By Jay Feldman
A important, attractive, and occasionally troubling tale of contemporary America’s fight to dwell as much as its ideals.
In this formidable and wide-ranging background, Jay Feldman takes us from the run-up to global battle I and its anti-German hysteria during the September eleven assaults and Arizona’s present anti-immigration flow. What we see is a outstanding trend of elected officers and personal voters alike utilizing the yank people’s fears and prejudices to isolate minorities (ethnic, racial, political, spiritual, or sexual), silence dissent, and stem the expansion of civil rights and liberties.
Whether it’s the post–World warfare I persecution of radicals; the Depression-era deportations of Mexican immigrants and Mexican-Americans; the area struggle II internment of 112,000 ethnic jap besides millions of German and Italian extraterrestrial beings; the chilly struggle campaigns opposed to Communists, gays, and civil-rights activists; or the Vietnam-era COINTELPRO operations, we see how financial, army, and political crises were used to curtail the rights of supposedly subversive minorities.
Much of the tale could be laid on the ft of J. Edgar Hoover, yet Feldman is going deeper to teach how those trends were a part of a continual vein that runs via American lifestyles. instead of treating this background as a chain of discrete moments, Feldman considers the whole programmatic sweep on a scale nobody has but approached. In doing so, he supplies us a effective reminder of the way, even in the USA, democracy and civil liberties are by no means guaranteed.
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Extra info for Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America
Sample text
Enron had relationships with more than 120 major financial institutions worldwide. Jeff McMahon, Enron’s treasurer since April 1998, coordinated the transactions so that the banks could not cherry-pick the most lucrative deals and shun the lower-value transactions. In reality, however, the treasurer’s office was little more than a front for dealing with the banks. While McMahon might make the initial introduction of a proposed transaction to a financial institution, he did not negotiate or consummate the 31 deals for Enron.
The fabric of fallacy they had so carefully woven was unraveling. “The Goldman Sachs of energy trading” was losing its grip on its publicity, the analysts, and its luster. One question led to another. Fastow knew how bad it really was, and he was increasingly terrified of being exposed—his lies laid bare. Not even Ken Lay’s wheeling and dealings with the Astros Major League Baseball club and friendships with past and current presidents could solve Enron’s problem. ” Meanwhile the pressure of questions about performance continued to mount as Enron struggled to meet earnings under its new business model.
She had been appointed to the bench by the first President Bush. Andersen got speedy, but it was difficult to characterize it as much of a trial. Andersen hired Houston criminal defense attorney Rusty Hardin to lead the defense team. Hardin, an experienced and highly regarded criminal defense attorney, got nowhere fast with Judge Harmon. The task force trial team of Caldwell, Weissmann, Buell, and Friedrich got its way with the judge. No one seemed to have noticed that Judge Harmon didn’t allow the defense to introduce the hundreds of thousands of 61 documents Andersen had retained.