The US Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights (the first ten Amendments) is supposed to be the law of the land. This book tells how, since 9/11, it has been shredded by the USA PATRIOT Act, in the name of security.

It is now legal for the government to search a person’s home without informing the person being searched. It doesn’t pertain to just “terrorism” cases; it can now apply to all criminal cases. The Fourth Amendment’s provision concerning reasonable searches and seizures has been subverted. The standard of “probable cause” required to obtain a warrant has been reduced to information that is “relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation” that somehow is linked to alleged terrorism.

This is not the first time the FBI has ignored the Bill of Rights. In the COINTELPRO program, from 1956 to 1971, the FBI infiltrated and manipulated civil rights, antiwar and other groups that were using the First Amendment to oppose government policies. The guidelines put in place to make sure it never happens again have been thrown out by John Ashcroft.

Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act allows the FBI to walk into libraries and bookstores and demand lists of books bought or read by people who are under suspicion. The bookstore or library is forbidden to tell anyone, including the subject of the visit, that such a search has taken place.

Many self-appointed enforcers of patriotism on local school boards have been commanding the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance every day. In some places, students are informed that they can refuse to stand and pledge as an act of conscience (courtesy of a 1943 US Supreme Court decision). Any person who does so can expect to be treated as a terrorist-lover and pariah.

Opposition to the PATRIOT Act has been growing, on both sides of the political spectrum, from the ACLU to Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. More than 100 towns and cities, plus a couple of state legislatures, have passed laws against the Act, or forbidding local law enforcement from helping the federal government to enforce the Act within local boundaries.

Even if the things discussed in this book aren’t exactly news, this is still an excellent book. The chapters are short, it’s easy to read and pretty chilling, and the author is a long-time scholar on the Constitution, so he knows what he is talking about. Very much worth reading.

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Lulu is a struggling actress from southern California. Hyacinth is a healer from Oklahoma. Ginny is a beautiful, young Australian. Sean and Bud are a couple of Texans. Belinda is from Boston. Ignoring the official events at their first stop, an isolated monastery, they go exploring on their own. They find their way into some ancient, underground caverns. They are joined in their journey by Nardo, a local artist who is painting a fresco at the monastery, and Ubaldo, an agent for Peruvian Intelligence, whose mission is to find a way into the caverns (the two are also estranged brothers).

While in the caverns, the group finds a passage to a land called Tonlea. It involves falling down a bottomless pit, but never reaching the bottom. Each of them are encouraged to make the plunge by a moving globe of blue light which has been leading them through the caverns. While in Tonlea, each of them “acquires” a blue globe of their own, which enhances their natural psychic abilities.

Returning to “reality,” the group keeps quiet about their experiences as the tour continues to the ruins at Machu Picchu. It becomes clear to the group that each year, on the Summer Solstice, aliens have landed at the ruins to conduct a certain ceremony. They have been prevented from doing so for the past several years, because a vital part of the ceremony, a specific large rock, has been buried. It’s up to the group to uncover the rock with their newly-enhanced psychic abilities.

An openness to New Age thinking, like crystals and past lives, would be a big help when reading this novel. Aside from that, it’s quite good. The characters are real people and the story has a high degree of Weird to it. The reader won’t be disappointed.

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When traveling to Sicily on business, one of the courtesy visits that must be made, after the local mayor and police chief, is to the local mafia don. By the time you have arrived at the local airport, he has been informed, so ignoring him would be a very bad idea. The amount of bureaucracy required for foreigners to get a driver’s license ranges from almost overwhelming in Rome to almost nothing in Denmark.

When entering into a domestic business partnership, an American corporation will engage in all sorts of investigation of the potential partner, making sure of their financial stability. That logic tends to fly out the window when entering into a foreign partnership, simply because “everyone else is doing it.” Sometimes, transactions, or “commissions,” will be paid with suitcases full of cash. European governments, especially the tax authorities, tend to get very picky about such large amounts of money leaving the country. People can be found who specialize in transporting such bundles of cash from one country to another, no questions asked.

Much care must be taken when dubbing an American film into European languages. For example, the German spoken in Hamburg is coarser than that spoken in Hanover. Residents of Paris and Lyon look down their noses at the French spoken in Marseilles. To send a dubbed copy of a film to the “wrong” region would be disastrous. Last but not least, Americans working overseas should learn another language and be adaptable to local customs.

This book is excellent. The best business schools can give only a partial education. The rest of it, dealing with people who operate under a different set of customs, can only be gained on the job, or through books like this. Each chapter is a separate story, so it is meant for students and executives. Well worth reading.

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After a stint in the Texas army, fighting Mexican troops led by Santa Ana, Andrew is discharged and given a plot of land to start his own homestead. His Cherokee brother-in-law, Red Bird, and his wife, Ke-Ke, have a nearby homestead. Whether it’s planting and harvesting corn, cotton or vegetables, the work is long and hard, but Andrew and Red Bird do pretty well for themselves. They never go hungry, and are able to barter for what they want with the local tribes or at the nearby Army fort. Under President Houston, relations are pretty good with the Indians.

Houston is forbidden by Texas law to run for another consecutive term as President, so a man named Mirabeau Lamar succeeds Houston. Lamar is the sort of person who would rather flood Texas with settlers, pushing the Indians off their land, or just kill them outright, than deal with them fairly. A couple of instances of groups of Indians being invited to peace conferences, then slaughtered, bring relations between them and the settlers almost to the point of collapse. Also on the point of collapse is the official Texas economy. War-related debts cause the exchange rate of Texas money to plummet, and force Andrew and Red Bird to stick to barter.

President Houston returns to power, to great sighs of relief. He calls for a peace conference of all the Indian tribes in Texas, to sign an overall peace treaty. It’s a summer-long affair, with the various bands and tribes camping on several hundred square miles of land. Andrew and Red Bird are among the organizers. All of the tribes eventually sign the treaty, though some are reluctant signers. The book ends with the people of Texas debating whether or not they should give up their independence and become part of the United States.

Since this story is told in the form of a diary, the writing is kind of dry. But for anyone interested in 19th century American history, specifically the early history of Texas, this book is recommended. It’s based on actual events, and certainly gives the feeling like it was written 160 years ago.

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After nearly being raped at what Julia thought was an end-of-the-day job interview, she is saved by Blake Anderson, who has an office in the same building. Blake is tall, square-jawed and handsome, while Julia is young and gorgeous. He offers her a job as his personal assistant for the next several months. It involves living elsewhere for that period of time, and doing lots of word processing. Julia doesn’t really have a choice, so she accepts. Then she finds out that they will be spending the next several months in Africa, specifically Tanzania, a place that Julia considers to be the middle of nowhere.

It helps when Blake pays Dad’s nursing home bill for the next several months. Julia gets a quick education on African life at the airport in Nairobi, where the two are to meet (her luggage is stolen). Blake takes her on a cost-is-no-object shopping spree to replace her things, before they continue to Tanzania.

The place where they are to live could be compared to a mansion. It is maintained by a local husband and wife, who live on the premises. Blake and Julia soon get to work. He is a best-selling romance author, and she is his typist.

Julia doesn’t know what to make of Blake. One day, he treats her like a queen, and the next day, he acts like a slave driver. Later, a woman named Karen stops by for a visit. One can almost see the claws and fangs growing between the two women. On his way to Mt. Kilimanjaro, where Karen owns a resort, Blake is carjacked and severely beaten. Julia rushes to his bedside. Blake later reveals that Karen is his overly protective step-sister. Julia also begins to realize that there is more to Africa than what meets the eye.

This book is quite good. It’s a romance story (as you may have guessed) set in a part of the world unknown to most Westerners. It is also a good tale of cultural discovery. It is a fast read, and is worth checking out.

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The first step is to connect with other people. Start a website or blog, and let people know that it exists. Speak out online. Email the President (and other politicians). Spread the word about online petitions. Vote, no matter what. Register voters in unlikely places. Get your office to vote. Maximize the vote on election day. Participate in a phone bank.

Then there is the news media. Read more, watch TV news less. If you know that a piece of reporting is biased, don’t sit and fume, respond to it. Tell the media about uncovered events. Start a political book club. Try your hand at writing an op-ed piece. If you don’t like the media, make your own.

In the area of politics, start with writing to Congress. Support clean elections. Volunteer for, or help run, a campaign. Donate money, or host a house party. Run for office, if only to force the incumbent to actually debate the issues. Investigate your state’s laws about initiating a constitutional amendment; if it’s possible, do it. Serve your community. Take action with your family. Host a political salon. Help others express their political views. If possible, get a socially responsible day job, or bank with or invest in groups that strengthen communities.

This book is excellent. The individual essays are written by actual MoveOn members. Some of the actions may seem like common sense, but everyone needs occasional reminders. These actions can be done by anyone, regardless of age, income level, amount of available time or walk of life. Anyone who wants to get involved in this thing called democracy would do very well to start right here.

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These days, Loomis spends his time as a second-shift copy aide at the local newspaper. He is the one who must type the future weather forecasts into the computer. It usually waits until the most inconvenient moment, like just before deadline, before it crashes. For part of each day, Loomis must monitor the radio room. It’s the place where a variety of police and fire radios are all talking at once. Woe unto him who misses the big fire or auto accident that everyone else will be reading about the next day.

Loomis likens working at the newspaper to living in the time of the dinosaurs. The meat-eaters (editors) do battle with the plant-eaters (reporters). Sometimes the plant-eaters win the battle, and, sometimes, the resulting carnage can get pretty bloody. Loomis thinks of himself as a compsognathus, a mini-dinosaur that could probably fit through a doggie door. What’s worse is that the meteor that destroyed the dinosaurs has already struck, and its effects are starting to be felt. The meteor is called Television. Newspaper readership is down, and the biggest question each day is what was the news lead on the local TV station.

Loomis has a rather unique group of friends. Harry is a gambler who read the Racing Form like it was the Bible. John is a teacher enjoying his summer vacation. Michael’s presence is all through the book (he and Loomis are brothers), even though the two haven’t seen each other in several years.

This book could take place anywhere (it’s set in Minnesota), and anyone can put themselves in Loomis’s shoes. It’s lighter reading that’s interesting and well done, and a person could do a lot worse than read this. It’s worth the time.

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In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Velasco was the only one to reach a lifeboat. The current prevented him from reaching his shipmates, one of whom was just a few feet away, and he watched as they slipped under the water, never to return. He had no food or water, and with no land in sight, he had no idea in which direction he was traveling. In the first couple of days, he saw a search plane overhead, but it was too high to see him. As the days went on, his skin broke out in blisters, because of the constant exposure to the sun. Every day, at around 5 PM, he was visited by a group of sharks looking for dinner. He watched as they engaged in a feeding frenzy just a few feet away from him, whenever a school of fish got too close. He had started to hallucinate, so he wasn’t sure if that was actually land he was seeing in front of him. The current was carrying him toward some cliffs, so he jumped out of the lifeboat, and managed to swim the last couple of kilometers to land.

Upon his rescue and recovery, he immediately became a national hero. He was kept away from the public, and allowed to speak only to pro-government journalists (at that time, Colombia was under a military government). He made a small fortune as a product endorser, and was enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. Weeks later, he walked into the offices of a national newspaper, where Marquez was a journalist, looking to tell the whole story (until then, only bits and pieces of the story were known). It ran as a 14-part series, and was a national sensation. Things got difficult for the government when it was revealed that a) the Caldas was carrying cargo, which b) so overloaded the ship that it was unable to turn around and go back to look for the missing crewmen, and c) the cargo was contraband (like stoves and refrigerators); all of which were absolutely illegal under Colombian law.

I really liked reading this true story. It’s short and an interesting read, and it’s a very good tale of human survival under horrendous conditions. Well worth it.

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Saddam Hussein’s rise to power was helped by a CIA decision to assassinate one of his predecessors, General Abdel Karim Qassim. In Syria, the CIA sponsored a 1949 military takeover, the first of over a dozen coups in the next 20 years. American oil companies felt that an independent Syria was not in their interests. Sudan has been involved, off and on, in a bloody civil war for almost 50 years. Oil just happens to be a factor in this ongoing slaughter.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has ruled with an iron fist ever since the 1982 assassination of Anwar Sadat, his predecessor. Mubarak uses billions of dollars in US military aid to beat and torture opposition politicians and journalists, many of whom have died in custody. Press restrictions are widespread. Egypt is viewed as a well-bribed client state of the US. The military in Turkey, a US ally and fellow member of NATO, has been one of the biggest human rights abusers of the 1990s.

America has always looked for a surrogate policeman in the Persian Gulf, to keep an eye on the huge oil reserves. First we armed the Shah of Iran, ignoring his repression, until he was overthrown. The we armed Iraq, ignoring Saddam Hussein’s repression, until he became too powerful, and a major war was needed to destroy his arsenal. Now America is arming Saudi Arabia, ignoring their repression, creating a generation of militants determined to overthrow the puppet regime propped up with American money.

Part of the blame for all this can be laid at the feet of Great Britain. They were the dominant power for much of the first half of the 20th century, and they had a tendency to ignore the ethnic makeup of an area while drawing boundaries.

Arab hatred of America has less to do with our freedoms and diversity than with our illegal involvement in other country’s internal affairs. This book easily reaches the level of Must Read. It’s interesting and easy to read and it’s full of information that won’t be mentioned in the mainstream media.

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Since returning from Vietnam, Michael has lived by himself as a hermit. He blames himself for the death of another SEAL, courtesy of one of his mines. He is told by one of the others on the list that the death was not his fault, lifting a huge weight from his shoulders. Meantime, their unknown assailant is not your garden-variety nutcase. Whoever it is knows their way around weapons and military strategy, leading the ex-SEALs to believe that someone who also served in Vietnam wants revenge.

They get plenty of help from the local Navy base (they may be out of the military, but they haven’t been forgotten by those in authority there). Finding more than one listening device in the Parks residence, a plan is hatched to lure the assailant(s) to Michael’s isolated farm to settle this once and for all.

This is another excellent novel. It has enough action and military influence (for lack of a better term) to satisfy anyone, and the author does a fine job at making real people out of the characters, and not just military stereotypes. Will there be a Mitchell Parks, Volume 3?

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Frank was born in 1940 in Baltimore. Dad was Sicilian, and had a child from a previous marriage (scandalous in those days). Mom came from a family of eleven children; only one other sister survived to the present. As a young girl, she really liked Catholic school and seriously considered becoming a nun (scandalous for a Jewish girl).

In the early ‘50s, the family made the first of many moves across the country, while Dad undertook teaching work. In California of the 1950s, Frank discovered cigarettes, and music, and the joys of blowing up stuff (like putting smoke bombs in the school lavatories on Open House night). The family moved a lot in those days, never spending more than a couple of years in any one place.

During Frank’s teen years, the relationship with his father became more and more difficult. Part of the problem was the natural parental reluctance to let go of your child, and part of it was Frank’s growing rebelliousness. He eventually moved out of the house, and started to make his name in the music world.

While Patrice was growing up, her parents did their best to continue with her Catholic upbringing, and shielding her from things like sex, shaving her legs and Frank’s occasionally “unique” behavior. But Frank never forgot his family, inviting them to some of his concerts, after he became a Famous Person.

The book also looks at more recent times, including Dad’s death in 1973, due to complications from diabetes, John Lennon’s death in 1980, and Frank’s death in 1993 from cancer.

Anyone with the slightest interest in Frank Zappa’s music needs this book. The author does a fine job at making it sound like she is reminiscing about the “old days.” Highly recommended.

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He goes to Texas for basic training, where he begins to realize that this was a very bad idea. After more training in Texas, he is sent to an air base in California, where he has been assigned the job of guarding B-52 bombers as a military policeman (MP). So much for never carrying a gun. Later, he is given 30 days leave, then told to go back to Texas, on his way to Southeast Asia.

Instead, John returns to California and registers as a conscientious objector. He is sentenced to 6 months in prison, during which many attempts are made to get him to feel like a criminal for refusing to go to war. While in prison, he gets an angry letter from his father, disowning him and calling him a coward.

After getting out of prison, John goes back to California and gets a job at a lumber mill in Humboldt County. He even tries a couple of semesters at the local junior college. Feeling isolated and alienated from everyone around him, and America in general, he hitchhikes across America, and flies to Europe, where he backpacks for the next several months.

In Paris, he meets Hamid and Abdul, a couple of Persian carpet traders. Hamid tells John that jobs for foreigners are plentiful in Iran, his homeland. The two undertake a harrowing car journey through southeast Europe, Turkey and Iran. Harrowing because Hamid drives like an insane person, darting in and out of traffic, creating his own travel lanes when necessary and with one hand always on the car horn. After spending time in Iran, John continues to Afghanistan, where he again meets up with Abdul. John continues on to India, where he witnesses poverty and human degradation on an unimaginable scale.

Back in America, John tries his hand at being a writer, though it doesn’t work very well. Seized with wanderlust once again, John hears about jobs available for foreigners teaching English in Japan. He goes there, and, after a couple of years, when he has to decide whether or not to apply for a permanent resident visa, decides to stay in Japan.

This book is written in simplified English, and questions at the end of each chapter make it a very good choice for people learning English. Aside from that, it’s a very fast read and a good tale of one person’s search for identity. It’s well worth reading.

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