New Book Announcement: THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT

I recently participated in science fiction literature conventions like the World Fantasy Convention in Los Angeles and the Philcon in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where I have been making an announcement at various panels, readings, and book-signing sessions (like the one above at in L.A.). So it’s about time I should let the world know here as well!

In 2020, my second novel, THE CEDAR VALLEY COVENANT, will be published by World Castle Publishing. If a combination of science fiction, horror, mystery, and action/adventure excite you – and how can they not? – then you’ll need to put this book on your reading list. Trust me!

Aliens on the radio!

I was interviewed by Lisa Valentine Clark on her podcast a few weeks ago and my segment can be heard right here. We were discussing all things extraterrestrial with an overview of some of the major topics in UFOlogy, spanning from ancient astronaut theories to abductions, Roswell, and the Men in Black. It's a topic I am endlessly fascinated by, both as a sociological phenomenon and in the big "what if" question. Some 7 to 10 percent of UFO sightings around the world are unexplained, so it's intriguing to ponder just what if the phenomenon really could be the manifestation of something extraterrestrial or interdimensional.

The Neo-Nazi core of the 9/11 "truther" movement

 

During the recent anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I spent a few days perusing the (all too many) 9/11 “truther” sites and their latest claims of conspiracies and coverups. Now I know what you’re thinking: what do 9/11 conspiracy theorists have to do with the truth. And you’re absolutely right. The inhabitants of the “alternate news” funny-farm have nothing to do with the truth. But just go with me. I did put the word truth in quotes to signify sarcasm.

But I digress from something serious. Perhaps the loudest and dumbest of the “truther”/”alternate news”/conspiracy-theory is no longer even attempting to hide the fact that at the core of this movement is a malignant culture of bigotry and anti-Semitism. So how did you guess that I am writing about the State of the Nation? Although originally the 9/11 conspiracy movement had its fair share of crackpots from the far left—the Bush and Chaney and Haliburton and the military/industrial-complex were behind it all crowd—they had eventually become outnumbered by the anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli far-right Neo-Nazi lunatics. These are the people who believe that the attacks were staged to start wars against Arab nations at the behest of Israel. This is the crowd that used to advance the thoroughly discredited, baseless assertion that Jewish employees of the World Trade towers were told to stay home from work on 9/11.

State of the Nation, of course, still advances this theory, along with every other theory about Jewish cabals, world-wide Zionist subversion, and so on and so on. In fact, if you visit this website, you’ll find a massive, putrid electronic garbage dump of alt-right talking points and links to various Holocaust denying Neo-Nazi sites.

For a closer look, scroll through the archives of SOTN on the right side of their page and look for the following links:

“The real 9/11 perps outed – yes, it’s all the usual suspects!”  Spoiler alert: the usual suspects the article talks about are Jews.

“Dr. John Dee: Occultist Behind the British Empire and Judaic New World Order”

“Here’s how the Israeli puppet masters coerce PM Netanyahu to steal Palestinian land in order to stay out of prison.”

“Was Bolton fired to make room for another rabid Neocon Zionist and confirmed Muslim hater?”

“Israel stages F35 Saudi attack after Putin’s smackdown of Netanyahu over Syria.”

“Conspiracy for total world domination exposed by religious proponents of scheme”

“The dancing Israelis and Mossad: How did they have foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks?”

“Why has this crazy tribe been kicked out of every country on Earth?”

Perhaps the most repugnant of these links is the last one above, the “crazy tribe” piece. It originates from a virulently anti-Semitic site full of more links to Holocaust-denying books and various sundry bits of fascist propaganda.

And do pay close attention of the content in the “crazy tribe” article. At first, of course, you will notice the grotesque caricature of a Jew. With the large, hooked nose, its sneer, it looks exactly like it could have been lifted from an anti-Semitic propaganda poster in Nazi Germany. But then you must understand the article’s content. It lists incidents throughout history where Jews had been oppressed and expelled from lands as a matter of official state policy. The title of the piece implies, of course, that the “crazy tribe” must somehow have deserved these pogroms. They must obviously be at fault if they had been oppressed so often.

So yes, the legacy of 9/11 must include a quest for the truth. The real truth is that a barbaric attack on the United States by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorists is being exploited by hate mongers and home-grown Nazis. Another enemy is attacking the U.S. now and they are called conspiracy theorists, “truthers,” and the purveyors of “alternative news.” These people need to be exposed, opposed, and, as the FBI correctly stated not too long ago, called the terrorists they are.

The most despicable conspiracy site, hands down.

As an observer of the modern conspiracy culture, I often find myself in the same situation as Robert L. Ripley did when he chronicled the world’s oddities. I spend a whole lot of time looking at the strange, the bizarre, and the unexpected. There are the theories about the Earth being flat, the back-engineered alien spacecraft fantasies from the not so distant fringes of UFOlogy, and the stale, shopworn JFK assassination theories. But then there are the conspiracists who are vile beyond any measure of human depravity.

For one, there are the anti-vaxxers who might as well be treated by the law as murderers. Their scientifically discredited nonsense is leading to a global wave of disease outbreaks and death. People like this are no better than someone who prods and cajoles a depressed, suicidal individual into taking their own lives. 

Then we have the 9/11 conspiracy crowd, a collection of blood-sucking vampires exploiting the deaths of over 3000 Americans in order to sell their self-published books, cheaply produced DVDs, and get hits on their social media platforms. 

Then there are the climate-change-deniers who still insist on claiming that global warming is some kind of a massive hoax perpetrated by a conspiracy of scientists. In the middle of this freakshow we have the State of the Nation website, which subscribes not merely to all of these theories—and pretty much every conspiracy theory under the sun—but has now taken to mocking children and calling them crisis actors. If you visit the SOTN site, you’ll find them not only joining the attacks on 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg, but upping the ante in personal attacks and ridicule. In fact, SOTN displays its unique ability in taking tastelessness, absolute sociopathic callousness to heretofore unseen levels. You will see SOTN offer a rebuttal to Thunberg’s activism by making fun of her appearance and mocking her with nicknames like Greta the Grinch. 

But then if any other boundaries of boundaries of decency might come up, SOTN, of course, finds it and immediately crosses it. SOTN then mocks Thunberg’s Asperger’s Syndrome and, naturally, claims that her condition is some kind of a willful creation by the “globalists” who had vaccinated her to turn her into their puppet on a quest for worldwide domination.

So State of the Nation likes to refer to the big, invisible bogeyman of the New World Order and the “globalists” as “sociopaths” and “psychopaths” a lot. They throw these phrases around constantly. But what they really should do is look those words up in a dictionary. Whoever the dregs of humanity are who run that site should find the experience akin to staring into a mirror.