The techniques of modern counter-terrorists revealed in The Terror Factory

From The Week of July 1st, 2013

Though technology will eventually liberate human civilization from all forms of political control, government is, for the moment, a necessary evil for the continuance of our march towards a brighter future. For until we can delegate the functions of the societal machine to impartial and intelligent algorithms, organized around the public good while being immune from public pressure, this messy assemblage of technocrats and politicians is the best and only way to regulate commerce, normalize international relations and lend aid to the less fortunate. In order for them to perform these duties, however, governments must be given considerable power over our individual and collective affairs, a reality which eventually, and inevitably, tempts them to seize yet more power in the aim of doing more good. Rarely has this truism been better exemplified than in Trevor Aaronson's shattering examination of the counter-terrorism policies of the FBI.

Despite numerous presidential statements calling for American citizens to exonerate mainstream Islam for Al-Qaeda's nihilistic attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, the United States' intelligence agencies have spent the years since 9/11 alienating the Muslim community. Employing a series of strongarm tactics, they have aggressively recruited both willing and unwilling informants within targeted communities and unleashed them upon people of interest, individuals who have, through anger or foolishness, braggadocio or malice, harbored some intent to harm the United States. Prior to 9/11, this would not have been possible. For not only did the FBI not possess the financial resources to execute such missions, they lacked the networks of human spies necessary to carry them out.

Since 9/11, however, these chains, which once prevented the FBI and its sister agencies from digging into every dark corner of American life, have been lifted, an evolution that has allowed these agencies to infiltrate religious institutions and everyday businesses, all in the aim of preventing the next attack. But though this is a commendable goal, one that a majority of the populous would undoubtedly support, their tactics have been as crude as the informants they've paid to execute them. And though the these agencies claim numerous successes in this dirty war against extremist elements, their methods have been so manipulative, so self-serving, that they've sparked some to wonder just how legitimate the attacks they've prevented actually were.

Enter The Terror Factory, a devastating catalogue of government misdeeds. Mr. Aaronson, an American journalist, investigates the high-profile prosecutions of terrorists since 9/11 in a manner so systematic, so unrelenting, that he leaves the reader gasping in horror at the sheer audacity of government agencies who, in acting in the name of society's protection, are willing to bend-unto-breaking every law cherished by the citizens they are charged to protect. Informant by informant, victim by victim, the author explores the anatomy of this system of government-sanctioned entrapment of immigrants made vulnerable by Byzantine laws that leave them open to the threat of deportation if they fail to become double agents for counter-terrorist agents who are, in turn, in no way disincentivized to act reasonably, cautiously, or with much respect for the broken lives they leave behind. No price is too high when the stakes are the protection of the homeland.

This is far from a neutral account of this shadow world of informants and their sting operations. In particular, Mr. Aaronson devotes little time to trying to assess the guilt of the individuals caught up in the FBI's various nets. In fact, some of these individuals appear, superficially, to be quite willing to carry out attacks on the scale of 9/11. However, for all his reluctance to speak to the ugliness of some of these characters, the author's point supersedes such concerns. After all, whether or not one harbors the desire to commit a terrorist attack is entirely apart from whether or not one is willing to actually plan it, collect the means to do it and then to execute it. That the FBI eagerly enables these individuals to take all three of these fateful steps merely to arrest them and parade them for the world to see, is abhorrent. That they do so seemingly indifferent to the fact that they have recruited thousands of morally dubious, and sometimes outright criminal, spies in order to complete this self-beneficial mission is tragic.

The Terror Factory is a mesmerizing read that makes it abundantly clear that the United States will stop at nothing to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack on its soil. That it does so at the expense of all its hard-won principles is nothing short of frightening, not only for its citizens but for the rest of the world as well. (4/5 Stars)

Faith, justice and innocence all go missing in Redrum The Innocent

From The Week of June 17th, 2013

As much as we plan and dream, organize and hope, our lives are beyond our control. We live in a world of billions, a world in which, every day, countless people make decisions that have an impact on both our present and our future. We can't resist that. We lack the knowledge and the power to turn back that flood. And so we ignore it, concentrating on what we can change, on what we can see affecting us in the moment. This is a much more palatable existence, one that gives us the illusion of command. But what happens when that illusion is shattered? What happens when our lives are turned upside down by events we could no more predict than we could accept? What are we then? And how do we survive? Kirk Makin ruminates in his sprawling work of non-fiction.

On October 3rd, 1984, Christine Jessop, a playful, adventurous, nine-year-old girl living in Queensville, Ontario, vanished without a trace from her quiet, suburban home, shocking a community unfamiliar with such terrible events. Over the next three months, fuelled by her mother's hope for the girl's safe return, the police and the public would undertake a regional search for little Christine, one that would end in tears when her broken body was found some 50 miles from her home, in woods frozen by winter. With only a few suspects and even less evidence, investigators soon locked in on Guy Paul Morin, the Jessops' eccentric, 24-year-old neighbor who, though lacking any sort of motive, much less a criminal history, was extensively questioned by cops increasingly eager to find their man. Their suspicions were only strengthened when they learned that Morin declined to join the extensive, public search for Christine, in the desperate days just after her disappearance.

Using hair and fiber samples taken from Morin and his car, police would eventually arrest Morin, charging him with Christine's murder. Fixated by his social awkwardness, they would spend the next year largely ignoring other suspects, SHAPING what few pieces of evidence they had into a case against Morin that would lead to two controversial and contentious trials, the second of which would finally convict him of a crime he did not commit. This truth, however, would only come to light in 1995, 14 months after his conviction, when newly developed DNA techniques would rule out his involvement with Christine. This shameful miscarriage of justice would conclude with a 1997 inquiry which excoriated the police and the judiciary, accusing the former of leaping to unsupported conclusions and recommending that the latter change its prejudicial procedures. But none of this would help Guy Paul Morin regain his life. Nor would it return Christine to a Jessop family shattered by her disappearance.

As shattering as it is revelatory, Redrum The Innocent is Mr. Makin's extensive chronicle of both the murder of Christine Jessop and the judicial farce that would attempt to identify and punish her killer. Drawing on dozens of interviews with the principals and countless hours spent observing Morin's two trials, the author masterfully weaves together the personal and the professional, painting intimate portraits of the prime movers while methodically laying out the dubious evidence used to first hound and then to imprison an innocent man. Between, Mr. Makin systematically savages the case against Morin, not only revealing its shoddy construction, but detailing the unforgivable extent to which police fixated on Morin, contorting the facts to better fit their assumptions of his guilt. His efforts here are so thorough, so overwhelming, that they leave the reader's faith in the judicial system deeply shaken.

There is no doubt that Redrum The Innocent is at its most potent when describing the ways in which the police bungled the investigation of Christine Jessop's murder. In fairness, the cops in question were neither trained nor prepared to handle such a complex and difficult case. None of their rural charm, or good ol' boy instincts would help them find their man. For the degree to which they were overwhelmed by what unfolded, we can have sympathy. However, what we cannot tolerate, much less accept, is the degree to which the police refused to acknowledge their own inadequacy. Instead of welcoming outside assistance, they fell back on interdivisional rivalries out of the selfish desire to claim the glory of finding Christine's killer. This hunger would lead them to not only manipulate evidence and coach witnesses as a means of firming up the case against Morin, it would cause them to unforgivably dismiss the leads that might have lead to Christine's killer. As a consequence of hurling all their energies at an innocent man, the killer was never found, a fact which has left the Jessop family in ruins.

If this is the work's travesty, its tragedy is saved for the Morins and the Jessops, two families smashed by this ordeal. As a result of the harsh light of the investigation, secrets and lies are forced out of the shadows, truths nearly as cruel as the murder itself. This endless, grinding process of lurching towards something like justice leaves the reader hollowed out, hoping for some measure of peace, of justice, that never comes. We should be better than this. It should be easier than this. Alas...

Redrum The Innocent could have used an edit trim some of its 750 pages. Nonetheless, it is, in every other respect, a mesmerizing read that withstands the test of time. For though its subject is primarily the murder of a young girl, the ways in which it branches out to speak about the law, society and human nature is timeless. A must-read... (4/5 Stars)

Honor killings, multiculturalism and a horrific murder in Honour on Trial

From The Week of June 17th, 2013

Multiculturalism has, and will likely always be, problematic. For though many of the world's countries pride themselves on open borders and hospitable populations founded on notions of generosity and the will to be free, humanity has spent the bulk of its history as a species in homogeneous environments, ensconced in tribes and lands where everyone walked and talked like everyone else. Certainly, there were exceptions, particularly in the most recent millennia in which technologies that allowed for large empires were deployed to conquer other lands, but these centuries are but the tip of the iceberg poking out of the waters of our evolutionary past.

As a consequence, human beings living in multicultural environments experience a quiet tension, one that pits the wisdom of their cultural enlightenment against the suspicion of their genetic makeup. While times are good, with crime low and jobs plentiful, wisdom wins out. But when times are difficult and money scarce, like for like takes the day, causing suspicion of the unknown to override judgement and for cynicism to replace kindness, a matter made all the worse when this multiculture is forced to grapple with crimes it cannot imagine, emanating from backgrounds with which it has only a passing knowledge. This is a truth chillingly rendered in Paul Schliesmann's brisk work of true crime.

For Canada, a country that has never experienced a high rate of crime, relative to much of the world, the Shafia Family murders came as a severe shock. An honor killing that claimed the lives of three teenaged daughters of a successful, immigrant family from Afghanistan, then living in Montreal, it would launch a three year odyssey beginning with a lengthy police investigation and concluding with a high-profile trial in which Mohammad Shafia, the family patriarch, Hamed, his son, and Tooba, his second wife, would stand accused of executing a cruel plot to drown the three young women, along with Rona, Mohammad's first wife, in a Kingston Mills Lock. It would take time for a motive to emerge for such a terrible and senseless crime, but eventually an chilling image of the family would take shape, one colored by tribal customs transported to the new world, customs that endow females with family honor to such a degree that any significant act of disobedience brings a stain upon the family that can only be cleansed with blood. This would prove to be true of the three Shafia daughters who, having once agreed not to date boys, broke with their eastern customs to embrace the western culture in which they were immersed. For this, they died in the cold and the darkness.

A thorough primer of the Shafia murders and the complex trial that would follow on from them, Honour on Trial is a read as swift as it is informative. Mr. Schliesmann, a Canadian journalist, possesses a newsman's prose, pages stripped of any sense of excess or flair. In its place, cold, hard facts which paint a portrait of events that are as clear as they are difficult to stomach. In this vein, the author makes no judgement calls about the Shafia family, leaving such editorializing to others. Instead, he uses established truths to depict the tragic, senseless course of events with heart-sinking deliberation, leaving little room for doubt.

For those looking for a simple chronicle of events, Honour on Trial serves admirably, but the Shafia case demand more than this. This was not only a murder. This was the premeditated killing of four women for reasons that are inescapably barbaric. Yes, we must be sensitive to the customs of other cultures, to embrace them and weave them into the fabric of who we are. But we must test those customs against not only our ethics, but the widely acknowledged human rights that should exist for all individuals. Any customs that fail that test, that violate the rights to be free for which countless people have fought, then those are customs we can all rightfully reject, leaving them in the dust of history along with every other unenlightened, self-serving notion that we've evolved out of. But for a brief section describing honor killings and the causes that give rise to them, Mr. Schliesmann fails to articulate this important point.

Every day, innocence is lost because of ignorance, because of customs that are not knocked down by exposure to other cultures. This is multiculturalism's value, a test of who we are against the values of others, a crucible from which reasoned truth can emerge. If only such enlightenment did not have to come at such a terrible cost... (3/5 Stars)

the rocky road to Justice in postwar Kosovo in Under The Blue Flag

From The Week of April 15, 2013

When tallying up the cost of war, it's natural for our minds to first turn to the most obvious losses: lives and fortunes. These are measurable deficits, quantifiable burdens that can be inscribed into the hearts and textbooks of a people and used as a crude means by which to compare conflicts. But just because they are obvious doesn't make them foremost in importance. On the contrary, sometimes those things we cannot measure -- the grief of a broken heart, the arrested development of a child without a school, the cynicism of a citizen who knows the rule of law does not hold -- have far more lasting consequences than the readily apparent. Their ephemeral natures trick us into underestimating their collective power to instill in war's victims a gloominess about the future that means far more than a rubbled building. After all, a building can be rebuilt. A broken spirit cannot so easily be mended. This Philip Kearney convincingly contends in his memoir of the most fascinating and challenging adventure of his career.

One of the bloodiest chapters in a most gruesome campaign, the Kosovo War, lasting little over a year, pitted two ethnic communities against one another in a vicious fight for freedom. Unwilling to allow one of its provinces to secede from its collective, Yugoslavia endeavored to crush Kosovo by subjecting it with crimes the likes of which Europe had not seen since the Second World War some five decades earlier. Equally unwilling to be ground out beneath the Serbian bootheel, Kosovo violently resisted, an act which caused it to spawn the powerful and ruthless Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which sought to win, through terrorism and guerilla warfare, what could not be won in open combat. Though the war lasted over fifteen months, it devastated Kosovo to such a degree that the United Nations stepped in to run the protectorate until it could stand on its own.

At this time, Mr. Kearney was a successful prosecutor in his native San Francisco. Married, and with work to keep him occupied, the prospect of him traveling to Kosovo to help the UN bring cases of war crimes against some of Kosovo's foulest characters must have seemed impossibly remote. And yet, the restlessness of a midlife crisis, combined with an abiding desire to do lasting good while at the height of his powers, found Mr. Kearney applying to the UN for a six-month stint in Kosovo as a UN-appointed prosecutor in a postwar Kosovo coming to grips with its deep and enduring wounds. This first adventure begot a second and, before he was through, Mr. Kearney would have spent eighteen months in war-ravaged Kosovo, helping to restore order to a lawless and broken place.

While problematic as a work of history, Under The Blue Flag is nonetheless an inspiring document that wonderfully captures the rewarding nature of dangerous, but ultimately righteous, work. Mr. Kearney virtually abandoned his comfortable life, trading it in for an existence in Kosovo that was both imperiled and difficult. Threatened by gangsters and terrorists, none of whom were interested in the niceties of civilization, he helped bring to that war-torn place a measure of justice long lost in first the corruption of Communism and then in the depravity of ethnic strife. He did all this all while knowing it would cost him money, friendships and even his marriage. He did it to satisfy the thirsts of his spirit, but also for a sense of rightness, of accomplishment, the potence of which only comes from a job well done under extraordinary circumstances.

However, for all that Mr. Kearney paints vivid portraits of the men he prosecuted, and while his detailing of their crimes sheds light on the awfulness of postwar Kosovo, his prose leaves a great deal to be desired. Under the Blue Flag is devoid of literary flare. Other than a few paragraphs describing the destitute nature of the author's environs, we're almost never presented with a verbal image of Kosovo. Mr. Kearney is fond of describing how much he loves this beleaguered place, and the loyalty he feels to the men and women with whom he worked to put some truly gruesome characters behind bars, but his talents utterly fail him when it comes time to root these criminals in the homeland for which so many died. Moreover, Mr. Kearney makes virtually no attempt to describe the Kosovo War, much less to place it in any historical context. Other than a few scant references to 14th-century battles that live on in the hearts and minds of modern-day Serbians, he makes no attempt to inform his readers about the creation of Yugoslavia, much less the Kosovo war which gave him the opportunity to serve in such a remarkable way. These are bodyblows to a memoir that aspires to be more than self-aggrandizement.

Under the Blue Flag is moving work that inspires us to take chances and be true to our selves and our desires. However, its failure to educate its readers on any issue but the personal history of Mr. Kearney, and the suffering of the peoples of the Balkans endeavoring to find justice in a broken world, prevents it from achieving greatness. (3/5 Stars)

Police corruption and "the trial of the century" in Dash's Satan's Circus

From The Week of February 25, 2013
Though the truism "absolute power corrupts absolutely" has been proven far too many times to be doubted, it is perhaps too pithy to capture the full truth. For it is not enough to simply say that power is corruptible. We must understand why it corrupts. We must grasp precisely what forces, temptations and inclinations lead men and women of good character down the road to autocracy and authoritarianism. Is it that self-doubt is an essential and underappreciated aspect to the good life that keeps in check our worst excesses? Are we not built to bear the responsibility for the lives of the many? Or is it that we simply lack the proper understanding of institutions and their capacity to corrupt those who rise through its ranks to helm its tentacled arms? These are but a few theories amongst many that attempt to answer this most important mystery. If Mr. Dash's excellent micro-history is any indication, he too considers this a question of serious note.

Since "the trial of the century," New York City has changed beyond recognition. Today, it is a clean city of power and finance with safe streets, a thriving multiculture and gentrified boroughs that make it an ornament of human urbanism. But a hundred years ago, it was something else entirely, a lawless sprawl of immigrants and hedonists, honest laborers and cunning thieves, all vying for a piece of American prosperity. Prohibition was on the horizon, a foolish law that would only further empower the city's criminal element while institutionalizing the kind of widespread corruption that had been the city's hallmark for decades. From glorious city hall to the most fetid back alley, everything in this American melting pot was purchasable. A price had only to be named for negotiations to begin.

Into this fast-talking, gun-toting maelstrom plunged Charles Becker. The child of German immigrants, he came to new York City looking for a life of opportunity. He joined a notoriously corrupt police service which, in the early decades of the 20th century, not only allowed the criminal element to run unchecked, it encouraged it in exchange for its slice of this most profitable pie. However, rather than simply following in the footsteps of tradition, Becker took NYPD corruption to the next level, helming a special anti-vice unit that oversaw much of the extortionist activities within Satan's Circus, the colloquial name for one of Manhattan's most iniquitous districts. Despite Becker's legendary influence and control, however, his empire quickly fell when he was personally fingered for having orchestrated the murder of a legendary gambler about to blow the whistle on police corruption. What resulted was the Trial of the century, a grandstanding affair that not only cost Becker his life but lead to the dawning of a new era for the NYPD and the city it was meant to protect.

Though it revels in the sensationalism of the period, Satan's Circus is, nonetheless, a breathless and breathtaking examination of a now forgotten time. Mr. Dash, an Welsh writer, deploys becker's life and trial as a lens through which to view turn-of-the-century New York in all of its sinful splendor. From prostitutes to gamblers, from crooked cops to immigrant gangs, the author chronicles the haunts, the practices, the legends and the schemes that characterized this gin-soaked period of American history, doing so with style and veracity. In this, Mr. Dash lucks out. For though Becker himself is something of a predictable creature, a man who could not resist the twin seductions of power and money within a corrupt system, the host of long-since forgotten gangsters and gamblers pulled to the surface by Becker's literary excavation are as delightful as they are utterly ruthless.

While Satan's Circus succeeds on the merits of its aspirations as a cultural micro-history, it is equally adept at highlighting the political corruption of the period. The 21st-century media is obsessed with the downfall of American politics, but one glimpse of the machinations of the 1910s reveals a nation where not just votes but candidates were bought and sold, promoted and discarded, by a relentless and unstoppable machine that had been in place since the mid 19th century. Though this will hardly be a revelation to some, the detail here is nonetheless an excoriation of the notion that politics are today in a bad state. For what today can compare to a sham democracy run by crooked administrators who selected their own candidates for the most powerful offices imaginable.? Truly very little.

Satan's Circus delights in the debauchery of pre-prohibition new York. It gets down with the gutter snipes to tell the tales of some decidedly slimy characters. But though it may, at times, openly root for some of its villains, it is so charming and shocking that these relatively minor sins can easily be forgiven. An excellent romp through a blood-soaked time of injustice and corruption. (4/5 Stars)

God's Jury by Cullen Murphy

From The Week of October 22, 2012 Though the human character is possessed of many heartening virtues like compassion, generosity and altruism, these cannot be counted without also tallying up its more lamentable aspects. And of these, surely our tendency to be judgmental must be considered among the most grievous. For few other features of human nature have been responsible for more death and destruction than judgment which not only legitimizes our childish jealousies, it enables a capacity for slaughter on a scale that has kept human civilization from reaching its full potential. For in passing judgment on a man, one is effectively elevating himself and his codes of behavior above the object of his judgment. He is declaring that his way is better, that he is wiser. And with this superior mindset in place, authoritarianism is soon to follow. This sad, recurring truth inherent to the human character is demonstrated well in Mr. Murphy's fascinating if scattered history.

Ignited as a means of punishing heretics and scaring the faithful into proper compliance with Catholic orthodoxy, the Inquisition has existed,in various states,for almost 800 years. Formalized in 13th-century Europe and headquartered in Rome, its practitioners were dispatched to the four corners of the Catholic world where, empowered by the church, they would sit in judgement of strayed,and supposedly straying, adherents of the faith. Described by Mr. Murphy as having been detectives,prosecutors and judges rolled into one, inquisitors were not burdened with the necessity of proving their cases. They were not troubled with the bothersome necessity of public trials. Backed by the awesome authoritas of the Catholic church, they could act as they saw fit, arrogantly confident that only god, and perhaps their ecclesiastical masters, could judge them. In this way. Armed with these unimaginable powers, the Inquisition not only supposedly uncovered crypto-Muslims and Jews, they actively worked to foil the plots of those disorderly rebels who aimed to reform the church,untroubled by anything like the modern law. For in such times, they were the only law that mattered.

Chillingly penned and extensively researched, God's Jury is the gripping and disturbing result of ten years of labor. Mr. Murphy,an American author and magazine man, dredges up 800 years of church history to mount a devastating case against not only the abuses of civil liberties inherent in the surveillance state, but the ways in which the human capacity for hypocrisy and smug superiority are unleashed in the judgmental, blinding them to the balms of compassion and decency. In illustrating how inquisitors cynically kept their hands clean even while consigning tens of thousands of their fellow humans to painful torture and fiery death, The author marshalls any number of cases of the abuse of church power not so much to assault the already crumbling walls of an ancient institution, but to highlight the ways in which we can all, even the righteous, especially the righteous, be tempted to separate ourselves from our morality for the sake of power over others.

For all its virtues, God's Jury suffers somewhat from flawed construction. In incorporating elements of memoir, investigative journalism, historical non-fiction and political commentary, it is compelled to make compromises in order to come in at fewer than 400 pages. For instance, a more thorough reconstruction of the Inquisition's earlier centuries is forsaken in lieu of an analysis of how its practices and the desires that drive them can be connected to modern-day state-sponsored surveillance. But while there is value in connecting these dots, the effort dilutes the history that is the backbone of Mr. Murphy's tale, a reality that makes of it a jack of many trades but master of none. Still, it may be that the present-day connections drawn here will please many readers who might've been off-put by a dryer reconstruction of dark deeds now centuries gone.

It may well be that the Inquisition's ugliness was confined to those who claimed to be Catholics, that others were beyond their purview. But given the degree to which the Inquisition systematized cruelty, and in light of how difficult it would have been to be anything but a Christian for much of the time of its height, this fails to be a distinction with any meaning. It wasn't as though the faithful had much of a choice. In wishing to live as they chose, they were broken and burned. There is, for them, no apology too strong to earn forgiveness. (3/5 Stars)

Hostage Nation by Victoria Bruce, Karin Hayes & Jorge Enrique Botero

From The Week of June 25, 2012

However many societal, cultural and even familial benefits humans derive from possessing a strong desire to conform, species that self-select leaders for the rest to follow take on a difficult and challenging burden. For in sacrificing a measure of his autonomy and trust to the leader, the follower not only opens himself up to being manipulated by the leader into acting against his own interests, he inadvertently contributes to the deification of the leader by swelling his ranks of compliant followers and making him the person around whom all else revolves. In situations where leaders are relatively grounded individuals, the damage dealt by such a centralization of power is minimal as the leader refuses to indulge the darker side of his nature. However, where the leaders are bellicose and bold, aggressive and tempestuous, then the cult of personality swiftly careens out of control and gives birth to ideology, a living, breathing mentality that is beyond any one person's control.

Ideology, like leadership, can be put to good purposes. It can harness the willingness of the able to be mindful of the unfortunate. It can propagate ideas of mercy through a violent world. It can even accelerate the adoption of new and helpful mores. But when it turns violent, when it is shaped from pain and grief, anger and distrust, it can bring entire nations to their knees, devouring them from within. This excellent piece from Ms. Bruce, Ms. Hayes and Mr. Botero has many virtues, but this is its most enduring and demonstrative lesson.

Arising from decades of social and political chaos in the first half of Colombia's bloody 20th century, the FARC was, for decades, one of the world's most effective revolutionary forces. Staunchly communist, the FARC has, since its inception, devoted itself to the overthrow of the Colombian political order, deploying a toxic blend of murder and mayhem in hopes of actualizing their dream of a future Colombia free of corruption and foreign influence. Backed by a guerilla army which, at its height, numbered over 30,000 well-trained and fervently loyal soldiers, they used a mixture of hostage-taking and cocaine trafficking to feed, clothe and arm themselves, ostensibly in the name of their stated mission.

At the height of their power, in 2003, the FARC would take, as a matter of business, four hostages, holding them for nearly six years in an effort to extort spectacular ransoms from the wealthy nations they called home. The three Americans were pilots and private contractors, working, at the behest of the US government, to destroy drug crops from the sky. The fourth hostage was Ingrid Betancourt, a flamboyant Colombian politician whose marriage to a French citizen made her something of a celebrity in France and, as a result, an object of potential interest to the French government. Four gilded prizes that should have commanded fortunes! As weeks become months and months years, the ransom's never come. Instead, the FARC finds itself beset by a resurgent Colombian army flush with American cash, fickle alliances with mercurial foreign powers and a decaying superstructure corrupted by drug profits and the soul-deep cynicism that naturally flows from men and women born into chaos and despair. For the FARC, the world has never been more dangerous.

Hostage Nation is first-rate journalism. The result of a collaboration between two American journalists (Hayes and Bruce) and a Colombian reporter and film-maker (Botero) who has devoted much of his adult life to the intersection of corruption, the FARC, and Colombian politics, it elucidates the history of the FARC, using the hostage-taking of Betancourt and the three Americans as a lens through which to view their aims and their tactics, their successes and their failures. It faithfully, if cynically, describes the circumstances that lead to the taking of the four hostages and the efforts, botched and otherwise, to see them safely home, delivering, in the process, a sweeping history of a revolutionary organization born in war and sickened by corruption.

But in as much as Hostage Nation is a primer on the FARC and its relationship with Colombia and western powers, it dives deeper to teach us three enduring lessons about life in the modern world:

(1) Governments, though they might wish us to think otherwise, act more in their interests than they do in ours. They are megalithic institutions tasked to serve the general public, not the interests of a few, even if those few are fighting for them.

(2) Elicit drugs must be legalized. For however much they may sicken individuals who come in contact with them in the light of day, forbidding them only sensationalizes them, dramatically inflating their value to the extent that entire private armies can be floated on the back of their ill-gotten gains, armies devoted to nothing more than profit at the expense of society.

And (3) it demonstrates, with painful clarity, the degree to which ideological movements are inevitably corrupted by greed and the pursuit of power. However pure the founders of a movement may have been, they and those who come after them cannot sustain their beliefs in the face of the need to succeed. For having worked so long for a single goal, they will do anything it takes to win, even if it means selling out their own morals.

This is exceptional work that skillfully weaves together the macro history of a movement and the micro histories of men and women who watched years of their lives stripped from them by captivity. It is passionate and unapologetic without being polemical which is quite an achievement in the current cultural climate. (5/5 Stars)

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls

From The Week of May 07, 2012

Though intelligence separated humanity from the animal kingdom, allowing us to invent the tools that would eventually steer us onto a new, evolutionary course of profound self-discovery and world domination, intelligence is but the key to a much greater lock, a necessity for the grander goal of society. For it is society that harnesses that raw intellect and capitalizes upon it, chronicling its many inventions and innovations and putting them to widespread use not only for the general advancement of all, but so that others might improve upon what came before, creating an endless chain of advancement that will one day elevate us to the stars. Without society, the genius of one is never remembered, savored only by those he happens to encounter. His death causes his knowledge to pass into the ether, obligating humanity to sputter along at a level not much higher than the apes from which we branched.

Being that society is critical to our development, it would be advantageous to discover society's ideal form. What rules should it enshrine? What principles should it uphold? Should it favor one class over another, or should everyone be equal? Should innovation be the cornerstone, or should it be the acquisition of knowledge that begets wisdom? Mr. Rawls, a famous 20th century philosopher, grapples with these vital questions in this his classic 1971 treatise on the ideal society.

From the principles of justice to the Veil of Ignorance, from the ethics of civil disobedience to the sins of freeloading, A Theory of Justice is Mr. Rawls' systematic attempt to logic out society's most beneficial form. To do so, he requests that the reader join him in a most detailed thought experiment. The reader is asked to imagine that he is society's ultimate architect, free to work upon a blank and perfectly malleable canvas. He is free to set any rule, to impose any right, to pass any law, to harbor any prejudice. He may shape and contort his society to his heart's content. However, there is one critical stipulation that he must adhere to while he molds his world.

Upon the completion of his experiment, when it comes time for the reader to enter his ideal society, he will do so without any knowledge of where, in that society, he will appear. He does not know what job he will hold, what family he will have, what class he will belong to, or what talents he will possess. He may be the highest of the high, or the lowest of the low. Over this one aspect of his experiment he has no control. With this veil of ignorance in mind, what will his original position be? Will he engineer a society that is fair, fearing that he might enter it as a drudge in need of external support? Or will he engineer an unequal society, trusting himself to rise on the back of his natural abilities? Will he enshrine equal rights to all as insurance against his position at the bottom, or will he opt for unequal rights, confident the powerful will not need such flimsy protections?

Though A Theory of Justice is a challenging read, written more for the benefit of the author's colleagues than it is for the layman, it is nonetheless a powerfully persuasive piece of political philosophy. The Veil of Ignorance, an idea as revolutionary for philosophy as Einsteinian Relativity was for physics, is surely one of the 20th century's most powerful thought experiments. For it forces the reader to recognize that birth is random, that the extent to which we succeed is at least partially based on the luck of the draw, and that opportunity has a huge bearing on our quality of life. Taken altogether, these principles demand that we examine anew our successes, not only to be thankful for the moments in which we were helped by others to achieve our dreams, but in order to recognize that whatever we are is as much to the credit of others as it is to the credit of ourselves. This notion has widespread implications for our future and the societies it will birth.

As much as this work is understandably dominated by the Veil of Ignorance experiment, it is as much a 600-page logistical construct that makes a profound and profoundly simple argument for equality. While we know that society cannot grant us all equal shares of resources or income -- endeavoring to do so is nightmarishly complicated and utterly senseless --, we do all wish to live in a society with equal rights to liberty, to conscience, to life. So how do we justify creating a society that has equal rights but not equal opportunity? By creating a society whose laws, institutions and instruments are designed to consider first the least among us. For to do otherwise is to not only consign the most vulnerable among us to short, pain-filled lives, it is to abandon even the conceit of the notion that society is based on logic and reason.

A Theory of Justice is, at times, interminable and insufferable, a volley of intellectual arrows fired at targets most of us will never meet or know. But within its megalithic logic there are shattering truths that possess the power to reform the reader's conception of society and fairness. In this, it is deeply and enduringly transformative. (4/5 Stars)

The Great A&P by Mark Levinson

From The Week of January 02, 2012

Though economics and the practical application of its theories have always been important to the health of our societies, the fiscal tempests unleashed by both the 2008 Financial Crisis and the forces that triggered it have refocused our collective consciousness on the roles they play in capitalist societies. Is it wise to have such enormous influence concentrated in the hands of the few who run the financial sectors of our economies? Should our governments be involved in regulating private businesses? Just what kind of business, big or small, a large or an efficient employer, is most beneficial to our communities?

These are all valid questions, questions yet without answers. And so we shouldn't expect Mr. Levinson's history of the A&P grocery chain to reveal all. And yet, he goes a long way to elucidating complex and controversial issues that have plagued us since the inception of capitalism.

In the midst of the American Civil War, what became the A&P grocery chain, a supermarket behemoth that heralded the age of Walmart, began modestly as an unremarkable wholesaler of tea in New York City. With a single store and no advantages over its competition, it bore no outward appearances of becoming the grocery powerhouse that would still be minting fortunes for its stockholders nearly a century later. And yet, over time, helmed by three remarkable men, each of whom possessed disparate but complementary talents, A&P survived and evolved, creating new kinds of advertising and a whole new way of distributing goods on its way to market domination.

From the cramped economy stores to the spacious supermarkets, from its marketing geniuses to the steady hands of the Hartford clan who lead it into the 20th century, Mr. Levinson describes, vividly, the cultural, economic, and social forces that allowed the A&P to flourish into the Walmart before Walmart. But as much as this is a biography of both the genteel Hartfords and their phenomenally successful business, it is also a treatise on the nature of commerce. For in fashioning their business into an enormously successful enterprise, the Hartfords not only changed the manner in which American shopped for and consumed food, they not only drove thousands of businesses out of work through the inevitable forces of Creative Destruction, they not only managed to to reduce through the consolidation of goods the cost of food to the consumer, they set into motion a political fight over big business that, as both a political and a practical issue, lingers to this day. A powerful legacy indeed for a company that began, 150 years ago, as one of a thousand distributers of tea.

The Great A&P is captivating work. Mr. Levinson juggles the Hartfords, their company, the reconfiguration of American food distribution, and a number of complex political issues and legal cases that engulfed the A&P, managing, throughout, to find an admirable balance between all these intertwined but competing narratives. Though he does a wonderful job explicating the private Hartfords, he is unquestionably at his best in laying out the various business models that brought them so much success. The author is so effective that, as the attentive reader attempts, inevitably, to decide which is better for society, a big, impersonal business that reduces costs to the consumer, or a small, local business that is expensive but supports and actively participates in the community, he finds himself torn in two; for Mr. Levinson has expertly made the case for both sides, leaving the reader as frustrated and indecisive as the US government was when, out of fear of big business, it attacked and contributed to the fall of the A&P.

An excellent biography, economic treatise and political primer. Good enough that I will hed any subsequent project Mr. Levinson applies himself to. This is no less than the distillation of a profound, contentious, cultural argument we've been having for 60 years. And though the work can offer no conclusive solutions, it furnishes the reader with enough data to draw his own educated conclusions about the nature of good business. Fantastic... (4/5 Stars)

1215 by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham

From The Week of January 09, 2011

It may be that, eventually, all roads lead to Rome. For those of us in the West, that great civilization was, prior to the Renaissance, the last time the average citizen had access to culture, education, and something approaching human rights. But if this axiom is true of our culture, then a similar axiom must apply to our laws, that all roads of inquiry eventually return to Magna Carta. This great document, which came about as a result of the foolishness and profligacy of king John, not only bound the British king to the laws of the land, it enshrined into law and into the consciousness of the people the rights of individuals to stand up to the tyranny of the state. As such, it is considered to be a formative statement of the freedoms that all Westerners now enjoy.

Though 1215 is primarily Mr. Danziger's and Mr. Gillingham's delightful account of the lead-up to the signing of Magna Carta, it also does justice to king John's folly, the Plantagenet squabbles which caused the British throne to fall to him, and the wider historical backdrop of 13th century England. With pace and precision, they describe everything from how the document was written to the sociopolitical conditions which brought about its signing. In the process, the authors do not fail to inject the sense of awe that accompanies witnessing a surviving copy of the fairly plain document, two of which are housed at the British Library. There is so much detail here, all of which is satisfyingly packed into 300 engrossing pages.

This is a must-read for any fan of history. There's not a boring moment in the lot and that's an achievement indeed for a book which concerns itself with a time now so enshrouded in history that writer's ink came from the acid created when a wasp stings a tree. To bring alive such a time is a wonderful achievement. (5/5 Stars)

Strangers In The House by Raja Shehadeh

From The Week of November 14, 2010

It is a fascination of mine to imagine what my life would've been like had I been born elsewhere, bathed by different suns, shaped by different customs, and enchained by different laws. Would there remain, somewhere inside me, some measure of the man I am today, or are we all just products of our environments, our personalities and prejudices assembled out of cultural norms? Perhaps this is a question Mr. Shehadeh has asked himself because it's clear that, while he has the passion and the intellect to have happily succeeded in the West, he was born into a part of the world antithetical to peace, a world which gives only lip service to the law he loves so much.

Strangers In The House is Mr. Shehadeh's chronicle of his life in occupied Palestine. Though he can trace his family lineage back to his grandfather who was a judge for the British when they owned this part of the world, the bulk of the narrative is taken up with the universal conflicts and rivalries that crop up between fathers and sons. Mr. Shehadeh and his father, though both lawyers, chose different paths in the pursuit of justice, the son believing he can work within the Jewish system the father refusing to yield an inch. It is a disagreement made all the more poignant and tragic when Mr. Shehadeh's father is assassinated and the reader watches as Mr. Shehadeh's belief in the Israeli sense of justice is eroded and then destroyed by their inaction on the case.

Though the assassination and the extent to which Mr. Shehadeh is shaped by it dominate this tale, he has also movingly captured his own youth amongst constant conflict. The cities, the attitudes, the family members, the universal themes... They are all here, potently, tragically. For it's clear that Mr. Shehadeh is a stand-in for so many people in the world who want nothing more than to live lives untouched by strife. And yet for some, strife is all they know, so much so that they never have the chance to learn who they are without its everpresent pall occluding the light of freedom. (4/5 StarsFrom The Week of November 14, 2010
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Simon Wiesenthal by Tom Segev

From The Week of November 07, 2010

History has produced many giants: adventurers like Magellan, philosophers like Spinoza, thinkers like Newton, soldiers like Washington. But most giants have an opportunity to choose their destinies. In fact, most giants seek out greatness, believing that they possess such a spark of brilliance that they deserve to be at the center of events. Not Simon Wiesenthal. He lived a life worthy of the giants, but he did not choose that life. It was imposed upon him by events completely beyond his control, events which will forever scar the 20th century, marking it as the century of social experiments gone horrifically wrong. They are events he endured, events which ought to have broken him but did not, events which stole away his life and replaced it with a purpose that governed the rest of his days. What Nazi could have imagined that one, anonymous Jew, subjected to the unmatched cruelties of their concentration camps, would some day come back to hunt them down and bring them under the force of the law.

Born in Austria, Wiesenthal's early life was shaped by war when World War I claimed the life of his father and forced Wiesenthal and his family to relocate to Vienna where, decades later, he would settle in his new life. But before he would cement himself as one of the greatest Nazi hunters, he spent the 1920s and 1930s between Poland and the Ukraine, helpless as the Nazis rose to power. Arrested in 1941, Wiesenthal was initially forced to work in a rail repair yard before escaping to aid the Polish resistance. But then in 1944, he was re-arrested by the Nazis and relocated to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Severely undernourished and with a wounded foot, Wiesenthal nonetheless survived the three months between his arrival and the American liberation of the camp, an event which marked the completion of his crucible.

Upon returning to Vienna and reuniting with his wife, Wiesenthal chose his destiny. Though his resources were at times pathetically scarce, he deployed the threat of the law to first acquire information concerning the whereabouts of Nazis who had fled Europe and then to badger various governments into acting upon his intelligence. A supporter of Israel, he was clearly appalled at the lack of appetite Western governments had for pursuing and prosecuting escaped Nazis. And so he shamed them by collating enough intelligence that he was able to play a significant role in the arrest of numerous high-profile targets, including, most famously, Adolf Eichmann. For decades, he went to work, every day, hearing the accounts of victims, collecting information, tracking targets, and using the statements of his victims to establish proof of guilt for those targets. In this, he devoted his life to the pursuit of justice, forsaking even the wishes of his wife to perform a remarkable service.

What must it be like to realize that ones life has been shattered, that one cannot go back to the way it was, that one has only a choice between forgetting, as so many governments wished to do, or immersing oneself so completely in the ugliness that one becomes the reposatory of remembrance, an instrument capable of forcing others to remember? Simon Wiesenthal surely had his own aspirations -- he clearly had a talent for architectural design --, but he shelved those dreams to commit himself to a path that would have been unnecessary but for European appeasement of Hitler's madness. It is a supreme act of self-sacrifice, but of course it did not come without its benefits: a sense of purpose, a sense of justice, and the knowledge that his enemies would never forget his name or their crimes. Mr. Segev does a wonderful job of conveying the complex life of Simon Wiesenthal. And though there will always be questions left inconveniently unanswered -- Wisenthal did have a complex and sometimes disappointing relationship with the truth --, the author has drawn as clear a portrait of this exceptional person as can be assembled by the available data. We watch Wiesenthal the boy become Wiesenthal the victim, only to resurrect himself as Wiesenthal the hunter, Wiesenthal the justice-maker, and then Wiesenthal the legend. It is a fascinating journey I will not soon forget. (4/5 Stars)

Beggars In Spain: Sleepless 01 by Nancy Kress

From The Week of March 21, 2010

First published in 1991, this first in a trilogy from Nancy Kress, is a study in a modern odyssey which, while inventive in concept and operatic in scope, fails to find its full stride.

In the early 21st century, a wealthy magnate, obsessed by his own weakness, sets about the task of genetically engineering his unborn children with the stated goal of eliminating their need to sleep. And though his dream is realized beyond his wildest imaginings, the fateful experiment proves to have profound consequences for Earth when it is realized that the Sleepless, as the children of this experiment come to be called, are extraordinarily gifted children who, upon growing to adulthood, cease to age. The sleepless, numbering only in the thousands, begin to harness the economies of the world, out-performing regular humans to such a painful extent that, eventually, there is simply no need for most people to work anymore. The labor necessary for the functioning and advancement of society is not only lifted from the shoulders of humanity, but the Sleepless, in their superiority, essentially promise to take care of everyone else, putting their unmatched powers to the forwarding of society.

This is an intense and fascinating sociological novel which has clearly had a great deal of thought injected into its crafting. The characters are interesting, the dilemmas are ethically engaging, and the sense of tension between the sleepless and the humans keeps the reader connected to the plot. However, Ms. Kress has bitten off, here, far more than can be comfortably chewed. The novel spans about a century of human history. And though many of the characters are the same, thanks to their non-aging, too many formative events are skipped over in the interests of brevity. Clearly, Ms. Kress has written three or four distinct stories here and packaged them into one, but they fail to knit together in a satisfactory manner because some of the sections, particularly the early ones, are much stronger than the sections which come later. And so as the story moves farther away from what we know and onto highly speculative ground, it trades in its sociological potency for some pretty mundane, science-fiction tropes: the rise of the renegade faction of mutants who refuse to conform, the inflaming of anti-mutant sentiment among mainstream humanity, the formation of a renegade cult of mutants who remove themselves to orbit under the leadership of their quasi-religious and completely nutty leader... Sound familiar? What begins with both feet firmly planted in the tradition of speculative, social commentary disappointingly devolves into Star Wars. Just too jarring a transition in a single book.

The first half of Beggars in Spain is great work and I salute Ms. Kress for the thought she put into her project. But this work would have greatly benefited from being divided into three or four parts, with each part fleshed out to make a novel. This would have provided much needed continuity which was sorely lacking in this set up. (3/5 Stars)

Freedom For The Thought That We Hate by Anthony Lewis

From The Week of February 14, 2010

Freedom For The Thought That We Hate is a biography of the First Amendment, it's enshrinement in the American Constitution, its initial, conservative interpretation, and then, finally, its rise to unfettered dominance in the 20th century. Mr. Lewis sites Oliver Holmes as one of its most vigorous champions while covering other famous cases in which it played a preeminent role.

Freedom of Speech is a universally recognized right among enlightened nations, but that particularly unfettered strain of free speech practiced by Americans is comparatively rare. Most other nations, particularly those to have come out of the British Commonwealth, practice a more modest form of free speech which takes into account the greater good of society. If the speech is harmful to a great many people, then it can be justifiably censured. The manner in which such a system could be abused by government is obvious, but it seems to me that the American strain of free speech is not without its own flaws, for instance the Westboro Baptist church which pickets military funerals as a protest against the relatively permissive (for them) stance American society has taken towards homosexuality. This is considered protected speech because all speech is protected speech, but as Mr. Lewis points out, speech today has taken on a different meaning than the one originally intended for it. More over, an organization such as the Westboro Baptist church would have been unthinkable in the time when the American Constitution enshrined their first and least alienable amendment.

The debate will rage on which strain of free speech is better, safer, andfairer. However, that we can even have the debate is a sign that we possess the very right that the Founders thought so important. In writing this, I am practicing free speech, as was Mr. Lewis when he wrote his lovely book. A good biography of a difficult subject, least of all because it cannot defend itself. But that's well enough because millions stand ready, the world over, to defend it to the death. (4/5 Stars)