Tag: Terrorism
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Review–Old Sparky
My copy of Old Sparky—The Electric Chair and the History of the Death Penalty arrived the day after a federal jury ended 14 hours of deliberation during which they concluded that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev deserved death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon attack. This was no accident. I requested the copy as a means of examining…
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Hands Off My Free Speech
Hate-speech promoter Pam Geller reminds me of Jerry Seinfeld’s dentist, Tim Whately and his quest for total joke-telling immunity. When Jerry tells Father Curtis he thinks Whately converted to Judaism for the jokes, the priest asks, “And this offends you as a Jewish person?” “No,” says Jerry. “It offends me as a comedian.” Geller’s irrational defense of…
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Review: Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!
This review appears in the latest issue of Crime Factory magazine–the excellent Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! by Douglas Lindsay. Enjoy, coffee drinkers and Beatles lovers! Before Douglas Lindsay’s Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! descends into nightmare, the narrative hints at a story about the ho-hum life: the humorous musings of a middle-aged man resigned to a tired…
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Review: Shattered Glass–The Story of a Marine Embassy Guard
I picked up Greg Matos’ Shattered Glass—The Story of a Marine Embassy Guard with a narrow purpose. I wanted to read about the December 2004 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. I wanted to know what it felt like to be the Marine standing Post when five heavily armed terrorists stormed our compound, killing…
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The Departed–Ten Years After
The opening column in this month’s Foreign Service Journal is a timely and moving reminder of friends and colleagues killed ten years ago in a terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia. American Foreign Service Association President Robert J. Silverman writes: The Foreign Service has taken more deaths in the line of duty, on a percentage basis, than has…
Ben East Books 