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Friday, November 14, 2014

Terrorist attack in Ottawa failed with cool Canadians

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As a Canadian, the attack on our capital city on October 22, 2014 (the day before my 70th birthday) forced me to rethink my opinion about my country's role in response to ISIS threats. Having thought of war as an ungodly and primitive response to a distant situation, a response which tore apart the minds and bodies of millions of young men and women, and left them -- if alive -- broken for the rest of their lives in defense of a tenuous peace, I confess that my beautiful flawed fascinating polite socially aware and self effacing Canada would not exist were it not for young men like my father who went to war, fought, and won.

The radicalized young man who killed a soldier and wounded another in a parking lot in Quebec on October 9, 2014 and the terrorist attack on Ottawa only two weeks later stunned Canadians, but did not succeed in bringing us to our knees in fear. Our media is not fear-mongering in response and we are not afraid. As our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, declared "Canada will never be intimidated."

Canadian airstrikes on ISIS in Iraq continue -- perhaps they precipitated the attacks, but we will not bow to threats.

In Canada, it's not illegal to have dangerous opinions or beliefs until they are acted on, so the RCMP were hampered in their attempts to help the first young man, though they were aware of his radical beliefs. His family and imam and other members of his community were consulted and their good faith utilized, but Michael Zihaf-Bibeau appears to have been a mentally unstable person whose attack on the two soldiers was unrelated to the Parliament Hill shootings. In focus, however, of the world situation today and the ever-increasing media coverage of ISIS and other terrorist threats, Canadians are divided whether these attacks were a reaction by radicalized individuals to the world situation in the Middle East and beyond.


This brings about an "us and them" mentality which could be equally dangerous in this country.

Moderate Islamists live as peaceful citizens and don't support their radical brothers and sisters. The danger here is that Canada will become a country of fear and hatred toward the unknown, toward Muslims, toward those who would speak reason and not brand an entire group of millions of peoples who have a history of thousands of years of civilization.

Remember that the USA supported Osama Bin Laden initially, when he drove the Russians out of Afghanistan, and the USA also supported Saddam Hussein in the early years. Former enemies such as Germany and Japan and Italy are now our friends and allies.

Times change. People change. Nations change. Each nation calls upon their God to help them in their holy wars.

My father, who fought in five campaigns in five different countries in WWII, and emerged forever damaged after the war, often told his children, "I refuse to let them make me live in fear."

Go to our soldiers, not the leaders, for the truth.



http://www.amazon.com/Short-Circuit-Other-Geek-Stories-ebook/dp/B00MHE1880/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1407912631&sr=1-1&keywords=kenna+mckinnon 


Terrorist attack in Ottawa failed with cool Canadians brought to you by:




Short Circuit and Other Geek Stories is a fascinating tribute in memorial to Kenna's son Steve Wild, 1968-2012, who loved "hard" science fiction, robots, and high technology. Authored by Kenna McKinnon, with topics ranging from music of the spheres to death, this book contains short stories written for all ages to enjoy.

Available on Amazon.com here! Buy it for your Kindle with one click! All Kenna's proceeds go toward the Edmonton Humane Society.





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Friday, November 7, 2014

The author who outsold Old Man and the Sea

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From Imajin Books - best selling author Jesse Giles Christiansen






PROLOGUE

JAKE RAYNER is the only one, other than Samantha Bryant, who had the vision.
He’ll never forget the first time it happened. He was out for a walk in the woods by himself, a practice highly discouraged by the Overseers.
He was always surprised at how little everyone questioned the rules of the Overseers. Many of them seemed so ridiculous. Then again, they owed everything to them. There would have been no life here at all, if not for them.
That afternoon the hazy air was happy and it seemed to seep into everything. Jake was reckless to allow it to seep into him. His feet, his legs, his fingers, even his thoughts, were reckless.
I know they’re going to find me. I just know it. Then they’re going to hook me up to the Recalibration Machine again.
But that day he didn’t care about a single thing. He was mad with life. Life was mad in his veins. Life was livid in his veins. 
Everything spoke to him. The birds’ songs were like shrilly operas stuck in fortissimo. The creek sneaking along by his side crackled and popped the way a long-asleep radio wakes up hungry and eager to play. The wind in the pines moaned softly like a lonely lover. 
Then it happened.
He felt dizzy at first, his head so light he thought it might float away. Something surged inside him that could have been swallowed lightning, rising, writhing, and climbing up to his head.
The memory came.
Memories were demons; they were even more forbidden than being all alone; they were not allowed to even start. When they went in for their weekly screening, any evidence of memories prior to the Anti-Emotion Movement was immediately erased. It was for their own good. Really. They had to believe in the Overseers. They gave them everything, and asked for so little in return. The Overseers picked them up after the Great Fog.
He just stood there and could not stop the memory. Oh, it was so warm. That swallowed lightning curled up, balled up in his head and took to nuclear fusion, forming a miniature sun to melt all the work of the entire Overseers’ brilliant technology.
But what an afternoon it was.
The first flash was of shiny boxes wrapped in fancy bows under a tree that someone had stuck in a living room. What a bizarre image. Why would someone put a perfectly good tree in a living room? Perfect madness. Perfect madness, indeed. And the poor, poor tree.
The tree was wrapped with winking lights, and as he stood there, letting this memory take root, he could see the pines around him dressed the same. They were beautiful, and he overflowed with the urge to take all the pines in the forest, shrink them down, and put them into everyone’s homes.
Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.
He heard footsteps, and the beautiful, horrible, absurd memory vanished. The memory vanished like the scent of a woman riding with you on a train—a woman you know you will never see again.
He waited for the Goth Town Police to arrest him. And he cherished those seconds as the taste of a curious and wild memory remained for a few seconds on his lips. Those few seconds were more blissful than the rambunctious air that crept all through the forest that afternoon and shot rays of perilous hope into everything. In those few seconds, he tried to chase the echo that was home to that taste. That scent of a woman on a train. He tried to return to it with the desperation of a legless man waking from a Boston Marathon dream.
But at least the taste was there when they handcuffed him.
At least the flicker.
A gray haunt … at least … 

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Biography



Jesse Giles Christiansen is an American author who writes compelling literary fiction that weaves the real with the surreal. He attended Florida State University where he received his B.A. in English literature. He is the author of Pelican Bay, an Amazon #1 list bestseller, outselling Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway. He'll be releasing what is expected to be one of the most unique Christmas stories in years, Goth Town, on November 6th, 2014. One of Christiansen's literary goals is to write at least fifty novels, and he always reminds himself of something that Ray Bradbury once said: "You fail only if you stop writing."

You can also visit this author at www.jessegileschristiansen.com.
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