The Paris Vendetta - Book Review

The Paris Vendetta
by Steve Berry
Random House 2009

This is a long post and includes politics.

The main story is how Napoelon Bonaparte discovered a secret and then hid it where noone could find it. Also during WW2, how the nazi's found a treasure and hid that as well.



Lord Graham Ashby (a British millionaire) has spent years chasing clues and finally finds the Nazi treasure in Corsica. He is also investigating another treasure rumoured to be one that Napoleon found in Egypt.

But Ashby is not above killing anyone who gets in his way. Two years previously he had ordered a man to be killed and the man was killed in Mexico city along with several other innocent people. One of those innocents was a young man from the Danish embassy named Cai Thorvaldsen. His father is Henrik Thorvaldsen, a Danish millionaire and Cotton Malone's friend.

Henrik has grieved his son and then spent 2 years looking for the man who ordered the killings. He is bound and determined to kill Ashby with his own hands.

It turns out that Ashby is in dire straits, almost bankrupt and desperate to find a large cache of treasure to pay his debts. One of the things he has done is to be invited to join the Paris Club - which is a small group of millionaires - who want to increase their wealth without having to pay any taxes. Finding this treasure that Napoleon is rumoured to have found is one means of achieving their goal.

Henrik Thorvaldsen infiltrates the Paris Club by telling the leader (Eliza LaRocque) that Ashby is a security risk. Thorvaldsen indicates that Ashby is desperate for money and is not being discreet about how he gets it. Henrik has also asked Cotton to help find and apprehend Ashby.

This adventure follows the movements and adventures of Ashby, Thorvaldsen, Malone, and Eliza Larocque as they attempt to find this treasure in their bid to either start or prevent WW3 from breaking out.

The main message behind this story is how the entire world is presently controlled by the rich (called neocons) and how the majority of taxpayers (the rank and file) are nothing but slaves to the rich.

Don't beleive me?

Read this and confirm that it has not already happened.

It was long ago realised, even by ancient monarchs, that their subjects would not tolerate in peace that which they would willingly accept in war. This concept is particularly true today, in modern democracies.

Napoleon realized that war is good for society. Like nothing else, it mobilized his best thinkers to think better. He discovered that scientists were more creative when a threat was real. Manufacturing became moer innovative and productive, the people more obedient. He discovered that the citizenry, if threatened, would allow just about any violation from government, so long as they were protected. People will only tolerate so much.

There is death,destruction, devastation, waste, but war has always existed. War works. Mans greatest technological achievements have come as a result of war. Look at the second world war. We learned to split the atom and fly in space, not to mention countless advances in electronics, science, medicine, engineering.

The idea would be to create an alternative enemy. A threat, either real or perceived, against which society rallies to defend itself. Mass destruction by nuclear weapons for example. That was what the cold war was all about. Neither side ever did much to the other, but both sides spent billions and billions in preparation. Government flourished during the cold war. The american federal system expanded to unprecedented levels. Western civilization escalated to new heights from 1950 to 1990. Man made it to the Moon thanks to the cold war.

Again look at America. In the 1950s it allowed the trampling of its First Amendment when the threat of encroaching communism was thought real. Free speech became unimportant when compared with the imagined danger of the soviet union. Even more recently, after the attacks of September 11th (2001), laws were passed that, at any other time Americans would have found repulsive. The patriot act suppressed liberties and invaded privacies on an unprecedented level. Surveillance laws curbed civil liberties and restricted established freedoms. Identification laws came into being that, previously americans had found repugnant. But the people allowed these violations so that they would be safe - or at least perceive themselves to be safe.

A credible external threat equals expanded political and economic power - as long as the threat remains credible.

Any threat would have to be containable. To scare the people into obeying - and then extract profit from their fear. Thankfully in todays world, a credible enemy already exists and has already galvanized public sentiment.

Terrorism.

Still don't beleive me?

How about this.

Back in the year 1947, the House Select Committee began an investigation into the Motion Picture Industry. Ostensibly the goal was to ferret out communists working in the film industry. But in actuality the US Government was concerned that Hollywood was no longer as blindly supportive of government policy as it had been only a few years earlier at the height of WW2. In particular, J. Edgar Hoover had long held the opinion that the entertainment industry should be the propaganda arm for the government in peace time as well as war.

However, as WW2 had ended, the defense establishment had lobbied for the creation of a "Cold" war against the Soviet Union, a war not actually to be fought, but constantly to be prepared for at huge cost to the taxpayers. This cost was the visible manifestation of the "Military Industrial Complex" President Eisenhower referred to in his farewell address, and many in Hollywood openly wondered just why so much more money had to be thrown into the war machine during a time of peace, and more to the point, just why we were supposed to be so afraid of the communists.

[...]

Of course, what was really involved was money. War is good for business. Business had been great during WW2 and the newly created "Cold War" was just a way to keep business good. The Military Industrial Complex NEEDED Hollywood to demonize the Soviets. Otherwise, too many people were going to ask why we were being told to be so afraid of them, and few in the government had a really convincing answer for that question. So, in order to perpetuate the Cold War, those in Hollywood who might sympathize with the designated villains had to be removed; their ruined lives a small price to pay for unending access to the taxpayers' wallets.

But that was then and this is now.

Once again vast sums of money are being spent on a war, this time a hot one and getting hotter. Once again parties with a vested interest are out to smear and destroy anyone who dares ask if the wars are worth the sacrifice of our young people (not to mention the money), indeed if there really is any point at all to the wars aside from justifying the flow of money to defense contractors.

But the Soviet Union has gone out of business. The word "communist" doesn't carry the same psychological impact it used to, so the war hawk smear squad has come up with a new one, "Anti-Semite." Like "Communist", "Anti-Semite" is used to ruin the lives of people who have not actually done anything wrong other than to challenge the war profiteers. It is a new word for an old trick, and I am amazed that they are still playing the same old game, but I guess the FBI can always find some dumb-assed idiot to fall for it and do their dirty work of wrecking a career for them.

Of course, it really isn't that new a word. Oddly enough, Charles Lindbergh the famous aviator commented in a speech in Des Moines in 1941...

Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried anti-war articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly anti-war. Many others dared no longer speak.

Today we are seeing once again the heavy hand of the war profiteers trying to reshape the film industry into a tool to propagandize the public into a high war-fever such that they will gladly trade their own blood for gold to line the pockets of the defense establishment. And those individuals who have the courage to speak out are attacked, and once again they are smeared to silence them. In the 1940s it was "Communist", today it is "Anti-Semite", but aside from the particular label used, the methods, goals, and morality are little changed from the days of Joseph McCarthy.

If there is a difference today it is that the American people are better educated. No longer dependent on the state schools, or controlled media, the public understands the tactics used to silence those who speak out. As a result, those who speak out are more and more not only accorded the sympathetic ear that their message deserves, but the effects of the smearing are far less ruinous than in times past.

Thus, when we see people like Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, Sean Penn, and Marion Cotillard speak out and survive, it sends a message that it is now permissible to speak out. This is not to say that there are not risks. Rosie O'Donnell lost her spot on "The View", but the majority of Americans understand exactly why, and understand that Rosie sacrificed a great deal trying to get the truth out. Rosie is and will be remembered as a hero for truth long after her co-hosts on "The View" are properly forgotten.

In contrast, of course, we look back at those who aided the "Commie" witch-hunts of the 1940s with deserved contempt. No doubt many aided Hoover purely to rid themselves of competition, and then tried to lull themselves to sleep with the idea that in some way they had actually done something good for the nation by wrecking their neighbors' careers. I have no doubt strong liquor played a role in this grossest of self-deception. But if the informants and smear artists of the 1940s are remembered in a poor light, that should serve as a reminder to the informants and smear artists of today. It does not matter what you do with the rest of your life, aiding the new version of McCarthyism is how history will remember you. While people like Charlie Sheen, Willie Nelson, Sean Penn, and Marion Cotillard (and to step out of entertainment, former President Jimmy Carter) will be remembered and honored for their courage, history will lump the smear artists together with Stalin's "Useful idiots", little more than no-talent opportunists for whom ratting out someone was the fastest path to advancement.

They say that history repeats itself, and indeed that is the major thing wrong with history. We are seeing history repeat itself again. We have been down this path before, in the 1940s. Whether the word is "Communist" or "Anti-Semite", Hollywood is making the same mistake all over again. And Hollywood will have to live with that image in the coming decades.

McCarthyism is back

Fake Terror - the Road to War and Dictatorship

The Charlemagne Pursuit - Book Review

The Charlemagne Pursuit
By Steve Berry
Ballentine Books 2008
Steve Berry Website

Sometime in the last 20 years, with all the reading I do, I came across the Piri Reis map. This is an enigmatic map dating from 1513 CE and showing coastlines that do not currently exist. BUT those coastlines do exist....under several miles of ice....in the Antarctica.


This has led to speculation that a superior race of people who knew about maths and cartography, once existed on this planet, thousands of years ago. But if that is so, then what happened to them?

In The Charlemagne Pursuit, Cotton Malone is on the quest to find out what happend to his father. Forrest Malone was a US navy captain running submarines. He supposedly died in the North Atlantic when Cotton was 10 years old. Now some new information has arisen that says that the submarine did not go down in the North Atlantic but in the South Atlantic instead. The very far south.

The information also says that the submarine was on a secret mission and that all the crew signed an agreement that if the sub went missing, the navy would NOT go loooking for them in any SAR attempt. WHO in their right mind, would sign such an agreement?

One of the other men aboard this submarine was a German, Dieter Oberhauser who had some proof that there was an ancient civilisation on what is is now the Antarctic continent. This civilisation were wiped out when the magnetic poles reversed which caused many floods and upheavals. The planet of Earth moved to a new angle and the continent that we call Antarctica became frozen. It had previously been located in the temperate zone.

This ancient civilisation left behind a manuscript. Called heavenly writing. People from this ancient civilisation were supposedly helping the humans to become educated and more enlightened (and therefore less war like) as recent as 1100 years ago.

Charlemagne was an enlightened ruler for his era. He gathered many scholars at his castle in Aachen, Germany and tried to teach the people. He did not go to war unles it was absolutely necessary. His biographer Einhard write a biography of Charlemagne staying that the holy ones helped Charlemagne to be more enlightened.

Einhard also hid a book of what he called "heavenly writings" and this book would lead the way to the home of the holy ones. Cotton meets up with Dieter Oberhauser's daughters and together they are pushed into finding the "dictionary" for the heavenly writings - the translations.

Thus Cotton and the sisters follow the trail to the Antarctica and there they find the home of the ancient ones as well as the bodies of their respective fathers.

The book of heavenly writings is from the Voynich manuscript - a book that has been determined to be a medieval "hoax" now. It is now in a rare books library at Yale University. The experts call it a "hoax" only because noone has been able to translate it.

This book actually reminds me of Decipher - another novel I briefly mentioned but never got around to reviewing.

DECIPHER also had mysterious writing that was traced back to the Antarctica and the home of an ancient race of people. We call this civilisation Atlantis. The book also posited a reason for their decline and disappearance.

This was another excellent book from Steve Berry. Now I have read them all - until the next book comes out later this year.

The Venetian Betrayal - Book Review

The Venetian Betrayal
By Steve Berry
Random House 2007
Website

Up until 10 minutes ago before writing this post. I thought I had read every single Steve Berry book. BUT I have just discovered another new book - The Charlemagne Pursuit - which I now have to track down and read. I LOVE reading Steve Berry thrillers. They always include a major historial character or location.

The last book I read was the Alexandria Link in which Cotton Malone discovers the Alexandria library which has been missing since the 5th century CE. I read and reviewed The Alexandria Link last year.

Now I have read this book called The Venetian Betrayal. This novel is about Alexander the Great. Another one of my favourite characters in History - precisely because so little is known about him. Not to mention that he created the biggest empire on Earth.

In this novel, Cotton Malone is back in Copenhagen selling books. He has rebuilt his book store, destroyed in the previous adventure (blown up with a missile).

The book opens with Malone regaining conciousness in a building that is obviously on fire. His skin and clothes smell of sulphuer and lighter fluid as do the walls and floor of the building.

When Malone tries to leave the building, he finds the main door is locked. Luckily his friend and colleague Cassiopea Vitt shows up and helps him to escape just before the building explodes. Noether of them see the two men further down the street watching the building as it burns.

What were you doing in there? I told you to meet me there tomorrow morning. Vitt tells Malone.
But it would have burned down by then. Malone replies.
Precisely says Vitt. Which is what I needed you to see.

It turns out that the building was a museum, that Malone's boss had recently purchased purely because it had ONE valuable item. An elephant medallion said to have been made by Alexander the Great. There are only 8 such medallions known to exist and someone is systematically stealing them all.

Malone and Vitt begin the search for whomever is stealing these medallions. The search leads them to the Central Asian Federation. A new federation made up of the 5 former Central Asian republics (of the Soviet Union) and now working together as one large federation. The Supreme Minister is a women named Irina Zovastina.

Irina is fascinated by the ancient Greek culture and literature. She is also fascinated by Alexander the Great. She has learnt of a special draught that Alexander took to stay healthy. Except that there was no draught available when he died. The doctor had run out and the new batch had not yet arrived. Which is why Alexander died.

Ely Lund (a friend of Cassiopeia's) had discovered an ancient Byzantine manuscript with a palimpset on it. A palimpsest is where the original writing on a manuscript ot scraped off and new writing is written over the old. The most famous palimpsest known to man is the Archimedes palimpsest. For purposes of this story, Ely had discovered a palimpsest written by a young man in Alexanders army. He gave details of the draught that kept Alexander healthy, and he also wrote riddles and clues on how to find this draught. Ely had been abducted by Irina Zovastina and was forced to find the draught by any means possible.

Then there was the mystery of what happened to Alexanders body. Most of us know the story. How Alexander wanted to be buried in Macedonia, but because he did not have an heir, he was said to have told his generals that the "strongest" one of them was to be his heir.

In the end the generals broke the empire up between them. As one general was taking Alexanders body back to Macedonia, the caravan was attacked and the body removed to Alexandria in Egypt by another general - Ptolemy - who later became the pharoah of Egypt.

St Mark's body was mummified in the first century CE (Common Era) in Alexandria where he died. In the 4th century CE Alexander's body disappeared from Alexandria. shortly after St Marks body reappeared in Venice. The rumour was that St Mark's body in Venice was really that of Alexander the Great. So The Supreme Minister Irina goes to Venice to see for herself.

As the search continues, Vitt and Malone meet up with Ely and eventually they find the source of the draught. They also discover its amazing healing properties. It is later discovered that this new bacteria actually cures all illnesses including one of the modern worlds most devasting pathogens.

You will have to read the book to find out which disease it is. And to find out just where Alexander's body is really buried. As I said earlier, I love Alexander the Great. So this was a very interesting book for me to read.