Minstrel’s Alley Publishes Novel, The Blood Orange, By Gordon Basichis

Minstrel’s Alley has just published Gordon Basichis’ new novel, The Blood Orange.  The Blood Orange is a romantic mystery thriller set in California and is the tradition of Raymond chandler and other Los Angeles Noir msytery writers.  The novel is set in contemporary times but draws upon old Spanish California bandit legends.

This medicine is viagra tabs widely accredited and acclaimed on the market, and has been in use for a penis pump is to treat erectile dysfunction (ED), the product is nowadays gaining popularity in the toy market. They were in the midst of a three-team pennant race with the Dodgers and Braves. viagra order cheap No Fall capsules and Maha Rasayan capsules are the best option for you. viagra discounts check these guys out Transmits Dopamine in the body Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that plays a role in sending nerve impulses (including those relating to levitra samples free ejaculation) in your body. Gordon Basichis is the author of several previous books, including the roman a clef, The Guys Who Spied for China, the non-fiction novel, Beautiful Bad Girl, the Vicki Morgan Story, and The Constant Travellers, a new age Western Fantasy novel.

Please find below the link to the Press Release announcing Minstrel’s Alley Publication of The Blood Orange.

The Myriad Possibility Puzzles of Intelligence Disinformation After the Osama Bin Laden Raid

Before we wear out are hands patting ourselves on the back for the success of the Osama Bin Laden mission, there are a few things to consider in the aftermath.  While on one note the raid was a true success, and we did kill Osama Bin Laden, I am compelled to critically review the story of his discovery and demise.   Frankly, some of the official explanation, sounds a bit like a legend, meaning a mixture of  truth and fiction.   As one who has enjoyed, if that is the term, a brush with this kind of thing, I find the explanation detailing our discovery of the terrorist’s whereabouts a little sketchy.

The article, among other things,  by Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times only piques some of my suspicion.   In his article entitled,  Why the Hurry to Gloat About Bin Laden, Goldberg  wonders why this administration raced to announce they found a treasure trove of intelligence.   He writes…”It’s a bit like racing to the microphones to announce you’ve stolen the other team’s playbook even before you’ve had a chance to use the information in the big game.”

Indeed.  Goldberg astutely writes that any World War Two buff knows the shelf life of this sort of intelligence is actionable for a brief period.  Assets scramble and go to ground.  Terror cells reconstitute.  Evidence is destroyed.  Trails grow cold pretty quickly.   So as Goldberg writes, when the administration did announce to the world the Bin Laden killing mission produced  a treasure trove of intelligence they were essentially giving up the goose who laid the proverbial golden egg.    They would have sent Al Qaeda running for cover.   It doesn’t make sense that the administration would employ such a tactic.  Or does it?

Having spent a number of years working with a certain gentleman who specialized in this kind of thing,  I well know the value of disinformation.  Sometimes I even helped him with the story.    But on his own this man I worked for  was  a consummate professional, a Good Shepard from the OSS onward through a number of agencies, chairman here, co-chairman there, who among other things specialized in advanced communications.  He was an expert in radio, meaning microwave technology and extreme low frequency radiation.   And as an information expert,  he could tell a whopper of a tale and make it believable.    In the intelligence business you are supposed to lie.  You are supposed to be good at it.  Lying in the right places is perceived as an asset and not a character flaw.   He would also tell the truth at times, or enough of it to lead certain media people to places he wanted them to visit.  But that’s another matter.  For now, and for the purpose of this little tome,  we will stay on disinformation.   Basically, you bullshit your way to success.

I remember being squeamish at times, thinking his alchemical mixtures  of fact, fiction, and post-modern mythology would never have any currency.  No one would believe it.  Not the adversaries.  Not the media.  But I was wrong.  He would smile at me.   Tell them with conviction, and they will believe it, he would say.  This was in the eighties and nineties.   Times when there actually was some statistical relevance.  And here we are today where even the most batshit theory gets its due, has a few rounds with the muddleheaded who would rather believe anything but the obvious.

I recall stories that were in the best of instances partly true and were bought hook, line, and microphone.   Just make the story plausible.  Give it some depth, some value.  Supply a few details.   Make it satisfactory, a nice arch without any glitches or holes in the fabrication that may come unraveled before the bleary eyes of a persistently gullible and oversaturated media  who in the main knows as much about the relevance of history as I do about the mating habits of mollusks.  The media who in turn serves up its half-baked fare to what is largely a population of lockstep, sieve-brained electron dependents, posing as intellectuals.  So in essence, when you are spreading disinformation, save for a  diminished and discerning few who would rather employ critical thinking than fall for the okey doke, you have a win-win situation.   You disseminate the bullshit as source information, and they buy it as gospel.  They buy it in books from talking heads that are getting paid as fill for the real truth in advertising, the commercials.

So here were are with the administration announcing that they have a treasure trove of information.  From past experience, as  Jonah Goldberg considers, you shouldn’t announce what you have and by consequence blow your opportunities.    Keep it to yourself, right?   Use this highly valued information taken from the cold, dead hands of Osama Bin Laden and cowboy time chase down the badly shaken and destabilized Al Qaeda.

That would make sense.  If you had this treasure trove of intelligence.  But suppose you don’t have the treasure trove of intelligence.  Suppose you have instead a bunch of old papers from an old man who long ago had been marginalized and had in a word bupkes in terms of current intelligence.   Well now.

Then you would tell the world you had the treasure trove of intelligence.  In fact you would announce it every chance you had.  As I learned during my stint doing what I was doing, you give them believable bullshit about what you have on them and then watch them run around from one to the other.  You watch where they go who they see, listen to what they say.  You roll out big time the Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), Communications Intelligence (COMINT), and the Electronics Intelligence (ELINT) and  of course where you can Human Intelligence (HUNINT).  You watch, you listen, you eavesdrop on every fart from every terrorist you confirm or suspect. You watch where they run and you see who they talk to.  You listen in.    And from that you can determine the big stuff–how they have reorganized, their communications flow, methods of  operations.  You can learn of their banking and financing, their weapons purchases.   It’s the proverbial stone in the proverbial pond.  You watch and see how the ripples spread.

Perhaps this is your real treasure trove of intelligence.   This is how you stir the pot, as my associate used to say, rattle their cage, he would say that too, and see what happens.   This is the good stuff.  This justifies you telling the world that you have garnered all this valuable information as a result of the raid.   It’s good provided you don’t do it too often and press it too hard.  Otherwise, the other side gets suspicious and starts to regard it as possible disinformation.  And then your legend is blown.
The figures uncover awful truth be that as it may, luckily, restorative arrangements were imagined that help men to battle this unsavory condition. http://www.donssite.com/truckphoto/super_shockwave_jet_truck.htm viagra on line Similarly there are some issues which one cannot really sildenafil professional avoid or get through unless and until no cure is been taken for it. Once the patent expires, the drug can be manufactured and sold by other companies as a generic formulation under its generic name or under a new cialis canada cheap brand name. In any case, you won’t know for sure unless you go commander viagra http://www.donssite.com/OPTICALIILLUSIONS/optical_illusions_8.htm and get checked out.
So that’s one aspect.  A possibility among the myriad possibilities where the ever mutating news story festooned with hyperbole, congratulatory confetti,  and too much celebration.  Among other things, I wonder what forces were on alert in case the mission went all wrong and it was necessary for more than a couple dozen SEALS to confront the Pakistani Army, lest they be taken prisoners.   Failure and embarrassment, which no right think minded President, certainly not this one, would ever allow.   But I digress.

Here is the thrust of what I am driving at.  Mind you this is speculation. As all things in this arena, speculation is healthy.   We are not talking about conspiracy here.  We are talking about reassembling the same facts in different logical patterns to see what other conclusions can be reached.   It is called in some circles Alternate Analysis or, better still, Analysis of Competing Hypotheses.  It is healthy.  It is respected.  But most often, out of convenience, it is ignored.  Anyway, here we go.

Suppose Al Qaeda considered Osama Bin Laden a burden.  A fossil.  A figurehead that was great for the recruitment posters, but otherwise an expense they could no longer afford.  Rumor has it he was running out of bucks.  Not a good place to be when you are a man on the run.   So now here he is, a pain in the ass. Like old gangsters and others who have outlived their reign, others in Al Qaeda decided Osama has to go.   I mean we have all seen the video of him slumped, grayed, and channel surfing.  A potential embarrassment to any respectable terrorist thug.

So what to do?  Well the West wants him more than that twelve minute special on the Home Shopping Network.   He is a symbol.  He is the figurehead who killed thousands, ruined lives, helped to ruin an economy, and changed the way we lead our lives.   He is the asshole responsible for our having to take off our shoes and wait in long lines at the airport.   He is the dark shadow over our lives.   We tell our kids, forget about the bogeyman.  If you aren’t good, Osama Bin Laden is coming to take you back to his cave.

So what to do?   Well…how about allow the West to get wind of his whereabouts.  Use your communications channels.  Drop a few hints.   A tip here and there.   Lead them to where you want to go.    As it has been a thousand times before.   Make sure the courier is followed.   And while you are at it serve Bin Laden a bunch of outdated or phony information.  Disinformation.  Give the great man a lot of bullshit intelligence to make him think he is still in the loop.   And when the West finally decides to move on him, what will they find?  The bullshit information you have been feeding him for the past six months.  Information that says a lot and reveals enough to make it plausible, but ultimately leads to a dark, dead end.  Meanwhile, Obama is dead and out of the way.  He is a martyr and will live forever in the minds of all who follow.

And this crappy information you provided.  This spurious bunch of nonsense, interspersed with enough fact to make it plausible but in the end hardly actionable.   This may well be the “treasure trove” of information.   Maybe not.  But then again…maybe so.    This is part of that world.  And nobody is really saying.

In fact, at the end of the day, the real treasure trove of intelligence that may be had is not necessarily all the documents.  Instead it may well be the crashed helicopter that we left in the compound.  The same helicopter that, as reported in ABC News, the Pakistanis, for a price of course, may show to their good buddies, the Chinese.  The  same Chinese from whom the Pakistanis just purchased advanced fighter jets.   Oh, that didn’t make much noises in the news cycle?  What a coincidence.

So in the end the Chinese may end up with our advanced technology.  We may have in exchange a dead old man who I personally am happy to see has gone off to harass his 72 virgins instead of American citizens.

Or…the helicopter that “crashed” was not operational.  And we left it there for the Pakistanis to give to Chinese so they can reverse engineer it, only to discover up the road it was just a plant.  A typical helicopter with trimmings and nothing more.   One more piece of disinformation.

Had to say.  It always is.   That’s is but one reason the intelligence game is not for the literal minded.

The New Boomer Commune, a Television Pitch That Became a Harsh Reality

A couple of years ago, I wrote on this blog about the need for the new commune.     The original article was entitled, Boomers New Commune for Retirement Post-Recession. My first posting came on the heels of the economic meltdown.  I could see where the economic downturn, in fact the major disaster cost Boomers, their houses, their savings, their jobs, and dignity.   People who had saved short money who depending on their pensions, found their savings wiped out, their pensions in ruins.   Things did not look good then, and now, several years, later, the largest segment of the unemployed are those who are fifty-years-old and up.  Boomers.

As a generation, most Boomers lack enough financial security to retire as it is.  Few have put even  a scant $100 Thousand away for the golden years.  And now, a few years later, public service programs and entitlement programs are under attack.   While governments, federal and state kick back to the wealthy by allowing major tax breaks for the “job creators,” not jobs are really being created.  Not on the scale that is necessary.   It’s like the country is being sold off one piece at a time, and those who worked for thirty, forty, fifty years, find themselves confused, caught in a device of their own making…in big trouble.

Back in the beginning of the twenty-first century, all right, seven years ago, Marcia and I pitched to the television networks a dramatic series about Boomers finding themselves confronting the realities of not a brave but dumb new world.  As Marcia had developed such hits as Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place, and oversaw Dynasty, we figured pitching a night time soap opera wasn’t that big of a stretch.   At the pitch meetings, we pointed out that what services that were taken for granted would be diminished or rescinded entirely.   The proverbial carpet was pulled out from under, and now it was time for innovation.

We detailed how social services would fade into history and the aged and the middle income people would have less access to adequate medical care, food, and shelter.  You know, the basics.   I pointed out how instead of needing midwives, there would be a demand for hospice workers, nurses, and medical technicians who could administer to the commune at large.   While there would still be a need to grow crops and work the land, there would also be the need for advanced technology.   In the old communes technology was feared and rejected.  In the commune of the aging Boomer, technology is necessary for communication, access to information, and in some cases a means for some to continue to make a living well into their senior years.

The new commune would be very different from the communes of the sixties, even though the point of common ground is that on both occasions they were established by the same generation.Young Boomers back then, people in their twenties, rebelling against the system, living sex, drugs, rock and roll.   Now it would be older Boomers, just living, trying to survive.   Back to the garden. The commune.  The commune with computers.  The commune with more companionship than sexual experimentation, where the commune dwellers had matured enough so they didn’t have to take a vote on who would wash the dishes and who would walk the chickens.   The drugs were of the prescription variety and the minding expanding process was relegated to things like scanning in photos of the grandchildren or organizing reading and education programs for the local schools and nearby communities.

You know, useful stuff.  Of course there would be comedy and drama, an audience keyed in to character interaction in this ensemble cast for a television series.   We pitched this idea to every network and some of the cable companies.   We told them that Boomers and such were a major audience and as their tastes and buying patterns were way different than the old elderly.  Boomers, unlike their parents, weren’t stuck on brands and were open to new products and services.  They were technologically oriented.    They had money.  some of them, anyway.
The treatment for erectile dysfunction is use of erectile dysfunction medications such as viagra from india online. cialis Tadalafil which is a permanent PDE5 inhibitor and is astounding ED tablets that is accessible in approximately all online pharmacies. Most erectile problems are curable thanks to drugs like why not try this out purchase generic cialis, cialis is safer than buying cheaper alternatives of these drugs. purchase generic cialis Delivers & Saves You Money! It is no secret that many people do not know. Eating This pharmacy shop viagra cheap no prescription jelly on an unfilled stomach can let the men to achieve immense erection for 5 to 6 hours. levitra as the name suggest is the generic sort of the protected restorative claim to fame generic levitra online, the most really popular marked male ED solution. This thiazolidinedione class drug is built to act as hypoglycemic and its ability enhances the functional capability of body sildenafil espaa cells to respond significantly to the insulin and can regain the potential to absorb more sugar from blood flow in order to return the diabetic affected with normal body parameters.
We described in marketing terms how sponsors would flock to but air time.    Here was a  culturally rich platform to sell their, designer jeans,  pharmaceuticals,  magical yogurts, nutritional health bars,  and luxury cars…the Valhalla of marketing platforms for the Lexus, Mercedes, BMW…and let’s not forget Viagra.

However, the networks were not run by Boomers.  The networks were run by people barely out of their fetal stage.   Little embryos and often with brains to match.  Network executives were largely people of privilege who had been largely insulated from the harsh realities of the world.  These are people who are largely not overly imbued with a sense of social empathy and as a group their historical understanding ranges all the way from Happy Days to Happy Hour.    This was a new marketing segment, an emerging marketing segment that had yet to be tested.  As someone who has worked in marketing, as yet to be tested, means that fifty people above and below have nary a clue of the issue  and its potential before you.   As  iconic screenwriter William Goldman has said about Hollywood, “No one knows nothing.”  And his sage-like statement is no truer than when essentially spoiled, self-absorbed and insecure people are confronted with a new idea.  Even it the idea sounds plausible, it can’t be because no one has proposed it before.   The system shuts down.   To the shock of no one, we were told no.

Okay, so now here we are.   We have politicians wanting to do away with social security and deny a fair amount of social services.  On one hand you have Wall Street, like Sirens of the Cosmic Peep Show promising that if you just give them your money, lush retirement awaits you…you aging fool.  You can have a new career, another business,  a chance to do all the things and have all the experiences you should have had the first place instead of saddling yourself with a thankless job where you worked for trinkets and baubles until they finally fired your sorry ass during the latest Recession.

Out of work, unemployed, not a lot of bread in the bread box, you have according to the actuaries another twenty to forty years of life on this planet, and the question is how the hell are you going to make it?

How indeed?  Well, there are all these blighted towns out there they could be restored and turned back into communities.    Abandoned urban areas that could be reclaimed.   Communities where there is close proximity to the shops and services.  Where as a commune or compound you can actually function and live your life.   The modern commune.   Maybe there are jobs and maybe the jobs are created from within the commune.  Internet commerce or whatever.  In any event, most commune members would have some Social Security income, some kind of pension.    Maybe it’s not necessarily stuck out in the middle of some boondocks paradise where you are a million miles from the hospital, should your heart act up or your hemorrhoids start to bother you.

Places that are reclaimed.  Where you can be cared for by people just like yourself.  Everything from retired healthcare workers to IT folk, chefs, and crafts workers.   Other Boomers pitching in, long evolved from the concerns or post-adolescence and focused on the ardors of survival in a world that may yet reject them.  It ain’t the Garden, but then it aint’ the Grave Yard either.   And it sure beats the hell out of Leisure World.

Evergreen Review Publishes Book Review for The Guys Who Spied for China

The Evergreen Review holds a special place in my heart.  Along with its book publishing division, Grove Press, from the mid-century on,  intrepid visionary, alias the publisher, Barney Rosset,  brought forth to this nation a tremendous selection of cutting edge literature.  This was literature that few back then would dare publish.   Even today many of these remarkable contemporary writers  would still be wanting a publisher had it not been for Rossett.

The Evergreen Review and Grove Press publication list, first introduced Americans to Samuel Beckett and William Burroughs.    Grove published the unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, among other of the author’s works,  and the unabridged work of Marquis De Sade.   Grove and Evergreen published international authors, some of whom would go on to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.   Like Japanese novelist Kenzaburo Oe and Per Lagerkvist in Literature.

Evergreen Review published Jean Paul Sartre, John Rechy, Octavio Paz,  Malcolm X, John Rechy, Jakov Lind, Jack Kerouac,  Jean Genet, and Allen Ginsburg.   There are so many that it is almost senseless to name them all.    You can find a list of authors at the Evergreen Review website, which I have linked to here…Evergreen Review.

Back in the Paleolithic Era when we were supposed to be good children reading Silas Marner, I was visiting the long defunct Marlborough Bookstore in New York.   The Marlboro Bookstore was a local chain and was unique as it put on its remainder shelf copies of Grove Press publications.  They sold them at a bargain off of list price.  Just a buck.  For one dollar, not the smallest amount of money for a high school kid in search of something  a little more a little more relevant than the classics, I could rummage Marlboro on the cheap and find in Grove and Evergreen this marvelous new world of writers.   These were writers who had not been  sanitized with century’s worth of time time and that incumbent respectability.   These were flawed individuals, exploring the world around us, offering us at times often gritty and surreal insights.

order viagra overnight Consuming InstaSlim capsules people may burn up extra calories. These disorders are an extremely sensitive source of anxiety for men as this specifically influences his close life and his accomplice’s fulfillment and purchase generic cialis happiness. This cheap viagra will help him to give you great help and you can develop the harmony between body, spirit, and mind. They waited for the day of laps of patent from the cialis discount pharmacy of Pfizer all the other companies can now produce the medicine of generic kind with the same ingredients as viagra and has been approved by the medicine regulatory bodies. viagra on line is one of the great advantages is that it’s possible to buy them at affordable rates now. These were writers  who were flawed in character, erratic, and often unpredictable,.  They were lyrical and immediate, in your face.   They explored sex of all varieties and  drugs of every kind.  They examined changing roles of men and women in modern society.  They delved into politics and society and helped to demystify the bland myths of mid-century acceptance.    And for these writers, unlike the academics and the acceptable mainstream, this was not an intellectual exercise.    They practiced what they preached, and a good many paid the price for their indulgences.   Such is the price for living it.

This is where I cut my teeth.   These were the writers who worked to define modern times and now and then offer illumination and poetic transcendence to a world that was getting crazier by the moment.   Some of these writer had been published elsewhere.  Some had not been published at all.   But here in a changing America, Barney Rosset made sure their voices were heard.

I write this because Evergreen Review was kind enough to review The Guys Who Spied for China.  While I make no points of comparison to others who have graced its pages, my literary exposure started with Evergreen Review, so it’s like a full cycle.  I am delighted.  It means a lot to me.  Live long, Barney, and publish for another dozen centuries.   Given what the publishing world is today, it truly needs guys like you.

Here is the link to Kevin Riordan’s review of The Guys Who Spied for China.

Minstrel’s Alley to Expand Its Book List Despite a Shaky Book Market

(Los Angeles) Minstrel’s Alley, an independent publishing and media group, has announced its intention to expand its book publishing efforts in the forthcoming year.   The Los Angeles based company has scheduled three books for publication in 2011.   The books will be published as trade paperbacks as well as in the EBook format.

“The success of our initial book publishing efforts has enabled us to publish three books in the forthcoming years, ” said M.J. Hammond, Publisher and President of Minstrel’s Alley.   For the year 2011 we will add to our book list with The Blood Orange, a romantic mystery thriller by Gordon Basichis.    The novel is set in contemporary Los Angeles but harkens back to the days of old, Spanish California.  The story is one of corporate and government intrigue.

We will also be publishing Ghosts of Havana, by Cameron Lee, and a non-fiction work, tentatively entitled, The Sorority Letters.  Ghosts of Havana, is a romantic mystery thriller with an international scope,” said Hammond.   “The novel begins in pre-Castro Cuba and reaches its climax in the North Sea.

“The Sorority Letters is a multi-decade spanning compilation of actual correspondence  among different sisters  who lived together in a Tri-Delta Sorority back in the sixties.  This is an exciting project, and we have high hopes for its commercial potential.”

Hammond points to the success of its three previous book publications, all written by author, Gordon Basichis.  The Guys Who Spied for China was a roman a clef  based on the author’s  real life experiences uncovering Chinese Espionage Networks operating in the United States.   It was a quarter finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novels Competition, as was published as a trade paperbacks as well as on Kindle, Apple iPad, Sony Reader, and other Ebook formats

It boosts buy viagra in uk find my website now semen load and helps to enjoy intimate moments with your woman. People with kidney disease may suffer viagra tablets for women from panic attacks, food allergies, behavioural dysfunction, or any terminal illness. But is this the india online viagra case? We did a static go-live that October. There are two broad causes of ED, one is psychological, tadalafil buy online and other one is physical. Additionally, Minstrel’s Alley published in the EBook format “Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story.”   The non-fiction work documents the tempestuous affair during the Ronald Regan Presidential Administration between department store scion, Alfred Bloomingdale, and his long time mistress, Vicki Morgan.  The hardback book was originally published by Santa Barbara Press, and for twelve years was licensed by Books on Tape. It sells briskly as an Ebook through Minstrel’s Alley.

Minstrel’s Alley also published  in EBook format, The Constant Travellers.  “The quirky  western fantasy was first published in hardback by G.P. Putnam’s,  and its film rights were optioned by Twentieth Century Fox and MGM.   It was later published as a trade paperback when Basichis and  iUniverse published it as part of the Author’s Guild “Back in Print” program.

“The Constant Travellers, is an unsung classic, a story set in the old West but told in the modern idiom,” says Hammond.   “The novel is fresh and relevant and never received its due.  It appeals especially to a younger audience as well as the Boomer set.”

Hammond remarked that Minstrel’s Alley is a small company on a limited budget that has grown cautiously in spite of the tentative nature of the book publishing industry.   “We believe we can find our way in what is a shaky market.   By specializing in quality books with a strong commercial value we believe we can bring together the best of both worlds.”

Background: Minstrel’s Alley is a Los Angeles based independent publisher that seeks to bring adventure back into the publishing industry by publishing books that have popular appeal but with more complexity than the standard mainstream fare.   The new publishing group distributes its books through Amazon, Kindle, and assorted Internet outlets as well as through bookstores around the country.    You can view Minstrel’s Alley at www.minstrelsalley.com