Review: The Windsor Secret by David Cullen

When I bought The Windsor Secret I was looking for answers, mistaking it for fact. Make no mistake about it, David Cullen has penned a book that he calls faction, and there is a lot of fact contained on the pages. Where the line lies between fact and fiction, hence faction, is less clear. What is clear is that this book is fast paced, dark, dangerous, and a very good read.

The Windsor Secret is a continuation of The Mesrine Conclusion 18 years on and someone is killing to find out the secret, a fact that is not in evidence when the police begin investigating three murders that seem to be linked. Do they have a serial killer or is it just coincidence?

The conclusion to the investigation will surprise you, as will some of the politics involved in the special division that handles all things foreign in the French government. Cullen writes as though he knows the world of foreign affairs in foreign governments and he knows Carlos the Jackal, aka Illich Ramírez Sánchez from Venezuela, one of the most ruthless assassins in the world.

The Jackal is another piece of this international puzzle and there are two women who are out to catch him and put him down. One of the women escorted him to France to be imprisoned for life in solitary confinement, a confinement that the Jackal never saw since he was switched with a look alike.

There are many pieces to this international puzzle and Cullen lines them up and knocks them down with ease and style. According to Cullen, the Secret is what got Lady Di killed and what killed the Duchess of Windsor in her bedroom as she slept and many others who have died under mysterious circumstances and the Jackal was the agent of death. There is nothing mysterious about The Windsor Secret. It is a straight forward international espionage thriller that gives enough fact to make the fiction plausible -- and very real. It is as if Cullen has given the reader an inside tour of the British royal family and the private lives of people in and out of the news. I highly recommend The Windsor Secret for its artful blend of fact and fiction. It is a ride you won't soon forget.

Paying the National Debt

This whole idea of pushing social security to a private system and letting recipients handle their own funds is like a 401K or money market retirement fund? I think there's more to this than meets the eye.

For many years, social security has been a political slush fund. Clinton used it to pretend he balanced the budget and had a surplus, but that wasn't true at all.

As long as social security stays where it is and is managed the way it is, every working man and woman paying into the system is at least guaranteed that social security will be there when they are ready to retire. It isn't much, but changing the system would be worse, especially if the government has its way. Has anyone noticed that what would actually happen is that people would be bilked out of their retirement and Congress would be able to gut your social security benefits the way robber barons like Ponzi and the other Wall Street wizards have gutted numerous other retirement funds when they took over companies and dispersed the assets.

Is Congress going to create yet another bureau in the government staffed with money managers to help everyone manage their own private social security benefits? Is Congress also going to make sure that everyone's money is safe and that the ups and downs of Wall Street do not affect the money invested in social security? Is Congress going to make sure that short falls do not happen in the stock market in this new private social security system and that no one will lose their retirement?

Do not let this happen. Social security needs to be managed the way it is so that Congress and greedy politicians, and Presidents, cannot tamper with it. They might use it for a slush fund to pretend to balance the budget, but they cannot gut the fund nor can they spend it the way they'd like. Fight the privatization of social security. The system is not broke and never will be as long as there are people working in this country and paying into the system. Politicians, Congress, Presidents, and presidential candidates want to take away your retirement and make the future unsafe for you. Look at what they have done to the housing market and jobs. Do you really want them able to get at Social Security?

Here's the real reason Congress, the President, and politicians want to privatize social security. They want to use our money, yours and mine, to pay down the national debt, to pay off the interest on the loans to China and others. Social security is the only money available for that purpose -- and it has a very large liquid balance. They have squandered our taxes and now they want to take away what will be most people's only retirement income.

Now what do you say about the current regime in power and the coming regime? Isn't it time for a change? Isn't it time for every taxpayer and voter to stop the wholesale rape of this country? I'm tired of bending over and taking it in the rear. Aren't you?