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Iraqi Voices

Maybe instead of talking about them, we should be listening to them. This is a great project by a great group, and some really wonderful people whom I am privileged to know. Part of what happens when you bring a group of artists to speak to refugees (or really to speak to anyone), is that the subject of art comes up. When people hear that we are artists, they tend to start telling us about the art that they know and love. There stories begin to be told on the level of music and dance, picture and sound.

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.…