EU Spectacle
The word spectacle is carefully chosen, since this is what the current drama of which Greece is the symptom, not the cause, has become. It no longer bears any relationship to coherent democratic leadership or process of governance in a workable political and currency union. The cancellation at a moment’s notice of a summit of all EU leaders is extraordinary.
There is a problem with Greece, but it is not that difficult to solve. Indeed this blog working alone would be able to negotiate a workable solution. What is proving impossible is to find an acceptable solution, because the institutions normally established to process decision making at national and international levels are not there, or there in such abundance nobody can detect who is in charge. And to make matters worse the structure of the currency itself is unsustainable as it lacks a treasury and a finance minister answering to an elected government. A committee of finance ministers at loggerheads, elected by only one member state in each case, on conflicting mandates and to differing electoral timetables will work only in the good times and becomes dysfunctional under pressure.
So all we know at this moment is that Greece may or may not go bust tomorrow, the euro looks more like an impediment to growth than an engine of it, and the reputation of the EU as a coherent political union is severely damaged. Beneath that a big gap is developing between the north and the south of Europe, between the politicians and their electors everywhere and between those in the eurozone who want to stand firm to high principle even if it brings the whole thing down, led by the Germans, and by those who feel pragmatic reality demands compromise, led by France and Italy.
At the heart of of this crisis now engulfing the whole EU are three violated principles. You cannot have a democratic political union without an elected forum from which all authority flows. You cannot have a currency which cannot be printed. You cannot have capitalism which does not permit debtors to go bust. The first is violated because the whole EU is wrongly configured. The last two are rescinded because Germany says No.
If you think Texas and the oil workers are interesting you should drive through the oil patch. I could post some videos I took of working oil rigs. That might interest you. I'll look for all the gritty photos of Texas. By the way, one of my activities right now is compiling my trip reviews of motels, restaurants, and sightseeing attractions that I've posted to Trip Advisor and assigning photos to them. We print a copy of this for our shelves.
The secret of building an investment portfolio I am told by those who are good at it is to buy and not to sell. People who buy and sell all the time are dealers.Stocks should be chosen for their long term prospects when they are off their peak and the yield is higher and held for at least ten years. All this dealing just earns commissions for brokers and fund managers and dilutes the capital. The other measure is to count the number of shares rather than the value and add to them when you can. But they have to be a high quality shares in the first place and never bough in a boom or a bubble. That is what an investment portfolio is.
Buying and selling all the time is not investing; it is dealing. You can win big but lose bigger.
Linda wrote: ""Niche platform to which the content relates". What is a "niche platform"? This sounds interesting. For three years now I've tried all sorts of social media without any success as far as selling no..."Well if you were doing videos of your bobcats and wild pigs for example this needs to appear where people who are interested in wild life go. If bobcats appear where everybody is only interested in personal stuff and clubbing you won't get hits.
Yes you can sell fiction as well as non. I think it maybe has to be contemporary to take off. I notice younger female writers do well if their subject within the drama or crime is pretty gritty; care homes, sexual abuse and stuff. Not the sort of thing you and I do. I suspect some of them have actually had the experience or are close to people who have.
The crime dramas do well. Especially the Scandinavian ones ones; they are very big now both in books and TV adaptions. Maybe you should read some. You would get some ideas for sure.
That's just the point. Buying and selling all the time is what most people do if they don't invest in funds. That's another reason to invest in funds --- for stability. I made that my one exception, too. I said you could buy your own stocks IF you held onto them for the time period that Warren Buffett calls "forever". However, if you want to have a balanced portfolio, which is what you should have, the average or near average person MUST invest in mutual funds for the sole reason that he does not have enough money to buy enough individual stocks --- even if he is going to hold onto them FOREVER -- to make a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds.
What about this objection to buying your own stocks and not investing in mutual funds?
How do I relate the bobcat videos and javelina videos to Dora and Edward and the Edward Ware Thrillers? It may sound humorous but we have added a Section to the website called More Adventures. I make a note saying that Edward and Dora chased all over Santa Fe in 1945 in Unlocking Trinity. There are rumors that after the war they moved to the Southwest and set up a ranch in the country to be far away from whatever spies might still be pursuing them. Then I post the videos. But remember you were the one who suggested it.
Unfortunately you may be right about people being mostly interested in contemporary novels. My YA horror and mystery novels were all contemporary. And by the way Dark 3 is contemporary, too. It's the only volume of the Edward Ware Thriller Series that is. But for some reason I can write contemporary novels ONLY if they are YA. If I try to write an adult novel set nowadays it always ends up being YA. For one thing the sources of information you would need to write about Edward being involved in contemporary spying aren't open to me. I can look up volumes about Los Alamos NOW, but you couldn't during WW2 when it was all top secret. Whatever is going on in spying now requires inside knowledge that I don't have. You can get away with YA novels because they don't have to be as sophisticated. You see my dilemma? Contemporary times now will be the history of the future. My counterpart one hundred years from now or two hundred will be able to write about spying taking place in 2015.If I were to revert to adult horror novels with supernatural creatures, this would be silly. I know people do it, but it's much more credible that a teenager would be tricked by a vampire or a ghost than an adult. For me the whole thing falls apart when you use adults.
You would say then why did I start writing the Edward Ware Thrillers? Why didn't I stick to YA novels? I would have been happy to go on writing YA novels forever. But the market quit on me. The genre ended. The YA genre was never as big as the adult market anyway. Now in YA they are doing mostly romance and fantasy. Thrillers or crime keep on crashing unless they are library books (literary type novels for YA) that I don't write either. It's a very bad position to be in.
An acquaintance recently pointed out to me that novelists are advertising books in archaeological journals. Not that these books are bestsellers but they have a small niche audience. I should return to writing what I was doing before YA: writing about the ancient world. That's the subject of my original Cheops Books novel To Follow the Goddess about Helen of Troy.
About the only popular adult "historical novels" are romances. I tried writing those back at the time I was writing ancient books. I was told by the same agent who sold my YA novels that I didn't have the right style. However, I do have three recent contracts from Harlequin, one last year, for reprints. But they were for Harlequin Germany in Hamburg for YA romantic mysteries. I loathe the titles of romances. But here I am for the first time in years just starting to pitch my latest novel, Inn at the Crossroads which for them I will have to call Love at the Crossroads, at agents. I'll let you know what happens.
Linda wrote: "How do I relate the bobcat videos and javelina videos to Dora and Edward and the Edward Ware Thrillers? It may sound humorous but we have added a Section to the website called More Adventures. I ma..."Your blog does not need to relate to your books. Your books just appear as ads. That's how I do it. Draw your punters with interesting wild life blogs the intersperse ads for your books with buy links to your Amazon page.
Linda wrote: "Unfortunately you may be right about people being mostly interested in contemporary novels. My YA horror and mystery novels were all contemporary. And by the way Dark 3 is contemporary, too. It's t..."Yes that is a very interesting writing journey. I think you are a very talented YA writer but to keep selling new work you maybe need to move to where the YA market now is. It is more the Harry Potter type stuff. Also Terry Pratchett sold millions of books. It is make believe but also a metaphor for modern life, so loads of adults read the books and talk to their kids about it. I was about the only dad who did not read Harry Potter.
Linda wrote: "That's just the point. Buying and selling all the time is what most people do if they don't invest in funds. That's another reason to invest in funds --- for stability. I made that my one exception..."The charges. The average yield (income) on a safe stock is about 3%. Most mutual funds have charges greater than that so everything is run on capital growth and dealing.
On the other hand if you have a portfolio of twenty top shares and keep them and just bank the dividends, if you choose the right shares you will out perform mutuals. But 99% of punters do not know which shares to buy. That is why the funds do well. You should stick to the funds.
You can put ads on your blogs on your website? I know you can have links. I know you can have pictures of your books. You can have a reader click the picture of your book and go directly to Amazon. Is this what you mean as an ad? What's new to me, though, is that you are talking about something else in the blog and you put the book picture to the side as a smaller icon and as something you can click. If this is true, that's what they do on the side column and the top of the page on Goodreads.
As it is, my blogs are most typically about travel or at least frequently they are travel reviews that are also posted on Trip Adviser. It would be a novel idea for me to include a clickable ad for a book along with the posted review. If this is what you are saying, that's a great idea which I will try right away.
Harry Potter is not YA. Harry Potter is middle grades. My previous agent, Pema, even said so. In other words, Harry Potter is for ages 8 to 12. YA is 12 to 16. It isn't the same market. However, Harry Potter did have an adverse affect on YA horror and thrillers. It shifted everything towards fantasy which is something I don't do. Fantasy is grouped with science fiction and creating worlds, not dealing with here and now or the past. Both fantasy and sci fi are futuristic. I'm always in the past. P.S. You aren't the only one who has never read Harry Potter. I have avoided it like the plague for years.
You are supposed to have a diverse portfolio,not just twenty shares of a top performing stock. And that costs lots of money to buy if you are buying individual stocks. That is why stock investing used to be mostly for rich people until the advent of mutual funds.
Linda wrote: "You can put ads on your blogs on your website? I know you can have links. I know you can have pictures of your books. You can have a reader click the picture of your book and go directly to Amazon...."Yes, here's the link to today's blog. You can see how it works.
http://www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.u...
Linda wrote: "As it is, my blogs are most typically about travel or at least frequently they are travel reviews that are also posted on Trip Adviser. It would be a novel idea for me to include a clickable ad for..."Yes that's the idea. People who go on trips read books.
Linda wrote: "You are supposed to have a diverse portfolio,not just twenty shares of a top performing stock. And that costs lots of money to buy if you are buying individual stocks. That is why stock investing u..."Agree.
Yes, I like the ad. Last night I did something similar. I did a travel review of a breakfast we were served in Hittfeld, Germany at the Hotel zur Linde. Then we created an ad for Dark 3 which was clickable to Amazon. The only problem with this arrangement is that hardly anyone visits either of my websites. I don't know how to draw traffic there. More traffic lands on my Facebook page. But you can't do video ads there in the same way.
Your most recent blog post on IS and the political/military solution is one of the longest blogs I've seen recently. It's very detailed and well thought out. I noticed that you mentioned that the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia have to be told to stop funding IS. This is interesting, too. Remember I said that Ib'n Saud came to power as did his Saud dynasty with the help of the Wahhabis. The Wahhabis in effect are IS. That's why I say that you can't have Saudi Arabia as part of the solution. It's the heart of darkness. The guys who are on the throne of Saudi Arabia the last I heard as still the sons of Ib'n Saud since he had so many of various ages. This kind of weird political arrangement can't work nowadays. It needs to go bye-bye. When you say that even Turkey can't be trusted we get into a much more interesting situation. Turkey wants to be part of the EU. The Turks have wanted to be part of Europe since Suleiman the Magnificent if not for longer than that. Yet they have Islamic roots. I have much respect for the Islamic religion. Saladin as I have mentioned many times is one of my favorite historical characters. I was once going to do a novel that included the Turks and Suleiman but I never go around to it. I think the Turks did something to Islam that I don't understand and haven't researched enough. Somehow the Ottoman Turkish Empire caused Islam to "go bad". Before that in the Middle Ages it was in its flower. Maybe nowadays even the religion itself needs a Reformation. We are about to celebrate the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther. You can't do exactly the same thing in the Middle East, of course. But they need their own kind of Reformation clearly.
Gary says that your Shadow Foreign Secretary recently made a speech calling for a war against Is. He analogizes to the 1930's and fighting Hitler. I think that fighting IS is nothing like WW2. In WW2 you had the four leading industrial powers of the world fighting each other. The US and Britain teamed up against Germany and Japan. (It sounds like the four leading stock markets again). This isn't that situation at all. It can't be WW3. This is a pirate war. The problem is that pirate wars in recent centuries have been rather minor affairs. I don't even remember all the details.I recall something about pirates being imprisoned in Colonial Williamsburg for instance. There might have been bigger pirates wars several centuries ago that I don't know about. But the last large scale pirate war I know about was Pompey against the pirates in the first century BC. And unfortunately what they had to do to wipe out the pirates is something that I can't see moderns doing. It would violate all their laws, religions, and morals. It was very effective in wiping out the pirates, but considering that we have TV, email, media everywhere, etc. forget it. You hinted at it when you said that during WW2 we didn't worry about good and bad Germans. We just shot at them all. This is getting closer to what the Romans did adapted to a time before firearms. I'll leave it to your imagination what Gnaeus Pompey did to free Rome from pirates for good. Also you seem to be interested in China as an emerging world power. What do you think the Chinese would do to terrorists?
This is why I say that the only solution I can think of is occupation. It's the most humane way to deal with the problem and the most effective by far.You talk about redrawing the borders. This is what Churchill and Lawrence did in Cairo in 1921. It doesn't work.
I've heard that all the internet lines go through the US. Couldn't they cut off the lines from Syria, etc to the Western World? Would this help? Or is this what intelligence uses to block attacks?
I looked up Plutarch on Pompey and the Pirates who by that point had taken over all the shipping on the Mediterranean. The Romans had allowed it to get way out of hand. Sound familiar? It's very interesting. He took tens of thousands of slaves of course which isn't applicable nowadays at all. But what might be are his siege warfare tactics and his division of the Mediterranean into 13 districts. Then he closed in on the pirates from 13 directions simultaneously. He concluded the war in 3 months, record time for the pre-internet and pre-technology age.
Linda wrote: "Gary says that your Shadow Foreign Secretary recently made a speech calling for a war against Is. He analogizes to the 1930's and fighting Hitler. I think that fighting IS is nothing like WW2. In W..."Gary may like to read this blog about the shadow F.S. speech
http://www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.u...
Linda wrote: "Gary says that your Shadow Foreign Secretary recently made a speech calling for a war against Is. He analogizes to the 1930's and fighting Hitler. I think that fighting IS is nothing like WW2. In W..."Interesting points. Actually China is signed up to opposing IS but I don't think it will join the military effort. But it may very well join in the reconstruction, if we get there. It is the biggest investor in Africa at the moment.
Both the US and Europe are pretty tough on terrorists. If they are caught before they attack they get long sentences. If during an attack they are mostly shot dead.But that's what they want anyway.
Linda wrote: "I've heard that all the internet lines go through the US. Couldn't they cut off the lines from Syria, etc to the Western World? Would this help? Or is this what intelligence uses to block attacks?"Intelligence relies on intercepts to block attacks and to track ringleaders for drone attacks.
Linda wrote: "Gary says that your Shadow Foreign Secretary recently made a speech calling for a war against Is. He analogizes to the 1930's and fighting Hitler. I think that fighting IS is nothing like WW2. In W..."An Arab occupation might work but never a Western one. The problem with Sykes Picot was that it drew lines in the sand without regard to who lived there, so you have all this mix up which is the source of all the wars. It is like some dimwit redrawing boundaries in America so that some Americans find themselves living in Bolivia and others in Canada.
Any new boundaries have to be based on tribal occupations or whatever you like to call them that separate Shia, Sunni, and Kurd.
I agree with you IS is absolutely nothing like WWII. It is more like the insurgencies we dealt with in Malaya, Kenya, Aden and Cyprus. The terrorist part is very like the IRA. The thing was in those days we had politicians who knew what they were doing. The current generation are completely clueless.
What about Pompey and the Pirates? Have you looked him up? If there is a war siege warfare might be just the thing. As far as dividing the Mediterranean into 13 zones and then closing in all at once in 13 different places (which nowadays could have an international scope) sounds like something that the terrorist pirates couldn't withstand. If only we had military leaders like that nowadays. Of course the late Roman Republic was the supreme age of military leaders in all of western history. That's when Julius Caesar came in. Pompey was his son-in-law. P.S. T.E. Lawrence used classical sources as inspirations for his battles, too.
You say that nowadays the politicians are completely clueless. I would have to agree. But I don't follow most of them. But what is interesting about this is think of Churchill's reputation in the early and mid thirties in particular, his Wilderness Years. He was a mere back bencher. I recently talked to somebody who remembered that time period. She said that back then people respected Neville Chamberlain and thought Churchill was a radical, and that's from an American. Another answer could be that times make the man. Nowadays despite what you and I think is a time period that doesn't call for great men. The late nineteenth century in America, the Age of Robber Barons, was like that, too. It's hard to even remember the names of the Presidents then. That was right after the American Civil War and before WW1 and the lead up. Maybe nowadays is like the late nineteenth century.
Right now Gary has gone to drop off Rommel at the dog ranch for the day. When he gets back we will have breakfast. Then we will read your essay about the Shadow minister. It sounds interesting. I'll write back to you what Gary says.
Gary's response to your blog on the Shadow Party:A number of Labor members voted in favor of the resolution to extend the bombing campaign to Syria in solidarity with the French. There were some Tories who voted against this resolution to bomb on the grounds that it did not go far enough. There is at least some sentiment among some members of the Tory Party that you will finally have to have a ground campaign to get rid of the Islamic State.
What Gary thinks you are referring to is that in the millennial view of the Islamic State they are looking to have a huge battle between the forces of Islam and the forces of the West. It is to take place on a plain near the village of Dabiq somewhere near Aleppo. This is a prophecy. They are trying in essence to provoke the West to send in an army to fulfill this prophecy. So some people say you are playing into IS hands.
Gary's response to all this is that the West has got to show the will to fight these people on multiple fronts. You are going to have to shut down their recruiting. You are going to have to go in with both an air and land campaign to essentially eliminate IS control over Syria and Iraq. You are probably going to have to occupy the area with the help of the rebel forces for quite awhile.
Gary says the US President is not doing his job. His speech did not reassure the majority of the population in the US. People are scared out of their minds. These people in San Bernardino, CA were not on the FBI list or on the radar. So people wonder how you can trust it not happening in your community. If it can happen in San Bernardino it can happen anywhere.
Gary says that the US President is like a "wet blanket". His speech didn't satisfy most people.
I have paid no attention to any of these attacks. I had never even heard about the San Bernardino attacks until Gary mentioned them this morning. If most people were like me the terrorists would get nowhere. All this survives on publicity.
I remember right after 9/11 lots of people in the US said that they would never travel again. They were going to stay at home almost all the time. They would avoid shopping malls and have their groceries delivered. Since then I have been back and forth to Europe twice on a ship. Since 2001 I've also made two trips by RV back and forth to Alberta, Canada, one trip to Washington state, another trip to Yosemite and the Oregon Coast, a trip to southern Utah, and several trips to San Diego and Santa Fe. Of all places I've even recently visited Halifax, Nova Scotia. I haven't stayed at home. Should I start doing so? Is that what you intend to do?
Linda wrote: "What about Pompey and the Pirates? Have you looked him up? If there is a war siege warfare might be just the thing. As far as dividing the Mediterranean into 13 zones and then closing in all at onc..."Not yet!
Linda wrote: "Gary's response to your blog on the Shadow Party:A number of Labor members voted in favor of the resolution to extend the bombing campaign to Syria in solidarity with the French. There were some ..."
I only partly agree. European and US views do not coincide exactly. It will not work with western boots on the ground. It has to be Iran, the Kurds and Assad. The Sunnis won't fight IS until they get their own territory.
Europe accepts that Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan are total disasters. I am not sure America sees it that way.
Linda wrote: "Gary's response to your blog on the Shadow Party:A number of Labor members voted in favor of the resolution to extend the bombing campaign to Syria in solidarity with the French. There were some ..."
All the IS attacks are carried out by nationals of the country in which the attack occurs with very few exceptions.That is how it is organised. IS itself has a tiny army of fighters, fewer than thirty thousand.They only gained territory because the Sunni forces ran away and the Sunni population let them in.
The American (San Bernadino) attack was locals as was Paris (some from Belgium) and the other night here a stabbing at a tube stn was a local. Some of these people have been to the mid east but not all. They get it all from the net.
If the West occupied the whole middle east, the terrorist attacks would multiply 50 fold. As I have said again and again IS can only survive if the West attacks it.
I am sure that Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc are total disasters. But occupying the countries doesn't preclude drawing new boundaries. However, Americans don't like drawing boundaries based on religious differences. The big exception of course is Israel. But Britain was there first.
No, no, no! The attacks would not increase if the West occupies the source of the problem and stamps it out there. This is Moslem ideology guiding all this, and Wahhabi ideology at that. It doesn't spring from western sources even if it has western converts. And remember Pompey. If you have a worldwide operation and stamp out the sources in Afghanistan at the same time as Syria and wherever else, then you stamp it out. If you are suggesting that a few terrorists would survive and move to Chicago, it would be easy for the FBI to stamp them out inside the country for sure.
You are almost making IS sound like one of those events that you can organize on Facebook or on Twitter where you say there's going to be an event at a certain location and then your "friends" appear there, in this case to carry out a terrorist attack. You make it sound as if teenagers are organizing it, teenagers who like to pull pranks and laugh at the result. You make it sound like a perverse sort of YA novel and not something rooted in a revolutionary cause that has certain definite political aims such as freedom for a certain country or certain border objectives, etc.
You also make it sound like a problem that springs from the Internet, almost like a flaw in the whole setup of the thing. In other words, according to you if there was no Internet IS would cease to exist. This is all very interesting. Supposedly the modern internet springs from inventions by Britain during WW2. It was invented for military/government purposes. If it is flawed, maybe it should get an overhaul. I don't know how to do this. Maybe somebody else would.
All I know is that they have to stop cracking down on average Americans as a substitute for attacking and controlling terrorists. In the past few years all I have experienced is problems springing from the Patriot Act, TSA, etc all set up since 9/11. The fiasco in Boston this summer on QM2 sprang from that. So did the incident with TSA when I was boarding the QM2 in 2012 in New York. In addition would you believe that the genesis of the mover situation started with the Patriot Act. Fidelity thinks that they caused the check to bounce because a couple of months before that I had changed the address associated with the account and they temporarily "Froze" the assets in the account when they tried to deliver a letter to that address and the letter was returned to them in the mail.
Linda you make some excellent points in these latest posts but it will have to wait till tomorrow for worthwhile comment as am very busy this evening. Had a hectic day !
Linda wrote: "No, no, no! The attacks would not increase if the West occupies the source of the problem and stamps it out there. This is Muslim ideology guiding all this, and Wahhabi ideology at that. It doesn't..."No, we have to agree to differ here.The source of the problem is not in the middle east. That is where the inspiration is but the source is within the populations of mostly the West of young people who for one reason and another feel excluded from the economic and social direction of travel of global capitalism and are radicalized and trained through social media and later the dark net. As I say almost all the terrorists are nationals of the countries which they attack.
IS arose directly out of the occupation of Iraq. There is now no longer a single military, political, or other sort of analyst or expert in Europe who thinks that western forces on the ground can do any good at all. And Europe has much closer dealings with the Arab world than the US.
Linda wrote: "You are almost making IS sound like one of those events that you can organize on Facebook or on Twitter where you say there's going to be an event at a certain location and then your "friends" appe..."Well that is pretty close. Conventional military forces are more or less useless. It is the intelligence agencies in the front line and here Britain and the US are the best by far, especially their listening capability in monitoring all forms of communications world wide.
The Paris attacks were set up by iPhone by a French national from Athens.
Linda wrote: "You also make it sound like a problem that springs from the Internet, almost like a flaw in the whole setup of the thing. In other words, according to you if there was no Internet IS would cease to..."Linda wrote: "You are almost making IS sound like one of those events that you can organize on Facebook or on Twitter where you say there's going to be an event at a certain location and then your "friends" appe..."
Yes that is more or less exactly how it works.
Linda wrote: "You also make it sound like a problem that springs from the Internet, almost like a flaw in the whole setup of the thing. In other words, according to you if there was no Internet IS would cease to..."Yes the internet and cyber space have changed the whole dynamics of conflict as significantly as the invention of gunpowder. Without the internet and cyber space IS would be a local insurgency of little military significance that most people had never heard of. If you wiped them out in the Mid East it would have no more effect than blowing up Rome would have on Christianity. You can only defeat an idea with a better idea.
In other words, you don't think this is a political problem arising out of the fallout from World War 1? You don't think it has to do with the transition to capitalism, democracy, and the industrial revolution in the Middle East? You think it is some sort of social problem or "social disease" like the hippies of old? (Except the hippies were peaceful types with sit ins and nonviolent protests). Something internal to western societies though it was inspired by the Middle East? Something that calls for psychiatrists instead of soldiers?
I've always thought that the types who actually carry out the attacks are the victims of those in charge behind the scenes. In other words the men in charge of IS must be in the Middle East. They are recruiting people who have a screw loose world wide to carry out their attacks for political reasons of their own. For the victims who carry out the attacks it must be some sort of delusional psychosis. And the people on the internet from the Middle East who give the orders are like the voices in their own minds that they cannot resist. That's also why I have thought that in airports they ought to station psychiatric specialists who could spot these people just by the way they look and not by the silly tactics of TSA.
In spite of the attacks spurred by the Internet in the West, there still is a Middle Eastern nexus to all this. They still have taken territories in the Middle East. This could be fixed by an occupation. And if the weirdoes still want to go somewhere else, it would become easier and easier to catch the leaders all the time. As far as the teenage pranksters who want to use the internet to get their kicks, I don't think you could ever totally stop this in a western democracy. However the general level of violence keeps on declining. I saw another article about it the other day.
Of course what the Chinese would do would be to shut down the Internet to the common man. Only the elite members of the government and their cronies would be allowed to use a private Internet.
Linda wrote: "In other words, you don't think this is a political problem arising out of the fallout from World War 1? You don't think it has to do with the transition to capitalism, democracy, and the industria..."Well it can be traced back to WWI at one level. That settlement required strong autocratic dictatorship or monarchy to hold the borders across religious divides.Once the post 9/11 West decided to topple the dictators, they toppled the whole settlement; an issue which never crossed the Bush/Blair mind. Once Humpty Dumpty bust apart he could not be put back together again. Same here, so there will have to be a new settlement based on the ways things actually are.
IS is a local product of local circumstances but Jihadism and Muslim fundamentalism is world wide and in every country, although it is a tiny minority of Islam. Cyberspace allows continuous interaction of those extremists to operate loosely connected attacks. It is in cyberspace that you confront it. Over here we have arrested loads of young people planning attacks before they get dangerous.I think Britain has a lot of counter terrorist experience. Also our laws allow greater legal surveillance than the US.There is an anti-capitalist thread to it all but it is not the driver.
A couple years ago I tried a fictional blog where the characters write their thoughts. This attracted zero interest. I've written historical pieces. That of course doesn't attract interest on any scale. The only thing I seem to blog about that attracts any audience at all (other than Helga and Liverpool) are my travel reviews. They are related to Edward Ware Thrillers because I travel to get ideas. I then post pictures on my website of my travels. But I'm not a travel writer.
Incidentally do your blog posts help sell your nonfiction works or your novels or both?