rst a few parahprases from the interviews in this book which was published in 1993:"

Professor Douglas Massey points out that relatively stable jobs such as in factories, steel mills and auto plants have dissapeared in black communities. These jobs have largely dissapeared for this generation. Blacks cannot move to where decent jobs might be because of their difficulty in entering the housing market. A person working in the service economy, say at Macdonalds, full time at minimum wage, can't stay above the poverty line.

Alex Berteau, a partner in a law firm, says that it's tough for him to talk to young successful whites who say that they have nothing to do with the injustices done to African Americans in the past. Berteau says, no, it's not them, it's their fathers, who profited while paying black people subsistence wages so their children to go to Harvard. This young individual says "Don't lay it on my doorstep" yet he is getting all the fruits of it. Berteau, says that this youngster has a college degree but the black man who slaved so his father could get everything cheap is illiterate and can barely speak English. To get rid of Affirmative Action, is to ignore history, he says.

Maggie Holmes, retired domestic worker, refers to a painting at the Chicago art musem in the mid-80's of Chicago's black progressive mayor Harold Washington in a bra and panties and apparently an exhibit consisting of an American flag on the floor which people were invited to walk on. To judge by her comments, it appears the white population ridiculed the anger of blacks at the first, but raised an uproar at the second. She also says that the American flag is just an old rag that dosen't mean anything to her, because white people burned things and wrapped themselves around that flag when Dr. King was marching.

Mike Wrobleski, former police captain in Chicago is interviewed. He got a lot of viscious harrassment from his fellow officers during the 80's because he would not tolerate racist posters and other expressions, many about Mayor Washington, in police stations under his watch. He got one letter which contained a picture of a naked black man and a white woman with her mouth open that said "You nigger-lover. This is what my wife is doing when I'm not at home." Terkel notes that this lout actually meant to say "your wife" instead of "my wife" and Wrobleski comments that there is probably some deep Freudian stuff in that case, the fear of the alleged sexual prowess of black men on which he based his racism.

Fred Hampton, is only refered to once in this book, in the very last interview. Terkel says in a footnote that in 1990 the Chicago city council voted to have a Fred Hampton day but after that sixteen white alderman objected on the grounds that they thought they had voted to honor Dan Hampton the Chicago Bears football player.

Most of these interviews take place with people from Chicago, Terkel's hometown, which has always been pretty volatie racially. Marquette Park is refered to several times early in the book. This was where Dr. King tried to have a march in 1966 but instead got assaulted with rocks several times by rampaging white mobs, whose hatred terrified him. He said that it had surpassed anything he had seen in the South.

Then there are a few like C.P. Ellis and Ann Atwater from Durham North Carolina. Ellis was a poor white klansman who battled the black activist Atwater in the racial strife of Durham in the 60's. Ellis started to lose his enthusisasm for the KKK when he realized that the big politicians and economic elite of Durham who provided funds and expressions of racial solidarity to him and his chapter of the KKK during the nightime were embarassed to associate with a poor white like him during the daytime. He realized that poor whites had a heck of a lot in common with poor blacks. He became close to Atwater and speaks about her in his interviews (one in 1978, the other in 1989) with great emotion. He became a multi-racial union organizer. C.P. Ellis is an example of what Dr. Kenneth Clark of Brown Vs. Board of education fame refers to, in his interiview, about poor whites trying to get feelings of self-worth in this society by stomping on poor blacks below them in the class system.W

ill Campbell, a White Southern preacher says in his interview regarding the origins of the term "redneck. It was from a Edwin Markham poem which refered to the poor white farmer taking a break from his slavery, putting his hands on his hoe and looking on the ground. All the while the scorching sun beats down on the back of his neck. Thus he gets a redneck. Unfortunately, says the reverand, we've equated that with racism.

Let me give you an idea of the discussion in this powerful and well-written book on the Vietnam war by Prof. Dr. Marilyn Young.

In 1954, the French had to withdrawl and the Genevea accords were signed. This called for Ho Chi Minh and his group to withdrawl to the North of the country and the French puppet Bao Dai's government to be in control of the South. A provisional line separated North and South Vietnam, to be completely eliminated when elections for the reunification of the country took place in July 1956. The Americans then moved from supplying arms to the French to taking over the whole effort to crush independent nationalism in Vietnam.

The U.S., she shows, understood that the Viet Minh would win any free and fair election and that Ho Chi Minh was more of a nationalist than a communist. Therefore, it was necessary to set up a permanent separate nation in South Vietnam, under the dictatorship of Ngo Dinh Diem, who launched a campaign of slaughter and terror against his opponents, leftist or otherwise. In an endnote she quotes Diem's former chief of staff as saying that had the Diem regime confined the police state terror and torture to only communists or communist sympathizers, one could symphathize with them for such persons inherently deserved such treatment. But his terror spread to other political parties, people who simply did not like his government and those resisting extortion by government officials. Despite being constantly slobbered over as a great humanitarian statesman in the U.S. media and among American liberals, conservaties in South Vietnam were beginning to openly oppose his regime, worrying U.S. officials about his regime's stability.

Finally in 1959, Hanoi authorized the Viet Minh in the South to resist in self-defense the terror of Diem's government. A couple thousand North Vietnamese, most of them natives of the South, began infiltrating the country. In 1960 the National Liberation Front (NLF) was formed amongst many South Vietnamese dissidents led by the former Viet Minh ("viet cong" in U.S. propaganda).

Diem's biggest problem from the U.S. perspective was that he had begun negotiations with North Vietnam on the withdrawl of U.S. troops from South Vietnam and agreeing to allow for the NLf to join South Vietnamese policial life and disucss possible reunification of the country in the future. This was a real horror to U.S. officials as comes up many times in the documents the author quotes.

In any case Diem was overthrown and killed on November 1'st 1963 in a U.S. backed coup. The problem was that the U.S. had trouble finding any military officer that was not intent on continuing Diem's efforts to reach agreement with the NLF and North Vietnam. They installed a series of military dicatatorships over the next few years until they finally found one sufficiently pliable represented by Ky and Thieu.

The U.S. extended its bombing to North Vietnam, then launched an all out invasion of South Vietnam, accelerating its program of mass murder. Some of the more interesting documents quoted in this book come from the Rand corporation. The infamous "strategic hamlet" program is examined in the village of Duc Lap in one document. Another notes that villages in militarily contested areas often felt hostility towards both the GVN (South Vietnamese government)and the NLF but hostiliy towards the NLF tended to be based on the U.S.-GVN bombing that its presences in villages caused, excess taxation, and sometimes military defeat. Anger towards the NLF was based more on despair than hatred. On the other hand hositlity towards the government of South Vietnam was based on a "a more basic hostility resulting from GVN aims and behavior..." Another document spoke of increased support for the NLF resulting from the massive defoliation program launched by the U.S., allegedly to deny food sources to the NLF which it did not do but greatly devastated peasant farmers. This exacerbated the feeling that the U.S/ GVN were "at best minimally concerned with the peasant's welfare."

The author quotes the elite political scientist Samuel Huntington who was deeply impressed by the massive refugee exodus to the cities caused by the American terror bombing of the countryside. It was good because it was the only way to deprive the Vietcong of its supporters, the people of rural South Vietnam for the Viet cong was a powerful organization which could not be separated from its "constituency" so long as the constintuency continued to exist.

The author goes on to discuss the domestic aspects of the Vietnam war as well as the mass murder operations conducted in Laos and Cambodia. She notes that the U.S., as in South Vietnam, avoided opportunities to make peace by backing the forming of  a coalition government with the left wing insurtgents there as proposed by the dictator Prince Siahnouk. Siahnouk had been overthrown in early 1970 because he was vehemently opposed to the U.S. bombing his country despite U.S. claims that he supported it. When the U.S. bombing reached its horrific peak in 1973, Cambodia's infrastructure and moderate and progressive  civil society were just about completely destroyed, leaving the harshest and most brutal elements, in this case the Khmer Rouge, previously a very fringe wacko group of the insurgency, to take power.

Thieu's regime fell in 1975. The author notes that in his final pathetic words in power, he attacked Kissinger for allegedly selling out South Vietnam in the January 1973 peace agreement though the author notes that Thieu continued to attack and seize territory held by the NLF, continuing the war as if there had been no peace agreement with U.S. support. The U.S. gave him all the military aid in the world but Thieu was opposed by virtually all sectors of South Vietnamese society and he could arrest and kill tens of thousands of people and steal every election but the fundamental illegitamacy of his regime could not be hid.

An overview of some of the contents found in this book, a collection of writings from The Nation magazine written in the few months after the 9-11 massacres.

William Greider, Bill Moyers and others address corporate knavery since 9-11.

Katha Pollit asks why we have to fund barbaric dictatorships like the one in Saudi Arabia and oppose progressive forces in the ME. She points to the really unbelievably courageous work of the Revolutionary Women of Afghanistan, operating for years within Afghanistan as fierce opponents of both the Taliban and the Northern Alliance. She also staggers humanity by explaining why she would not allow her daughter to fly an American flag out their living room window.

Victor Navasky calls for Ann Coulter to be host of "Politically Incorrect" instead of Bill Maher. Coulter was fired by The National Review Online for saying racist things that not a few readers of that great publication probably believe but don't say so loudly publicly. On the other hand Bill Maher immediately backtracked after his infamous comments after a few advertisers for his show withdrew and he said he didn't mean what he said he loves our military people and so on. At least, he says, Miss Coulter was actually being politically incorrect in contrast to the whimpy centrist liberal Maher.

Chalmers Johnson, the former CIA analyst, has a particularly powerful piece. He quotes the U.S. Space Command's document "Vision for 2020": "the globalization of the world economy will also continue, with a widening between the 'haves' and the have-nots." He quotes the eminent senator from Georgia, the Hon. Zell Miller, as saying on the day after 9/11 that he didn't care if there was "collateral damage," lets bomb the hell out of everybody. He notes that collateral damage is one of those terms that isued to describe our destruction of Iraqi and Serb civillians by our high-flying plains. And that this might have been the term that our ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, might have used while he was helping coordinate the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Central Americans in the 80's while Ambassador to Honduras.

Richard Falk outlines his case for the attack on Afghanistan being a "just war." Numerous letters are printed in response to this including from Howard Zinn. The latter writes about the effects of our bombing: bloody young children staggering accross the Pakistani border, enitre villages and families wiped out, the evil cluster bombs, a red cross warehouse bombed.

Noam Chomsky quotes the New York Times about U.S. pressure on the military oligarchy running Pakistan to close its border to truck convoys carrying food to Afghanistan. He quotes from various aid agencies which condemned the American bombing as exacerbating the humanitarian disaster by blocking the distribution of desperately needed food aid. The 2001 Fall harvest in Afghanistan was 80 percent disrupted. Other contributors point to the sleaziness of the public relations gesture in dropping 37,000 food packets a day on a population where seven million were needing food. He refers to the massive refugee exodus from the American terror bombing of Kandahar and Herat into land-mine infested rural areas. He quotes from Michael Kinsley, Time magazine and other open supporters of the U.S. terrorist war against Nicaragua in the 80's as they openly advocated terrorist methods that would bring "democracy" there i.e. to terrorize the Nicaguan people into voting the Sandanistas out in 1990.

Alexander Cockburn points out that we on the anti-war left support eradicating Bin Ladenism. It's just that the so-called "war on terrorism" is only going to increase it over the long run. He like alot of other of the contributors, argue for non-violent legal means to aprehend the perpetrators of 9-11 such as through the international criminal court, the UN, coordinated international police work and so on.

Robert Fisk has an article from September 1998 about his interviews with Bin Laden. He quotes Bin Laden as calling the Israeli massacre of the refugees at Qana in 1996 "international terrorism" and calling for trials for the perpetrators. "Clinton used almost exactly the same words about bin Laden and his supporters in August [1998]. But the deaf, as usual, were talking to the deaf." Bin Laden lays out in the midst of ranting, in which he curiously accuses the Saudi regime of financing the defunct radical "communist" regime of North Yemen, his view that the slaughter of Iraqis because of the sanctions as a "war against Islam."

Fisk and Michael Massing write about the barbaric Northern Alliance led by the late Ahmad Shah Masood and Abdul Rashid Dostum and how they raped and plundered and bombed Afghanistan 1992-96, making people willing to accept the Taliban takeover.

Christopher Hitchens boldly shows that the Bin Ladenists are not misguided freedom fighters but barbaric terrorists. Of course nobody is actually contesting that notion and...oh why bother. Michael Massing's account of the critique of U.S. foreign policy of Fareed Zakaria and even Falk's deeply flawed arguments are much better ...

This book, inevitably, is becoming a little bit dated as time goes on for none of the articles are after December 2001 but the arguments in it still hold power.

The author, Shirlee Taylor Haizlip, is of mixed race parentage, her father more dark skinned black than her mother. Her mother, the youngest of her family, was abandoned by her brothers and sisters and her father, a mulatto, her mulato mother having died. Most of her surving relatives (those of Mrs. Haizlip's mother) moved away to other places and passed for white. The last child of the family, she was a painful reminder to them of the black experience they inherited. This abandonment happened around 1916. She passed into several gaurdianships and then ended up in the home of a light skinned couple, a dentist and lady who was slowly loosing her sanity. Her female gaurdian spent most of her time covering her furniture with white sheets,pulling down the blinds of the house and running around in rags. Her mother eventually met Julian, a part white and part Indian, a divorcee son of a prominent black minister. They married and Julian Jr. settled in as a pastor to the small black community in the working class town of Ansonia Connecticut.

In the pictures provided in the book, Margaret and her mother look rather Mediteranian. Margaret and Julian their three children, plus some foster children, lived an exceedingly happy middle class lifelife. There were summer homes to vacation, pleasant trips to Baptist national conventions, regular shopping trips, a vibrant social life, guests at home from NAACP leaders to Jackie Robinson. Racial problems were a little part of their life in this community. The children, except for the only sun Julian Jr. nicknamed "Brother," one of the few problems in their lives, were very successful in school,full of extra-curricular activities, camping, clubs, and so on.

Not exactly the life of the average black family in the 1940's. The author would marry a gentleman named Harold Haizlipp, attend Ivy league schools. They were amongst the elite of New York, sitting on a bunch of trustee boards, knowing all the famous intellectuals, and it was in such genteel circles that she and her husband conducted activism against racism. One interesting incident was a party thrown by the Haizlips in apparently the late 60's in New York. Attendees included Betty Shabaz, widow of Malcom X and a daughter of Nelson Rockefeller. A white woman, apparently some sort of civil rights worker, was brought along with one of Shirlee's friends. She apparently was so overcome by the interracial socilization going on, in addition to the nature of the party which called for guests to wear costumes revealing as much skin as possible (inspired by the play "Hairspray). The woman gripped around Harold's Cousin tightly and started screaming that the black males there wished to rape her before she was subdued and taken to a mental hospital.

Harold was commissioner of education in the Virgin Islands from 1971 to 1980. Shirlee had to fret about things like worrying about wearing the same dress as Queen Elizabeth when she met the latter. She became manager of the local CBS affiliate on the island and tried to make its programing reflect the interests of the natives. When she returned to the U.S., she became a director until 1986 at New York Public Television station WNET and had a few unpleasant racial situations there. She moved on to be the director of the National Center for Film and Video preservation at the American film institute and she found quickly found herself out of place in this organization which declared "Birth of a Nation" to be one of America's greatest film treasures. She didn't last long there. She expresses a great deal of disillusionment with race relations in this country.

The author towards the end of the book (set in the early 90's) helps her mother seek out her "white" relatives and there is mostly happy reunions. The interaction with Shirlee's Aunt Grace is particularly interesting. That lady was apparently quite sincere when she said she had no memory of her early life of things that related to the "black" part of her life. She had blocked it all out. Grace also is quoted bring up the issue more than once of her Spanish translator grandaughter going out with Hispanic men. She says "what's wrong with a good white man" and that her grandaughter's boyfriend is "dark--like a black man."

This book, except for the first part which is somewhat stiffly writen-- where the author laboriously describes, her ancestors, their physical features, their houses, personalities and so on--is a first rate piece of writing. The author has lived an exceedingly romantic life, one with lots of family love, friends and activity. ...

This book is the memoir of an ex-slave woman published in 1861. The author is a gifted story-teller and evokes feeling very well. The author was inspired by religous conviction and great personal confidence. This book is too genuine to think that someone else wrote it for her, such as her white editor. It would have turned it into just another political phamphlet from the civil war era if that were the case. She had a great deal of intelligence and obvious natural ability to write despite her lack of formal education.

She goes through her nonage at the mercy of a lecherous master, Dr. Flint, whom she successfully avoids against being raped yet is subjected to constant verbal and sometimes physical abuse. She managed to escape and hide in her Grandmother's house in some sort of extremely small space where she had to remain almost all the time for seven years.

She escapes to the North eventually and joins her two children, products of a relationship with a white man, a future congressman, of her town as she was trying to get away from her master. She falls into the hands of various abolitionst-inclined aristocrats who help protect her, particularly after the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, until one of her white benefactors was able to negotiate with Dr. Flint's son-in-law, Dr. Flint being dead by this time, to "buy" her freedom. Having to have her freedom bought was very distasteful to her for she had long fully reasoned herself a human being and not a cow.

It is good to read books like this that remind you just how horrible slavery was. Hardly a system where happy and content slaves worked for benevolent philospher aristocratic gentleman. It was a system which subjected slaves without protection of the law to the short term profit and personal whims of the white elite. To put it mildly. Blacks were treated worse than animals with all the whipping and constant mental degredation and the breaking up of slave families at a whim. The author asserts after visiting England as a nanny for one of her benefactors and observing the life of some of the dirt poor in rural England that the poorest of them lived better than the most pampered slave in America.

The best part of the book is the last fifth or so of the book where he deals with the fraudulence of democratic party populism. He goes through the list of Clinton's Republican policies. Clinton had us drinking 1942 arsenic in our water until the last days of his presidency. Bush then reversed Clinton's last second order decreasing arsenic (not to take affect until 2004), simply rerverting to levels that we had been drinking for eight years under Clinton. Moore notes that Tom Daschle and sixteen other Democratic senators had blocked efforts to reduce arsenic in October 2000. The same with the four greenhouse gasses whose reductions Clinton ordered at the last moment would not have taken affect until 2010. He notes that the democrats in Congress were actually very receptive to Bush's agenda. For instance the 37 democratic senators who voted for The Bankruptcy reform act making certain that families drowning in medical bills will continue under crushing debt. He notes that Clinton-Gore actually oversaw the lessening of fuel efficiency standards for veichles which had been at their highest during Reagan-Bush Sr. Clinton-Gore oversaw the accelerated drilling for oil and gas on Federal lands at the same level of Reagan-Bush Sr. Pollution, according to the Sierra Club has doubled along the Texas-Mexican border since Nafta was implemented. He notes that Clinton signed off on a bill denying money for abortions in foreign countries. This was the groundwork, he notes, for Bush signing a bill that denied funds to groups that advocated abortion as an alternative.

Moore ridicules liberals who support Clinton who threw poor people out on the street, who expanded the death penalty, who bombed Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Sudan, who allowed only a few conglomerates to own most of the media. He notes that at the end of the Clinton administration there was not a doctor willing to perform an abortion in 86 percent of the counties in the U.S. He says that what Clinton did was simply say that he was fervently devoted to the environment and abortion and his opponents were not. It didn't matter if he actually did anything in support of those things. To his liberal supporters, saying was the same thing as doing. In reality,he could harm abortion rights and pollute the air, yet his image was not hurt.

He suggests that the democrats and Republicans should merge into one party. Then there would be actual differences between our parties (The Republican-democratic party vs. The Greens) "There are about 200 million of us who would like to see a real two-party system (or three-party, or four-party--hey it's a big country), with one party fighting for the right to write off one's backyard tennis court as a business expense and the other fighting for the right to see a doctor if one gets sick."

He voted for Ralph Nader like I did. He notes that Gore would have won had he carried his home state, or Clinton's state Arkansas or the traditionally democratic West Virginia. Or if Bush hadn't stolen Florida, a topic to which he devotes his first chapter.

The funniest part of the book is his dealing with the Stem-cell research issue. It's very funny. Perhaps the most interesting of all the interesting things in this book is his pointing out how the Bush administration goons pardoned the goons from Koch industries of 90 plus counts of pouring 91 metric tons of Benzene, a cancer causing agent, into the air and water and covering it up from federal investigators. He contrasts the media's treatment of this with the hocus pocus of holy horror Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich.

The author discusses the dictatorship in Mexico of Porifiro Diaz (1876-1910). Dissidents were thrown in gulags. The author writes that in the slums of Mexico city, 43 out of every 1000 adults died a year compared to 6 out of a 1,000 in not very healthy London and half the babies did not survive their first year. In the rural areas, wages in 1910 where 35 centavos a day, exactly what they were in 1810. But American business elites were very happy with General Diaz. They could pludner Mexico all they wanted. Andrew Carnegie called him "the Moses and Joshua of his people."

The author goes through the period after the 1910 revolution which saw the U.S. engage in assasination, aggression and ideological warfare to keep the revolutionares from threatening the interests of the American businesses which had made so much loot under Diaz. 1929 saw the creation of what would later become the PRI, a political party to legitimize the dictatorship of the 1910 revolutionaries. That revolution was by that time quite deradicalized and co-opted by the U.S. The most radical revolutionary, Emiliano Zapata, was murdered under president Carranza's orders in 1919, a year before the latter met the same fate. After the presidency of populist Lazaro Cardenas (1934-1940)Mexico's government settled into a state capitalist one-party dictatorship, which controlled some sectors of the economy bbut always allowed foreign participation in those sectors. U.S. investment in the country continually rose as did military aid. The PRI tolerated dissent but always was willing to arrest and "dissapear" such persons if they got too uppity and always could commit fraud if they were about to lose an election. On October 2nd 1968, the Army massacred 337 people as they were about to disperse from a non-violent protest at the Plaza of Three Cultures at the Tlateloclo housing complex.

In the early 80's Mexico, burdened with a huge debt and low world oil prices, went into serious economic decline. Wages went down too and the one bright spot was Mexico's trade surplus with the U.S. as the lowest wages in the hemisphere were paid to the maquiladora workers of the exporting multinational corporations.

Carlos Salinas won the presidential election in 1988 through outright fraud and violence. Salinas engaged in massive privitization policies, earning him much praise from U.S. politicians and business leaders. He crushed strikes at businesses about to be privitized. The creation of NAFTA created unregulated movement of capital. Massive capital flight took place as stronger U.S. multinationals overtook local competitors in the Mexican market and sent their money back to the U.S. In December 1994, Mexico was in serious crises as it had to default on short term bond payments. Mexico was in its most serious crises since the Great Depression and its people suffered more terribly than usual.

He tells stories of what ordinary people throughout Mexico are dealing with and the hell their country has been put through. He looks at people attempting to block Jack Nicklaus's "Golden Bear" company from building a golf course and resort complex in their community and stealing all of their water supply, at people fighting the thuggery of the state oil company, at people fighting the looting of their forests and the destruction of the environment of their communities. He looks at people whose land was expropriated to build tourist hotels, who have launched armed rebellions such as in Gurererro and Chiapas. All of these people have encountered U.S. backed terror and torture in response.

The prose style in this book is somewhat plodding.

According to the author of this book, at least 104 people were still being held in INS custody as of May 2002. Back in November 2001 the total may have been around 2000. They are all of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. They were brought to the attention of the authorities soley because of their ethnicity and then held incommunicado on immigration charges. Reverend Ashcroft had granted powers to the INS to detain immigrants 48 hours without charges. The government has not been able to discover that any of these post-Sept 11 detainees have any connection to terrorism. The author points out that a disproportionate number of cases of the 718 of which anyone has been able to find anything about, have featured much longer detainment than 48 hours before being charged with their immigration infractions. One man was held 118 days.

The author notes in that in four decisions, judges ruled against Patriot act provisions including the effort to close immigrations hearings to the public of detainees of "special interest" and relating to the efforts of the government to block access to the outside world for the detainees and to not release the names and other info about the detainees. It is rather extraordinary, it is noted, for the judiciary to challenge the government in a time of national crises. One judge ruled against the government's use of the material witness statute to imprison witnesses for grand jury testimony. The case of Osama Owadallah was under review in that case. He was repeatedly assaulted, the author writes, by prison gaurds while he was in prison for three weeks.

The author notes some other stories. A Pakistani man was beaten by inmates as prison gaurds stood by after a newspaper article circulated in the prison that he was suspected of terrorism. Another, the plaintiff in Turkmen Vs. Ashcroft, complained of his face being kicked and slammed into walls by prison gaurds, loosening his lower teeth. He was in a great deal of pain but not allowed to see a dentist. A Pakistani man, was detained after a pastor at a local church pointed him out to the FBI and he had only overstayed his visitors visa. He had agreed to leave the U.S. but had to stay at a correctional center while the FBI completely cleared him of links to terrorism. In the meantime he died of a heart attack. An Iranian suffered a stroke and spent three months in solitary confinement but got no treatment. In general these poor immigrants have been heavily shackled and forced to stay in windowless rooms with bright light on 24 hours a day.

The author is particularly concerned about the new crime of "domestic terrorism" delineated in the "Patriot Act." Terrorism is no longer defined just as the use of violence against civillians for political ends. Domestic terrorism is defined as using force or coercion to intimidate the U.S. government. The author is certain that civil disobedience or any sort of confrontational protest will fall under "domestic terrorism. Combined with the enhanced powers of surveilance granted in the Patriot act and Ashcroft's very permissive guidelines issued on May 30 2002 for domestic intelligence, the other worries that Cointelpro-type activities are receiving official sanction. Under Ashcroft's guidelines, the author notes, relatively little restraints are placed on FBI infiltration and disruption of groups whose only crime is opposing the government. The author goes through some cases of such activities already known to be in existence such as the Denver Police department's "spy files" on peaceful organizations and their members.

Of particular interest, is the author noting that Bush (or rather Cheney and the rest of his advisors for Bush doesn't know what he's doing) in November 2001 vetoed the release of records from the Reagan administration that were supposed to have been released on January 20 2001. He signed an executive order essentially overiding the Presidential records act of 1978 that called for the release of records from a presidential administration twelve years after it leaves office. The order gave sitting presidents and former presidents and vice presidents the right to veto the release of past records. Bush's executive order essentiallty overrode the Presidential Records act. The president made a law to replace a law of congress, which is unconstitutional. Such are the notions of accountable constitutional government in the present administration of "conservatives."

If you are a pure-hearted American who cannot comprehend the notion that your leaders might have something other than your best interests at heart as they supposedly strive to protect you from Bin Laden, then this book might be too much for you. But if you are sceptical of the dominant institutions in this country, and are aware of the many abysmal episodes with civil liberties in this country's history, then read this book.

What are the true motives of the gangsters of the Bush administration and their colleagues in congress as described by the learned Marxist-Leninist author? Well, to exploit 9-11 to strengthen the powerful interests they represent. They attempted to get their "stimulas package" i.e. even more tax cuts and tax refunds for the corporate world, through congress. The gave billions to the airlines with no strings attached, airlines which, as he notes had been in financial difficulties before 9-11. The problem with the airlines, Parenti basically says, is that they couldn't compete once the industry was deregulated. They too much competition so they couldn't make any profits from taking a huge slice of the market share, so their friends in D.C. came in to protect them from the invisible hand of the market. Of course helping the tens of thousands of laid off workers would be against free-market principles.

Mr. Parenti says that tax cuts for corporations is really illogical since these scum have been making more money than they ever have been. ....

And of course after 9-11 we heard from the administration's trade representative that we must confront Bin Laden and the other enemies of freedom by passing "fast track" legislation which legalizes the right of the president to sign trade agreements with scant congressional or any other involvement so now we can get more agreements which further the process whereby governments can no longer place hindrances on corporations plundering labor and resources unless in the extremely unlikely event that unelected representatives from the corporate world on secret tribunals declare them to be OK.

He notes that the United states governent is the greatest terrorist in the modern world. Our government has slaugtered millions of poor people lately in Afghanistan and trained death squads and overthrown governments that obstruct transnational corporations from plundering their countries. You know the list. He surveys the quite bad effects of U.S. intervention in Grenada and Panamma. Our government is the leader in pushing on poor countries neoliberal programs from the World bank and IMF which places countries in virtually permanent debt and forces them to privitize all essential services so that you don't get clean water or decent health care if you need it but rather if you can purchase clean water and health care at market price and if it is profitable for the private sector put such things on the market for you.

Our government provides massive aid which props up terrible dictatorships in the Arab/Moslem worlds, dictatorships which stifle civil society and give rise to hopelessness and despair give rise to Bin Laden type groups. He places Afghanistan under the Soviet backed regime as an example of the U.S. working to destroy a government which provided for the needs of its people. He notes that the regime gave free health care, gender equality, free education, land reform and so on to the deeply poor peasant masses and this provided the basis for the U.S. to support the landowning and Islamic oligarchy as represented by the Mujahadeen "freedom fighters"--barbaric killers significantly representing the Northern Alliance--, as early as six months before the Soviets actually invaded. U.S. support for Afghan Islamic reactionaries produced all sorts of results including powerful organizations created by Afghan war vetrans like Bin Landen full of many other war vetrans who have been responsible for many of the more infamous acts of retail terrorism in the past decade. He is right in alot of things on this issue but he seem to want to idealize the Soviet backed regime which on the whole governed in the matter of Saddam Hussein

In this book Dr. West provides an incisive survey of the problems of the African American community and suggests strategies for solving them. It was published in 1994.

One problem is economic. Real wages have declined significantly for the majority in this country since the early 70's. Industrial and manufacturing jobs which once helped the black community have disappeared exacerbating unemployment and underemployment. Declining tax bases and cutbacks in federal services have seen the infrastructure of cities crumble. This has contributed to the breakdown of the black family. It leads to a loss of hope of leading a constructive life and many people adopt a crude form of our country's crude laizze faire ideology. That is to say, they try to get ahead in life by any means possible, maximizing their short term profit and pleasure, no matter what the consequences, no matter what other people get hurt. Dr. West is not a fan of the free market as manifested in the mass media which encourages massive conspicuous consumption and overwhelms one with images of sex and violence, having a negative effect on vulnerable people.

Dr. West argues that a revival of political participation and what others have termed social capital is necessary to create hope in disadvantaged people. Grassroots organizations should be led by democratic, accountable, leaders and educate people on the issues and make them feel that they are capable of changing their lives significantly for the better .

He critiques Malcolm X's version of W.E.B. Dubois's "double consciousness." It was Malcolm, says Dr. West, who was most successful in advancing ideas of black self-worth and self-pride and cracking the dependence of blacks trying to live up to the dominant white perceptions of intelligence, beauty, behavior, etc. and usually failing in their own eyes.

But West is concerned about these negative self-attitudes still persisting. One example he gives is of the Clarence Thomas episode in 91'. Thomas had a dreadfully mediocre career prior to this and supported policies greatly harmful to black people and was obviously chosen by George Bush Sr., despite cynical rhetoric to the contrary, because he was black. Many blacks avoided the grounds on which the congressional black caucus objected to Thomas which was his supreme lack of qualifications. Instead the debate centered on how "black" Thomas might be, helped along by Thomas's own bellowing about his racial authenticity. The Nation of Islam, despite viewing the Republican party as very racist, endorsed Thomas. Anita Hill, a right wing Republican like Thomas, and her dignity were thrown in the garbage. West writes that many blacks seemed not to want to object to a black person for an important position, no matter who, because if they did object on the grounds of his mediocrity, they feared it would reinforce white supremacist beliefs about blacks lacking intelligence.

Another example of blacks reacting not very well to white supremacist beliefs relates to sexuality. A disproportionate number of disadvantaged young black men lacking hope of leading a constructive life, adopt a machismo of sexual prowess and willingness to use violence. Since the myths of black men being inherent sexual studs is so wide-spread, young black men can feel superior to the white race in just this one way by flaunting their sexuality. or so Dr.West seems to say. Black females fall into different but still negative stereotypes.

West argues that only multi-racial, multi-gender and multi-sexual preference organization can lead to substantive black progress. Black nationalism he says can sometimes be very counter-productive. He laments Malcolm X's failure to embrace the hybridization of mass movements. He argues that though black nationalists do a good job in awakening self-pride and racial consciousness in blacks, such things should not always lead to exclusivist nationalism.

He devotes a chapter to analyzing black-Jewish relations and black anti-semitism. He gives factors contributing to the latter inclduing rightward direction of politically active Jews since the late 60's and Black sympathy for Palestinians and strong Jewish suppport of Israel. He notes that some black professionals are upset by the increasing Jewish opposition to affirmative action. Many black professionals in the private sector, he says, would not have been hired had the government not been monitoring company hiring practices. There is no evidence, he says, that whites would not prefer to hire qualified whites over qualified blacks. And support for cutbacks in social services upsets blacks who with few chances to make a decent living in the job market, might sink completely without government support.

Overall, he argues black anti-semitism is a a very irrational reaction to class differences and a rapid climb up on the social ladder for an ethnic group that is now very much part of the white elite, which used to be a "comrade" in the struggles of black Americans. He argues that anti-semtism or homophobia or any other form of bigotry is absolutely unacceptable if Blacks want to get any progress. Espcially bad is when these black ultra-militants sit up and talk about Jewish conspiracies while ignoring economic and other issues that have very serious importance for their audiences. And, of course, he reminds us that anti-semites are far from being only black and many blacks speak out against anti-semitism whatever the media perception to the contrary.

His idea for grassroots black movements that are free of patriarchy, exclusivism, homophobia, bigotry,classim is not completely impossible as it is not impossible for Americans as a whole. He is right that black social progress can best be made in concert with people different races and other backgrounds.