the cries of a woman reach me from the room below. our aim is to save you. if i were you, i'd save myself, mr. asadi. the door of repentance is open to everyone in islam. i sit down, a faint light is appearing at the end of this dark tunnel. it's going to end. they are not going to hang me. they are not going to bring me in my wife. they're going to believe me. they're going to believe that i have written everything i know. there is only one thing i haven't written about. i'm going to write about that too. even though iwas >> even though i was only a witness, nothing more. the wit descends. so now, i'm going to introduce the writer of those very impassioned words. he's a journalist, translator and writer and was a writer of the ironnian journalist syndicate. he served for many years as depp ky executor and was editor in chief of a magazine. in 1983 following the yinian's government crackdown, he was arrested and sent to the prison in the city and was severely tortured until he confessed he was a spy for the russian and british agencies. he was sentenced to hanging, but was freed after serving six years in prison. michael henderson author of no enemy to conquer, unforgiveness in a forgiving world is a testament to survival against all odds. please join me in woking our speaker. >> good evening, and thanks a lot for coming. i am so happy at just this moment, one that came out here and he was to present to you and he have a bad experience like me. i know live in a very nice place, and first i ask you and i apologize for my bad epg lish for a -- english because for a long time of lived in exile, and i lost a lot of practice in my english. i live in exile and wrote about my experience in my homeland of iran. i carved letter -- it's called letters to my torturer. i was there from 1983 to 1989 and forced to live in iran until 2004. the subject of my book is very painful. it's painful especially for the young people who have never been in prison. it is about what goes on behind prison walls in iran, but it's also about what goes on iran in general. it's my personal account, but my experience viewing this six years, i have spent behind bars is not very different from the thousand of others treated in irani prison today. today, however, the treatment is even worse. i was forced to make a false confession that i was an agent for the soviet union and the british intelligence service. today, the tortures call the prisoners prostitutes. in addition, today, the prisoners are routinely raped with no recourse to justice. it's not a charge. it has been documented by eyewitnesses. please don't think that iran is about torture. such practice is by a group that imposed itself on iran since 1979. iran is the 18th lanchest country -- largest country in the world. it's bordered by nine countries including russia, pakistan, and turkey. iran is home to one of the world's oldest civilizations. beginning in 2800 b.c.. famous for its philosophy and shift and math mat ticks. it also has a rich literary heritage. world famous poets. the poem written by the great yin poet in the 19th century today is on display at the united nations. depiction improve, road to human rights charter over 2500 years ago. in defense of basic human dignity. people are curious about prison, especially in the public of iran with rulers who do everything in the name of god and their religion. in 1988 as the political prisoner was underway of the direct orders, i was on the verge of being executeed. i lied in the courts, and saved myself. perhaps so that many years later one day i could describe the tragic holocaust of islamic fear. the importance of what i have been through is not simply to recall the past. today, as i speak with you, my torture who now attained in iran, have started a new era of torture. for those of you who have not read my book, i'd like to summarize its contents under three general headings, love, power, and torture. love. the underlying theme of my book is love. love for freedom. love for wants. love for human beings, and love for my wife. it's is in my love for my country. this love is displayed and forms a shield against torture. my wife braves patience during my years in prison is ever present in my story. it gave me a strength and continues to give me hope then as i was tortured in prison, she was tortured outside in. all crime was love, a love for a country and for each other. that love gave hope and created life in hell inside and outside the prison. of the two and a half years in confinement during which we were denied any form of communication, i was finally alone to write a six line letter to my wife. my wife published this letters in exile which were the province from prison to home and back. the name of the book is love and hope. however, power, the book talks of power. i take the readers back to over 30 years with my first imprisonment in 1974, and my time in a prison cell which i shared for many months with a young muslim priest. a friendship developed in us, the priest was kind, and his face borders with a smile. he was full of love. this prisoner had been tortured was brought into our prison cell. the priest fed him his own hand using his bare hands with prayers. today, people are around the world know that priest as who rules iran as a dig -- dictator. that very hands that fed a prisoner at that time today sign orders for the execution and torture of thousands of young muslims. my book also talks of other political figures. it is most interesting. torture. when i was imprisoned again in 1983, he had just become the president of iran. in prison, i was taken to a very small cell where i was locked up with him before. i remember it was winter. then i had been transferred out of that cell in 1974. on that day, mr. hama -- hamani was slivering, and i gave him my jacket. with tears in his eyes, he told me under the islamic government not a single tear will be shed by the innocent. under islamic -- excuse me -- he told me under islamic government, no a single tear will be shed by the innocent, but in fact in the new islamic republic, i had just been put in prison by the regime. my crime was that i worked at a newspaper belonging to a leftist political party that supported the islamic republic of iran, and in a regime in which no tear was supposed to be shed, i endured political torture. i have described this torture in my book, and it is very clear that it's purpose was to break the person utterly, his love and his fight inside. today, almost 30 years is my imprisonment, my feet are still barren from the whipping. when i received my first slap on the face midnight in 1983 blindfolded and completely confused, i was told that it was the first article of the islamic republic's constitution. also, i was shown handgun to represent the final article of the constitution. that was a big wakeup call. the next day i experienced my first flogging, and that was just the beginning. a lifetime have passed since then, but life takes me back to those defining days. i was young like most of you, and in love and freedom, i love my country. i dreamed that the world could be changed. i believed that one day love would be the ruler of the life. i took part in the iranian revelation that this dream and the hope that freedom would be provided. that bread would be available for all, and that advertisement would only be found in the museums. i suddenly found myself in hell. for three months, the only other person in my physical life was a person called torture. his ideology of hate stems from his religious beliefs and his con truement -- partners were whips and handcuffs. it was completely at the mercy of a brother. in the islamic republic of islam, brother is the title of our believers and all torturers were brothers, all of whom used nicknames. my life was in the hands of such brothers whom everyone called by their nickname. anything i wanted door needed to do could only be done with permission. this included eating, sleeping, and receiving medicine, ect.. i could not even go to the restroom. he saw himself as the exclusive ruler of our lives, and as the defender of holy regime. he viewed me as a traitor, a spry, and immoral. he was the image of god while i was satan. i had to confess to whatever he dreamed up. i lost consciousness under his torture. i spent night and days hanging from the ceiling with one arm tied to my back. i was forbidden to sleep and even forced to eat my own fecses. i confessed. i had been with the most hateful person. i had marched and marched. i spent 6082 days in solitary confinement, and then, and then make confessions, but would be used against me in my six minutes trial in court. make no mistake, please, this system of torture continues today. since the electoral call of 2009, torture in iran has occurred in new fads which i call mock torture. the rape of women and even of men has been added to the earlier tech technical of routine unhuman torture practices. when at last i was released from prison after six years, i didn't know that my torture had been revolted with the position of the minister of the islamic regime. i noticed that iran had been turned into a huge prison. also, i had been released from prison. security agents reteenly summoned me and my wife and subjected us to questioning over the most private aspect of our lives. i always thought if george had been alive, he would have revised this and would have written a new book called the republic of most. i suspect this is the first time in the history that most had full control over a country with a civilization and culture that has a history of thousands of years. it is them who use to treaten me and my wife and told us. they told us, to our country, you are outside. either get out or we will take care of you. it is this who last year used the most savage torture to destroy the new progressive movement. 30 years ago when brother ahmid and his colleagues were routinely torturing us to force us to say we are agent of soviet union, they did it secretly. it took years for all our voice to be heard outside the prison. today, the torture young girls and boys using torture technical and force them to say they are agent of u.s. and or israel. fortunately, everything comes to light more quickly now, and the whole world hears what is going on. unfortunately, torture is not limited to iran. if you look about carefully, we will see routines of torture all over the world. in view of everything that is going on in iran and elsewhere, my book, letters to my torturers is more than just a memoir of torturing. it deals with issues that rest heavily on the consciousness of modern man, and of course, it is surprising that in the modern century, people are still struggling with the issue of torture. i think that's enough. thanks to all of you, and please ask any questions. [applause] >> as you can see, this is on c-span, so there's a man there with a boom mic, so wait for him to come to you, and this man will do some answering. raise your hand if you have a question. >> in all of your imprisonment, did you have any legal representation ever at any time? >> a defense lawyer in the islamic of iran is a joke. there is no such concept. they don't believe in such cop sents. >> other questions? >> so you were in court, and if the defense lawyer is a joke, the -- is it all for show? >> could you repeat the question? >> if there is no defense lawyer, why do they have courts? [speaking in foreign language] they have courts, but it's more a show. it has no rhetoric, and i'd like to give you an example. [speaking in foreign language] >> i had a cell mate. he was taken to his trial in front of the judge, and he came back 10 minutes later. i said, where have you been. he said i just went to my trial that took 10 minutes. i asked him what the trial was like. he said, i went in, there was a young muslim priest sitting there who was the judge. i took my blindfold off, and he said to me, what is your name? there are thrrks s's in the persian alphabet. he asked what kind of s it was. he said, it's the second s. in that case, he said, get lost, 15 years. >> if you're released from prison in 1989, why did it take 15 years for you to be exiled from iran? [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: as a generalist, i had decided that i wouldn't leave my country unless i'm forced to leave, so i was intending to stay on until the situation arose that forced me to leave. they tried to arrest me again, and -- [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: they would routinely ask for to go in for questions, and after a few years, it was kind of a magazine dealing with movie reviews, film reviews, and after a few months, they closed that down as well. eventually, they came and told us, and a group of other generalists, that you are strangers here, you better go away or you'll get in trouble. [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: we felt there was sufficient reason to be anxious about another arrest, so we decided to leave very quickly. >> were you able to write letters to your wife while you were in prison? ] -- [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: not for the first two and a half years, but after that, we were allowed 6 lines per month. there was a piece of paper with lines in the middle. i could write six lines, and she responded with six lines. they are very censored correspondence between them. >> thank you so much for sharing your story. do you have any hope for the iranian people? what do you think will happen in the next 10 or 20 years in iran? [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: i'm a generalist, not a prophet, but i am positive about the future of iran, and in view of the role taken by women and the youth in the recent uprising, i feel very positive that good things will come out, but to estimate a time scale would be very difficult. >> were there ever doctors or medical personnel at your torture? was this medically assisted or was it just done by soldiers or prisoners? [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: there was one guard that he experienced and one revolutionary guard who had basic medical training, and when they were with him, the prisoners feet and also while they lost all sensation because they were so injured they couldn't feel anything. this guy would come to put something in there so it would restore feeling so they could continue beatings. i think there was exampling of this in his book. >> we have time for two or three more questions, so raise your hand. there's two ladies and a lady in the back there. >> after everything you've been through, how do you find strength to go on every day? [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: because of my wife. >> i have a two-part question. first bit, when you were exiled, were you strategically placed in paris, or did you choose that? the second part is do you feel you can return to your country some day and not live in fear? [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: when we felt under threat of arrest, we had a visa from france, and so under the resolution, if the country is letting you go there, you're abloijed to go there basically, and that's why they went to france. it is naturally my greatest wish to return to iran at any minute it becomes possible. >> we have two more questions left, and you can decide which one you want. >> okay, please. yes. >> it's been very difficult to read your book, and i wanted to thank you so much for writing it. [speaking in foreign language] >> thank you very much. i know it's very difficult, and thank you for reading it. thank you. >> so what type of international effort has been done to address the lack of human rights in iran? [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: the countries and the united states have taken specific measures since last year's uprising to address the human right situation in iran which are great, but many iranians, and i think here's one of them, still feel there's great need to put pressure on iran to put pressure on the human rights situation and this is the most important issue in negotiations between the united states and iran, that human rights should have a much higher priority in those discussions. >> we have one more question. wait for the mic, just one second. >> do you think your life is in more danger from publishing? [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] [speaking in foreign language] >> translator: for the last 100 years the lives of intellectuals and writers have been in danger, and in islam thereto another -- there is another highly accomplished filmmaker here whose life is equally at risk, and this is the nature of being iranian, i think. [applause] >> for more on his work, visit huoasadi.wordpress.com. >> thomas, what do you think about hip hop now? >> sunk to new lows. [laughter] the inspiration for this book i started -- >> sung to new -- sunk to new lows you said? wow. >> i do. i started this in 2007, and i believe the dominant artists at the time, not the sole artists, but the artists that were really driving the media coverage of the genera and that were really setting the cultural tone was soldier boy. if you compare that to the so-called gangster rappers of the early 90s like jay-z, that's a decline in artistic equality and in the message. >> you're cool with biggie? >> i'm not cool with him, but i think he is more complex than what you see now. i'm interested in watching a guy like drake, but i don't think, you know, that one artist guides an entire culture. >> you say it sunk to new lows. explain to me why you feel this way? i mean, these are street poets, okay? why do you feel they sunk to new lows if they are expressing their reality? >> well, it's debatable if they are expressing their reality. a lot of them are simply propagating some of the worst stereotypes of black people that ever existed. [applause] >> okay. if that's their reality, should they be silent? >> it's not their reality, some of them do -- >> there's a movie about biggie, and we can clearly see he rapped about his reality from the streets. >> no, he rapped about observations more than his own. [laughter] i lived in the fort green area of brooklyn for a few years, and the part of princeton hill biggie comes from is nicer than the rural south where james baldwin and it's better than the environment my father grew up in. >> the guy was a drug dealer. >> yeah, he made choices. i grew up in the suburbs and my friends sold drugs. his mother was a schoolteacher and he didn't have to sell drugs to survive. >> that was his choice. >> exactly. >> what is good hip-hop to you? >> i want to be clear about this. my book is not about music and a critique of hip hop. >> losing my cool, how a father's love and 15,000 books beats hip-hop culture. >> it's about a system of values that the music doesn't create, but it provides a sound check and an echo chamber and magnifies and glorifies these things, but i'm not -- a lot of older black critics of hip-hop have a problem with hip-hop and find it inferior to jazz and other forms of black music. that's not the argument. i'm trying to attack ideas in cultural values and critique them and talk about what i really see as the secular religion of hip-hop, it's a way of living or reaching for a glass of water or greeting someone in the street or dismissing ideas that are not real. i'm not talking about whether an artist like andre 3,000 has the ability because he does. i wouldn't need to critique the culture if the music was trash but one of the reasons it is so powerful is bog the culture is pleasing in a lot of ways. >> uh-huh, but that's the history of african-american music in a sense. >> well, not really. if you listen to love supreme by john cull clur, there's no similarities between that and the -- >> right. [laughter] [applause] >> i'm a cold train fan. >> me too. >> i am, i am. i want to go back to my question which i want you to answer directly. what would be good hip-hop? >> i can list. we could spend the rest of the panel -- >> no, what would be good hip-hop since you're saying -- >> good hip-hop music is like reasonable doubt by jarks-z and ready to die by biggie smalls. now is the message in that music poisen? yes, it is. if you try to live your life the way jay-z instructs you to, it will end disastrously for you. you will not fly in a private jet most likely. [laughter] >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or author's name at the top left of the screen, and click search. >> i'm holding the essential engineer, why science alone will not solve our global problems. it's author joins me. welcome, sir, and tell us what is the reasoning behind the subtitle here? why science alone will not solve our global problems? >> well, we hear a lot about the global problems, climate change and so forth, and we also hear a lot about the importance of what science will do to e leaveuate the problems or solve them. the history of science and technology teaches us differently that science doesn't solve problems. they help, but engineers are the problem solvers. verge and problem solving are hand in glove. >> in your book you define the difference between scientists and engineers, and how they work together. tell us a little more about that. >> scientists want to understand the world given to us. the classic scientists studies the planets and the stars and the origin of the universe and so forth. assembling knowledge and getting to the bottom of things, but engineers on the other hand want to change the world, introduce new things, new machines, devices, things that contribute to our civilization and our comfort. scientists and engineers get together in r and d which we hear a lot about. the engineers are on the development end, and there has to be a passing of the baton if you will from understanding the situation as it is to changing the situation through engineering. >> what's the difference between how engineering and science got us to where we are now, and how engineering and science takes us into the future. >> that's an excellent question because as you know, a lot of people think that those are the people that got us into trouble in the first place. well, we always have incomplete knowledge. science is always accumulating knowledge. we're always working as engineers with incomplete knowledge of the world and the laws of nature, so we make mistakes in that sense. we -- not to call them innocent mistakes in the sense they were done generally speaking, you know, without full knowledge of their implications. that's not to excuse them because we should look down the line to what the implications of whatever we do will be, however, if we try to study the problem, we never get to solving the problem, and that's a fine edge that really spraises the issues. >> in one of your chapters, you talk about speed bumps. why speed bumps as an example of the relationship between scientists and engineers? >> well every part of nature we try to understand, we invariably have to regroup part way along the path to the end. i described these as speed bumps because i think it's a good metaphor, and it's not original with me, actually, but you know, speed bumps are sometimes helpful, and i try to point that out in the book also that they make us think and recalibrate, they make us think about whether maybe we're not on the right road or right street, you know, we're being reminded of that. oh, we're going too fast. >> it's back to what we talked about that if we're going too fast to a solution, you might miss the implications and regreat it later on. >> you're going to be presenting later on here at the national book festival. what are you going to tell the folks who see you? >> i only got 20 minutes to allow time for questions and answers, so i'll focus on scientists and engineers, science and engineering. i thinka general misunderstanding about that. a lot of times engineers are just grouped with scientists. it's not that they resent that. it's that it's inaccurate because of the distinctions i try to draw. in these days dealing with so many global problemmings, really so many important issues. we hear a will the out of washington really right where we are. in fact, if we want to innovate and really change the way we do things so that we can affect the economy and improve it, we have to throw more money at science. well, that leaves engineering out entirety, and maybe there's a confusion. maybe engineers need to be included in science or intended, but more often than not, it's clear they are not included, and by not understanding that connection, i think we miss opportunities. all the great innovations of the world basically and all of history are engineering innovations, and they're usually done in not always done with incomplete scientific knowledge, and i'll talk about those examples this afternoon such as the steam engine. there was no science on which to base the steam engine. it was only after the steam engin that was operating for a couple centuries, they looked at it as an engine of study. the wright brothers are another example in developing an airplane to give us powered flight. the wright brothers looked for scientific basis on which to design their wings and their propel leers and wrote to the smithsonian institution and asked, what do you have in your files that will help us. the answer they got back was well, there's nothing directly related to what you want to do. the wright brothers had to do their own science. they had to do tests to figure out what shape of propeller should have, something simple and basic like that. the airplane was developed are very, very little science to back it up, and i want to emphasize things like that this afternoon so that we understand that if we just wait for science to bring us raw materials for innovation, we're either going to have to wait a very, very long time, or they are wasting time because we don't need complete information to move ahead. >> in addition to being an author, do you consider yourself a scientist or engineer? >> i consider myself both in this regard, but i'm an engineer in that i'm very interested in creating things. books, i see as creations, but i'm a scientists because i do have to study. i do have to get to the heart of the matter, and most of my studying and engineering in education includes a lot of sipes, so you really learn to think like a scientist as well as an engineer. one of the things i'll talk about this afternoon is al beer einstein to -- albert einstein to show you can be both. it's not widely known that he worked in the patent office when he was young because he couldn't get a job as a scientist, but in the 1920s, he was an invenn tear and after he -- inventer, he could have done science, but there was a special challenge to doing invention and engineering, and what he did was a very mundane thing among others, but refrigerators in the 1920s were very, very new, and they were subject to leaks and the refrigerant they leaked was poisennous, so families were killed when they were sleeping because of the leaking refrigerator. einstein there's not to be another way. he went on to invent a system that would not leak. he tried to market it, but the timing was just not right because refrigerator companies came up with freon that solved it because that's not poisennous. as we know, decades later, we discovered that freon doesn't poisen people, but the atmosphere. that's another one of those examples of unforseen consequences. >> we've been talking with henry petroski, the author of the essential engineer, why science alone will not solve our global problems. >> every weekend, book tv brings you 48 hours of history, biography, and public affairs. here's a portion of one of our programs. >> i'm a child of civilization. i was born at a time when large numbers of african countries had just gotten their independence or were getting their independence or were independent for awhile, and that entailed in africa in the context i was born in and later i found out there were places in asia there were coos that took over in power very quickly, and people in -- i don't want to use the word class because we had in africa the level we could call ourselves class, but clans, groups of people were prosecuted or prosecuting others, and those of us felt prosecuted by those in power we left our origin and went elsewhere. that was easy to do, and that means i had lived or born into globalization without even realizing that that was in a globalizing world. when i hear people use the word multiculture, i think back of my schooling in nairobi where we all came from different cultures in search for better life and economic progress, but to move from a to b, from country to country, language to language, from hemisphere to hemisphere seemed so much easier and let's say, we took it more for granted than my grandmother's generation, and then i come of age in the information age, so drastic modernization that i think generations like my mother and grandmother somehow didn't -- got a test of it, -- taste of it, but didn't grow up in it. i -- i'm not just a child of dwhroablization, -- globalization, but i'm a child that's intellectually comes of age after 1989, after the fall of the soviet union. >> why was that the case? how did that impact your life directly? >> it impacted it directly if we accept someone hunting these pieces that there is a class of civilizations and a clash between the west and islam in the sense i was born into the civilization and lived it and breathed it, loyal it it, and believed it, and left it, and came to the west and did the same thing. loved it, breathed it, made friends, you know, made my future here and was able as an individual to compare, not just the geographic differences and material differences, but the difference in value systems. i came to appreciate one over another and i made the choice, and i think that makes it, if you're looking to what is it that informs how i interpret events today, the events we're living in every day life, that informs it i think more than anything else, the fact i've been expose the to both worlds, exposed to the thinking in both world, and feel i'm able to compare them, and my opinions, you know, are one of many, one of a thousand opinions. it's objective, but it's my opinion, and it's how i interpret fact and events that we're living history today. >> you would say that a number of primary factors that influenced your thinking are derived from your being part of and being influenced by globalization, your being part of a tribe, you're also as i understand it, you're also your own background in terms of your education and being exposed to multicultural circumstance. would you say that's sort of the foundation on which your book is derived from and your very being? >> yes. the only thing i would add to that is that i have been exposed to different types of education. my grandmother and my mother and karan teachers have given me a different set of education from what i would call or label a western education. western education was in individualism. it was in responsibilities, in a sense of adventure, not just in adventure, but into the unknown, science, reason, that for me is what e associate with the west, and my grandmother and mother and teachers and preachers educated me in loyalty to the clan, tradition, and loyalty to our god and the hereafter, loyal to the ma mawmed and following in his example, but it's radically different. >> to watch this program in its entirety, go to booktv.org. simply type the title or the author's name at the top left of the screen, and click search. >> recalling the 2008 election for the minnesota u.s. senate seat, and the subsequent eight month recount. they examine challenges on both sides and the eventually announcement as al franken the winner. jay discusses his book at the university of minnesota bookstore in minneapolis. [applause] >> well, thanks very much. thanks to all of my friends and old frens for coming to the -- friends for coming to the minnesota bookstore and for hosting it and thank you, c-span for being here. it's an honor, so here i go. we're on the verge of another election, and one of at least one or more recounts will occur from chicago, las