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Trouble in Thailand -- and Elsewhere

2009-09-19T13:37:00.000-07:00

Censorship is on the rise, and that's not good news for anybody who wants to make a buck (or just make some noise) with pen or keyboard. Take the case of Harry Nicolaides. He's an Australian novelist who was tossed in jail in Thailand under an antiquated lese-majeste law. His particular crime? One of his books contained a single paragraph describing the sexual heavy-handedness of a fictional Thai prince. That's right -- fictional prince.

Then there's the decision by Yale University Press to back out of a commitment to publish a book containing the Danish Muhammad Cartoons. The cartoons, originally published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, depicted the prophet Muhammad in ways that brought sharp criticism from Muslim organizations. Riots followed; embassies were stormed. Yale said it nixed the book deal due to fear of violence. That's a reasonable-sounding explanation, but what about academic freedom? What about showing a little backbone?

China is the Big Daddy of censorship, with government agencies controlling all forms of media in the country. There's a constant cat-and-mouse game between anonymous bloggers, netizens, and censors. But this isn't like Tom and Jerry squabbling of a chunk of cheese. Getting caught in China with illegal material, especially material critical of the government, is a serious crime.

So what's going on here? Some have argued that it's all about economics. There's certainly something to that in the case of Yale. Being offensive to Muslims could hurt the bottom line, as in reduced endowment contributions. But there's a bigger issue than money. It's culture under attack. Thailand, China, the worldwide Muslim community -- they all feel threatened. Western movies, music, books, and web sites are undermining traditional balances. Once those balances are gone, then what? As Louis XV supposedly said, "After me, the flood." Holding the line on tradition means keeping out the barbarians, and their ideas. Thus, censorship.

The end game seems inevitable. Barriers will come down; the barbarians will get in. Still, the current situation is intriguing. Consider a novel about a hapless world traveler who is blogging about his adventures. Unwittingly, he posts something terribly offensive to the locals. Government agents stir into action. If the country is France, and the offense is to criticize an award-winning Sauvignon Blanc, then the story is farce. If the country is Burma or Cuba or Venezuela, then some real thrills could be in store.

And what about the United States? Could any of this happen here? The First Amendment pretty well guarantees that the government won't engage in censorship. But what about an angry mob, and a little recreational book burning? It could happen. In recent months there has been a lot of seething going on in America. It all circles back to the same thing: somebody's fear that their culture is under attack.

Rumors and Lives

2008-11-04T14:23:00.000-08:00

In the U.S. it’s election day, so I’m going to write about . . . France. But first, a word about the presidential campaign. Are you as sick of it as I am? I mean really, how much blood and gore can we stand? It reminds me (figuratively; I’m not that old) of the John L. Sullivan/Jake Kilrain heavyweight championship. It was the last big fight under bare-knuckles rules, in 1889. Went seventy-five rounds of a scheduled eighty. Sullivan won, thus becoming the first to earn the title "World Heavyweight Champion." I’ll just bet there were a lot of spectators that day who got more than they bargained for. Can't you inagine the whispers? Throw in the towel! Stay down! Do us all a favor and don’t answer the damn bell! That’s how I felt halfway through the third Obama/McCain debate. I kept hoping one of them would say, "Enough already. Let’s all go get a beer."

Anyway, France. The character who caught my attention this week is Yves Bertrand. Bertrand was formerly the head of Renseignements Generaux, the French domestic spy agency. The French tolerate a lot more domestic spying than most countries. In fact, they have a law on the books that allows the government to spy on anyone who has a "significant political, economic, social or religious role" in the country.

Bertrand used his spying powers with gusto. He had his people keep tabs on rock stars, politicians, cardinals, and business magnates. (I wonder if France has the equivalent of Joe the Plumber? If so, there’s a file on that guy, too.) Because Bertrand had so many agents looking into so many things, he heard a lot of gossip, much of it plain unvarnished tripe. He wrote it all down, longhand, in twenty-three spiral-bound notebooks. There’s the rub.

Bertrand’s notebooks were seized by government agents investigating the Clearstream affair, a complicated French political and business scandal. Someone with the police or magistrate’s office leaked the contents, and the juicer bits were published in Le Point, a popular magazine. There was the usual sexual tittle-tattle (in great detail), vague allusions to bribery and extortion, drug deals, and political favors owed and paid off. One entry said Jacques Chirac, while president, "had a facelift in Canada." Other entries were more personal to Bertrand, like "go to dentist," and "buy more cat litter."

There are a lot of problems here, but perhaps the biggest is that most of this "information" was just rumor. Even Bertrand claims eighty percent of it is probably false. Why on earth did he keep track of it all then? He says it was his job: he would have looked like an idiot if his bosses in the government heard about gossip before he did.

Now the lawsuits are flying, with the most prominent a libel suit filed by current president Nicolas Sarkozy against Bertrand (but, interestingly, not against Le Point). It all leads to a few intriguing questions. What should public officials do about gossip? Ignore it—at their peril? Follow up and turn gossip into fact? Or, as Bertrand did, just jot it down for future reference? And what "zone of privacy" can the big-wigs of society expect in our time of instant news? Should domestic life be off limits? Or the narrower category of sexual activities? What about their children: should they be subject to the public spotlight?

Intriguing questions, yes, but I’m more interested in Bertrand, the man. Bertrand left his job with RG in 2004. If he was no longer in government service, why didn’t he just destroy the notebooks? Were they even "his" to keep, or should they have been left behind as background information for his successor?

Bertrand lives alone with his three cats. That sounds like a lonely and dull existence, after being a spy. I can imagine him curled up by the fire with his kitties, reading back over his notebooks, nodding and chuckling. That has all the creepiness of J. Edgar Hoover, and the makings of a fine first chapter for a thriller.

The Pendulum Swing

2008-09-04T05:55:00.000-07:00

I’m back from summer break and ready to pick up my blogging duties. Lesson from vacation trip this year: don’t drive in urban Italy unless you have Formula 1 experience. I still have a bad case of the shakes whenever I get behind the wheel.

The last few months have provided some great new grist for thriller writers. First there was Bruce Ivins, the Ft. Detrick, MD, biological researcher whom the FBI claims was the sole person behind the 2001 U.S. anthrax attacks. Those attacks killed five people and infected over a dozen others. After Ivins’s death in July, which was ruled a suicide, the FBI moved to close the case, stating that the evidence against him was overwhelming.

Still, questions abound. How did the FBI eliminate all other suspects? How did Ivins prepare the anthrax spores? Where did he do the work? Why was no trace of the spores found in his house, his automobile, the lab where he worked? How did he get to Princeton, N.J., the location of the post box where postal inspectors said the tainted envelopes were mailed? And perhaps most confounding, what was Ivins’s motive?

There have been calls for an independent review of the Ivins case, but so far the Justice Department isn’t playing along. They’d rather turn the page, letting the questions fade. As one FBI investigator put it, "There will always be spores on the grassy knoll."

Another case involving the FBI is equally intriguing. Aafia Siddiqui is a Pakistani native who came to the U.S. in 1991 to attend college. She received a bachelor’s degree and doctorate and also obtained U.S. citizenship. In 2003, she was again living in Pakistan. One day she left home in a taxi, and simply vanished. At about that time, the U.S. Justice Department had begun investigating her for alleged ties to al-Qaeda.

Siddiqui resurfaced this summer in Afghanistan. The FBI claims she was seen acting suspiciously near a provincial governor’s residence and was taken into custody by local police. According to court filings, she had in her possession a "mass casualty attack" list of locations in America – Brooklyn Bridge, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty. She also allegedly was carrying instructions for making bombs and biological weapons.

After her arrest, Siddiqui was questioned by a group of U.S. Army officers and FBI agents. The government claims that during the questioning, Siddiqui got hold of an M-4 rifle and started shooting at the interrogators. She was wounded in the exchange of gunfire. She is now in New York, where she had been indicted in federal court on charges of attempted murder.

Questions? Here are a few. Where was Siddiqui from 2003 to 2008? No idea, says the government. Why was she carrying such sensitive information around Afghanistan and where did it come from? Can’t say, replies the government. How could she, a woman of only ninety pounds and no known military training, get her hands on a rifle while in U.S. Army custody? And most intriguing, why is the government charging her only with attempted murder and not with any terrorist-related offenses?

My point is not to paint Ivins and Siddiqui as innocent victims of government conspiracy. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. Instead, the real lesson is how far the pendulum has swung in recent years. After the 9/11 attacks, Americans strongly supported government efforts to stop terrorism. Now, in the popular press and around the kitchen table, the FBI, Homeland Security, the CIA – all the agencies involved in fighting terrorism – are viewed with skepticism, even cynicism.

This isn’t the first time Americans have been willing to believe the worst of their own government. Check out some of the top thrillers from the 1970s, like James Grady’s Six Days of the Condor or Loren Singer’s The Parallax View (both of which were made into fine movies.) It took decades for America to outgrow the hangover from Vietnam and Watergate. It’s sad to think it may take as long for America to come out of its current tailspin, brought on by the war in Iraq, by Abu Ghraib, by excessive government secrecy, by botched terrorist investigations.

Still, I won’t complain too loudly about any of this. Like I say, it’s a great time to be a thriller writer.

Latter-Day Witches

2008-06-19T05:19:00.000-07:00

Witches are back in the news. Recently in two villages in western Kenya, eleven people were burned alive by mobs of young men. The dead were accused of casting evil spells on children. Local residents won’t cooperate with the police, so arrests for the murders are unlikely. But were the killings really murder, or community defense?

Belief in witchcraft is deeply felt in sub-Saharan Africa. Every witch, it is thought, can perform both good and bad magic. The good includes fertility rights for crops and people, spells that cast out disease, and matchmaking spells. The bad includes hexes that injure one’s business or reputation and poison spells that cause people to become ill and even die.

Who are the witches? They don’t carry union cards, but in each community they are generally known. People will whisper, "This one has the power, and that one." Whenever anything bad happens, the gossip mill begins to churn. Who is responsible, and why?

The gossip isn’t idle chatter. If people feel threatened, they may take action. Witches can be banished or put to death. That happened with striking regularity in South Africa during the 1990s. Economic times were tough and, with the end of white rule, the political landscape was unsettled. Gangs attacked scores of people, often old women, hacking or burning them to death. The explanation was always the same: the victim was a witch who had turned to evil ways.

In modern-day America, we’ve given up on witches. They’re just characters for fairy tales. These stories often involve an innocent outsider who ends up crossing paths with an evil witch or witches. The hero ultimately prevails, as much from pluck and good-heartedness as anything. That’s the pattern in the greatest witch tale of them all, L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz.

I’ve always thought it would be fun to turn the standard western witch tale on its head. What would happen if an African witch haplessly crossed paths with a group of western non-believers? Say a self-effacing African hero is forced by some government edict to come west to study at an American university. He would see witchcraft everywhere; the Americans would miss it all, both the dangers and the opportunities. Through much of the story, the witch would race about saving his new friends from their own ignorance, while they laughed at his quaint ways. Then in the finale, something truly inexplicable would happen, and that would give rise to a crisis of belief for everyone.

The point is that for those who truly believe in it, witchcraft is as real as gravity is to a westerner. It’s an undeniable force that acts on everything in the world. That’s the starting point for understanding why anyone would decide to burn a neighbor for being a witch, and why the Kenyan police expect to make no progress in solving the recent crimes there.

Pushing Product

2008-05-26T07:20:00.000-07:00

Some years ago when I was teaching at the University of Colorado, I had an office just down the hall from Archibald Cox, the Watergate special prosecutor. It was a real pleasure for me. Archie was a true gentleman and a great one to talk to. He had a new book out then, The Court and the Constitution, of which he was duly proud. The publishing process frustrated him, though. "You can’t just write a book anymore," he said. "Now you have to shill for it!" So he made the long trips to the east and west coasts, playing the talk shows, doing the bookstore readings.

How times have changed; how they have stayed the same.

My new book, Eyes of the World, came out this month. As in the "old" days, I’ll have my share of interviews and store appearances. But the internet adds a whole new level to the marketing of books. A lot of sales run through Amazon and other on-line distributors. And advertising on the internet is (relatively) cheap. The digital world is a complex and jumbled place. A lot of people are crying for attention out there. A good on-line marketing plan is essential to the success of any book.

That all reminds me of a student I once had. His name was Paul, and, in a word, he was a worrier. One day after class, he asked me a pretty profound question. "How do you decide what to read?" he said. I shook my head, not really understanding him. He explained, "I figure I can read about twelve thousand books in my life, tops. How do I pick the right ones?" I could only smile and shake my head again. I had no answer. But I have thought about it since then.

A few centuries ago, say at the time of Thomas Jefferson, a smart person would read pretty much every book he or she could lay hands on. Visit his home at Monticello, and you’ll be surprised at how small Jefferson’s personal library was, though it was almost certainly the best in the country at the time. Again, how things have changed. Books are like vegetables now. They ripen, are quickly digested, and the husks thrown away. A new crop is always on the way.

But back to the question: how should we decide what to read? Maybe the best answer is, "Read what you need; read what you love." If you have to learn about a health problem or college savings plans, get a book on those topics. That’s pretty obvious. But when you have the luxury of choice, read books that are so memorable you can’t wait to recommend them to your best friend. Read books that are so good you really don’t want them to end. That, I guess, is my long-delayed answer to Paul.

I’m always happy to hear from fans. To use an old phrase, it’s just plain neat to connect with someone that way, that they read my work and enjoyed it enough to let me know. That’s especially true of the people who write to me from Iran, from South Africa, from the Philippines. All the way out there, somebody met my characters, shared my story lines, and maybe even laughed at my jokes.

What would Archie Cox say to all this? He died a few years back so we can’t ask him, but I imagine it would be something like: Can’t we just write the books and let somebody else worry about the rest of it? Nope. Not anymore.

Natural Born Citizens

2008-04-21T05:38:00.000-07:00

Normally, I think politics should be discussed only with family members and really close friends. If the conversation sinks to shaken fists and name calling, everyone still can kiss and make up later. That said, I’m going to wade in and talk about what it takes to be president.

I’ve got a book due out next month, Eyes of the World. It’s a political thriller involving the reelection campaign of the first woman president. One of the unexpected parallels between the book and the current race for U. S. president involves John McCain, the apparent nominee on the Republican side.

McCain was born in 1936 at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. Both of his parents were U.S. citizens. (His father was in the Navy and later became an admiral.) Do the somewhat unusual circumstances of his birth disqualify him from serving as president?

The Constitution provides that "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of the President . . ." Nowhere in the Constitution is the term "natural born Citizen" defined. It is clear that any person born inside the United States is qualified to serve as president. It’s equally clear that any person born outside the U.S. whose parents were not U.S. citizens is not qualified (sorry, Arnold Schwarzenegger).

So what about John McCain–born outside the United States to U.S. citizen parents? Most people who have studied this issue say the best place to look for an answer is the federal statutes that define citizenship. There McCain finds solid authority for the position that he’s constitutionally qualified for the presidency. Two long-standing statutes (for legal obsessive-compulsives, that’s 8 U.S.C. 1401(c) and 1403) classify him as a citizen at birth. Congress seems willing to accept this. There’s a resolution now before the U.S. Senate that would deem McCain qualified to serve as president; it’s likely to receive unanimous approval.

But this issue doesn’t end with John McCain.

Bill Richardson, governor of New Mexico, also was a candidate for the White House in this cycle. Richardson’s father was from Boston. His mother was Mexican. The family was living in Mexico City at the time, but his mother came to California to give birth to Bill. By all traditional standards, Richardson’s U.S. birth qualified him as a "natural born Citizen." Still, when he announced his run for the presidency, bloggers cried foul, squawking "anchor baby, anchor baby!" (That’s a pejorative term used by anti-immigrant forces to describe kids born in the U.S. of non-citizen parents.) Naughty bloggers. Wash their mouths out with soap.

It gets even more weird. An article in the March 5 edition of Hawaii Reporter argues that Barack Obama may not be a citizen because he was born outside the U.S. Wait–Obama was born in Hawaii, right? Sure, but (so the article claims) Hawaii isn’t a U.S. state. It’s a sovereign nation under military rule from Washington. That argument may draw a smile from the ghost of Queen Lilioukalani, but I doubt it would gain even one vote on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Even Hillary Clinton has faced a challenge to her qualifications. A man in Nevada has filed a federal lawsuit to bar her from the Nevada ballot. His theory? The Constitution uses the words "he" and "him" when laying out the powers and duties of the president. Thus only men are qualified for the job. That reminds me of one of my schoolmates in junior high, a guy named Oscar. Whenever he’d raise his hand in social studies class, the teacher would cover her eyes and mutter, "Oh, Lord, what now?" I think Oscar eventually went into the telephone solicitation business.

All this leaves open the basic question: what should be the qualifications for president? Patience and a thick skin are at the top my list. Oh, and add in a sense of humor. And this "natural born Citizen" stuff? I don’t worry too much about that, though I would draw the line at Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie Commando was enough to disqualify him.

Adiós Fidel–or maybe it’s only hasta luego

2008-03-27T12:42:00.000-07:00

In late February, Fidel Castro announced that he was permanently stepping down as Cuban president. Fidel’s brother, Raúl, was chosen to take his place. Nothing surprising there–Raúl had been running an interim government for over a year and a half. What is surprising is the amount of commentary in the U.S. and elsewhere claiming that finally things are going to change for the better in Cuba. Don’t bet on it.

In the nearly fifty years since Fidel came to power, far too much attention has been paid to him. He’s been treated like a rock star (whether he’s the bad-boy Keith Richards type or a do-gooder like Bono is a matter of opinion). In fact, inside Cuba, Fidel had his main impact in the long-forgotten 1960s, when he set up the state apparatus that runs things on the island.

One of the best books written on Castro’s Cuba is Tom Miller’s Trading with the Enemy. It’s part travelogue, part political expose, and thoroughly funny and engaging. As Miller describes it, the Communist Party has a throttlehold on every detail of Cuban life, from the media and the military to food prices and the electric supply. Cubans are careful when they talk outside the home. They’re wary not just of the Secret Police, but also of their neighbors. Each neighborhood has a block captain who watches over the local flock, making sure no one is selling state secrets–or telling anticommunist jokes.

The old guard–Fidel, Raúl, and the other boys of the revolution–will not be with us much longer. What then for Cuba? Inevitably things will change, perhaps quickly (as in the Soviet Union) or maybe more slowly (as is happening in China). Still, the legacy of the communist system will remain. In Russia today it is difficult to get a leaky faucet fixed, much less build a house or start a business, without "finagling." This often means paying a fee to the local mafia clan, which in turn will bribe the proper corporate and government officials. These same clans deal drugs and guns, run prostitution and gambling rings. It’s all a bit, well, unsavory. But something, or someone, needed to take on the role of the old apparatchik bureaucracy, to be the axle grease that keeps Russian society rolling.

Cuba may be headed down the same road as Russia, where government control morphs into shady private enterprise. It would make a great backdrop for a novel. Suppose the U.S. trade embargo ends. A Cuban-American protagonist is drawn back to the island–a family crisis, a government assignment, something. He finds the place totally out of tune with what he expected, and much more sinister. Add in a strong-willed Cuban love interest, a little timba music . . . I can almost feel the sea breeze wafting down the Malecón from Havana Bay.

Welcome to my Blog!

2008-02-18T19:12:00.000-08:00

This is the first of my monthly blog entries. Here I’ll talk about culture, food, travel, war, politics, family—just about everything under the sun. If there is a focus, it’s on things happening anywhere that might be spun into good stories. Besides being a writer, I’m a law professor, and one of the courses I teach is Law & Anthropology. That’s where law and culture meet (actually, “collide” might be a better term). I’m constantly amazed at the variety of ways people struggle and compete and adapt.

So, first stop: Australia. I’ve been interested in that part of the world since I read the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy as a boy. I recently heard of Jeffrey Lee, an Aboriginal man and the last living member of the Djok clan. Mr. Lee lives in the Northern Territory, on the border of Kakadu National Park. The Djok clan’s traditional land includes an area called Koongarra. Koongarra holds uranium deposits estimated to be worth $5 billion.

Under current Australian government policy, traditional owners, like Lee, control access to minerals, even though the land technically belongs to the government. Lee has decided not to sell to the French mining company that came knocking on his door. Instead, he wants the land annexed to Kakadu Park, where it forever would be protected from development.

Here’s a man, employed as a park ranger, who’s giving up a spare billion—or two or three. For what? According to an interview he gave with The Sydney Morning Herald, Mr. Lee is afraid that if the land is disturbed, there could be a flood, an earthquake, or some big accident.

A lot of us would say, bully for him! A spiritual man who’s got his priorities straight. This does raise a boatload of questions, though. Lee has no children, a condition he says he hopes to do something about. If romance doesn’t come his way, and he is the last member of the Djok clan, should the Australian government then take over responsibility for deciding what happens to Koongarra? Or should other, local Aboriginal clans be involved? What if Lee changed his mind and decided to sell? Could—or should—the Australian government or other Aboriginal people be able to intercede? What does Mr. Lee really own here? Obviously he views the world a lot differently than, say, Jed Clampett of The Beverly Hillbillies. And notice how we never got to see what happened to Bug Tussle after Jed sold out and the oil companies moved in.

I’m particularly interested in Jeffrey Lee’s story because of the pressures he must feel. A lot of people have weighed in on this, indicating they think he’s a nutcase for refusing all that money. Some see him as obstructing progress and prosperity in one of the poorest sections of Australia. Think, too, of the possibilities for threats, bribery, ostracism . . . even violence. Mr. Lee’s story is the stuff of good novels. Maybe some worthy Australian author will give it a go. Tom Keneally, are you listening?