Showing 1 - 9 of 9
Barbed humour
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 25/10/2018
» It was as a soldier boy in President Truman's "Police Action" that I first visited Asia -- South Korea and Japan.
Big city, small town
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 11/05/2018
» People are natural actors. Observe how they tell stories to their friends, passing on telephone conversations or what they saw or heard. They mimic and flap their arms for emphasis. Hoping for smiles or groans. Novelists aim to do the same with more words. Alas, only the better ones succeed. All too many try and fail.
One of a kind
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/11/2017
» In the US, and many other lands, justice is in the hands of the police and the courts. The citizenry must abide by their decision. But this overlooks the fact that vengeance is a human instinct.
Open season on IS
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 27/04/2017
» Though the president of the United States is a character in more than a few novels, he is a product of the authors' imaginations and bears little if any resemblance to the actual incumbents. In some stories he's idealised, in others vilified.
The actual arch-enemy
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 03/02/2017
» For several years after the start of the Counter Crusades -- the Middle East's invasion of Europe -- it was unhealthy for the European media to say or write anything that was negative to the Holy Book. Its extremist adherents attacked the source and blood flowed. Fleeing the scene, no suicide bombers they, so-called Islamic State proudly boasted of the murders.
The Cold War: Phase 2
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 18/04/2016
» The implosion of the Soviet empire was greeted with a sigh of relief in democracies by all but the cloak-and-dagger novelists. Who would replace the Soviet Union as the common enemy? To be sure, terrorists are sinister, but they lack the cohesiveness that was a mark of the KGB.
Show me the motive
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 24/08/2015
» Motives for acts of violence range from crimes of passion to drive-by shootings -- that is from defending family honour to reducing the food chain indiscriminately. They aren't justifiable under law and are equally penalised. There are a myriad of motives, often the perpetrator unable to explain what made him or her do it ("maybe I drank too much").
Here we go again
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 04/08/2014
» Mark Twain said that anybody could be president of the US, then quipped that anybody is. Sarcastic, but not untrue. In its less than two-and-a-half-century history, the US has had few chief executives worthy of the position. However, according to the democratic process, no matter how corrupt and/or incompetent, they are voted in and have to be voted out.
Not a farce?
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 01/07/2013
» Foaled in the Big Apple during the Great Depression, my earliest memories were of my father's ambition for me to be a doctor. Second best, a lawyer. The thing was that hospital smells turned my stomach. And I know my limitations. No Clarence Darrow, I.