[Announcement from Steve: If you’re looking for me on Facebook, for my author’s page in particular, you will no longer find me there: I have ended my long-term participation in that social media site! Zuckerberg and his minions have changed it so much and gone to the dark side that it’s now a complete waste of my time. (I could no longer post to my own author’s page, for example! And I have to put up with too many fascists whom Zuckerberg and friends are all too willing to help, including the Russians in 2016.) My readers can follow me here in this blog—hey, it’s social media too!—and on Twitter, although I might end my affiliation with Twitter too if Musk ruins it like Zuckerberg has done with Facebook. Meta be damned! Amazon (Bezos), Facebook (Zuckerberg), and Twitter (Musk) are no longer an author’s friends. Moreover, their outreach to readers has always been highly questionable. I can no longer recommend any of them to authors. Stick with your blog or, if you must, use Goodreads. (Amazon has ruined that too, of course.) Now…back to my post.]

As I explain in the end notes of my new novel Fear the Asian Evil, I’ve long believed that Xi’s China is a more dangerous adversary for the US than Putin’s Russia, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union. I gave Vladimir Putin his due as a villain in Legacy of Evil, so it was time to make Xi Jinping the villain in this third book of the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series. Putin has had made many mistakes and miscalculations; Xi’s major one so far was the mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic that threatens the Chinese economy. I suppose that’s just because Xi unleashed Covid upon the world.

In the novel, I deal with Xi indirectly by focusing on the MSS (China’s evil Ministry of State Security), specifically on its agents and spies whose goal is to disrupt western democracies and steal their ideas and inventions. (Any autocratic system kills individual creativity. The FPA in America should carefully consider that truism—that’s the Fascist Party of America, once known as the Republican Party.) How are these Chinese operatives financed? I examine one possible way in my novel, one that could be hard to thwart for any security agencies in the UK, US, or any other democratic country. There could be other ways not portrayed in my novel, of course, but what I do portray shows that China presents a clear and present danger for freedom, human rights, creatives’ hard work, and world peace.

It’s interesting that President Biden and others are echoing my concerns about China. The Ukrainians are slapping Russia around—let’s cheer them on!—but we’ve not forgotten and can’t afford to forget about that Red Dragon. It’s time that the US and all western democracies confront all the bad actors in the world, including Iran, North Korea, Russia, Saudi Arabia…and China!

My new novel is another mystery/thriller featuring the Bristol PD DI Steve Morgan. It might be called a political thriller with enough romance and suspense added to make a spicy stew. Its themes should be topics of discussion around everyone’s dinner table just like the themes in all the Morgan books. If you want fluff, read a cozy mystery, not these novels. I don’t ever expect all readers to agree with me (my characters express a variety of opinions, many not my own), but if I can start intelligent discussions among you, this book and the other Morgan novels are successes!

Watch for Fear the Asian Evil—coming soon!

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Fear the Asian Evil, Book Three in the “Inspector Steve Morgan” series, will be available this November at all of Draft2Digital’s affiliated retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc.) and library and lending services (Overdrive, Scribd, etc.), but not on Amazon. Here’s a summary:

Former Scotland Yard Inspector Steve Morgan’s next case at Bristol PD involves the attempted murder of a journalist who happens to be the sister-in-law of one of his sergeants. Its prelude, though, involves a fishing trip made during a vacation when Steve and his girlfriend’ father find a dead Chinese spy afloat in the North Sea. That leads to frictions with MI5 that distract from solving what should be the routine case of the woman’s attempted murder. The hunt for spies and ordinary policework clash until they come together where mutual cooperation finally wins the day.

While you can read this novel independently from all my others, if you missed The Klimt Connection (where Morgan makes his debut), Celtic Chronicles (which leaves some things unresolved for the first Morgan book), or Legacy of Evil and Cult of Evil (#1 and #2 in Morgan’s series), you might want to check them out too. (Hint for Santa’s helpers: A gift of the entire “Inspector Steve Morgan” trilogy will please any avid reader of mystery/thriller novels among your family and friends.)

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Hollywood aka Tinsel Town has always been self-absorbed and disconnected from ordinary life. Two things occurred at the recent Oscar ceremonies that can only reinforce that perception: One, many people were up in arms about Will Smith’s justifiable defense of his wife; and two, the Academy didn’t let Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy speak. Both show how obscenely sick the Academy is, and how sick our society has become, in general.

No one went after Chris Rock’s mockery of Will Smith’s wife, an insulting display from an uncaring comic on a par with ex-President Trump’s mockery of that reporter. Chris should have apologized to Will and his wife; Will had no need to apologize to Chris. Will did the noble thing and defended his wife.

Dissing Zelenskyy was also over the top. Hollywood pretends it’s so damn liberal and so caring about the world’s problems. BS! Actors, directors, producers, screenwriters—they’re mostly self-centered SOBs! At the very least, they live in a parallel dimension, disconnected from the realities of common people. They want to be like ostriches, effectively burying their heads in the sand to avoid the harshness of other people’s plights.

Compare Oscars night with Grammys night. For the latter, no one took sides in the Smith-Rock controversy; it was barely mentioned. (For counter balance, I would have preferred that someone went after Chris Rock, of course, and his style of comedy.) But John Legend and many other performers showed the world that musicians really do care, in contrast to Hollywood. Moreover, Zelenskyy was allowed to speak! The music industry is clearly better than the movie industry. Maybe that’s because musicians, like writers, have a moral spine that those in Hollywood lack? They believe in humanity more and can empathize with people’s suffering.

To these comments, I would add that the Oscars were otherwise dead and irrelevant to people’s lives, whereas the Grammys were alive and relevant in the lyrics and music of the songs. Like books, music needs no visuals—they both reach into the human soul, a lot more than the droll drivel that Hollywood now passes off as film art.

I suggest to everyone reading this post that you boycott movies, listen to music, and read books. You’re life will be much more meaningful if you do. I know mine will.

And this review of all of Hollywood will be my last movie review! It’s one that disses the entire movie industry. I shall never see another movie!

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Comments are always welcome. (Please follow the rules on the “Join the Conversation” web page, though. If you don’t, your comment will go into the spam folder.)

The Klimt Connection. This eighth novel in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series takes a close look at the war between democracy and autocracy at the local level as Esther, Bastiann, and friends battle far-right domestic terrorists out to kill migrants and refugees. The HQ for all the action is an MI5 safehouse where the crime-fighting duo must reside because the terrorist bombed their flat. And, of course, art is involved, as a parallel case recalls the horrors of World War II. Available wherever quality ebooks are sold (just not on Amazon). Novels #6 and #7 are free PDF downloads (see the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page).

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Let’s support the Ukrainian freedom fighters!

There’s a real possibility that Putin’s stormtroopers will overrun Ukraine. Whether that occurs or not, all people of good faith, especially Americans who pretend to be for freedom, despite Trump and his minions’ efforts, to be defenders of the free world, should make a solemn vow to support Ukraine’s freedom fighters. We know Ukrainians can fight. They ousted a Putin puppet, and they’re better prepared now than when Putin took Crimea.

Yes, Ukraine isn’t a NATO country yet, but so what? We must support the battle against Russia. If it comes to supporting resistance against Russian occupiers, though, that should still occur! We can turn Ukraine into another Chechnya for the Russians, only this time making Ukraine Putin’s Afghanistan.

If we don’t stop Putin now, he will move on to realize his dream of reconstituting the Soviet Union. The way Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland rejected the Soviet hegemony in the nineties still eats at Putin. He’s out for revenge, that’s clear, and he’s willing to ruin Mother Russia to get it. Let’s make sure he pays that price.

Sure, worldwide sanctions against Putin and his oligarchs and their finances are good—I proposed that to @POTUS and @SecretaryBlinken in a tweet—but they’re probably not enough. Putin laughs at them, although his inner circle might not. We must also stand up to all attacks on democratic countries and freedom everywhere they occur.

Let’s all take a solemn oath to do just that! We’re at a tipping point in world history not seen since the second world war, where we can either be smart and halt the march of fascism in the world, or we can surrender to it.

Cancel culture is yet another current fad that smacks of censorship—in fact, just another but less common name for it in the publishing world, in fact. Like the anti-cultural appropriation movement, it inhibits free speech and an author’s right to self-expression. I know I’ll get into trouble for saying this, but go ahead and boycott me! I don’t sell many books anyway (probably more pirated than legal sales, because I favor ebooks), so, unlike that emcee of ABC’s “The Bachelor,” my livelihood won’t be affected. And what I have to say doesn’t compare with the fantastic lies and conspiracy theories that have created on both the far-right and far-left.

From cancelling Pepe Le Pew to George Washington, this so-called cancel culture begins in absurdity-land and ends in tyrannical censorship-Hades. You can’t change facts by trying to erase them! Yes, Pepe was a hilarious cad, a pursuer of women (and more a French stereotype), but he was a far cry from Donald J. Trump (have you already forgotten that “Access Hollywood” tape and his 16+ victims?). Yes, George Washington and a few other Founding Fathers of our great nation owned slaves—Blacks weren’t even counted as humans in the original Constitution! And Chris Harrison is correct: We are viewing our current culture with a lens that differs from the ones of 1776, 1945, or even from just a few years back.

Slavery was outlawed with Lincoln, it continued in Brazil until 1888, and the Brits exploited Blacks to clean up their country after World War II, but under those earlier lenses, all these were an accepted practices. Many other persons, not just the Founding Fathers, were racists. Theresa May, when she was Home Secretary (or was it PM?), tried to send them back, saying they weren’t British citizens, yet another example of the racism today’s UK inherited from its colonial past (remember, Southern plantations in the US were originally British!).

And poor Pepe! He’s a victim of LeBron James and other questionable censors who wrap themselves in the cloak of good intentions but should know better. (I’m not knocking him for being a Yankees fan who bought shares that make him a partial owner of the Red Sox.) But going after Pepe is just wrong! Next thing you know, Speedy Gonzales (Mexican stereotype?) and Bugs Bunny (“Hey, Mr. A-rab!”) will be targets. What about Daffy and Sylvester? Or Porky? (We make fun of them because of their speech impediments, you know.) Or the Big Bad Wolf? (That’s making fun of people with asthma or COPD, right?)

Censorship is alive and well in the US and elsewhere. In the US, it has a new name: cancel culture. But giving something a new name doesn’t make it right. It’s still wrong, and it has always played footsie with fascism. Admit it: No one would know how absurd that QAnon movement is if we cancelled those absurd spiels that led to its beginning in the first place. If only to help people stupid enough to believe it, we can’t cancel that from our national discourse.

A lot of cancel-culture folks scream, “But it was wrong!” about George, Pepe, and others they’ve aimed their guns of political correctness at. That “was” is an example of cultural transference, not cultural appropriation. What’s wrong now was not wrong then. It’s possible the cancelers haven’t studied history enough to realize that? In any case, consciously or otherwise, they’re indicting everyone back than for crimes they believe were committed, crimes defined by their beliefs at this much later time. Those “transgressors” lived within their cultural context; no one living now has the right to apply their cultural mores to them other than saying, “It was wrong but acceptable back then.” And there are unfair equivalences drawn in the process, which are often absurd; Slavery was terrible; the Nazis’ Final Solution was worse. Human beings were crucified, drawn and quartered, burned alive, drowned, electrocuted, hanged, and beheaded; Pepe just got laughs. Yes, human beings’ predilection for treating other human beings horribly is always wrong, but, to mimic Animal Farm, some evils are more evil than other evils.

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I have a list of bad books, so I thought I’d end this series with my political dirty dozen. Some of these are up for election etc. Let’s hope voters and followers disavow them and stop them from ruining our democracy. Most belong in jail and certainly will meet their Maker as ultimate Judge (not Amy because she’s in the list), and they won’t like the sentence He gives them. They are listed in the order of those closest to the Devil to ones who are possibly innocent but at least commit the sin of being stupid and doing damage with their stupidity. In other words, all of them are dangerous for America and the world.

The Dirty Dozen:

President Donald J. Trump

Senator Mitch McConnell

Senator Lindsey Graham

Evangelical Franklin Graham

Judge Amy Coney Barrett

Senator Rand Paul

Representative Jim Jordan

Representative Matt Gaetz

Senator Tom Cotton

Senator John Kennedy

Justice Samuel Alito

Justice Clarence Thomas

Of course, there are other possibilities. For example, between hypocritical evangelicals Franklin Graham and VP Mike Pence (the fly was sent by RBG, I’m sure, as a reminder to him that he’s a hypocrite and full of…you fill in the word), it’s kind of a toss-up about who does the most damage; let’s just say that I wish Kamala could prosecute Franklin as well to show the world what a Nazi he is. Pence’s puppet strings are fully in Trump’s hands, as that one debate showed; Graham might do more damage, though, as the evangelical leader of the hypocritical hordes.

Cult member Judge Amy is Catholic but cut from the same cloth as the evangelicals (she might not believe the pope is the anti-Christ, though, just this “liberal pope”). Her position in this list is subject to change. Consistent with her cult-member status, she’ll go after women’s rights—after all, right-wing Catholics and evangelicals are violently in agreement that women are the property of men and have no rights, and that same-sex marriage is an aberration. Amy would also willingly overturn the ACA—she’s on record for that, and, no matter what she says, her opinions won’t change—and thus she’ll kill essential healthcare for millions. She’ll probably vote against many other rights we’ve worked so hard to obtain as well.

Of course, the orange-skinned Devil with the three-ply hair foldover is number one on this list. I’ve given you ample evidence for that in these pages. The sociopathic @realDonaldTrump is a danger to this nation and the world! He should be tried for crimes against humanity because he’s a mass murderer: Tens of thousands of people have unnecessarily died from COVID because of his mismanagement of the crisis; many more will do so unless we stop him…and the others on this list.

If you don’t know who all these people are, you’re part of the problem and shouldn’t be allowed to vote! They are all out to turn America into a fascist state run by their Hitler surrogate, Donald J. Trump. They are truly the Angels of Darkness leading the hordes of zombies against American democracy.

Does your list of dirty dozen differ from mine? Should I expand the list and call it “The Misfortune 500”? Perhaps I should just save some time by stating that anyone with proclivities toward supporting the Good Ole Piranhas is likely a danger for America and the world too? Many of you have already voted. I hope you voted wisely.

In any case, thank you for reading these Op-Ed Pages. This is the last post of this type before November 3 (I might have to return to them if Narcissus le Grand wins). If you haven’t voted, please do so. Democracy is on the ballot this year. A vote for Trump is a vote for fascism!

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Comments are always welcome.

Death on the Danube. At the end of Son of Thunder, #2 in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series, ex-MI6 agent and ex-Scotland Yard inspector Esther Brookstone and Interpol agent Bastiann van Coevorden finally say their I-do’s. At the beginning of this new novel, #3 in the series, they embark on their honeymoon cruise down the romantic Danube. When a strange passenger who is traveling alone is murdered, Bastiann takes over the investigation because the river was declared international waters in the Treaty of Paris. Who really is this gaunt victim? And who on the list of passengers and crewmembers is the assassin? Mystery, thrills, suspense, and romance await readers who join them in their journey. You can’t take this trip now because of COVID, but you can join them in spirit. Available in ebook and print format at Amazon, and in all ebook formats at Smashwords and its affiliated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo and Walmart, etc.) and affiliated library and lending services (Scribd, Overdrive, Baker & Taylor, Gardner, etc.). Click to see the book trailer.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

(Note: While science and sci-fi writing motivated this post, some readers might find the following material offensive. Tough.)

The U.S. president wanted a Space Force. The U.S. military capitulated. And the U.S. Congress gave it to him on December 20. Sounds neat. Does it make sense?

Traditionally the USAF took care of most things happening above the Earth’s surface, including spy satellites and whatever secret weapons are up there (yep, and they’re just as dangerous as the U.N.’s black helicopters that will invade the U.S.). Astronauts have generally been a mix of USAF and Navy pilots, discounting civilian scientists, so there was already a lot of overlap with other services. And the U.S. NASA wasn’t above getting into the militaristic aspects either. So forget tradition. Maybe we should call a spade a spade? The military is in space, so maybe we should admit it and wrap it up in one tidy package?

Is there some savings to be had? Even if the answer were yes, that’s probably not an argument most reasonable persons would make…or believe. The current administration will have created a trillion dollar U.S. debt very soon, so what’s a few more dollars here and there? A precedent might be the moving of the Coast Guard into Homeland Security, but the creation of Homeland Security also increased federal bureaucracy and incompetence (not to mention murderous enforcement on the southern border where thousand of illegals are invading). Maybe they should have put anything to do with protecting the U.S., including what’s now in Space Force, into Homeland Security? Isn’t Space Force about protecting the homeland and not invading ETs or killer asteroids? U.S. of A., uber alles!

Bigger isn’t necessarily better. Smaller isn’t either. (Seems like the Goldilocks Principle needs to be applied here, but the Pentagon’s good ole boys would never listen to a girl.) And where does the Earth’s atmosphere become space? Where does it end and space start? I can’t wait for scramjet technology, where intercontinental flights hop and skip across the atmosphere, going from the USAF’s domain to the USSF’s and back. Who will have authority over those flights? Or might that be the FSA (not to be confused with the Russian equivalent of the FBI) instead of the FAA?

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Today is a solemn but sad day, full of nostalgia and yearning. Fifty years ago, I was part of the party-like atmosphere in College Park, Maryland, as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human being to set foot on the Moon. No good and wonderful event since then has brought the US and the world so much together to share our common humanity and hope for the future.

Space is the final frontier., but we have shied away from it and Armstrong’s hopeful and inspiring message, putting our petty and tribal squabbles ahead of that great adventure, going where no human has gone before. Will we return to space? The way into that final frontier is not to be found with militarized space commands, seeking to sully space with political saber rattling, but via a motivated and concerted effort by all human beings to go into that great beyond out of scientific curiosity. I don’t imagine that it will happen in my lifetime, if ever, which makes today doubly sad for me.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to all those courageous and intelligent space pioneers of the past. I regret that our collective myopia and efforts to further more trivial agendas have inhibited human beings’ reach for the stars. Hopefully we will come to our senses…sometime.

“Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.”—Isaac Asimov

(James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership, Flat Iron, 2018, ISBN 978-1-250-19245-5)

I don’t like to read celeb books. Famous people hire a ghostwriter to turn experiences, opinions, reminisces, and disordered notes about them into a book, and many readers will pay top dollar to read it, which often fattens that celeb’s already bloated bank account. The Big Five publishers rush to publish books like that because of those readers. And, as good as the ghostwriter might be (sometimes they get co-author status in small print), these tell-all memoirs are usually ho-hum and self-aggrandizing tales of the rich, powerful, and/or has-beens.

I so rarely read these books that friends and family take pity on me because they think I might be missing something I’d like. This books is an example. Even though it sounded intriguing when it came out, I’m enough up on the news that I didn’t think there would be much in it that I didn’t already know—not details but the general plot. They also know I wouldn’t spend money on such a book. With the Kindle edition at $14.99 (at least three ebooks worth in my budget, although I have a bundle of three books at $5.99) and the hardcover at $13.38 (you read correctly—it’s marked $29.99 retail, but I guess Amazon decided to “discount” the hardcover more than the ebook at the time I checked…go figure), I would have waited to either buy it used or borrow it from the public library.

That’s my little story about how I came by this book, a big story that Mr. Comey tells about the cesspool that is Washington politics. He is a celeb, of course, maybe more so now than when he wrote the book. But this isn’t the typical celeb’s book. He actually has written something that’s worth reading.

Comey was famous even before the 2016 election and the later skirmishes with Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. He helped end the mafia of days of yore and stranglehold of the Gambino family; he prosecuted Martha Stewart; and he created the special counsel the put “Scooter” Libby where he belonged. You probably heard more about those three people, though, than about James Comey. They were more infamous celebs. (The last prosecution explains Mr. Trump’s pardon of Libby as a way to get back at Comey. The next-to-last explains the rumor about another potential pardon for the same reason. Mr. Trump is a vengeful man who holds a grudge.)

The 2016 election changed everything. The FBI was investigating Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server, more for the possibility she had violated national security rules for dealing with classified material (those who have security clearances might still wonder why she wasn’t prosecuted for that) and Donald Trump and his minions’ possible collusion with the Russians (they already knew about their cyberattacks on the U.S.). Mr. Comey was no longer working in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District (starting there under Giuliani, a man Comey describes with no kind words, to be sure). He was no longer the Deputy Attorney General who became acting AG for an ailing John Ashcroft. He was Director of the FBI since 2013, taking over from Bob Mueller, and Comey was expecting to serve his country in Washington for ten years.

So, what about the book? Let me take a novelist’s point of view. The plot here is well done, interesting and complex. The characters are well drawn, none of them two-dimensional and most of them flawed. The setting, the DC power scene, is well described with all its warts and surreal nature. Make no mistake, this is a novel. But the writer didn’t have to follow Clancy’s advice and make his fiction seem real. Here the reality slaps you in the face and tells you to wake up and smell the cesspool. That’s what DC is—not a swamp—and the cesspool stinks more than ever before. In this autobiographical novel, James Comey writes like a novelist, and his story about his struggles in the halls of power often reads like a mystery/thriller. Comey is telling a story, his story, and he tells it well. (An aside: I like that he uses the Oxford comma in his title!)

I suppose I shouldn’t sing the praises of a man so many people hate, but like Comey and unlike many others in our nation’s capital, I believe in doing what’s right to the best of my abilities. In that sense, those same haters are disrespecting an honorable man who believes he’s done what’s right for the country and the integrity of the FBI as an independent police force. He might be wrong, but I don’t think so. Maybe he could have done things differently and still act rightly. Read the book before you make your decision about that.

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Those who are accustomed to my blog posts—minimally, an op-ed comment on current events on Tuesdays and something on reading, writing, or the publishing business on Thursdays—might find it strange that I’m placing this post here on a Tuesday. There’s a simple explanation: reading and understanding what we read are building blocks in the democratic foundation of our country.

A dear friend and I were talking over the holiday about reading “popular science” articles. These are supposedly designed so that an “intelligent layperson” can develop some understanding about an esoteric bit of science or technology. I complained about Scientific American’s overly detailed articles in fields I’d like to learn more about for my sci-fi writing. “Don’t worry about it,” said my friend. “They’ve dumbed down the articles now.”

Some translations are in order. First, there’s no such thing as “popular science” anymore. Science isn’t popular, from outright attacks on it by religious fanatics and politicians who are sycophants for Corporate America, unwilling or otherwise, to teachers telling students that they should study something else because science is too hard (especially egregious when a male teacher adds “…for girls”). In all age groups, many consider science and technology to be the root of all the problems society faces, and there are many others who encourage such an opinion.

Second, “intelligent layperson” is all too often another oxymoron nowadays. I’m not speaking to the obvious cases where someone believes dinosaurs and human beings coexisted and the world with all its wonderful diversity of flora and fauna was all created six thousand years ago. I’m talking about the average Joan or Joe who reads something but can’t understand what they’ve just read. Call it what you will, it’s an indictment against popular culture. At the critical lower levels in our educational systems, teachers over-emphasize getting through the words—understanding is secondary. Certain content is emphasized; there’s not much practice analyzing and digesting new content. Too many people read something that’s devoid of facts but don’t have the background or even common sense to know better.

Third, “dumbed down” is a nice way of saying that essay and book writers know all about the problems mentioned above and bend over backwards to compensate in order to get their message across. The latter is a struggle that’s becoming increasingly difficult, even for fiction writers, where “dumbed down” has destroyed serious literature.

Even if we get people to read with all the other distractions they have—streaming video, social media, video games, and so forth—getting them to understand what they are reading is a high hurdle to jump over. I’ve often read a review of a “popular science” book and asked myself, “Did the reviewer read the same book I did?” That would probably happen with fiction too, but I don’t bother to read those reviews unless I’m making excerpts for the PR and marketing of my own books.

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The Saudi Arabian prince isn’t just another Arab strongman consolidating his dictatorial power; he’s also creating his own Hitler-like genocide against the Houthis in Yemen. His secretive and despotic government supports Sunnis in Yemen.  Because Iran supports the Houthi Shi’ites there, Saudi Arabia is using starvation and cholera as weapons to murder the Houthis. These include women and children, innocent victims of an evil regime.

The NY Times in a rather misleading article called the prince’s actions another manifestation of the Arab Spring. Far from it. I guess the Times’s writers went into a trance with things like allowing women to drive, as if cosmetic changes in this dark and closed society could turn Saudi devils into angels! This is all just spin conjured up to distract the West, and the NY Times swallowed it and extolled the virtues of the “new regime” in a piece of irresponsible journalism at best and unpaid Saudi propaganda at worst.

The rotting core below the tip of this reformist iceberg is dangerous and depressing.  The images of starving and sick children on the November 19^th segment of CBS’s Sixty Minutes should make anyone who isn’t a neo-Nazi cringe and grimace. Conservatives in the U.S. generally don’t watch Sixty Minutes, but they should have watched this episode, especially considering the NY Times blatant bias. Starvation and cholera aren’t pretty wherever they occur, but weaponizing them is a new invention. Leave it to the duplicitous Saudis to turn them into weapons in their campaign for political and religious domination in the region.

The Saudis didn’t just settle with creating modern terrorism. Most of the 9/11 murderers were Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. And the Saudi government funds religious schools that brainwash young men so they become violent terrorists—Saudi terrorists. ISIS never became a 16^th-century-style caliphate; Saudi Arabia already was long before ISIS! If Iran is a rogue nation, so is Saudi Arabia. They both destabilize the region via their radical brands of Islam. Their only commonality is their hatred for Israel. Neither nation is any friend of the U.S. or the West, yet the very military equipment we’ve sold to the Saudis is now used to murder Houthis in Yemen.

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