terrorism

Gladdy’s Wake

mandy — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 08:00:00 +0000

It took me a while to really sink my teeth into Gladdy’s Wake. The book weaves in and out of three generations, each tying together through family, hints of religion, and the story of Nawal Habib, a devout Muslim. Nawal (once Janie Kelly) is suspected of terrorism, an act that reunites her with her estranged brother, Frank (now a priest) and hospitalized father, Daniel (a once devout Catholic); both of whom she left to eventually reinvent herself as Nawal Habib. The story runs through Nawal’s family tragedy, her rebellion, the birth of her son, and eventual religious transformation, all the while introducing the reader to her grandfather, James Kelly, a womanizing Irish immigrant interested in fast cash with no real ethical principles, lest it regard his passion: Gladdy Sage.

Though each story is captivating, the book is fractured and difficult to engage in. It seemed that each time I fell into the story, the author interfered with an abrupt switch from one narrator to the next. It was not until the near end of the novel that Anderson’s transitions became fluid and absorbing, the way a book should really grab your attention and not let go.

Nevertheless, the story is a unique twist on the post-9/11 novel and introduces the reader to the challenges of belief systems and the interconnectedness of the human race through the passion of moral conviction. While the protagonists devote their lives to different ideologies, from Islam to Catholicism, atheism and the idolization of romantic love, each struggle with the reality of their idols and the conflicts that exist within themselves and their systems of belief. In this way, Gladdy’s Wake takes a critical look into how we follow faith and why we accepts conceptions of the “moral life” that contradict our character.

Nawal struggles with jihad and the role of women in Islam; Frank with the Catholic vilification of his hidden sexual orientation; Michael Kaminsky (Gladdy’s object of affection and James Kelly’s match) struggles with his Jewish heritage in the Communist revolution; and James Kelly with the real Gladdy Sage – an alcoholic escapist, devoted to Michael Kaminsky and the drink. None of the characters in Anderson’s novel are able to see their deities for what they are. Each blinds himself or herself, excusing as a way of maintaining the pedestal upon which they have placed their flawed idea of morality.

In turn, the story employs a seemingly fractured start to reveal the connection between the disconnected by relating the characters on a moral level. In this way, the author recovers her initial shortcomings. Though this lends the question, what makes a book? Its ability to capture its audience upfront, or to engage its reader with a critical approach to a heavy issue?

Written by: Ani Colekessian, April 22nd 2011

Muzzling a Movement: The Effects of Anti-Terrorism Law, Money, and Politics on Animal Activism

mandy — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:00:00 +0000

By Dara Lovitz

Lantern Books

There isn’t another contemporary nonviolent activist movement that is so routinely dismissed as too radical, mocked as too extreme, and so actively condemned and persecuted across the political spectrum as the animal rights movement. If you believe the media bias when reading reports about animal liberation, “victims” are often corporations and research facilities that abuse and slaughter animals, and the “terrorists” are those seeking a peaceful end to our destructive lifestyles and appetites. Those one-sided attitudes are even more prominent within the legal system, which punishes so-called ecoterrorists for thought crimes without much regard for the First Amendment.

When Dara Lovitz set out to write Muzzling A Movement, she had no idea just how thwarted her own efforts would be. Seeking to interview convicted animal rights activists in federal prison, the United States Department of Justice forbade her to conduct interviews with inmates. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, her work—research and interviews with activists convicted under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA; previously known by the less sensationalist named, Animal Enterprise Protection Act, or AEPA)—could and would facilitate criminal activity. A book project about animal rights activism became one about freedom of speech and the ways animal rights activists and their allies are often silenced, even before they speak.

A lawyer with years of experience and a landmark animal rights trial under her belt, Lovitz writes with authority and candor about the history of anti-terrorism laws and the ways international animal rights coalitions have been especially stifled in the United States since 9/11. Muzzling A Movement offers an overview of legal animal persecution and how modern so-called humane slaughter laws fail to protect ninety-eight percent of slaughtered animals—namely, birds and fish. Lovitz delves deeply into both legal and activist history, and readers emerge with a newfound understanding of just how harmful the “green scare” has been to the efforts of non-violent animal rights activists and supporters.

Although there is a long history of animal advocacy around the globe, Lovitz cites 1977 as the year it became widely publicized in the U.S. following the release of several laboratory animals. In the years that followed, animal liberation activities took place across the country; from releases at university laboratories to mink farm liberations, both connected to and unaffiliated with the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), animal rights activists began a series of direct actions that gained widespread attention.

Much of the book centers on one case and several key laws, though this is not without warrant given the legal precedence and the (limited) publicity that has been doled out. In November 1999, a group of U.K.-based activists formed a coalition with the goal of closing down Huntingdon Life Sciences, Europe’s largest contract animal testing lab, where an estimated 500 animals died every day at the hands of HLS lab workers. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC, spread to a number of countries that outsourced to HLS. Within several years, seven U.S. activists—later known as the SHAC7—were arrested after an aggressive FBI investigation. Six of the original seven were later prosecuted and sentenced to prison time, though their efforts were not in vain; the New York Stock Exchange refused to list HLS on the market in 2004, which the vivisection industry attributed to SHAC’s activism. As of this writing, several of the original SHAC7 remain behind bars.

Despite the book’s small size, Lovitz packs an enormous amount of information onto its pages. I have yet to read another such thorough history of animal rights protection law as it relates to direct action, activism, and government oppression.

Written by: Brittany Shoot, September 7th 2010

Prophecy (6/6/2010)

admin — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

East Fourth Street Theater

New York, New York

Forty years ago, Edwin Starr’s “War” was a Billboard Top 100 hit, an explicit denunciation of armed conflict. “War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing,” he trilled. Karen Malpede’s Prophecy takes this sentiment as her starting point. Her latest play, an ambitious, layered look at the damage wrought by centuries of strife on the battlefield—and in the personal relationships that ensue once military action is over—is bold and dramatic. It’s also shrill.

Numerous stories unfold simultaneously. Jeremy Thrasher (Brendan Donaldson), recently back from fighting in Iraq, is studying acting at a well-respected New York conservatory. His teacher is former Broadway actor Sarah Golden (Kathleen Chalfant). A monologue Golden instructs Thrasher to deliver—the Tiresias speech from Sophocles’ Antigone unwittingly sends him into a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder-induced rage. Golden is shocked by the violence of his in-class outburst, and in short order not only has to help him deal with the trauma he has experienced, but also has to re-examine her own past, including a volatile relationship with Lucas Brightman, a former student who fought in Vietnam and later died. Golden and Brightman had been lovers and Thrasher’s struggles bring Golden face-to-face with a host of complicated recollections and emotions from the early 1970s.

At the same time, Golden and her husband of many decades, Alan (George Bartenieff), are having difficulties. As the director of a refugee aid organization, Alan is often busy “saving the world,” making Sarah feel as if her work as a teacher is frivolous. Also distressing, many years back Alan had an affair with his assistant, Hala (Najla Said). But it was not just lust that propelled Alan into bed with Hala. A Jew whose father saved hundreds from Hitler’s ovens, Alan felt a tremendous need to propagate, to do his bit to replace those lost to the Fuhrer’s genocide. Sadly, Alan and Sarah cannot reproduce; Sarah became infertile following an illegal abortion performed years before, prior to Roe v. Wade. After taking up with Hala, Alan’s dream was realized—after one miscarriage, Hala carried to term and delivered a daughter, Mariam, who she reared in Lebanon.

Out of sight is apparently out of mind and Sarah and Alan rarely talk about either Hala or the child anymore. In fact, Alan doesn’t meet Mariam (Najla Said) until years later when, as an adult, she lands on his doorstep and threatens to blow him to smithereens with a bomb she says is hidden in her purse.

And that’s not all: Turns out Sarah’s boss, Dean Charles Muffler, [Peter Francis James] was Lucas Brightman’s commanding officer in Vietnam and his possible role in Brightman’s death lurks over the two-act production. What’s more, Thrasher’s PTSD triggers long-buried feelings in Muffler and he is once again tormented by memories of serving in the country.

These themes give Prophecy incredible, palpable intensity. Despite this, Prophecy weaves a cloth of far too many threads. The similarities between U.S. involvement in Vietnam and Iraq are noteworthy, but on top of themes including marital fidelity, the desire to reproduce, the meaning of friendship, the Holocaust, successful mentoring, how best to assist refugees, the threat of terrorism, and the lasting impact of war on both those who fight and those who are fought against, it’s too much.

Still, Prophecy delivers an urgent message. Like Edwin Starr’s “War,” it reminds us that nothing good comes from military combat. “They say we must fight to keep our freedom,” Starr sang. “But Lord knows there’s got to be a better way.”

Indeed.

Written by: Eleanor J. Bader, June 11th 2010

Micmacs

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Sony Pictures Classics

After running through a gauntlet of elevators and security guards at the Sony Tower in midtown Manhattan, I entered a small screening room to see the French film Micmacs. Micmacs follows a group of ragtag junkyard denizens as they attempt to help a newcomer in their midst get revenge.

The story opens with Bazil (Dany Boon) receiving word that his father has died after stepping on a landmine in the Moroccan desert. Bazil is effectively orphaned, as his frail mother winds up institutionalized. Several decades later, Bazil is working his shift at the local video store when a random act of violence gets him a bullet in the head.

Bazil returns home from the hospital—bullet in skull—only to find out that he has lost his housing and his job. Suddenly homeless, Bazil scrapes by as a street performer. He crosses paths with Slammer (Jean-Pierre Marielle), a life-long criminal who was pardoned after the guillotine failed to take his head off. Slammer takes Bazil to the junkyard run by Mama Chow (Yolande Moreau). Bazil becomes part of a group that includes, amongst others, Remington (Omar Sy), a Congolese ethnographer; Buster (Dominique Pinion), a man desperate to make it into the record books; and Elastic Girl (Julie Ferrier), a contortionist with more than a friendly interest in Bazil.

Shortly after his “adoption,” Bazil happens across two gigantic buildings that bear the logos of the weapons that destroyed his life. Vowing to get even, Bazil and his new friends work to deceive two unscrupulous arms dealers (Nicolas Marie and Andre Dussolier).

While I watched Micmacs, I couldn’t help but compare it to an earlier Jeunet film, Oscar-nominated Amelie. Both films have a zany charm, presenting gentle dreamers given to surrealistic fantasy sequences. Bazil and Amelie lost parents at tragically young ages, like old movies, distract themselves with silly questions, and anxiously avoid romantic attachments. The plots of both films are driven by coincidences and fortuitous events, have quirky characters who achieve their ends by (repeatedly) breaking into other people’s homes, and present comical sex scenes. In fact, three of Micmacs' cast members also appeared in Amelie.

Unfortunately, Micmacs doesn’t work as well as Amelie did, which I chalk up to an inappropriate tone. While Amelie was basically a romance, Micmacs touches upon corporate greed, international arms dealing, terrorism, and even genocide. To make matters worse, the arms dealers come off like caricatures, despite Jeunet’s efforts. A much darker tenor would have been more suitable for this film.

Micmacs was funny, but not hilariously so. The word that kept coming to mind during the screening was “cute,” and I found myself fidgeting despite the 104-minute run time. I anticipate that Micmacs will have a respectable run in certain American theaters; however, I would suggest that anyone interested in this film wait for the DVD.

Written by: Ebony Edwards-Ellis, May 21st 2010

31 Hours

admin — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:02:00 +0000

By Masha Hamilton

Unbridled Books

Following the event, I promised myself I would never read "a 9/11 book," fiction or not. Having admitted that, I can't explain what exactly led me to almost eagerly pick up John Updike's Terrorist in the year it was published, save for the vague hope that this was a writer who could help make some sense out of a senseless situation. As long as I was breaking my vow, lifting the corner of Pandora's box long enough to peak in, I wanted assurance the hands of the author were skilled, strong hands - hands experienced enough to explain the unexplainable.

Ironically, it turned out Terrorist was abysmal, almost cartoonish in its depiction of the "kind of" person who willingly sacrifices his own life in an attempt to advance the cause of Muslim extremism. Instead of a moment of enlightenment, I received a disappointment so great it achieved the same effect I'd originally hoped for, failing to come anywhere near invoking the same degree of terror as 9/11 itself.

Having failed once makes it all the more surprising that, when offered dozens of choices, I actively chose to review Masha Hamilton's 31 Hours —a book with a very similar theme. Only this time, the premise hit much closer to home. Hamilton's novel is told through the lens of a close relationship between a mother and son, a relationship I know times two. The theoretical suddenly became personal.

The plot itself is simple. Thirty-one hours is both how long a mother has to reach her son—whom she knows to be in dire straits—and the length of time her son has to prepare himself to die. In this time frame each goes through eerily similar situations. First, the initial phase of realization: the mother (Carol) that something is terribly wrong and the son (Jonas) that what he'd worked for since training in Pakistan was imminent. Next, the preparation: the mother, in desperation, following all known leads and the son purifying himself, as he's been taught by his mentor. Finally, the act of magnetic repulsion, as the mother tries to reach her son in time, and the son she raised slips out of her hands.

Meanwhile, the other two major characters orbit, providing the context in which the rest of the story plays out. There is Vic, Jonas' neglected girlfriend, who is too caught up in her own ambition to become a dancer to be an effective deterrent, and Sonny, a homeless man with the preternatural ability to smell evil in a person, a character interesting in premise, though poorly executed through the author's inability to create believable dialogue.

The novel capitalizes on a post-9/11 world in which acts of brutality are a daily reality. It brings to the surface the terrifying realization some terrorists are homegrown, produced from the same soil as patriots, and hell-bent on bloodshed in order to right the balance of the world. Unfortunately for the reader, the book falters. A fast-paced thriller promising in its concept, in many ways it lacks in execution. 31 Hours hovers midway between mass market and literary fiction, unable to quite hit the literary mark due to its off-target attempts at a lyrical writing style, as well as passages of dialogue that clunk in the ear.

What Hamilton does achieve is edge-of-your-seat action in a book slim enough to be consumed in a day, taking the wait out of discovering the abrupt—and some would say breathtaking—denouement. Her premise is also a good one, coming at a now well-worn genre from a unique angle of the relationship between a mother and a child raised to know right, yet going terribly wrong.

31 Hours is not a great book. Nor is it the sort of book to perch near the top of the bestseller lists. Yet, it presents an original approach to a difficult subject and story threads that, though not always tied up satisfactorily, at least venture into new territory. And in these days of cookie-cutter bestsellers, sometimes that is enough.

Written by: Lisa Guidarini, November 30th 2009

Pygmy

admin — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 22:07:00 +0000

By Chuck Palahniuk

Doubleday

Chuck Palahniuk has a following online; it’s even called The Cult. The fandom is well deserved. When a book evokes such emotion in the reader that you might just faint from graphic truth (such as in his novel Haunted), you have got to love it! Upon opening his latest novel, Pygmy, I felt as if I were taking a dip into the sexiest sea of twisted delights. I often had to stop reading mid-page to burst into a flurry of laughter brought on by his text. This man makes me feel alive, and I need more! The book left me questioning what is wrong with human nature, and what are we products of, exactly?

The story takes you through the inner tinkering of Pygmy, a pubescent terrorist foreign exchange student implant living in suburban America. The sexual explicitness throughout the story was humorously uncomfortable, yet strangely stimulating. Palahniuk’s satirical prowess is yet again screaming victory in the land of fictitious works.

Pygmy reflects on the various activities of everyday American life as truly absurd actions in a perverse and awkward society. He parades us through big-box stores, the town’s “religion propaganda distribution outlet,” and ponders scholastic shortcomings, all while conniving his way into various illegal actions to work up to his and his fellow terrorists’ “Operation Havoc.”

Cacophonic explosions within Pygmy’s head lead to many devilish deeds. However, a sugary sweet reinvention occurs, suggesting that even programmed human beings can reconfigure themselves. This serves as a surefire reminder that the mind is a powerful weapon that just might also provide peace, possibly. Pygmy often draws on quotes that were drilled into himself and his cohorts from an early age that seem to fuel them in every situation. Most often these quotes were of fascist, communist, and all around extreme iconic thinkers. These shocking tidbits of actual recollections of figureheads past greatly impact the novel’s outcome. Most of the quotes Palahniuk includes are stunning in their impact, and made me want to fight a little, such as Benito Mussolini's assertion that, “War is to man what maternity is to a woman.”

You have to stop and rearrange your thought process every time you pick up the book. This style is a departure from his previous novels—more of a structured, militant mind process of events recounted by the main character. Many times after putting the story down, I would find myself thinking similarly to the character. Each process or action noted, each bizarre human encounter was now a new experience.

My only disappointment with this offering from Palahniuk is that I wasn’t disturbed as greatly as I have been whilst reading some of his other novels. Don’t get me wrong, more than likely I’ll read Pygmy again. It’s a country of it’s own, a ride into a mindset that is foreign and convoluted. Cheers to a man who seems to be unafraid to push his limits in challenging the public and making people think differently after reading. This is entertainment.

Written by: A. Mariel Westermeyer, July 28th 2009

Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan

admin — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:33:00 +0000

By Barbara Bick

The Feminist Press

A deluge of books on Islamic fundamentalism had swamped the world's bookshelves following the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Some 100 books and 5,600 articles were written on the subject, many focussing on the lives of Afghan women under Taliban rule. I chose to review Barbara Bick's Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan despite knowing well that another book on Afghanistan and its peripheral issues would fill me with some apprehension. Would it be yet another sob story about those poor burqa-clad women and how much they need to unveil their faces, I wondered?

Thankfully, Bick's book is a little more than that. Walking the Precipice is a fascinating insight through the eyes of a long-time feminist activist in a country devastated by war and deprivation. Bick's keen observation and intrepid spirit for someone her age (she was sixty-five and arthritic on her first trip to Afghanistan in 1990, seventy-eight years old on her last) is inspiring and makes reading a well-trodden and tiresome topic easier. In her memoirs, readers will learn quite intimately of her arduous travels and passion for the local women's liberation groups that began as nothing more than her “one last, unforgettable journey before 'old age' kicked in.”

Once in Kabul, Bick, together with a small group of American women made their rounds in orphanages, schools, international health agencies, and support organisations for women widowed by the war. Not surprisingly, the burqa would immediately come to her attention – both a symbolic and physical form of repression she feels impassioned to lift.

In 2001, Bick returned to Afghanistan, this time to an even more dangerous terrain: a region dominated by the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban militia. Her journal entries at this stage become a gripping countdown of events preceding the 9/11 attacks, including the assassination of the Northern Alliance's leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, by suspected Al-Qaeda terrorists. In the final section of the book, she witnesses during her return in 2003 the drafting of the Declaration of the Essential Rights of Afghan women and the post-9/11 reconstruction, marking a poignant cadence to her adventures in Afghanistan.

Bick and her cohorts, all foreign-based, are the dominant figures in this story. With little evidence of Afghan female agency throughout the book, Bick and Co. appear to do much of the "rescuing", reinforcing the idea that feminism is a privileged woman's preoccupation. The one major weakness in Walking the Precipice is the second-hand interpretation of events due to her inability to speak any of the local languages. She appears to be a sympathetic observer at best, but a helpless bystander of the injustice around her at worst.

Just as interesting is Bick's experience with the different strands of activists fighting for the Afghan women's cause. On her first trip, she travelled with a feminist with a strident pro-Soviet political agenda, while on her second she was in the company of an anti-communist member of the Kabul elite. These are all examples of how groups that are ideologically each other's polar opposites can come to agreement, for better or worse, on providing international aid to Afghan women and children.

All in all, Bick's slim memoir, although fascinating, recounts in the manner of adventurous Western holiday-makers and gap-year students in faraway, dangerous places. It is vivid, as many good travelogues are but it is hardly groundbreaking in the sea of post-9/11 books.

Written by: Alicia Izharuddin, May 2nd 2009

Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror

admin — Fri, 23 May 2008 01:58:00 +0000

By Nonie Darwish

Sentinel

An outstanding, courageous, and straight-from-the-heart book by a very remarkable woman, _Now They Call Me Infidel _gives an inside view of the sociopolitical and religious facets of Middle Eastern countries. Nonie Darwish is the daughter of Colonel Mustafa Hafaz, a high ranking Egyptian intelligence officer who was killed and hailed as a "Shahid," the highest honor bestowed on a Muslim that can be achieved by being killed during Jihad against the enemies of Islam. Darwish recounts her early experiences of being told outrageous lies, like Jewish rabbis kill Arab children to take their blood for baking cookies. She recalls being in schools filling the minds of the children with dread and terror when they hear the word "Jew" and being made to sing anti-Jewish poetry. Her education at school and her mosque bred fear, anger, and extreme intolerance towards other religions.

Darwish, who lived in Egypt for thirty years, explains that the major problem of the country is extreme poverty, which she feels is shielded in the cloak of religion. Her description of the mistreatment of Jews and other minorities (Coptic Christians, Armenians, etc.) is heart breaking. Jews were hung and branded as traitors, and they were forced to leave the country. She also identifies the Muslim marriage and divorce laws as oppressive to and fostering distrust between Muslim women, as the Islamic law allows a husband to have four wives. Darwish believes that religion is used by political and religious leaders to divert the attention from the other grave problems in Egypt.

After coming to United States, which she now considers to be her homeland, Darwish was astonished at the cultural gulf between U.S. and Egypt. She admired the way Americans accept different religious affiliations and this social equality made her ponder the degree to which Egyptian society oppressed and manipulated its citizens. She started questioning her upbringing, and the anti-Jewish propaganda she had been fed.

After 9/11, Nonnie thought it was her duty to speak out against religious fanaticism; she started to speak out and write against terrorism. Her point of view and non-defensive attitude earned her great appreciation from some, and she founded the website Arabs for Israel to provide a forum for Arabs and Muslims to express their support for Israel. On her tours, she was subjected to insults from Muslims who consider her a traitor, and many universities cancelled her presentations after Muslim students demanded that she not speak. She was shocked and embarrassed to find out that educated American Muslims think Israel should not exist and has become concerned that radical Muslim’s power is increasing in college campuses. Nonie Darwish's opinion on the problem of religious extremism is a must read.

Written by: Sunitha Jayan, May 22nd 2008