A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Hi there, Constant Reader. It’s 11:03 a.m. EST on a cool Saturday morning in Miami. The current temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit under cloudy skies. With an east-northeasterly wind blowing at 15 mph (gusts of up to 21 mph) and humidity levels at 51%, the feels-like temperature is 76 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s not too chilly here, but not warm enough to turn on the air conditioner. I have been reading a lot over the past few days. Partly because I have been a voracious reader since I was a child, partly because I am a book reviewer for Examiner, but mostly because I need to read a lot in order to be a good writer. Right now my main focus is non-fiction, with an emphasis on U.S. military and political history. I’m also half-heartedly reading some fiction, especially Stephen King’s 11/22/63 and his epic Dark Tower series. I used to post my “current reading lists” at the now-defunct Bubblews and the soon-to-be defunct Persona Paper every so often, especially in “blog doldrums...

When Libyan rebels ousted the late Muammar Khaddafy's dictatorial regime in the late fall of 2011, their difficult task was made easier by the international community's timely declaration of a "No Fly Zone" enforced not only by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) but also by various members of the Arab League. Carried out by military aircraft from France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Canada, Qatar, Denmark, United Arab Emirates, Sweden, and Norway, Operation Freedom Falcon and several supporting naval missions helped keep Khaddafy's forces from achieving air supremacy, prevented massive civilian losses from loyalist air strikes on rebel-held cities and degraded the regime's capacity to carry out successful ground counteroffensives against the Free Libyan forces. Back in 2011, the anti-Khaddafy coalition could count on the West, particularly the United States and her allies, to provide military assistance that would assist...

(C) 1992 Simon & Schuster The trouble with history, particularly modern history, is that events can be interpreted and presented in different ways. Consider, for instance, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Some books, such as Jim Bishop's The Day Kennedy Was Shot and Gerald Posner's Case Closed , point the finger at Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone gunman. Others, such as David Lifton's Best Evidence , claim there was a vast conspiracy to shoot Kennedy in Dallas, Texas and to cover this violent coup d'etat up so Lyndon Johnson could be President and escalate the Vietnam War. I don't believe the conspiracy theorists and they'll never get a dime from me, but nevertheless there are plenty of people who do believe Lifton and his other "there was a second gunman in the grassy knoll" compadres. By taking a fact here, adding a supposition there, and by presenting information selectively to make it fit an author's particular ...

As the White House, the Pentagon and the various intelligence-gathering agencies of the United States focus their attention on such threats as Al Qaeda and other Islamic jihadist groups, the rise of China as an emerging Asian superpower, the growing instability in the Middle East as a result of last year’s Arab Spring popular revolts and Russia’s apparent turn toward autocratic rule by Vladimir Putin, it is important to remain vigilant to national security threats from within the Western Hemisphere. Even as President Barack Obama’s national security team seeks to reduce the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan after more than a decade of fighting the extremist Islamic group known as the Taliban – a struggle complicated by Pakistan’s less-than-enthusiastic attitudes toward U.S. objectives in the region – and American defense budgets undergo cutbacks, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other left-leaning Latin American leaders are forging alliances with Iran and other anti-American...