…or maybe it needs a little manipulation, why bother with the other man’s point of view?

Sitting, or rather lying on the sofa today, feeling rather sorry for myself following an intense bout of food poisoning and drifting in and out of sleep, my mind wandered to events of the past week, both personal and topical. I am not often moved to analyse, or perish the thought, criticise fellow historians of the Holocaust, (please see my next blog entry) but something got the train of thought going and that something was the now infamous Brand/Paxman interview so widely shared on YouTube. It popped into my inbox last Wednesday evening and having nothing else to do at that time, I pressed the link.

Have you seen it? Something like the anger which was directed at Messrs Brand and Ross after the Andrew Sachs ‘phonecall by many who had not even listened to the tape seemed to be echoing around the dinner tables of middle England and as I have never really felt comfortable with the curtain twitchers and whisperers, I felt it my duty to give it the once over. And very interesting it was. Brand is not a revolutionary…wait, he is a revolutionary! Paxman hectored and twisted in his seat with the usual bombastic style escaping him at times. Brand appeared to have swallowed a dictionary, the contents of which were occasionally vomited in the direction of the camera, no doubt delighting his publishers and tour promoters alike. Russell Brand is a wealthy man. Good for him, I say. Not for me the traditional British hatred of the successful. Oh, no. Yet there is something of the old left about him. Smug, self-opinionated, with all the answers yet with none of them at all. Lenin would have loved him for a while, Stalin too, until he tired of the boorish behaviour and then he would have been painted out of the picture, shunted off to a gulag and into the hard Siberian earth.

Paxman’s prejudice and dislike of anyone he feels unable or unqualified to talk about politics shone through like a selfie-induced mirror flash, bright, yet fleeting. Why he thinks that only politicians have the right to talk sensibly about politics beats me. After all, several of them were proved to be cheats and liars and many more of them should have joined us at HMP Ford or perhaps Holloway? Anyone can and should comment on politics if it is genuine, but please don’t do it just to make more money out of the easily influenced and stupid. Come off it, Russell. You’re a bright lad. Now f*** off and make some money.

Today, it has been reported that eBay have removed over 30 items directly connected to the Holocaust. I am curious to know why they have left it so long, as I wrote to them back in the early summer of 2013 highlighting some extremely offensive and upsetting photographs of mass shootings from the Operation Barbarossa campaign in Eastern Europe as the German forces spread deep into the former Soviet Union, killing and maiming at will in the name of Lebensraum. I found it very surprising that they were keen to police certain items which they found offensive, yet when I complained, I did not even get a response from them.

Better late than never, rather like the attempts to bring more of the murdering swine dressed in the uniforms of the Third Reich to justice.

US Use of Dachau Data and “Friendly” Nazi Doctors

Much has been talked about German scientists working on the US space programme in the 1950s and 1960s, but little of the German doctors who had worked in concentration and extermination camps such as Dachau, conducting “experiments” on live human beings in the name of medical progress.

There were 200 German medical doctors conducting these medical experiments. Most of these doctors were friends of the United States before the war, and despite their inhuman experiments, the U.S. attempted to rebuild a relationship with them after the war. The knowledge the Germans had accumulated at the expense of human life and suffering, was considered a “booty of war”, by the Americans and the Russians.The Americans tracked down Dr. Strughold, the aviation doctor who was in charge of the Dachau experiments. With full knowledge that the experiments were conducted on captive humans, the U.S. recruited the doctors to work for them. General Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his personal approval to exploit the work and research of the Nazis in the death camps.

Within weeks of Eisenhower’s order, many of these notorious doctors were working for the U.S. Army at Heidelberg. Army teams scoured Europe for scientific experimental apparatus such as pressure chambers, compressors, G-force machines, giant centrifuges, and electron microscopes. These doctors were wined and dined by the U.S. Army while most of Germany’s post-war citizens virtually starved.

The German doctors were brought to the U.S. and went to work for Project Paperclip. All these doctors had been insulated against war crime charges. The Nuremberg prosecutors were shocked that U.S. authorities were using the German doctors despite their criminal past. Under the leadership of Strughold, 34 scientists accepted contracts from Project Paperclip, and were moved to Randolph Air Force Base at San Antonio, Texas. The authorisation to hire these Nazi scientists came directly for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The top military brass stated that they wished to exploit these rare minds. Project Paperclip, ironically, would use Nazi doctors to develop methods of interrogating German prisoners of war.

As hostilities began to build after the war between the Americans and the Russians, the U.S. imported as many as 1000 former Nazi scientists.

In 1969, Americans landed on the moon, and two groups of scientist in the control centre shared the credit, the rocket team from Peenemunde, Germany, under the leadership of Werner von Braun, these men had perfected the V-2s which were built in the Nordhausen caves where 20,000 slave labourers from prison camp Dora had been worked to death. The second group were the space doctors, lead by 71-year-old Dr. Hubertus Strughold, whose work was pioneered in Experimental Block No. 5 of the Dachau concentration camp and the torture and death of hundreds of inmates. The torture chambers that was used to slowly kill the prisoners of the Nazis were the test beds for the apparatus that protected Neil Armstrong from harm, from lack of oxygen, and pressure, when he walked on the moon.

You will be able to read more about this in my forthcoming novel, “Right to Live”, the first ten chapters of which are available via this website.

I am listening to Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine programme at the moment and a very interesting discussion on the above topic. I refer to the barrister who appears to have made exaggerated claims as to his level of qualification. “When is a lie not a lie?”, I am moved to ask. Apparently there are lies, white lies, fibs and so on. I am particularly interested in this discussion, having experienced first hand what it is to be lied to by the legal profession. I have been in the witness box for two and a half days at my trial, during which my trial judge had to intervene on more than one occasion on behalf of the prosecuting QC when I had him on the rails. Yet it was not the prosecution which intrigued me, but two members of my own defence team. Is it ever acceptable for senior members of the legal profession to lie in order to gain pecuniary advantage in a publicly funded trial costing well over £20m?

I thank The Daily Telegraph for the following:

The offence of “scandalising the court” is a form of contempt that makes it illegal to ridicule the judiciary to such an extent that justice is brought in to disrepute. However there has not been a successful prosecution in more than 80 years and the Government’s law advisers have recommended it be abolished because “social attitudes have changed”. The law was aimed at protecting the image of the judiciary but in modern society judges regularly face criticism over some sentences they pass or rulings they make. The Law Commission, which consulted on the future of the offence, said it “belongs to an era when deferential respect to the judiciary was the norm”. “But social attitudes have changed. Enforcing the offence today would do little to reinforce respect for the judiciary and, if judges are thought to be using it to protect their own, could strengthen any existing distrust or disrespect.”
The last prosecution was in 1931 and the Commission said it “had no place in today’s society”.
The offence made it illegal to publish anything that was likely to bring the judiciary into disrepute such as “extremely offensive” comments or suggestions they were corrupt. But the Commission concluded: “Using the threat of proceedings for scandalising the court to suppress complaints about the judiciary, even those that are wholly unjustified or abusive, is likely to restrict freedom of expression and have a “chilling effect” that would deter people from making justified complaints.” As with anyone else, judges will still have redress through civil courts if comments made were false and defamatory.
Professor David Ormerod, the Law Commissioner leading the project, says: “Abusive publications about judges and courts occur frequently but are never prosecuted as scandalising. “The offence has fallen out of use. It no longer serves as a deterrent, and any symbolic power it once had to drive home the message that scandalising the court is unacceptable is much diminished. “Scandalising also amounts to a restriction on freedom of expression, and it is not clear that the infringement is necessary. “We have found, on the contrary, many strong reasons for removing this restriction.”
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said the Government would support the recommendations and move to abolish the offence.

However, in the USA, things are different:

Man Jailed for Criticising Judge

It is not often that I am moved to write about such a controversial mainstream piece of output and I came across it whilst browsing comment on Essex’s best kept secret. “What is that?” I hear you ask. “Foulness Island”, I say. Look it up, for I am not going to enlarge on that place here. No, instead I am going to talk briefly about the film, which you can find from the link at the end of this comment. I had half a mind not to complete my viewing of it, what with the attention span being somewhat short at the moment, perceiving it initially as a conspiracy theory/sensationalist filmette. Something kept me going and by the time I got to the end, it reminded me of remarks I made back in 2008 about there being cause for concern that people might take to the streets if the economy continued to nosedive. Well, take to the streets they certainly did, though the ensuing riots seemed in some ways to divert attention away from the real issues.

It would appear that despite assurances to the contrary, the economy is about to get much worse rather than better. There are, I can assure you, ticking financial time bombs just waiting to go off that haven’t even made it into the tabloids. Mis-sold mortgages are next on the menu and the resulting claims could make PPI look rather small fry. The banks continue to sell dodgy products to the unsuspecting consumer, all the while paying bigger and bigger bonuses to their staff.

We are certainly in a mess. Watch the film and then share it with your friends.

http://pro.moneyweek.com/myk-eob-tpr-cut/PMYKP905/?utm_source=taboola&h=true

There was I, thinking that this ebook business was going to be easy. Writing the books? Well, that was something else, but this has become quite a task in itself. Did I think I knew it all? Certainly at the age of 15, why yes. After a lifetime of ups and downs, I truly felt I had found my vocation when Koestler gave me the First Prize for Fiction. Right, I thought, the publishing world is ready for me at last and I am indeed ready for it, (or was I ready for IT? Now I am not so sure), so off went the manuscripts to publishers and agents alike. Full marks to William Morris for at least giving it a go, but as for the rest of them, well at least I now know that my work helped to form a large and ever larger pile for the bin men to collect at the end of the week from some of Britain’s most esteemed.

Then along came the ebook. I watched from afar as the world and his wife began to upload their scribblings and clumsy keyboard clutter to the world of the interweb. Then in February of this year, when Wharam was finally let out to play, it began for me. Nothing is going to be easy, I decided, yet nothing had prepared me for the delights of formatting, uploading and the increasing numbers of hoops that one has to jump through, just to get the damned thing up there for friends and family to read.

Thus far, however, so good. Years of eBay have taught me one thing – reviews and ratings count for everything today. One’s efforts/business/life can be made or broken by a few one line critiques, so to all of you out there in lala land, I say this, “Please rate my books”. No, really, I need you to. It is very gratifying to see the book sales creep slowly upwards, but I need you to tell the world about Greed and Right to Live. (Why do I always type Right to Love?) I am working frantically on the remaining eight chapters of the Holocaust novel so that it can be published this winter, so look out for the links.

Back to the grindstone, just as the sun comes out again after hiding for so many days.

Ah, the trials and tribulations of the e-author. At least poor old JK Rowling never had to negotiate the pitfalls of attempting to get her work to a wider audience. No, all she had to do was slog away for years in a damp cafe and look where that got her. So, it’s steep learning curve for moi, (et toi if you are persevering with my endless updates as to how it’s all going with Nook, Kobo, Kindle and Lulu) and a hell of a lot of swearing as one publishing tool after another rejects my labours. Today, however, is another day and I am delighted to say that both the full version of Greed and the first ten chapters of Right to Live, my post-holocaust novel based in Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Austria, South America, Israel and the USA are now available across all the e-book formats via the Kindle Store, Kobo and Lulu. Having proudly negotiated my way through the legal requirements of publishing via iTunes, I now have a US E.I.N. number and within a few days, will have Greed available in the Apple Store.

Right to Live is a novel, based heavily on historical fact revolving around the life, disappearance and re-emergence of the “Angel of Death of Auschwitz”, Dr Joseph Mengele. Key characters emerge as the book unfolds and there are many twists and turns to enthral the reader. It is, however, not a book for the faint-hearted, documenting and relating the terrible truth about the concentration and extermination camp system which was so widely adopted by the Nazis in Eastern Poland and beyond in what is now modern-day Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus. As well as the real characters portrayed in the book, there are many fictional beings brought to life and, in some instances, sadly often to death within its pages and as you make your way through the trilogy, which will be completed in 2014, you will get to know so much about them; their strengths and weaknesses, lives and loves, all the while punctuated by terrible memories and flashbacks to the terror that was Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Warsaw Ghetto.

At last, the first five chapters of my novel “Greed” are available for download on Kindle. Please go to: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greed-Chapters-One-Five-ebook/dp/B00D8G49ZA Just £2 gets you into the characters before you really take a plunge into the dark and murky world of international cocaine smuggling. Riddled with sexual intrigue and the kind of graphic violence that is engendered by excess and the desire for more…

Life is all about perception and perception is everything. This book revolves primarily around the lives of an extended Essex family. Extended to include work colleagues, members of the ‘gang’ and others. Extended to include friends, both male and female. Aah! Friends. True friends, false friends, old friends, new friends, if there are such things. You may quickly realise that the prima famiglia, the Bolds, are criminals. Propaaah villuns! And you would be right. Criminals, bank managers, doctors, accountants, even solicitors. Hold on, you say, what have criminals to do with bankie, the doc, the bean counter and the lowest of the low? Everything! For there is seldom such a thing as a ‘criminal’. Congratulations, Mrs Scumbag, it’s a criminal and will carry on the family traditions for year upon year of happy blagging! No, I don’t think so. Dean Bold, for example, our anti-hero, is the owner of a haulage company. He lives with his wife and family in Canvey Island, as do lots of other people. He has a mortgage, school fees to pay and drives a car. Well, three cars to be precise. His wife, Gina, owns a beauty salon. Through which he launders a little money. Not much, but some. For most of Dean Anthony Bold’s life, he just does stuff. Goes to the pub, goes to work, goes home. Scenes move from Canvey Island to the Costa Blanca, to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in north Africa, to Venezuela and the home of one of South America’s wealthiest and most ruthless cocaine barons. Links are maintained by a semi-feral Spanish heiress whose hunger for excitement and wealth is matched only by her sexual appetite. There are links to the IRA and several other branches of international crime.
This book contains episodes of what Dean does. He laughs, he cries, he loves, he drives, he snorts coke, he beats people half to death, he makes millions, he goes to bed. He sleeps, eats, breathes, farts, walks and wanks. Just like everyone else.
We are all dirtbags. Some of us are bigger dirtbags than others.
But we ALL shop at Tescos.
And we all die.

Greed Synopsis Submission