Review: "There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration" by Ali Noorani

 

Ali Noorani is the President and Director of National Immigration Forum. He began writing There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration in 2010, after Congress failed to pass The Dream Act, despite the Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Those advocating human rights for migrants were bitterly disappointed that, despite decades of advocacy and organizing, legislation which would have provided the most meager of relief for some undocumented immigrants failed. 

Ali Noorani identifies that cultural advocacy was the missing ingredient: "When Americans were looking for an answer to their questions of cultural identity, we gave them a political answer instead." [p. 30]

Review: "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder" by Vincent Bugliosi

I had started listening to the audio narration of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder by Vincent Bugliosi several years ago and never finished it. My new car has a working CD player, and I remembered I had 3 more discs from this book, so I finished them driving around town over the last week.

Even though I lived through the events of George the Small's years in the White House, this book reminded me how bad he was and how much he deserves punishment for the criminal wars he pursued. If you are like me and you've forgotten or you are too young to know, it's worth a read.

But more importantly, he ends the book discussing the cultural changes he saw in the United States which allowed for the election of George the Small and the popularity he enjoyed for most of his rule. Now some of this is simply an aged curmudgeon (he hates rap music), but there are some points congruent with a book I reviewed earlier about the erosion of literacy.

Mohammad Fadel "The Challenge of ISIS to Sunni Islam"

University of Toronto Law Professor Mohammad Fadel gave the Third Annual Sharjah Chair in Global Islam Lecture on September 29, 2015. You can follow him on Twitter and read some of his papers.



Parts of his talk focusing on the dismal political conditions in predominantly-Arab countries leading to the heresies of ISIS reminded me of Umberto Eco's novel In the Name of the Rose.