On Tuesday (1/22) bookstores across the U.S. released N.Y. Times best-selling author
Steve Alten’s THE SHELL GAME, a fictional thriller that deals with the end of oil
and the next 9/11…a false flag event designed to lead us into a war/chemical attack …

On Tuesday (1/22) bookstores across the U.S. released N.Y.
Times best-selling author Steve Alten’s THE SHELL GAME, a
fictional thriller that deals with the end of oil and the
next 9/11…a false flag event designed to lead us into a
war/chemical attack on Iran. Can a novel help educate the
masses that have avoided the message of 9/11 truth
movements?

Change is avalanching upon our heads, and most people are
grotesquely unprepared to cope with it. –Alvin
Toffler

When Steve Alten sent me a review
copy of The Shell Game, despite glowing reviews of it from
people I know and respect, I sighed and squirmed in my
chair. Anyone who knows me well knows that I don’t DO
fiction-or to be more specific, I resist it because of the
difficulty I usually experience with trying to organize the
characters of a novel in my mind. Nevertheless, I emailed
Steve and assured him that I would review the book and
began skimming it with dread. Peeking into the pages with
immense caution and aloofness, something completely
astounding happened: I found myself inexplicably riveted.
That someone like me could not put the book down speaks
volumes, and no one was more surprised than I was.

As
reviewer Bill Douglas points out, Shell Game opens from the
perspective of the neocons “THEN, the novel proceeds to
dis-assemble that `reality’ taking the reader on a
journey that shows the ugly underbelly of false flag
terrorism, diminishing civil and human rights, and the lies
that led into past wars, and portend to lead us all into
future wars.”

Early on in the book, we hear protagonist
Ace Futrell, a petroleum geologist and former college
football star, testifying before Congress regarding the
precariousness of world oil supplies, his grim report
engulfed and lost in a morass of political posturing by both
parties. Futrell is married to Kelli Doyle, who had worked
undercover for the CIA and the neocons, but is now gravely
ill with terminal cancer. In her final days, Doyle is
penning an expose entitled “To The Brink Of Hell: An
Apology To The Survivors” in which she is disclosing the
machinations of empire which are driving humanity to the
collapse of civilization.

The first sentence reads:
“Frankly, I hope this scares the hell out of you.” In
another portion of Doyle’s tell-all memoir she unleashes a
litany of the lies of empire, noting that “All presidents
lie.”

Roosevelt, she says, lied about Pearl Harbor,
Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam, Reagan about Iran-Contra, and
Clinton about personal affairs in the Oval Office. Yet she
emphasizes that:

“…it was the lies coming
from the Bush-Cheney White House after the events of
September 11, 2001 that led us to the invasion if Iraq and
to a crossroads in western civilization that will affect
you and your loved ones and a billion more innocent
people.”

“Did the U.S. intelligence community know al
Qaeda’s attack was coming? “

“Yes. “

“But did we try to
stop them? “

“Yes, but we were prevented from doing
so.”(77)

Doyle’s subsequent revelations then
echo the exhaustive research of Mike Ruppert in Crossing The
Rubicon and the work of countless other 9/11 truth
researchers, which explains the posting of the Bill Douglas
review on 9/11 Blogger. In fact, Alten’s mesmerizing novel
is already being embraced by many in the 9/11 Truth
movement and is likely to take root in its fertile
soil-possibly giving birth to a movie version of Shell Game
which would be nothing less than a two-hour nail-biter. Like
any good story, The Shell Game is not linear but rather
unfolds in a spiral of intrigue that culminates in a second
9/11-this time a nuclear one occurring in Los Angeles. But
first and second 9/11’s are not the principal focus of
Alten’s captivating novel. He has painstakingly clarified
the corruption, greed, and power-driven madness that makes
such catastrophes possible in the twenty-first century and
intertwines these with the reality of a planet in the throes
of unprecedented resource depletion. One is tempted to ask,
“With all we actually know, how could this happen?” until
Ace Futrell in Shell Game is rudely awakened by a
conversation with Kelli’s cousin, Jennifer.

This fictional
dialog could not be more timely than in the non-fiction
election year of 2008, and Jennifer, a former campaign
strategist trained under Karl Rove, enlightens Ace
regarding the duplicity of the mainstream political
process. Insisting that Jennifer explain why in the face of
all of the evidence regarding climate change and energy
depletion, Congress essentially takes no meaningful action,
he asks: “So, despite all the evidence of climate changes,
despite rising gas prices, despite air pollution and
respiratory problems…despite the fact that the world is
running out of oil and we’re ill prepared for what will
happen next-nothing will change?” Jennifer
replies:

“Not in Washington. Ace, it’s not
about the problem, it’s all about the message. Most
candidates’ policies run counter to their own voters’
interests. They get elected on sound bites and staying on
message. Repeat the biggest lie often enough, and the
public will accept it as truth. Give me enough money to
blitz the media, and I could get Elmer Fudd elected,
assuming he occasionally went to church and could lose the
lisp….You begin with the message, something you can sell.
Doesn’t matter if it’s true. Then you spend a million
dollars in ads hammering it into the American psyche.
(133-134) “

In my opinion, The Shell Game was
worth the read for this particular dialog alone between Ace
and Jennifer of which I have quoted only a small portion.
Without having access to a former campaign strategist’s
explanation as Ace has in the story, I grasped the same
realities several years ago which is one of a plethora of
reasons that I personally have no intention of ever again
voting in a federal election in America-at least until the
present political system has thoroughly collapsed.

The
Shell Game’s value lies not only in underscoring the
catastrophes toward which the human race is hurtling but in
analyzing the mindset of empire that has made them
inevitable. Alten’s novel feels eerily prescient and
replete with tragic scenarios that now seem
probable-perhaps unstoppable.

The book ends with the
closing comments of Kelli Doyle’s memoir, simply: “Will we
ever learn?”

I sit with that question, and as I do,
another question comes: “How do we learn? What will it take
for us to learn?”

Other civilizations have created and
maintained natural cultures and lived harmoniously with
each other and the ecosystems for millennia, so we know
that such functioning among humans is possible. It is
absolutely possible that humans can once again create and
maintain similar cultures for significant periods of time,
but can we do this without having to experience the
collapse of the current civilization? I think not, yet as
one who sincerely believes in miracles, I dare not preclude
the possibility. However, I’m no longer willing to say that
“time is running out” because time has already run out. I
must now answer Kelli Doyle’s question with another
question: What will it take to wake us up? What will it
take for us to learn? Shell Game demonstrates some
horrifying possible answers to those questions. It will not
offer solutions, but it will take you on a spellbinding
adventure that even a fiction-phobe like me could not
resist.

*NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT!*

1. Call your local
bookstore and make sure they have copies.

2. Buy as many
as you can afford. Use them as gifts to convince loved ones
about a truth they have, up until now, refused to see. These
first editions are special. Special covers. Special looks.
The second editions are already being printed.

3. Send an
e-mail to everyone you know to BUY THE BOOK! We GUARANTEE
they will love it!

4. Go to href="http://www.theshellgame.net/"
target="_blank">http://www.TheShellGame.net and grab the
links to the two 90 second book trailer videos. POST THEM
EVERYWHERE! Spread the word anyway you can. When you read
the book, you’ll realize exactly what’s at
stake.

*WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT TO DRIVE THIS BOOK TO THE
TOP OF BEST-SELLER LISTS?* When a book appears on the NY
Times best-seller list, a new mainstream machine kicks in!
The books receive better front of store shelf space. More
chains buy the book. Airport stores and grocery chains buy
in. Talk shows like Letterman and Leno wait for a book to
hit best-seller status before arranging interviews. If the
9/11 movement can launch The SHELL GAME onto the list, the
mainstream machine will carry it to a million readers who
might otherwise NEVER research the truth. The success of
THE SHELL GAME raises everyone’s boat. Pre-season’s over!
The clock is
ticking!

STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org
does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the
above article. We present this in the interests of research
-for the relevant information we believe it contains. We
hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us
further, in helping to build bridges between our various
investigative communities, towards a greater, common
understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie
before us.

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