The Nation Jan-05-15

Calvino!
 Thanks so much to Aaron Thier for his wonderful and informative article on Italo Calvino [“Calculators and Butterflies,” Nov. 24]. I was so impressed by Calvino’s philosophies and writing style that I immediately went online and purchased a copy of Difficult Loves, principally for the short story “Smog.” Robert Fuller Hayward, Calif. * * * Slavery and Capitalism
 I enjoyed “Apostles of Growth,” by Timothy Shenk [Nov. 24]. I recommend an excellent book, Reservation “Capitalism”: Economic Development in Indian Country, about Native American capitalism from pre-invasion to the present. It’s by Robert Miller, who taught Indian law at Lewis and Clark College. Eugene Johnson Milwaukie, Ore. 
 * * * Timothy Shenk’s “Apostles of Growth” matches an incisive assessment of how slavery in the United States figures centrally in…

The report on the brutalities of the CIA’s secret prisons is the most important work by the Senate Intelligence Committee since congressional oversight of the CIA began in the 1970s. Its descriptions of torture and deception are as compelling as the newsreels of the Nuremberg trials. 
 But will it have any impact on the CIA or the future of congressional oversight? Not likely. Can Americans run a secret intelligence service under law in an open democracy? Not yet. We’ve been at it since 1947, but we’ve rarely gotten it right—and we’ve rarely gotten it more wrong than we did after 9/11. 
 The director of the CIA, John Brennan, much vilified for trying to defend the agency against the indefensible, was at least truthful in his public remarks after…

Human experimentation was a core feature of the CIA’s torture program. The experimental nature of the interrogation and detention techniques is clearly evident in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s executive summary of its investigative report, despite redactions (insisted upon by the CIA) to obfuscate the locations of these laboratories of cruel science and the identities of perpetrators. 
 At the helm of this human experimentation project were two psychologists hired by the CIA, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. They designed interrogation and detention protocols that they and others applied to people imprisoned in the agency’s secret “black sites.” 
 In its response to the Senate report, the CIA justified its decision to hire the duo: “We believe their expertise was so unique that we would have been derelict had we not…

Gaza, Ferguson, the midterms, abortion clinics closing, torture. Was 2014 the worst or what? Fortunately, it’s not too late to spread a little love. Have a glass of champagne and donate to one (or more!) of these great groups.
 1. We Need Diverse Books. More than half of all schoolchildren are of color, LGBT, have a disability or belong to another minority. But children’s books don’t come near to reflecting that reality. In 2013, for example, only 10 percent of books about people featured a person of color. This new and energetic organization of authors, bloggers and publishers—which burst onto the publishing scene after one too many all-white-male panels convened last spring—wants to make sure today’s kids can find themselves and their stories on the library shelf (weneeddiversebooks.org). 
 2. Lost Voices.…

On the penultimate day of the recent United Nations climate summit in Lima, Peru, activists staged a “die-in” outside the conference center. They were honoring the thousands upon thousands of lives already lost in disasters and conflicts deepened by climate change. And they were doing something else: symbolically joining the increasingly global #BlackLivesMatter uprising, which has brought shopping malls and busy intersections to a standstill from the United States to the United Kingdom.
 The courageous demonstrators shouting “I can’t breathe!” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” are asserting a core principle about the value of every human being, starting with the most discounted. Standing in solidarity with their calls for a transformation of the criminal-justice system is of paramount importance. But why should the questions raised by #BlackLivesMatter end there? What…

On November 18, the Los Angeles Unified School District voted to make ethnic studies a high-school graduation requirement.
 Over 90 percent of LAUSD students are people of color, and activists hope the class will help students to gain a better understanding of history, culture and bigotry.
 Together with the fight to end the school-to-prison pipeline, activists see this as part of a larger movement to end educational racism.
 In a school-board meeting packed with 700 people of all ages and backgrounds, the ethnic-studies resolution passed by a vote of 6 to 1. 
Activists now hope to expand the requirement to other school districts, both state- and nationwide.
 —Isabel Sanchez…