Battling Child Sex Slavery

A few years back, I started donating my speaking honoraria to organizations I support -- the ACLU, various independent news groups, the Occupy Movement. I just gave my latest, $2000, to the Somaly Mam Foundation, dedicated to rescuing children from sexual slavery.  Please do what you can to support this vital organization, and I recommend Somaly's heart-wrenching book, too, The Road of Lost Innocence.

Interrogators Speak Out: Why Not a Torture Turing Test?

I'm proud to be part of a series of articles by intelligence and military interrogators denouncing torture this week at the Huff Post.  Here's my entry.

When I wrote my eighth thriller, Inside Out, in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.  The plot was of course based on actual events, and I considered naming one of the characters Jose Rodriguez, the Director of the National Clandestine Service at the time the actual tapes were destroyed.  In the end I decided against real names, though, because, after all, the characters in the book were committing terrible crimes, and to name them after real people seemed a recipe for a libel suit.

I needn't have worried.  Since Inside Out was published, former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney have confessed to ordering waterboarding in their respective memoirs, with no repercussions, legal or otherwise.  And now former Director Rodgriguez, in his own memoir, has himself confessed to ordering the destruction of the videotapes that were the basis for the plot of my novel.  He understands -- correctly, I'm sure -- that he will face no more legal action or damage to his reputation than did the president or vice president.  Such are the times we live in.  After all, President Obama disavowed torture on his second day in office.  No, this was not good news.  It merely ratified the idea that torture, illegal by treaty and US law, is not in fact a crime, but rather merely a policy, which some presidents will permit and others prohibit, entirely at their discretion.  And indeed, although Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged during his confirmation hearings what everyone already knew -- that waterboarding always has been and always will be torture -- no one has since been charged or prosecuted for ordering it or carrying it out.

Is waterboarding torture?  The Spanish Inquisition, the Nazi Gestapo, and the Khmer Rouge all used it.  And previous US cases have all ruled that waterboarding is inarguably torture.  And it's hard to imagine that any American, Rodriguez included, would argue waterboarding isn't torture if the tapes in question depicted Iranian or Chinese agents waterboarding captured American pilots.  Just a dunk in the water?  A little discomfort, no big deal, all's fair?

But Rodriguez says waterboarding isn't torture, at least when it's Americans doing it, that it merely makes victims "uncomfortable."  He also says it's vital for US national security that we continue to waterboard terror suspects.  So: why not a torture Turing Test?  If Rodriguez can continue to maintain that waterboarding isn't torture even while being waterboarded, he would be infinitely more persuasive.  I wonder why Rodriguez, and so many other apologists with so much on the line, refuse to make this extremely persuasive point?  After all, they say waterboarding causes no permanent harm.  It's just a dunk in the water, a no brainer, merely uncomfortable, no big deal at all.  Are these people not patriots?  Why won't they submit to an easy dunk and demonstrate powerfully and persuasively and once and for all for everyone to see that waterboarding isn't torture, and thereby make a more powerful case that America should continue doing it?  You know, like rightwing talk show host Mancow did.

It's bad enough high government officials like Rodrigez get away with murder, sometimes literally.  It becomes even more galling when they justify their self-interested destruction of evidence of their crimes by claiming the destruction was necessary to protect America.  Remember the English lord in the film Braveheart, showing up with men-at-arms to rape the bride at a Scottish wedding, and describing the act as a way to "bless this marriage"?

I don't know which bodes worse for the future of the republic.  That officials like Rodriguez can claim such stunningly self-interested reasons for having destroyed the evidence of their crimes.  Or that the public is credulous enough to believe them.

We Don't Want You To Get Robbed, So We'll Just Take Your Wallet Now

Traveling to the Bainbridge Writer's Conference near Seattle this weekend to give the keynote.  I'll be talking about some of the issues I discuss in this Guardian piece on the battle between Amazon and legacy publishers.  The battle fascinates me not just because I write books for a living, but also because it involves some of the topics I find most engaging:  political use of language; the establishment mentality and mindset; the struggle between the forces of control and the forces of democratization.  Enjoy.

Establishment Publishing Kabuki

Today I learned via a mass email from Michael Pietsch, Executive Vice President and Publisher of Little, Brown, that Authors Guild President Scott Turow has an op-ed in Bloomberg on Amazon and the legacy publishing industry. The op-ed is mostly a cut and paste of an open letter Turow posted earlier on the Authors Guild website, and because Joe Konrath and I have already fisked the letter, I won't repeat our arguments here (David Gaughran also had a typically excellent response). Instead, I'd like to point out just one thing I think will be of particular interest to readers of HOTM.

At one point Turow writes, "It may seem strange to hear the president of the Authors Guild expressing sympathy for the plight of American publishers." Well, Turow is expressing more than just sympathy; he's adopting and advocating establishment publishing's philosophy and business practices in a manner indistinguishable from the manner in which establishment publishing executives themselves so advocate (indeed, as I note above, the EVP and Publisher of Little, Brown heartily endorsed Turow's op-ed in a mass email earlier today). But yes, Turow is fundamentally correct: it's as unseemly for the head of an author's guild to defend legacy publishers as it would be for the head of, say, the Pilot's Union to defend United. And Turow is apparently sufficiently aware of, and concerned about, the appearance of his questionable role as legacy publishing spokesperson to call it out.

But here's the reason Turow says you should not only accept his unlikely role as legacy publishing flack, but should in fact find it desirable: you see, the Authors Guild and legacy publishers "have been at each other’s throats since the guild came into being a century ago, and we still have serious differences."

This dodge -- the pretense of a real divergence of interests -- is so significant and widespread I wanted to call it out here.

No establishment wants to present itself to the public accurately -- that is to say, as a monolith. If it did so, people would correctly understand that the utterances of every part of the establishment are merely self-serving, and would discount them accordingly. So what establishments work hard to do instead is to create the appearance of conflict, competition, and a divergence of interests. In this way, for example, The New Republic can be used by conservatives, as in, "Even the liberal New Republic says…". Similarly, Blue Dog and other corporate-serving Democrats can be cited by Republicans as "Even Democrats acknowledge that…". And now, as we see, the Publisher of Little Brown gets to say, "Even Authors Guild President Scott Turow says…".

I've written about this phenomenon before as it exists in the establishment media. The apparent divergence of views among NPR and other such "leftwing" media, on the one hand, and the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, and other such "rightwing" media, on the other, is intended to distract from the much more important commonality of interests among these establishment media outlets (and here's Glenn Greenwald with a recent piece on what these interests are). I call this kind of competition Kabuki Competition, and not coincidentally, it's the same kind of "competition" that exists among legacy publishers. Yes, they battle over author and employee talent, but these battles are vastly outweighed by the areas in which they cooperate: author royalties, means of distribution, and all the other fundamentals of maintaining their privileged station in the world of books. Remember, Europe's royal clans once fought real battles, too, but what they agreed on was much more important than what they fought over. And what they agreed on was the entire feudal system that was the basis for their profits, their position, and their power. They agreed on their place, and the place of the peasants, and all their battles were fought within those bounds.

So don't be misled: despite what they would have you believe, players like Turow and Pietsch are not fundamentally adversarial. They may differ, and they might actually fight, over how the system's spoils should be properly divided. But on the preservation of that system itself, they are of entirely the same mind and have entirely the same interests.

P.S. Michael, in your mass email praising Scott's latest, you said, "These are interesting times for all of us and I welcome your questions and thoughts about the issues facing our industry. I hope you agree that our open exchange of ideas is critical for continued success." I do! Which is why I've taken the trouble to respond to Scott and now to you, too. Won't you do the same? If not, then particularly given Scott's failure to address any of the numerous thorough and cogent responses to his arguments, which you have now publicly endorsed, people might start to feel that what interests you isn't in fact an open exchange of ideas, but instead a one-sided coordinated campaign of self-serving propaganda.

Scott Turow, Servant of Establishment Publishing

Scott Turow is the president of the Authors Guild, yet his real concern seems to be protecting legacy publishers at the expense of the authors whose interests he claims to represent. Today Joe Konrath and I fisked Turow's defense of legacy publishing price collusion, currently the subject of a Justice Department investigation. We weren't gentle, but when someone pisses down your back and tells you it's raining, you have to call 'em on it. Here's your link.

Publishing, Politics, and Persuasion

Today I did a long interview with the awesome Catherine Ryan Hide, author of eighteen award-winning novels including Pay It Forward. Catherine asked me some great questions, and I talk about publishing; establishments; how the one percent couldn't exist without the support and reverence of substantial parts of the 99%; false-binary thinking; why nothing, not even the Holocaust or child-molestation, should be off-limits to humor; what motivates dudgeon demons and mobs; the Amazon bogeyman; what makes an effective or ineffective book cover; what the publishing industry will look like in ten years; Chihuahuas; and lots more.

Read the whole thing on Catherine's blog. And be careful! Some of it might offend you, after which, you could suffer from feelings of being offended, which many people find troubling.

A Few Book Recommendations

Whenever I read a good book, I try to post an Amazon and Goodreads review, and it occurred to me that I ought to be doing so here, too. So here are three recent ones I thought were outstanding:

Glenn Greenwald, With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful

This superb book is a powerful indictment of America's two-tiered system of "justice" and the perversion of American ideals by the American establishment (better understood as an oligarchy). It could serve as a manifesto of the Occupy movement, which, contrary to variously naive and opportunistic mischaracterizations, has no problem with people winning, and is opposed instead to systemic, institutionalized cheating.

If you think certain classes of people should be above the law, or that the law (including the Constitution) should be treated more as a kind of guideline, suggestion, or recommendation than as a binding authority equally applicable to all, you won't agree with the book's clear argument and you'll find a way to ignore its overwhelming evidence. But if you recognize that, as Thomas Paine said, in America it is the law that is king, you'll be grateful that Greenwald has written such a cogent appeal for Americans to live up to our ideals.



Michael Hastings, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan

The Operators covers, in excellent prose and with perfect pacing, three broad topics. First, the insanity and futility of America's war in Afghanistan. Second, the way decisions are made in Washington and at the Pentagon -- the bureaucratic battles, the petty resentments and one-upmanship, the alliances and betrayals. And third, the realities of journalism -- the tradeoffs journalists engage in between access and honesty, the way journalists allow themselves to be seduced and suborned by the powerful figures they purport to hold to account.

For nonfiction, the book was an unusually gripping read (I listened to the audio version in my car, and many evenings sat in the driveway after getting home, unable to turn it off). Hastings turns this trick by avoiding preaching, and instead illuminating his broad themes through a specific focus. The insanity and futility of the war are represented by the heart-aching death of Army Corporal Mike Ingram. The White House and Pentagon turmoil is told via the story of the rise and fall of General Stanley McChrystal, America's commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. And the realities of journalism are presented through Hastings' account of his own decision-making process; of the temptations he felt (and, to his credit, resisted); and of the reactions of other journalists to his coverage of McChrystal and the war.

The subtitle is spot-on: this really is a wild and terrifying inside account, and a deeply affecting one, too. I highly recommend it.


Writers Anonymous, Seven At The Sevens: A Collection of Seven-Word Stories, Memoirs and Poems

I completely enjoyed this eclectic and wonderful book, which the authors were kind enough to give me when I spoke at Grub Street Writers in Boston this past November. I wouldn't have thought a book grouped around the concept of seven-word observations, poems, stories, and aphorisms would be so engaging, but I would have been wrong about that (and I should have known better, as I suppose you could say the same thing about haiku).

If you love writing, this book will make you feel connected with a passionate and funny (and anonymous, though their bios provide delightful glimpses) group of people who share your love. The illustrations are memorable, and sometimes haunting. The quotes from Steve Jobs, Hemingway, and others will inspire you. I'm indebted to the authors for introducing me to the work of Katherine Mansfield -- her short story The Fly is a magic act. Magic.

A particularly fine read in a favorite coffee shop (mine is Hatou in Tokyo). Also goes with Charlie Haden's American Dream. I hope you'll have as much fun with this slim volume as I did.