Played for a Chump

Posted on | September 3, 2018 | Comments Off on Played for a Chump

Life is a team sport, and teamwork requires loyalty. You’re never going to win if your teammates aren’t committed enough to put aside their selfish interests and focus on achieving victory for the team. Often, the worst things that happen to people are not caused by the malice of their enemies, but rather because they are betrayed by disloyal “friends.” This is why conservatives so loathed “Every Liberal’s Favorite Republican,” whose vanity and ambition made him an untrustworthy teammate.

You could ask Maxim Anokhin about the pain of betrayal:

A Russian man has sued an IVF clinic after his wife admitted that she had swapped his sperm for her lover’s during treatment.
Maxim Anokhin only found that his one-year-old son was not his biological child when their relationship turned sour and his wife admitted to the swap.
Yana Anokhina, 38, had reportedly told the clinic she wanted the man she loved to be the father, but had let her husband pay for the treatment and kept him in the dark for the child’s first year.
Mr Anokhin successfully sued the Moscow clinic which allowed the swap and was awarded £4,600 in compensation for his moral and financial damages.
‘I trusted my wife,’ he said. ‘I believed her and trusted her, 100 per cent.’ . . .
The court found that he had paid for the IVF treatment and had provided his sperm believing that he would be the father of the baby.
Ms Anokhina has not spoken about the swap but reports say she wanted the father of her baby to be the man she loved — not her husband.
But for a year Mr Anokhin believed the child to be his and ‘loved and supported’ the boy, called Timofey.
Later the couple split and are now both in new relationships, the court was told. Mr Anokhin said his wife revealed the truth to him when they broke up. . . .
‘Allegedly, she wanted to give birth to a child by a man with whom she was in love, and her husband was the one who paid the costs.’
DNA tests proved that Mr Anokhin was not the father prompting him to sue Kulakov Medical Centre which provided the IVF treatment.

This kind of selfish and dishonest behavior by women is what inspires misogyny, in the same way that male misbehavior inspires feminism.

It was Rational Male author Rollo Tomassi who called my attention to this story, and he’s interpreting it through the Alpha-male/Beta-male discourse of evolutionary psychology that is lingua franca of the Red Pill “manosphere.” As much as I dislike this framework of discussing sexual behavior, a case like this is evidence that cannot easily be ignored. While the circumstances in this Russian cases are unusual, it reflects a known pattern of behavior by unscrupulous women, who will take shameless advantage of so-called “Beta males,” exploiting them financially while betraying them in pursuit of more desirable “Alpha males.”

Why do men put themselves at the mercy of such women? Desperation and naïvete, mainly, and an appetite for flattery. To quote Johnny Rivers, “A pretty face can hide an evil mind,” but some men simply can’t get past the superficial level to assess a woman’s character objectively. If a man has a good income and is willing to spend it on a woman without considering the value-added terms of the deal, he puts himself at risk of becoming the kind of sucker who never deserves an even break.

Sometimes, it helps to remind ourselves why Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy. The “star-crossed lovers” pursued love without the counsel and approval of their elders. A young person’s idea of “love” is typically a bundle of nonsense, assembled from novels, pop music, TV shows and movies, and many parents have forfeited their rightful role as tutors and supervisors of their offspring in the courtship process. Too often, parents embrace a sort of fatalistic attitude toward their children’s dating lives, assuming that there is nothing they can do to prevent their offspring from suffering broken hearts (or inflicting them, as the case may be).

Grant that sometimes kids will rebel and run wild, but in most cases, young people desire to please their parents and make them proud, in terms of their choice of mates. Therefore, responsible parents should not hesitate to voice their own preferences, both general and specific, about who their children date. “Stay away from weirdos” is the kind of general advice I’ve offered my kids. The so-called “alternative” look (bizarre hairstyles, piercings, etc.) may just be harmless fashion trends, but on the other hand, there’s Chanty Binx. Could you imagine the parental mortification if their son hooked up with that aposematic SJW?

In an Age of Decadence, the availability of “safe” choices is decreasing, and finding a sane, normal partner can be difficult for young people in a society full of broken minds and damaged personalities. God forbid any of my children should ever make themselves such a fool as Maxim Anokhin has done. His was an avoidable error; certainly, once he discovered how his ex-wife had cuckolded him, Anokhin must have gone through his memory and recognized the warning signs. There is seldom such a case where any fool goes roaring toward disaster without ignoring the obvious flashing yellow lights and clanging bells.

“Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

Category: Sex Trouble

Fake News, Real Hate

Posted on | September 2, 2018 | Comments Off on Fake News, Real Hate

When President Trump attacks the liberal media as “fake news,” this is treated by the media as a threat to freedom of the press. However, it is the press itself which, by its deliberately one-sided partisan approach to news, is destroying its own credibility. The transparent biases of the media — e.g., CNN’s role as the “Clinton News Network” in 2016 — are not merely harmful to their own journalistic integrity; they are a threat to democracy itself. “Fake news” is bad for America.

Consider the case of a Washington Post article about efforts by U.S. immigration officials to prevent illegal entry into the country by those using fraudulent documents. This article by Kevin Sieff claims that “U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies.” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert denounced the Post article as “dishonest,” and declared: “This is an irresponsible attempt to create division and stoke fear among American citizens while attempting to inflame tensions over immigration.”

The central claim of Sieff’s article — that there is a “surging” number of people being denied U.S. passports as part of a Trump administration “crackdown” — is false. According to State Department figures, the approval rate for passport applications involving disputed birth certificates has actually increased, from 64.1% in 2014 to 74.2% so far in 2018. Obviously, passport denials cannot be “surging,” if the approval rate is increasing; Seiff’s article is therefore “fake news” — partisan propaganda, an anti-Trump hit job disguised as journalism.

Sieff constructed a textbook example of fraudulent “reporting.” For example, he treats as authoritative the claims of two immigration lawyers in Texas, one of whom says that cases of denied passports are “skyrocketing,” and another who asserts that he is aware of “probably 20 people” who are U.S. citizens that have been sent to “detention centers” by the Trump administration. These anecdotal claims were accepted as fact by Sieff, who nevertheless was unable to identify even one such case by name, so it is impossible to verify if any such cases actually exist.

What is the truth? State Department spokeswoman Nauert explained:

For decades, some midwives and physicians along the Mexico-U.S. border provided United States birth certificates to babies actually born in Mexico. Many questions related to fraudulent birth certificates . . . were documented during the 2009 proceedings of Castelano v. Clinton, in which midwives admitted to issuing fraudulent birth documents.
Midwives falsely reporting births in exchange for compensation is an old problem that is not unique to the Trump administration. In fact, thie administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama denied passports in these cases as a result.

As evidence, Nauert was able to cite the trustworthy journalism of (wait for it) the Washington Post, which in September 2008 reported:

The federal government won convictions against dozens of South Texas midwives from 1967 through 1997 for fraudulently registering births that they did not deliver, a U.S. official said, with most convictions coming after 1980.
An INS list last updated in October 2002 identifies at least 65 midwives who have been convicted of fraud since the 1960s. U.S. officials previously said cases in the 1990s uncovered forgeries for about 15,000 people born in Mexico.

So the fake birth certificate problem dates back at least to the 1960s, and this issue was covered by the Post a decade ago. Yet somehow, in 2018, editors at the Post apparently didn’t bother to check their own archives, nor did they give the State Department adequate opportunity to respond to the “reporting” of Seiff, who constructed a bogus tale of “surging” passport denials, based on anecdotes by immigration lawyers.

The legal case mentioned by Nauert involved a class-action lawsuit against the federal government when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, which is why it was called Castelano v. Clinton. (Read the final 2009 settlement here.) The fact is that there were many thousands of people who were born in Mexico, but their parents bribed midwives and doctors in Texas to provide these Mexican babies with phony U.S. birth certificates. Obviously, most of these fake birth certificate cases would have been steadily weeded out over the years, so that common sense tells us that such cases cannot be suddenly “surging” in 2018. Yet facts and common sense play no part in the kind of “journalism” now produced by the anti-Trump “fake news” industry, which will resort to any means necessary to manufacture libels against the President.

The phony Post story quickly ricocheted around the Internet. It was promoted on Twitter by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes and, in turn, this prompted a threat by Arizona Democrat Rep. Reuben Gallegos:

If you are a US government official and you are deporting Americans be warned. When the worm turns you will not be safe because you were just following orders. You do not have to take part in illegal acts ordered by this President’s administration.

This is startling: Federal officials being threatened with some kind of reprisal by a member of Congress who has been led to believe, by a misleading story from the “fake news” media, that “this President’s administration” is engaged in deporting American citizens. Officials who are “following orders” in the Trump administration “will not be safe,” according to Gallegos, because they are engaged in “illegal acts.”

The dishonest “journalism” of the Washington Post has thereby yielded exactly what it was intended to produce: Hatred.

What will be consequences for America if, for the purposes of partisan politics, journalists continue producing this kind of hate propaganda, false stories intended to incite hatred of Republicans?

No honest person can blame Trump or his supporters for this sad state of affairs. In 2016, the liberal media went “all-in” betting on Hillary Clinton to win the White House and, when 63 million voters answered, “Hell, no,” this led the media to double-down on their lost wager. Having failed to prevent Trump’s election, now the “fake news” media are seeking to sabotage his presidency, which they regard as illegitimate.

Nothing good can come of this, either for the media or for the Democrats, and “fake news” is a danger to America as a nation. We shall become divided against each other, with those who believe the media’s lies on one side, and those who defend the truth on the other side.

“Truth is great and will prevail.” Never doubt it.

(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)

Category: Immigration, Media Bias

FMJRA 2.0: Synthwave & The End of Summer

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: Mariya Takeuchi
Animal Magnetism
Ninety Miles From Tyranny
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive
EBL

A Fake Jew in the Identity-Politics Age
EBL

Fake Hate (Because It’s an Election Year)
EBL

RIP, Senator John McCain
A View From The Beach
EBL

Trey Gowdy Is Well Worth Your Time
EBL

Every Liberal’s Favorite Republican, and the Problem With ‘Bipartisan Reform’
EBL

FMJRA 2.0: Day Late & A Dollar Short
A View From The Beach
EBL

Fake Jew Update: SJW Julia Salazar Accuses Truth-Tellers of Racism
EBL

Crazy People Are Dangerous: Transgender Activist and ‘Her’ Pedophile Dad
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.27.18
Proof Positive

Support Higher Education (UPDATE)
EBL

Russia! Russia! Russia!
A View From The Beach

In The Mailbox: 08.28.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

Paul Gottfried vs. Neocon Mythology
EBL

Paging Captain Obvious
Adam Piggott
A View From The Beach
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.29.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

The Subjectivity of ‘Harassment’
Adam Piggott
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.30.18
A View From The Beach
Proof Positive

The Back To School Labor Day Book Post
EBL

The Church of Fear: Desperate Democrats Have Become the Prophets of Doom
EBL

In The Mailbox: 08.31.18
357 Magnum
Proof Positive
EBL

Bonus Black Hole Book Post (It Has Rivets)
EBL

Bad Gamblers and Bisexuality

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | 2 Comments

Have you ever heard of the TV show Brooklyn Nine-Nine? It’s a comedy. Anyway, this was the news in People magazine last October:

Wedding bells will be ringing soon for Stephanie Beatriz — the Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress got engaged to Brad Hoss over the weekend.
“Brad and I hosted our first party together this weekend: his friends, my friends and my sister all came,” the actress, 36, tells PEOPLE exclusively about the surprise proposal. “During the party, Brad pulled me aside. I’m thinking he’s going to tell me how great the party is going, that we make a great team … the usual lovely supportive thoughts he shares with me and really everyone who knows him.”
However, Hoss’s words were a bit sweeter than usual.
“He starts to pull something out of his pocket. My initial thoughts as a member of Bachelor nation is, ‘Oh my goodness, is this the moment where he asks me to marry him in front of a bunch of people?’”
Indeed, Hoss popped the question, and “the words were barely out of his mouth” before Beatriz said ‘yes,’” she adds. “I then started laughing … a lot!”

What would you estimate the odds of success of this marriage to be? Well, how about if I informed you of some more recent news?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Stephanie Beatriz, who plays Rosa Diaz on the show, says she’s “still bi”, even if she’s marrying a man.
She’s written about her experience of not feeling “gay enough”, feeling like an “outsider” and having her sexuality “misjudged”, in an article for GQ.
“In October, I will marry a heterosexual man… but I’ll be bi till the day I die,” she says. . . .
Stephanie describes her frustrations with having her sexuality defined by “who we’re partnered with at any given moment,” but says she wants to speak publicly about her experience.
“I’ve chosen to use that platform to speak openly about my bi-ness, because of other people who may feel invisible and unsure of whether or not to come out as bisexual.” . . .
Expanding on her experience in the essay, Stephanie says it “feels good to be out”, even though “it’s still scary sometimes”.
“I feel like an outsider so often. But those moments of discomfort are worth it.
“Living authentically gives me so much joy and feels so honest and good.”

Well, good luck with that. Because here’s an obvious question: How gay do you have to be before you feel compelled to come out as “bisexual”?

That is to say, if Ms. Beatriz just had a youthful fling or a mere speculative interest in homosexual behavior — a matter she perhaps considered, hypothetically, and didn’t feel she could rule it out — would she feel an urge to declare herself “bi till the day I die”? Doesn’t such a declaration imply a house divided against itself, that her husband-to-be cannot presume she is wholly satisfied with his companionship?

When I was young, this would not have occurred to me. The recent boom in “bisexual” identification, especially among young women, is unprecedented, and its potential consequences are unknown. According to the CDC, 7.8% (about 1-in-13) of U.S. women ages 18-24 identify as bisexual, whereas only 1.8% (about 1-in-55) identify as lesbian. By contrast, among males 18-24, more identify as homosexual (2.8%) than bisexual (2.5%). Overall, young men are more likely to identify as strictly heterosexual (94%) compared to women (89.5%), but that differential is explained entirely by the larger percentage of bisexual women.

Or, I should say, “bisexual” women? This term has become so elastic it could be claimed by almost anyone, and one suspects that many young women identifying as “bisexual” are probably more interested in making a political statement of their support for gay rights than they are in actually engaging in homosexual relationships. Because that’s the thing, see? When a celebrity like Stephanie Beatriz comes out as “bisexual,” despite her intent to marry a man, we must ask, “How gay is she?”

Shouldn’t we presume her interest in homosexual behavior is rather obsessive and persistent for her to say she is “bi till the day I die”? And if this is the case, doesn’t it suggest that she is unlikely to find happiness with her husband-to-be? Isn’t her marriage likely to end in divorce?

Perhaps my own knowledge in this regard is obsolete. It’s been nearly 30 years since I married; my observations and experiences of the dating scene from more than three decades ago might not be very useful in judging behavior in the post-Lewinsky/post-Obergefell era. However, I think that if I were a young bachelor now, I’d make a point of avoiding women who gave any hint of harboring a “bisexual” tendency.

Like, you’re a college boy and you meet a girl on campus and she’s got a lot of “friends” who play varsity softball? Don’t waste your time. Or you’re at a keg party and start talking to a girl with facial piercings, then she tells you she’s a Gender Studies major? Skip it, pal.

Consider the fate of celebrity guys who married bisexual women. Angelina Jolie wrecked Brad Pitt’s life, and Johnny Depp was riding high until he made the mistake of marrying Amber Heard. It doesn’t matter who you blame for those Hollywood divorces; the point is that there is a negative correlation between bisexuality and marital permanence. The odds are clearly against long-term success, and if Stephanie Beatriz’s fiancé thinks he can beat those odds, well, good luck with that.

How many previous lesbian lovers has Stephanie Beatriz had? If her attraction to women is so persistent that she’s “bi till the day I die,” why didn’t she end up with a woman? Shouldn’t we suspect that Brad Hoss is marrying a woman so crazy that no lesbian wanted her? Like, the only woman he can get is one from the “Rejected by Lesbians” pile?

It’s like a bad gambler, shoving all-in on a pair of threes.

On the other hand, he’s 36 and bald, and his acting career hasn’t been very successful. If you’re an unsuccessful actor in Hollywood, probably you don’t have a lot of options, but I can’t imagine that being a desperate bald guy improves the odds of your marriage succeeding.

Category: Gays

Speedway Bomber: 40th Anniversary of Brett Kimberlin’s Notorious Crimes

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | Comments Off on Speedway Bomber: 40th Anniversary of Brett Kimberlin’s Notorious Crimes

‘Speedway Bomber’ Brett Kimberlin was sentenced to 50 years in 1981

My podcast colleague John Hoge reminds me that this weekend marks the 40th anniversary of the Indiana crime spree that made Brett Kimberlin notorious. Two videos from WRTV:

The summary of Kimberlin’s crimes:

A six-day bombing spree rocked the town of Speedway, Indiana in September 1978. The bombings began the evening of Sept. 1 and did not end until Sept. 6.
A total of eight bombs exploded. Two people were seriously injured in the final bombing.
The first explosions rocked three different locations in Speedway on Sept. 1. The bombs hidden inside of trashcans caused damage, but nobody was seriously injured. One witness said the explosion, “…moved me back about a foot and it felt like I guess like you were shelled like a bomb just went off.”
The bombings continued into the next week.
The tactics of the Speedway Bomber escalated on Sept. 5 when a parked Speedway Police cruiser was targeted. Again, nobody was injured in the bombing, but that would soon change.
On Sept. 6, 1978, an abandoned gym bag blew up in the parking lot of Speedway High School. Multiple people were injured, including Carl DeLong. DeLong’s injuries were so severe that doctors had to amputate his right leg.
Authorities soon offered a $2,500 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for the eight explosions.
Later that month, a former Broad Ripple ‘Businessman of the Year’ named Brett Kimberlin was arrested on unrelated charges. Police executed a search warrant but did not immediately charge Kimberlin in the Speedway bombings.
Kimberlin was eventually charged in the bombings and went to trial in 1981. He was convicted by a jury of 12 and sentenced to 50 years in prison.
Kimberlin was released after serving 15 years. He continues to deny any involvement in the Speedway bombings.

Never mind that Kimberlin was also a major drug trafficker, and let’s not even mention that little girl, Debbie Barton, who was called “Jessica” in Mark Singer’s 1996 biography of Kimberlin, Citizen K:

From the beginning of his friendship with Sandi [Barton], Kimberlin said, her younger daughter developed an attachment to him. Sandi would come to Eagle Creek, to tend his horses and ride her own; Jessica would tag along, and “she used to hang on me, she didn’t want to let me go.” Jessica was ten years old and Kimberlin was twenty. . . .
For three consecutive summers, 1974 through 1976, they took vacations of a week or longer in Disney World, Mexico, and Hawaii. Sandi couldn’t get time off from work, so on these summer trips it was just the two of them — Brett and Jessica.
Eyebrows levitated. A drug-dealing colleague had memories of conversations with Kimberlin that struck him as odd: “We’d see a girl, who was pubescent or prepubescent, and Brett would get this smile and say, ‘Hey, what do you think? Isn’t she great?’ It made me very uncomfortable.” Another recalled Kimberlin introducing Jessica as “my girlfriend,” and if irony was intended, it was too subtle to register. To a coworker . . . Sandi confided that Kimberlin was “grooming Jessica to be his wife.” . . .

Just coincidentally, the girl’s grandmother was the victim of an unsolved murder, and when police began investigating, the bombings started.

“Sue Me Again, You Evil Liar.”

Category: Crime, The Kimberlin Files

Chicago’s Zulu War: ‘The Cops Have Told Us They Aren’t Gonna Touch Them’

Posted on | September 1, 2018 | 3 Comments

A startling reality of life in Chicago is that gangs of black teenagers roam the streets randomly assaulting white people:

Chicago police today confirmed final charges filed against ten juveniles following two hours of chaos in Wrigleyville on Wednesday evening.
“It’s been a problem all summer,” a Clark Street merchant said this morning. “They’re kids. The cops have told us they aren’t gonna touch them. We can’t touch them. What can we do?” . . .
The mayhem began around 4:20 p.m. when six teens shoved boxes of candy into backpacks and ran from Walgreens, 3646 North Broadway, according to police. The boys then began selling the candy in outside of Wrigley Field as Wednesday’s afternoon game wrapped up, according to witnesses and social media video.
But the spree took a serious turn one hour later when 911 callers reported that “10 to 15 children” were surrounding and battering people in the 3500 block of North Clark Street around 5:35 p.m., police said.
One man was beaten up outside the Cubby Bear, 1060 West Addison. Police on the scene summoned an ambulance for the victim who was bleeding from his ear. Another victim was attacked by the group near Irish Oak, 3511 North Clark Street.
Around the same time, the mob stole merchandise from a smoke shop in the 3400 block of North Clark Street, according to police.
Police said a 35-year-old man who dialed 911 while following the group was threatened with physical harm by the youths. He backed off when confronted, but pressed assault charges after the teens were in custody.

These attacks took place near Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs baseball team. Click here to see videos showing some of the gang violence. In the first video, a teenager sucker-punches a woman outside a restaurant. You see that there are several muscular men — “door staff,” i.e., bouncers — outside the restaurant, as apparently this kind of security is necessary for the safety of restaurant patrons in the neighborhood. It reminded me of the British fighting off Zulus at Rourke’s Drift.

This is far from a rare occurrence in the city. The Chicago Sun-Times has spoken of “the annual summer wilding problem.” Evidently, these random attacks on white people by swarms of black teenagers happen routinely, and a Chicago police officer says department policy prohibits them from taking effective preventive measures: “All we’re allowed to do now is ‘herd’ them toward [Chicago Transit Authority] stations.”

WBBM-TV reports: “Nearby store owners and workers, who refused to talk on camera, said this type of violence is more common than people realize, adding some groups see the traffic [around] a Cubs game, not as a gathering for baseball, but as an opportunity to rob and victimize others.”

Thomas Lifson observed earlier this year at American Thinker: “A ‘good’ neighborhood is no guarantee of safety anymore in Chicago. The breakdown of civil order, in other words, is well underway in the Windy City. Bit by bit, civilization is slipping away in Chicago.” As Labor Day weekend brings summer to a close, Chicago has experienced nearly 200 homicides since Memorial Day weekend, plus more than 900 wounded, with the city’s total homicides for the year nearing 400.

Category: Chicago, Crime, Racism

Bonus Black Hole Book Post (It Has Rivets)

Posted on | August 31, 2018 | Comments Off on Bonus Black Hole Book Post (It Has Rivets)

— by Wombat-socho

Oh, the embarrassment. An author sends me a review copy of his most excellent hard-SF technothriller, and I completely forget to do the review in yesterday’s book post. Well, I promised him a review before the end of the month, which is now here, so you get a bonus book post!

Michael Rothman’s Primordial Threat is a great combination of hard SF (the kind, as we used to say in the glory days of Astounding/Analog, that had rivets) and modern technothriller – much of the plot revolves around a missing scientist who may have the solution to the deadly threat of a black hole approaching Earth. Rothman has a solid grip on both the science and the bureaucratic machinations within the government that are almost as big a threat as the oncoming hole. Definitely recommended.

Also, I erred yesterday when I wrote that Karl Gallagher’s Torchship Trilogy was also a Prometheus Award winner; it was nominated, but did not win. Buy it anyway.

Other books I’ve been re-reading recently: S.M. Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers, a tale of derring-do set in an alternate Earth where a comet strike in the Northern Hemisphere has effectively destroyed Western Civilization, except for the French in North Africa and the British, who evacuated their best and brightest to India, which has become the seat of the Angrezi Raj. Someone is trying to kill cavalry officer Athelstane King and his academically-inclined sister – but why? It’s up to King, his Sikh sergeant, and an Afghan bandit chief to find out, but can they defeat a Russian agent who can see the future? A lot of people consider this one of Stirling’s best novels, and it’s very much worth your time and money.

Also, Keith Laumer’s The Long Twilight (repackaged by Baen with Night Of Delusions and some other short pieces) which is the tale of a pair of starship captains, Grallgrathor and Lokrien, marooned on Earth in the 10th century and engaged ever since in a vendetta stemming from Lokrien’s murder of Grallgrathor’s Norse family…a vendetta that changes human history. Now, an experimental broadcast power station draws both men to it as it goes out of control and causes a mid-ocean typhoon, and the truth of the murders comes out at last – but has the truth come too late to save the Earth? There are some interesting subtexts in the book regarding AIs, humans born in synthetic wombs and taught by those AIs, and (a recurring Laumer theme) the true nature of reality. I’ve substituted the cover from the Ace edition because, frankly, the Baen cover is terrible.