1 to 9 of 9
Review Date: 11/26/2021
The executive summary: yes, it is a love story, a literary fiction, a work with magical realism, a fantasy.
This book has romantic drama and beautiful imagery. It is also an alternate future book, where society and peoples' belief systems have taken a turn into something very different from what we have today. For one thing, they have a pagan religion as the predominant creed, and no mention of other religions. Arden, our hero, has had to live with trauma since he was a child, because the woman who served as his mother figure was sacrificed to the gods in what was supposed to have been a double sacrifice. She let go of his hand at the last minute, so he was not put to death. For a while, the society and its priests (all female) didn't know what to do with him. However, by the time he reached adulthood, they had figured it out. He was, by then, living the life of a "toiler", doing largely outdoor, blue collar work, with a group of other men in what was clearly the laboring class.
If you're willing to suspend disbelief, the idea of a mortal man who has a relationship with a woman from the fictional cloud realm, and is saved from capture and potential death as a fugitive by means of some unexplained supernatural ability to be transported there, and transformed from a solid mortal man into one of the less tangible cloud people has its merits. It also has some interesting alternate world/future technologies that (at least to me) are not clearly explained, but perhaps for some people that is part of the fun. This does render the choice of cover imagery mysterious. While a cloud- themed cover and author bio picture with clouds are certainly appropriate here, the relevance of a giant vacuum tube with a silvered end and containing a storm cloud with lightning have me scratching my head.
There wouldn't be much of a novel if tempests were contained by such means. The human sacrifice took place because to the people on the surface of the planet, a " war in heaven" had occurred, wherein a more powerful new god had routed some of the old gods, and the religious authorities wanted to win the favor of the new god.
Arden's miraculous escape to the cloud realm was very far from the end of his troubles. What Arden didn't know when he decided to throw in his lot with Estra, the Cloud Lady, was that her ex was Inglis, another cloud person who was owner and pilot of a giant storm cloud, who was believed to be a god by those on the planet below. Cloud Lady's ex reacts by shooting thunder bolts at him.
Eventually, he finds it necessary to build and arm a rival storm cloud to survive the continued attacks by Inglis. Alas, his mind becomes as narrow and warlike as that of his rival...
This book has romantic drama and beautiful imagery. It is also an alternate future book, where society and peoples' belief systems have taken a turn into something very different from what we have today. For one thing, they have a pagan religion as the predominant creed, and no mention of other religions. Arden, our hero, has had to live with trauma since he was a child, because the woman who served as his mother figure was sacrificed to the gods in what was supposed to have been a double sacrifice. She let go of his hand at the last minute, so he was not put to death. For a while, the society and its priests (all female) didn't know what to do with him. However, by the time he reached adulthood, they had figured it out. He was, by then, living the life of a "toiler", doing largely outdoor, blue collar work, with a group of other men in what was clearly the laboring class.
If you're willing to suspend disbelief, the idea of a mortal man who has a relationship with a woman from the fictional cloud realm, and is saved from capture and potential death as a fugitive by means of some unexplained supernatural ability to be transported there, and transformed from a solid mortal man into one of the less tangible cloud people has its merits. It also has some interesting alternate world/future technologies that (at least to me) are not clearly explained, but perhaps for some people that is part of the fun. This does render the choice of cover imagery mysterious. While a cloud- themed cover and author bio picture with clouds are certainly appropriate here, the relevance of a giant vacuum tube with a silvered end and containing a storm cloud with lightning have me scratching my head.
There wouldn't be much of a novel if tempests were contained by such means. The human sacrifice took place because to the people on the surface of the planet, a " war in heaven" had occurred, wherein a more powerful new god had routed some of the old gods, and the religious authorities wanted to win the favor of the new god.
Arden's miraculous escape to the cloud realm was very far from the end of his troubles. What Arden didn't know when he decided to throw in his lot with Estra, the Cloud Lady, was that her ex was Inglis, another cloud person who was owner and pilot of a giant storm cloud, who was believed to be a god by those on the planet below. Cloud Lady's ex reacts by shooting thunder bolts at him.
Eventually, he finds it necessary to build and arm a rival storm cloud to survive the continued attacks by Inglis. Alas, his mind becomes as narrow and warlike as that of his rival...
Review Date: 9/17/2019
This particular copy does _not_ come with a CD.
Review Date: 7/20/2019
This is a book which is derived from a compilation of the author's sermons on saints/eminent personages in the world/Episcopal Church from an Episcopalian/Anglican point of view. I learned a lot about some individuals in Church and world history who had been obscure to me. Portaro tries to see historical figures with compassion and humanity, and project that picture upon the page. Though there are some areas where he says certain things to adhere to the Protestant party line, there are also interesting observations on certain public figures' role in supporting and nurturing religion and social order. This book is a learning experience for people of other faiths who read it. I recommend this book, and hate to give it up.
Review Date: 9/17/2019
This book has important information about how the famous Currier & Ives business partnership which produced some of the most well-known and distinctly American/distinctly New York art prints came into being, evolved, changed, and finally, suffered dissolution. There is also insight on the different artists who designed some of the lithograph prints, and on the design and lithography process, as there are some surviving sketches and notes reproduced in the book which show that there were some early drafts of designs for prints which were changed, edited, and reworked so that they contained elements different from the initial concept. There are also a number of (mostly small in size) reprints of print pictures which would be considered politically incorrect these days, because they portrayed black people in situations that would be considered making jokes at their expense through slapstick comedy. Alas, though this book is itself oversized, it often fails to do justice to the prints it reproduces, and the printing process used tends to produce reprints which are not sharp.
Review Date: 9/15/2014
This is a really useful book, written by medical professionals who specialized in spinal conditions and one who has experienced debilitating, if temporary, back pain himself. The exercises given in the book meant to strengthen back muscles and help relieve back pain really work. I had read this book years ago and bought it to pass on to a friend. Unfortunately it is out of print, so I was lucky to find it through PaperBack Swap.
Review Date: 12/18/2014
If you like Tom Clancy novels and similar reading material, I think you'll enjoy this book. It is a speculative-future tale, based upon some unfortunate facts in our modern world, namely, that the Communist government of mainland China is increasingly persecuting non-State sanctioned Christian/Catholic groups and clergy instead of allowing more liberty in belief and worship. While the fictional 30-year imprisonment of Bishop Yu is an extreme case it serves to illustrate the continuing human rights abuses and crisis for religious liberty and diversity in China. I think it is helpful that the author included a section in the back of the book detailing recent developments in the very real and relevant nature of this problem. It is this basis of grim reality upon which the fantasy of the story is woven: the narrative details a commando operation to free the imprisoned Bishop, undertaken by US Special Forces at the behest of the Vatican, and a show of courage by the College of Cardinals, for voting in the imprisoned Yu as putative Pope in the face of powerful opposition by Communist China while spies and assassins allied with China and the Mafia attempt to sabotage the operation at every step of the way because of their common interest in perpetuating the profitable (but illegal) heroin trade. It is set in what is now the near future/near past, clearly inspired by the Papal election which took place after the death of John Paul II, but having to change the names. Some current technology plays a role in the story, such as smartphones which can upload video footage. However, there is some speculative technology used by the American Special Forces members and others such as ultra-small microphones, etc. and a small, highly-mobile sort of aircraft called the B.A.T. which is essentially and artificial bat. Though the hero of this and the other books in Tom Grace's series is an Irish-American Catholic, this is the only book in the series which deals directly with the affairs of the Vatican City-State and contains a well-researched level of factual detail concerning Vatican City. It is a very good book for our time, and one that perhaps our politicians should read.
The Thomas Carroll Affair: A Journey Through the Cottage Industry of Illlegal Immigration
Author:
Book Type: Paperback
1
Author:
Book Type: Paperback
1
Review Date: 3/31/2016
The Thomas Carroll Affair is an ideal book for a class on international law to study, because it details the sting operation and the personal sacrifice it took to circumvent the protections of diplomatic immunity and to effectively catch and prosecute a US foreign service officer who engaged in an exceptional career of white collar crime parallel to and intertwined with his legitimate post. (The following book review has been previously published by Yahoo Contributors Network, and as an Amazon.com review.)
Would you get an intestinal parasite to serve your country? While Americans in the Armed Forces face all kinds of risks, among them, potentially contracting parasites incidental to battlefield conditions, an American civilian government employee, who perhaps had a reasonable expectation of a more posh lifestyle, deliberately and knowingly had himself infected in this way for the sake of busting a bad guy whose conduct was giving a bad name to the United States and a division of its federal government. He was a Foreign Service Officer, an American governmental representative serving overseas in a US Embassy, who became a vital part of a sting operation, the successful conclusion of which brought justice to a larcenous impresario of a transnational criminal network. Yet his story is not widely known, nor the hazardous and primitive environment immediately outside of his air-conditioned office. Because such is the public image of the Foreign Service Officer: those Americans who have the vaguest idea of what FSOs do, picture a relatively fortunate holder of a physically unchallenging desk job under the protective wing of the US Embassy by day, an evening dress-clad bon vivant who attends state dinners and debutante balls with royalty and politicians by night, whose most serious occupational hazard is a champagne-induced hangover the next day.
To be sure, I couldn't have been the only one to have had such professional aspirations as I slogged through the foreign service civil service exam (formerly the FSWE, now the FSOT) in the hopes of embarking upon a career in the US State Department. FSOs do enjoy a relatively high standard of living, even in "hardship posts", less-developed nations where everything is in short supply and there may be pervasive violent crime or terrorist threats. The US government provides state-sponsored housing (leading to the envious nicknaming of FSOs as "the free-rent boys"), moving expenses, and pay that is not generous by the standards of the American elite, but stretches well "on the economy" of many less fortunate host countries. Foreign Service Officers in some respects lead a pampered, protected existence, often insulated from the worst of the impoverished conditions, crime, and anarchy which may bedevil their host country, and tend to socialize among themselves. This closed milieu is what author David Casavis, who knows many FSOs socially, and has interviewed many more (as well as host country nationals working for the US Embassy in Guyana) for the purposes of this book, has chosen to refer to as "The Bubble World". It is when the rough edges of the host country succeed in bursting the metaphorical "Bubble" that FSOs realize they got more and less than they bargained for. Under such conditions, a "culture of complaint" against Uncle Sam as well as the host country and its nationals grows and flowers, and various coping strategies are developed. Some who have contempt for the law and for professional ethics, or perhaps don't care about the consequences of their actions, use their positions of privilege for profit in ways ultimately detrimental to any effort to pretend that the USA is a "shining city on a hill" to other nations. Former FSO Thomas Carroll was a more conspicuous example of this than most.
While it is made clear in The Thomas Carroll Affair that for a number of years, it has not been entirely uncommon for US FSOs to accept monetary and other considerations in exchange for preferential treatment in issuing US visas to foreign nationals, (indeed, the author suggests that Thomas Carroll's first posting in Beijing, where a superior officer, section chief Charles Mathew Parish, got a so-called "slap on the wrist" in legal penalties for having routinely accepted financial and sexual favors in exchange for visas to the US, set the example for Carroll's conduct later on when he was posted in Guyana) it was the sheer scale of the illegal activity promoted within Guyanese society which distinguished the visa fraud and related criminal activity connected to former FSO Thomas Carroll. Ordinarily, an FSO selling visas might have had his conduct known among superiors and colleagues, yet remained unpunished due to several factors, among them the fact that the Foreign Service has long preferred to "look the other way" when FSOs put in a position of trust went astray, and the fact that they were often in circumstances where they enjoyed the protections of diplomatic immunity could make it near-impossible to prosecute them. It is said that like the Catholic Church, the State Department has preferred to transfer personnel who proved problematic, providing a "clean slate" with every new posting, and even to 'hush up' tales of wrongdoing for the sake of attempting to keep an ethical and prestigious image. However, the ramifications of Carroll's actions eventually proved too large to ignore. Carroll did not merely accept money or sex from a limited number of individuals hoping for US visa-issuing rules to be bent in their favor. In the words of a Guyanese reviewer of the book, "He established a self-perpetuating network of criminals, visa brokers, money launderers, drug traffickers and enforcers. The latter is very disturbing as Carroll recruited late Police Officer Leon Fraser and members of the then Target Special Squad, more known as the 'Black Clothes Police' as his enforcers, even suggesting they may have committed murder on his behalf, killing two 'Rasta men' whom they believe stole some of the visa money." (From Guyanese Online, July 28, 2013, 'My take on Davis Casavis's "Thomas Carroll Affair"' - Ralph Seeram [...] )
Though visa brokers, shadow money networks and similar legally dubious enterprises serving immigrant communities and aspiring emigrants have long existed in the shadowy parts of the economic system, Thomas Carroll utilized these phenomena to an unprecedented degree, not only to operate his illegal enterprise, but to "launder" the literally millions in bribery money this organized crime "machine" effectively sent his way, moving much of it to the United States, accounts in the names of his wife's family members in Taiwan, and an unknown number of accounts and safe deposit boxes in an unknown number of Caribbean Islands. The Thomas Carroll Affair explains that the bribes-for-visas enterprise was not merely a cash cow for Carroll, but incredibly lucrative for everyone involved in this white-collar crime network in Guyana: "At US $120 a month, a steady job can't compete with the cottage industry of visa sales. If a visa broker could pocket US$2,000 on the sale of just one visa, that broker could pocket more than the annual pay of a well-paid worker. ...Together with Carroll's own estimate that twenty-five out of thirty-five visas issued by Embassy Georgetown went to people who had no intentions of returning, goes a long way in explaining why the cottage industry thrived in Georgetown." (Casavis, D., 2012, The Thomas Carroll Affair, Deeper Look Books, p.87.) Indeed, being approached by would-be visa brokers is an occupational hazard for FSOs.
Carroll's pre-9/11 clandestine financial activity had such far-reaching consequences, that besides negatively impacting the chances of legitimate visa seekers, it affected the economy of his host country on a national level:
"The scope was vast beyond anything Georgetown had ever seen. Carroll was moving five visas a day, five days a week. That's 25 visas a week. Conservatively estimated at US$8,000 each, those sales would total US$200,000 a week, or US$800,000 a month. In a small economy, that much money had a profound effect... Consider first that this money was largely in American dollars- Carroll insisted on being paid in American dollars-the need for American dollars to pay Carroll's ever rising prices created a demand for dollars. The supply and demand curve moved for United States dollars," (Casavis, 2012, pp. 148-149.)
Though Carroll is not credited with a conscience by his colleagues and captors, towards the end of his term as a consular officer, he suffered from an attack of nerves if not guilt, as his illegal enterprise became larger and took on a life of its own. Perhaps he became scared of the monster he had created, when he "tipped his hand" with an angry outburst while he sat in on a meeting between the US Embassy's Regional Security Officer and aggrieved Guyanese national Joe De Agrella, a diamond dealer who had been an important figure in the Guyanese economy during more prosperous times, and who connected the extreme fluctuation in the exchange rate and an effect on diamond prices with money-laundering and visa fraud. Though De Agrella had not connected these economic phenomena directly with Carroll himself, Carroll's conduct afterward in which he later informed his native enforcers, who would in the following days make threatening phone calls to De Agrella and his family, led to De Agrella having another meeting at the US Embassy in Guyana with the Regional Security Officer, in which he got closer to the truth of what was going on. De Agrella also had a brother-in-law in Washington, DC who had worked with US Congressmen in his capacity as a Ph.D. with published works on the Caribbean, and thus De Agrella had the ability to take his complaint higher up the chain of command, and cause Diplomatic Security (the Foreign Service's equivalent of an Internal Affairs department) to give closer scrutiny to the situation. (pp. 166-178.)
In other respects, Thomas Carroll was a high-achieving, if not seemingly exemplary, FSO. He had gotten into only minor-league trouble during a previous posting, producing an illegitimate child with a native girlfriend. He subsequently had what to all appearances was a stable and successful marriage with a Taiwanese national, was known to have indulged a love of Chinese cuisine, and developed an aptitude for the Chinese language. Indeed, it was because of this latter skill and his insinuation of himself into Chinese social circles that he did some intelligence work: he helped the CIA get information about the alien-smuggling network that transited through Guyana, which they called "the Chinese trampoline" because it bounced Chinese nationals with phonied-up Guyanese documentation into the USA. These achievements led the State Department to promote him to economic and commercial officer, up and away from the visa window where he had plied his illicit black-money trade. No such lucrative opportunities for illegal income immediately presented themselves in his nominally higher position. Unanswered is whether it was greed or fear which led to Carroll's ultimate downfall. Despite his impending promotion and the prospect of a higher pay grade from his legitimate job, Carroll sought to retain and preserve his visa fraud money-making machine, perhaps if only to continue feeding what had become an increasingly ravenous beast.
Carroll had hopes of effectively getting kicked upstairs in his black-money job as well, if he could only convince the newly arrived FSO who would become his replacement that selling visas at the highest prices you could get for them was the 'smart' thing to do, and he was doing his replacement a favor by handing him the black market visa business as a turnkey operation.
Unbeknownst to Carroll and others in the US embassy in Guyana, newly-minted Foreign Service Officer Benedict Wolfe took morals and ethical questions rather more seriously than average: Benedict had studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, and remained active in the Catholic Church, even though he ultimately chose to marry. Benedict had taken the Foreign Service Exam because he needed a career to support the wife and three children. Instead of accepting bribery and corruption as a way of life, Benedict dropped a dime on Carroll with his superior, and played his part in the sting operation arranged by Diplomatic Security, known as DS. DS and the Regional Security personnel moved slowly, but hatched an elaborate and risky plan in order to ultimately arrest Carroll on US soil, where his diplomatic immunity would cease to be effective, and American law would be. In order to do this, they had to lure Carroll into making a trip to the USA. They did this through Benedict, who had been playing it sufficiently coy to give Carroll encouragement that he could continue to attempt to "sell" Benedict Wolfe on taking over the daily operations of the routinized visa fraud. Rarely does a newly-minted junior officer such as Benedict have the time, money, or superior's permission to make an unscheduled trip back to the United States. Thus DS had to come up with a pressing and undeniable rationale for such a trip on Benedict's part. They initially decided to medivac his wife, using the claim of gynecological problems in need of medical attention from a specialist they didn't have in-country, then shortly afterwards, Benedict himself. They couldn't claim Benedict needed a gynecologist, so they had to come up with something bold and far-fetched, and not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach. When Benedict conversed with Thomas Carroll about being handed the keys to the illicit visa business during a shared airport layover, he was wearing a wire with an electronic bug on his person, and literally had an actual bug up his behind. Placed there by the Embassy nurse for the sake of the sting operation, the intestinal parasite had to be there for the official medical records, and for a Stateside doctor unconnected with the internal investigation and sting operation, to verify and remove.
The one serious criticism I have of this book, besides the plethora of proofreading peccadilloes probably to be expected in a first self-published book, is the simplistic analysis claiming socialistic domestic economic policies as the sole source of Guyana's socioeconomic miseries when Guyana can well be said to suffer similar malaise to African states dependent on extractive industries which experience economic growth by the numbers, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, but whose citizens rarely see tangible benefits. Guyana's post-independence politics have often been organized on racial lines, much as rival tribes were left to duke it out within the artificially-imposed national borders of post-Colonial Africa. Guyana's economy also bears no small resemblance to that of many such African states. Casavis names bauxite and sugar as Guyana's major exported products, and cites gold and diamond mining as important parts of the Guyanese economy while acknowledging that Guyana does not have much tourism, and therefore does not benefit from that source of international revenue to the extent of other Caribbean and South American economies, many of which have had tourism as a major industry for a number of years.
As a helpful feature for those not in the know about Guyana, Casavis gives a complete historical disquisition and overview of Guyana's economic and social conditions. Though he portrays Guyana's immediate post-independence past as a halcyon time of an orderly and prosperous society, he also describes many of Guyana's ambitious and promising citizens as wanting to expatriate themselves and seek wealth abroad rather than remain and attempt to solve their country's problems. Not all of those paying top dollar to buy non-immigrant visas to the USA, which many then would overstay, were Guyana's thugs and criminals, though certainly a few of those were described as successful US visa purchasers in this book, and a smaller subset of them were caught and prosecuted by US authorities after they repeated previous criminal behavior after successfully settling in the USA. Thomas Carroll also couldn't have successfully run his black market in US visas without varying levels of complicity from the local authorities as well as a citizenry desperate to live and work abroad in the hopes of securing their futures and living in a stable, lower-crime environment. Casavis' description of the Guyanese society and economy walks the fine line between sympathy for the "huddled masses" facing diminished future prospects and increasing threats in their homeland, driving the potential for immigration, and the need for self-protection and selectivity about the immigrants we accept on the part of our homeland. Thomas Carroll's decision to make visitors' visas to the USA expensive and to accept that those willing to pay inflated prices for the privilege of getting one were planning to overstay, was part of the problem rather than any progress towards a solution. A departing supervisor who had given Carroll a negative performance review during his time in Guyana was perhaps unaware of the extent of his black market activities, but was well aware of contributions to the afore-mentioned "culture of complaint" concerning the country to which he was assigned, and his negative attitude towards the Guyanese population, whom he referred to as "stray dogs".
In the book, Casavis vividly portrays Guyana's slide into even more anarchy, poverty, and misery, following Carroll's arrest and departure. For all his complaints about Guyana and its people, Thomas Carroll left it a far worse place than he found it.
Would you get an intestinal parasite to serve your country? While Americans in the Armed Forces face all kinds of risks, among them, potentially contracting parasites incidental to battlefield conditions, an American civilian government employee, who perhaps had a reasonable expectation of a more posh lifestyle, deliberately and knowingly had himself infected in this way for the sake of busting a bad guy whose conduct was giving a bad name to the United States and a division of its federal government. He was a Foreign Service Officer, an American governmental representative serving overseas in a US Embassy, who became a vital part of a sting operation, the successful conclusion of which brought justice to a larcenous impresario of a transnational criminal network. Yet his story is not widely known, nor the hazardous and primitive environment immediately outside of his air-conditioned office. Because such is the public image of the Foreign Service Officer: those Americans who have the vaguest idea of what FSOs do, picture a relatively fortunate holder of a physically unchallenging desk job under the protective wing of the US Embassy by day, an evening dress-clad bon vivant who attends state dinners and debutante balls with royalty and politicians by night, whose most serious occupational hazard is a champagne-induced hangover the next day.
To be sure, I couldn't have been the only one to have had such professional aspirations as I slogged through the foreign service civil service exam (formerly the FSWE, now the FSOT) in the hopes of embarking upon a career in the US State Department. FSOs do enjoy a relatively high standard of living, even in "hardship posts", less-developed nations where everything is in short supply and there may be pervasive violent crime or terrorist threats. The US government provides state-sponsored housing (leading to the envious nicknaming of FSOs as "the free-rent boys"), moving expenses, and pay that is not generous by the standards of the American elite, but stretches well "on the economy" of many less fortunate host countries. Foreign Service Officers in some respects lead a pampered, protected existence, often insulated from the worst of the impoverished conditions, crime, and anarchy which may bedevil their host country, and tend to socialize among themselves. This closed milieu is what author David Casavis, who knows many FSOs socially, and has interviewed many more (as well as host country nationals working for the US Embassy in Guyana) for the purposes of this book, has chosen to refer to as "The Bubble World". It is when the rough edges of the host country succeed in bursting the metaphorical "Bubble" that FSOs realize they got more and less than they bargained for. Under such conditions, a "culture of complaint" against Uncle Sam as well as the host country and its nationals grows and flowers, and various coping strategies are developed. Some who have contempt for the law and for professional ethics, or perhaps don't care about the consequences of their actions, use their positions of privilege for profit in ways ultimately detrimental to any effort to pretend that the USA is a "shining city on a hill" to other nations. Former FSO Thomas Carroll was a more conspicuous example of this than most.
While it is made clear in The Thomas Carroll Affair that for a number of years, it has not been entirely uncommon for US FSOs to accept monetary and other considerations in exchange for preferential treatment in issuing US visas to foreign nationals, (indeed, the author suggests that Thomas Carroll's first posting in Beijing, where a superior officer, section chief Charles Mathew Parish, got a so-called "slap on the wrist" in legal penalties for having routinely accepted financial and sexual favors in exchange for visas to the US, set the example for Carroll's conduct later on when he was posted in Guyana) it was the sheer scale of the illegal activity promoted within Guyanese society which distinguished the visa fraud and related criminal activity connected to former FSO Thomas Carroll. Ordinarily, an FSO selling visas might have had his conduct known among superiors and colleagues, yet remained unpunished due to several factors, among them the fact that the Foreign Service has long preferred to "look the other way" when FSOs put in a position of trust went astray, and the fact that they were often in circumstances where they enjoyed the protections of diplomatic immunity could make it near-impossible to prosecute them. It is said that like the Catholic Church, the State Department has preferred to transfer personnel who proved problematic, providing a "clean slate" with every new posting, and even to 'hush up' tales of wrongdoing for the sake of attempting to keep an ethical and prestigious image. However, the ramifications of Carroll's actions eventually proved too large to ignore. Carroll did not merely accept money or sex from a limited number of individuals hoping for US visa-issuing rules to be bent in their favor. In the words of a Guyanese reviewer of the book, "He established a self-perpetuating network of criminals, visa brokers, money launderers, drug traffickers and enforcers. The latter is very disturbing as Carroll recruited late Police Officer Leon Fraser and members of the then Target Special Squad, more known as the 'Black Clothes Police' as his enforcers, even suggesting they may have committed murder on his behalf, killing two 'Rasta men' whom they believe stole some of the visa money." (From Guyanese Online, July 28, 2013, 'My take on Davis Casavis's "Thomas Carroll Affair"' - Ralph Seeram [...] )
Though visa brokers, shadow money networks and similar legally dubious enterprises serving immigrant communities and aspiring emigrants have long existed in the shadowy parts of the economic system, Thomas Carroll utilized these phenomena to an unprecedented degree, not only to operate his illegal enterprise, but to "launder" the literally millions in bribery money this organized crime "machine" effectively sent his way, moving much of it to the United States, accounts in the names of his wife's family members in Taiwan, and an unknown number of accounts and safe deposit boxes in an unknown number of Caribbean Islands. The Thomas Carroll Affair explains that the bribes-for-visas enterprise was not merely a cash cow for Carroll, but incredibly lucrative for everyone involved in this white-collar crime network in Guyana: "At US $120 a month, a steady job can't compete with the cottage industry of visa sales. If a visa broker could pocket US$2,000 on the sale of just one visa, that broker could pocket more than the annual pay of a well-paid worker. ...Together with Carroll's own estimate that twenty-five out of thirty-five visas issued by Embassy Georgetown went to people who had no intentions of returning, goes a long way in explaining why the cottage industry thrived in Georgetown." (Casavis, D., 2012, The Thomas Carroll Affair, Deeper Look Books, p.87.) Indeed, being approached by would-be visa brokers is an occupational hazard for FSOs.
Carroll's pre-9/11 clandestine financial activity had such far-reaching consequences, that besides negatively impacting the chances of legitimate visa seekers, it affected the economy of his host country on a national level:
"The scope was vast beyond anything Georgetown had ever seen. Carroll was moving five visas a day, five days a week. That's 25 visas a week. Conservatively estimated at US$8,000 each, those sales would total US$200,000 a week, or US$800,000 a month. In a small economy, that much money had a profound effect... Consider first that this money was largely in American dollars- Carroll insisted on being paid in American dollars-the need for American dollars to pay Carroll's ever rising prices created a demand for dollars. The supply and demand curve moved for United States dollars," (Casavis, 2012, pp. 148-149.)
Though Carroll is not credited with a conscience by his colleagues and captors, towards the end of his term as a consular officer, he suffered from an attack of nerves if not guilt, as his illegal enterprise became larger and took on a life of its own. Perhaps he became scared of the monster he had created, when he "tipped his hand" with an angry outburst while he sat in on a meeting between the US Embassy's Regional Security Officer and aggrieved Guyanese national Joe De Agrella, a diamond dealer who had been an important figure in the Guyanese economy during more prosperous times, and who connected the extreme fluctuation in the exchange rate and an effect on diamond prices with money-laundering and visa fraud. Though De Agrella had not connected these economic phenomena directly with Carroll himself, Carroll's conduct afterward in which he later informed his native enforcers, who would in the following days make threatening phone calls to De Agrella and his family, led to De Agrella having another meeting at the US Embassy in Guyana with the Regional Security Officer, in which he got closer to the truth of what was going on. De Agrella also had a brother-in-law in Washington, DC who had worked with US Congressmen in his capacity as a Ph.D. with published works on the Caribbean, and thus De Agrella had the ability to take his complaint higher up the chain of command, and cause Diplomatic Security (the Foreign Service's equivalent of an Internal Affairs department) to give closer scrutiny to the situation. (pp. 166-178.)
In other respects, Thomas Carroll was a high-achieving, if not seemingly exemplary, FSO. He had gotten into only minor-league trouble during a previous posting, producing an illegitimate child with a native girlfriend. He subsequently had what to all appearances was a stable and successful marriage with a Taiwanese national, was known to have indulged a love of Chinese cuisine, and developed an aptitude for the Chinese language. Indeed, it was because of this latter skill and his insinuation of himself into Chinese social circles that he did some intelligence work: he helped the CIA get information about the alien-smuggling network that transited through Guyana, which they called "the Chinese trampoline" because it bounced Chinese nationals with phonied-up Guyanese documentation into the USA. These achievements led the State Department to promote him to economic and commercial officer, up and away from the visa window where he had plied his illicit black-money trade. No such lucrative opportunities for illegal income immediately presented themselves in his nominally higher position. Unanswered is whether it was greed or fear which led to Carroll's ultimate downfall. Despite his impending promotion and the prospect of a higher pay grade from his legitimate job, Carroll sought to retain and preserve his visa fraud money-making machine, perhaps if only to continue feeding what had become an increasingly ravenous beast.
Carroll had hopes of effectively getting kicked upstairs in his black-money job as well, if he could only convince the newly arrived FSO who would become his replacement that selling visas at the highest prices you could get for them was the 'smart' thing to do, and he was doing his replacement a favor by handing him the black market visa business as a turnkey operation.
Unbeknownst to Carroll and others in the US embassy in Guyana, newly-minted Foreign Service Officer Benedict Wolfe took morals and ethical questions rather more seriously than average: Benedict had studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood, and remained active in the Catholic Church, even though he ultimately chose to marry. Benedict had taken the Foreign Service Exam because he needed a career to support the wife and three children. Instead of accepting bribery and corruption as a way of life, Benedict dropped a dime on Carroll with his superior, and played his part in the sting operation arranged by Diplomatic Security, known as DS. DS and the Regional Security personnel moved slowly, but hatched an elaborate and risky plan in order to ultimately arrest Carroll on US soil, where his diplomatic immunity would cease to be effective, and American law would be. In order to do this, they had to lure Carroll into making a trip to the USA. They did this through Benedict, who had been playing it sufficiently coy to give Carroll encouragement that he could continue to attempt to "sell" Benedict Wolfe on taking over the daily operations of the routinized visa fraud. Rarely does a newly-minted junior officer such as Benedict have the time, money, or superior's permission to make an unscheduled trip back to the United States. Thus DS had to come up with a pressing and undeniable rationale for such a trip on Benedict's part. They initially decided to medivac his wife, using the claim of gynecological problems in need of medical attention from a specialist they didn't have in-country, then shortly afterwards, Benedict himself. They couldn't claim Benedict needed a gynecologist, so they had to come up with something bold and far-fetched, and not for the faint of heart, or the weak of stomach. When Benedict conversed with Thomas Carroll about being handed the keys to the illicit visa business during a shared airport layover, he was wearing a wire with an electronic bug on his person, and literally had an actual bug up his behind. Placed there by the Embassy nurse for the sake of the sting operation, the intestinal parasite had to be there for the official medical records, and for a Stateside doctor unconnected with the internal investigation and sting operation, to verify and remove.
The one serious criticism I have of this book, besides the plethora of proofreading peccadilloes probably to be expected in a first self-published book, is the simplistic analysis claiming socialistic domestic economic policies as the sole source of Guyana's socioeconomic miseries when Guyana can well be said to suffer similar malaise to African states dependent on extractive industries which experience economic growth by the numbers, as measured by the Gross Domestic Product, but whose citizens rarely see tangible benefits. Guyana's post-independence politics have often been organized on racial lines, much as rival tribes were left to duke it out within the artificially-imposed national borders of post-Colonial Africa. Guyana's economy also bears no small resemblance to that of many such African states. Casavis names bauxite and sugar as Guyana's major exported products, and cites gold and diamond mining as important parts of the Guyanese economy while acknowledging that Guyana does not have much tourism, and therefore does not benefit from that source of international revenue to the extent of other Caribbean and South American economies, many of which have had tourism as a major industry for a number of years.
As a helpful feature for those not in the know about Guyana, Casavis gives a complete historical disquisition and overview of Guyana's economic and social conditions. Though he portrays Guyana's immediate post-independence past as a halcyon time of an orderly and prosperous society, he also describes many of Guyana's ambitious and promising citizens as wanting to expatriate themselves and seek wealth abroad rather than remain and attempt to solve their country's problems. Not all of those paying top dollar to buy non-immigrant visas to the USA, which many then would overstay, were Guyana's thugs and criminals, though certainly a few of those were described as successful US visa purchasers in this book, and a smaller subset of them were caught and prosecuted by US authorities after they repeated previous criminal behavior after successfully settling in the USA. Thomas Carroll also couldn't have successfully run his black market in US visas without varying levels of complicity from the local authorities as well as a citizenry desperate to live and work abroad in the hopes of securing their futures and living in a stable, lower-crime environment. Casavis' description of the Guyanese society and economy walks the fine line between sympathy for the "huddled masses" facing diminished future prospects and increasing threats in their homeland, driving the potential for immigration, and the need for self-protection and selectivity about the immigrants we accept on the part of our homeland. Thomas Carroll's decision to make visitors' visas to the USA expensive and to accept that those willing to pay inflated prices for the privilege of getting one were planning to overstay, was part of the problem rather than any progress towards a solution. A departing supervisor who had given Carroll a negative performance review during his time in Guyana was perhaps unaware of the extent of his black market activities, but was well aware of contributions to the afore-mentioned "culture of complaint" concerning the country to which he was assigned, and his negative attitude towards the Guyanese population, whom he referred to as "stray dogs".
In the book, Casavis vividly portrays Guyana's slide into even more anarchy, poverty, and misery, following Carroll's arrest and departure. For all his complaints about Guyana and its people, Thomas Carroll left it a far worse place than he found it.
Review Date: 2/11/2014
This is one of the better childrens' books out there, but keep in mind it has its limitations. It is a fairy-tale story of its time, written in the late 1960s/early 1970s, when the Meatpacking District on Manhattan's lower West Side was a place with rented apartments where laborers and their families (in this case, Puerto Rican immigrants)could actually afford to live, and vacant apartments and buildings where people could potentially live as squatters unnoticed. It is a tale of two extraordinarily lucky children, Thomas and his older sister Fernanda, who go into hiding in this fashion (a later paperback reprinting of this story is called "Children In Hiding") when their father leaves them and doesn't come back. (Kids, don't be getting ideas about doing this, because it just isn't possible nowadays.) Though the Law of Attraction isn't overtly mentioned in the book, the children amazingly find things in the trash that they need to survive on their own, and even, in one instance, things to decorate the apartment and enhance their lives. As the title implies, it is Tomas, the pre-teen boy who "takes charge", coming up with this plan and sustaining their subsequent short-lived squatting existence by daily excursions in which he is scavenging from edible but rejected food thrown out by the former Washington Market, earning money babysitting, looking for dimes from coin returns on pay phones, and coming into some other work posing for a childrens' book illustrator he accidentally discovers living in the area. It is because of those connections with the adult world on Tomas's part, that when he twists his ankle and can no longer go on his daily rounds, he is missed, and an investigation and the involvement of child services "Welfare", ensues with the childrens' hidden home being found. Though Tomas's sister Fernanda is older, and in a passive role in which Tomas "takes care" of her, the book is saved from even more extreme sexism than was prevalent during the time period in which it was written by virtue of the fact that part of the reason for Fernanda's behavior is cultural, "girls in Puerto Rico weren't expected to go to school", and it was considered normal if not desirable for her to just stay at home. Additionally, she suffered from a larger problem than merely misguided application of the culture of "the old country" to her, when Tomas met a psychiatrist, it was discovered that Fernanda was agoraphobic, and part of the "happy ending" which ensues is the offer of psychiatric help to help her overcome this issue and hopefully become less dependent on Tomas and others.
Review Date: 9/6/2020
Today this book would be classified as "paranormal romance" but back when it was written, they didn't have a name for it. This book plunges the reader into what is an alien world for most Americans, that of an ancient family in England who kept a manor house and the property it was on through multiple generations, and for whom marrying a cousin was not unusual. It is made clear that ruthlessness and self-serving was one of the constants in the family. In the past, that characteristic was credited with having kept the property with the moated manor in the family. In more modern times, the 70s, apparently the UK still has the same sexist laws which also affected Jane Austen's heroines, wherein the male descendents inherit all, leaving female heiresses in potential penury; in spite of both biological and legal advantages, the males of the family, ostensibly running a wine business, fail to make money, pile up debt, and come to consider the sale of the estate to real estate developers the solution to their financial woes. In order to sell the land, and to enable a developer to replace the grand estate with tract houses, they have to get their female cousin to consent to break the trust protecting the bulk of the property, and to allow a road to be built through the small strip of land with a cottage which she inherited, or sell it for that purpose. She wants to stop it for sentimental reasons, but is legally powerless, until a clue from a statement made by her father before he died gets figured out, and an unknown cousin who was formerly believed to have been descended from an illegitimate line and therefore disqualified from inheriting the estate turns out to be legitimate after all, his great-great-great grandparents having been secretly married, and the page from the parish register which documented that fact having been carefully concealed. A happy ending for all but the villains is achieved by the end of the book, the history of the family having played its part. (Foreshadowing, your mark of quality literature.) BTW, a Scottish wildcat, the animal on the family crest, is something closer to a Bobcat or Lynx than a leopard, but capable of breeding with domestic cats and producing hybrid offspring. It was common centuries ago, but is threatened today: http://www.coffeefilms.com/scottishwildcats/wildcats.html
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