the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in various Srebrenica-related trials), and approximately 30,000 women, children, and elderly persons were forcibly transferred from the enclave. Men and boys were separated from their families and were detained and executed at various sites in a systematic and organized way. In an effort to conceal the crimes, many of the victims’ bodies were later moved and reburied in secondary and tertiary mass graves.”
Bosnian Genocide Educational Trust. (n.d.). Bosnian genocide. Retrieved May 22, 2025, from https://www.bget-uk.org/bosnian-genocide. “At the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, 31,500 people were reported missing. Since then, the remains of 25,000 victims have been exhumed from hundreds of mass graves across the country. There are still nearly 7000 missing people. This campaign of extermination of Bosniak (Muslims) was labelled “ethnic cleansing” by perpetrators so as to normalize their actions. Sadly, it is a term which was quickly adopted by the international community and observers to circumvent less morally, legally, and politically ambiguous terminology. Although the war finished with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995, the post war period has been categorised by rampant genocide denial, triumphalism and lack of justice as majority of perpetrators are still living in the same communities they once terrorised.”
Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. (n.d.). Rwanda topic guide. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.clintonlibrary.gov/research/rwanda-topic-guide. “The role of the United States in responding the Rwandan genocide focused primarily on humanitarian aid. The massacre of Tutsi and subsequent military offensive by the RPF created a massive humanitarian and refugee crisis. The Clinton Administration opposed direct military intervention and large-scale UNAMIR deployment in Kigali, but expressed support for humanitarian assistance and a UN peacekeeping force to protect refugees in border areas. In April 1994, the U.S. called for an immediate cease-fire and renewed negotiations per the Arusha Accords. ”
Clinton Presidential Library and Museum. (n.d.). Rwanda topic guide. National Archives and Records Administration. https://www.clintonlibrary.gov/research/rwanda-topic-guide. “on April 6, 1994 an airplane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down near Kigali International Airport. The RPF and Rwandan government blamed each other for the assassination, and in response Hutu extremists in the Rwandan military and Hutu militias began killing Tutsis and moderate Hutus in retaliation. An estimated 500,000 and possibly up to 1 million people were murdered in the approximately 100-day genocide.”
Ferroggiaro, W. (Ed.). (2001, August 20). The U.S. and the genocide in Rwanda 1994: Evidence of inaction. National Security Archive. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/. “Many consider this statement by the White House—done at the urging of Human Rights Watch—as the penultimate US initiative during the genocide. In naming and calling on four Rwandan military leaders to “end the violence”, it is probably the sole example of high-level attention—however brief—trained on officials involved in the genocide.”
Al Jazeera. (2024, April 7). Remembering the Rwandan genocide 30 years on – how did it happen? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/7/30-years-on-what-led-to-the-rwandan-genocide. “Being identified as Tutsi or Hutu before colonialism was “fluid” and based significantly on class with wealthy Hutus able to attain an honorary Tutsi title. “It was really based on how many cows you had, [but] the Belgians built up differences between the two and manipulated it. The Tutsis were better off already, and they, of course, used their privilege to improve their lives,” Wohlgemuth said.”
Al Jazeera. (2024, April 7). Remembering the Rwandan genocide 30 years on – how did it happen? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/7/30-years-on-what-led-to-the-rwandan-genocide. “Then, government forces, together with Hutu militia groups known as the Interahamwe, a name that means “those who attack together”, set up roadblocks and barricades in Kigali and began to attack Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The killings quickly spread to other cities. Soldiers opened fire on crowds while men buoyed by media messages and government officials promising rewards went from house to house, using machetes and sharpened or blunt clubs to hack at those they knew to be Tutsis or any Hutus offering them refuge. They killed neighbours and family members. They raped women and looted homes. Later, victims were herded into large open areas such as stadiums or schools where they were massacred.”
Al Jazeera. (2024, April 7). Remembering the Rwandan genocide 30 years on – how did it happen? https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/7/30-years-on-what-led-to-the-rwandan-genocide. “Estimates vary. The UN said 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the three- month genocide, but some said people included in that number are those who died of other causes. Other independent monitors put the number at about 500,000 people. The size of the Tutsi population after the genocide is also unclear because many identified themselves as Hutus to avoid being killed and Rwanda has since scrapped any identification showing ethnicity in its censuses. Before the genocide, the 1991 census pegged the Tutsi population at 657,000, or 8.4 percent, (although some allege without proof that Habyarimana’s government undercounted Tutsis to limit their access to education and other opportunities). Human Rights Watch estimated at least 500,000 Tutsis – 77 percent of their 1991 population – were killed.”
Najjar, F. (2025, December 15). Bosnia's war, 30 years on: How did the atrocities happen? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/15/bosnias-war-30-years-on-how-did-the-atrocities-happen. “Western governments had been reluctant to intervene decisively earlier in the war, but the genocide at Srebrenica forced a shift in approach. In August and September 1995, NATO launched a sustained air campaign against Bosnian Serb forces – a turning point that paved the way for the Dayton Peace Agreement, which formally ended the war. US-brokered talks brought the leaders of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and the then-Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to an airbase near Dayton, Ohio, in the US. On November 21, 1995, they agreed to the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, better known as the Dayton Peace Agreement, which preserved Bosnia as a single state divided into two main entities – the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Republika Srpska entity. The agreement was formally signed in Paris on December 14.”
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press. “All Indigenous individuals and groups living outside designated federal reservations were considered "fomenters of disturbance," as the War Department put it. Following Sitting Bull's death, military warrants of arrest were issued for leaders such as Big Foot, who was responsible for several hundred civilian refugees who had not yet turned themselves in to the designated Pine Ridge Reservation. When Big Foot heard of Sitting Bull's death and that the army was looking for him and his people-350 Lakotas, 230 of them women and children-he decided to lead them through the subzero weather to Pine Ridge to surrender. En route on foot, they encountered US "Indian Country " troops. The commander ordered that they be taken to the army camp at Wounded Knee Creek, where armed soldiers surrounded them. Two Hotchkiss machine guns were mounted on the hillside, enough firepower to wipe out the whole group. During the night, Colonel James Forsyth and the Seventh Cavalry, Custer's old regiment, arrived and took charge. These soldiers had not forgotten that Lakota relatives of these starving, unarmed refugees had killed Custer and decimated his troops at the Little Bighorn fourteen years earlier. With orders to transport the refugees to a military stockade in Omaha, Forsyth added two more Hotchkiss guns trained on the camp, then issued whiskey to his officers. The following morning, December 29, 1890, the soldiers brought the captive men out from their campsites and called for all weapons to be turned in. Searching tents, soldiers confiscated tools, such as axes and knives. Still not satisfied, the officers ordered skin searches. A Winchester rifle turned up. Its young owner did not want to part with his beloved rifle, and, when the soldiers grabbed him, the rifle fired a shot into the air. The killing began immediately. The Hotchkiss guns began firing a shell a second, mowing down everyone except a few who were able to run fast enough. Three hundred Sioux lay dead. Twentyfive soldiers were killed in "friendly fire." Bleeding survivors were dragged into a nearby church. Being Christmastime, the sanctuary was candlelit and decked with greenery. In the front, a banner read: PEACE ON EARTH AND GOOD WILL TO MEN. The Seventh Cavalry attack on a group of unarmed and starving Lakota refugees attempting to reach Pine Ridge to accept reservation incarceration in the frozen days of December 1890 symbolizes the end of Indigenous armed resistance in the United States. The slaughter is called a battle in US military annals. Congressional Medals of Honor were bestowed on twenty of the soldiers involved. A monument was built at Fort Riley, Kansas, to honor the soldiers killed by friendly fire. A battle streamer was created to honor the event and added to other streamers that are displayed at the Pentagon, West Point, and army bases throughout the world. L. Frank Baum, a Dakota Territory settler later famous for writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, edited the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer at the time. Five days after the sickening event at Wounded Knee, on January 3 , 1891 , he wrote, "The Pioneer [sic] has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. "” (p. 154-156)
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press. “A few contingents of Cherokees settled in Arkansas and what became Indian Territory as early as 1 8 1 7. There was a larger migration in 1832, which came after the Indian Removal Act. The 1838 forced march of the Cherokee Nation, now known as the Trail of Tears, was an arduous journey from remaining Cherokee homelands in Georgia and Alabama to what would later become northeastern Oklahoma. After the Civil War, journalist James Mooney interviewed people who had been involved in the forced removal. Based on these firsthand accounts, he described the scene in 1838, when the US Army removed the last of the Cherokees by force…A Georgia volunteer, afterward a colonel in the Confederate service, said: "I fought through the civil war and have seen men shot to pieces and slaughtered by thousands, but the Cherokee removal was the cruelest work I ever knew."” (p. 112-113)
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press. “Half of the sixteen thousand Cherokee men, women, and children who were rounded up and force-marched in the dead of winter out of their country perished on the journey. The Muskogees and Seminoles suffered similar death rates in their forced transfer, while the Chickasaws and Choctaws lost around 15 percent of their people en route. An eyewitness account by Alexis de Tocqueville, the French observer of the day, captures one of thousands of similar scenes in the forced deportation of the Indigenous peoples from the Southeast: I saw with my own eyes several of the cases of misery which I have been describing; and I was the witness of sufferings which I have not the power to portray.” (p. 113)
Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples' history of the United States. Beacon Press. “In the aftermath of "the Battle of Horseshoe Bend," as it is known in US military annals, Jackson's troops fashioned reins for their horses' bridles from skin stripped from the Muskogee bodies, and they saw to it that souvenirs from the corpses were given "to the ladies of Tennessee." Following the slaughter, Jackson justified his troops' actions: "The fiends of the Tallapoosa will no longer murder our women and children, or disturb the quiet of our borders . . . . They have disappeared from the face of the Earth . . . . How lamentable it is that the path to peace should lead through blood, and over the carcasses of the slain! But it is in the dispensation of that providence, which inflicts partial evil to produce general good." Horseshoe Bend marked the end of the Muskogees' resistance in their original homeland. As historian Alan Brinkley has observed, Jackson's political fortunes depended on the fate of the Indiansthat is, their eradication. The surrender document the Muskogee Nation was forced to sign in 1814 , the Treaty of Fort Jackson, asserted that they had lost under "principles of national justice and honorable war." Andrew Jackson, the only US negotiator of the treaty, insisted on nothing less than the total destruction of the Muskogee Nation, which the Muskogees had no power to refuse or negotiate. These terms of total surrender shocked the small group of Muskogee plantation and slave owners, who thought that they had been thoroughly accepted by the US Americans.” (p. 99-100)
Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. “In all, the United States expended close to 30 billion pounds of munitions in Southeast Asia over the course of the war. At the peak of its effort, in 1970, the U.S. was using up 128,400 tons of munitions per month. (By comparison, the revolutionary forces never fired more than 1,000 tons per month.) By the early 1970s, years before the war’s end, South Vietnam’s landscape was already pockmarked with an estimated 21 million craters, some of them twenty feet or more across. Analyzing the effects of the “tremendous firepower” of U.S. forces, two South Vietnamese generals wrote, “Many villages were completely obliterated … houses were reduced to rubble, innocent people were killed, untold numbers became displaced, riceland was abandoned, and as much as one half of the population of the countryside fled. “ The “cratering” of South Vietnam also produced a cascade of environmental effects. Huge numbers of rice paddies, orchards, farms, and gardens were lost to cultivation. This led to rampant erosion and weed invasion, destroyed wildlife habitats, and played havoc with the countryside’s intricate irrigation systems. Craters in the more tropical Mekong Delta and those in the coastal regions tended to remain flooded year-round, becoming mosquito breeding grounds and thus sources of disease. What’s more, according to postwar estimates, at least 12 million acres of forest were subjected to saturation bombing. Many trees crucial to Vietnam’s rubber and timber industries were destroyed; others were filled with metal fragments, which made them more susceptible to fungal rot or unusable altogether. In addition to such environmentally devastating side effects of the war, the U.S. military deliberately sprayed more than 70 million liters of herbicidal agents—most notably Agent Orange—across the countryside. When plants absorbed the herbicides, their leaves rapidly shriveled and dried up. “The effects appeared overnight, ” wrote a South Vietnamese colonel about defoliants that drifted across orchards and farms in Bien Hoa Province. “Fruit fell from the trees and the rubber trees in the large nearby plantations turned brown and lost their leaves. ” He noted that the aerial spraying took an especially heavy toll on custard apples, mango, jackfruit, pineapples, and other economically important crops.” (p. 78-79)
Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. “The visceral horror of what happened at My Lai is undeniable. On the evening of March 15, 1968, members of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, were briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, on a planned operation the next day in an area they knew as “Pinkville. ” As unit member Harry Stanley recalled, Medina “ordered us to ‘kill everything in the village. ’” Infantryman Salvatore LaMartina remembered Medina’s words only slightly differently: they were to “kill everything that breathed. ” What stuck in artillery forward observer James Flynn’s mind was a question one of the other soldiers asked: “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” And Medina’s reply: “Kill everything that ”3 moves. The next morning, the troops clambered aboard helicopters and were airlifted into what they thought would be a “hot LZ” —a landing zone where they’d be under hostile fire. As it happened, though, instead of finding Vietnamese adversaries spoiling for a fight, the Americans entering My Lai encountered only civilians: women, children, and old men. Many were still cooking their breakfast rice. Nevertheless, Medina’s orders were followed to a T. Soldiers of Charlie Company killed. They killed everything. They killed everything that moved. Advancing in small squads, the men of the unit shot chickens as they scurried about, pigs as they bolted, and cows and water buffalo lowing among the thatch- roofed houses. They gunned down old men sitting in their homes and children as they ran for cover. They tossed grenades into homes without even bothering to look inside. An officer grabbed a woman by the hair and shot her point-blank with a pistol. A woman who came out of her home with a baby in her arms was shot down on the spot. As the tiny child hit the ground, another GI opened up on the infant with his M-16 automatic rifle. Over four hours, members of Charlie Company methodically slaughtered more than five hundred unarmed victims, killing some in ones and twos, others in small groups, and collecting many more in a drainage ditch that would become an infamous killing ground. They faced no opposition. They even took a quiet break to eat lunch in the midst of the carnage. Along the way, they also raped women and young girls, mutilated the dead, systematically burned homes, and fouled the area’s drinking water. 4 There were scores of witnesses on the ground and still more overhead, American officers and helicopter crewmen perfectly capable of seeing the growing piles of civilian bodies. Yet when the military released the first news of the assault, it was portrayed as a victory over a formidable enemy force, a legitimate battle in which 128 enemy troops were killed without the loss of a single American life.” (p. 7-8)
Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. “What’s more, the exposure of My Lai paradoxically worked against bringing other war crimes to public attention. Atypically large as far as massacres by ground troops were concerned, My Lai dwarfed other mass killings, making many of the atrocity allegations that surfaced later seem small and less newsworthy by comparison. It was almost as if America’s leading media outlets had gone straight from ignoring atrocities to treating them as old news, with just a brief flurry of interest in between. Only something “bigger” than My Lai, in scale and scope, might then have galvanized national attention. Westmoreland knew of at least one such potentially game-changing revelation: Operation Speedy Express, which had unleashed nonstop death for half a year across thousands of square miles densely crowded with civilians. But with the army having quickly killed any investigation into the Concerned Sergeant’s letters— and with the anonymous letter writer himself falling silent after his first few messages—it appeared that the details of this operation would, like so many other atrocities, forever remain a secret from the general public.” (p. 200)
Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. “The army’s own estimates showed that the number of enemy forces in the region never declined during Speedy Express and may even have increased slightly.” (p. 170)
Turse, N. (2013). Kill anything that moves: The real American war in Vietnam. Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company. “Between 1965 and 1973, the U.S. Strategic Air Command launched at least 126,615 B-52 combat sorties, the majority of them hitting targets in South Vietnam. Deaths from these devastating B-52 strikes often left indelibly traumatic memories. One villager described how shock waves from such a bombing killed children, leaving blood gushing from their ears. 27 Villagers who had been far enough from the drop zone to survive the almost indescribable, earth-shaking explosions frequently still suffered serious injuries, and they filled hospitals across the country. B-52s were not, however, the most common strike aircraft. Sixty-six percent of air-launched munitions were unleashed by smaller fighter-bombers, such as F- 4 Phantoms. These planes streaked across the sky laden with high-explosive bombs, napalm canisters, and other antipersonnel weapons. The jellied incendiary napalm, engineered to stick to clothes and skin, had been modified to blaze hotter and longer than its World War II–era variant. An estimated 400,000 tons of it were dropped in Southeast Asia, killing most of those unfortunate enough to be splashed with it. Thirty-five percent of victims died within fifteen to twenty minutes, according to one study. Another found that 62 percent died before their wounds healed. For those not asphyxiated or consumed by fire, the result could be a living death. Noses and lips, nipples and eyelids would be burned off or melted away, while charred skin would flake off as a chemical- scented powder. The Magnum photographer Philip Jones Griffiths photographed a number of such victims, and he would never forget a child he saw in the napalm ward of a Quang Ngai hospital. “He had his eyelids burned off, his nose burned off, and his lips burned off. He was halfway to becoming a skull, but he was still alive, ” the photographer recalled.” (p. 70)
U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. (1970). Command history, 1969 (Vol. 1). Military History Branch, Office of the Secretary, Joint Staff. https://vva.vietnam.ttu.edu/images.php?img=/images/1683/168300010785.pdf. “OPERATION SPEEDY EXPRESS (IV CORPS TACTICAL ZONE) terminated. This multi-battalion clear and search operation began 1 December, 1968, under the control of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division and was centered in an area 16 miles west-northwest of Ben Tre (35 miles southwest of Saigon. Results: 10,899 enemy killed; 2,579 suspects detained; sixty crew served and 688 individual weapons captured. U.S. casualties were 242 killed, and 2,385 wounded.” (p. 11)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “Yet the Rape of Nanking remains an obscure incident. Unlike the atomic explosions in Japan or the Jewish holocaust in Europe, the horrors of the massacre at Nanking remain virtually unknown to people outside Asia. The massacre remains neglected in most of the historical literature published in the United States. A thorough examination of secondary-school history textbooks in the United States revealed that only a few even mention the Rape of Nanking. And almost none of the comprehensive, or “definitive, ” histories of World War II read by the American public discusses the Nanking massacre in great detail.” (p. 17)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “One of the most bizarre consequences of the wholesale rape that took place at Nanking was the response of the Japanese government to the massive outcry from Western nations. Rather than stifle or punish the soldiers responsible, the Japanese high command made plans to create a giant underground system of military prostitution —one that would draw into its web hundreds of thousands of women across Asia. “The Japanese Expeditionary Force in Central China issued an order to set up comfort houses during this period of time, ” Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a prominent history professor at Chuo University, observes, “because Japan was afraid of criticism from China, the United States of America and Europe following the cases of massive rapes between battles in Shanghai and Nanking. ”” (p. 67)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “In 1994 archival evidence emerged from a former Japanese- owned railway company in Manchuria to reveal that one burial squad alone disposed of more than 30,000 bodies in Nanking between January and March 1938.” (p. 118)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “Moreover, Yin and Young discovered through interviews with survivors that family members of rape-and- murder victims usually buried their dead immediately and neglected to report the burials to the authorities. Since their study tabulates numbers only from the reports of mass killings—rather than individual, random murders—Yin and Young believe that the total number of deaths from the Nanking massacre lies well in the 400,000 range. There is even compelling evidence that the Japanese themselves believed at the time of the massacre that the death toll at Nanking may have been as high as 300,000. The evidence is significant because not only was it generated by the Japanese themselves but it was done so during the first month of the massacre, when the killing was far from over.” (p. 122)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “Live burials: The Japanese directed burial operations with the precision and efficiency of an assembly line. Soldiers would force one group of Chinese captives to dig a grave, a second group to bury the first, and then a third group to bury the second and so on…Mutilation: The Japanese not only disemboweled, decapitated, and dismembered victims but performed more excruciating varieties of torture. Throughout the city they nailed prisoners to wooden boards and ran over them with tanks, crucified them to trees and electrical posts, carved long strips of flesh from them, and used them for bayonet practice. At least one hundred men reportedly had their eyes gouged out and their noses and ears hacked off before being set on fire…Death by fire: The Japanese subjected large crowds of victims to mass incineration. In Hsiakwan a Japanese soldier bound Chinese captives together, ten at a time, and pushed them into a pit, where they were sprayed with gasoline and ignited. On Taiping Road, the Japanese ordered a large number of shop clerks to extinguish a fire, then bound them together with rope and threw them into the blaze. Japanese soldiers even devised games with fire. One method of entertainment was to drive mobs of Chinese to the top stories or roofs of buildings, tear down the stairs, and set the bottom floors on fire…Death by ice: Thousands of victims were intentionally frozen to death during the Rape of Nanking. For instance, Japanese soldiers forced hundreds of Chinese prisoners to march to the edge of a frozen pond, where they were ordered to strip naked, break the ice, and plunge into the water to go “fishing.” Their bodies hardened into floating targets that were immediately riddled with Japanese bullets…Death by dogs: One diabolical means of torture was to bury victims to their waist and watch them get ripped apart by German shepherds. Witnesses saw Japanese soldiers strip a victim naked and direct German shepherds to bite the sensitive areas of his body. The dogs not only ripped open his belly but jerked out his intestines along the ground for a distance. The incidents mentioned above are only a fraction of the methods that the Japanese used to torment their victims. The Japanese saturated victims in acid, impaled babies with bayonets, hung people by their tongues. ” (p. 103-105)
Chang, I. (1997). The Rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books. “It is impossible to determine the exact number of women raped in Nanking. Estimates range from as low as twenty thousand to as high as eighty thousand. But what the Japanese did to the women of Nanking cannot be computed in a tally sheet of statistics. We will never know the full psychic toll, because many of the women who survived the ordeal found themselves pregnant, and the subject of Chinese women impregnated by Japanese rapists in Nanking is so sensitive that it has never been completely studied. To my knowledge and to the knowledge of the Chinese historians and officials at the memorial hall erected in memory of the Nanking massacre, not a single Chinese woman has to this day come forward to admit that her child was the result of rape. Many such children were secretly killed; according to an American sociologist in the city at the time of the massacre, numerous half-Japanese children were choked or drowned at birth. One can only guess at the guilt, shame, and self-loathing that Chinese women endured when they faced the choice of raising a child they could not love or committing infanticide. No doubt many women could not make that choice. Between 1937 and 1938 a German diplomat reported that “uncounted” Chinese women were taking their own lives by flinging themselves into the Yangtze River.” (p. 106)
Human Rights Research. (2022, July 1). Justice denied: Torture and arbitrary detention in Libya. https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/justice-denied-torture-and-arbitrary-detention-in-libya. “The Libyan prison crisis is a shocking human rights infringement resulting from the civil war, which had placed the country in a state of chaos after the deposition of Gaddafi. Libya’s people once envisioned bringing all into the political fold under a new nation. However, other foreign countries that are keen on Libya's wealth have funded people and entities that are responsible for wielding power, disregarding the violations of the rights of Libyan civilians. Not only do these entities kidnap civilians, but they also torture and forcibly disappear them without practicing legal investigation or due process.”
U.S. Department of State. (2021, January 28). Joint statement on the situation in Libya [Press release]. U.S. Department of State. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/joint-statement-on-the-situation-in-libya“Increased economic and security integration is essential to ensuring Libya’s sovereignty, security, and long-term prosperity and will complement and strengthen the political process. A strong and prosperous Libya with unified economic, military, and political institutions is in all of our interests. ”
Center for Victims of Torture. (n.d.). Guantánamo Bay detention facility: An overview. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.cvt.org/what-we-do/advocating-for-change/legacy-of-us-torture/guantanamo-bay-detention-facility-an-overview/. “On January 11, 2002, the United States opened the detention facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly eight hundred Muslim men and boys have been held there over the years, all but a handful without charge or trial. Fifteen remain, some of whom have never been charged with a crime. Torture was central to Guantánamo’s founding and still infects its every function. Some officials in the George W. Bush administration referred to Guantánamo as a “Battle Lab,” and the label proved accurate: experiments with torture at Guantánamo spread to Afghanistan, and then to Iraq, as the gruesome images from Abu Ghraib vividly showed.”
Center for Victims of Torture. (n.d.). Guantánamo Bay detention facility: An overview. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.cvt.org/what-we-do/advocating-for-change/legacy-of-us-torture/guantanamo-bay-detention-facility-an-overview/. “Abu Zubaydah, told their superiors that if they did not kill him they would “need to get reasonable assurances that [Abu Zubaydah] will remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.” Their bosses agreed. Four years later, the CIA shipped Zubaydah to Guantánamo, where he remains.”
Center for Victims of Torture. (n.d.). Guantánamo Bay detention facility: An overview. Retrieved February 26, 2025, from https://www.cvt.org/what-we-do/advocating-for-change/legacy-of-us-torture/guantanamo-bay-detention-facility-an-overview/. “At a cost of half a billion dollars per year historically, Guantánamo is the most expensive detention camp on earth.”
Savage, C. (2025, January 9). Guantánamo Bay explained: The costs, the captives and why it’s still open. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/us/politics/guantanamo-prison-costs.html “Not exactly. The last comprehensive study of the costs of running the prison, by The New York Times in 2019, put the figure at more than $13 million per year for each prisoner (Note: I accidentally said 30 million during the narration). Most of that went to supporting court operations and the prison staff. At the time, there were 40 prisoners and a Pentagon staff of 1,800 U.S. forces. By that measure, it would cost $36 million to hold each prisoner there in 2025. But operational costs have changed. The Pentagon has reduced the staff by more than half and hired more contractors, who may be more expensive than soldiers serving on nine-month tours of duty.”
Axelrod, J. (2024, November 14). What happened in Abu Ghraib and why did a US court award damages? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/14/what-happened-in-abu-ghraib-and-why-did-a-us-court-award-damages. “A United States jury has ruled that Virginia-based defence contractor CACI must pay $42m to three Iraqi men who were tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2004.”
Axelrod, J. (2024, November 14). What happened in Abu Ghraib and why did a US court award damages? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/14/what-happened-in-abu-ghraib-and-why-did-a-us-court-award-damages. “Like one of a hooded prisoner connected to electrical wires and forced to stand on a small box. He had been told he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box.”
Axelrod, J. (2024, November 14). What happened in Abu Ghraib and why did a US court award damages? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/14/what-happened-in-abu-ghraib-and-why-did-a-us-court-award-damages. “The picture was of Ali Shallal al-Qaysi, who testified about it in 2005. After he was no longer able to use his hand due to the torture, the American guards started calling him “Claw Man”. Other images show prisoners forced into humiliating positions, sometimes with excrement smeared on them, while US prison guards posed, smiling, beside them.”
Axelrod, J. (2024, November 14). What happened in Abu Ghraib and why did a US court award damages? Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/11/14/what-happened-in-abu-ghraib-and-why-did-a-us-court-award-damages. ““The worst was the first day I arrived in Abu Ghraib, how they forced me to strip … naked in front of everyone,” Ejaili said. “They placed a black hood on my head and left me hanging all night,” he said, adding that the Americans sang “Happy birthday, Al Jazeera” to him as he hung there. He was released after two months. Al Shimari was in Abu Ghraib from 2003 to 2008, during which time, he said, he was threatened with dogs, electrocuted and forced to partake in physical activities while naked. Al-Zubae was held from 2003 to 2004, during which he was tortured, including solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, and extremely hot and cold water.”
Middle East Monitor. (2024, April 16). US trial unveils horrors of Abu Ghraib scandal, decades later. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240416-us-trial-unveils-horrors-of-abu-ghraib-scandal-decades-later/. “The US government has not created any official compensation program or avenues for redress.”Middle East Monitor. (2024, April 16). US trial unveils horrors of Abu Ghraib scandal, decades later. https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240416-us-trial-unveils-horrors-of-abu-ghraib-scandal-decades-later/. “Abu Ghraib, Iraq, some 32 kilometres (20 miles) west of the capital, Baghdad”
Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc. (n.d.). Center for Constitutional Rights. Retrieved October 26, 2023, from https://ccrjustice.org/home/get-involved/tools-resources/fact-sheets-and-faqs/factsheet-torture-abu-ghraib-and-al-shimari-v. “In March 2003, the United States unlawfully invaded Iraq using a false claim that Iraq had developed “weapons of mass destruction” to justify the full-scale invasion. Measures taken by the Bush/Cheney administration before and after the invasion led to the complete political destabilization of Iraq, and a U.S.-established governing body formed in its wake. The incalculable human toll of the Iraq war continues to grow: hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced, environmental devastation, chronic, generational medical conditions, countless people tortured, traumatized, or otherwise harmed in ways unseen, and an entire generation raised with endless war. Soon after the occupation and the ensuing insurgency, the U.S. began a mass round-up of Iraqi civilians — the vast majority of whom were never charged with any crime — and set up a prison system around the country. Abu Ghraib, a notorious prison outside of Baghdad previously used by Saddam Hussein’s regime to deploy torture and cruel treatment, was opened as a key detention site to hold Iraqi men, women, and children. Inside that sprawling detention center was a two-floor concrete prison — the “hard site” — where Iraqis were detained, interrogated, and, ultimately, tortured. In April 2004, news outlets broke the story of the torture of Iraqi prisoners detained by the U.S. at Abu Ghraib, releasing photographs and video showing naked, hooded detainees posed in human pyramids, prisoners on leashes, and widespread sexual assault — images so horrifying, they are burned into the conscience of a generation. The revelations drew demands for accountability and redress from around the world. Subsequent military investigations led to the court-martial of a small number of low-level U.S. soldiers as well as documentation of the role played in the torture at Abu Ghraib by private military contractors from two U.S. corporations: Titan Corporation (later known as L-3 Services and Engility Corporation) and CACI Premier Technology, Inc.”
Gokhale, V. (2021). Tiananmen Square: The making of a protest: A diplomat looks back. HarperCollins Publishers India. “One eyewitness, a diplomat from Chile, who later briefed the US embassy, had driven to the square around 2100 hours on 3 June to fetch his ambassador who was dining at the Movenpick Hotel on the western side of Tiananmen. He said that troops had filled the approach roads to the square but had not impeded his passage. He had parked just east of the Museum of Chinese History, and walked into the square. He had heard sporadic gunfire but no automatic fire. He told the US embassy that troops were mostly armed with anti-riot gear. He also claimed that most tents in the square were empty when the tanks rolled over them. There were no signs of a massacre. In the early hours, the remaining students, arms linked together, left the square through the south-east corner, after which troops cleared the square of the tents and garbage. His account matched the narrative that the student leaders would offer many years later. Violence did occur in other parts of the city. Troops fired upon citizens or students who resisted martial law, but there were also instances of the troops themselves being assaulted and killed. Some of our embassy personnel who had gone to Xiyuan Hotel that evening to enquire about the welfare of Indian nationals reported seeing fifteen burnt-out vehicles. The exact number of casualties is not likely to be known unless the communist authorities disclose the truth. Lacking credible inputs, the US embassy and foreign media began to give wildly speculative accounts of the happenings on the night of 3–4 June. Declassified US government documents show that the estimates of casualty figures increased from 180 to 300 in the briefing paper for the secretary of state on 4 June, to 500 to 2,600 a couple of days later, and the number of those injured was put at 10,000. The 5 June briefing paper claimed that ‘hundreds’ of military vehicles ‘including at least thirty- four tanks and numerous APCs’ had been destroyed, and some students, having seized APCs and weapons, were ‘vowing to resist’. The US embassy continued to treat rumour and speculation as fact and report it to Washington. An embassy cable reported that the PLA opened machine gun fire in the square, which was subsequently found to be untrue. Another cable claimed that, according to one report, Deng Xiaoping was giving attack orders from a hospital bed.16 This too turned out to be false when Deng made an appearance a few days later in public. Yet another cable on 6 June suggested imminent hostilities between the 27th Army deployed at the Jianguomen flyover and other unnamed PLA units, and rumours of infighting in the PLA. The US ambassador even alluded to this in a Voice of America broadcast. It is not always possible to get accurate information in a crisis, but US diplomats abandoned even the normal caution that should have been adopted when reporting back to headquarters. Many diplomats, who were living in the diplomatic compound overlooking the Jianguomen bridge and thus had a bird’s-eye view of the area, knew that the rumours were untrue. Presumably, US diplomats, who were staying in the same compound, also had these facts, and yet a US embassy cable on 7 June claimed that there was fighting between PLA units, and artillery fire had been heard in south-west Beijing on the night of 6 June. Recently released British archives tell a similar story. The British ambassador, Sir Alan Donald, reportedly sent a telegram to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, claiming that 10,000 fatalities were a minimum estimate, and providing a dramatic description of how tanks mowed down students in the square and then ran over their bodies time and again.18 He claimed that this information had been provided by sources (unnamed) in the government, but eyewitness accounts by student leaders themselves decisively refute such an account. In the fog of war or revolution it is not always easy to get facts, but responsible governments are expected to desist from reporting rumour as fact. This is especially the case when they are representatives of nations that wield extraordinary influence in the shaping of global public opinion, as in the case of both the United States and the United Kingdom. And yet, the news that went out to the world through the Western media and from Western representatives in China were mostly half-truths mixed with downright fiction. It was not a proud moment for the Free World or its Free Press.” (p.114-116)
Gokhale, V. (2021). Tiananmen Square: The making of a protest: A diplomat looks back. HarperCollins Publishers India. “Deng Xiaoping felt confident enough about the situation to make a public appearance on 9 June. Virtually, the entire leadership – anybody who was fit enough to walk and stand – lined up behind him in a clear message to the public that the Communist Party of China was united. His opening words to the martial law troops were, ‘The storm was bound to come. It was fortunate to have a large group of veteran comrades at this time,’ thus underscoring collective responsibility for the action that he took. He reaffirmed that the description of the protests as ‘turmoil’ in the People’ s Daily editorial of 26 April was correct. He dismissed the allegation that concerns over corruption had led to the protests, labelling it an ‘excuse’ for those who wanted to overthrow the Party and establish a bourgeois republic that would be entirely dependent on the West. While commending the PLA for carrying out its task, he also admonished them by saying, ‘In future we must never again let people take away our weapons.’ He had two clear messages for the West. First, he warned the Americans about their actions in sanctioning China over the suppression of the student protests, adding, ‘From now on, as soon as a trend emerges, we should not allow it to spread.’ Thus, he made it clear that China would place its own security above US concerns. Secondly, he unambiguously reiterated that China was committed to a market economy with the words: ‘There cannot be any change in this policy. We should never change China into a closed country.’ US commercial interests would not be hurt and it would be business as usual.” (p. 117-118)
Roth, R. (2009, June 4). There was no “Tiananmen Square massacre”. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/there-was-no-tiananmen-square-massacre/. “I was being held captive by Chinese army troops on the south portico of the Great Hall of the People (which forms one of the borders of the Square) when that round of gunfire occurred. I could hear it but I could not see into the Square. Around forty minutes later, Derek Williams and I were driven in a pair of army jeeps right through the square, almost along its full length, and into the Forbidden City. Dawn was just breaking. There were hundreds of troops in the square, many sitting cross-legged on the pavement in long curving ranks, some cleaning up debris. There were some tanks and armored personnel carriers. But we saw no bodies, injured people, ambulances or medical personnel — in short, nothing to even suggest, let alone prove, that a "massacre" had recently occurred in that place. Later, being debriefed on-air by Dan Rather, I recall making an effort to avoid using the word "massacre." I referred to an "assault" and an "attack."”
Wallenfeldt, J. (2025, November 8). Boston Massacre. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Massacre. “On the morning of March 5 someone posted a handbill ostensibly from the British soldiers promising that they were determined to defend themselves. That night a crowd of Bostonians roamed the streets, their anger fueled by rumours that soldiers were preparing to cut down the so-called Liberty Tree (an elm tree in what was then South Boston from which effigies of men who had favoured the Stamp Act had been hung and on the trunk of which was a copper-plated sign that read “The Tree of Liberty”) and that a soldier had attacked an oysterman. One element of the crowd stormed the barracks of the 29th Regiment but was repulsed. Bells rang out an alarm and the crowd swelled, but the soldiers remained in their barracks, though the crowd pelted the barracks with snowballs. Meanwhile, the single sentry posted outside the Customs House became the focus of the rage for a crowd of 50–60 people. Informed of the sentry’s situation by a British sympathizer, Capt. Thomas Preston marched seven soldiers with fixed bayonets through the crowd in an attempt to rescue the sentry. Emboldened by the knowledge that the Riot Act had not been read—and that the soldiers could not fire their weapons until it had been read and then only if the crowd failed to disperse within an hour—the crowd taunted the soldiers and dared them to shoot (“provoking them to it by the most opprobrious language,” according to Thomas Gage, commander in chief of the British army in America). Meanwhile, they pelted” the troops with snow, ice, and oyster shells. In the confusion, one of the soldiers, who were then trapped by the patriot mob near the Customs House, was jostled and, in fear, discharged his musket. Other soldiers, thinking they had heard the command to fire, followed suit. Three crowd members—including Crispus Attucks, a Black sailor who likely was formerly enslaved—were shot and died almost immediately. Two of the eight others who were wounded died later. Hoping to prevent further violence, Lieut. Gov. Thomas Hutchinson, who had been summoned to the scene and arrived shortly after the shooting had taken place, ordered Preston and his contingent back to their barracks, where other troops had their guns trained on the crowd. Hutchinson then made his way to the balcony of the Old State House, from which he ordered the other troops back into the barracks and promised the crowd that justice would be done, calming the growing mob and bringing an uneasy peace to the city.”
Wallenfeldt, J. (2025, November 8). Boston Massacre. Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/event/Boston-Massacre. “By the next morning Preston and the seven soldiers that he led were under arrest as was the sentry whom they had sought to rescue. A town meeting produced a demand for the removal of all the troops, and by March 11 both the 14th and 29th regiments had decamped to Castle William (now Castle Island) in Boston Harbour. Fearing for their safety, customs commissioners also left town. Various developments delayed for months the trial of the soldiers, who were not arraigned until September. In the interim both sides of the clash endeavoured to convict the other in the court of public opinion. In his Boston Gazette, publisher Benjamin Edes, acting under the influence of radical leader and skillful propagandist Samuel Adams, characterized the event as “a horrid massacre.” The report compiled by Colonel Dalrymple based on 31 testimonies collected by his officers and titled “A Fair Account of the Late Unhappy Disturbance at Boston in New England” told a very different story than “A Short Narrative of the Horrid Massacre in Boston,” which was written by James Bowdoin, Samuel Pemberton, and Joseph Warren, based on depositions from 96 “eyewitnesses” who unanimously cast the actions of the British soldiers as murder, and was distributed as a pamphlet only days after the event. Writing from his jail cell, Preston sought to make known his version of the event with the “Case of Capt. Thomas Preston,” which appeared in the Public Advertiser in London in April 1770. Agitprop broadsides and poems dealing with the event were distributed, as were illustrations of it, most notably Henry Pelham’s evocative but factually inaccurate image—The Fruits of Arbitrary Power; or, The Bloody Massacre, depicting the soldiers in formation, firing in unison—which Paul Revere reproduced without crediting Pelham.”
Haas, J. (2009). The assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago police murdered a Black Panther. Lawrence Hill Books. “On December 3, they went to bed after midnight. Fred called his parents but fell asleep on the phone. Deborah had to finish the conversation with Fred’s sister, Dee Dee. Deborah testified she woke up to gunfire. Harold was shaking Fred, trying to wake him. The bullets were coming so fast that “the mattress was shaking . . . Fred never really woke up. He just raised up slowly and put his head back down.” Deborah crawled on top of Fred to protect him. After someone in the room yelled, “We got a pregnant sister in here,” the police pulled her out and made her stand in the kitchen. Two police entered the bedroom. “One of the policeman asked, ‘Is he still alive?’ I heard two shots, then ‘He’s good and dead now.’” Deborah broke down in tears several times. She had expected she and Fred would raise their child together, and Fred would support them. Deborah testified that she had no blood on her nightgown as she was pulled out of the bedroom and did not see blood on Fred at that point. Montgomery uncovered the mattress, which had been placed in front of the jury. The top third was covered with dried blood. Deborah broke down crying. She said the blood was not there or on Fred when she left the bedroom.” (p. 260)
Haas, J. (2009). The assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago police murdered a Black Panther. Lawrence Hill Books. “I argued that Carmody was the only officer who entered at the rear whose weapon could have caused the fatal bullet wounds to Fred’s head. Carmody dragged Fred’s body into the dining room for all to see, claimed he did not know whether Fred was dead but never checked, and brought his body out to where guns were within easy reach. “Carmody knew Fred was dead because he’d just fired two shots into his head with his .38 snub-nosed revolver.” “When you put it all together, you will find that Edward Carmody went in there to murder Fred Hampton.”” (p. 303)
PBS NewsHour. (2021, May 14). The largely forgotten history of Philadelphia’s police bombing of Black organization MOVE. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-largely-forgotten-history-of-philadelphias-police-bombing-of-black-organization-move. “In May 1985, the city’s police department dropped an improvised bomb on a residential home that housed the Black revolutionary organization MOVE. The bomb and ensuing fire killed 11 people, including five children, and destroyed more than 60 nearby homes.”
PBS NewsHour. (2021, May 14). The largely forgotten history of Philadelphia’s police bombing of Black organization MOVE. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-largely-forgotten-history-of-philadelphias-police-bombing-of-black-organization-move. “The complicated story of MOVE begins in the early 1970s. The organization followed the teachings of their founder, John Africa, who advocated a lifestyle rooted in nature. All members took Africa's last name and lived communally in West Philadelphia.”
PBS NewsHour. (2021, May 14). The largely forgotten history of Philadelphia’s police bombing of Black organization MOVE. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-largely-forgotten-history-of-philadelphias-police-bombing-of-black-organization-move. “And on May 13, local news stations like WCAU in Philadelphia covered the escalating crisis throughout the day. Police would fire more than 10,000 rounds of ammunition into MOVE's row house before eventually dropping a bomb on it The city's police commissioner at the time, Gregore Sambor, defended his officers that evening.”
PBS NewsHour. (2021, May 14). The largely forgotten history of Philadelphia’s police bombing of Black organization MOVE. PBS. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-largely-forgotten-history-of-philadelphias-police-bombing-of-black-organization-move. “Eleven MOVE members, including five children, were killed. While no city officials were criminally charged. A Philadelphia investigative commission later concluded that police actions were clearly excessive and, quote, unconscionable.”
Colorado Encyclopedia. (2018, July 25). Ludlow Massacre. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre. “The Ludlow Massacre began on the morning of April 20, 1914, when a battle broke out between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners at their tent colony outside of Ludlow in Las Animas County. Nobody knows who fired the first shot, but the incident is remembered as a massacre because the miners and their families bore the brunt of the casualties. At least nineteen people died, including one guardsman, five miners, and thirteen women and children who suffocated as they hid from the gunfire in a pit. More died in violence throughout southern Colorado over the next few days. No matter how the casualties are counted, the Ludlow Massacre is one of the bloodiest events in American labor history. The massacre was the culminating event of the 1913–14 Colorado coal miners’ strike. The strike had two main goals: getting coal operators to follow state of Colorado mining law and gaining representation by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) for Colorado’s coal miners.”
Colorado Encyclopedia. (2018, July 25). Ludlow Massacre. https://coloradoencyclopedia.org/article/ludlow-massacre. “The Guard was supposed to maintain the peace, but since mine owners had already worked out a deal with the state to pay for the cost of the deployment, the troops actually caused more trouble. The battalion also included many veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection who were conditioned to think of the multi-ethnic miners as their inferiors.”
Applebaum, A. (2004). Gulag: A history (1st Anchor Books ed.). Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc.”Such encounters were frequent, for the camps had a large turnover. Although arrests were constant, so too were releases. Prisoners were freed because they finished their sentences, because they were let into the Red Army, because they were invalids or women with small children, because they had been promoted from captive to guard. As a result, the total number of prisoners in the camps generally hovered around two million, but the total number of Soviet citizens who had some experience of the camps, as political or criminal prisoners, is far higher. From 1929, when the Gulag began its major expansion, until 1953, when Stalin died, the best estimates indicate that some eighteen million people passed through this massive system. About another six million were sent into exile, deported to the Kazakh deserts or the Siberian forests.JLegally obliged to remain in their exile villages, they too were forced laborers, even though they did not live behind barbed wire.” (p. xvii)
Applebaum, A. (2004). Gulag: A history (1st Anchor Books ed.). Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc. ”A single round number of dead victims would be extremely satisfying, particularly since it would allow us to compare Stalin directly with Hitler or with Mao.” (p. 584)
Berry, D. R., & Gross, K. N. (2020). A black women’s history of the United States(Revisioning American history). Beacon Press. “Starting with the seventeenth century, we learn of more women of African descent who were forcibly moved to the New World. These women had different experiences on this land than Olvera. They were unwilling victims of genocide in the largest forced migration in history: the transatlantic slave trade. Historians confirm that 1444 marked the first year a slave ship left the African coast to a Portuguese market, although this ship of 250 Africans did not come to the Americas; it went to Lisbon, one of the primary slave-trading centers at that time.23 The ship arrived with grief- stricken men, women, and children. It is impossible to imagine the experience of this journey or the horror of being taken into captivity.” (p. 37)
Berry, D. R., & Gross, K. N. (2020). A black women’s history of the United States(Revisioning American history). Beacon Press. “he previous decades had witnessed the end of racial segregation, a new phase of voting rights, and a seismic shift in women’s rights, including access to birth control and legal abortion. A significant drug culture also developed during that period, and illegal narcotics ravaged Black and Latinx inner cities. Conservative politicians ran on a series of law-and-order platforms that appealed to white Americans, many of whom had grown tired of social protests, so much so that lofty aims such as the War on Poverty would eventually give way to the War on Drugs. Legislation such as the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act sharply altered criminal justice, particularly after the passage of stringent anti-narcotics laws known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws. These statutes mandated lengthy prison sentences for drug crimes and included stark sentencing disparities with racial implications that devastated Black and Latinx communities. The impact of the policies under Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard Nixon were amplified during the Reagan era. The sentences for possession of crack cocaine versus those for powdered cocaine showed the close relationship between race, class, and legal bias. Defendants with five grams of crack cocaine received the same ten-year sentence as those with five hundred grams of powered cocaine. Crack, which cost as little as five to ten dollars per vial, was prevalent in African American and Latinx communities, while powdered cocaine, which was more expensive, was more commonly used by middle- and upper-class whites. The culmination of these policies gave rise to the mass incarceration of citizens nationwide, but African Americans were disproportionately represented, and Black women especially saw their numbers in prison grow nearly 800 percent by the 1990s, due to drug crimes. In this climate, African American women who lacked prior criminal records found themselves facing years and years of confinement once they had been arrested and found guilty. In New York City in 1983, Elaine Bartlett, a Black woman, was sentenced to twenty years to life for a first offense. The mother of four lived in public housing, received welfare, and worked off the books at a beauty salon and local bar to help make ends meet. But when the Christmas holidays approached, she decided to transport four ounces of cocaine. Arrested by undercover officers, Elaine would become like thousands of African American women who were netted by harsh drug laws and overrepresented in prison. In 1984 in New York, 23 percent of the women prisoners were Latinx, 26 percent were white, and an astounding 51 percent were African American, though Black women only accounted for 14 percent of the state’s population.” (p. 216-217)
Berry, D. R., & Gross, K. N. (2020). A black women’s history of the United States(Revisioning American history). Beacon Press. “After Reconstruction, across the South a system of convict leasing took hold, as local whites reconfigured criminal justice to curtail Black freedom. Using vagrancy laws to criminalize and limit Black mobility, thousands of African Americans, including disproportionate numbers of Black women, effectively found themselves in bondage to the state. Black women prisoners helped rebuild the South as convict labor pioneered modern business industries in the region. Working in camps or on chain gangs, as many Black female prisoners did in the South, proved particularly perilous. Georgia convicts worked “sun to sun, rain or shine,” and as historian Talitha LeFlouria explains, imprisoned African American women worked in railroad camps, brickyards, chain gangs, lumber mills, plantations, washhouses, barns, and “big houses,” in addition to being “terrorized, whipped, raped, and emotionally bruised.” Conditions in prisons and penitentiaries elsewhere in the country were also dire. African American women served sentences in squalid, rat-infested cellblocks where they were vulnerable to violence and sexual assault. Further, nationwide, Black women and Black men were disproportionately imprisoned, though numbers proved especially stark for African American women. For example, although Black people only accounted for 2 percent of the Midwest population in 1880, they accounted for 12 percent of all state prisoners; 12 percent of male prisoners were Black men, while 30 percent of incarcerated females were Black women. In the Northeast in 1900, where, again, African Americans made up approximately 2 percent of the population, they accounted for roughly 13 percent of all state prisoners, with Black women accounting for 18 percent of female prisoners and Black male prisoners making up 12 percent of incarcerated males. Conditions were most severe in the South, where African Americans accounted for 30 percent of the population and 74 percent of the region’s prisoners; Black men accounted for 73 percent of incarcerated men, and a staggering 90 percent of incarcerated women were African American.” (p. 133)
Rich, P. (1988). United States containment policy, South Africa and the apartheid dilemma. Review of International Studies, 14, 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210500113473. “As the cold war intensified in the late 1940s and early 1950s, following the exploding by the Soviet Union of an atomic bomb in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean war a year later, South Africa appeared a strong anti-communist ally to a considerable section of the US policy-making establishment. Pretoria agreed to sell uranium to the United States and paid back its lend-lease debt as well as despatching a fighter squadron to the Korean peninsular. It was during this period that many of the US economic links with South Africa were forged and some neo-marxian analysts have seen this as a straightforward reflection of US global hegemony and the over- whelming power of US capitalism. A close reading of the State Department documents of the time, however, suggests a much greater degree of political opportunism in US policy than the model of neo-imperial US economic and political hegemony implies. Though South African issues were conducted through the Office of British Commonwealth and North European Affairs until the establishment of the more liberally-inclined African Department in 1956, a number of fact-finding surveys was undertaken. The basic assumptions behind several of them were that, while South African politics looked like becoming increasingly unstable in the years ahead, they were then not of such magnitude as to prevent the development of US investment in the country, especially in the area of strategic minerals such as uranium. '. . . as far as can be foreseen at present , wrote the head of the Office of British Commonwealth and North European Affairs, 'it is unlikely that the political disturbances in the Union of South Africa will affect our uranium ore procurement program in that area” (p. 179-180)
Rich, P. (1988). United States containment policy, South Africa and the apartheid dilemma. Review of International Studies, 14, 179–194. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210500113473. “The climate of thinking in the Reagan administration when it came into office in 1981 was favourable in some degree to a renewed dialogue with the Pretoria regime as the Total Strategy ideal fitted in with a return to a more cold war conceptualization of national security. The Reagan administration was initially impelled by an ideology of new right conservatism in search of a policy though in practice this meant falling back on the traditional strategic conceptions of the right wing American African lobby especially as it had already become clear in 1978 that the Senate Republican minority was prepared to break the post-war consensus on foreign policy by openly attacking the Carter administration's policies in the report Declaration on National Security and Foreign Policy. The conservatives drew on strains of strategic thinking which contrasted with the moral appeals of liberals such as President Carter's former UN ambassador Andrew Young who tried to keep the issue of sanctions against the South- African government on the political agenda by an analogy with the American civil rights movement and the use of the US Supreme court as a "scapegoat5 and moral authority for initiating change in the segregationist South.36 The conservatives stressed the economic and military dominance of South Africa in the southern African sub-region and the slim likelihood of White power being overthrown in the foreseeable future by a Black revolutionary movement. US investments, they stressed, were only some 16-18 per cent of total foreign holdings in the country and a strategy of disinvestment would lead to their being bought up by South African capitalists anyway.- It'was, to this extent, politically unrealistic to insist—as the previous Carter administration had done—on majority rule and policy should be aimed more at encouraging verligtheid in South African governing circles and more rational approaches to political 'change' within the governing power bloc. However, the American new right conservatives were worried by a more general phenomenon of the apparent fragility of political institutions in Africa and tended to emphasize this aspect once it was clear that the strategic arguments for maintaining links with South Africa to offset Soviet naval expansion in the Indian ocean could no longer be maintained with credibility.f” (p. 187)
Clark, N. L., & Worger, W. H. (2022). South Africa: The rise and fall of apartheid (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003091981. “In 1948, White South African voters elected a government dedicated to the ideology of apartheid or, in Afrikaans, ‘apartness’ or ‘apart-hood’. Not con- tent with separation under segregation, the new government would fashion a system that precluded Africans from all rights normally associated with those of citizens. By the 1980s, many Africans in South Africa would no longer legally be considered citizens of that country but would be catego- rised as foreigners. At the same time, former colonial subjects in Africa and Asia were being given their independence, the civil rights movement was making gains in the US and elsewhere, and it appeared that the world was moving towards greater human rights for all. In comparison, South Africa appeared to be moving backwards at an alarming rate” (p. 37)
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press. “Political disenfranchisement. During the Jim Crow era, African Americans were denied the right to vote through poll taxes, literacy tests, grand-father clauses, and felon disenfranchisement laws, even though the Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution specifically provides that “the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied . . . on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Formally race-neutral devices were adopted to achieve the goal of an all-white electorate without violating the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment. The devices worked quite well. Because African Americans were poor, they frequently could not pay poll taxes. And because they had been denied access to education, they could not pass literacy tests. Grandfather clauses allowed whites to vote even if they couldn’t meet the requirements, as long as their ancestors had been able to vote. Finally, because blacks were disproportionately charged with felonies—in fact, some crimes were specifically defined as felonies with the goal of eliminating blacks from the electorate—felony disenfranchisement laws effectively suppressed the black vote as well.” (p. 187)
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press. “Jim Crow and slavery were caste systems. So is our current system of mass incarceration. ” (p. 12)
Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. The New Press. “They are legally denied the ability to obtain employment, housing, and public benefits—much as African Americans were once forced into a segregated, second-class citizenship in the Jim Crow era.” (p. 4)