Monthly Archives: July 2014

For the Love of Money is the root of all Evil . . .

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And is there anything more evil than the killing of innocent children such as is happening every day in Gaza.

The shooting down of MH 17 that killed so many young children was gruesome enough – but at least there is the possibility that this was a mistake and the terrorist thought he was shooting down a Ukrainian military plane. No such mitigating circumstance exists in Gaza where the Israeli forces are indiscriminately killing women and children with a ferocity that is unbelievable given that they claim to be a civilized society.
This weekend there was an article in Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald that compared the policies of Benjamin Netenyahu and his LIKUD party to the Nazis, and their arrogance to that of Fascists. The savagery of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) retaliation to the HAMAS rockets smacks of the Nazis policy of shooting 100 innocent hostages for every German soldier killed. The recent wave of rockets killed 2 or 3 Israelis. The IDF response has been to kill almost 1,000 Palestinians (mostly civilians) including about 200 children.
This is barbaric and obscene. But what is even more obscene it the refusal of the USA to sanction Israel. Russia’s complicity in the shooting down of MH 17 has brought about a huge wave of sanctions orchestrated by the USA. Yet Israel has bulldozed 400 Palestinian villages, sent 1 million Palestinians into exile to live in the misery and squalor of refugee camps, laid siege to Gaza, continued to build illegal settlements on the West Bank – and continues to slaughter Palestinians: all with with the complicity of the USA, and with weaponry and ammunition supplied by them using the US$20 million per day of aid the USA provides to Israel. Why?
Because all American politicians know that without the support and the finance of the Jewish lobby they will not get re-elected. Shame on you for your inhumanity and putting politics before people. May you rot in Hell.
Is it any wonder the Arab Street refers to America as The Evil Empire and fundamental Islam is on the march. Some years ago an Arab friend of mine said that Israel would never be satisfied until they owned the whole of the Middle East and its oil wealth. At the time I thought that was an extreme view. But the Israelis seem intent on annihilating Gaza and annexing The West Bank. What is next? Jordan? Iraq? Syria? Tomorrow the World?
The Biblical quotation about the love of money ends like this:
“ . . . which some coveted after have erred from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”
And while it seems that the majority of Israelis support Netanyahu and LIKUD, there is a sizeable minority who are sickened by their inhumanity.
The final chapter in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” tries to set this in context with the story of Layla, a Christian Palestinian who quits her career as a cabin attendant and runs a Church of England orphanage in Ramallah which is eventually closed by the IDF scattering the orphans to the wind. This is just one story of many of that turbulent region where millions of lives have been shattered by the blunderings of the Foreign policies of the super powers.
Perhaps God in His wisdom has forgiven Sykes and Picot and James Balfour. Millions of Palestinians cannot, and their dead and maimed children cannot.

You can preview my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” at:
http://www.amazon.com/author/mikerichards
and download it if you have a Kindle.
Or if you prefer a real book you can order the paperback edition from:
http://www.thebookdepository.co.uk
The ISBN number is 978-1908147097
They offer free delivery worldwide.
I hope you enjoy it.

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Fascism, Communism . . . and Picasso

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Yesterday I happened on a book about Picasso’s creation of his Civil War masterpiece GUERNICA. In a series of brutal images etched in black across a huge stark white canvas he expressed the rage he felt at the carpet bombing of a small town in Spain that killed 80 percent of the inhabitants. This, the first time bombing had been aimed at civilians in order to terrorise them – and a precursor to the carpet bombing of Coventry, Liverpool and London by the Nazis, the 1,000 bomber raids of the Allied forces that flattened Dresden and Berlin – the ultimate horrific atom bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and the American bombings of Hanoi, and the NATO terror bombings of Belgrade.
America and The West wants to spread democracy and freedom, as long as it is the democracy and freedom they want. And if hundreds of thousands of people are killed and maimed in the name of freedom so be it.
How quickly the momentous events of the 20th Century have become history, and how quickly in this age of the triumph of Capitalism have we forgotten the struggle of Communism versus Fascism that dominated the last Century.
The Spanish civil War was a consequence of extreme right wing Monarchists refusing to accept the will of the people in electing (twice) a Socialist government and replacing it with a Fascist dictatorship by force of arms. And this has been replicated in Latin America many times, particularly in Chile, where President Allende was assassinated by the CIA and replaced with the military dictator Pinochet, and in Iran where the legitimate elected government of Mossadeq was replaced by the vainglorious and corrupt Shah – and now in Egypt, where the elected Muslim government of Morsi has been replaced by a military junta.
In my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” I have tried to set in the political context of the 20th Century a series of stories spanning 40 years from the 1960s as The Arabian/Persian Gulf developed rapidly from a sleepy backwater of the British Empire into a fabulously wealthy, and hedonistic arena of international significance fueled by the Western greed for cheap energy supplies. The history of that turbulent period is shown through the stories of archetypal expatriates who washed up in The Gulf, their lives shattered by the blunderings of US (and British) foreign policies in the region.
In particular one story “If You Don’t . . . Someone Else Will” set during the First Gulf War deals with the American massacre of Iraqis fleeing from Kuwait to Baghdad along Highway 80 – an infamous stretch of road littered with burned out trucks, cars and buses, and hundreds of bodies including women and children that came to be called “The Mile of Death”. It sickened the military into telling the politicians “Enough is enough” and brought that war to an end.
You can preview my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” at:
http://www.amazon.com/author/mikerichards
and download it if you have a Kindle.
Or if you prefer a real book you can order the paperback edition from:
http://www.thebookdepository.co.uk
The ISBN number is 978-1908147097
They offer free delivery worldwide.
I hope you enjoy it.