My friend the Iraqi

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

My friend and I meet early for breakfast, cappuccinos and chocolate croissants at a French bakery in downtown Brooklyn, N.Y. My friend – I’ll call him Abraham -- shows up in a dark suit and tie, an overcoat and a top hat, minus the prayer cap he sometimes wears.

“Are you nervous?” I ask.

“A little bit,” he says, as we walk through a rainy morning toward the courthouse.

On the way his father calls to check in, and to share news from home. Multiple bombings in Baghdad. More than 60 dead. “He’s on old man now, he deserves to live in peace.” Abraham sighs, and lights a cigarette as we cross busy Jay Street and turn the corner toward Cadman Plaza, heading toward the Theodore Roosevelt Federal Courthouse, a shiny new building a few blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge. “But just for this one morning I feel like acting like a selfish American. I don’t want to worry about it. I want to be happy.”

Inside TED

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:19:00 +0000

A perfect breeze wafts through the outdoor plaza of the four-star Riviera Resort in Palm Springs, Calif., site of this year's TEDActive conference, the slightly less expensive, and less exclusive, overflow conference of the annual TED conference, held in Long Beach. Friend and colleague Andy Bichlbaum and I are sitting with a crowd in an outdoor Jacuzzi, reveling in the balmy weather after having just barely escaped the blizzard on the East Coast. This being a conference devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," we've been invited to give a talk here about the work of the mischief-making, left-leaning activist collective known as the Yes Men, best known for constructing elaborate pranks, impersonations and hacks of major corporations and powerful government bodies. Andy is one of the co-founders, and I've been working with the group on and off in various capacities for a year and change.

Salon.com > Joseph Huff-Hannon

My friend the Iraqi

Inside TED