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Reasonable Torture Doesn’t Exist

by Zoe Pollock Scott Horton interviewed father and son Charles and Gregory Fried about their book, Because It Is Wrong—Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror. Horton asked why they paired torture with privacy and surveillance: [After 9/11] the general public, and even the informed public, reacted as if both transgressions were equally serious and equally deserving of condemnation. Indeed, there may have been a markedly greater tolerance of torture than of surveillance—maybe because few of us expect to undergo torture, but all feel our phones or Internet may be tapped into. This gets things exactly wrong.…

Note from near Urumqi – #Uyghur

Following email was received from a friend. Edited to remove identifying information. Initial email received on July 7, 2009. people who live in xinjiang province feel panic, riot just happened there, they are afraid where and when the riot will happpened again, the matter is really seriou, at the beginning i also heard the news from TV news, then I called my family and friends, but all phone numbers are baring, and was told this number does not exist. I even can not contact anybody and get any news from xinjiang except CCTV news. some calls is not easy to…

The Anti-Muslim Machine < Killing the Buddha

The Anti-Muslim Machine < Killing the Buddha. the shitstorm that just passed through town is a familiar one. The proposed Islamic cultural center in Lower Manhattan is the Brooklyn “madrassa” all over again, with the same cast of conservative activists working to block the mainstreaming of Muslims in the public sphere. Imam Abdul Feisal Rauf wants to create essentially a Muslim YMCA in Lower Manhattan? They say he supports Hamas and has terrorist ties. Debbie Almontaser wanted to head a public school that’d specialize in Arabic? Also—you guessed it—a Hamas supporter with terrorist ties. And repeat.