It Has Come to This

Happy Friday.

In the February 14th issue of the New Yorker is a rather intriguing article entitled Outsourcing Torture about a practice known as “extraordinary rendition” whereby the United States government ships individuals to other countries where they are interrogated through torture. While some of you may claim the practice is necessary in a post-9/11 world, the realization that our government seizes people from their homes in the middle of the night to subject them to such extreme cruelty that they must be taken overseas is more than a little disturbing--especially considering that the historical precedent for such conduct was limited to places like Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and Amin’s Uganda.

What’s most disturbing, perhaps, is that the practice no longer needs to be kept secret--somehow we have come to accept such things.