This pipeline is a particularly brutal and dumb idea.
This, of course, is a particularly brutal accounting — the idea that, maybe, you never quite existed for another person but were merely a proxy, a placeholder, quietly keeping a seat warm while other, better plans were negotiated.
"The reality is, there is an enormous number of checks and balances," he says: "the very rigorous, brutal selection of ideas".
Resuscitating this frightening invention of racism and desperation and letting him speak for himself is the bold and inspired idea behind "Brutal Imagination," which opened last night at the Vineyard Theater.
Mark Danner, a journalist who has written extensively about the covert program for The New York Review of Books, said the news reports had fed the idea that brutal interrogations could instantly glean information about terrorist plans.
The portrayal of torture in television shows like "24" — which makes no pretense of reflecting real events — may already have contributed to a notable shift in American public opinion toward the idea that brutal interrogations are necessary and effective, said Amy B. Zegart, who studies intelligence at Stanford University.
Yet, half a year after Sarkozy's election, Lévy published a book depicting his old friend as a crass opportunist, cynically indifferent to ideas, and brutal in his capacity for denial.
He feels he cannot urge Liberians to continue to speak Grebo instead of English, given his conclusions that it is plagued by "lowness of ideas, with brutal and vindictive sentiments" and with "principles" that show a predominance of "animal propensities".
Either we're forcing kids these days to grow up far too quickly, exposing them to a raft of brutal and complex adult ideas and pressures they are ill-equipped to handle, or, well, something possibly far, far worse: they never really grow the hell up at all.
"To be brutal, it's a cool idea... we want the company to unlock its own potential".
