Ed's Thread

Richard North Patterson continues to show his mastery of the legal thriller in Exile, his latest journey into the world of crime, and the courts of America. In Exile we meet David Wolfe, a Jewish attorney, who while in Harvard law school had an affair with a Palestinian woman from the West Bank. Some 13 years later Hana Arif, the one true love of his life, contacts him again while on a trip with her husband to counter the speeches given by the Israeli prime minister, who is seeking to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians. After a speech in San Francisco two Palestinian suicide bombers assassinate the prime minster and thus this enlightening journey into the morass of the Middle East begins.

During the investigation Hana Arif and her husband become persons of interest and have their passports confiscated by the FBI. She contacts David, a former US Prosecutor with a promising political career ahead of him, to ask that he represent her in this process. This is one of the most important decisions of David's life, because he knows how damaging it could be to his future prospects in politics. Following his heart, and ideals, he agrees to represent her at the meeting between her and the FBI. The meeting takes place on the day of the mourning for the Israeli Prime Minister, which he had planned on attending with his fiance, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor. This begins the tension that leads to the end of that relationship, adding to the stress of representing Hana.

In the course of the investigation the FBI charges Hana with being the handler of the two suicide bombers, due to the testimony of the one who survived. This leads to David appearing in a court case that is followed around the world. It takes him to Israel, the West Bank and deep into the heart of the tension between Israel and the Palestinian. The personal upheaval includes the end of the relationship with his fiance, he loss of friends, and the end of his political hopes. During the course of the pretrial actions there are discoveries that shake David to core of his identity and change his very outlook on life.

In Exile once again Richard North Patterson has given us a grand story, yet somehow he also educates us on one the most misunderstood problems the world faces today. I can only say thank you to him for the mastery with which he handles this wonderful novel and will be waiting impatiently for his next work In this world and all of its tensions we need works like this to broaden our base of understanding, the only true hope for a solution of the problems in the Middle East.

As I have been reintroducing myself to the active side of the web I have found that I want to do more than post to a blog. I want to explore the technologies behind the blogs and other things that I am seeing on the web. So I have started.

This week I established a hosting account at Ifastnet that offers PHP access, a MySQL database and loads of other goodies. I am starting the process of moving the Thread there. This first portion of time is going to be spent exploring the features and learning how to use them. At this point I have only installed WordPress to the site and stated to play with it. As I have been exploring I have started to think I may move my blog to a CMS system instead of just a blog platform. This is a decision that should come this week and will be detailed in future posts. At this time I only have a bare skeleton there and it may change rapidly so right now I am not encouraging visitors but will announce in the near future when the New Ed's Thread becomes available.

I am going to keep this site informed of the process as I go through it and would welcome any input you might have. This will be an ongoing series. I hope you enjoy it and look forward to your participation.

I started using Live Writer in early November and found it to be a useful tool. When Blogger went to Beta with its update I could not post from Live Writer and found that to be very frustrating. The problem was solve by the Live Writer team about a week after I had the problem, but I just discovered it today. If you are having the same type of problem you need to download and install the latest version and then update your blog settings.

As we enter a new year I want to wish you and yours a happy prosperous New year. I would like take time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the new things coming in 2007.

In 2006 we saw a continuing escalation of empire building by the Neocons and the Bush administration. Our economy is failing and our national debt has grown to new heights. We can not even know how far in debt the nation is without an accounting by Congress because the administration has used the shadow budget to fund the war in Iraq. The housing industry which has kept the economy afloat is showing signs of weakening ad the realestate bubble looks like it is going to burst taking the economy with it.

We have seen abuses of power in Iraq and here at home. The execution and trial of Saddam Hussein is just the latest example of the administration run wild in Iraq. Here at home we have wire tapping without court orders, the suspension of habeas corpus in the "War tribunal act", the situation and continuing abuses in Guantanamo Bay as the administration continues to sow panic in our nation to justify their quest for power.

All of this could leave one to wonder what do we have to be optimistic about. I see a few and they can lead to others. The first is the shift of leadership in the congress. Hopefully we no longer have a congress ready to rubber stamp anything the administration wants. we are beginning to see evidence of this already in the letter to the administration requesting that war funding become a part on the annual budget and not be funded by emergency funding measures. We also see the main stream media asking some hard question and beginning to inform us of some of the abuses carried out by this administration. Any time we can bring what is in the shadows into full light we can begin to take back some of the control and rights so ruthlessly stolen from us.

We do have things we need to do to continue this trend. We need to demand the information about war funding, the criminal abuses of the people of Iraq, and so much more. We need to find out what is happening in Afghanistan the supposed seat of the attack on 9/11. We need to demand that congressional oversight be brought back to the budget process so that some control of this nations foreign policy is taken from the administration. We need to see investigations into war profiteering to see how closely the administration is tied to these criminals. e need to continue to bring light into the shadows that this administration and the Neocon so covet . This is the only way to bring some honor and decency back.

Yes we can still be optimistic. It will take effort from all of us as we head towards the next presidential election and continue to recover from the folly of the past. We stand at a threshold and must continue to press forward to come though this with as little lasting damage as possible. But this is something we can and must do.

When I was growing up I was taught that one of the things that we did on Thanksgiving day was to give thanks. Well as I got older I was always thankful for my family, my home, and so on, which continues through this day. This year I want to list my thanks for the technology which fascinates me.

The first computer time I was allowed to play with a computer was in 1975, at the Weyerhaeuser Tech Center in Longview, WA. I was a junior in high school, member of the high school science club, on a tour of the Tech Center where they let us play Star Trek on the Tech Center. In order to interact with the computer we had to use punch cards to input the commands. At the time it was one of the high points of my life.

Well, ten years pass and I finally decide to get serious about college. I attended Southern Oregon State College in Ashland, OR, and my first major was Computer Science. What an eye opening experience. We had gone from a limited computer using punch cards, to a Harris 500 system and the higher level programming languages like FORTRAN, BASIC, COBOL, etc. I felt like a 6 year old at Disney Land with unlimited rides. What a rush. While I was in school we saw the introduction of "C", LISP, and Old and the technological beat went on.

Well, life being life I was unable to complete my degree and it was again ten years later when I became involved  with computers and software development.  The Internet was in it's infancy, the browsers all had the 1.0 suffix and  the technology was exploding like a fission reaction.  I was able to hang on and went to work as an Internet consultant and it was one of the biggest thrills of my life. I have seen the Web go from a hobbyist back corner to one of the cornerstone of our economic life and a great means of communication and research. We are looking at the birth of Web 2 architecture with Blogs, IM, and all of the multimedia presentations. The future can be as exciting as the recent past and we will continue to move forward.

So as you can see the primary career interest I have is more than a way to make a living, but also one of my life long passions. I am so thankful that I live in a time when what I love continues to grow and the innovation continues. So to all of those who have brought us this far a very large Thank You.