Video created by Mike McCormick of KEXP Public Affairs.

Video taped by Mike McCormick with KEXP Public Affairs.

The practice of torture is perceived by many as a dark element of history, but what few people know is the United States continues to dirty its hands by engaging in this immoral and illegal practice. (For the lecture by torture expert Alfred McCoy, click here).
“We cannot wish it away…questions of responsibility are pressed upon us,” said [...]

With April 26 being the 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, Dr. Holly Barker and Dr. Tom Carpenter gave lectures that were equally informative and disturbing on the health impacts of radioactive weapons. With the Cold War over, the shadow that is the threat of nuclear weapons is not gone.
Barker from UW brought to the forefront the [...]

Some Americans feel removed from war. Not Dr. Howard Campbell. As a cultural anthropology professor at University of Texas at El Paso, Campbell is on the front lines of the Mexican war on drugs. Juárez, Mexico, is literally outside his back door.

His message was simple; we are losing the war on drugs.

What is the cost of war? According to Dr. Evan Kanter, a psychiatrist who treats veterans, it is much greater than the price of military operations. Kanter spoke Saturday about the wounds of war on the home front.

“You need to be patient,” Frederic, a 15-year-old boy in Rwanda, told his younger sisters. “Maybe it is tomorrow that God will give us food.”

Frederic’s story was one of several anecdotes that were shared during yesterday’s panel on children and war.

Alfred McCoy, PhD, a professor with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror, spoke on Psychological Torture and Political Impunity” on Saturday. (Mike McCormick with KEXP recorded the interview and posted it on YouTube.)

Panelists at the Women and War session addressed a packed room about gender-based violence and rape as a war crime during the War and Global Health conference Saturday. Sutapa Basu, executive director of the University of Washington Women’s Center, introduced the topic of rape as a weapon of war, stating that evidence of women being handled as trophies of war has been documented for centuries.

While Dr. Evan Kanter persuasively painted a dire future unless nuclear weaponry is eliminated, Dr. Robert Gould of the San Francisco Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility presented a dismaying history of America’s political commitment to nuclear weapons as critical elements in national policy.