Book review: 'Liberty: 1784' marred by unnecessary elements

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"LIBERTY: 1784 The Second War for Independence," by Robert Conroy, Baen Books, $25, 368 pages (f)

Only a few months after the release of 1920: America's Great War, novelist Robert Conroy gives readers another story that turns history on its side. His new offering, Liberty: 1784 The Second War for Independence, supposes a British victory at Yorktown and a very different final act to the American Revolution.

The story begins with George Washington's execution for treason in the Tower of London. Readers are soon introduced to Will Drake, an American officer wasting away in a British prison ship in the Hudson River. Escaping, Will soon makes his way west, to the last rebel enclave known simply as Liberty. Somewhere near present-day Chicago, Liberty is a series of free communities keeping the spirit of the American Revolution alive.

Along the way Will meets several characters such as a beautiful young woman named Sarah, fleeing the cruelty of American loyalists; Major Fitzroy, a British officer determined to do his duty to the crown; and Owen, a deserter from the Royal Marines who joins the Revolutionaries. These characters and more mix with actual historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, John Burgoyne, John Paul Jones, and John Hancock.

Soon, a British army under Burgoyne marches west to destroy Liberty and finally bring the American Revolution to an end. Dramatic tension builds as the rebels must frantically train their ramshackle army and prepare their defenses for the final showdown with the king's troops.

Like most of Conroy's novels, Liberty: 1784 is a thrilling adventure tale that offers an interesting perspective on one of history's most important events. Alternate history can illustrate just how fragile a series of cause and events can truly be. Here, Conroy brilliantly explores America's beginnings with a generally engaging and fun story.

Unfortunately, Conroy falls back on sex far too often in this book. Sexual scenes are a staple for most of Conroy's novels, and rape is frequently explored as a by-product of war. In Liberty: 1784, Conroy pushes these themes to an uncomfortable and often quite off-putting degree. Additionally, some of the foul language employed seems a bit anachronistic.

In most respects Liberty: 1784 is an entertaining novel, though it is marred by too many of these unnecessary elements. In addition to the sex and language, the novel does contain some scenes of intense war violence and atrocities.

Cody K. Carlson currently teaches history at SLCC, and is an avid player of board games. You can check out his blog at thediscriminatinggamer.com. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com

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Book review: 'Liberty: 1784' marred by unnecessary elements

The Red Bureaucracy: Authoritarian Socialism vs Libertarian Socialism – Video

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The Red Bureaucracy: Authoritarian Socialism vs Libertarian Socialism
In anticipation of comments suggesting Leninists and anarchists should #39;unite against the capitalists #39;: http://greatmomentsinleftism.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/left-unity.html Notions of anarchists...

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The Red Bureaucracy: Authoritarian Socialism vs Libertarian Socialism - Video

What Libertarians Should Learn From the Abolitionists

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[A Selection from Libertarian Review, August 1978.]

If victory is indeed our given end, an end given to us by the requirements of justice, then we must strive to achieve that end as rapidly as we can.

But this means that libertarians must not adopt gradualism as part of their goal; they must wish to achieve liberty as early and as rapidly as possible. Otherwise, they would be ratifying the continuation of injustice. They must be abolitionists.

The objection is often raised that abolitionism is unrealistic, that liberty (or any other radical social goal) can be achieved only gradually. Whether or not this is true (and the existence of radical upheavals demonstrates that such is not always the case), this common charge gravely confuses the realm of principle with the realm of strategy ...

The realism of the goal can only be challenged by a critique of the goal itself, not in the problem of how to attain it. Then, after we have decided on the goal, we face the entirely separate strategic question of how to attain that goal as rapidly as possible, how to build a movement to attain it, etc.

Thus, William Lloyd Garrison was not being unrealistic when, in the 1830s, he raised the glorious standard of immediate emancipation of the slaves. His goal was the proper one, and his strategic realism came in the fact that he did not expect his goal to be quickly reached. Or, as Garrison himself distinguished,

Urge immediate abolition as earnestly as we may, it will, alas! be gradual abolition in the end. We have never said that slavery would be overthrown by a single blow; that it ought to be, we shall always contend. (The Liberator, August 13, 1831)

From a strictly strategic point of view, it is also true that if the adherents of the pure goal do not state that goal and hold it aloft, no one will do so, and the goal therefore will never be attained. Furthermore, since most people and most politicians will hold to the middle of whatever road may be offered them, the extremist, by constantly raising the ante, and by holding the pure or extreme goal aloft, will move the extremes further over, and will therefore pull the middle further over in his extreme direction. Hence, raising the ante by pulling the middle further in his direction will, in the ordinary pulling and hauling of the political process, accomplish more for that goal, even in the day-by-day short run, than any opportunistic surrender of the ultimate principle.

In her brilliant study of the strategy and tactics of the Garrison wing of the abolitionist movement, Aileen Kraditor writes,

It follows, from the abolitionists conception of his role in society, that the goal for which he agitated was not likely to be immediately realizable. Its realization must follow conversion of an enormous number of people, and the struggle must take place in the face of the hostility that inevitably met the agitator for an unpopular cause. ... The abolitionists knew as well as their later scholarly critics that immediate and unconditional emancipation could not occur for a long time. But unlike those critics they were sure it would never come unless it were agitated for during the long period in which it was impracticable. ...

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What Libertarians Should Learn From the Abolitionists

Barrie's Libertarian candidate says Ontarians have been saddled with too much debt

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Darren Roskam is Barrie's voice in the political wilderness, and it looks like he will stay right there.

Roskam, 46, is the Ontario Libertarian Party candidate for Barrie in the June 12 provincial election.

But it's an uphill battle for him, and his party.

The Libertarians haven't elected an MPP in any of the last four elections. In 2011, the percentage of valid ballots cast for the Libertarians, Elections Ontario says, was 0.5%.

So why vote Libertarian?

Because our platform is the only one that provides solutions to the problems that we have, said Roskam, a self-employed graphic designer. The other parties have provided us with a great burden of debt and spending.

"Government is too big, too expensive, so big and expensive that we have to borrow money at interest to keep the whole thing going," he added.

Roskam has been a candidate before, in Barrie municipal, provincial and federal elections. He's never come close to winning.

So why vote for him?

They should vote for me because no one else is going to cut all those things (Ontario's ministries of sport, culture, tourism, TVOntario, the Ontario Wine Council), only the Libertarian, Roskam said. The rest just want to play a shell game and blame each other, and say 'look at the mess I inherited'.

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Barrie's Libertarian candidate says Ontarians have been saddled with too much debt

Libertarian Party looks to field a candidate in 2014 House campaign

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The Staten Island Libertarian Party is looking to field a candidate in this year's House race.

West Brighton resident Richard Bell, a member of the Richmond County Tea Party Patriots, will gather petition signatures in a bid to get on the ballot.

Bell, 67, a small business owner, said he was looking to get into the race because he is concerned about the economy, particularly the national debt.

"It's affecting everything we do in our daily economy," he said, "the price of food, the price of energy. We need to start addressing the debt."

New York state has been hit particularly hard, Bell said.

"Everywhere you go, there are for-rent signs on stores," he said. "New York is like a depression."

Bell said he saw a different picture during a recent trip to Toronto.

"Toronto is like a boom town," he said.

Bell had little to say about the two major party candidates in the race, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) and Democrat Domenic M. Recchia.

"Those two parties haven't been able to do anything about the shape we're in," he said. "The parties make a lot of promises."

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Libertarian Party looks to field a candidate in 2014 House campaign

The Koch brothers can save the Republican Party by making it more moderate

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It seems hard to fathom now, but the Republican establishment once viewed the Kochs as a threat. In the late 1970s, National Review now a reliable defender of the brothers devoted a series of articles to eviscerating the libertarian movement and its angel investor, Charles Koch, whom the magazine described as a man whose wealth and devotion to privacy are straight out of the Howard Hughes legend.

Now the Koch brothers, thanks to their sprawling political and fundraising network, are the toast of the GOP, while Democrats have taken up the cause of demonizing them, even placing them at the center of their midterm election strategy. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recently suggested that Senate Republicans should wear Koch insignias to denote their sponsorship. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, meanwhile, has rolled out a Web site proclaiming that the GOP is addicted to Koch.

But their fiercest critics on the left may be surprised to learn that the Kochs actually share a host of views with them, particularly on social issues (though emphatically not on economic ones). And now that the brothers wield significant influence within the Republican Party, they have an opportunity to push it closer to the center on issues that have caused members of many key voting blocs women, Latinos, youth to shun the GOP.

For a party undergoing an identity crisis, a Koch-style makeover may not be such a bad thing.

The brothers have achieved political notoriety for bankrolling the tea party movement, leading the charge against Obamacare , stoking skepticism about climate change and carpet-bombing the airwaves with ads targeting vulnerable Democratic lawmakers via their advocacy group Americans for Prosperity. But lesser known are the issues on which they are at odds with the conservative mainstream.

The Kochs generally disapprove of foreign military interventions and were no fans of the Iraq war. As a young man, Charles strongly opposed the Vietnam War, even though this position was highly unpopular in his home town of Wichita, headquarters of military contractors such as Beech and Cessna that supplied the war effort. His activism so angered the leadership of the conservative John Birch Society, which his father had played a role in founding and where Charles was a member, that he was forced to part ways with the group in the late 1960s after placing an antiwar ad in the local newspaper.

David has criticized U.S. drug policy and victimless-crime laws. I have friends who smoke pot. I know many homosexuals. Its ridiculous to treat them as criminals, he said in 1980. He supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights positions that risk his standing in the GOP. Charles seemingly shares these views. What a spectacle it is for the same people who preach freedom in voluntary economic activities to call for the full force of the law against voluntary sexual or other personal activities! he wrote in his 1978 jeremiad. What else can the public conclude but that the free-market rhetoric is a sham that business only cares about freedom for itself, and doesnt give a damn about freedom for the individual?

The Kochs have largely remained quiet on these issues in recent decades, but David made headlines at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, when he told Politico, I believe in gay marriage. His remark came just days after the GOP had officially hammered out a platform calling for a federal ban on gay marriage.

The libertarian movement, in which Charles and David Koch were leading figures, attempted to forge an alliance with the political left by highlighting the issues on which they could agree, such as robust civil liberties, a non-interventionist foreign policy, reproductive rights and the elimination of corporate subsides. It sought to demolish the two-party monopoly, as David put it when he accepted the Libertarian Partys vice-presidential nomination in 1979. But the fractious movement imploded in the wake of the 1980 election, after David and his running mate claimed 1 percent of the popular vote but came under fire from within the libertarian ranks for diluting the movements radical agenda on the campaign trail. (They had, for instance, committed the heresy of failing to call for the full eradication of the income tax.)

The Kochs ultimately abandoned the Libertarian Party, though not its core beliefs, once the futility of challenging the two-party system became clear. Thus began their three-decade climb from libertarian gadflies to Republican power brokers. The question now is what they will do with their newly acquired clout within the GOP.

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The Koch brothers can save the Republican Party by making it more moderate

Libertarian Party looking to field a candidate in this year's congressional race

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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The Staten Island Libertarian Party is looking to field a candidate in this year's House race.

The party will gather petition signatures in a bid to get West Brighton Republican Richard Bell, a member of the Richmond County Tea Party Patriots, on the ballot.

Bell, 67, a small business owner, said he was looking to get into the race because he is concerned about the economy, particularly the national debt.

"It's affecting everything we do in our daily economy," he said, "the price of food, the price of energy. We need to start addressing the debt."

New York state has been hit particularly hard, Bell said.

"Everywhere you go, there are for-rent signs on stores," he said. "New York is like a depression."

Bell said he saw a different picture during a recent trip to Toronto.

"Toronto is like a boom town," he said.

Bell had little to say about the two major party candidates in the race, Rep. Michael Grimm (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) and Democrat Domenic M. Recchia.

"Those two parties haven't been able to do anything about the shape we're in," he said. "The parties make a lot of promises."

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Libertarian Party looking to field a candidate in this year's congressional race

HERITAGE: Mysterious isles of East Indonesia

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WE were the only ones there at peak season, Shivaji Das observes of his trip to the Kelimutu coloured lakes in Flores, listed on Wikipedia as the islands most famous tourist attraction. Thats what makes these islands a bit special, he says.

Das was at Universiti Malaya last month to give a talk on his newly launched travel ebook, Journeys With The Caterpillar, that charts his adventures in the Eastern Indonesian islands of Sumba and Flores with his then partner, now wife, Lobo (real name Yolanda Yu).

These relatively unknown islands seem to be a curious choice for two lovebirds, but Das lists their other options as Nepal and Syria, proving that these two choose the road less travelled by (and also less air-conditioned) whatever the circumstances. As it were, he says, Indonesia was the cheapest option with the best weather.

Its very different from Bali, he tells an audience of students and academics who will probably venture no further than that glossy destination when it comes to Indonesian islands. Its still very raw.

Sumba, Das informs us, is known as the Texas of Indonesia. Its very dry and you have a lot of flatlands and small hills. And of course horses. About a hundred years ago, the Sumba used to export horses. They still do, though not to the extent it once was and horses still play a major role in their culture, especially in annual festivals like Pasola, where horseback riders throw spears at each other.

Flores on the other hand, is wet and mountainous and has many volcanoes. These volcanoes, Kelimutu specifically, are the cradles for the lakes that change colour according to the oxidation state of the lakes. But more captivating than their landscapes is their culture.

PINK BUFFALOES AND MONOLITHS In his three-week travel, Das managed to cover a lot of ground and also discover much about the daily lives and festivities of the people of Sumba and Flores.

In Flores they say they dont have a face, Das says as the projector reveals a slide populated with faces that seemed to look like they are from South America and Africa. If you look at their faces, theyre all very different. From a Creole face to sharper features to more Javanese features.

These variations can be attributed to the rich colonial history of Flores, waves of colonisation as Das calls it, from neighbouring islands of Sumbawa and Sulawesi, and the Portuguese, then the Dutch.

On Sumba and Flores, a lot of importance is placed on ancestor worship, although most of Flores is nominally Roman Catholic. It is especially strong in Sumba, where the practice is called Marupu. In recent years, there has been a new surge of pride in their culture.

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HERITAGE: Mysterious isles of East Indonesia

Cuizon: Islands, islands

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IT WAS 20 years ago when the Philippines and Indonesia first decided to talk about their claims of islands in the Mindanao Sea and Celebes Sea.

Within this month, the two countries have set new maritime boundary lines in the areas with unclear sovereignty. This includes rich fishing grounds, trading routes and sources of oil or natural gas. And the agreement, set for signing, is called Agreement between the Republic of the Philippines and the Republic of Indonesia Concerning the Delimitation of the Exclusive Economic Zone Boundary.

That's what the Philippines has asked for in its claim of the Spratly Islands over which China claims authority. China is also claiming the South China Sea islands that Vietnam, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, also Brunei, believe are theirs.

The agreement between the Philippines and Indonesia over some islands show the intent of both countries to stay as friends and keep the regional community firm according to Aseans international laws. It could serve as example of steps towards real world peace.

In the early years of the world, there werent people quarreling over islands since there were few people in a big world, each prehistoric clan could own one and more of an archipelago, except that the travel from one island to another would lead to the people's preference of vast land in its natural flourish.

But through the years and today, man has found the importance of small islands, as rich fishing grounds, also as sources of oil and natural gas reserves in reefs, atolls, and coral islands. Most of the world's plants and animals are endemic and indigenous species, mostly found only in some islands.

The islands in total the world over---of land and the water---is sixth of the world's total area and home to a big portion of the world's animals and plants.

Over these islands are the disputes of territorial ownership, like the South China Sea. In the Philippines, the islands in dispute are found in the west, in Vietnam found in the east. The area is called the South China Sea which the Philippines calls the West Philippine Sea and Vietnam calls the East Sea. Japan and China are in dispute over seven islands in East China Sea which Japan calls the Senkaku and China, Diaoyu.

And the quarrel over these islands are referred to as a sea row among Asian countries, or territorial issues, or disputes, with tensions running high.

There is the 2002 Declaration among Asean countries on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. But is China looking? Its looking towards a claim of about a 90-percent of the sea and islands in the area.

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Cuizon: Islands, islands

Connecting terrestrial islands to promote biodiversity

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Details Published on Saturday, 24 May 2014 10:41 Janita Gurung and Pratikshya Kandel Hits: 117 Privacy Policy

This year, the UN has declared Island Biodiversity as the theme for celebrating International Day for Biological Diversity. The worlds islands are home to about 600 million people 10 per cent of the worlds population. These islands are also home to some unique species of plants and animals that are found nowhere else in the world. For example, the kangaroo is found only in Australia, the flightless kiwi bird is found only in New Zealand, and the now extinct dodo another flightless bird was found only in Mauritius. Australia, New Zealand and Mauritius are all island countries.

Islands the word generally conjures images of areas of land surrounded by water. For conservationists, islands take on another meaning when pockets of pristine land areas rich in biodiversity exist amidst intensive areas of human settlements, agriculture or industrialization. These islands are generally home to numerous species of plants, birds, insects and animals. At a larger scale, many of these ecologically significant islands have been set aside as areas to protect plants and wildlife.

Animals, particularly large animals, must move, and thus require large areas of habitat for their survival. Often, when animals travel outside their islands of protected areas, they enter human settlements and destroy crops, livestock, and even human life, resulting in what conservationists term human-wildlife conflicts. Humans generally respond to such wildlife intrusions by exterminating them through various means a process termed as retaliatory killing.

One of the methods by which the habitat of large animals can be increased is by connecting protected areas through wildlife corridors. These corridors can be instrumental in connecting fragmented habitat islands and thereby facilitating wildlife movement. Corridors also promote interbreeding, which results in genetic diversity within the wildlife population.

The Kanchenjunga Landscape is one of seven landscape initiatives in the Hindu Kush Himalayas where the ecosystem approach is being used with a focus on connecting islands of protected areas through conservation corridors. This initiative is a trans-boundary program involving the governments of Bhutan, India, and Nepal. The program aims to develop connectivity between the 20 isolated protected areas in the landscape through a network of conservation corridors extending from eastern Nepal, through the states of Sikkim and northern West Bengal in India, to western Bhutan. These corridors will facilitate the movement of species, such as the endangered snow leopard at the higher elevations, and Bengal tiger and Asian elephant at the lower elevations.

The Kanchenjunga Landscape is part of the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspot where there is high level of biodiversity, much of which is facing severe threats from humans. The landscape hosts a significantly high number of plants and is home to at least six species of endangered animals including the snow leopard, Himalayan musk deer, Bengal tiger, Asian elephant, and one-horned rhino, among others. The trademark plant species of the landscape is the rhododendron at least 45 species of which are found in the landscape. The landscape is also home to approximately seven million women and men, some of whom belong to distinct ethnic groups, such as the Lepchas and the Walungs.

Despite the ecological significance of the Kanchenjunga Landscape, there is much we need to know about the biodiversity and socio-economy of the region. During a recent review process for understanding the state of knowledge on biodiversity in the landscape, about 850 published and unpublished documents were recorded. The first recorded study in the landscape was conducted more than 170 years ago on the Lepchas of Sikkim by Archibald Campbell, the British political agent to Sikkim and Darjeeling in the East India Company. This was followed by the work of the notable British naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who published an account of his botanical expedition in the Kanchenjunga region in two volumes of The Himalayan Journals in 1854. Subsequently, research interest in the Kanchenjunga landscape increased significantly only three decades later in the 1980s. Much of the information gathered in the area was focused on animals and plants, with the red panda being the most researched animal species in the landscape. Over 80 per cent of the research has been conducted in the Indian portion of the Kanchenjunga Landscape, only 9 per cent has been conducted in Nepal and just 4 per cent took place in the Bhutan portion of the landscape.

Why is it important to know about the biodiversity in the Kanchenjunga Landscape? There are an estimated 8.7 million species of organisms in the world. Among these, only 1.2 million species have been identified till date representing only 14 per cent of the total biodiversity in the world. Accordingly, we have probably identified only a third of the total number of species in the Kanchenjunga Landscape. Much of the gaps in our knowledge exist in relation to species other than plants and animals, i.e. on fish, amphibians, insects, fungi, and bacteria. Not much has been done to know the status of these relatively neglected life forms. Knowledge about biodiversity is crucial to understanding their roles in the ecosystem and therefore for their effective management. Biodiversity is a natural capital that provides a number of ecosystem services in the Kanchenjunga Landscape, including providing food, timber, fiber and medicines all things we depend on. It is also an important source of income for many local people living in the landscape. Therefore, gaining in-depth knowledge on biodiversity and associated ecosystem functions is extremely important for the well-being of the communities within the Kanchenjunga Landscape, as well as for the global community.

Janita Gurung ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) is Biodiversity Conservation and Management Specialist and Pratikshya Kandel ( This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ) is Research Associate for Biodiversity at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).

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Connecting terrestrial islands to promote biodiversity

The Camel’s Nose is in the Tent: Health Care Reform & the Joslin Affiliate – Video

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The Camel #39;s Nose is in the Tent: Health Care Reform the Joslin Affiliate
The Affordable Care Act has triggered many changes in the health care delivery system. Learn about the health reform-inspired approaches to redesigning care that work (or don #39;t work) for management...

By: David Harlow

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The Camel's Nose is in the Tent: Health Care Reform & the Joslin Affiliate - Video