Mark Biskeborn is a writer.
His most recent novel: Mojave Winds
To learn more: www.markbiskeborn.com
“Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” means a lot of things to a lot of people. Literally it means that the Al-Saud family owns the country and its residents are their vassals. The Royal Saud family rules “Saudi Arabia” mostly by force. Nevertheless its ministry of communications attempts to present the kingdom as a country of peace and harmony. If this were true, how could 15 of the 19 terrorists of the 9/11 attack come from the kingdom?
After World War I, at the Cairo Conference of 1921, the British rewarded Sherif Hussein, naming one of his sons, Faisal, king of Iraq, and another, Abdullah, ruler of modern-day Jordan both countries, like most in the Middle East, were imperial inventions whose borders were sketched in the sand. The winners of WWI carved up the Ottoman Empire into the modern Middle Eastern countries we know today and they assigned rulers who seemed cooperative.
The British also backed Ibn Saud and his Wahhabi followers because he seemed most capable to pacify rival tribes in the Arabian Peninsula, especially since he had already regained control of Riyadh after a final power struggle against Al Rashid in 1902. Thus the Saud family gained royal power to rule what became the Saudi Arabia we know today.
In 1945, US President Franklin Roosevelt met with Ibn Saud (featured above) to negotiate an important oil deal in which the US would back the Saud dynasty by providing military support in exchange for a reliable supply of crude. It seemed like a good deal at the time.
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Tags: News · World news
A man parks his car in the wrong spot, he pays a fine.
The Supreme Court appoints a privileged family’s son who manipulates an entire nation to wage a major war, and this in order to raise his failing first term ratings and to stay in office another term. Indulging his delusional, ideological ambitions, he causes disaster, the maiming and death of hundreds of thousands, and economic breakdown
He walks away without even a tap on the wrist, without the slightest judicial review?
Is this the American way? Is our justice system functional?
Why the absence of any impeachment proceedings against Cheney and G. W. Bush? Not enough proof of misleading the public? Not enough proof of treason at a national scale? So many books published by insiders of the Bush administration now line bookstore shelves. A library full of books now details the misconduct, the intentional lies, and devious, criminal acts. Ample eye-witness testimonies from prominent public officials fill the bookstores. I need not include the long list of names already so well known.
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Tags: Editorials · Local Politics
How often do you talk with a porn-star? Until we experience something first hand, we easily form preconceived ideas about it. Fantasy can jumble up reality.
What benefit do you provide society?
I show people how to enjoy their sexuality, Belladonna responded without pause. I’m an educator. I teach people how to loosen up and live a little, how to feel good about sex. That’s especially important for women. We’re often taught to hold back and suppress our pleasures. That’s not so healthy.
Before talking with Belladonna, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had many questions and maybe more prejudices. A prima donna? A wild, imbalanced, nutcase? An immoral degenerate?
We entered into a conversation that was supposed to last maybe 20 minutes. So engaging was our chat, we went on for over an hour. We covered many a philosophical and theological nuance and concluded by solving the world’s problems.
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Tags: Interviews · Visual Arts
Most publishing professionals consider Book Expo of America the industry’s compass in trends and innovative thinking. This weekend, the spirits of Magic Johnson, Ted Turner, Thomas Friedman, Michael Moore, and others drifted through the convention center’s halls, as the Zeitgeist of our times flashed glimpses of its elusive light.
Agents, writers, and editors roam through the aisles and rows of new books. As the publishing industry’s annual showcase, it’s one of the world’s largest flea-markets of books and thought trends. The event focuses on business to business relations, not intended for general public.
Coolest of all people I met at the event was by far James Rollins, my favorite writer buddy. He told me about how he wrote the novel entitled “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” based on the latest movie.
As a journalist I meandered around hoping to shake hands with the Zeitgeist, peer into its eyes, and listen as it whispered secrets to me. Things didn’t turn out quite like that though.
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Tags: Literature · Local LA · Reviews
When a soldier returns from war, normally he keeps his mouth shut. It’s one of those unwritten rules of the military, part of some arcane code of honor. But those rules only hold if you return to the States with hopes for “a normal life” with career opportunities. But now days, for many veterans, that’s not the case.
Joshua Key was a typical recruit. A good old boy with patriotic and conservative values, he comes from Guthrie, Oklahoma. Backed into a corner by economic necessity, he joins the Army only to face broken promises from recruiters that he would obtain training as a welder building bridges.
The way the military reeled in the other recruits and me many black and Latino, and all poor I now call the poverty draft.
Recruiters assure him of not being sent to Iraq because he is the father of three kids with one on the way. After years of moving around with wife Brandi, chasing low-income jobs, Key gives in to the bait ‘n switch methods of the U.S. Army, and with the help of a recruiter who coaches him to lie his way through an application (e.g. don’t mention the wife with the expectant baby), he enters the military.
They were smart men, those recruiters. They didn’t waste time at the doors of doctors and lawyers but came straight for me.
The Deserter’s Tale breaks into three parts: Key’s poverty leading to his decision to join the army, then his moral awakening in Iraq, and then the aftermath of his desertion. When he comes home on leave, he decides he can’t return to Iraq because of moral repulsion, not because of cowardice. By far the most gripping portion of the book recounts his gradual crisis of conscience as he reflects on his own behavior, the madness of tactics that the military applied in Iraq, and America’s crumbling moral standing in the world.
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Tags: Literature · Reviews
One thing you can count on, the department stores offer special sales. But if you’re going to visit the VA Hospital, leave your expectations in the car.
Los Angeles, CA– Smoke rises up in the neighborhood. Aromas of steaks on flaming gills perfume the air. The sounds of kids running around, laughing, playing, remind you of Memorial Day. Families get together. Guys drink beer and chat. Women talk about family and fashions. People go to the movies and talk about their goals. Memorial Day is all about these things.
Well, unless you’re remembering. And this might mean that you’ve resisted forgetting. A little something might chafe there, in the back of your mind. It’s so easy to forget. It’s healthy to avoid harmful, bad, ugly things.
What could be worse than war’s flesh ripping, bone smashing carnage?
This Memorial Day weekend I went to visit the wounded, the dying at the Veterans’ Hospital on Wilshire Boulevard. If you’re looking for it; it’s just where Wilshire passes under the 405, a huge complex of buildings, packed with broken, tired veterans from old wars like Korea or Vietnam and new ones, like Afghanistan and Iraq. Among the many large buildings, veterans from different wars are scattered and placed in wards depending on their wounds. Very few remain of World War II, and if you meet any of them, even fewer care to talk about it.
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Tags: Editorials · Local LA
When Nate, whose womanizing was legendary at Hollywood Station, shot her his Groucho leer, Ronnie said, ‘Forget it, Nate. Ask me for a date sometime when you’re a star and can introduce me to George Clooney.
“Hollywood Crow’s” hero, uniformed cop Nathan Weiss, works his beat and has more on his mind than routine police work. For one thing, his patrol buddies call him “Hollywood Nate” “because of his obsession, recently waning, to break into the movie business.” For another thing, “Nate had been pulled out of trouble, usually involving women, and spared from disciplinary action more than once by the supervisor.”
Hollywood Nate is a blue collar guy suffering the frustrations of the politics of his social class. “The Oracle the kind of cop Nate told everyone he had wanted to be when he grew up had been replaced by a politically correct, paper-shuffling little putz with dwarfish arms, no lips, and a shoe fetish.”
Nate does not seem to derive life-fulfilling gratification from his work. He looks around for other opportunities. When he notices a “Hills bunny,” he wonders if the beautiful woman “would ever need a cop, but after finally getting his SAG card, Hollywood Nate Weiss was starting to believe that maybe anything was possible.”
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Tags: Literature · Reviews
A legal drug in America can wake us up and cure our delusions.
Venice Beach, CA - This early in the morning only the seagulls keep me company. The air still holds sea mist. This coffee shop opens at daybreak. Though, nobody shows up until the seagulls have eaten up all the crumbs left on the street from the Saturday night pizza and beer parties.
Soon the regulars will arrive. The first of them is a lady who scoots around in a wheelchair, whispering and asking for spare change so she can buy a cup of Starbuck’s strategically revived Pike’s Peek brand. Past her prime, she seems to use the wheelchair to keep her increasing weight off her feet. What she may not realize, though, the more she uses her wheelchair, the heavier she’ll become and eventually bound to it, entrapped by her own convenience. [Read more →]
Tags: Editorials · LA Backdrop
The Bush Administration celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Israeli nation this week.
W visited the one or two places in the Middle East where the entire population would not massively attempt to undo him. Israelis are the only people to give W a standing ovation, moving our grossly failed president to tears. It’s the only country where he feels welcome.
In 1947, the United Nations approved the partition of the Mandate of Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Arab. The Arab League rejected the plan, but on May 14, 1948, the Jewish provisional government declared Israel’s independence. Israel thus became the first Jewish state in the world, now with a population of just under 8 million. It’s about the size of greater Los Angeles and 85% Jewish.
Since the UN recognized this new nation, especially after the 1948 Israeli-Arab War, Israelis have pushed their borders east into Muslim territories. Israeli expansion has inflamed decades long fighting between Jews and Muslims with no resolution in sight. Emphasis on the differences in their religions has continually ignited hate on both sides of the battles.
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Tags: News · World news
Institutionalized religion has almost always served as a political tool, but its jumbled dogmas befuddle our thinking. Democracy depends on rational thinking.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share the same God and many of the same prophets give or take a holy man or two. We have to admit the benefits of religions. They have contributed to building civilization throughout history, spreading some level of moral consciousness and culture.
So, what’s all the fuss? Why do these portals to eternal life cause so much mayhem and destruction in the world today?
They’ve certainly served political purposes, unifying people under a similar belief and custom. The mega-religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that surround us today, still benefit folks in some ways. They console and reassure us in times of trouble. Faced with confusing situations, we flock to religion for answers although usually simple and superficial, if not altogether illusionary.
Take the Lakewood Church in Huston, Texas, where Joel Osteen lifts people’s spirits by preaching a cheery version of the Bible, not an easy feat considering the Old Testament’s blood’n guts.
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Tags: Editorials · Local Politics · local news
Voters are concerned about the economy. Oh and the war in Iraq. Both are connected at the hip.
With G.W. Bush’s lisping and slurring, I imagine him sitting on his favorite barstool, nursing from a glass, and talking to the bartender how someday he’d outdo his father. John McCain sits next to him, toasting and soaking up all W’s wisdom. The bartender only half listens to W’s drivel while turning an ear to the football score on the TV.
With similar interest, many Americans listened to his final State of the Union speech.
To change his view on Iraq, W would have to acknowledge it as a mistake. An error like this has so far cost the US well over 4,000 soldiers W’s Admin counts war casualties by distorted criteria as well as several hundred thousand innocent civilian lives.
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Tags: Editorials · Local Politics · World news
In his new book, Jeremy Scahill traces the explosive growth of Blackwater, USA, a private and secretive mercenary company based in the backwaters of North Carolina. Scahill writes that “in less than a decade [Blackwater] has risen out of the swamp in North Carolina to become something of a Praetorian Guard for the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror.”By following the mercs’ (mercenaries) missions, Scahill takes us on a tour of some of the most outrageous policy blunders in the occupation of Iraq. Based on every aspect of this so-called Operation Iraqi Freedom, from policy, planning, strategy, and daily tactics, this has everything to do about colonization for economic gains, and very little about liberating the citizens.
In the Introduction, Scahill reminds us of President Eisenhower’s famous and prophetic farewell speech in 1961 about the perils of the American industrial-military complex:
“The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”
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Tags: Literature · Reviews · World news
