Like many people in this country I have watched the news
coming from the new White House Administration with deep concern – as the
intent of President Donald Trump becomes clearer in the Executive Actions he
has taken along with appointments to key positions in his Cabinet. I have added my voice to numerous petitions
both group and self-initiated and participated in three peaceful protests in
the Louisville area.
Much of my interest in current events stems from my long
career as a teac her of government, history and English in public schools all
over the country. My initial book “The Peacemaker” is a generational saga that
tells the “true” story of American history in fictional form. This book tells
the stories of disenfranchised members of American society from the days the
Western European “invaders” came to North America to establish freedom for only
one small group of people – the white Anglo-Saxon male. When I decided to write a sequel to this
story, the natural movement was to find the connection between what happened to
the indigenous people of North America and take it to a global level of
American imperialism that began after the completion of Manifest Destiny.
Manifest Destiny was the cry of the American industrialists
who supported all the land grabs of the 18th and 19th
Century that enabled them to take control of all the land and mineral resources
from “sea to shining sea” by virtually destroying all the indigenous cultures
that stood in their way. And there was a lot of cooperation from members of the
press whose desire to sell newspapers rather than report the news led to the
establishment of yellow journalism as the way of informing the public.
In the late 19th
and 20th Centuries the American war machine turned its interests to
third world countries and the wealth that existed there for the voracious needs
of American factories and consumers to build the American Dream or a “chicken
in every (American) pot.” At the dawn of
the 20th Century the vast oil reserves in the Middle East became the
object of interest among all the newly established nations of Europe as well as
the United States. Enter World War I, World War II, the Cold War, the Persian
Gulf War, the Iraqi War and Afghanistan. “The Peacemaker” ended on September 11, 2001
and it took 10 years for me to find the way to connect the events of September
11, 2001 with something that was happening on the global level to bring
everything full circle. The acquaintances and events in my life in Florence,
Oregon during those ten years finally led me to the setting and connections in my
current book “New Pangaea – An Evolution into the Fifth World.”
In 2011 I was commissioned by a female doctor living in Seal
Beach, California to ghost write a book for her about her experiences growing
up as an entitled female in the Middle East and Pakistan and the horrific
circumstances that led to her seeking sanctuary in the United States. I was
paid for the writing so the book belongs to her and her husband, but aside from
earning a bit of money, I earned a wealth of information from behind the scenes
of political headlines coming from these countries. At the same time, I
established a close friendship with a woman of the Bahia faith living in
Florence. Through her, I learned the story of a young woman of the same faith
who fled Iran when her best friend named Mona was executed for not swearing
allegiance to the Islamic Faith that became the only faith allowed in Iran
after the Revolution of 1978. I began to read about the Bahia faith and its
founders who were from Persia (Iran) and the atrocities committed against them
for hundreds of years. I found “A Cry from the Heart” by William Sears, http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2316155.A_Cry_from_the_Heart
, most enlightening. The thread of a story began to develop.
I began to read more stories coming from the refugees from
Iran and found that most of the refugees were women because the men unfortunately
fell to a more undesirable treatment. One book was especially enlightening. This is
Daughter of Persia http://www.storydriven.net/work2.htm.
In compiling a profile of the main
character of New Pangaea, I relied on a fictional profile created by studying
the story of the wife of Mark Perry who wrote “A Dress for Mona” https://www.amazon.com/Dress-Mona-Mark-Perry/dp/1931492026
and the story of a journalist who came to the United States after the Iranian
Revolution and settled in New Mexico and who works for NPR (National Public
Radio). The name of the book is “My Name is Iran,” https://www.amazon.com/My-Name-Iran-Davar-Ardalan/dp/0805087273.
The setting emerged as I began to learn about the Hopi Prophecy and the
collaborative work done by members of the Bahia Faith not only with the United
Nations and human rights but in seeing and finding connections to their own
spiritual philosophies that have developed over the centuries. That, combined
with the current indigenous people’s attempts to regain land and water rights
and stop the destruction to the environment from mineral leases and corporate
collusion with the federal government gave the setting and story line of the
book. “New Pangaea – An Evolution into the Fifth World” is now available at http://xlibris.com as well as amazon.com, Barnes
and noble.com and also available in signed print form by going to the contact
Brenda Duffey page at http://angelbandproductions.com.
As someone who has researched the history of Iran and the
true story of American and Western European involvement in Iran, I must now
comment on the restrictions to Iranian immigration the United States in the name
of combating terrorism. Last night, Rachael Maddox revealed a study done by
someone interested in knowing the true reason for the ban on certain immigrants
to the United States in combating terrorism in this country on “The Rachael
Maddox Show.” Ms. Maddox showed a study
done of all the terrorist attacks in the United States conducted from September
11, 2001 through the recent attacks in California and Florida. The study
revealed that not one of the perpetrators of these attacks came from the
countries affected by the ban on immigration.
In addition, my own
research has revealed that the extreme killings and torture that have occurred in
Iran for the most part came first from the radical treatment of the Shah’s
secret police force that was established in concert with the American CIA. It was this treatment that led to the
reinstatement of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the radical mullahs who seized
control after the Revolution of 1978. The refugees that have come to the US
from Iran have come as a result of the aftermath of the 1978 Revolution. To
date, and I am not as current as I need be, I have seen no connection between
the beheadings of Christians pointed to by Donald Trump as the basis for his
concern about terrorism and also the use of torture, and ISIS and Iran. What I
have seen is a man whom I believe is causing much alarm all over the world in
countries such as Iran who now have nuclear weapons walking onto Air Force One
followed by a man with a black box that contains the nuclear codes, and this is
a matter of grave concern to me.
