The Work of Jaysh al Mahdi in Baghdad

This image is very graphic. 

If you care, the text in a partial translation reads:

Pictures of the Sheikh Hassan Al Nayimi, member of the Shawra Council, who was killed by the Mugawheer Police (Subjected to Torture) was kidnapped in Sha’ab in North Eastern Baghdad.

Was tortured with a drill in his back, his head, his hands and legs were broken…..

Mind you this photograph is VERY GRAPHIC

http://frqan.com/uploads/alnoaimi.jpg

Review of Broken Under Interrogation by Kirkus Discoveries

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Broken Under Interrogation has recieved positive reviews, and has drawn comparisons to classic works of fiction by Authors and Philosophers such as George Orwell, Franz Kafka, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ayn Rand.  This is the most recent review, by Kirkus Discoveries, www.kirkusdiscoveries.com. 

Former Army intelligence officer John Powers, back in the States from Iraq, is arrested after a vigilante campaign to rid his neighborhood of drugs and undergoes a series of brutal interrogations in this nihilistic screed set in the near future.

 

Utilizing only skeletal conventions of the novel structure, Hopkins sets the scene with Powers’ long, anger-fueled, stream-of-consciousness rants and flashbacks, as the protagonist endures torture sessions at the hands of a corporate police force. Powers attempts to figure out why this is happening to him in a society whose benign legal system is well-established. He also can’t understand why he is being targeted when his methods, while admittedly illegal, are far more efficient at reducing drug trafficking than prior police procedures. While there is too much “tell” and not enough “show” in Hopkins’ book, his style draws chilling and effective comparisons to Orwell, Kafka, Nietzsche and Rand—an estimable group whose themes and narrative approach overlap in telling fashion here.

 

Powers is an intriguing character—a product of a rough childhood whose school-of-hard-knocks survival skills and native smarts make him an ideal candidate for intelligence work once he lands in the service. But while he seems destined to become the sort of sociopathic soldier that sometimes blossoms under the brutal conditions of war, Powers instead develops a curious and humanitarian empathy in the well-told anecdotes of his time in Iraq. It’s after Powers is arrested that his military training and innate decency provide a fascinating conflict, as he is subjected

to the disturbingly violent methods of Garrett Moore—the whatever-it-takes philosopher heading the corporate police. These sections pare the story to its essence and define a novel that is decidedly not for the squeamish.

A novel that asks what torture is, how far it can go and why society allows it as a means to an end.

Please Purchase Broken Under Interrogation by Author Jeffrey M. Hopkins here:

 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419698303/ref=s9sims_c4_14_at1-rfc_p-frt_p-3215_g1-3102_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=1N1ZNPYE87ZFZE576KG1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=436516001&pf_rd_i=507846

LEICA M3 Picture A Week, Picture 1 (copyright Jeffrey M. Hopkins)

Image Copyright Jeffrey M. Hopkins

Folks,

Here is an experiment with the Leica M3, which I purchased Saturday.  I probably spent too much money for an “obsolete” camera, but I don’t care.  As you see, the quality of images produced by this camera, are better than your point and shoot Nikon.  In a world that values mass produced trash, as evident in the world of fiction and photojournalism – the Nikon is sure to win out.  I am still getting the hang of composing with only my senses to guide me, I refuse to purchase a light meter.  Mind you this is me doing experiments. 

This was shot with a 28 mm Carl Zeiss Biogon at F5.6 on 1/125. 

I have decided to only focus on what I am passionate about in my life.  Photography is one of those passions, so why should I not arm myself with the best tool available?

Writing is another passion of mine, I am soon to be publishing short stories on here as well.  I am not going to pay too much attention to the mainstream press anymore, unless it is the Magazine – The Economist.

These will all be experimental, none too polished. 

I wish you all well.

Review of Broken Under Interrogation of Book Review.com as posted by Rod Clark, editor of Rosebud Literary Journal

BOOK REVIEW BROKEN UNDER INTERROGATION By Jeffrey Hopkins REVIEWER: Rod Clark

It’s a desert out there—and a horror show—whether you are talking about the terrorist haunted streets of Baghdad, or the stinking meth lab neighborhoods of America’s rotting inner cities. That’s part of the focus of Jeffrey Hopkin’s searing new book Broken Under Interrogation—but there is also a deeper and darker message here: that the government machineries that ostensibly seek to destroy terrorism and drug trafficking are actually perpetuating a status quo that perpetuates perks and power for society’s “protectors.” In this reality, the truth about terrorism and drug trafficking is less important than information that will reinforce the public impression that the military establishment and policing institutions are doing their job of containing these menaces. What makes the book difficult and more than a little hair raising to read is that the search for information about terrorism and drug dealing often takes place in small dark rooms where interrogation and torture unfold.

The main character, John Powers, is a man who served in Iraq as a counter terrorist intelligence agent and finds himself, after returning home, drawn into vigilante operations against metropolitan drug dealers. In both instances, he is, ultimately, a failure—not because his tactics don’t work, but because, in the end, in both instances, military and police remove him from the field, because the success of his operations threatens a status quo in which their power and influence are comfortably anchored.

The chronological setting is a little unusual. The scenes in Baghdad seem very contemporary, ripped from today’s headlines—although it is possible the author assumes that the current pattern of terrorism in that tortured city is likely to continue for some time to come. The anti-drug operations seem to be taking place in some rotting inner core of a future American metropolis simply called “P.” The job of containing drug trafficking in the inner cities has been handed over to a private police agency, SCi (SecuriCorp and Consolidated Industries), that is not held back by annoying constitutional restraints—or any limitations on civil rights or torture.

After being extracted from Baghdad (for being too effective at his job of counter terrorism), Powers returns to city life to find that once vital neighborhoods are riddled with crack houses and meth labs. Like many former Iraqi War vets, Powers is easily drawn to substance abuse, but soon discovers that drugs are a path to destruction not only for him and fellow veterans, but for large portions of the inner metropolis of P. Joining forces with Mike Miller, another ex-Iraqi vet that he rescues from addiction, Powers begins to put together a vigilante group composed of other Iraqi vets to destroy drug dealing operations in the ravaged inner city. Unfortunately, they are so successful that they challenge the status quo maintained by SCi, the private policing corporation that is supposedly in charge of eliminating trafficking. Powers is seized by SCi agents, and soon finds himself a subject in the same kind of interrogation chamber he supervised himself in the back alleys of Baghdad.

While this book is sometimes painful to read, the language is candid and clear. Author Jeffrey Hopkin’s voice has gritty authority as he describes the counter terrorism efforts waged in the streets of Iraq and the battle to contain drugs in the shattered neighborhoods of “P.” These are covert and highly targeted battles, fought on the basis of specific information revealing where, what, when. The key battle ground is often not the street at all, but the interrogation room where such knowledge is extracted. Although this book is not for everyone, Broken under Interrogation provides a horrific and lucid look inside the increasingly subtle conflicts of the modern world. What do we know? When do we know it? How can we use such knowledge to conserve or project power? The trend toward torture, he implies, is driven by the increasing informational demands of powerful and devious organizations. Those who seek assurances that terrorism and drug trafficking are being effectively fought will not find this book comfortable reading. Those who enjoy a peek into the abyss will be sure to appreciate this book.

OBTAIN your COPY of BROKEN UNDER INTERROGATION here:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1419698303?tag=thebookbuffet&camp=14573&creative=329585&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1419698303&adid=1HZE5P1VP4RJQQ3BP3WC&

What I Have in Me

I will never author a heartwarmer.  My writing is not fit to be placed inside a crack pipe and smoked, or crushed, liquified, and shot into your veins like heroin.  It will not give you 8 seconds of bliss.  It will not make you forget about your troubles.  It is not escapist.  It may induce you to think, if you are not living a reptilian existence of sitting, and waiting for insects to cross your field of vision to snatch up with your long sticky tongue, and chew with your delicate pink mouth. 

If you enjoy literary crack, I may suggest Marley and Me, a story about a loveable dog and all the problems he causes for his owner.  I do not know the author, nor do I care.  This also may be a memoir.

Mitch Albom’s books are fine and dandy too.  I took a look at one once at my friend’s house while I was using his bathroom.  I vomited on the ceiling. 

I enjoy Christian Inspiration, especially anything proclaiming the prosperity gosepl of a la Joel Osteen and TD Jakes.  Jesus wanted men to be rich and prosperous, especially if they put some of it in the collection plate.  Jesus applauded slave owners, marketers and the money changers in the Temple.  The books of Thomas Merton have no place in this modern world, for he was a learned man who used metaphor to express himself.  He also didn’t smile much.                

I either have a very black soul, an old soul, or one that doesn’t exist.  I have discarded this hypothesis from my being.  It doesn’t make sense to me.  Maybe one of you readers of Joel Osteen and his bretheren can explain it to me, but first you must explain it to yourself.  I have been cast into the wilderness.  I think I am an animal who can know himself.  I am a finite being who has experienced much, but not more than I can handle. 

I have a lifetimes’ worth of logic and the logical framework to laminate at least 5 works of fiction.  Not more.

I think the purpose of fiction is to test ideas from the real world in unreal possible worlds.  Values can be put through a crucible in it.

Much of today’s popular titles trade on pat ideas and boring commonplace notions.  It takes its purpose for granted.  It serves Mammon, nothing more.  So do crack dealers.

Fire it up. 

I have coined a term for fiction that is unsparing in its capacity to induce thought, and destroy commonplace ideas.  It elucidates the gears of a machine, and lubricates them.  It morphs into a monkey wrench. 

Grease.

The End

And in the End….the love you take, is equal to the love you make.

John Lennon

Not Vladimir Illiyich Lenin

Bob Woodward’s New Book: The War Within: The Secret White House History 2006 – 2008

Overall it was not the conventional stacking of units in the country of Iraq which helped improve the security situation in Iraq, it was what Bob Woodward writes, the covert operations designed to capture/kill insurgent, and terrorist leaders that paid security dividends along with the Anbar Sunni Awakening.

I have argued all along, and will continue to argue that you could kick every single conventional unit out of Iraq, and let Special Operations Forces get to work actually doing positive things for the country of Iraq. Let the Iraqis take over security for the multitude of line units, and get to doing things that will actually affect the security situation on the ground: capturing/killing terrorist masterminds without the interference of people who are better stationed stateside in garrison.

Pick up “Broken Under Interrogation” and learn to do these for yourself, against DOPE DEALING SCUM!!!!!

Imad Mugiyah, The Saint of the Resistance, of course I am being facetious.

NABATIYE, Lebanon — The children crowd forward around the glass case, eager for a glimpse of the martyr’s bloodstained clothes. His belt is here, and the shoes he died in, scarred with shrapnel. The battered desk where he planned military operations still has his box of pencils on it, his in-box, his cellphone.

Bryan Denton for The New York Times
An exhibit in Nabatiye celebrates the life of Imad Mugniyah, the shadowy Hezbollah commander suspected in the West of masterminding devastating bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1980s and ’90s. Busloads of schoolchildren have flocked to the exhibit, which includes bloodstained clothes and, at night, light and laser shows.

The New York Times
An exhibit in Nabatiye, Lebanon, honors Imad Mugniyah.
“May God kill the one who killed him,” an old woman says, wiping tears from her eyes as she stares through the glass.

The dead man being shown such veneration is Imad Mugniyah, the shadowy Hezbollah commander. Until his death in a car bombing in Syria in February he was virtually unknown here, his role in the militant Shiite group clothed in secrecy. But since then Hezbollah has hailed him as one of its great military leaders in the struggle against Israel.

Now, the group has opened an exhibit in this southern town in honor of Mr. Mugniyah, who is widely accused in the West of masterminding devastating bombings, kidnappings and hijackings in the 1980s and ’90s. His stern, bearded face towers over the transformed parking lot where the exhibit is taking place, along with banners exalting him as “the leader of the two victories” — the Israeli withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000 and the 2006 summer war with Israel.

The presentation, which opened Aug. 15, is Hezbollah’s most ambitious multimedia exhibit to date, meant to dramatize the group’s bitter conflict with Israel on the second anniversary of their latest war. Schoolchildren pour in throughout the day, absorbing the carefully honed message of heroic resistance. At night, light and laser shows illuminate the weaponry and tanks, and overflow crowds have been keeping it open until after 1 a.m.

At first glance, the exhibit could almost be taken for an outdoor children’s museum. The green entrance awning is a huge replica of Mr. Mugniyah’s signature cap, and visitors then cross a “victory bridge” made partly from artillery shells. But it soon takes on a more grisly cast.

A fake skeleton stands upright in a torn uniform and helmet beneath the legend, “The invincible Israeli soldier.” There are captured Israeli tanks jutting up from the ground at odd angles, their hatches burned and broken. As visitors crowd from one display to another, a soundtrack blares overhead, mixing the sounds of bombs and machine-gun fire with mournful operatic voices and warlike speeches.

There is also an impressive array of Hezbollah’s antitank missiles and artillery, all neatly labeled. There are even display cases containing the eyeglasses, letters and clothes worn by two other major Hezbollah figures, both assassinated by Israel.

But the eerie heart of the exhibit is the glass-encased room displaying Mr. Mugniyah’s possessions. His prayer mat is here, his slippers, even his hairbrush, as if they were a saint’s relics.

On a recent afternoon, a crowd of onlookers stared through the glass in awe, some of them weeping openly.

“Look, there’s his gun!” shouted a small boy dressed in army fatigues, leading his parents in for a closer look.

A young Hezbollah guide, standing nearby, explained that the gun was a modified AK-47, more powerful and capable of firing faster than the standard model. “He never went anywhere without it — it was part of his soul,” said the guide, who like others working at the exhibit declined to give his name, in accordance with Hezbollah’s policy of secrecy about its members.

This is a tense moment in Lebanon. Israeli leaders have issued warnings that they would carry out a more devastating attack than the 2006 war if Hezbollah were to lead Lebanon’s government. Last month Lebanon formed a transitional government in which the Hezbollah-led opposition has enough cabinet seats to wield veto power. New elections are scheduled for next year.

Hezbollah officials have recently renewed warnings that they will retaliate against Israel, which they blame for Mr. Mugniyah’s death. Indeed, this week, newspapers in Israel reported that intelligence agents had foiled at least five attempted kidnappings of Israeli citizens in foreign countries.

Israel has denied any role in the Mugniyah killing, which took place in Damascus, the Syrian capital. But Israeli and Western agents had spent 25 years pursuing Mr. Mugniyah, who was blamed for a series of spectacular attacks, kidnappings and hijackings, including the suicide bombing of a United States Marines barracks in Beirut that killed 241 American service members in 1983.

Mr. Mugniyah was believed to have spent much of his time in Iran and Syria, though his whereabouts were unknown.

If the exhibit is testimony to Mr. Mugniyah’s new public status as a Hezbollah hero, it is also evidence of the group’s increasingly sophisticated efforts to capture the hearts and imaginations of a new generation.

Hezbollah has organized similar exhibits before, most notably a mock-up of a military bunker that opened in southern Beirut a year ago, titled “The Spider’s Web,” to commemorate the first anniversary of the 2006 war.

But the new presentation is more extensive. It was conceived by the architect Ahmed Tirani and built in just three weeks by a staff of 290 working around the clock. In addition to an extraordinary array of weaponry and martyrs’ paraphernalia, it includes a large indoor room that was remodeled to resemble “what we believe the martyrs’ heaven is like,” according to one of the guides on duty.

In the darkened room, a figure representing a dead Hezbollah fighter lies on his back on a large sloping bank of white flowers. A sound of exploding bombs gives way to patriotic anthems as a screen shows a brilliant sunset and a coffin being carried through a dark forest. Later, a laser show illuminates the darkness. Other videos braid together images from the 2006 war, including some showing Mr. Mugniyah, along with scenes of Hezbollah soldiers training in the green hills of southern Lebanon.

On a recent afternoon, busloads of schoolchildren were arriving to see the exhibit, with a group of Boy Scouts.

“I came here to teach my kids the culture of resistance,” said a visitor who gave his name only as Ahmed, as he stood with his wife and two children. “I want them to see what the enemy is doing to us, and what we can do to fight them, because this enemy is not merciful.”

FROM JEFFREY M. HOPKINS:

Imad Mugiyah was the Hezbollah commander par excellence, who gained his terrorist street credibility during the long Lebanese civil war.  He orchestrated the Marine Corps Barracks bombing in Beirut, the kidnapping, and torture of CIA Beirut Station Chief William Colby, bombings of Israeli Embassies in South America, kidnappings of countless civilians, hijackings, and finally the kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers to start the 2006 Israeli/Hezbollah War.

He was wanted by nearly every Western nation, and finally met his end when he opened the door to his German Automobile in a posh Damascus Suburb.  The resulting explosion split Mr. Imad Mugiyah in half and sent his upper torso flying through the neighboring Falafel Shop.  When Hezbollah got word that their military brain had been destroyed they decried the assassination saying, “the resistance has lost one of its pillars.”

It is nice that Hezbollah has spent some of their Iranian dough building a shrine to this gentleman.  It only serves to demonstrate that they are a dangerous gang of criminals.  However, they are a now a powerful gang of criminals.  If Imad Mugiyah did not have Hezbollah and this so called “culture of Resistance”, perhaps he could have grown up to be a successful Engineer, and built bridges, buildings, and hospitals.  Instead he used his fecund mind to devise destruction.  It only resulted in his own.

Americans should not assume that terrorists are stupid people, or they are insane maniacs guided by their insanity to cause chaos.  They aren’t inhuman evildoers bent by some evil force to cause destruction.  They are highly talented and often very educated people who are cold and calculating.  Sun Tzu implored us to “know your enemy.”  We should respect and treat them like the people they are.

Fighting them should not arouse our passions.  That is the stuff of cavalry charges and Light Brigades.  We are warriors of a different era.  We must be as cold and calculating as them, targeting them alone.  Everywhere he goes he should be afraid.  Terrorize the terrorists.  Leave the infrastructure alone.

Bombing on The Green Mill, Chicago, IL on 31 Aug 2008

Peeps,

The Fearless Author has just returned from reading a greasy excerpt from BUI, at the famous Green Mill Bar in Chicago, IL. During Prohibition Era gangster days of Chicago’s notorious past the Green Mill was a hangout of Al Capone. Today it hosts a large open mic and poetry slam competition every Sunday night from 1900 until 2200. I hustled my way onto the microphone with the charms taught to me by my lovely girlfriend, who enabled me, by schmoozing the host to let me read from my book, which while it isn’t traditional poetry – still speaks to peoples’ hearts because it was written from mine.

Immediately after ascending the stage I recieved some hecklers, who told me to read a poem. Two old windbags in the front shouted at me to read a poem. Earlier in the night they goaded the host, Marc Smith – a poet and author of the Complete Idiots guide to Slam Poetry, into reading something political. After they shouted at me, I said in terms I learned in the interrogation booth, “you both wanted to hear something political, well this is political.”. They silenced immediately.

Some drunken frat boy shouted something out that was unintelligible, I said, “this is a story about Iraq, I’ve been there twice.”. People cheered and silenced the buffoon. Here is what I read to them:

When he returned from his first deployment to Iraq,
John stepped off the military transport and before he could
breathe his first breath of air, a group of old men and women
all smiling in matching American flag apparel handed him
a McDonald’s cheeseburger and said in unison, “Thanks for
defending our freedom!” John maintained a smile through his
exhaustion and said, “You’re welcome.” The second time he
came back, he wanted to spit in their faces. The third time he
came back, he wanted to murder them, but he didn’t because
they were civilians and didn’t know any better.

On the surface, John was unremarkable. If you were
to pass him in a public place, you would neither be turned
on nor turned off to his appearance. He was ordinary looking
with a long beak-like nose that sat square in the middle of an
expressionless face. His cold, bluish-gray, beady little eyes were
sunken in two large eye sockets and gazed upon the world,
taking everything in. He studied and memorized every face he
came across with intensity. When he was in his teenage years,
John believed that not having any hint of emotion written on
his face would make him appear mysterious and aloof to the
opposite sex. Most women found him emotionally distant or
preoccupied and did not pay him any heed. Over years of
practicing his profession, Power’s inner being came to match
his expressionless face, and nothing excited him.

When Powers wasn’t reading or exercising, he spent
his days sitting in a chair in his Spartan living room staring
off into space. He thought of the past and tried hard to think
of a future for himself. The short fat doctor at the Veteran’s
Administration had nothing to offer him but a bottle of pills
that made him totally numb and took away his only pastime,
his ability to think. The time he spent during the second war
in the desert forged him into a hardened unrepentant cynic—
to him people were only interested in fulfilling their own
needs and wants, however base and petty those wants were.
He had watched with his own eyes how people acted in a total
anarchy—the gangs that formed around people not fit for
any form of civil society and the power they wielded because
they had the will to do heinous acts. This helped to solidify his
disgust with the animals that thought to themselves that they
were so special. They hid behind facades, masks, and religion
to prove to themselves they were better off than the animals
and it wasn’t eat or be eaten, and the law of the jungle with
their kind.

After Iraq, Power’s entire life revolved around collecting
information that would be of use to him in his endeavors.
His latest endeavor would prove to be his last. Living in the
neighborhood forgotten by the remainder of the modern
globalized society, Powers came to the realization that nothing
there was ever going to get better. No one cared outside of the
ghetto, and no one cared inside the ghetto. In this place the
poor coagulated and formed a crust over a seeping infection.
In the ghetto, amongst the school grounds and parks
littered with empty glass crack vials and used heroin baggies,
the double edged despair of hopelessness existed. To find
oneself living in a horrible situation was one side of the sword.
The sharper side that sliced deeper straight to the marrow
was the complete lack of opportunity or ability to do anything
about it.

The growing black raven of American nihilism takes
wing from the suburbs and flies home to roost in the inner
city. It lives, breathes, and takes in nutriment there amongst
the abandoned homes and crumbling schools. Without the
misery and despair of the ghetto, there would be no impetus
for people to flock to the safety of the suburbs. Without the
homes abandoned by people moving out of the city center
in fear, the low property values caused by the abundance of
properties on the market, and the slumlords to buy them up
looking for a fast buck —there would be no ghetto. The raven
was feeding on racism, and the raven was getting fat. It shit on
the American Dream and had pecked out the eyes of hope.
John thought to himself, if there was an American Dream it
should exist for all Americans, but it didn’t, and if it ever didit
was as dead and rotten as the Founding Fathers. John could
cut the tension around him with a knife. The suburbanites
did not feel it yet because they were too busy watching reality
television.

I told the unsuspecting Chicago public to find Broken Under Interrogation at Amazon.com, and its sitting there like a bomb waiting to blow the foundations of the rubbish of the last 8 years.  As if anything needs to blow the foundation, its already rotten to the core.

I did this in three minutes. It is a good thing I can speed read. When the people started snapping to signal the end of the three minutes. I increased the pace, it became frenetic. Towards the end I tossed the book at the lectern, and took my seat.

Marc Smith picked it up and introduced it again. Broken Under Interrogation…..

I received a total of 24 points from the three amateur judges, which went up against the next poem, a little ditty about ripping the legs off of a bullfrog.

Marc Smith said, either Iraq, or a Bullfrog…..

And the Bullfrog had it.

I knew I should have read the part about battery acid and power drills.

Review of Broken Under Interrogation by Rebecca’s Reads

Reviewed by Kam Aures for RebeccasReads (8/08)

Although “Broken Under Interrogation” is a work of fiction, the events in the book closely parallel situations that exist in the world today. John Powers served his country in Iraq and returned home with many disturbing images burned into his mind. He arrived home to find a country filled with drugs and despair, and along with Mike Miller, a fellow war veteran addicted to methamphetamine, Powers wages war on his home soil, a war against drugs. Utilizing techniques that he learned in Iraq, he embarks on a mission to find drug dealers, torture them, and issue final justice.
The story is told after SecuriCorp officers find and seize John Powers at his home in Illinois. “The specialists found his tool box, which contained enough different blood and other DNA trace material, hair, and bone fragments to link him to the brutal torture of at least twenty-five individuals. The police photographed each tool separately and placed them into red biohazard evidence bags. John had chastised Mike several times, but Miller didn’t waste the time cleaning up after himself after they talked to someone. For Mike, holding a blood caked power drill in front of a detainee would often elicit a confession. The detainee was assured of Miller’s willingness to use it when they looked into his soulless black eyes, which only lit up with life when he spun the drill bit into place.” (p. 17) John’s story is told through a series of flashbacks as he is being interrogated by the privatized police as they attempt to flush out his co-conspirators and to determine where John has hidden money that he took from drug dealers.
The author, Jeffrey M. Hopkins, was inspired to begin work on “Broken Under Interrogation” immediately after he returned home from his second tour of duty in Iraq. The resulting work is a very disturbing and graphic novel. It is not written for those that are the least bit squeamish. Hopkins’ writing is very raw, powerful and will definitely grab your attention. The story told is an interesting one that will remain embedded in your consciousness. I believe that “Broken Under Interrogation” will appeal to anyone who likes reading about war and contemporary issues.

The most disturbing and provocative work of 2008 is available here:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1419698303/ref=s9sims_c6_14_at1-rfc_p?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SFDX46BXTH5BQ8MZXHY&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=320448701&pf_rd_i=507846