Review: Escape
October 21, 2007 | 1 Comment
Escape, by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer
The cover says, “I was born into a radical polygamist cult. At eighteen, I became the fourth wife of a fifty-year-old man. I had eight children in fifteen years. When our leader began to preach the apocalypse, I knew I had to get them out.”
The book is a fascinating look into the FLDS culture. While it is very one-sided and shreds whatever reputation the FLDS have left, it still stands as one of the few views we have into this insular group. A lot of the book covers the dangerous minefield that life with multiple wives in the Jessop home was:
I planted a huge garden that summer and we managed to eat every meal from its harvest. We bought flour for bread and had some beans in the cellar, bottled vegetbales, and fruit. But despite our best efforts, the tension at home because of he sheer want kept building.
Rather than appreciating our efforts, Merril and Barbara were offended. Merril made it clear that Tammy and I should have checked with Barbara before we implemented changes in the daily household routine. Merril once refused to eat dinner because I hadn’t checked with Barbara before preparing it. I could not believe the ego of that man.
I didn’t think of him as my husband, a gift from God. I thought of him as “that man,” an egocentric bully whom I had been forced to marry, someone who had control over my life and my body. I hated depending on him financially. I still believed in my religion, but I knew Merril wasn’t following it the way he should. I knew the way he treated me and his other five wives was wrong, and yet he was a powerful man in the FLDS. I felt frustrated and confused.
These types of stories continue. These men, portrayed to the FLDS as faithful men, appear in Jessop’s book to be far from saints. This on Warren Jeffs from the time he was the principal of the FLDS private school Alta Academy:
Warren thrived on brutality and seemed to love hurting people. He’d pull some kids out of their classroom and beat them on an almost daily basis. Warren targeted the kids from bad homes whose parents wouldn’t make waves even if their kids told.
Warren also taught brutality. One day he brought one of his wives into the auditorium, which was packed with boys. Annette had a long braid that fell past he knees. Warren grabbed the braid and twisted and twisted it until she was on her knees and he was ripping hair from her head. He told the boys that this was how obedient their wives had to be to them.
As the book tells, the wives live in this crazy abusive environment. One wife is favored, one stays up all night watching television and sleeps all day, a couple do all of the endless housework and laundry. And Merril comes off as quite the ass:
Several years later, Tammy went to Merril and told him she could no longer live wihtout physical affection. How could he expect her to live that way forever?
Merril was reading while she talked. He turned to her when she was finished, took off his reading glasses, looked across his desk, and said, “I always knew you had a weak character!”
For all of you eager to find out what it’s like behind closed doors in a polygamous family, here is one woman’s look at it. I’m sure there are other experiences out there, but this is Carolyn’s.
Escape, by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer
Review: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun
October 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, by Peter Godwin
[rating:5/5]
Godwin’s story traces his family’s history along with the decay of his native Zimbabwe.
Nearly a thousand white-owned farms have now been invaded by the wovits, but the CFU has told their members to sit tight while they negotiate with Mugabe. The CFU has warned the farmers that any of them named in the media will risk being singled out for reprisals by the government. And the wovits themselves are very hostile to strangers coming onto the farms, especially anyone suspected of being from the media. Photographing farmers is hugely problematic; photographing war vets is almost suicidal. Nonetheless, the New York Times has sent Antonin Kratochvil, a Czech photographer, now a New York resident, to cover this story with me.
Antonin cuts an unlikely figure here. Corpulent and bearded, he speaks American English with a Czech accent. He usually has a cheroot in the side of his mouth and he laughs constantly, a booming rumble that rises from his belly. He is a tropical Santa, able to such the tension from a room. His very strangeness makes him a perfect choice. I collect him from the Meikles Hotel, where he stands waiting on the lion paw-print carpet in his sleeveless khaki camera jacket, his little Leica over one shoulder.
Godwin makes several trips back to Zimbabwe as its economy collapses. Journalists have been banned:
On the drive from the airport I notice new graffiti, “Exodus 20:17,” scrawled on various walls along the way. At a red traffic light a group of ragged, feral children swarm around the car with cupped palms. One small boy comes up to my closed window. When I don’t open it, he wiped his hand across his runny nose and writes on the glass in yellow snot: “help me.”
One more quote with Kratochvil:
At the entrance to their camp I had noticed a fresh grave, and now I ask for a closer look. There is a large cross at the ehad of the grave, and at its base is arranged and MDC T-shirt with a hole burned out where the wearer’s heart would be. One a piece of iron drum they have scrawled the name of the grave’s symbolic occupant, the opposition leader: “Morgan Tsvangirai, MDC.” Above his name they have painted their rallying call: “War Vets Back to War!” Underneath it is written “He will kill the people.”
“MDC, it means Morgan Don’t Come…again!” yells Commander Satan, and he and Muroyi and other men who have been filtering in pound their feet on the grave as they begin to dance around it. So far, Antonin has not revealed his camera, but now I ask if he might photograph the grave, and Satan agrees. But just as Antonin lifts his Leica, Satan suddenly shouts, “Wait! Wait!” Antonin whips down the camera, fearing some sudden irrational countermand, and Satan dashes away. Seconds later, he returns with a broad-brimmed felt hat on his head. Around its crown is a leopard skin band and a large label that reads “The mighty denim VOLO- king of all jeans- designed in Korea.”
Satisfied now with his attire, Comrade Satan strikes a pose at the graveside looking suitably fierce, clenching his fist to the skies.
“Now,” he says to Antonin, “I am ready. You can shoot me.”
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa, by Peter Godwin
[rating:5/5]
Review: Lone Survivor
October 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
[rating:5/5]
This will easily be the best book I read all year. And I read a lot. Marcus Luttrell tells the story of SEAL Team 10, and you can’t help but be awed by their courage. The story of the SEALs’ heroism is so compelling that even Luttrell’s borderline talk-radio conservative bravado can’t spoil it:
How about when a bunch of guys wearing colored towels around their heads and brandishing AK-47s come charging over the horizon straight toward you? Do you wait for them to start killing your team, or do you mow the bastards down before they get a chance to do so?
That situation might look simple in Washington, where the human rights of terrorists are often given high priority. And I am certain liberal politicians would defend their position to the death. Because everyone knows liberals have never been wrong about anything. You can ask them. Anytime.
The rules of engagement that Luttrell fought under end up forcing he and his team, deep in Taliban country, to make a decision: kill a shepherd who stumbled upon their hiding spot, or let him go and risk being discovered. They let him go and are engaged shortly after:
I fixed my Mark 12 in firing position, pulled my head back a few inches, and looked up the hill. Lined along the top were between eighty and a hundred heavily armed Taliban warriors, each one of them with an AK-47 pointing downward. Some were carrying rocket-propelled grenades. To the right and to the left they were starting to move down our flanks. I knew they could see past me but not at me. They could not have seen Axe or Danny. I was unsure whether they had seen Mikey.
My heart dropped directly into my stomach. And I cursed those f*king goatheards to hell, and myself for not executing them when every military codebook ever written had taught me otherwise. Not to mention my own raging instincts, which had told me to go with Axe and execute them. And let the liberals go to hell in a mule cart, and take with them all of their fucking know-nothing rules of etiquette in war and human rights and whatever other bullsh*t makes ‘em happy. You want to charge us with murder? Well, f*king do it. But at least we’ll be alive to answer it. This way really sucks.
Don’t get caught up in Luttrell’s Texas conservative attitude. This is a book about warriors. What follows is a raging gun battle between the four SEALs and dozens of Taliban fighters:
Danny was saturated in blood, still conscious, still trying to fire his rifle at the enemy. But he was in a facedown position. I told him to take it easy while I turned him over. “C’mon, Dan, we’re gonna be all right,”
He nodded, and I knew he could not speak and would probably never speak again. What I really remember is, he would not let go of his rifle. I raised him by the shoulders and hauled him into an almost sitting position. Then, grasping him under the arms, I started to drag him backward, toward cover. And would you believe, that little iron man opened fire at the enemy once again, almost lying on his back, blasting away up the hill while I kept dragging.
Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10
[rating:5/5]
Review: Where War Lives
August 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Where War Lives
[rating:5/5]
Watson is the Canadian journalist who took the photograph of a Somali mob dragging a US soldier through the streets of Mogadishu during the disastrous Operation Gothic Serpent (Blackhawk Down). The photo won the Pulitzer prize. As he writes of the moment of exposure:
In less than the time it took to breathe, I had to decide whether to steal a dead man’s last shred of dignity. The moment of choice, in the swirl of dust and sweat, hatred and fear, is still trapped in my mind denying me peace: just as I was about to press the shutter on my camera, the world went quiet, everything around me melted into a slow-motion blur, and I heard the voice: If you do this, I will own you forever.
As Watson tries to reconcile the profound effects of his photograph, he recounts experiences covering conflict throughout the world, including Iraq, where he narrowly escapes death by the hands of a mob:
Faces pressed in. Children laughed. Men shouted and spat on me. The image of Cleveland’s body lying in the Mogadishu dirt flashed through my mind, and I wondered: “Is he coming to take me now?” A hand thrust into my pocket and grabbed my cash. Another snatched the lens from the grip of my trembling knees. Like an animal acting on instinct, I focused all my energy into holding on to the cameras…
Following Watson in his quest to make sense of it all, I read this book in one go. To fully understand the impact of his photograph, here’s some boasting by Osama bin Laden (from Watson’s book):
“When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one America Pilot was dragged in the streets of Mogadishu, you left the area carrying disappointment, humiliation, defeat, and your dead with you. Clinton appeared in front of the whole world threatening and promising revenge, but these threats were merely a preparation for withdrawal. You have been disgraced by Allah and you withdrew; the extent of your impotence and weaknesses became very clear.”
Where War Lives
[rating:5/5]
Review: Guests of the Ayatollah
July 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam
[rating:5/5]
This is a long book, but well worth finishing. An in-depth account of the Iran Hostage Crisis, an understanding of which seems very valuable in today’s climate. Bowden takes you into the minds of the hostages:
Two of the other marines, Billy Gallegos and Rocky Sickmann, played similar games. Gallegos rigged a slingshot out of rubber bands, and he and Stickmann opened their window slightly one night after lights out and shot Geritol tablets at a guard standing outside next to the building’s back wall. When the first pill pinged off a car nearby, the guard jumped. When the next pill hit, convinced he was under attack, he shot off his weapon. Soon there was a small crowd of guards, weapons up, shouting into their radios. Eventually the guards burst into the chancery and searched all the rooms, but the marines had long since closed their window, disassembled the slingshot, and crept back under the covers on their mattresses.
And covers the feelings of the time, in America:
America’s long lack of a military response to Iran’s provocations prompted a popular joke; in which President Carter was visited by the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt, who wondered what was going on in the world.
“The Soviets have invaded Afghanistan,” Carter says.
“Are you retaliating with conventional forces or with nuclear weapons?” Roosevelt askks.
“Uh, neither one,” says Carter. “We’re boycotting the Olympics in Moscow.”
But most interesting to me was getting to know the people who stormed the embassy. Mere students who found themselves on the world stage. Completely naive and ridiculous, with no apparent knowledge of the world outside Iran.
Wound up now, Cooke described the fear he had seen in the eyes of visa applicants who had lined up by the thousands before the embassy seizure to apply for visas to escape Iran. “These were people trying to escape,” he said.
“Tell me there’s a long line outside of the Iranian embassy in Washington of blacks and Indians or Hispanics and whatever, seeking to try to escape the United States in order to come to Iran, you know, for their protection. Well, by God, there was a line half a mile long outside of my embassy the day we opened, of people who were just that. Religious and ethnic minorities trying to escape your government. Real oppression. Firing squads, executions.
As one hostage said to his captors:
“One of the things that I didn’t learn was what you were trying to accomplish,” he said. “You were the first social revolution in history that didn’t have to compromise from the very first moment for lack of money. When you took over, you had all the money you needed to make Iran back into part of the fertile crescent. If you wanted to do reforestation, if you wanted to reinstitute the underground irrigation systems you once had…anything at all. Anything was possible because you had the money, and you threw that away.”
Ebtekar argued that all revolution required a period of cleansing, of wiping away corrupt influences, such as Iran’s ties to the United States.
“All I’ve got to say is that nothing we could have done to you in our wildest dreams is half as bad as what you’ve done to yourselves,” Morefield said. “Your children and your grandchildren are going to curse your name.”
Guests of the Ayatollah: The Iran Hostage Crisis: The First Battle in America’s War with Militant Islam
[rating:5/5]
