Underground – The Tokyo Gas Attack and Japanese Psyche

Crime is a complex subject in Japan. Known today for its relatively safe streets, wealthy citizens, and polite society – the reputation is something the Japanese like to promote – even in some cases going so far as to ignore reports of crime so as not to inflate the government statistics. When people started disappearing…

Bush v. Gore – Recount

The 2000 US Presidential Election was notable for its relatively lackluster set of key issues surrounding tax cuts and social security reform. The events afterwards, however, were anything but insubstantial, as America plunged headlong into its War on Terror during the Bush Administration, raising questions regarding how Al Gore may have responded differently to 9/11….

Cycles in History – The Fourth Turning

It has been described as “Bannon’s ‘Bible’”. The ‘Fourth Turning’, published in 1997, describes Anglo-American civilization as going through a series of four main generational phases, cycling from ‘Founding’, ‘Awakening’, ‘Unraveling’, and ‘Crisis’. The authors describe a trend going back centuries throughout much of Western civilization, essentially seeing a pattern of birth, rise, decline, and…

The Blood Libel of Leo Frank

Leo Frank – a man lynched in 1915 for allegedly murdering a young girl Mary Phagan at the pencil factory he ran in Atlanta, Georgia – is a relative unknown to most ordinary Americans. But to those who view his trial, conviction, and lynching as a seminal moment in American race relations, including the ADL…