Richard V. Rupp

September 11, 2021

Good Saturday morning. I'm author Richard V. Rupp, writing from Burbank, California. Welcome to Rupp's Notes/FBI Special Agent Hartman Series posts.

 

Yep. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have confirmed what many people felt and saw: California - along with Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah - reported their hottest summer on record. I thought so, and my electric bill supports this report. I will be glad when this summer is over.

 

This is the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. It's appropriate on this date to tell you about a frequent source of information for me, which you may be interested in tapping into. It's the COMBATING TERRORISM CENTER at West Point.

 

The CTC issues a monthly publication titled the CTC SENTINEL that keeps you up to date on terrorist activities. This publication leverages the Center's global network of scholars and practitioners to understand and confront contemporary threats posed by terrorism and other forms of political violence. It is available free of charge at www.ctc.usma.edu.

 

Here's the intro to the current issue –

 

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It has been 20 years since 9/11. In the wake of the attacks, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point (CTC) was established to provide cadets and policymakers with best-in-class research so that they could better understand and confront the threat. With the Taliban returning to power in Afghanistan, with Africa emerging as the new epicenter of global jihadi terror, and with it likely becoming more difficult for the intelligence community to track threats in jihadi conflict zones from which the United States has withdrawn militarily, objective and rigorous open-source research is more critical than ever.

 

To mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11, this special issue of CTC Sentinel, supported by the Recrudescence Project, features interviews with five former officials who have made immense contributions to the counterterrorism enterprise: former Acting Director of the CIA Michael Morell, former CENTCOM Commander Joseph Votel, former State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism Dell Dailey, former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan, and former Chief of the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Sir Alex Younger. Their reflections on 9/11 and their lessons learned across key parts of the counterterrorism spectrum—intelligence; military; diplomacy; law enforcement—and across the Atlantic are essential reading. Video highlights of several of the interviews are available on the CTC website.

 

The special issue also features five articles by leading scholars on the evolving global terror threat landscape. Asfandyar Mir focuses on Afghanistan. Charles Lister examines Syria. Tricia Bacon and Jason Warner look at Africa. Elisabeth Kendall surveys Yemen and Saudi Arabia. And Colin Clarke evaluates the future of the global jihadi movement.

 

On this anniversary, our deepest sympathies are with those who have lost loved ones to terrorism. Responding to this threat, as General Votel puts it, has been a noble undertaking. We deeply appreciate those who have served. Their sacrifices have saved countless lives.

 

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I highly recommend that you check out the CTC SENTINEL.

 

It appears to me that some people have a death wish. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced results from a study Friday that found unvaccinated individuals were 11 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than fully vaccinated people. Please, people, get vaccinated.

 

In recent posts, I have suggested my gut tells me high inflation is on the way. Here's what a just-released BROOKINGS INSTITUTE paper on economic activity indicates – "Inflation is going to be quite high in 2021." On this same subject, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged Congress Thursday to quickly raise the U.S. debt limit. She warned that the economy could be severely damaged if lawmakers let the federal government run out of money. With that in mind, here are the five major causes of inflation - federal governments deficit spending, excessive demand, rising input costs, unexpected increase in the cost of non-labor inputs, and excessive monetary growth. Just think about each one, and what conclusion do you arrive at?

 

I only include this to indicate what a writer goes through. My conundrum. I'm well into my manuscript for SKYWARD, and the story timeline makes no sense. I discovered this when I started adding dates to the story. To me, millennials are youngsters. Wrong. In redoing my timeline, I found millennials are too old. They don't fit the dates I'm using. Not sure what I was thinking? Maybe time is moving faster than I thought. Or, I'm not used to writing SciFi. Or, I've been writing this manuscript for so long two more generations have come about. For those of you who have been following the development of SKYWARD, here's the corrected timeline (at least for the moment) –

 

2009 – Jordon Bowman and Daniela are married.

2010 – Norman and Chris Borman (The Twins) are born.

2015 – Homeschool starts for The Twins and Gavin, Elon, and Jeff (The Clique)

2020 -  Jordon dies

2024 – The Clique goes to St. Marks Prep School to learn how to work with normal people

2027 – The Clique start college

2031 – College Graduation and planning starts for the Bowman Colony

2033 – Bowman Space Colony Begins

 

So my Twins and their friends moved from Millennials to Generation Z. I'm currently learning about Generation Z. Apparently, "Zoomer" is an informal term used to refer to members of Generation Z, often in an ironic, humorous, or mocking tone. Fortunately, most of my writing about the Clique and what they do seems to still work. The trials and tribulations of a writer.

 

Cheers,

 

Richard V. Rupp, Author

Website – www.richardvrupp.com

Email – rupprisk@gmail.com

Copyright©2021 by Richard V. Rupp