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RedditFifty years ago, the great Martinican poet Aimé Césaire wrote that the trouble with colonization was not just that it dehumanizes the colonized but that it also "decivilizes" the colonizer. Torture does the same. While transforming a human being into a thing of pain, it simultaneously strangles human society. Torture threatens to decivilize us today not only because its practices are being normalized within our national imagination but also because civil society is being enlisted to rationalize its demands. In most arenas, this process has elicited at least some vocal opposition. When it was revealed that medical professionals were assisting in abusive interrogations, debates among doctors and psychologists followed about torture, medical ethics and war. And while Administration lawyers have attempted to narrow the definition of torture and to authorize new methods of inflicting pain, other attorneys, including top military lawyers, have challenged interrogation policies on legal, moral and tactical grounds.
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Congress: Stop Funding Torture
In an open letter to Senator Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, lawyers, clergy and human rights activists voice alarm at mounting evidence of torture and human rights violations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Back Talk: Billy Bragg
Christine Smallwood: British punk rocker and activist Billy Bragg talks about his new album and the politics and economics of free online music.
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Where Is the Outrage Over Torture?
Robert Scheer: The muted response to revelations of torture raises the question of whether Americans are truly savages or simply tone-deaf on matters of morality.
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A Wink and a Leer
Jess Harvell: Nick Cave's self-lacerating sense of humor helps him avoid being just another pretentious old rocker.
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Her Good Thing
Nathaniel Friedman: The versatile vocalist Mable John, now a novelist and minister, has come a long way since the 1960s soul era that made her (almost) famous.
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The Torture Memo
Stephen Gillers: How could two really smart government lawyers authorize torture in arguments that have no foundation in law?
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Reviving Vietnam War Tactics
Tom Hayden: One of Gen. Petraeus's top advisors advocates a return to the global Phoenix program used during the Vietnam War.
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A Light in Brooklyn
Moustafa Bayoumi: In Brooklyn, a beleaguered Arab-American community copes with bigotry and heightened government scrutiny post-9/11.
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Arab America's September 11
Moustafa Bayoumi: Arab Americans are experiencing something similar to McCarthy-era redbaiting, but the cold war performed better on racial justice than Bush's "war on terror."
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Disco Inferno
Moustafa Bayoumi: Military detainees have been subjected to starvation, sleep deprivation and now Metallica and Britney Spears. Blasted at high volume, torture music has become a weapon of war, used to destroy the minds of Muslim detainees. It's time for musicians to speak up.
But Hetfield's voice must not be the only one. Where do other musicians stand? Will Eminem rage against the torture machine or will Bruce Springsteen speak out as his music is press-ganged into futility and pain? If American musicians oppose the use of their music in torture, it's time for them to make some noise.
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