2 comments about The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State.

1. This book can help researchers of Asian gangs identify the uniqueness and features of the Yamaguchi gumi and other Japanese organized crime syndicates. The information provided by this book unquestionably has long-term impacts on criminology and sociology of crime, especially on the area of Asian crime.



2. This scholarly work examines the nature of organized crime in great depth and details the evolution of Japan's mafia, called the yakuza, and the challenges confronting it in the 21st century. Although Peter B.E. Hill's style is rigorously academic, the nature of the material itself is so sensational that the book is at times a thrilling read. It offers a glimpse of the underside of Japanese government and society, and reveals historical facts likely to shock the average non-Japanese reader. getAbstract finds that this book will, of course, interest readers who are professionally concerned with crime, sociology, economics, Japanese studies and the like. However, it may also appeal to fans of true crime stories and hard-boiled fiction - a rare attribute for an academic book.

No comments about Understanding, Assessing, and Responding to Terrorism: Protecting Critical Infrastructure and Personnel.

5 comments about Shaiton's Fire.

1. The book opens when a group of terrorists bomb a subway train in San Francisco. The plot thickens when another terrorist attack is connected to the first bombing. The group's primary target is Diablo, a nuclear power plant in California. If they pull it off, the entire central coast of California would be at risk.

   Chapter 16, a unit created to create domestic security attempts to stop the attacks. Steve Alstead's hands on role in the organization places his family in jeopardy. Steve tries to balance his commitment to his family and his job. However, his son is kidnapped, and his wife, Cindy, struggles with Steve's absence and their fragile marriage.

   Shaiton's Fire has a complicated, exciting plot that draws you in from the first page. Thoene absolutely pulls this off. The book is well worth your time!




2. From one writer to another, I have to say that Jake's book was exciting. Too often in the CBA world, we stay away from tough issues or write as if a real world doesn't exist. This is not only intriguing, but well-written. Thank you, Jake Thoene for an awesome book!



3. "Shaiton's Fire" starts with a literal bang and builds toward a cataclysmic threat. Although his plot and pace kept the pages turning, Thoene took a little longer to show me which characters to put my heart behind. Once the story's players were established, it was hard not to enjoy this novel.

   Set in San Francisco and southern California, the story revolves around the threat of terrorist attacks. After a bombing on a subway, a unit called Chapter 16 steps in to track down the culprits. Despite the conflicts with his estranged wife, Steve Alstead helps his unit hone in on the suspects. He has tried to keep his work separate from his home life, but that is about to change--and not on his own terms. For the culprits are zeroing in as well. They have plans that will bring destruction on personal and public levels.

   Thoene's story reads smoothly, bringing chuckles, thrills, and spiritual encouragement. Even with an abundance of needless adverbs, he makes the dialogue crisp and down-to-earth.

   If you liked Oliver North's "Mission Accomplished," or Joel Rosenberg's "The Last Jihad," you'll find this book to be a treat. In fact, I set down Clancy's latest to speed through the pages of "Shaiton's Fire." And I don't regret it.




4. I guess this was one of those things where I saw the book, said that the book looked good, but merely considered reading it. Then, as book #3 (Fuel The Fire) was already on the shelves I finally picked up book #1. Go figure, right? But with a great, sometimes frantic pace, it was impossible to put down!
   
   It ripped, it roared, and it never snored! We join what is called the Chapter 16 team. This is after the fact that a bomb has obliterated a transit subway station. But you might think, the ultimate team? Oh, you bet! We learn that this team is put together by a Senator James Morrison, and as my own dumb joke I was wondering this: If people ever call him Jim Morrison, does he sometimes sing to himself, "This is the end!"? But in this book, that would be a bad guy song, right? Leave it to a former die-hard DOORS fan to think up something weird like that! ANYWAY!
   
   You have Special Agent Steve Alstead in charge of a team that isn't likely to lose. Hopefully not. In the midst of all the chaos, we learn what "Shaiton's Fire" is. Oh, do we ever!
   
   With an idea like this, along with good plots, combined with a little humor along the way, Jake Thoene has created a spark. One that already has 3 books and hopefully doesn't fizzle out after that. All I can say is thank you!



5. I have read the first two books of this series, Shaiton's Fire and Firefly Blue, and have begun the third one. Although there are a few aspects of the author's writing that annoy me, I am really enjoying the series. With terrorism so prevalent in the world today, I find the technical aspects presented in these books very timely and intriguing. Faith is very dear to many of the characters, and they wrestle with real-world issues with which I can identify.
   
   Some books seem to target a specific gender, but both my husband and I love these books. I will definitely look for more titles by Jake Thoene, and I definitely recommend this series.

5 comments about A Widow's Walk: A Memoir of 9/11.

1. I bought this book after having heard the author on "This American Life." I was touched by her humor and grace during the radio piece, and was pleasantly surprised by how well-written and un-put-downable this book is. Check out the radio story before you decide to buy the book, if you like; the book doesn't tell the George W. story, so there's no spoiler there.



2. This is an exquisitely written book that I still remember - nearly a year later - as one of the best books I've ever read. The book was heart-rending at times to read, as the author so well expresses her feelings and the pain of losing her husband. It would be nearly impossible to read this book and not feel the depth of her loss - of her husband and the life they lived until 9/11.
   
   Marian Fontana is a gifted, talented writer and I wish her story was one with a happy ending for her. While her story is one of loss, it is also one of love, family, friendship and survival. The cover photo haunts me, so well does it depict the love the Fontanas shared. Highly recommended and memorable.



3. the first half or three quarters of the book kept me absolutely riveted and hurting with feeling so close to the families and what they suffered through as well as how very brave their firefighter family members were. But about three quarters through, I found myself scanning as there was really more information and details than I really needed or wanted to know. I wish the very best for Marian and Aidan and hope they find happiness. She is one brave lady.



4. Marian Fontana lost her husband, Dave, on what should have been their eighth wedding anniversary. Instead of spending the day with her husband, laughing and celebrating, she watched in disbelief and horror as the World Trade Center came down - she knew in that instant that the love of her life and the father of her child was dead.
   
   What follows is a year in which she struggles through every emotion imaginable. She is hollowed out with grief, and at times, wants to join Dave and leave all her troubles behind. She is expected to be a loving and patient mom to a little boy who has lost his Daddy and who is too young to understand, and she is angry. Angry at the monsters who slammed into the buildings, angry at the endless red tape and bureaucracy that tangles her days and fills her inbox and, occasionally, furious with Dave for leaving her to run into the Towers. He and the other 342 firefighters who ran in saved more than 25,000 people that morning, but he left Marian and Aidan behind to do so. The most painful, and truthful, section for me to read was the one when she cursing Dave for leaving her alone when he promised that they would grow old together. I was grateful for her honesty in sharing her anger with the rest of us.
   
   Marian channeled her grief into an organization for the widows and family members of those lost on that murderous day, and her life has taken a turn that she couldn't have imagined, and didn't want. She is a gifted writer, and one who is brutally honest about the stupidity she is facing and the pain she cannot escape.
   
   This is what truly matters about 9-11. The politics and the "who knew what when" are important, sure. But what it boils down to, and what matters deep in one's soul, are the thousands of love stories that were interrupted. Love stories just like this one. It is our blessing that Marian Fontana is gifted enough to put it on the page. Thanks to her, her son Aidan will never forget who his father was, and now, none who read this book will, either.



5. As a wife of a retired firefighter and mother of two firefighters (one also a police officer), this book really hit home. I think I cried the whole way through. The way the story was told made me feel I really knew the family and I felt heartbreak as well that this wonderful man was taken from his family and friends and how courageous his wife was to continue on without him.

3 comments about The Age of War: The United States Confronts the World.

1. Many conservatives, neoconservatives, libertarians, and free market advocates probably first heard of Gabriel Kolko when reading ex-neoconservative and free enterprise author Paul H. Weaver's "The Suicidal Corporation" (1988). In Weaver's memoir of his employment at Ford Motors Corporation as Economic Communications Planning Director (written after his discovery that corporations are hostile to free enterprise), he wrote "Aside from their socialism and anticapitalist animus, which I found as alien as ever, the strictly historical conclusions of the New Left historians now struck me as persuasive and even revelatory" (Weaver, p102). The New Left historians that Weaver was referring to were William Appleman Williams, Gabriel Kolko, and others who were busy during the 1960s revising interpretations of American history based upon the historical examination of elite behavior. Kolko's thesis in his PhD dissertation, which was later published in 1965 as a study of railroad regulation ("Railroads and Regulation 1877-1916"), was that corporations favored government regulation because they feared competition and preferred Italian-style corporatism over free enterprise. During the 1960s, Kolko's ideological assumptions were considered radical and his conclusions were generally rejected by other scholars. Since then, Kolko has turned his historical eye from the history of U.S. business to the history of U.S. foreign policy and war.
   
   In his six-chaptered "The Age of War", Kolko examines the effects on Americans generally and on the country as a whole since the British were able to partner with the U.S. to provide the brawn to British empire during and since World War II (see Nicolas John Cull's "Selling War" on how Churchill and his British fifth column accomplished this partnership) - a partnership that Kolko fails to discern. The result of Anglo-American global empire (where the Anglo piece to the equation remains obscure to Kolko) has been "a basic neglect of human necessities and an increasingly decaying public infrastructure of roads, bridges, and much else that people require for their health and welfare" (p2). Kolko views these changes as "an aspect of U.S. foreign policy frustrations and failures" since 1941 (p2).
   
   Chapter one is subtitled "Warfare at an Impasse: The Road to Vietnam". Here Kolko argues that contrary to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's complaint that there were no Vietnam experts, the Vietnam experts who were churning out reports from thirteen intelligence services were ignored. Kolko says that ignoring intelligence is not something that U.S. government leaders began in 2001 - they have always sought the politically expedient and let future leaders worry about the blowback and fallout.
   
   Chapter two is subtitled "Prelude to Permanent Crises: The Background". Kolko states "To the extent the United States was the most active power on the world scene after 1950, wars and conflict since then have increasingly resulted from policies it pursued" (p39). Kolko argues that as British power declined, U.S. power supplanted it. Kolko views the U.S. role in supplanting British power as somewhat predatory rather than a partnership that profited Anglo and American elites alike. He believes that the U.S. is now the sole bully and does not see Blair or other British whispering advice into Bush's ear. Kolko's dismissal of an Anglo-American alliance can be attributed to his view that instead of an Anglo-American alliance calling the shots, especially in the Middle East, there is an Israeli-American alliance doing that. He believes that the Six-Day War and the January 1968 massive arms aid to Israel (over half a billion in 1971 reaching 2 billion in 1973) indicate that U.S. foreign policy is Israeli foreign policy, stating "The difficulties that the United States has experienced in the Middle East began with this decision. Today Israel still receives $2 billion [annually] in free US arms aid" (p45). While it is true that Israel is the number one recipient of U.S. foreign aid dollars, Kolko neglects to inform us that Egypt is number two.
   
   Chapter three is subtitled "The World Comes Apart: The 1990s". This chapter's theme is that the disintegration of the Soviet bloc led Europe from its predictable security to insecurity and regional conflicts. Kolko lambasts government leaders for ignoring U.S., Soviet and British intelligence "most of the time" (p64). He also comments on the Iraqi army invasion of Kuwait on 02 August 1990 and the resulting Gulf War, stating "The administration of George H.W. Bush was utterly surprised; it had no up-to-date maps, desert camouflage netting, and the like"(p65), thereby revealing his ignorance of what really happened. Kolko seems unaware that Kuwait had funded the re-Islamisation of Bosnia and its star city Sarajevo. At the same time, CIA-installed Saddam Hussein was having trouble with internal dissidents and insurgents hoping to topple his regime - an ever-growing problem since the cessation of war with Iran in which both CIA-installed dictators (Hussein and Khomeini) were able to kill off each other's insurgents and maintain stability of their dictatorial regimes under the watchful eye of U.S. AWAC squadrons. The Bush regime decided to kill two birds with one stone - Iraq was instructed to smack up Kuwait and in turn the U.S. would smack up the Iraqi insurgents inducted into the Republican Guard. For 130 consecutive months after the Gulf War, U.S. and/or British bombs continued to fall monthly on the heads of Iraqi insurgents to the benefit of Saddam Hussein's regime. And that's what happened - but Kolko doesn't know this. I wonder why? An over-reliance on published material rather than first-hand participant observation could explain it.
   
   Chapter Four is subtitled "The Twenty-First Century: The United States and War on the World". Here Kolko contends that the U.S. is failing to create a new world order and that Communist China has already eclipsed U.S. power in East Asia - thus showing his lack of any military experience or knowledge of current military installations and operations. Neither does Kolko indicate that he is aware of the Bush Crime Family blowing up the Twin Towers and blaming it on Arabs (see David Ray Griffin's "The New Pearl Harbor" or Webster Griffin Tarpley's "9/ll Synthetic Terror: Made in the USA"); instead Kolko seems to have bought into the government's conspiracy theory that al-CIAdah did it, stating "The war the United States has been fighting abroad since 1947 had finally reached its shores". Many observers do not believe that Arabs did the 9/11 attacks in America or, if they did, they had to have been operated by CIA and/or MOSSAD. Stanley Hilton, for example, has filed a lawsuit against the government on behalf of the families of Twin Tower victims for instructing Marvin Bush to blow them up. As one Muslim educator put it - "you have to be a moron to think that Arabs did it". Kolko does seem to know more about the Taliban than he does about what happened on 9/11, stating the Taliban "were opposed to opium cultivation and reduced it to virtually nothing by 2001" (p110). But Kolko does not appear to know that CIA relies on Afghani opium to fund its covert operations or that the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in order to install former Soviet drug lord Hamid Karzai as leader in the quiet name of CIA drugs. Kolko does indicate that he is aware that dictator general Musharraf in Pakistan and dictator Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan are henchmen for U.S. foreign policy in those two Muslim countries and are opposed by the majorities they dictatorially rule over.
   
   Chapter Five is subtitled "Things Go Wrong: The United States Confronts a Complex World". Here the author maintains that Americans face a dire future if their government continues its Nazi-like behaviour, alleging that "the Iraq War greatly accelerated the breakup of traditional US-led alliances" - thus does Kolko ignore the G-8, United Nations Security Council, or the counsel of Ned Beatty's character Arthur Jensen in the 1976 film "Network" that "There's no such thing as countries anymore; the world is a college of corporations". The G-8 led billionaire club (its enrollment up to 796 in 2006 from 500 in 2000) is still calling the shots as usual. The power of information warfare will ensure that people will not remember longer than six months and will believe what ever the corporate media tells them. Catastrophic lies will be rewritten. But Kolko sees none of this, believing that all that the U.S. does, especially in Iraq, is folly. Kolko does not seem to grasp the fact that every country in the world today is ruled by a leader put there by the CIA or allowed to remain there by its blessing. There is no government anywhere today that is independent of the global billionaire club's CIA, NSA, or others in its alphabet soup of government agencies.
   
   Chapter six is subtitled "Conclusion: The Age of Perpetual Conflict". Kolko sees an aggressive interventionist foreign policy spawning blowback and regional insurgencies without end. I, too, see nothing getting better during the twenty-first century; it will remain the century of corporate statism. As Thomas Jefferson, one of the United State's liberty-loving founding fathers, said - "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all peoples, entangling alliances with none" is the only foreign policy that is compatible with traditional American values and liberty. That is the tradition of America's years before the British snookered the Yanks into doing British empire (or before the Israelis snookered the Yanks according to Kolko). Kolko is correct on his main point - expensive and clumsy military approaches to foreign policy always seem to end in disaster for the common man and have made America and the world less safe for Americans and less safe for the victims of their government's military adventurism. At the same time, war is the health of the state. Liberty versus power - which will triumph?



2. The seminal debate over America's entry into World War I was between John Dewey and his one-time student Randolph Bourne. Debate may be too strong a word as Dewey never responded to Bourne's eloquent jeremiad against his embracement of "the war technique" as the preferred route to democratizing the world. Bourne died, aged 32, as the Great War was ending, but his spirit lived and lives on.
   
   Dewey's spirit lives on as well (even if he ultimately accepted that Bourne was right), most recently under the banner of "Humanitarian Intervention," a banner that has probably seen numerous defections based on the report card of their latest Noble Cause, Iraq.
   
   But they'll be back. The peculiar romance of American Liberalism with military adventures: Korea and Vietnam, to name the most important, must account for some of its intellectual and moral paralysis in the face of Bush the 2nd's Middle East disaster.
   
   It's the Bournian spirit that pervades the vast body of work of Gabriel Kolko and his wife, Joyce Kolko. Like Bourne, Kolko is an "irreconcilable" to the self-satisfied, optimistic chauvenism that has led this country into more wars since 1945 than any other.
   
   His first published writings appeared over 50 years ago. They have embraced a staggering range of topics, and displayed great depth of scholarship and an intellectually uncompromising effort to understand who we are and what we have done to others.
   
   Kolko is a self-professed, but non-Marxist, man-of-the-left. Yet the American Left has produced few balanced, as opposed to sectrian, critiques of its rather meager achievements to match Kolko's. See, for example, his 1966 essay, The Decline of American Radicalism.
   
   Many of Kolko's insights into the workings of American history have been adopted by historians without attribution. I don't think this is conscious plagiarism, but speaks to something of a bad-conscience regarding Kolko within the domestic historical profession.
   
   In his massively researched book on the Vietnam War, Choosing War (1999), to mention one example, Fredrik Logevall informs us that "Historians have been slower than political scientists in exploring the concept" of "credibility," as a causal agent in the American military escalation, citing "political scientists" who "got" the saliency of the concept before "historians" did, citing, in the former category, works published no earlier than 1976. Kolko treats "credibility" as a cental motive for the escalation no later than his 1972 essay in Vol V of the Gravel edition of the Pentagon Papers.
   
   American historians are, understandably, a largely patriotic group, and Kolko is, well, just too intellectually uncompromising, skewering America's complacent optimism in refrains that would have pleased H.L. Mencken.
   
   But Kolko's skewering does not share the jaded and joyous elitism of Mencken but rather the belief that "American intellectuals," as Bourne put it in "War and the Intellectuals," "seem to have forgotten that the real enemy is War..."
   
   Like Bourne, Kolko is, in Russell Jacoby's sense of the term in his book The Last Intellectuals, a Public Intellectual. Kolko is not mentioned in Jacoby's book, although despite the density, depth and originality of Kolko's work, he has always written a readable Plain Style, pitched to educated, public-spirited Americans, not academic specialists.
   
   But perhaps Kolko isn't commonly viewed as an essentially public intellectual because he seldom seeks the public eye: he avoids the polemical combat that becomes "the talk of the town", I've never seen him on TV, never heard him on radio, never seen a book review by him, etc. I've seen just one picture of him: on the back-flap of his 1968 book, The Politics of War.
   
   The Age of War is a short book, a summing up of American foreign policy since the Korean War, but especially since 9/11. Those of have read most of his work will not find surprises. The volume's larger themes are The Limits of Power (the title of his 1972 book, co-authored with Joyce Kolko), and the limitlessness of the illusory and disasterous belief in military power within the foreign policy elite, whether neo-con, liberal or conservative.
   
   Worth watching, in terms of the trends Kolko predicts in The Age of War, is the terminal decay of the Western Alliance, and whether the result will be as positive as he believes it will be. As usual, Kolko's perspective on this issue is unconventional.
   
   As an avid reader of Kolko since 1969, my hope is that he will again explore new intellectual territories -- his most exciting writings for this reader are those where he's obviously exploring what is to him new territory.
   
   P.S. I commend the previous reviewer, Mr. Williams, for giving Kolko 4 and a half stars, but he misstates virtually all of Kolko's ideas, and spins his own crack-pot conspiracies as a better alternative. It wasn't Weaver in 1988 who discovered Kolko for conservatives, but Ayn Rand in the mid-1960's. Read Kolko.



3. The Age Of War: The United States Confronts The World by Gabriel Kolko (Research Professor Emeritus, York University, Toronto, Canada) is an informed and comprehensive study of what may potentially occur in Professor Kolko's prediction of the world's current state and instability. Enlightening readers on the international environment's likelihood to produce another great war due to its flailing status, The Age Of War describes the American ideals and irrational pursuit of control of the world through a contemporary expression of a kind of "manifest destiny" mentality. A impeccably researched and well authored historical documented and predictive study, The Age Of War is very strongly recommended reading for all young Americans registered for the draft, scholars of American politics and contemporary social issues, modern political science, and those searching for a conceptual interpretation of America's coming potential future on the international scene.

2 comments about Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy.

1. Begin with Puppetmasters if you suspect that al Qaeda must have had help to accomplish the Sept. 11 attacks and seek examples of how U.S. intelligence agencies have manipulated terrorists.

   Throughout the 70's and halfway into the 80's, the United States and right-wing factions within Italy conducted a war of terror in the name of Communism that was designed to arouse public sentiment against the Italian Communist Party. Willan documents that they did it, and how. In doing so, Puppetmasters, which was first published in 1991, reveals to the contemporary reader the ease with which the same tactics could have been used in September 2001 in order to mobilize political support for a weak U.S. president, a right-wing social agenda, and military adventures into far away lands.

   The Italian experience with terrorism was astonishingly similar to what we have experienced since Sept. 11. Authorities on the peninsula found themselves blocked and hindered in their efforts to stop terrorism and then to convict terrorists once apprehended. Similarly, the failure to apprehend any accomplices to the Sept. 11 terrorists, the lack of progress on finding those who mailed anthrax letters to congress and the media, and the persistent failure to catch a sniper who terrorized the nation's political capital at the height of the 2002 congressional elections, all raise suspicions that we're not getting to the truth about the War on Terrorism. Puppetmasters may present part of the answer.

   Although it details the "years of lead" during which Italy suffered through thousands of terror attacks, the book clearly has important lessons for today. It is an excellent starting point for those wishing to understand how al Qaeda could be receiving assistance from those in government to accomplish their far-flung plots.




2. Philip Willan analyzes remarkably and profoundly the violent activities of left- and right-wing terrorist groups in Italy in the 2nd half of the 20th century.
   He unveils a monster conspiracy between the Italian secret services, the CIA, the FBI, NATO (Gladio netword), the Mafia, the Catholic Church, conservative Italian politicians and freemasonry against the left.
   They created a strategy of tension designed to prevent the Italian communist party from taking power or to become a government partner (Italy was a key NATO member).
   
   One of the main means in this strategy was the infiltration of extreme left-wing movements. After the leaders of the Red Brigades were put in prison, the movement became totally controlled by governmental intelligence services. Bombings with indiscriminate killings of innocent civilian were blamed on the left in order to discredit left-wing parties, create fear among the population and concomitantly support the right-wing parties.
   The most blatant sign of the collusion of the different players involved was the kidnapping and the murder of the Italian politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. Also Moro tried to forge a center-left government with the communists.
   A key player in the strategy of fear was the infamous freemason lodge P2 and its venerable Master Licio Gelli, who attended as an honorary guest the inaugural ceremonies of the presidents Ford, Carter and Reagan. He was also implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal.
   The author states that American lodges were set up for every NATO base.
   
   The main culprits in the deadly strategy were the Italian secret services. But, as the author rightly states, `they needed the endorsement of NATO and NATO's most powerful member. He stresses the 'ignoble' role of the US government: `the responsibility of what happened as a result of the strategy of tension rests with the US.'
   Ultimately, this book shows the limited sovereignty of a NATO member State, which in fact was run by its secret services. The US even concocted to install a `Greek colonels regime' in Italy.
   
   This depressing story of (in)discrimate killings and a vast number of mysterious deaths is extremely revealing for the kind of democracy we live in: `if you don't vote as we like, you will pay the price.'
   
   This book is a must read for all supporters of real democracy.

5 comments about Nine Months at Ground Zero: The Story of the Brotherhood of Workers Who Took on a Job Like No Other.

1. Wonderful book that captures what really went on to clear out Ground Zero and how recoveries were handled.. Charlie Vitchers is an amazing man and is so modest for all that he accomplished. He brought compassion to recovery. Without his direction and authority recovery and clear up would have been chaotic. I highly recommend this book if you want to know what really happened at Ground Zero on Sept 11, 2001



2. Thank you Bobby, for imortalizing the experience, and heartache, of us all.



3. This book is a terrific account of the story of the recovery from the Pile to the Pit at the WTC Site. In contrast with the twisted and bitter 'American Ground' written by William Langewiesche some years ago, 'Nine Months's firsthand hand accounts from the rank and file men and women from the FDNY, NYPD and Constuction Trade show the human efforts and bursting hearts that forged those involved in the recovery into a band of brothers. Their desperate efforts and hopes again inspire us through this account.
   
   It was worth waiting for until now to hear their stories in their own words and much applause to Glenn Stout, Charlie Vitchers and Robert Gray for putting this together for the rest of us. No one should miss it.



4. The "outside world" owes a debt of gratitude to the men and women who worked hard to respectfully recover those who were killed on 9/11.
   This book goes a long way to bring those of use who observed from afar closer to what happened in the aftermath.
   The courage to step up and the morality to do what is right is imbedded in these individuals.
   Thank you.



5. For all the crowds who were compelled to come to Ground Zero in those first traumatic months to see for themselves, pay their respects or simply offer moral support, most did not get close enough to see what these men and women who worked "The Pile" saw. Their lives will never be the same. Dedicated first and foremost to bringing home the victims, cutting a giant tangle of twisted steel and pushing compressed concrete--1.8 million tons of "debris"--the ironworkers, heavy equipment operators and other tradesmen who worked the site were heroic in their selfless determination to work fast and see the job through to the end. Reporters were not allowed inside and workers who talked to them could be fired. Unprepared for the horror they would see but pushing through, day after day to get the job done, these men and women came together in an unspoken bond which could not be breached, even by members of their own family. This is a story everyone should know. God bless them all.

No comments about Root Causes of Suicide Terrorism: The Globalization of Martyrdom (Political Violence).

4 comments about Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror.

1. Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr. is senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law and a partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He was chief counsel to the Church Committee. Aziz Z. Huq is associate counsel at the Brennan Center and previously clerked for the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a book you will not be able to put down, in which they demonstrate and document how the Bush administration has gone further than Nixon or Reagan ever dreamed to create a monarchical presidency with the acquiescence of a complicit Congress and a cowed judiciary.



2. The authors documents how the Bush Administration, in an effort to fight terrorism, has side-stepped the constitution, circumvented the Geneva Convention, and broken countless other laws. The authors describe how the net result is an erosion of the moral character of America, which, in the long run, is counterproductive in the war on terror.



3. Benjamin Franklin, when asked what type of government we had created, is said to have replied, "A republic, if you can keep it." "Unchecked and Unbalanced" shows why America is in danger of being transformed into a monarchy by the Bush Administration, reporting how this new theory of unchecked presidential power developed and why it is wrong. The authors also contend that the theory is not a response to 9/11, but long nurtured by Cheney and his assistant David Addington from at least the days of the Iran-Contra investigation, and even followed (to a much lesser extent) by Bill Clinton.
   
   Executive branch lawyers now describe an ongoing (not just emergency) power to set aside legal checks imposed by Congress and to even act when Congress is silent. This authority extends to treaties as well, and at least one Office of Legal Council (OLC) leader claims coverage of judicial decisions as well.
   
   Lincoln acted early on at the start of the Civil war without Congressional authorization, and even ignored an order by the Chief Justice. The difference between Lincoln and Bush is that Lincoln did not do so on an on-going basis, sought subsequent approval, and did not act in secret.
   
   "Unchecked and Unbalanced" provides rationale for concluding that OLC's conclusions are wrong; it also asserts that the OLC claims were developed without adherence to professional obligations - eg. they failed to identify, let alone respond to, weaknesses in their legal arguments, and failed to mention key Supreme Court cases.
   
   Finally, to protect our republic, the authors recommend Congress hold hearings and act, and that the Supreme Court follow suit. Unfortunately this is made difficult by executive branch supervision of intelligence gathering and distribution.



4. I'm so glad we have the reader reviews on Amazon. The Publishers Weekly evaluations are often very biased and dismissive. "Though another book criticizing the Bush presidency is of questionable necessity" - really? We've reached the limit on books examining and critiquing the performance of the President of the United States? Thanks, PW! I'll stop worrying about the health of our democracy and go straight to bed.

1 comments about Christian in an Age of Terror, The: Sermons for a Time of War.

1. This is a collection of sermons from WWII and the early part of the cold war.
   
   The author started out as a physician and then became a pastor. He has analytical skills seldom found in pastors and theologians.