Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil

I became interested in "Terrorism and Tyranny", by James Bovard, after his appearance on C-SPAN's "Booknotes" program. The author provides an incredible amount of documentation to back up the book. It delves into how the USA-PATRIOT Act has done serious harm to our civil liberties, and it uncovers the new attitude of the government in the days since 9/11. "Terrorism and Tyranny" is a warning to all of us that more government power and surveilance doesn't necessarily mean a safer nation, and that sweeping government reform like the USA-PATRIOT Act can potentially have devastating consequences to the freedoms that we all enjoy. This book is a very fascinating read, no matter which side of the political spectrum you belong.

A compelling compendium of evidence marshaled together in one book that can serve as an indictment of Bush's "War On Terrorism", "USA Patriot Act", and "Homeland Security". Meticulously researched and presented. Ridicules "weapons of mass deception" and "faith-based intelligence". Bovard sounds an alarm that apparently nobody is listening to. Unfortunately he fails to present a viable plan for evacuating or saving the building. Becoming a victim of terrorism is a risk; being subjected to tyranny at the mercy of a government that has usurped unlimited powers is a certainty. In the name of "freedom" our government tramples on our civil liberties while engaging in misguided adventures abroad.

On the dust jacket of his new book, author James Bovard quotes Attorney General John Ashcroft's chilling words regarding the costs associated with the raging war against terrorism. Ashcroft claims, "Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty...will only aid terrorists as they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies and pause to America's friends". Such is the poisonous atmosphere created by the current administration and its utter disregard for the civil liberties and precious personal freedoms of average Americans. This then, is an extremely well written book that exhaustively details the manifest ways in which the Bush administration has misused and abused its power and privilege in what is obviously the most blatant grab for exclusive executive power in the last two hundred years. Characterizing the war on terror as the single most aggressive growth industry of the new millennium, Bovard boldly documents the specifics of the Bush' administration's war against its own people through the implementation of a wide range of anti-democratic measures to ensure its hold on power and to use the rationale of the war on terror to pursue a plethora of totally unrelated neo-conservative goals. For Bovard, the current range of executive branch actions against terror has more to do with ensuring its own survival in an abrasive political environment than it does with combating the actual terrorist threat. Every action taken is done with public assurances it is being done with scrupulous and diligent concern for protecting individual rights and personal privacy, when in fact the administration then eschews any and all efforts to oversee or surveil its constitutionally questionable actions and policies. It misrepresents the actions of its agencies such as the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security at the same time it seeks to extend its ability to monitor and control the civil liberties of its innocent citizens. Much of the book centers on the specific ways in which the tyranny of the established order attempts to justify its own actions by portraying them as being taken in the public interest. Yet rather than commit sufficient funds for enhancing internal security or bolstering first responder capabilities for cities, states, and municipalities at risk of terrorist strikes, they engage in the single largest tax-refund program for wealthy Americans since the initiation of the federal tax code in the 20th century. They exaggerate victories and minimize failures, and use "bait and switch" tactics to sell a war in Iraq by claiming Iraq posed a clear and present terrorist danger to the United States. The Bush administration constantly conjures up references to freedom and liberty, yet supports many governments that are both anti-democratic and authoritarian to their own citizens. Most provocatively, Bovard shares a wealth of documents and sources showing how a group of neo-conservativ

Yes, be afraid of your government. Bush and Ashcroft and the whole lot of them have seized on the horror that was September 11th to make a full-scale frontal assault on the personal liberties of each and every one of us. James Bovard, yet again, holds their feet to the fire. "Terrorism and Tyranny" is a stark and coherent warning to the country about the state of the "war on terrorism". Terrorism, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Those who practice it, Mr. Bovard shows, can slide from "freedom fighter" (and eligible for enormous support from you, Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer) to "terrorist" in the time it takes to bite that hand that feeds them. Osama Bin Laden was always a "terrorist", even when he was a "freedom fighter" doing America's bidding. See Castro. See Hussein. Mr. Bovard's charge that the American military is being mis-used in the service of wealth rcalls former Marine General Smedley Butler's lament that he was, in a career that saw him win two Medals of Honor, "...little more than high-class muscle in the service of the rich". General Butler wrote that in the 30's; it is apt today. Enemy combatants scooped up on the battlefield are locked away, basically forgotten, and denied funamental due process. That might be in in accord with the Geneva Convention so those people don't have much of a case. But American citizens arrested in America? Locked up, denied access to family and lawyers? For years, with no end in sight? This is wrong, as wrong as the jingoistically named "Patriot Act", an odious a piece of legislation that must have been passed before anyone bothered to read it. They, the ubiquitous, faceless "they", can now subpoena our school records, phone records even our library records, by merely showing that the investigation is "...related to terrorism". Gone is probable cause. Gone is reasonable suspicion. One of Ashcroft's minions wants to go fishing and your entire life can be laid bare. And woe betide the recipient of such a subpoena, a librarian, say, who tells you that your records have been grabbed; that is now a crime.Frightening, frightening, Big Brotherish sufff that Mr. Bovard wants us all, left, center, right, to rise up against. "Terrorism and Tyranny" is well, researched, well documented, and well written by a true patriot.

Jim Bovard, in the words of the Orange County Register, is "Washington's most hated truth-teller." In his latest book, _Terrorism and Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice, and Peace to Rid the World of Evil_, he sustains that long-standing reputation with surefire dignity and aplomb.You get a feeling about a book and its author, when, in the book's very first sentence, he rivets you to your chair with jackhammer force by stating that "the war on terrorism is the first political growth industry of the new millennium." The rest of the book falls out from that thesis, as Bovard takes the reader on a journey through the war on terrorism, starting with the mostly forgotten Reagan crusade, and onward through to the Bush cabal.Jim Bovard is, without a doubt, the best political researcher-writer in politics today. While most writers add a few footnotes to their writing, Bovard adds some first-rate writing to his immaculate set of footnotes. He doesn't make wild judgments or blanket allegations; he provides an encyclopedia's worth of timely quotes laid out in chronological fashion to funnel the reader through an extensive framework of US government double-dealing, coercion, corruption, and propaganda milling. Perhaps the most unforeseen and brilliant facet of Bovard's chronology is his application of the war on terror's inauguration as being firmly planted in the Ronald Reagan camp. It's as if he expected the reader to forgive and forget, or at least not conjure up those deep-rooted memories in light of the Bush administration's tyranny spree. Buy this book. No matter what your views; right, left, center, or indifferent, you won't be disappointed.