Showing 1 - 10 of 14
Isis thwarted
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 26/12/2019
» Until the 20th century, jihadists had no bones to pick with the US. Their ire was directed at the UK and France who coveted their lands, and the Jews trying to carve out their own. They got good press when T.E. Lawrence led the Arabs against the enemy Ottoman Turks. The silent film The Sheik romanticised them. The Riffs were favoured in their uprising against Spain. They didn't participate in the North African campaign in World War II.
Friends and enemies
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 22/11/2019
» People have friends and enemies -- fair-weather and true friends, run-of-the-mill and mortal enemies. It takes an emergency to sort them out.
Déjà vu
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 24/10/2019
» It wasn't until the second chapter -- what took me so long? -- that I realised I'd reviewed The Root Of Evil before, though it has a 2018 copyright.
Quantum thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 02/02/2018
» The upside of the digital age is our ability to contact one another in moments. The downside is our lack of privacy. The powers that be intercept and record our conversations and messages. Our thoughts and expressed feelings are common knowledge to authorities determining whether we are security risks.
A crisis of faith
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 21/04/2017
» While martyrdom indicates the intensity of belief in, not the truth of, a religion, religious wars have been bloody throughout human history. Though not regarded as a war of religion, six million Jews died in the Nazi Holocaust. Christianity in general, Catholics in particular, experienced persecution for centuries.
Combating the beasts
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 24/03/2017
» The world is a jungle and its beasts -- humans and animal -- are out to get us. Can the forces, sworn to protect and defend us, keep them at bay? It's touch and go. The basic task is not to catch them after they've struck, but to prevent them from striking.
Wealth of interviews
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 08/02/2016
» Interviewing was one of my functions back in the day. Rather than the top I focused on those lower on the totem-pole, accepting the common belief that everybody has a story to tell. The column appeared weekly. We didn't meet over a drink or during a meal. (I had no expense account.)
Way too much
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 11/01/2016
» Born and bred in the Big Apple, I was raised believing -- it was in my mother's milk -- that New York is the centre of the universe. It has Times Square and Central Park, Broadway and Wall Street, the United Nations and the Empire State Building, Coney Island and two rivers, Greenwich Village and Nathan's hot dogs.
Depressing psychological thriller
Life, Bernard Trink, Published on 10/02/2014
» Over Christmas, this reviewer received a number of books of a kind-boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. And conversely girl meets boy, girl loses boy, girl gets boy. In both, they end up married and live happily ever after, which is the formula for literary love stories apart from Shakespeare's Romeo And Juliet in which the lovers commit suicide.