Book Reviews-A Dance With Dragons, Pest Control, Camber of Culdi, Hitler's Black Victims

A Dance With Dragons

by George R.R. Martin

I finished A Dance with Dragons (ADWD).

How to write a review without discussing specific events or naming who's alive? I could write that it was a good story and stop. Many people have not read the series so no spoilers here. However I can say that whoever your favorite character might be, you are more attached to him or her than Martin is.

ADWD is the long awaited fifth book in George R.R. Martin's (GRRM) planned seven book series A Song of Ice And Fire (ASOIAF).  GRRM has stated that often morally good people can make poor leaders while people who are dreadfully wicked can turn out to be excellent executives. ADWD shows that intelligence, competence and morality are not correlated traits. 

GRRM also tweaks our desire for vengeance. ADWD makes an explicit shout out to Titus Andronicus. A few evil characters who earlier committed savage violent acts encounter people who are so demonically depraved, so psychotically sadistic, so incredibly maleficent that you almost find yourself feeling sorry for the lesser baddies and perhaps a little ashamed of your previous bloodthirst. Some of this was hinted at or even detailed in previous books but here GRRM stomps on the fuzz pedal and turns the amp up to eleven. This is ninth circle of hell stuff. Nightmare Fuel. It's as if GRRM is saying "Oh so you want vengeance huh? Let me show you just what that looks like. Still want it tough guy?" It's an echo of Ned Stark's warning that "If you would take a man's life, you owe it to him to look into his eyes and hear his final words. And if you cannot do that, then perhaps the man does not deserve to die".   

ADWD examines if it would be better to have a kindhearted but inept ruler who brought various catastrophes on his/her people or a tyrant who ruthlessly punished dissent and ripped people's tongues out for speaking before s/he spoke to them but otherwise left people alone and created a safe peaceful environment for commerce and daily life.

The royal succession dispute has seemingly been settled-mostly. One legendarily stubborn claimant still battles on without support. Secretly, rival House leaders are still jockeying for power and control. And there are some new Houses on the scene; some old Houses have fallen. Winter has finally arrived. GRRM has expanded the story beyond Westeros and near environs. Magic is more evident. Dead things are walking. Priests have more powers. The dragons and the Stark direwolves are maturing. Both have critical roles to play.

Some characters lose everything in an instant,  just as in real life. The Romanovs didn't foresee the revolution; they didn’t think they’d be executed. How many Africans lived in freedom one day and three months later were sold as chattel in New Orleans? Stuff happens.

ADWD introduces minor characters and gives them POV chapters. We get  new perspectives on things. ADWD strongly implies that some key justifications for Robert's and Ned's rebellion weren't valid. However, ADWD has too many characters. This 1000 page book could use some tighter editing. Some subplots could have been dropped or tightened up IMO. The reader must pay CLOSE attention to details. ADWD gives hints of future events. I will need to re-read this book and some earlier ones.

ADWD ends on a cliffhanger and something of a downer. As usual with GRRM there were times I laughed out loud or cheered and times I wanted to throw the book at the wall. I hope GRRM enjoys life and his well deserved acclaim. I also hope I don't have to wait three years or more for the next installment.

Pest Control

By Bill Fitzhugh

This is in the same genre as work by Tim Dorsey and Carl Hiassen and John Ridley. It’s a slyly ironic book with bursts of chaotic absurdist humor. It’s a very quick and fun read. The protagonist is an exterminator, Bob Dillon (who constantly has to tell people he wasn’t named after Bob Dylan) who lives in Brooklyn with his practical wife, Mary and their cherubic daughter Katy.

Bob used to work for a company but decided that the use of deadly chemicals was not good for him or for the environment. He quit and became an eco-friendly self-employed exterminator. Unfortunately he doesn’t have a lot of success with this concept and his marriage is at risk because of the financial strain. 

Meanwhile the world’s greatest hitman, a fellow named Klaus, has turned down an assignment in NY because it offends his morals. Go figure. The middleman, a Frenchman named Marcel, has to find someone else to do the job and it just so happens that Bob Dillon has taken out a new ad in the very newspaper in which Marcel usually places and looks for coded messages.

When Marcel sees this:

“PROFESSIONAL EXTERMINATOR”  Fifteen years field experience. Gone private with lethal new concept! No pest left alive!!

He assumes that despite what he sees as crudity, this is an ad for a new assassin. A few confused phone calls later and Marcel is convinced that he’s found the right man for the job. And with a few unfortunate coincidences EVERYONE believes Dillon really is a hit man.

Of course all of Marcel’s other usual hires who were eager to do the job that Klaus turned down are rather upset to hear that it’s gone to some unknown. And when people like this get annoyed, other people die. They head to New York to get rid of The Exterminator. The CIA, who heard that Klaus might have a new protégé, sends a team to New York to get The Exterminator. And a notorious drug cartel does some internal housecleaning and you guessed it, blames it on The Exterminator. Hilarity ensues as Bob Dillon, armed with little more than encyclopedic knowledge of insects, tries to keep himself and his family alive. And with all the brouhaha Klaus shows up to see what’s going on.

I liked this book. It walked that fine line between complete slapstick and dry irony. 

Camber of Culdi

by Katherine Kurtz

Although she may not be as well known to some as GRRM, particularly today, Katherine Kurtz is a contemporary of GRRM's and writes the same sort of historically based fantastic fiction that makes ASOIAF so fascinating. Actually her first Deryni book, Deryni Rising came out years before GRRM's A Game of Thrones. Camber of Culdi also features court intrigues, men that are too loyal and honest to understand the danger they're in, grey morality, hidden royal incest, murders that set off wars and new claimants to an uncertain throne.

But aside from a shared deep knowledge of Medieval, Dark Age and Renaissance European cultures Kurtz is a completely different writer than GRRM, in tone, brevity and style. Her world is not as grim, bloody and horrific. The novel Camber of Culdi is an excellent introduction to her work. It is the first book chronologically in her created world but she actually wrote another trilogy earlier than she wrote Camber of Culdi. Most of this story is told through the pov of the wealthy or well-connected; profanity and graphic sex are not part of this book. Camber of Culdi and the two novels that follow it in the trilogy could fit inside A Game of Thones with room left. It's not a long sprawling tale.

In a world and time very similar to early medieval Europe the most powerful country is Gywnedd-a fanciful amalgamation of England, Wales and Brittany. Gywnedd is currently ruled over by a fictional race of humans called Deryni, who though indistinguishable from normal humans and able to reproduce with them, are born with various mental or magical abilities.  The Deryni are very much a minority within Gywnedd, having seized power from the human rulers. In order to keep power their more ruthless or pragmatic leaders severely punish any human rebellion, dissent or even hint of independent action.

The title character, Camber, is a Deryni Lord who is for lack of a better word, something of a liberal. He believes in equality between humans and Deryni. Camber is one of the most powerful Deryni Lords in the country and the previous advisor to two Kings. Camber is not the advisor to the current King, Imre, a vain and arrogant man with an unhealthy interest in his equally vile (though beautiful) sister Ariella. King Imre most definitely does not believe in any sort of racial equality and oppresses humans every chance he gets-high taxes, reduced rights, and retributive executions of innocents for any offenses against Deryni. 

The retired Camber stays on the sidelines and tries to protect humans but after Imre murders one of his family members Camber gets involved with the revolution. He goes on a risky search to find a rumored heir of the previous human dynasty and place him on the throne.

This is a fun book to read if you can still find it. As mentioned, Kurtz sets a swift pace and crams a lot of information into a relatively small story. She knows lot about the medieval Church and its relationship to the secular world. Good stuff.

Hitler's Black Victims

by Clarence Lusane

Some books are exactly what they sound like. This book, by American University Political Science Professor Clarence Lusane, a Detroit native, is one such book. It's often overlooked that Hitler had a long list of people he really didn't like and while Blacks weren't at the tip top of that list they certainly were in the top five.

Dr. Lusane set out to bring some of this forgotten history to light. He researched the black experience in Nazi Germany, via archives, primary source interviews and direct interviews with black concentration camp survivors, as well as with Black POW's.

Many of these people's experiences were obviously pretty bad. But in some cases they weren't. To an extent it's like blind men describing an elephant. One man feels the trunk and declares an elephant is like a snake, another feels the leg and says an elephant is a huge tower, and so on. Although Dr. Lusane has written for the popular audience before I'm not sure this was written in that style. It tends a bit more to the academic. It's rigorously documented. There's a lot here that was new to me , I was ashamed to say. I didn't know that the German genocide of the Herero in what is today Namibia was pretty much a dress rehearsal for the Jewish Holocaust. Some of the colonial administrators or military leaders involved in that genocide of the Herero became quite enthusiastic Nazi theorists and ideologues. 

Dr. Lusane basically does a comparative and internal history of racism against Africans, African-Americans and Afro-Germans within Germany. He examines the love that some African-American intellectuals had for Germany (WEB DuBois) This is dense writing but really fascinating stuff. It's not only worth reading but will be worth several re-readings as the footnotes alone lead one into all kinds of really intriguing side trips. 

The parallel German fascination with black art or sport and the revulsion with blacks made it both easy and surprisingly sometimes difficult for Nazis to put into place all of their racial practices. There were arguments about whether black sterilization was sufficient, what should be done with black citizens and so on. Some black POW's described being treated as no worse by Germans than anyone else while others told of massacres carried out by German soldiers.  Dr. Lusanne also looks at racism within modern Germany and how it still targets Blacks. 

Solid read.

To Thine Own Self Be True

To Thine Own Self Be True

What do those words, spoken by the character Polonius*, from Shakespeare's Hamlet mean to you? They are often interpreted as advising us to live in harmony with our conscience. Although there are some people with warped consciences or who don't have consciences, most of us would probably agree that if someone is trying to live consistently in accordance with his or her internal values they are likely attempting to live a "good" life. 


Or would we agree with this at all? After all there are other ethical, moral and legal considerations that life requires besides living in harmony with our conscience. Sometimes these considerations conflict. Two recent stories piqued my interest on this. 

LEDYARD, N.Y. — Rose Marie Belforti is a 57-year-old cheese maker, the elected town clerk in this sprawling Finger Lakes farming community and a self-described Bible-believing Christian. She believes that God has condemned homosexuality as a sin, so she does not want to sign same-sex marriage licenses; instead, she has arranged for a deputy to issue all marriage licenses by appointment.
But when a lesbian couple who own a farm near here showed up at the town hall last month, the women said they were unwilling to wait.
Now Ms. Belforti is at the heart of an emerging test case, as national advocacy groups look to Ledyard for an answer to how the state balances a religious freedom claim by a local official against a civil rights claim by a same-sex couple.
Ms. Belforti, represented by a Christian legal advocacy group based in Arizona, the Alliance Defense Fund, is arguing that state law requires New York to accommodate her religious beliefs.
“New York law protects my right to hold both my job and my beliefs,” she said in an interview last week, pausing briefly to collect $50 from a resident planning to take 20 loads of refuse to the town dump. “I’m not supposed to have to leave my beliefs at the door at my government job.”
But the couple, Deirdre DiBiaggio and Katie Carmichael of Miami, are arguing that the law requires all clerks in New York to provide marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The couple are being represented by a liberal advocacy organization, People for the American Way, based in Washington. “Gay people have fought so long and hard to get these civil rights,” said Ms. Carmichael, 53, a filmmaker. “To have her basically telling us to get in the back of the line is just not acceptable.”

Story Link

The Lesbian Couple

The Town Clerk

The second story is that because of the new HHS requirement that requires organizations to cover contraceptive services for women employees, some Catholic organizations have been pushing back against this requirement, claiming that the current religious exemption is too narrow. Some charities have said they could wind up reducing headcount or going out of business.

Catholic universities, hospitals, and social-service organizations are fighting new federal health-care rules that would require them to cover contraceptive services for employees, The Wall Street Journal reports.
Catholic leaders say a provision exempting organizations that employ and serve people within their faith is too narrow because larger institutions such as schools and hospitals routinely hire non-Catholics.
Churches have been urging parishioners to contact the Department of Health and Human Services and call for a broader exemption.
Faith groups said the rule would force them to choose between violating their religious beliefs and dropping insurance coverage for workers.
“If you’re required to pay for services that are contrary to our teaching, the only option is to not provide benefits,” said Susan Rauscher, who heads Catholic Charities in Pittsburgh.

Story Link (registration required)

I have my own ideas on both situations but I don't feel like writing a polemic this morning.  I just want to know what you think of each issue. Are you bothered by either or both of them?

QUESTIONS

Are the people or institutions correct to follow their conscience above government demands?

Does the government have the right to require someone to violate deeply held moral or religious beliefs? Where do you draw the line?

Do you respect people who let you know upfront where they stand, even if you disagree with them?

If you don't agree with a law does that give you the right to ignore it?

* Polonius is usually depicted as something of a boorish old fool and gets killed by Hamlet , albeit mistakenly. So it goes.

Music Reviews-Betty Davis and The Holmes Brothers

Betty Davis

Betty Davis is a funk singer, songwriter and musician who received some notoriety in the late sixties and early seventies. For a short time she was Miles Davis' (second) wife and muse. Her roommate tells the story that Betty went backstage to meet Miles, found Miles with another woman and told him 

"I'm Betty Mabry. I'm a musician and I think you might want to get together with me. And when you throw that **** out, I'll be back".

Betty says it didn't happen like that and that Miles made the first move. 
Although Miles and Betty were only married for a year , Miles was heavily influenced both sartorially and musically by his much younger wife. Betty wasn't too much into jazz but was extremely well versed in the new funk and rock that was coming out. Per Miles' autobiography: 
"That year was full of new things. Betty was a big influence on my personal life as well as my musical life... If Betty were singing today she'd be something like Madonna; something like Prince, only as a woman". 
Miles wrote music for his wife, "Mademoiselle Mabry" and put her on the cover of his album Filles de Kilimanjaro. Per Betty, Miles also asked her opinions on his upcoming album Bitches Brew.  

Betty was also good friends with Jimi Hendrix. According to Miles she was a bit too friendly with Jimi. In his autobiography Miles described learning of an affair between Jimi and Betty from Jimi's then girlfriend, who upset, wanted to be intimate with Miles as a form of revenge. Miles declined the offer but divorced Betty soon after. Betty Davis always denied this affair. She said Jimi was just a friend. Later during her career Betty Davis wrote a song titled He Was a Big Freak about a man who liked to be whipped with a turquoise chain. People thought she was talking about Miles but in an interview she once claimed she was talking about Hendrix. How she would know that if they were just friends is something I don't want to investigate further. Davis was really before her time. She had a guttural singing voice that made you believe she was Howling Wolf's daughter by Etta James. Her dress style and sense of abandon, of letting it all out was quite shocking in the early seventies. At the time women singers just didn't sound like that or dress like that-especially black women singers. But Betty Davis never really seemed to care about what other people thought. She wrote most of the music on her albums, a skill which was rare, and brought a fierce, wild feminine energy to rock, something that in my opinion is missing today. She didn't get a lot of airplay; the NAACP came out against her music. Her clothing and freedom was too much for a more straitlaced black audience; being black worked against her for the white audience. Betty Davis was often frustrated by the expectations placed on her as a woman singer. She walked a thin line between vulgarity and open expression.


Davis' music is unabashedly raunchy and wild. "If I'm in luck .."  has got to be one of the nastiest hardcore rock riffs created and that includes anything by Led Zeppelin or Funkadelic. Davis created that perfect combination of funk, soul, blues and rock that her friend and inspiration Jimi Hendrix also perfected. Vocally her nearest comparison today is probably Macy Gray while people like Joi, Janelle Monae, Nicky Minaj and Nikka Costa probably also owe her something. The song Stepping in her I. Miller Shoes was dedicated to her friend, Devon Wilson, a famous supergroupie and Hendrix's favorite girlfriend.

If I'm in Luck I might get picked up     F.U.N.K
70's blues           Lone Ranger   Stepping in her I. Miller Shoes



The Holmes Brothers

(Left to right) Sherman, Wendell and Popsy

The Holmes Brothers could be described as a blues trio but that description is far far too limiting and probably gives you the wrong idea about their music. You're not going to hear cliched slide guitar licks, guitar tones straight out of beer commercials or meandering solos that go on for 8 minutes and end long after the guitarist has run out of ideas.
No the Holmes Brothers can more accurately be described as an American roots band, primarily based in blues but with equal footing in gospel and soul and R&B and an easy familiarity with country music and rock-n-roll. Similar to other musicians I enjoy listening to The Holmes Brothers grew up before a musician could make a living specializing in just one form of music.  They've played with John Lee Hooker, Willie Nelson, Rosanne Cash, The Impressions, and Wild Jimmy Spruill among others.


The band consists of Wendell Holmes (guitar, piano), Sherman Holmes (bass), and Popsy Dixon (drums). All three men sing and take lead on different songs. Their not no secret weapon is their harmonizing. These are some of the most beautiful gospelized masculine male harmonies I've ever ever heard. Although Popsy can still employ a beautiful falsetto to hit the high notes, generally Wendell and Sherman switch back and forth between soulful tenor and baritone voices. 

This is really good stuff and has won the admiration of younger musicians such as Ben Harper and Joan Osbourne. If you ever have a chance to see them live, please take it. They occasionally use a second guitarist or organist but they don't really need them. Wendell Holmes has the ability to play all the rhythm parts by himself and can drive a band so hard you won't realize there's not another chordal instrument. They're also pretty good arrangers as well. Their version of I Want You to Want Me is sublime and miles apart from Cheap Trick's original. (I'm not saying the original was bad either but the song's subtext differs greatly because of the change in the singer's age and experience). If you don't know much about gospel but don't want to hear a choir, The Holmes Brothers could be a good place to start. Or if you're curious about country music but wouldn't be caught dead listening to Lady Antebellum, again The Holmes Brothers might satisfy that curiosity.


I Want You to Want Me   Everything is Free  Don't Spare your Sword  Amazing Grace

You won't be living here anymore

A State Called Palestine

The Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, will submit a bid for Palestinian statehood to the UN Security Council this week. The US will veto this application. The US has been working diplomatically to prevent Abbas' move. The US claims that "unilateral" actions are unhelpful though somehow it never seems to get too upset about unilateral Israeli actions. Abbas has a fallback option of submitting an application for UN observer membership (similar to the Vatican) to the UN General Assembly. This can't be vetoed. Either way, a Palestinian state would have greater access to international treaties, organizations and courts. This worries Israel. The US and its allies have tried to persuade some UN states to vote against the application, though it is conceded that a General Assembly vote offers the Palestinians a better chance of success.

In either case, the Palestinians do not have the military strength to evict the Israeli Army and Israeli settlers from a Palestinian state. The Palestinians lack the latest and greatest in land mines, fuel air bombs, automatic shotguns, cluster bombs, small arms, helicopter gunships, jet fighters, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery, tear gas, bulldozers, tanks, mortars, depleted uranium munitions, unmanned drones, motion detectors, sniper rifles and other weapons which Israel either lovingly obtains from the US or produces on its own.

On cue, several US elected representatives or Presidential candidates have started to agitate to cut off aid to any Palestinian state and/or to the UN. As some Western commentators or politicians have cynically pointed out, any declaration of statehood-whether it is a formal UN Security Council resolution or the lesser General Assembly version will not change anything for the Palestinians. Israel is not ending the occupation so why bother going thru with it?

Give Peace a Chance

One could just as easily ask the people who say this, if you aren't worried about an independent Palestine, why are you so desperately trying to prevent Abbas from making good his promise to submit the application?

The answer is pride and arrogance on the one hand, desperation on the other. The US doesn't wish to be embarrassed by vetoing the Palestinian drive for independence at the same time it is mouthing pieties about the Arab Spring. It just wants the Palestinians to bleed peacefully and hopefully fade away into irrelevance. Israel doesn't want to admit to what exactly it's been doing in the occupied territories-which is why the state and its supporters diligently work to prevent any information from getting out. Apparently, the Palestinian Authority has finally realized that Israel has absolutely no intention of ending the military occupation. NONE. As the Wikileaks documents made clear not only does Israel not wish to end the occupation, its concept of a Palestinian state is at most a "state" which cedes control over its airspace, radio frequencies, immigration policies, boundaries and water rights to Israel, is disarmed, and allows Israeli troops to enter at any time to arrest or kill "terrorists"-in other words, no state at all. 


When you are dealing with someone who is so confident in their total control and superiority over you that they see no need to even throw you a face-saving crumb, at some point you will do something, ANYTHING, to make the point that you're here, you matter, you're human and you intend to resist. The negotiations have dragged on, halted, restarted and are currently stopped. But one thing that has been a constant in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is the establishment of new Israeli settlements and the growth of existing ones. There are over 500,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, roughly triple the number that was there when the "peace process" started.

Israelis "negotiating" with a Palestinian woman.

It is difficult to overstate how humiliating this is to the Palestinians and how corrosive it is to negotiation. If we intend to share a pizza and I continuously take more slices from your portion while mumbling through mouthfuls that "We need to continue the negotiations", eventually you will stop the "negotiations". You will attempt to either physically prevent me from eating the rest of your food or find someone who can. Otherwise there will be nothing left to share. Actions speak louder than words.

The US is the only state which could make Israel do something it doesn't want to do, which is why some Palestinians were actually happy to see President Obama elected. They believed that perhaps there was finally a US President who could be a fair broker. These people soon learned that that wasn't the case.

• The settlements are illegal under both the Geneva Conventions and previous UN resolutions. The Palestinians sought a new UN Security resolution stating this. The US vetoed it.
• When President Obama said that the settlements needed to stop, Prime Minister Netanyahu gave him the finger and said settlements would continue. President Obama backed down.
• When Vice-President Biden visited Israel the Israelis took the opportunity to announce new settlements. President Obama backed down. 
• When President Obama mentioned that the 1967 border needed to be the basis of negotiations, Prime Minister Netanyahu threw a temper tantrum and stated that there would be no going back to 1967 lines under any circumstances. Just so no one would misunderstand he publicly lectured President Obama on this and proceeded to share his opinion with the US Congress. President Obama backed down.

A blind man can see that here the tail is wagging the dog. As even pro-Israel NYT columnist Thomas Friedman belatedly and ruefully admits, there is a very strong US pro-Israel lobby that plays hardball against anyone who doesn't obsequiously prostrate themselves before the throne of reactionary Israeli stances. As he puts it "..This has also left the U.S. government fed up with Israel’s leadership but a hostage to its ineptitude, because the powerful pro-Israel lobby in an election season can force the administration to defend Israel at the U.N."

Obama and Abbas will meet today. The US wants Abbas to back down for some vague promise to restart negotiations. He may well do that. He doesn't strike me as the bravest man. 
But as one man once said "There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair." We will see if Abbas is ready to stand up and be counted. Ironically Hamas and some other Palestinian activists and intellectuals oppose Abbas' gambit, decrying it as futile and as ceding rights to land inside pre-1967 Israel. In this view Abbas is implicitly (and perhaps explicitly?) recognizing Jewish hegemony in Israel. Politically Abbas is under pressure to show Hamas and the Palestinian people that he can actually win something.

I think that the settlements are so thoroughly embedded in the West Bank that the Palestinians would be smarter to agitate for equal rights in a unitary state-a la South Africa. If Apartheid South Africa can change then so can Israel. I don't think a West Bank state is viable.

A brave Israeli soldier defends himself against terrorists

But then again I don't have to worry about not being allowed to drive on a road in my own neighborhood. I'm not surrounded by military checkpoints and humiliated for fun by bored soldiers. I'm not being used as a test subject for new crowd control technologies. There are no crazed armed-to-the-teeth settlers defacing my place of worship, shooting my children, or tearing down my olive trees out of pure malice. I haven't gone to a demonstration and been shot at with live ammo. I haven't had my legs broken for throwing rocks. I haven't visited a theater and had it raided by the Israeli Army. I don't have execution squads looking for my brother and killing my father by "mistake". So it's easy to pontificate from over here what the Palestinians should do. Like anyone else they're probably trying to do the best they can.

Questions
Will Abbas defy the US and submit a UN application? 
If he does this what will this mean for the Palestinians?
Is a US veto the right move?

Book Reviews-Mob Killer, The Store, The Devil You Know, Lion's Blood

Mob Killer

by Anthony DeStefano

Charles Carneglia, who is imprisoned for life, was a killer for the Gambino Crime Family, most specifically the Gotti faction. He was directly involved in at least five murders committed under the Family aegis. He was well known throughout the NY underworld for his "enhanced interrogation" skills and for making bodies disappear.

Although I'm not sure it was the author's intent, he simultaneously strips off any glamour from the criminal lifestyle and almost makes you feel sorry for Carneglia, who despite spending his entire adult life toiling away in the NY underworld, never progresses financially. He lacks wealth and respect. No yachts, fat bankrolls, long cigars or harem of busty blondes for Carneglia. 

A delusion persists among some Mob enthusiasts as well as some deluded Mafia members and associates that the Mafia is somehow different than the so-called "street" gangs –more majestic in its goals, possessed of a sort of Dark Side of the Force grandeur that we reluctantly recognize even as we condemn it.

Bullhockey.

If Carneglia resembled any fictional gangster it wasn't Michael Corleone so much as it was O-Dog. The hot-headed Carneglia committed three murders during unauthorized street brawls or armed robberies. When he wasn't murdering people or disposing of bodies for other gangsters, the subliterate Carneglia was usually drunk. He would boast about killings or crimes he had committed. He was routinely watched and monitored by worried Family associates, who had standing orders to make sure the crazed thug didn't get into a fight and kill someone important, talk too much, or implicate anyone higher up in the Family hierarchy. 

This book destroys the myth that the Mob doesn't kill police officers or other law enforcement officials. Carneglia murdered Albert Gelb, a NY court officer, who saw Carneglia carrying guns and attempted to arrest him. 

Carneglia could not earn or save money. Outside of occasional involvement in drug rackets and extortion of adult video stores/dance clubs he didn't make much money for himself or others. He was despised and yet feared by other Family members wary of his quick temper and skill with a knife. 

Carneglia gradually fell out of favor with Family leaders, who gave him less work over the years. His financial desperation led him to riskier crimes (such as armored car robbery) and involved him with numerous people who could (and ultimately did) testify to his involvement in various acts of mayhem. This book shows that being a criminal is stupid.  Many criminals described were killed or locked away for decades. If you are bound and determined to be a criminal, try to commit illegal acts by yourself or with only one other person. Committing murder in front of witnesses is bound to come back on you and not in a good way. And keep your mouth shut. When five different people sit in court and tell how the jury they saw you kill someone or that you told them how you killed people, you really only have yourself to blame.

Carneglia was no Mafia mastermind. He was just a murderous guy with a bad temper. Mob Killer also examined the life of John Gotti Jr. who triumphantly used a defense (I quit the Mafia) that Carneglia was unable to utilize successfully. There is a question that the book elides but is worth discussing. Many people who testified against Carneglia and received light sentences and/or placement in the Witness Protection Program were either wealthier criminals than he was or more disturbingly had murdered just as many or more people. It doesn't seem right that a killer who looks weird or lacks money (Carneglia was guilty on both counts) gets the book thrown at him while a wealthier or better looking thug (John Gotti Jr.?) manages to elude justice. But that's the world we live in. So it goes.

  

The Store

By Bentley Little

Like fellow horror authors Stephen King and Richard Laymon, Bentley Little is able to find and depict horror in everyday events. He also throws in some satirical jabs at some American ideals or institutions.

The Store attacks the growing ubiquity of the box store (Target or ESPECIALLY Wal-Mart) as an evil thing sucking the life out of local commerce. That is often how those stores are described by local competitors, union or environmental activists and municipal officials. 

In this book Little asks you to imagine that all those things are true, not just in a financial or moral sense but in a literal supernatural sense. Bill Davis is a local Arizona manager who signs on to join The Store as a good career move. Davis and his wife are social climbing materialists. And he's raising his daughters to be the same way.  Davis finds that The Store's leadership has rather extreme and even immoral ideas about getting low prices, how to defeat the competition and what an employee's loyalty to The Store requires.

The more he learns about The Store, the more Davis feels trapped. He tries and fails to quit and then also tries and fails to prevent his teenage daughters from working at The Store. Davis discovers that corruption pays well but the cost is more than he or his family can afford. Bill Davis is not a typical hero and makes plenty of mistakes. Even after some of the more serious ones though Bill is still in there plugging away, trying to find a solution to the mess he's in. 

Note, somewhat unlike King but definitely like Laymon, Little has a penchant for using kinky sex as a method of shocking and disturbing the reader. If this bothers you (he's nowhere near as explicit as Laymon though) be forewarned. If you don't like Wal-Mart, aren't overly fond of yuppies and like to see just how far someone can push a theme this could be the book for you.

The Devil You Know

By Mike Carey 

Recently there has been an explosion of horror/fantasy/mystery novels set in the UK, primarily in London. Neil Gaiman is probably the most successful author to work this genre but there are several others who do so. Mike Carey is a prime example. The Devil You Know was his debut novel and was a worthwhile entry into this field. 

This book asks us to imagine that in our world’s very near future things like zombies, ghosts, werewolves and demons either suddenly become real or are discovered to have been real all along. After a few religious controversies about the end of the world and so forth and so on, most people settle down to accept these things as real, somewhat normal and just part of life in the new millennium. 

One group of people who have known all along that there are things that go bump in the night are the real psychics and mediums in the world. Felix Castor is such a man. He’s been able to perceive things from the Other Side since he was a boy. As a man he makes a living as an exorcist. He uses music (like Tolkien’s writings, in this story songs have power) to place spirits at rest or eject more maleficent spirits from people they’re possessing. 

But there have been a few problems with his work of late. Castor tried to exorcise the devil Asmodeus from his friend Rafi and found that instead of ejecting the devilish presence he actually bound it with Rafi permanently. And Asmodeus, although trapped in human form and locked away in an insane asylum has some very unpleasant plans for Earth in general and Castor in particular. Depressed by his failure, Castor intends to get out of the exorcism business for good right after he solves a simple case of a museum haunting. 

Obviously this “simple case” turns out to be anything but and Castor ends up fighting for his life and soul from various baddies (werewolves, succubi, gangsters, etc.) who would like to take one or both of them from him. This was a fun book, probably a little longer than it needed to be. It’s very descriptive of London and surrounding areas and can make the reader feel as if he or she is right there. This book has a sizable amount of sardonic British humor. It combines the detective novel, light fantasy, adventure and a touch of horror for a solid read.

Lion’s Blood

By Steven Barnes

(Disclosure-Barnes is a huge influence on my writing style and world view. I used to post on his blog quite a bit and listen to his podcasts frequently.)

You should read this book. That’s probably the most succinct and honest thing I can say about this book. Barnes has written a LOT, on his own, with his wife, the author Tananarive Due, and with the authors Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven among others. Lion’s Blood is probably the best Barnes’ story I’ve read and that’s saying something. It ties together a number of themes and interests that are seen in many of Barnes’ other works-including but not limited to why and how our world came to be, martial arts, love between men and women, and the ultimate shared humanity (for good or bad) among all cultures.

Barnes shows his skills by using the most unlikely of story settings to display these themes. For you see Lion’s Blood is a story about slavery in the New World. It is an incredibly brutal story about slavery in the New World-one complete with all the horrors that institution entailed-the ripping apart of families, the rape of women, the breaking of human beings into little more than farm animals, the stripping away of pride, language, culture and religion and the replacement of those things with false mental images designed to produce abasement, racial self-hatred, and depression for centuries after the initial enslavement.

The twist however is that Lion’s Blood is an alternate history novel. In this timeline, Socrates did not accept his death sentence but fled to Egypt. Later Egypt and Carthage defeat Rome. Bilal becomes more important in Islam. These and other events have the impact of slowing down European development and speeding up the development of Egypt, Ethiopia and West Africa.

As a result one April morning in 1863, Aidan O’Dere, an eleven year old Irish boy has his village raided by Viking slave traders, The Vikings are armed with guns, and swiftly and easily kill the male warriors who try to defend the village, as the Irish only have spears and halberds. One of the men killed is Aidan’s father, who dies before his eyes. The Vikings sell their Irish captives to African slavers. Aidan, his mother, sister and several other Irish are transported across the Atlantic Ocean to the nation we know as America but in this timeline is known as Bilalistan and is divided among various feuding African nations, as well as the Aztecs, Chinese, Vikings, and First Nations. 

Aidan is sold to a powerful African noble, Wakil Abu Ali. Ali, despite having a reputation of being marginally kinder to his slaves than most owners, finds white inferiority self-evident and very much believes in and accepts the institution of slavery. Wakil Abu Ali has a son, Kai, who is about Aidan’s age. The two will become rivals, and enemies and perhaps friends-to the extent that a slave can be a friend with someone who owns him. But Aidan has no intention of remaining a slave. War is in the air. Aidan swears to find his missing sister or die trying. It will take a seven nation army to stop him. And Kai has his own moral, physical and spiritual challenges to deal with... 

Again, I can’t think of anything else to say here than please read this book. It is imo the best book Barnes has ever written and by far the best of those reviewed here today. Check it out.

Racial Profiling on Airplanes-Detroit Incident

It's never a good thing to be accused of or questioned about something that you had nothing to do with. When the people doing the accusing or questioning have the full might of the US Federal Government behind them, it's even worse. And it's really bad when the primary reason for the accusation or questioning is not something that you did, it's how you look. I've been through some minor instances of this a few times but never anything like what recently happened to Shoshana Hebshi, a Toledo woman of Jewish-Arabic heritage.

On September 11, 2011, there was an incident at Detroit Metro Airport that made national news. Reportedly a few dark-complected men were allegedly "acting suspiciously" during a Denver to Detroit Frontier Airlines flight.  The story was that they were in the bathroom together or one was in the bathroom for too long. F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and escorted the airliner to its suburban Detroit destination.

Law enforcement personnel and bomb squad specialists surrounded the plane. Armed police stormed the plane yelling at everyone to put their heads down and their hands on the seats in front of them.

(AP) -- An Ohio woman who was one of three people taken off an airplane at Detroit's airport and questioned on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks says she was shocked when armed officers stopped at her row and ordered her off.

Shoshana Hebshi, 35, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Tuesday that she believes she was targeted because of her Middle Eastern appearance. Hebshi, who describes herself as half-Arabic, half-Jewish with a dark complexion, said she endured nearly four hours in police custody that included being forced off an airplane in handcuffs, strip-searched and interrogated.

NEWS LINK

Please read Shoshana's detailed blow-by-blow account of what happened here. It's moving stuff.

Things like this make me very angry because in my humble opinion it shows that America has succumbed to its fears. We're losing the sense that the police/government should have limits on their actions. We have implemented a sort of deliberate overreaction which is more about flaunting the power of the state over the individual than it is about stopping any terrorist attack.

I hope that the legal experts who read and/or author this blog will chime in but to this simple guy from Detroit, it seems that something has gone drastically wrong with this society when the mere whisper of suspicion can cause F-16 FIGHTER JETS to scramble, an armed team to enter a plane and an American citizen to be detained for four hours without arrest or warrant, handcuffed and STRIP-SEARCHED.

I do not think that the so-called War on Terror and the US Constitution are compatible. I am worried that if forced to choose, too many of my fellow citizens and their elected representatives will choose (have chosen?) the War on Terror. This means increasing numbers of "exceptions" to the Bill of Rights, increased militarization of the Police and politicization of the Armed Forces as their roles and duties merge, and of course ongoing "intelligence" gathering on American citizens-what websites you read, who you give political support to, what books you buy, where you travel, who your friends are, who you talk to and so on. And why would you oppose any of this? You don't want the terrorists to win do you? Do you?

For what's it worth neither Shoshana Hebshi nor the South Asian men were charged with any crime and nothing of danger was found on the plane. Evidently the dudes weren't in the bathroom at the same time either. No new members were inducted into the "mile high club" (same sex division)

QUESTIONS
1) Did anyone do anything wrong here or are these just the times we live in?
2) Would Hebshi have been within her rights to refuse to answer any questions w/o an attorney present? What would you have done?
3) If you see a group of South Asian/Middle Eastern people sitting together on an airplane do you get nervous ?(Don't answer if you're Juan Williams-got your response already)
4) Should Hebshi sue? If so whom?