Blogging from A To Z April Challenge - Letter P

Only two more days left in the third week of the Blogging from A to Z April Challenge. I spared you the linky list this week considering the somber feelings in my home state on Monday after the Boston Marathon bombings. The third victim has been identified and officials continue their investigation into locating those responsible for this heinous attack.

Last night, hockey returned to Boston as the Bruins hosted the Buffalo Sabres. The night started out with a moving tribute shown on the big screen, followed by the singing of our National Anthem by all those in attendance. You can watch it in the video below. I watched it last night on TV and I still can't get through it without crying.



At the end of the game, the teams met at center ice and saluted the fans by raising their sticks together.

It seems fitting to discuss another attack on our soil that caught us off guard. On December 7, 1941, Japanese plans attacked Pearl Harbor at 7:55 AM. Another wave hit an hour later. Most of the American planes on Oahu were wrecked. Eight battleships, three cruisers, and three destroyers were put out of action, and the battleships Oklahoma and Arizona were destroyed. We lost 2,323 U.S. servicemen.

A day that President Roosevelt called a "date which will live in infamy," signaled the entry of the United States into World War II. Men signed up to serve this country in droves. I knew two of those men later in life. Uncle Phil told me how he and his brothers rushed to sign up. His older brother, Stanley, was interrogated as a spy during the war. Seems when he signed up, the recruiting officer misspelled his last name, substituting an "i" for an "a". When Stanley was cleared, he legally changed his name to the incorrect spelling.

The emotions have run raw this week as Americans come to terms with the hatred of our way of life. But we, like those in Boston, remain strong. Whether it be at Pearl Harbor, or in New York City, or in Boston, we remain strong. We will not allow terrorists to take that from us. God bless the U.S.A.!

72 Virgins by Avi Perry

72 Virgins is a novel about Jihad terrorism and the security agencies’ struggle to thwart its stratagem and trounce the perpetrators. Abu Musa is an Islamic Terrorist with an agenda, a ticking bomb inside the US. Arik Golan is an Israeli who tries to bring him down and pull the plug on his terror organization. Stanley Cramer is an FBI agent on a hunting mission, seeking to place both Abu Musa and Arik within his crosshair. The FBI, the Israeli Mossad, the US-based Iranian clandestine terror network, and the Islamic Jihad fraternity are engaged in a timeless conflict, playing out to a crescendo that comes to a head before the dramatic conclusion.

The story offers an ample dose of realism, a cast of intense characters who engage in love, lust, and violence. It portrays the Jihad culture with its rationale and the volcano that breeds an irrational obsession with death. Moreover, it builds on the Jihadists’ motivation for targeting so many innocents and exploiting the victims’ massacre as a stepping-stone to their dream of eternal paradise next to Allah’s throne.

The real question is not whether Jihad terrorists’ plots will ever cease to emerge – there is no chance of that. The question the book seeks to answer is—will the next one be stopped before it’s too late?

72 Virgins is built on life experiences that combine technology know-how, familiarity with spy craft and human intelligence (HUMINT), understanding of Middle Eastern cultures and history, a great sense of humor, and a talent for writing—all breathe authenticity into the setting.

Although 72 Virgins is a suspense-thriller, focusing on a countdown to a terror attack on US soil, it is, nevertheless, highly instructive. The story and its associated subplots are fiction, but the setting is real, the places where conspiracy is instigated are fictional, even though they’re based on genuine events; the characters are deep and distinctive, while at the same time, they embody their unmistakable cultural heritage. Ronald L. Donaghe, winner of the 2008 Jim Duggins out-standing Mid-Career Novelist Award., characterized it best—”Perry was able to combine reality with fiction in a way that has made the book—one to remember. Perry’s style and approach, makes for a great, entertaining read, in addition to being suspenseful and intriguing, from start to finish”.


Avi Perry grew up in Israel. As a teenager and throughout his college years, he was a professional musician. He financed his student life with numerous gigs, playing with his Israeli band, writing songs, playing the various keyboard instruments, and enjoying listening to his performances on the Israeli radio (there was no MTV in late 60s Israel). He still plays and writes music, but as a hobby (at home), rather than as a line of work. During the Six-Day-War in 1967, he served in the Israeli military, in the field intelligence unit, and gained valuable and relevant experience in covert communications technology and a variety of spy craft and methods.

He has spent the past four decades in the US, first as a Ph.D. student, then as a professor at Northwestern University, a Bell Laboratories – distinguished staff member, and finally as Vice President at NMS Communications. He signed for early retirement in 2004 with the intention of writing a technical book. The title Fundamentals of Voice Quality Engineering was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007 and became very popular. Readers praised the book for its thoroughness and for my refreshing, unique and entertaining writing style, atypical among technical writers. Throughout Avi’s tenure at NMS, he wrote many short (humor-packed, peppered with company culture) satires, technical reports, white papers (published on company website), press releases, and more.

One may find more information on his websites (www.aviperry.org and www.aviperry.com).

Avi’s latest book 72 Virgins is built on life experiences that combine technology know-how, familiarity with spy craft and human intelligence (HUMINT), understanding of Middle Eastern cultures and history, a great sense of humor, and a talent for writing—all breathe authenticity into the setting.

To see where Avi stops next on his virtual book tour, please visit http://virtualbooktours.wordpress.com/.

Jamie Glazov and United in Hate

United in Hate crystallizes the danger that a Barack Obama administration, if tilted too far left, presents to American security and global freedom.

As history shows, leftist beliefs have spawned mass carnage and misery. Put into practice, they have caused the deaths of millions. Until now, it has been extremely difficult for rational people who value personal freedom to understand the motivations of those who live in comfort and yet embrace monstrous dictators, ideologies, and policies that leave only death and destruction in their wake.

In United in Hate, Dr. Jamie Glazov presents startling new insights into the toxic beliefs and torturously contorted thought processes of the leftists who lust to destroy the very freedoms that allow them to exist. Glazov explains the Left’s love for and deification of totalitarian ideologies, from Marxism to radical Islam, with clarity and candor.

In this groundbreaking examination, Dr. Glazov at last reveals the vile and morbid forces that impel so-called “progressives” to embrace not just murderous ideologies such as Marxism and radical Islam, but the systematic elimination of all those standing in the way of their new utopia.

Advance Praise for United in Hate by Jamie Glazov:

An ambitious, original and well-documented study that addresses some of the most interesting and important political-historical questions of our times.

Paul Hollander, author of “Political Pilgrims" and "The End of Commitment.”

A must-read for those who care about truth, the rule of law, and any hope of ultimate stability for humankind. The redefining work for twenty first century readers of an eternal message.

Robert C. McFarlane, National Security Advisor to President Reagan. Chairman and CEO of McFarlane Associates Inc.

In years to come, this book will become a classic, not just for conservatives but for all Americans interested in the truth and how to combat a perfidious alliance.

Steven Emerson, author of "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Amongst Us" and producer of the documentary "Jihad in America."

Read and excerpt:

“The believer’s totalitarian journey begins with an acute sense of alienation from his own society—an alienation to which he is, himself, completely blind. In denial about the character flaws that prevent him from bonding with his own people, the believer has convinced himself that there is something profoundly wrong with his society—and that it can be fixed without any negative trade-offs. He fantasizes about building a perfect society where he will, finally, fit in…

A key ingredient of this paradigm is that the believer has failed to rise to the challenges of secular modernity; he has not established real and lasting interpersonal relationships or internalized any values that help him find meaning in life. Suffering from a spiritual emptiness, of which he himself is not cognizant, the believer forces non-spiritual solutions onto his spiritual problems. He exacerbates this dysfunction by trying to satisfy his every material need, which the great benefits of modernity and capitalism allow—but the more luxuries he manages to acquire, the more desperate he becomes. We saw this with the counterculture leftists of the sixties and seventies, and we see it with the radical leftists of today. Convinced that it is incumbent upon society, and not him, to imbue his life with purpose, the believer becomes indignant; he scapegoats his society—and ends up despising and rejecting it.

Just like religious folk, the believer espouses a faith, but his is a secular one. He too searches for personal redemption—but of an earthly variety. The progressive faith, therefore, is a secular religion. And this is why socialism’s dynamics constitute a mutated carbon copy of Judeo-Christian imagery. Socialism’s secular utopian vision includes a fall from an ideal collective brotherhood, followed by a journey through a valley of oppression and injustice, and then ultimately a road toward redemption.

In rejecting his own society, the believer spurns the values of democracy and individual freedom, which are anathema to him, since he has miserably failed to cope with both the challenges they pose and the possibilities they offer. Tortured by his personal alienation, which is accompanied by feelings of self-loathing, the believer craves a fairy-tale world where no individuality exists, and where human estrangement is thus impossible. The believer fantasizes about how his own individuality and self will be submerged within the collective whole…. As history has tragically recorded, this “holy cause” follows a road that leads not to an earthly paradise, but rather to an earthly hell in all of its manifestations. The political faith rejects the basic reality of the human condition—that human beings are flawed and driven by self-interest—and rests on the erroneous assumption that humanity is malleable and can be reshaped into a more perfect form. This premise spawned the nightmarish repressions and genocidal campaigns of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and other communist dictators in the twentieth century. Under their rule, more than one hundred million human beings were sacrificed on the altar where a new man would ostensibly be created.”


About the author: Jamie Glazov holds a Ph.D. in history with specialties in U.S., Russian, and Canadian foreign policy. He is the managing editor of Frontpagemag.com.

Former FBI Counterterrorism Chief Interviewed by Jamie Glazov at FrontPage Magazine

Ben Furmam, Former FBI Counterrorism Chief and past client of Pump Up Your Book Promotion, was recently interviewed by Dr. Jamie Glazov, managing editor of FrontPage Magazine and author of United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror. Their interview focused on the infiltration of terrorists across U.S. northern and southern borders, and the groups here that support it via facilitating illegal alien immigration.



FP: What is the state of this problem as we speak?

Furman: No one knows how many terrorists are currently in the United States, but that they are here is not debatable, and the tally goes up each day. It’s natural to be swept away by the frightening battle occurring along our southern border, and it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the flood of illegal aliens crossing over that are eluding capture, but there’s a similar problem on our northern border that can’t be overlooked and it is equally as serious.

Terrorist infiltration is a deadly ongoing problem that our counterterrorism and law enforcement agencies face, both externally and internally, and in many respects the internal obstacles are the most troubling. Rooting out terrorists is a difficult job under the best of circumstances, but it’s made more difficult by the “open border” crowd that labels the agencies or anyone trying to control illegal immigration as racists, xenophobes and bigots. And the current mantra of political correctness has darn near beaten common sense police work to death.

To read more, please visit FrontPage Magazine.

You can find Ben Furman and his counterterrorism blog online at http://blackhawkpress.com/