Tag: Tom Avitabile

Free Press in China?

Tom Avitabile, Free Press in ChinaI once recommended to an economic expert on China a trailer for an upcoming book. My vision was to have the economist standing on the Great Wall of China, explaining to the camera that seven centuries ago this was the technological achievement of mankind.

Then the economist holds up an iPad, explaining that this is the current technological achievement of mankind. Both from China. Interesting, I thought, that the technological impetus has come around full circle from the Great Wall to the Great iPad.

But when you look deeper, look at all the things they missed.

For example, we have the Bill of Rights. All the greatest (and wealthiest) men of the day had the notion that it was necessary to specifically enumerate the rights that were at the heart of the conflict of England and the Revolution, and they eventually got it down to 10.

Extra credit reading: Look up the original Bill of Rights.

If you go to the National Archives in Washington, DC you can see that there were actually 12 amendments in the original Bill of Rights.

  • The original 1st amendment set out rules for districting the House of Representatives – a scheme that would have made today’s Congress 6,000+ members strong.
  • The original 2nd amendment stated that Congress cannot ratify its own proposed pay raises until after the next Congressional election. This would eventually become the 27th amendment, ratified in 1992.

The elimination of these two amendments cleared the way so that right up there at number one, which the Chinese never considered, was a nasty little thing called Freedom of the Press. (Now as a writer, I think it’s inherently unfair to reveal the Founder’s early draft, after all, they didn’t publish until they had the 10 and if you saw any of my earlier drafts I’d dig a hole and hide.)

Freedom of the Press (along with Speech and Religion) was a founding part of this nation’s psyche, government and culture. Last month that little notion of freedom arose again in a small revolution in South China. Not exactly the Redcoats against the farmers, but a small local newspaper dared to print something close to the truth. This brought upon it a hefty dose of scorn and consternation from the old party apparatchiks of the ruling elite in Beijing.

But then, with the internet and with the world going the way it is, those old Chinese guys in the Politburo must have said to themselves “Hey wait, what’s so bad about this?” or “Hey, maybe if we give them just a little, we can keep a lid on this thing.”

Perhaps they had this old Chinese proverb in mind when they decided to loosen up a bit:

That which doesn’t bend, breaks.

So they bent a little. A seemingly tacit allowance of what would, five years ago, buy you a ticket to the reeducation camp or a bullet in the brain – a bullet your own family would be billed for after your death – Communist Party family values being what they are.

But here is the most tantalizing question of all, if the Chinese Communists were to suffer a come to Jefferson moment and, more unbelievably, grant a Bill of Rights to their billions of subjects which of our 10 would never see the light of a Chinese day?

Send me your answer vis-a-vis the comment section.  I’ll give you my ‘forbidden amendment’ next time.

Tom Avitabile, Free Press in China?

Tom Avitabile
Tom@TomAvitabile.com

Those who do not learn from the past are destined to….

USA - CIRCA 1970 Landing of the PilgrimsMost people don’t realize that the Bill of Rights is actually the foundation of capitalism, and that capitalism was the remedy for the early socialism that was codified in the Mayflower Compact – which totally didn’t work and nearly wiped out America in it’s first generation. It sounded great in theory but when it got down to the guys in the buckle hats and shoes, it didn’t work because they didn’t work. Nobody did anything. It was the “Let the next guy do it” syndrome and, of course, the next guy was saying the same thing so nothing ever happened. And the Native Americans had to come to the rescue of these “do nothings!”

So in terms of socialism, America can say “Been there, done that.”

William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, quickly found out that when everything was shared -from responsibilities to rewards-  and outcomes were assured, no one, who could do more, did more, because they wouldn’t get more for their extra effort, and people who didn’t do anything still got something, so it quickly devolved down to no one doing anything.

It was truly atrophy of the economic muscle.

Although Socialism feeds our emotional needs and seems less threatening than other forms of government, it lacks certain dynamics of basic Economics which renew and refresh the consumption of resources and labor. In short, human behavior erodes the self-sustainability of Socialism. So as an English Prime Minister once said, “The problem with Socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” – or corn!  Although, in the early colonial days it wasn’t called ‘Economics’, it was called survival. This flaw in the self-sustaining dynamism was revealed. At the basic level Economics is survival. Today we can no longer appreciate that because our existence has been layered by the advancement of our society till it becomes like the pea under a pile of mattresses. We are so far away from our last meal, so far away from the last shelter, so far from last resort, that we don’t feel it or fear it. We now regard economics as an intellectual endeavor. But when we had a bushel of corn and 500 people, economics suddenly was survival. So the math (economics) of a bushel of corn to feed the 500 people became an economic formula of life and death.

It’s hard in this modern day, when the poorest American enjoys a higher standard of living than 75% of the 7 billion souls on Earth, to even imagine the scarcity of the basics, the essentials, the imperatives that challenged our forefathers. We are so blessed now that we would never, ever, appreciate the subtleties, realities and hardships of the founding of this nation. Yet, the reason for the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, The Bill of Rights, the reason why the Articles of Confederation were totally inadequate and why socialism crushed the spirit, are all etched into those documents with the watermarks of poverty, death, sacrifice and nobility of our early nation. I fear these underlying reasons will never again be fully understood by American’s today who have not been challenged in the basics.  In a way, I see a cycle. One that is coming around, that by losing sight of our founding, we condemn ourselves to return to the conditions which created the tyrannical political environment which fomented revolution in the first place.

The question is, if our economic system falters, by either excessive debt, excessive spending, excessive cutting or excessive taxes, will the average American feel the pain of the founders? Will they seek the same freedoms all over again, strike outgainst tyranny, re-establish the individual as inviolate and fight a war to free themselves? Or will they avoid all that by just dusting off the Bill of Rights and the Constitution they already have and reading them.

The Winners to my T-shirt Giveaway Are….

Image

Amanda Baros

Jane Sizemore Ritz

 Kaycee Mason

Kelly Brasfield

Arinna Black

Scott Brady

JS Ritz

Shaunda Adams Eppes

Ashley Marie Morrissey

Suzanne Gregg

 Congrats to the giveaway winners. Your prize is on its way.  

Iterations of the Apocalypse

Tom Avitabile | Iterations of the ApocalypseThroughout the evolution of mankind the Chicken Little gene has survived intact. Every 50 years or so, mankind decides things are too boring and we collectively embrace end of the world scenarios. Halley’s Comet was thought to bring poison gas that would wipe out all life on earth on May 18th, 1910. In the mid 50’s a group called The Seekers, I guess after OD’ing on films like ‘Earth vs. the Flying Saucers’ and ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’, were convinced that aliens had told them of a massive flood that would destroy the planet.

Last week, we escaped another cosmic billiard ball as those incredible prognosticators of science, technology and human sacrifice, the Mayans, got it wrong again. You remember Mayan Airlines, the Mayan cell phone and the ever popular Mayan Ginsu knife for human sacrifice. (Pay separate shipping and handling and get two.) Those chocolate coveting geniuses, who didn’t see Columbus coming, by the way, threw a dart at a calendar and it came up last week. Now December 22, 2012 is added to the pantheon of apocalyptic prognostications.

But who am I to talk! I now throw my Mayan headpiece into the ring announcing, for your nightmare pleasure: a little ditty called, ‘The God Particle’, my soon to be released third novel which continues the Bill Hiccock ‘Thrillogy’.

Now even though scientists are still searching for the God Particle and have spent billions on the largest machine in the world to find it, not unlike Jodi Foster in Contact.  I step ahead and use the really scary notion that it won’t be cosmic forces or the shifting of the magnetic poles or collisions with NEOs (Near Earth Objects) that will end the world – though NEOs make good reading if you don’t want to sleep for the next 30 years.

No, it won’t be anything so glorious, just one part of mankind embracing technology to destroy all of mankind. At this point we re-read the name of this blog: It’s only fiction til it happens, and hope I’m dead wrong.

But as laid out in The God Particle, historically there was a plausible, logical threat matrix that had been ballyhooed for years beginning with the fears that the atomic programs of the ‘40’s would get out of hand and all the world would be consumed in the dreaded ‘chain reaction’. The very same argument echoes today, with ‘Chain Reaction’ being replaced by ‘Black Hole’ as all the world’s geniuses gather near Geneva to recreate the Big Bang. What could possibly go wrong?

Big Bang: The unimaginable explosion that created everything and was so powerful that the most distant stars and galaxies were flung from the bang’s epicenter to the furthest reaches, trillions of light years away. Don’t even try to think about it.

But hey, that’s what Bill Hiccock and the White House’s Quarterback Operations Group was put on earth for, and boy do they earn their pay in this one. Oh, and by the way, get to know the name ISON, because around Halloween of this year some crazies somewhere on the planet will be screaming about ISON. The comet ISON, will be a dazzling omen in the night sky. I can just hear the tales of the apocalypse getting re-racked and reloaded for next year.

BS (BlogScript): Keep those letters to ABC going about not canceling “The Last Resort!”

The Wall

Tom Avitabile | The Wall
Berlin Wall art on exhibit at 53rd St. in Manhattan. Click to enlarge.

In my novel, Hammer of God, a relic of the Cold War war-fighting machine plays a key role in a terrorist attack today. I grew up during the Cold War. It left an indelible mark on me, and probably everyone else who, as part of their school day, had to practice being immolated and turned into nuclear ash. Ostensibly as neat piles under our desks to make the clean up easier or why else have us duck and cover?

An iconic symbol of the Cold War was the Berlin Wall.  An actual concrete wall, which was built after World War II, to split the city into two parts. The East Germans lived on the other side, the side that was connected to the Communists, the Russians or in short, the Enemy.

In later years, when things changed, I remember a factoid that the average East German visitor to NYC dropped $23.22 a day into the local economy. A Japanese tourist spent $989 per day.

The reason for all this nostalgia is that, last night, I went to a restaurant located behind the Berlin Wall!  Albeit a piece of it, now residing in a plaza on 53rd Street in NYC. I was struck by the fact that the cheapest (and there was only one) entree on the menu was $37.50.  My appetizer alone cost my host for the evening, $25.00. So just the first course would blow the average East German visitor’s budget into dust.

That fact caused me to remember that nobody fired a single shot during the entire Cold War! In fact, it ended like a game of Monopoly. The other side just ran out of money.

So as dozens of Christmas Party goers who collectively dropped $1,200 to $1,800 per table on this one part of one night’s entertainment, passed by this huge chunk of concrete on their way in to the restaurant, maybe 1 in 10 knew what the hell it was.  And even smaller odds that it was America’s robust economy that defeated all the nightmares, terrorizing classroom drills and nuclear paranoia that gripped this country no so long ago.

Admittedly the restaurant goers I am writing about are the top end of business folks and well to do revelers and most of them are on expense accounts.  But still the irony was not lost on me.  That even though today America may be heading for a fiscal cliff, years ago we avoided the Wall.

Don’t Forget to Wash Your Hands

“It looks like it’s shaping up to be a bad flu season, but only time will tell.”

– Dr. Thomas Frieden, National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Tom Avitabile | The Hammer of GodIn The Hammer of God, the inciting incident of the book is a flu vaccine shortage which is caused by nefarious forces overseas, resulting in half the number of vaccinations necessary to guard the public.

That is step one of a two-step biological attack; take away the first line of defense – which would be the flu vaccine. Then the second part of the attack was to unleash a really nasty airborne bug on the public. So the bad guys weren’t contaminating the flu vaccine to be their vehicle to do harm. They contaminated the supply to take it off the market.

This created a situation, in my book, where during the onset of the attack, people had symptoms that mimicked the flu – and no one suspects anything is awry. The airborne bug’s dormant stage lasts five to six days, taking the world by surprise when the infected take an extreme turn for the worse and people start to die.

It seems like we should be very cognizant of foreign suppliers producing this and other vaccines because their production and distribution lines might be interrupted more easily.

Of course, this being a book about my hero, he thwarts the attack. The mastermind is arrested and becomes a bargaining chip in the escalated terror plot to follow. But the groundwork is there in the story; this is a weak pressure point in the threat matrix aimed at this country.

I am confident in the safeguards that had somebody tried to manipulate or add something nasty to the flu vaccine, it would set off alarm bells and triggers. The far greater insidious plot device is simply to render us unprotected and willing to accept high numbers of infections as the new normal – when in fact it’s anything but. It is the start of an attack.

Remember: wash your hand often.

Blogscript

ABC has decided to cancel my absolute, all-time favorite show: The Last Resort.

When you read The God Particle you’ll see one of my main characters is the USS Tom Avitabile | The God ParticleNebraska – a trillion dollar missile boat (luckily on our side). That’s why I am so distraught over the cancelling of this series, whose main star is the USS Colorado, the sister ship of the Nebraska.

Besides I looove the dialogue…to the point where I say “Damn, I wish I would have written that!”

Please take a moment and email ABC. Tell them to keep the Last Resort afloat.

I Love A Parade

This is a very important election for New Yorkers. They will be deciding who will tie up their traffic for the next four years.
– Barack Obama

Recently during Superstorm Sandy, Mayor Bloomberg respectfully requested that the President come nowhere near New York City. That’s because a presidential visit has an inordinate impact on the infrastructure and connectivity of the City on the best of days. During a storm, it would have been positively lethal. The mayor was 100% right.

Tom Avitabile, The Hammer of GodAs Mayor Bloomberg alluded, to live in New York is to curse the President. Especially when you’re in traffic. Even more especially when you’re watching the meter in your cab go past the $20 mark because a cop three blocks away has cordoned off your street in order for the president to get from one hotel to another. And you sit back and you think: Why are we doing this?

As written elsewhere in this blog, my first exposure to anything presidential was in 1968 when Lyndon Johnson flew over my head in the blue and white Air Force One 707 (Tail number 26000). Just seeing the plane created a sense of awe and wonderment, and since those early days I’ve been hooked by all things presidential.

That doesn’t stop me from thinking critically, though. Is this visit worth spending millions of dollars in security? Is it worth tying up all this traffic? Why put up with this terrible impact on the City of New York’s ability to generate wealth for an entire day? And why are streets blocked off for hours even after he’s passed? No one has ever explained that one to me.

And then I begin to wonder if he is even in that limo. Wouldn’t it make more sense to drive Continue reading “I Love A Parade” →