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Ben and the Bunker Busters - UPDATED 10/16/12

NOTE - The "Dark of the moon" for October has passed uneventfully, with no new outbreak of war in the Middle East. Instead a skirmish was fought in cyberspace when the US and others accused Iran of launching a major cyber attack at the Gulf States, US bases and US Banks in reprisal for tightening of sanctions. Now the action will move to the presidential debates...but the NEXT dark of the moon will occur after the election. Was Israel waiting to see who they will be dealing with? I guess we'll have to wait and see as well.


For many years now I have monitored the slowly rising tension between Israel and Iran and predicted that a hard line Israeli Prime Minister would eventually "pull it" and unleash his U.S. made air force on Iran. The "attack" to disable Iran's emerging nuclear program has been percolating for years, rehearsed by the IDF and seen as "imminent" for months now. People learn of US or British carrier movements and start writing about "massive" US naval buildups, when in fact there is nothing more going on that normal carrier rotation. (I check each time I run across one of these articles.) But the one thing that does get my war radar up and running is good old Benjamin Netanyahu appearing on US TV to remind us all of the threat Iran poses to... well, to Israel. Face it, Iran has no missile that can reach US shores.
Bunker Buster Ben came out in force on recent Sunday morning news talk shows to make his case like a football coach trying to rally his linemen for a pass rush in sudden death overtime. He basically stated that Iran was nearly at the goalpost, and "you can't let them go that last 20 yards" to a point where they would have enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. In Ben's mind, the decades old problem of Israel has a terrifying "one bomb solution" for Iran. That's all it would take, so you can see where Netanyahu is coming from with his fear over an Iranian bomb.
Israel's response is to get their with its air force first, though I have no idea how they think they can inhibit such a widely hidden and distributed enrichment program. It's not like Iran has gathered its entire nuclear effort under one ten foot thick concrete bunker. Any air strike that would have even the slightest hope of affecting the Iranian timetable for nuclear development would have to be massive and sustained--for weeks. Anything else, a quick in an out by the Israeli air force, would be militarily stupid and completely ineffective.

Yet recent news has rumored that a quick strike, lasting perhaps no more than 2 hours, may be in the option mill "prior to the Nov 6 election." It is presumed that this will be a joint US/Israel operation, though other "analysts" feel Israel may go it alone. Yet does Israel have what it would take to mount such a campaign, all while hundreds of lethal medium range ballistic missiles are raining down on Haifa and Jerusalem in reprisal? Of course not--hence we get Bunker Buster Ben hoping to rally support here in the US for his long planned war with Iran. What Ben really wants, and needs, is the US Navy and Air Force to second his intended madness.
Beyond inhibiting Iran's enrichment program, such an attack would have ramifications on multiple political fronts. First, it would demonstrate to Iran that the US is dead serious about its statements concerning a nuclear option for that country. It would also loudly voice the same to Russia and China, and thirdly, it would serve to defang Romney, who has trumpeted that Obama is too soft on Iran and foreign policy issues in general. Some say that Obama would get a boost after his lackluster first debate saw his poll numbers slip. It's now a horse race with Romney.

If an attack is launched, watch the dates for the dark of the moon, right around Oct 14-16, with late Sunday the 14th being a prime date for the launch, leaving the pitch black skies of Monday the 15th at the dark of the moon for follow up strikes. One might expect to see several warning signs if this attack were actually planned: the movement of special forces planes and teams to the Middle East (often deployed as target pathfinders, but more so to extricate US nationals in trouble spots after the attack). This has already been reported. Watch activity at US bases like Whiteman AFB, home to our only B-2 Stealth Bomber squadrons. The really big earth penetrating bombs would have to be carried by a bomber, not a naval plane. Take note of activity at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Yes, watch the carriers. We currently have an interesting "overlap" relief in progress, with CV Enterprise on its very last deployment in the Arabian Sea being joined by CV Eisenhower there. Some have even suggested that a "False Flag" incident would be staged involving Enterprise as a pretext to the attack.

But one other note... If I know this, and if it is all over the Internet, then you can be certain Iran's military professionals know it as well. A high level commander of the Revolutionary Guards went on the air recently too, and said there would be "nothing left of Israel" if Ben lets his Bunker Busters fly in October, November or any other month. Brother, if ever there was a war that was waiting to happen, this one is primed and ready to go. And if Obama think he can sanction a quick limited strike against Iran without major consequences, then he is seriously wrong. Iran has so many options for reprisal that I hate to count them.
I wrote some fiction about it once upon a time, and here is a small slice that depicts what might happen if Ben finally gets his pass rush....
... An uneasy calm settled over the Gulf region, but tensions ratcheted high as radar crews squinted at their screens in nervous anticipation. Missiles in Iran were fueling at a frantic place, and mobile launchers emerged from their hiding bunkers to prepare their deadly game of shoot and scoot. But for the moment, however, the missiles stayed on their launch pads.

The hours ticked by, and tensions slowly subsided. One by one the Iranian air force planes in the initial scramble defense waves were running low on fuel and returning to their bases. Too few rose to replace them, as the initial wave had sent more than 80% of the inventory aloft. In spite of recent drills, only 75 of the 125 aging F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers were air worthy. Of these 60 had flown in the first alert wave, leaving fifteen to take their place in the hot late afternoon sun. There were still five old F-14 Tomcats and ten Mig 29s available as well.

All across the region radars were humming as they scoured the skies for any sign of incoming enemy aircraft. Yet nothing was seen. Then, a few minutes before dusk, the newly installed Syrian early warning radar facility atop Lebanon's highest peak at Mount Sannine, went dark. There were crucial minutes of confusion at Syrian Air Defense Command before they realized the facility had been destroyed by a missile. The source was not discovered, but the outpost had been hit by an Israeli Popeye Turbo cruise missile launched from a submarine in the Eastern Med. Other missiles were already on their way to strike similar early warning outposts in Iran, this time launched by Israeli submarines in the Persian Gulf. The Netanyahu government, always ready to exploit any opportunity, had chosen this delicate moment to launch their long planned air strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even as the first alert wave of Iranian aircraft were landing for refueling, two Israeli air groups flying F-15 I and F-16 I fighters were being led by radar suppressing G-550 Suter and NCCT aircraft on a mission targeting uranium enrichment facilities in Qom and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak, the new facility at Bushehr, and the gas storage complex at Esfahan. The Israeli attack would look like a joint operation with the Americans, though Israeli diplomats had not revealed their intended strike date to politicos in Washington until the planes were well on their way. It was a necessary formality, for the Americans had supplied most of the KC-707 air refueling tankers and liberal allotments of missiles and bunker busting bombs that would be used in the attack.

 The strike groups began their run up the Mediterranean coast, then turned East, flying low over Syria. With massive jamming and software attacks unleashed by the IDF, Syrian Air defense response was simply too slow. The few anti aircraft missile batteries that managed to acquire Israeli targets were quickly extinguished from the grid as their radars fell prey to the AIM “Harm” anti-radar missiles. The strike groups were out of Syrian airspace in a flash, but even though the Iranians had been forewarned, there was little their own air defense could do as well.

The Israeli F-15 top cover swept aside the few remaining Iranian aircraft aloft to contest their approach, and the F-16s went to work. As night fell on a moonless night in October, targets would soon begin lighting up the deepening dusk, their heavy laser and GPS guided ordinance pummeling the industrial heart of the Iranian nuclear program, at least those facilities that were known.

      Unable to prevent the attack, or hinder it an any way, the Iranians had a precious few minutes to consider reprisals. They could order a massive retaliatory strike, in keeping with the rhetoric of their own government in recent months, and “severely punish any aggressor who would dare to threaten or strike the Iranian homeland.” But the Israelis were already finding and extinguishing a good number of the fixed Shahab missile sites. If they were to launch a counterattack, it had to be soon. Alternatively, they could stand down, ride out the storm, then take the role of the aggrieved victim and raise hell in the UN and every other international forum available. Their third option was to take the conflict "international" and make the world suffer the consequences. The Straits of Hormuz and the oil rich Sheikdoms to the south were the most inviting and easily ignited targets a ballistic missile commander might ever have.

The Iranians had made up their minds.

At a little after 22:00 hours, Gulf time, the first wave of missiles left their launch pads. The Israelis had found, and destroyed, sixteen launching sites, those deemed most likely to harbor weapons packages that might be aimed at Israel. But the Iranian response had a far greater scope, taking in the full range of the target rich southern shores of the Persian Gulf. The oil storage bunkers and terminals at Al Fujairah, the world's third largest bunkering center, were among the many targets they had decided to strike, and the list was long. Missiles were falling at the export terminals of Ras Tanura,  Ras al-Ju'aymah and the industrial city of Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia. The American facilities in Qatar were struck that night as well, along with the ports at Abu Dhabi, and a host of other key facilities along the coast. If the Iranians could not have atomic energy, the world would not have petroleum. The equation was quite simple and it would mark the end of modern life as so many had lived it for the last hundred years.

Assad al Arif watched, amazed from his makeshift sasha, a palm frond fishing canoe bobbing at the end of its mooring rope a few miles south of the main oil storage facilities at Al Fujairah. He had been out all day, fishing as his father and grandfather before him, and now was simply tending and mending his nets in the quiet evening. Then the horizon to the north exploded in fury and red orange flame. An Iranian Shahab had struck the ENOC oil terminals there, igniting an inferno of burning oil and gas as one storage tank after another was engulfed in the holocaust of fire.

From far more plush accommodations in the city itself, the ruler of Fujairah, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, and His Excellency Sheikh Hamad bin Saif Al Sharqi, his deputy, watched in horror as the oil storage bunkers burned out of control. Millions of barrels of oil would be consumed in a conflagration that sent massive clouds of broiling smoke aloft to further char the black night settling over the Straits of Hormuz.

“And so it begins,” said one Sheikh to another. The long feared “incident” in the Persian Gulf had finally ignited the well oiled kindling there, and the fires were burning.

“No my friend,” said the able deputy to his Highness.  “And so it ends...”

Think gas prices are high now? Think again.

 

Ben and the Bunker Busters - UPDATED 10/11/12

For many years now I have monitored the slowly rising tension between Israel and Iran and predicted that a hard line Israeli Prime Minister would eventually "pull it" and unleash his U.S. made air force on Iran. The "attack" to disable Iran's emerging nuclear program has been percolating for years, rehearsed by the IDF and seen as "imminent" for months now. People learn of US or British carrier movements and start writing about "massive" US naval buildups, when in fact there is nothing more going on that normal carrier rotation. (I check each time I run across one of these articles.) But the one thing that does get my war radar up and running is good old Benjamin Netanyahu appearing on US TV to remind us all of the threat Iran poses to... well, to Israel. Face it, Iran has no missile that can reach US shores.
Bunker Buster Ben came out in force on recent Sunday morning news talk shows to make his case like a football coach trying to rally his linemen for a pass rush in sudden death overtime. He basically stated that Iran was nearly at the goalpost, and "you can't let them go that last 20 yards" to a point where they would have enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. In Ben's mind, the decades old problem of Israel has a terrifying "one bomb solution" for Iran. That's all it would take, so you can see where Netanyahu is coming from with his fear over an Iranian bomb.
Israel's response is to get their with its air force first, though I have no idea how they think they can inhibit such a widely hidden and distributed enrichment program. It's not like Iran has gathered its entire nuclear effort under one ten foot thick concrete bunker. Any air strike that would have even the slightest hope of affecting the Iranian timetable for nuclear development would have to be massive and sustained--for weeks. Anything else, a quick in an out by the Israeli air force, would be militarily stupid and completely ineffective.

Yet recent news has rumored that a quick strike, lasting perhaps no more than 2 hours, may be in the option mill "prior to the Nov 6 election." It is presumed that this will be a joint US/Israel operation, though other "analysts" feel Israel may go it alone. Yet does Israel have what it would take to mount such a campaign, all while hundreds of lethal medium range ballistic missiles are raining down on Haifa and Jerusalem in reprisal? Of course not--hence we get Bunker Buster Ben hoping to rally support here in the US for his long planned war with Iran. What Ben really wants, and needs, is the US Navy and Air Force to second his intended madness.
Beyond inhibiting Iran's enrichment program, such an attack would have ramifications on multiple political fronts. First, it would demonstrate to Iran that the US is dead serious about its statements concerning a nuclear option for that country. It would also loudly voice the same to Russia and China, and thirdly, it would serve to defang Romney, who has trumpeted that Obama is too soft on Iran and foreign policy issues in general. Some say that Obama would get a boost after his lackluster first debate saw his poll numbers slip. It's now a horse race with Romney.

If an attack is launched, watch the dates for the dark of the moon, right around Oct 14-16, with late Sunday the 14th being a prime date for the launch, leaving the pitch black skies of Monday the 15th at the dark of the moon for follow up strikes. One might expect to see several warning signs if this attack were actually planned: the movement of special forces planes and teams to the Middle East (often deployed as target pathfinders, but more so to extricate US nationals in trouble spots after the attack). This has already been reported. Watch activity at US bases like Whiteman AFB, home to our only B-2 Stealth Bomber squadrons. The really big earth penetrating bombs would have to be carried by a bomber, not a naval plane. Take note of activity at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Yes, watch the carriers. We currently have an interesting "overlap" relief in progress, with CV Enterprise on its very last deployment in the Arabian Sea being joined by CV Eisenhower there. Some have even suggested that a "False Flag" incident would be staged involving Enterprise as a pretext to the attack.

But one other note... If I know this, and if it is all over the Internet, then you can be certain Iran's military professionals know it as well. A high level commander of the Revolutionary Guards went on the air recently too, and said there would be "nothing left of Israel" if Ben lets his Bunker Busters fly in October, November or any other month. Brother, if ever there was a war that was waiting to happen, this one is primed and ready to go. And if Obama think he can sanction a quick limited strike against Iran without major consequences, then he is seriously wrong. Iran has so many options for reprisal that I hate to count them.
I wrote some fiction about it once upon a time, and here is a small slice that depicts what might happen if Ben finally gets his pass rush....
... An uneasy calm settled over the Gulf region, but tensions ratcheted high as radar crews squinted at their screens in nervous anticipation. Missiles in Iran were fueling at a frantic place, and mobile launchers emerged from their hiding bunkers to prepare their deadly game of shoot and scoot. But for the moment, however, the missiles stayed on their launch pads.

The hours ticked by, and tensions slowly subsided. One by one the Iranian air force planes in the initial scramble defense waves were running low on fuel and returning to their bases. Too few rose to replace them, as the initial wave had sent more than 80% of the inventory aloft. In spite of recent drills, only 75 of the 125 aging F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers were air worthy. Of these 60 had flown in the first alert wave, leaving fifteen to take their place in the hot late afternoon sun. There were still five old F-14 Tomcats and ten Mig 29s available as well.

All across the region radars were humming as they scoured the skies for any sign of incoming enemy aircraft. Yet nothing was seen. Then, a few minutes before dusk, the newly installed Syrian early warning radar facility atop Lebanon's highest peak at Mount Sannine, went dark. There were crucial minutes of confusion at Syrian Air Defense Command before they realized the facility had been destroyed by a missile. The source was not discovered, but the outpost had been hit by an Israeli Popeye Turbo cruise missile launched from a submarine in the Eastern Med. Other missiles were already on their way to strike similar early warning outposts in Iran, this time launched by Israeli submarines in the Persian Gulf. The Netanyahu government, always ready to exploit any opportunity, had chosen this delicate moment to launch their long planned air strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even as the first alert wave of Iranian aircraft were landing for refueling, two Israeli air groups flying F-15 I and F-16 I fighters were being led by radar suppressing G-550 Suter and NCCT aircraft on a mission targeting uranium enrichment facilities in Qom and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak, the new facility at Bushehr, and the gas storage complex at Esfahan. The Israeli attack would look like a joint operation with the Americans, though Israeli diplomats had not revealed their intended strike date to politicos in Washington until the planes were well on their way. It was a necessary formality, for the Americans had supplied most of the KC-707 air refueling tankers and liberal allotments of missiles and bunker busting bombs that would be used in the attack.

 The strike groups began their run up the Mediterranean coast, then turned East, flying low over Syria. With massive jamming and software attacks unleashed by the IDF, Syrian Air defense response was simply too slow. The few anti aircraft missile batteries that managed to acquire Israeli targets were quickly extinguished from the grid as their radars fell prey to the AIM “Harm” anti-radar missiles. The strike groups were out of Syrian airspace in a flash, but even though the Iranians had been forewarned, there was little their own air defense could do as well.

The Israeli F-15 top cover swept aside the few remaining Iranian aircraft aloft to contest their approach, and the F-16s went to work. As night fell on a moonless night in October, targets would soon begin lighting up the deepening dusk, their heavy laser and GPS guided ordinance pummeling the industrial heart of the Iranian nuclear program, at least those facilities that were known.

      Unable to prevent the attack, or hinder it an any way, the Iranians had a precious few minutes to consider reprisals. They could order a massive retaliatory strike, in keeping with the rhetoric of their own government in recent months, and “severely punish any aggressor who would dare to threaten or strike the Iranian homeland.” But the Israelis were already finding and extinguishing a good number of the fixed Shahab missile sites. If they were to launch a counterattack, it had to be soon. Alternatively, they could stand down, ride out the storm, then take the role of the aggrieved victim and raise hell in the UN and every other international forum available. Their third option was to take the conflict "international" and make the world suffer the consequences. The Straits of Hormuz and the oil rich Sheikdoms to the south were the most inviting and easily ignited targets a ballistic missile commander might ever have.

The Iranians had made up their minds.

At a little after 22:00 hours, Gulf time, the first wave of missiles left their launch pads. The Israelis had found, and destroyed, sixteen launching sites, those deemed most likely to harbor weapons packages that might be aimed at Israel. But the Iranian response had a far greater scope, taking in the full range of the target rich southern shores of the Persian Gulf. The oil storage bunkers and terminals at Al Fujairah, the world's third largest bunkering center, were among the many targets they had decided to strike, and the list was long. Missiles were falling at the export terminals of Ras Tanura,  Ras al-Ju'aymah and the industrial city of Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia. The American facilities in Qatar were struck that night as well, along with the ports at Abu Dhabi, and a host of other key facilities along the coast. If the Iranians could not have atomic energy, the world would not have petroleum. The equation was quite simple and it would mark the end of modern life as so many had lived it for the last hundred years.

Assad al Arif watched, amazed from his makeshift sasha, a palm frond fishing canoe bobbing at the end of its mooring rope a few miles south of the main oil storage facilities at Al Fujairah. He had been out all day, fishing as his father and grandfather before him, and now was simply tending and mending his nets in the quiet evening. Then the horizon to the north exploded in fury and red orange flame. An Iranian Shahab had struck the ENOC oil terminals there, igniting an inferno of burning oil and gas as one storage tank after another was engulfed in the holocaust of fire.

From far more plush accommodations in the city itself, the ruler of Fujairah, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, and His Excellency Sheikh Hamad bin Saif Al Sharqi, his deputy, watched in horror as the oil storage bunkers burned out of control. Millions of barrels of oil would be consumed in a conflagration that sent massive clouds of broiling smoke aloft to further char the black night settling over the Straits of Hormuz.

“And so it begins,” said one Sheikh to another. The long feared “incident” in the Persian Gulf had finally ignited the well oiled kindling there, and the fires were burning.

“No my friend,” said the able deputy to his Highness.  “And so it ends...”

Think gas prices are high now? Think again.

 

Ben and the Bunker Busters

For many years now I have monitored the slowly rising tension between Israel and Iran and predicted that a hard line Israeli Prime Minister would eventually "pull it" and unleash his U.S. made air force on Iran. The "attack" to disable Iran's emerging nuclear program has been percolating for years, rehearsed by the IDF and seen as "imminent" for months now. People learn of US or British carrier movements and start writing about "massive" US naval buildups, when in fact there is nothing more going on that normal carrier rotation. (I check each time I run across one of these articles.) But the one thing that does get my war radar up and running is good old Benjamin Netanyahu appearing on US TV to remind us all of the threat Iran poses to... well, to Israel. Face it, Iran has no missile that can reach US shores.
Bunker Buster Ben came out in force on recent Sunday morning news talk shows to make his case like a football coach trying to rally his linemen for a pass rush in sudden death overtime. He basically stated that Iran was nearly at the goalpost, and "you can't let them go that last 20 yards" to a point where they would have enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. In Ben's mind, the decades old problem of Israel has a terrifying "one bomb solution" for Iran. That's all it would take, so you can see where Netanyahu is coming from with his fear over an Iranian bomb.
Israel's response is to get their with its air force first, though I have no idea how they think they can inhibit such a widely hidden and distributed enrichment program. It's not like Iran has gathered its entire nuclear effort under one ten foot thick concrete bunker. Any air strike that would have even the slightest hope of affecting the Iranian timetable for nuclear development would have to be massive and sustained--for weeks. Anything else, a quick in an out by the Israeli air force, would be militarily stupid and completely ineffective. But does Israel have what it would take to mount such a campaign, all while hundreds of lethal medium range ballistic missiles are raining down on Haifa and Jerusalem in reprisal? Of course not--hence we get Bunker Buster Ben hoping to rally support here in the US for his long planned war with Iran. What Ben really wants, and needs, is the US Navy and Air Force to second his intended madness.
"Analysts" now whisper this attack is coming "before the election."  If it does, watch the dates for the dark of the moon, right around Oct 14-16. And one other note... If I know this, and if it is all over the Internet, then you can be certain Iran's military professionals know it as well. A high level commander of the Revolutionary Guards went on the air this week too, and said there would be "nothing left of Israel" if Ben lets his Bunker Busters fly in October, November or any other month. Brother, if ever there was a war that was waiting to happen, this one is primed and ready to go.
I wrote some fiction about it once upon a time, and here is a small slice that depicts what might happen if Ben finally gets his pass rush....
An uneasy calm settled over the Gulf region, but tensions ratcheted high as radar crews squinted at their screens in nervous anticipation. Missiles in Iran were fueling at a frantic place, and mobile launchers emerged from their hiding bunkers to prepare their deadly game of shoot and scoot. But for the moment, however, the missiles stayed on their launch pads.

The hours ticked by, and tensions slowly subsided. One by one the Iranian air force planes in the initial scramble defense waves were running low on fuel and returning to their bases. Too few rose to replace them, as the initial wave had sent more than 80% of the inventory aloft. In spite of recent drills, only 75 of the 125 aging F-4 Phantoms and F-5 Tigers were air worthy. Of these 60 had flown in the first alert wave, leaving fifteen to take their place in the hot late afternoon sun. There were still five old F-14 Tomcats and ten Mig 29s available as well.

All across the region radars were humming as they scoured the skies for any sign of incoming enemy aircraft. Yet nothing was seen. Then, a few minutes before dusk, the newly installed Syrian early warning radar facility atop Lebanon's highest peak at Mount Sannine, went dark. There were crucial minutes of confusion at Syrian Air Defense Command before they realized the facility had been destroyed by a missile. The source was not discovered, but the outpost had been hit by an Israeli Popeye Turbo cruise missile launched from a submarine in the Eastern Med. Other missiles were already on their way to strike similar early warning outposts in Iran, this time launched by Israeli submarines in the Persian Gulf. The Netanyahu government, always ready to exploit any opportunity, had chosen this delicate moment to launch their long planned air strike against suspected Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even as the first alert wave of Iranian aircraft were landing for refueling, two Israeli air groups flying F-15 I and F-16 I fighters were being led by radar suppressing G-550 Suter and NCCT aircraft on a mission targeting uranium enrichment facilities in Qom and Natanz, as well as the heavy water reactor at Arak, the new facility at Bushehr, and the gas storage complex at Esfahan. The Israeli attack would look like a joint operation with the Americans, though Israeli diplomats had not revealed their intended strike date to politicos in Washington until the planes were well on their way. It was a necessary formality, for the Americans had supplied most of the KC-707 air refueling tankers and liberal allotments of missiles and bunker busting bombs that would be used in the attack.

 The strike groups began their run up the Mediterranean coast, then turned East, flying low over Syria. With massive jamming and software attacks unleashed by the IDF, Syrian Air defense response was simply too slow. The few anti aircraft missile batteries that managed to acquire Israeli targets were quickly extinguished from the grid as their radars fell prey to the AIM “Harm” anti-radar missiles. The strike groups were out of Syrian airspace in a flash, but even though the Iranians had been forewarned, there was little their own air defense could do as well.

The Israeli F-15 top cover swept aside the few remaining Iranian aircraft aloft to contest their approach, and the F-16s went to work. As night fell on a moonless night in October, targets would soon begin lighting up the deepening dusk, their heavy laser and GPS guided ordinance pummeling the industrial heart of the Iranian nuclear program, at least those facilities that were known.

      Unable to prevent the attack, or hinder it an any way, the Iranians had a precious few minutes to consider reprisals. They could order a massive retaliatory strike, in keeping with the rhetoric of their own government in recent months, and “severely punish any aggressor who would dare to threaten or strike the Iranian homeland.” But the Israelis were already finding and extinguishing a good number of the fixed Shahab missile sites. If they were to launch a counterattack, it had to be soon. Alternatively, they could stand down, ride out the storm, then take the role of the aggrieved victim and raise hell in the UN and every other international forum available. Their third option was to take the conflict "international" and make the world suffer the consequences. The Straits of Hormuz and the oil rich Sheikdoms to the south were the most inviting and easily ignited targets a ballistic missile commander might ever have.

The Iranians had made up their minds.

At a little after 22:00 hours, Gulf time, the first wave of missiles left their launch pads. The Israelis had found, and destroyed, sixteen launching sites, those deemed most likely to harbor weapons packages that might be aimed at Israel. But the Iranian response had a far greater scope, taking in the full range of the target rich southern shores of the Persian Gulf. The oil storage bunkers and terminals at Al Fujairah, the world's third largest bunkering center, were among the many targets they had decided to strike, and the list was long. Missiles were falling at the export terminals of Ras Tanura,  Ras al-Ju'aymah and the industrial city of Al Jubayl in Saudi Arabia. The American facilities in Qatar were struck that night as well, along with the ports at Abu Dhabi, and a host of other key facilities along the coast. If the Iranians could not have atomic energy, the world would not have petroleum. The equation was quite simple and it would mark the end of modern life as so many had lived it for the last hundred years.

Assad al Arif watched, amazed from his makeshift sasha, a palm frond fishing canoe bobbing at the end of its mooring rope a few miles south of the main oil storage facilities at Al Fujairah. He had been out all day, fishing as his father and grandfather before him, and now was simply tending and mending his nets in the quiet evening. Then the horizon to the north exploded in fury and red orange flame. An Iranian Shahab had struck the ENOC oil terminals there, igniting an inferno of burning oil and gas as one storage tank after another was engulfed in the holocaust of fire.

From far more plush accommodations in the city itself, the ruler of Fujairah, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, and His Excellency Sheikh Hamad bin Saif Al Sharqi, his deputy, watched in horror as the oil storage bunkers burned out of control. Millions of barrels of oil would be consumed in a conflagration that sent massive clouds of broiling smoke aloft to further char the black night settling over the Straits of Hormuz.

“And so it begins,” said one Sheikh to another. The long feared “incident” in the Persian Gulf had finally ignited the well oiled kindling there, and the fires were burning.

“No my friend,” said the able deputy to his Highness.  “And so it ends...”

 

The Dog and Pony Shows

The recent red, white and blue extravaganza that posed as a serious political party was oh so typical of American politics these days: vapid cliches, empty promises, endless heart rending images invoking God and family interspersed with snide and sarcastic swipes at the other party and its political leaders, with the climax being a speech by an 82 year old ex-gunslinger to an empty chair.
Through all the promises of "leadership," the hackneyed life story of this year's Republican nominee, the wholehearted invocations of "let's get it done...let's fix it...let's get America working again," absolutely nothing was said about the real reason why 23 million of us are out of work, and countless millions more are simply not even being counted as out of work any longer because they've given up looking for the missing jobs and have dropped off the official rolls of the "unemployed."
Nothing was said at all about the corporations, banks and insurance companies that literally bankrupted the nation itself in a mind boggling series of swindles, financial hocus pocus, ruinous speculation and outright criminal fraud.
Ah yes, remember the good old days when there were four or five bankers in your living room clutching home loan and refi offers while you sat snootily at your desk rejecting them? Remember "Flip that House?" The banks served up a raft of phoney mortgages all designed to explode like roadside bombs in every god fearing, family loving neighborhood of "America." They then packaged all these bogus loans up into "tranches" and sold them off to clueless investors, municipalities, insurance companies and foreign nations,deftly transferring the liability for their criminal actions to some else, or so they thought until Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went down, and the whole reeking mass of rigged "gentleman's agreements" on Wall street threatened to topple in one massive ignominious heap that would make the fall of the twin towers on 9/11 look like a minor inconvenience.
No worries...Uncle Sam and "The Fed" (a consortium of private bankers who were insanely given the power to create money at their whim), just decided to prop up all the other bankers with billions in acronym laced bailouts and trillions more in Fed programs--and to "pay" for it all we got the delusional printing press quietly called "quantitative easing." Then the banks returned to the high speed trading casino, (the stock markets) and to their fantasy land "investments" in derivatives, and the rest is done with mirrors--the foreclosures, the lost jobs, ruined careers, forsaken families, the former middle class citizenry now homeless on the streets, the legions of college graduates now sitting idle at home.
And of this not one single word was spoken at the Republican national convention...not even a whisper.
James Kunstler hit the point squarely in the center with his Sept 3 post when he talks about "the web of fraud that shrouds all the operations of money and banking - which is to say: the fate of everything the nation thinks it has invested in itself and its future. In the USA of 2012, anything goes and nothing matters...The two major parties regard the rule of law as optional, especially in money matters. Neither party has any will to interfere with a broad array of financial rackets that range from the blatant manipulation of markets, interest rates, and currencies to computerized front-running thievery, traffic in booby-trapped derivatives and counterfeit shorts, pervasive accounting fraud, channel stuffing, irregularities in central bank bullion leasing, flagrant confiscation of private accounts, municipal bond-rigging flimflams, "private equity" looting operations, offshore banking dodges, and untold other scams, rip-offs, and cons that have crippled the basic functions of finance, namely: price discovery, currency as a reliable store of value, and the allocation of surplus wealth for productive purpose."
Bring any of that up at a dinner party and you will soon be talking to an empty chair yourself. "Americans" just don't seem to get it.  They don't seem to be able to see and recognize the gentlemen in nicely pressed Italian suits that perpetrated all these financial crimes, and continue to do so at this very moment, quietly transferring trillions into their coffers while the country scratches its head, dumbly bemused by flag waving and family videos at the convention, (along with the insane cult of celebrity that serves as the great distraction on TV.) Like 9/11, they just don't understand who really "pulled it" and brought it all down, even after seeing it with their own eyes--the phoney mortgages blasting out from the sides of the building like squibs, the blatant foreclosures collapsing like the deliberate demolition of "Building 7," and lets not forget the rigged stock market to make us forget about it all. And years later our delusional talk of a "recovery" still serves as nothing more than a cloak to conceal the men who really destroyed the "American Dream," our very own Wall Street Wizards of Oz.
I am willing to wager that we will hear nothing at all about these men in the coming Democratic national convention either.  But it will be interesting to see what President Obama and his cohorts come up with as an election theme this time around. He certainly can't run on "hope and change," can he? Nope. The Republicans have seized upon that line as their primary slogan this year. There are really only a few functional lines of thought in politics. One is "time for a change;" another is "stay the course." The Republicans grabbed the first line this year, so the Dems will have to come up with some convincing meme for the electorate to "stay the course" with an endless chant of "four more years."
Me? I embrace a third political line, and the only one that promises any real movement to reality in this country: "throw the bastards out!" Yup, all of them. It's time we cleaned all these Republicans and Democrats out of our cupboard and started over--and not with a Tea Party, but with a legion of courageous young men and women who are willing to stand up to the "gentlemen" in gray tweed suits that really ruined this country, and return the rule of law in all things: politics, government and above all, the financial shenanigans of our banking system. 
Until they step forward, all we have for real leadership in this country is that empty chair Eastwood was talking to at the RNC, and the fantasies we tell ourselves about "recovery" and "putting America back to work." Don't for one minute think that Romney and Ryan are going to fill that empty chair and get anything done differently. Instead they'll fixate on tearing down the first chance at getting affordable health care that 40% of us have ever had. Strange, isn't it? Health care has been a political issue for almost every election I can remember. And now the issue the RNC seized upon this year was not about providing us with a new health care promise, but about destroying one. 
So you see...The RNC, the party of the "good old boys," will have no solutions either. You think they'll go after the banks, corporations and insurance companies? You think they'll rein in "Big Pharma" and stop the ceaseless drug peddling that that gets pushed on us every night on TV like Soma? Not a chance...but until we first have real justice in this country, until the rule of law is no longer "optional," nothing else matters.
OK... we've just seen the dog show at the RNC... Now we get to see the ponies trotted out by the other side. Enjoy the flag waving.

Mobile Webs

NUMBERS TELL THE STORY

It's a new era. Steve Jobs re-invented the phone and other devices for what apple calls "the post PC era" and now look at these astounding stats starting to make headlines!
5.1
There are 6.8 Billion people on earth...5,1 billion have a cell phone, but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush!
10x
The growth of the iPhone was 10 times faster than the growth of America Online (AOL)
$592
Venture capital in mobile ap marketing went from $128 million to $592 million last year.
57%
57% of all smart phone users now use their phone to browse the web every day.
91%
91% of all US citizens have their mobile device within arm's reach at all times, 24/7.
70%
70% of all mobile phone searches result in action within 1 hour!
14%
14.3% of last Black Friday web traffic was attributed to mobile devices, and this number may double in 2012.
Your existing web site may be perfect for a desktop or laptop, but it will just look terrible on a cell phone. The pages will be too small, text unreadable without zooming, scrolling, zooming, scrolling, and links and buttons will be too small to tap with fingers or thumb. In short, your existing web site will just not work for smart phones, which now command a rapidly growing segment of the web. 20% of users now come to a site for the first time through their cell phones, and 70% of mobile searches result in action within one hour!
Get ahead of this rapidly emerging internet trend with a sharp, professional Mobil Web Site designed by the Writing Shop!
www.writingshop.ws

With over 1.3 billion people, China has been a rising eco...

With over 1.3 billion people, China has been a rising economic powerhouse in Asia for the last decade. The surge of capitalism is everywhere apparent in this land of layered culture where the pulsing growth of a 21st century nation rises from the bones of an ancient civilization stretching back over 5000 years.

Join the Writing Shop as we take an incredible 23 day tour through seven cities of China from Beijing to Hong Kong. We visit all the main cultural, historical and religious sites, from the Palace Museum at the Forbidden City, to Tienanmen Square, Summer Palace, The Great Wall, Houtong Heaven, The Imperial Gardens, The National Museum, Henan Province, Zhengzho and the Tower of Fortune, Kaifeng, Longmen Grotto, White Horse Temple, Millennium City, Luoyang, Shaolin Temple, The Iron Pagoda, Amazing Hong Kong, The Tian Tan Buddha, Victoria Peak, Kowloon, Stanley Bay and so much more!

Part I: Beijing
Part II: Henan Province
Part III: Hong Kong
Part IV: Fine Dining In China
Part V: Image Gallery

So Many Books...So Little Time!

That old lament is more true today than ever before. Just under 300,000 books were published in the US last year, many of them as ebooks. Great Britain was second adding 206,000 more books, and the Chinese published another 136,000. Russia, Germany, Spain Italy, Japan, France… The list goes on until the combined worldwide total of all books published last year equaled 1,882,944.  A new book was published about every 16 seconds! This happens every year, with another two million books ramping up for publication in 2012, and these will drop onto the enormous pile of all previously published books. You realize that you could never even make a cursory review of the list of titles available in a lifetime, let alone read any significant portion of these books. And as a writer, you realize that your latest little polished gem of a book, just released, is now out there competing with over seven million titles currently on sale in the US at any given moment this year.
The ebook phenomenon has opened the floodgates of publication, as the former gatekeepers of the dam, the professional editors and traditional book publishers, have now been swept aside and a writer can now go directly to the reading public through Amazon, CreateSpace, Lightning Source, Lulu and any of a number of other POD printing services. As a writer you no longer need anyone's  approval or permission to get published--how empowering! Print On Demand publishing and the Internet changed the entire publishing business, particularly since the advent of Kindle. And yet, though it is easier for a writer to break into "print" (be it digital print or ink), the sheer volume of books competing for a relatively stable pool of readers attention now makes it more difficult than ever to get noticed and make any significant sales. In fact, I would say it is more challenging now to make any headway as a writer than it was in the bygone era where traditional publishers controlled the game.
Unwilling to admit that they have lost control, traditional publishers still hawk their best sellers, but POD books are now outselling most others, and ebooks swamp the market with their sheer volume. Unfortunately the average self-published book on places like Exlibris, iUniverse or Authorhouse, (all now owned by a single company, Author Solutions) sells fewer than 200 units in its lifetime. Last year iUniverse authors sold an average of 166 books, with 40% being purchased by the author or their immediate clan of family and friends. Clearly these companies are doing business under a high volume but low sales per author model.
I must be frank and number myself among the many services out there that assist authors in preparing their books for publication. Even knowing the enormous challenge they face for achieving anything approaching a wide readership, my philosophy is that 10 readers, 50 , a 100, 500, are better than none. Even if their sales will be modest, they can take pride in the effort they made to write and prepare their book as best they can. POD publishing was all about personal empowerment as achieved through the  current day "miracle" of the internet, the Gutenberg press of our electronic era. It's encouraging to see a web site like Project Gutenberg where you can find 38,000 free ebooks with authors like Hermann Melville hawking their goods. Call me Ishmael, but I wonder how many of the books currently finding their way between the dignity of two covers are going to be around a hundred years from now?
The challenge for the writer today, who must now do most or all of their own marketing, is how in the world do you get attention and make consistent sales? Visit writer's forums and they are all discussing how they can make their breakout as a writer and really get noticed. Some advise building an enormous web tribe to trumpet their books, others have determined to write a series of short 30,000 word novellas, make the first one "free" and then wait for the sales on the sequels. These books have been deliberately designed to be readable on a long plane trip, for example, a case of a supposed artist bending his or her craft to suit the contingencies of modern life.
Sigh… Thank God Keats and Shelly didn't have these things to worry about. Yet, on that note, Keats was helped early in his brief writing career when he was introduced to an editor of the Examiner, Leigh Hunt, who energetically advocated on his behalf and helped persuade a friend to publish Keats' first volume of poetry in 1817. It was this timely assistance from an editor that influenced Keats to continue his career as a poet, where he once lamented with Wordsworth, that no real poet of merit would be truly acknowledged and enjoy success in his lifetime. Two years later Keats wrote five of his most famous odes, and to this day we may contemplate the Grecian Urn with his thoughts in our minds.
Shelley's wife Mary (the author of her era's  "Frankenstein") tried to encourage him to write on topics that might find him a wider audience, and lamented that he wrote "without hope of appreciation" from many readers. She wrote: "I believed that he would obtain greater mastery over his own powers, and greater happiness in his mind, if public applause crowned his endeavors… Shelley did not expect sympathy and approbation from the public; but the want of it took away a portion of the ardor that ought to have sustained him while writing." God forbid that the travails of finding readers might have prevented either Keats or Shelley, perhaps two of the three greatest English poets, from plying their craft!
The list of great writers who never achieved popular or commercial success in their day is a long one. Some languished in alcohol, drowning their sorrows away, while other lived in relative poverty. Nothing they did was ever really valued in their lifetime. A long time fan of Tolkien's fantasy stories, I often wondered what old J.R.R. would have thought of the trilogy of blockbuster movies that achieved more commercial success than the author could have possibly imagined. Virtually redefining the entire fantasy genre, The Hobbit sold over 100 million copies, and the Lord of The Rings beat that with 150 million sales. Tolkien never knew it, and once noted that he was quite pleased with the proceeds he received from his writing, as it was "enough to buy a nice new couch." And did you know that the now famous poet e.e. cummings (who always typed his name in lower case) dedicated his first book of poetry, self-published I might add, to all the thirteen editors and publishers who had rejected it! Other great self-published authors include Howard Fast (Spartacus), Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way), T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas  Hardy, James Joyce and Alexandre Dumas, who all funded the publication of their own work, and thank god they did! Even old Ben Franklin wrote and self-published Poor Richard's Almanac under the pen name of Richard Saunders for 26 years.  
With a list like that it should be understood that this article is in no way a knock on self-publishing, which I now consider the new norm where books are concerned. Self-published titles represent the  majority of what is now published each year, but how does one find the Hemingways and Eliots in the  deluge, particularly when all Amazon continually displays, on each and every page when I do book searches, is "The Hunger Games?" How does one find the time to make any critical review of what is published each year? While I doubt if there is another Keats or Shelley out there in cyberland, I am certain many fine writers are going unnoticed, and despairing for want of appreciation.
Yet here is another truth about writing. Few real writers ever begin a novel with commercial success in mind. There are loads of hacks out there with a commercial formula—write 25,000 words on S&M  or Vampire erotica, offer it for $0.99 cents and let the hunger games begin! But real writers do not debase themselves this way. Like Shelley, they write because their mind overflows with thoughts, feelings, observations on life and the stories and poetry these things eventually become. Ever hear of House of Spirits by Isabel Allende, The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Atonementby Ian McEwan, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, Beloved by Toni Morrison? These are all authors considered in the top 10 for contemporary writers of the last 20 or 30 years. Yet you will not find any of their books on the Amazon top ten list.
A real writer starts with a good book, though let's face it, countless thousands have started with a fairly BAD book. I've looked at many top sellers and found them to be poorly written books, and in many cases pure drivel. But, quality in writing has not been the real touchstone of success for decades. Look at Amazon's current top sellers, and you will find "Fifty Shades of Gray" by a former British TV Executive E. L. James leading the charge. Not to pick on her, but read a few of the one (1) star reviews, a whopping 604 by last count out of a total 2261 reviews, representing that over 26% of all readers reviewing gave the book the lowest possible rating, some even wishing they could have rated it a zero (0)! Their comments are scathing, like: "the writing is about two levels worse than the worst Harlequin romance you've ever read." Another reviewer wrote: "This has to be the most appallingly atrocious writing I've ever seen in a major release." The negative reviewers seem baffled that anyone would consider the book good, yet 1,070 other reviews award 5 stars.
How is this possible? It happens for the same reason no-talent, wholly manufactured twerps like Justin Bieber are popular. Readers are a bell curve, with the lion's share at the median "C" level. I would like to suspect that the 600 plus negative reviews of "Fifty Shades of Gray" come from the top of the curve, the more intelligent and discerning readers. For those five star accolades the book received,  one has to wonder how many were written by friends and associates of the author's ex TV clan, her "tribe" of supporters, as these Amazon reviews are considered a necessary ingredient of any new author's marketing plan.
And the fact that these Amazon "reviews" carry so much weight at all is another oddity. There are boatloads readers out there who, quite frankly, cannot tell good from bad when it comes to prose, yet their opinions can make or break a writer from a commercial standpoint. Remember that we live in a society where our TV programming is all about surviving odd little wilderness games, dancing with stars, (or ice-skating with them), or the desperate struggles of people trying to become the next great pop star, the next American Idol, the next chef, the next fashion designer, the next millionaire, all under the stern judgment of so called experts in those areas. Our current "entertainment" is one massive talent show where viewer "votes" via iTunes downloads or calls to fatten Verizon, AT&T and Sprint make the thumbs up or down decision on would be performers. Yes, we make the decisions, like the spectators in the  coliseum shouting life or death to a fallen gladiator. Does this say anything about what the public considers "good?" In like manner, what the public selects out of the enormous annual book surge is also seldom anything that really has merit as good fiction. Even the Pulitzer Prize panel snootily turned up their noses at the hundreds of fiction books entered for consideration this year and refused to award a prize for the fiction category! That is indeed a damning condemnation of the quality of contemporary fiction, with or without the literary gatekeepers that have now been dethroned by POD publishing models.
Popularity has seldom been any real indicator of quality, but all that said, popularity is what will make a writer commercially successful faster than anything else. The bottom line today is that you don't have to be a very good writer at all to be commercially successful. You just have to be a good marketer, adept at "trending" on twitter, face booking, marshalling an on-line "tribe" of people and stacking up five star Amazon reviews from friends. You can even break into the Amazon best seller top 10 for a brief moment of fame by simply placing a mega order for your own books through their retail channel, and many writers have done this as a pure marketing ploy when their book launches. After all, they get 70% back immediately as a royalty, so they consider the other 30% nothing more than an advertising cost. If they had bought the books through their author account that would have received no more than a 75% author discount from the POD houses anyway. So now their real investment in the ploy is only about 5% of the retail cost of the book on Amazon, which often discounts from the list price of the book to even wipe out this loss.  On top of that, if they bought 100 books from Amazon, for example, they still have those copies to resell, so they make back that 5% in short order and actually come out ahead by buying their own books! 
Any writer who wanted to be "famous" could keep themselves on the Amazon top 100 list indefinitely if they had a little war chest to buy their own books. I know of one author who propelled herself into the number 4 spot on Amazon for a day by simply buying 20 of her own books one day! Of course this nonsense could be corrected by Amazon in a heartbeat by not counting author retail purchases as sales, but the so called "writer" could spoof this by simply using a new email and shipping address.
Is this what it takes to make it these days as a writer, a host of marketing tricks? If you are a writer looking for some magic marketing plan, think fast, because in the time you have taken to read this brief post another ten authors have just "launched" their latest book with wide eyed hope. They've blogged about it, put it on the web, issued press releases, twittered, plastered their Facebook wall, and god knows what else. They are out there just like E. L. James or Suzanne Collins, who piled up 1500 three star or less reviews (about 50% of all reviews) for her book "Mocking Jay", (over 400 gave it 1 star). These middling to poor reviews equaled all those who rated the book higher, but it didn't stop Collins from beating out Steven King in the Amazon rankings with 820 days in the top 100 compared to King's relatively anemic 63 days on that same list after his last book launch. Her book "The Hunger Games" is the slush pile's soup of the day success story. Yet one astute reader, just 17 years old and from the obvious target audience for this book wrote: "The characters and plot are one-dimensional. It was painfully predictable. Cliché. Boring. Immature. The sad thing is, I think teenagers like this book because it requires no thought--it has no sustenance by means of developed characters or intricate plot. If we want people my age to start reading, should we really settle for feeding them empty stories like this one?"
The answer to her plaintive question is obviously "yes." Like all the recent vampire thrillers, the really successful writers serve up drivel, and the public seems to love it because that's all they know, or all they are capable of measuring. I hate to quote a Hollywood movie to make a point, but it seems in keeping with the theme I have going here. I am reminded of that line from the movie American President, a quaint comedy starring Michael Douglas where a presidential aid pleads that the American people "want leadership. And in the absence of genuine leadership, they will listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They're so thirsty for it, they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand."
To this Douglas quickly returns: "We've had Presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand, because they're thirsty. They drink it because they don't know the difference." The ominous silence after that statement, and the look on the faces of the  bewildered White House staffers tells all. The public is a collective bunch of know nothing idiots. Was the remark a high-browed exercise in hubris, or was it more a scathing truth about American culture?
You be the judge. Vote with your attention as a reader. Vote with your dollars, just as you do for The  Voicewhen you make that call. Want more movies about young teens hunting each other down with bows and arrows? Buy Suzanne Collins and keep her in that Amazon top 100 list. Just start typing the name "Suzanne" on Google, for example, and watch what comes up before you even finish the word—soup du jour. Google has pronounced her the world's iconic Suzanne. It may be painful to swallow, but it is the reality of our time. I sit here wondering how long it will take for some other Suzanne to dethrone her on Google.
Unfortunately, for every astute and intelligent reader who makes thoughtful choices about their books, there will be ten idiots out there awarding five stars to claptrap, poppycock, hogwash, rubbish, drivel, twaddle, balderdash, nonsense, baloney, tripe, gibberish, bunkum, hooey, hokum and humbug! And of the top ten books on sale at Amazon, most would be best described that way.
I'd like to think that the success stories of the day will soon fall like autumn leaves, allowing really good writers to get more attention, but the problem is that the Hunger Games of today will be replaced by some other crap next year. You have to ask yourself what Steinbeck would have accomplished if he was releasing his novels for Kindle today.  Would he make the top ten? How would he even get noticed in the deluge? The "gray priesthood" of critics and reviewers, as he called them, has now been replaced by … well, by YOU. Anyone can throw those stars up on Amazon to make or break a writer.
But it's not all bleak. There is hope. Check on "the classics" and you will find lots of really great books still scoring high marks on Amazon. The current top 10 in Literature / Fiction / Classics: 1) Midnight Cowboy - ( James Leo Herlihy, 2) The End of the Affair - (Graham Greene), 3) The Hobbit - (J.R.R. Tolkien), 4) Atlas Shrugged - (Ayn Rand), 5) Lord of the Rings - (J.R.R. Tolkien), 6) 1984 - (George Orwell), 7) The Great Gatsby – (F. Scott Fitzgerald), 8) Jane Austen: The Complete Collection – (Jane Austen), 9) Lord of the Flies – (William Golding), and 10) A confederacy of Dunces – (John Kennedy Toole).
The fact that none of these will appear in the current Amazon top 10 should be obvious, because the  collective public is, indeed, a confederacy of dunces. Yet the fact that these books all still score relatively high, with authors that never heard of Facebook or Twitter,  is the glimmer of hope out there. And guess what. I'll bet they will still be scoring high in another fifty years, when the Hunger Games is long forgotten. So keep writing. The real writers will be found in time, even if it takes a hundred years. You may never know about the success future readers crown you with. That's the writer's lot in life at times, but how impoverished the world would be if poor sales had discouraged Keats and he never wrote those five great odes. You just have to believe that someday, someday, you'll break through the ranks and get the attention you deserve.
Oh… by the way…to Good luck with your next book launch!

Kirov Sets Sail for 1941

The military fiction naval saga Kirov has just left port for the open waters of Amazon Kindle, released today, 3/12/12.

Kirov is a rollicking naval saga that might best be described as "The Final Countdown" meets "The Hunt For Red October." In the year 2021, the Russians rebuild the formidable battlecruiser Kirov and outfit her with their latest weapons and technology.  She is about to engage in live fire exercises in the Norwegian Sea when a freak accident aboard an escorting Oscar II sub displaces the ship in time to July 28, 1941. 
The novel is an intensely focusednaval saga, where the crew of the lost Russian battlecruiser must struggle tounderstand what has happened to them, and then make a choice that could bedecisive in the outcome of the war—who'sside are they on? The course of all future history rides in the balance!
At this crucial time, Kirov finds herself just days and milesaway from a secret summit at sea between Churchill and Roosevelt. On August 9,1941, the two great leaders meet to plan cooperation in the war and lay downthe Atlantic Charter, which decides the framework of post war power in theworld and becomes the basis for the new United Nations and NATO.With the hindsight of history astheir guide, Kirov races south towardthe secret meeting place at Argentia Bay in Newfoundland. Even as she cruisesfor the Denmark strait, both Roosevelt and Churchill prepare to embark for thesea journey as well. The Royal Navy soon discovers what they believe to be afearsome new German raider in the Norwegian Sea, and they join with America'sAtlantic Fleet to bar the  way and huntdown the most formidable surface action ship in the world.
Kirov is presently available on Amazon for Kindle, and on Barnes & Noble for the Nook eReader. It will also be released as a quality trade paperback in the near future.
eBook versions are priced at  at $4.99 (390 pages, about 140,000 words).
For more information
Direct Amazon Link

The Insane Drivel of AOL

One look at the home page of AOL this morning captures the fullness of America's nonsensical, trivial insanity. You would thing this page might have the most relevant and important news items of the day, or links to information that had some artistic or intellectual value--but you would be very, very wrong. Here's what AOL thinks is important to America this morning:
Jeniffer's Dress Was Pretty Stretchy
Where Full Moon Party Rages
Deadliest Catch Star In Hot Water
Man Caught Applying Makeup on TV
Man 72 Claims to be Shortest in World
Guess the TV Star in Hot Pink Bikini
Kelly Ripa Flaunts Figure in String Bikini
Fox New Host Reveals Surprising Morning Ritual
Colbert Honors Mother in Show's Return
Kate Middleton Sports New Dress, Old Shoes
Biggest Loser Reveals Off Camera Secret
Happy 24th Birthdar Rhianna
What "Fraiser" Star's Home is Hiding
Dog and Kitten are Adorable Pals
Highest paid Pro Athletes of All Time

The list above accounted for 95% of the home page screen real estate, and it was what AOL thought was vital and important this morning. Buried amid all these image laden article links was one single newsworthy story about the Supreme Court deliberation on Affirmative Action, and one on Romney's fundraising problem. All things considered, AOL's appreciation of reality is roughly equivalent to one of those rag newspapers like the Enquirer that fabricates odd stories for the local supermarket checkout aisles. Add to this the ubiquitous insult of the goofy girl in the stark blue ads for Progressive Insurance Company--insurance I would never, ever consider buying simply because of the stupidity an endless offensive drudgery of this ad campaign, and here you have a perfect montage of our ridiculous sludge like culture. My guess is that you can find much the same on other major portals like Yahoo, etc.
What is it about our media that consistently elevates this trivial, celebrity based "news" as important? I suspect the answer is that people click on these things--that this is what people want. Yet in visiting AOL this morning one had little choice. It was either click on the nonsense, or leave. I hung around just long enough to write this post, and then made a graceful exit, banishing AOL to the dustbin of irrelevant drivel.