Dumbing down literature

"From Reader’s Digest to Cliff’s Notes to No Fear Shakespeare, simplified novels have infiltrated American society over generations. They seem innocent enough, flaunting an “easy to read” nature meant to appeal to those less versed in complex literature and language. However, while these watered down novels may be convenient for the busy, story-oriented adult reader, they are hardly appropriate for a class focused on critical reading. They’re a skewed kind of censorship that removes students from the benefits of difficult, close reading and dumbs down the English classroom.

Words are taken out that set the entire mood of the piece; phrases that define the moment and add depth to the author’s style are taken out. Removing these aspects eliminates the experience of analyzing the author’s intent and figuring out why that phrase or scene was deemed necessary."

From: http://tigernewspaper.com/wordpress/2013/03/14/the-dangers-of-watering-down-literature/



SpyWriter Jack King, the author of:
Agents of Change, WikiJustice, The Black Vault, and The Fifth Internationale.
A new Pope. A new Church. A new world:


www.SpyWriter.com

The Dirty "S" Word

The dirty S word is back, and gaining popularity. Young Americans (ages 18 -29) are growing disillusioned with the capitalist system post 2008 crash, and look more favorably upon... socialism. The ideas put forward by Karl Marx are back in mainstream. Listen to podcast: http://www.cbc.ca/thesundayedition/shows/2013/02/24/is-marxism-facing-a-rebirth/

The survey by Pew Research indicates shift in perception on social policies, despite decades long propaganda war of vilification:

"powerful and wealthy private interests and special interest groups have taken almost full control of most democracies, their money and influence increasingly dictating the political and social agendas for these nations, agendas beneficial to them alone.

All democratic governments to some extent, but again primarily the US, have essentially abandoned their responsibility as “managers” of their nations and societies, have lost the thread of “management for the people”, and instead have relegated their nations to a condition of “management for the benefit of private interests”. ...

The management of these nations for the benefit of special interest groups has become so embedded that 'socialism', which is nothing more than a concern for the overall welfare of the nation and its people, has become a dirty word.

As evidence, most Americans are energetically, and sometimes almost violently, opposed to socialism though few appear to have any understanding of the term's actual meaning.

Socialism – caring about the people of a nation and about their welfare, is equated in the American mind to a hateful dictatorship with no rights or freedoms – in fact, to the precise opposite of the term's real meaning. Such is the power of propaganda." From: http://www.spyghana.com/democracy-and-income-inequality-america-the-worlds-richest-banana-republic/

Tampering with Nature as weapon

"That iconic atomic bomb mushroom cloud image could have been a towering tsunami wave. According to archival military records uncovered by author and filmmaker Ray Waru, a 1944 top-secret operation, code-named Project Seal, planned to hijack nature's wrath by creating 33-foot tsunami waves capable of destroying coastal cities. How? Simply detonate 2 million tons of explosives as a series of 10 blasts about five miles from shore. "If the atomic bomb had not worked as well as it did, we might have been tsunami-ing people," says Waru. But while a tsunami bomb was deemed totally feasible after about 3,700 bombs were exploded off New Caledonia and near Auckland, plans for a pseudo-natural doomsday device were abandoned in 1945."

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/newzealand/9774217/Tsunami-bomb-tested-off-New-Zealand-coast.html

http://m.now.msn.com/tsunami-weapon-tests-carried-out-in-wwii



SpyWriter Jack King "A new King of thrillers on the horizon" www.SpyWriter.com

The subtle difference between a "spy" and an "intelligence agent"

Q: "What exactly were you doing in the U.S.? What is it called? Spying?"

A: "It’s the same thing the American special services are doing in Russia. The English word “spy” may refer to what the Russians call “spy” or “intelligence agent.” It depends on how you look at it. It’s no accident that, in the Soviet Union, the good guys were called “intelligence agents” and the enemies were called “spies.” ...

"intelligence does not work against specific people. It’s not permanent and assignments can change. As a secret agent, you work for the good of your country. Crimes may be committed against specific people, but intelligence is a patriotic business."

More: http://indrus.in/articles/2012/10/19/russian_spy_reveals_his_secrets_18485.html

Leftist beliefs cause cancer (with a little help from the CIA)

"The gun fired a frozen liquid poison-tipped dart, the width of a human
hair and a quarter of an inch long, that could penetrate clothing, was
almost undetectable and left no trace in a victim’s body."

"It was a case destined for the X-Files and conspiracy theorists alike, when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez speculated that the US might have developed a way to weaponise cancer, after several Latin American leaders were diagnosed with the disease. The list includes former Argentine president, Nestor Kirchner (colon cancer) Brazil’s president Dilma Rousseff (lymphoma cancer), her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (throat cancer), Chavez (undisclosed), former Cuban president Fidel Castro (stomach cancer) Bolivian president, Evo Morales (nasal cancer) and Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo (lymphoma cancer). What do they have in common besides cancer? All of them are left-wing leaders. Coincidence? In his December 28, 2011 end-of-year address to the Venezuelan military, Chavez hinted that the US might have found a way to give Latin American leaders cancer.
 
“Would it be so strange that they’ve invented the technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?” Chavez asked. “It is very hard to explain, even with the law of probabilities, what has been happening to some leaders in Latin America. It’s at the very least strange,” he said. Chavez said he received warning from Cuba’s former leader Fidel Castro, who has survived hundreds of unsuccessful assassination attempts. “Fidel always told me, ‘Chavez take care. These people have developed technology. You are very careless. Take care what you eat, what they give you to eat … a little needle and they inject you with I don’t know what’,” he said."

More: http://www.guardian.co.tt/lifestyle/2012-02-27/cancer-secret-weapon

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www.SPYWRITER.com

The absurd world of espionage

"From propaganda catapults to exploding seashells, why do "intelligence" services come up with so many bad, and often absurd, ideas?

Well, maybe they aren't coming up with all that many stupid ideas: maybe they come up with exactly as many stupid ideas as, say, the U.S. House of Representatives, but we pay more attention to the CIA's nonsense because we're more surprised by it. After all, these people, at least, are supposed to have some idea of what they're doing.

But reading through some of these stories, you start to wonder if there might be another explanation. The CIA's looniest notions, after all, bear remarkable resemblance to the loony ideas that seem to constantly pour out of totalitarian dictatorships, including current ones such as that of North Korea. Maybe it's the very fact of brainstorming behind closed doors -- six guys in a room trying to figure out a way to do whatever currently seems impossible -- that encourages it. Desperation plus not having anyone to laugh at you (whether because of secrecy or, in the case of North Korea, because you've got the entire country in a headlock) must be a pretty potent combination."

More: http://m.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/spy-agencies-have-had-some-very-dumb-ideas-new-documents-reveal/253238/



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www.SPYWRITER.com

Writers as political instruments

"In order to introduce our literature to the world, we should first set our ideology, since nothing can change world beliefs as literature does.

Unfortunately most writers do not take effort in studying our contemporary history... All superior novels of the world are ideology-oriented.

Revolutionary literature [is] the subgenre of political literature and ... in the west, the effect of fiction on political and intellectual movements is measured and we see that before American invasion to Iraq, a number of novels had been written on the possibility of the event. They actually train their political writers and put them through valid and even ultra-confidential information.

In order to create revolution literature, we should first train researching writers who probe into the historical ground, causes and effects of revolution."

http://www.ibna.ir/vdciv3az3t1aru2.ilct.html

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www.SPYWRITER.com

America reads

"Poverty in no way stops anyone from being literate. You can see that in the immigrants who work they way up the ladder by reading books. Remember that author Ray Bradbury was too poor to go to college. So he sat most of the day in the public library and read as many books as time permitted.

And other authors in the literary world did the same. It doesn't take a lot of money to create a world of literacy in your environment. Literacy is an enriching experience as far as life and experience because it opens doors and inspires imagination."

Here are some of the most/least literate cities in America:

"The nation's capital has scored top literacy honors for the second year in a row, ranking No. 1 as the "most literate" city in America. But when it comes to literacy, not many people in Congress read all those laws from first to last page, because many prefer action novels based on factual possibilities, it has been said.

New York city is not the most literate in spite of the publishing industry centered in NYC for decades. For example, if you want to meet writers and see ads for writers from agents and publishers, there are associations and societies in New York City with so many literary contacts regarding publishers, that New York has become a hub for publishers and writers to connect.

San Francisco has numerous book clubs made up of both authors and readers. And San Francisco is listed pretty high on the list of literacy as number 6, compared to Sacramento, a two-hour Amtrak train ride east, as Sacramento was listed low on the scale of literacy at 45. Who reads more Sacramentans or San Francisco residents? Observe the difference in numbers. Is it being near the ocean that helps people relax over books, newspapers, or magazines?"

More: http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/11385961-usa-cities-ranked-as-the-most-and-least-literate



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www.SPYWRITER.com

America, the House of Mirrors

"In this house of mirrors where endless war has made guilt and innocence or even facts irrelevant, the U.S. has left the realm of science and empiricism and entered a realm more mystical than real. It is a realm where ideology dictates plans and programs and not logic and empirical evidence.  It is a realm where ideology dictates who dies and who lives and is populated by men and women who can neither be understood nor reasoned with outside the confines of their own internal and hermetically sealed logic. 

From its inception during World War II, America’s military/intelligence apparatus has acted more as a subculture of America’s ruling elite than a bureaucracy dedicated to the nation’s security. It was said of America’s first spy agency the OSS that its initials stood for Oh-So-Social because of its abundant staffing with New York’s high society blue bloods. Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks even titled their 1974 book on their life in the CIA and Foreign Service as The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. 

But over the last forty years and especially since the events of 9/11, that “Cult,” and its sister organizations in the military/intelligence community have emerged from behind the curtain to become a ubiquitous and forbidding presence.

In effect, 1974’s American “Cult” of intelligence has grown to become in 2011 the dominant American “Cult-ure.” But what that culture really is and where it’s leading us remains a frightening proposition that each and every American needs to understand."

Continue: http://m.officialwire.com/main.php?action=posted_news&rid=306786

Thrillers, Suspense, Espionage, Conspiracy: SPYWRITER.com

The Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers

"Those who don't know the US system are shaken at what is going round the world. But there is a well laid background, reason and calculated goals to it.

The most crucial link of the US government and the rest of the world is its CIA, originally called the Strategic Services Unit (SSU) whose main objective of secret action aimed at understanding or subverting what goes on abroad on behalf of the US. President Harry Truman in his briefing notes in 1946 called it 'Cloak and Dagger Group of Snoopers.'

It started as a SSU until being renamed by the National Security Act on September, 18, 1947. During the cold war it engaged in murders of foreign leaders, staging coups, bribing political and business leaders. It was the CIA that bought off former fascists and war in Japan who were in jail after World War 2 and helped build the corrupt Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that ruled Japan for over five decades. In Italy, under the guise of fighting the communists, the CIA bought off the elections of 1948 with suitcases of cold cash in four stars hotels in Rome and the Vatican. The CIA's standard operating procedures in peace times have been exchanging information for money, wine and food at cocktails and dinners, paid foreign trips especially to their preferred countries."

More: http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/459/765749

The day Nixon wanted to blow up the world

"For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  [...] Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found. 

“There are two main after-the-fact explanations: first, that nuclear brinkmanship was designed to convince the Soviets that President Nixon was prepared to launch a nuclear attack against North Vietnam in order to convince Moscow to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate an end to the war in Southeast Asia” along the lines that previous historians have suggested.

The second proposed explanation is “that the President ordered the alert as a signal to deter a possible Soviet nuclear strike against China during the escalating Sino-Soviet border dispute.”  Consistent with the second interpretation, the FRUS volume provides new documentation of intelligence reports indicating that Soviet leaders were considering a preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear facilities.

Astonishingly, even the most senior U.S. military leaders were kept in the dark by the White House about the nature of the alert– before, during and after the event."

More: http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/10/1969_nuclear_alert.html

How to restore profits in America

Worried about the state of the economy? You're not the only one. Others worried before you, and they had a plan... Here's a piece that sends chills for its resemblance to current affairs:

"In 1934 a special Congressional committee was appointed to conduct an investigation of a possible planned coup intended to topple the administration of president Franklin D. Roosevelt and replace it with a government modelled on the policies of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

The Congressional committee had discovered that some of the foremost members of the economic elite, many of them household names at the time, had indeed hatched a meticulously detailed and massively funded plot to effect a fascist coup in America. The owners of Bird's Eye, Maxwell House and Heinz, among others, totaling about twenty four major businessmen and Wall Street financiers, planned to assemble a private army of half a million men, composed largely of unemployed veterans. These troops would both constitute the armed force behind the coup and defeat any resistance this in-house revolution might generate. The economic elite would provide the material resources required to sustain the new government.

The plotters hoped that widespread working-class discouragement at the stubborn persistence of the Great Depression would have sufficiently disenchanted the masses with FDR's policies to make the coup an easy ride. And they were appalled at Roosevelt's willingness after 1933 to initiate economic policies that economists and businessmen considered dangerously Leftist departures from economic orthodoxy. Only a fascist-style government, they thought, could enforce the kind of economic 'discipline' that would reverse the Great Depression and restore profits."

Source: CommonDreams, August 2, 2007

Stand by for Jack King's suspense novel that was inspired by the above events: www.spywriter.com

Why the Soviets Built the Berlin Wall

Here's a take on the reasons behind the erection of the Berlin Wall, a Cold War symbol:

"during the 1950s, American  cold warriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. [...]

The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions"...

Source and more: Consortiumnews.com, July 28, 2011

The great UFO conspiracy

"Just about everything that is popularly believed about UFOs has been exploited, shaped, and, at times, generated by people working for the U.S. Air Force and the intelligence community. The idea that UFOs crashed on U.S. soil, that the U.S. government was harboring and hiding UFO technology, that it was denying its citizens the right to know that aliens have come here and visited—all these things have been deliberately seeded into the culture."
SOURCE

Carrying Capacity of the USA

Carrying capacity (maximum sustainable population size) of the United States:

The estimate of maximum sustainable population size takes into account both the source and sink functions of Earth. At least two effects of pollution­greenhouse warming and the ozone hole are poorly understood. One can only estimate the extent of change to which present levels of pollutants commit us already, the lead time before effects become manifest, and the damage that is being done. Nevertheless, the shift away from a fossil-fuel based economy, adopted in order to minimize greenhouse gas emissions and/or as a market response to high prices, will be one of the severest constraints.

Others, more sanguine, peg the U.S. carrying capacity at a higher level. Economist Robert Costanza of the Marine Biological Institute (University of Maryland) and editor of Ecological Economics thinks the carrying capacity is closer to being 150 million persons (Carrying Capacity, 1991).

In the United States, humankind is already managing and using more than half of all the solar energy captured by photosynthesis. Yet even this is insufficient to our needs, and we are actually using nearly three times that much energy, or about 40% more energy than is captured by all plants in the United States [italics in the original]. This rate is made possible only because we are temporarily drawing upon stored fossil energy; the very use of these fossil fuels, plus erosion and other misuse of our natural resources, are reducing the carrying capacity of our ecosystem. SOURCE

USA the spitting image of communism

Not many people remember, or want to remember those days behind the Iron Curtain when lining up was a part of everyday routine. Everyday one lined up somewhere, elbowed, pushed and shoved, tramped over people to get inside a store, or an office, or a bus. In those days people lined up for the basic necessities that they could not find regularly, such as bread, meat, flour, toilet paper, or vodka, somehow finding out via the grape vine that this or that store in town will receive a limited supply sometimes next week.

Today we have the "black friday". People line up everywhere on this side of what once was the Iron Curtain. They line up all night for a chance to elbow, push, shove, sometimes even tramp someone to death, all in a rush to buy something.

The difference between line ups in communist countries vs America - over there people lined up for things they needed, here they do it for the sheer excitement, out of boredom, greed and consumerism, sometimes out of false sense of frugality: it's cheap, so I'll buy a truckload, never mind that I'll pay four times the value of this crap in credit card fees...

Communist Poland:

US of A:

JFK assassination, witnesses and odds of dying

In the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died - six by gunfire, three in motor accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut throat, one from a karate chop to the neck, three from heart attacks and two from natural causes.

An actuary, engaged by the "London Sunday Times," concluded that on November 22, 1963, the odds against these witnesses being dead by February 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one. The above comment on the deaths of assassination witnesses was published in a tabloid companion piece to the movie "Executive Action," released in 1973. By that time, part of the mythology of the Kennedy assassination included the mysterious deaths of people who were connected with it. By the mid-1960s, people in Dallas already were whispering about the number of persons who died under strange or questionable circumstances.

Well into the 1980s, witnesses and others were hesitant to come forward with information because of the stories of strange and sudden death which seemed visit anyone with information about the assassination. READ MORE

Are we going to find out what really happened to JFK?

Triumph of money over culture?

It is reported from the United States that the Americans have declared our patents void. That fits their mentality exactly. I have the impression anyway that the Americans participate in a European war every quarter century in order to be able to take for themselves as cheaply and easily as possible whatever cultural work has been done in Europe. The American continent is hardly in a position to bring forth anything of its own in the cultural realm. It is dependent upon imports from Europe, and as the Americans are so crazy about money they naturally like to take possession of the results of our creative and inventive labors as far as possible without paying for them.

Joseph Goebbels, Ph.D., in The Goebbels Diaries, April 23, 1942

Novel inspiration

This weekend marked the 18th anniversary of the event that inspired my latest novel: the assassination of the Jesuit scholars in El Salvador.

The murderers were graduates of the American School of Assassins at Fort Benning, and recipients of military aid aimed at terrorizing the civilian population.

Martyred Jesuits were the faculty of the Universidad Centroamericana in San Salvador. Their deaths brought to the world's attention the criminal activities of the US government: training of assassins and torturers that terrorize Latin America: from murdering, torturing, raping, and "disappearing" to staging coups - such as the overthrowing of Salvador Allende in Chile.

Lat weekend, over 11,000 protesters gathered outside of the Fort Benning were murderers are trained courtesy of US taxpayer. Among the protesters was Dennis Kucinich, Jesuits, students, families of the murdered and disappeared, and scores of people of conscience. Vigils in support of the protest were staged across America.

Jesuits murdered 18 years ago:

Fr Ignacio Ellacuría Beascoechea (1930-1989)

Fr Amando López Quintana (1936-1989)

Fr Joaquín López y López (1918-1989)

Fr Ignacio Martín Baró (1942-1989)

Fr Segundo Montes Mozo (1933-1989)

Fr Juan Ramón Moreno Pardo (1933-1989)

Who killed JFK

In today's Washington Post:

The "evidence used to rule out a second assassin is fundamentally flawed," concludes a new article in the Annals of Applied Statistics written by former FBI lab metallurgist William A. Tobin and Texas A&M University researchers Cliff Spiegelman and William D. James.

You know the day is coming when the file on JFK assassination is supposed to be open?

You know what's in it?

I quote what I've been told by an old-timer from the spy world, an intel officer from the WWII and beyond:

"You know what they will find when they open the file on JFK? Nothing. There will be nothing in it."

Remember this.