Category Archives: Crime

The Muppet Show – or Fiddling while Rome is Burning?

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Right now the Australian government is in uproar and has yet again changed Prime Ministers. That’s 5 Prime Ministers (only two elected) in 8 years.

Is the reason for this?:

1) A Royal Commission has found evidence of widespread corruption and outright criminal activity in the banking and financial sector (what a surprise).
2) There is a huge and growing drug addiction crisis (The highest illegal drug usage per capita in the developed world). A 28% increase in consumption year on year 2016-17.
3) The state of NSW is in the throes of the worst drought in 100 years driving many farmers to the wall – and some to suicide.
The answer is none of the above.

The answer lies in the overriding concerns of politicians – their ego and their vanity. The ruling Liberal party was sinking rapidly in the polls because of their lack of action over the above problems – and a huge increases in the cost of living.

The patrician leader Malcolm Turnbull was replaced, and like Serena Williams, displayed a complete lack of class. He resigned from Parliament on the spot, handing a poisoned chalice to the incoming leader. He has to try and operate in Parliament without a majority.

And the man who first started the leadership challenge, Peter Dutton, is now being challenged and vindictively pursued because it is alleged that he, as Home Affairs Minister, let in a French and Italian Aupair in order to help his mates. All they did was babysit. Meanwhile there has been no satisfactory answer why the perpetrator of the Lindt Café Siege – an Iranian illegal immigrant with 36 counts of sexual assault, and one count of accessory to murder – was free to roam the streets on bail.

It is so bad, that one of the Opposition MPs has labelled parliament THE MUPPET SHOW, and wonders why he bothers to turn up such is the low level of debate.

Last year the main concerns of Parliament were Gay Marriage, with a very expensive and time consuming referendum, and the number of MPs who had dual nationality. They did absolutely no harm. There was no evidence that they were acting as agents for their Mother countries. But they were forced to resign on a technicality, causing a series of disruptive and expensive by-elections. It’s all part of the game. Huff and Puff and Ponce around to avoid the serious issues.

Fiddling while Rome is burning.
In the broader political context of the background to my new book GULF II “The Beginning of Sorrows” the starting point is a meeting of the “Great and The Good” that took place in Corfu. The occasion was the 40th birthday of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter, and her party attended by Lord Rothschild, David Cameron and George Osbourne, former UK Prime Minister and UK Chancellor, and Peter Mandelson, the right hand man of Tony Blair, the existing UK Prime Minister at that time.
One of the outcomes of that get together was Mandelson and Rothchild squabbling over a GBP 50K donation solicited from Oleg Deripasky the wealthiest Russian oligarch. He was also present on the island at that time.
And while squabbling over the petty cash none of these Masters of the Universe foresaw the GFC – the multi-billion dollar financial meltdown that would ruin the lives of millions of people – and expose the greed, the cynicism, the criminality and sheer incompetence of unbridled global laissez faire free market capitalists.
The overriding theme of my current book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, is that Western politicians have persisted in trying to make the Middle East conform to their view of how they think it should be – democratic, free market, capitalistic – a system that isn’t even working in The West. The calibre of our leaders has never been lower. It is time for another Oliver Cromwell. Or maybe we have found one in Donald Trump?

To quote Rudyard Kipling: “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.”

You can review and buy my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” and its fictionalizations of real events in the Middle East at:

amazon.com

Or on my publisher’s website:

feedaread.com

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Harvey Weinstein, and sneak-peek vagina dresses

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The despicable Harvey is just an extreme example of the lecherous showbiz producer who has been in existence since Hollywood began. Read your Raymond Chandler.

Anybody who has ever had contact with Showbusiness can immediately identify how sleazy it is.

My aunt was a senior receptionist at a 5-star hotel in the UK that had many Showbusiness personalities as guests – and the staff hated having them. Almost without exception they were drunken and foul-mouthed – abused the staff, and lived like pigs. They trashed their rooms with wild after-hours boozy parties that frequently involved under age girls, and boys.

But for all those sleazy sexual predators there is also an endless supply of slutty prey in Showbusiness. Nubile young women, and young men, who are willing to do anything for their fifteen minutes of fame – and even more of fortune. And you don’t have to be in the business to see that.

Look at any first night or awards ceremony on TV, and see the grizzled old-toads, filthy rich and powerful men, with girls young enough to be their daughters, or granddaughters, on their arms. And then the wannabe starlets yet to hook a sugar daddy, strutting the red carpet with plunging necklines, or transparent dresses worn without underwear – or the latest red-carpet fashion for sneak-peek vagina dresses slit to the hip bone. It’s a meat market.

Almost as nauseous as Harvey and the like, are the crocodile tears of the Sisterhood. Harvey Weinstein’s behaviour, like that of Jimmie Saville, Rolf Harris, Bill Cosby Et Al, were “open-secrets” well known in the industry, and condoned because of their success – and the desire to be part of that success. To portray themselves as victims of brutal alpha males is hypocritical. The industry is full of narcissists and exhibitionists who can see no fault in themselves – always ready to blame their failings on others.

Hanoi Jane Fonda, who betrayed American POWs to the Vietcong, also procured young women for threesomes with herself and Roger Vadim. And Dame Helen Mirren, for whom I have great respect, complains that producers wanted to see her body. Why not? In her very first movie role she did three full frontal topless scenes, almost unheard of in UK films at that time. Why did she think that they would fly a first time film actress, straight out of drama school, first class to Hawaii – and accommodate her in a 5-star hotel? She and/or her agent, must have read the script.

Yes, some of Harvey’s harassments were genuine victims: production assistants, interns and gophers overawed by his wealth and dominant personality. But a large number were willing “victims”. And now Pandora’s box has been opened, every aspiring Hollywood starlet will claim to have been harassed by Harvey. It will be an essential part of their CV.

Many of the expatriates who feature in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, washed up in the Arabian/Persian Gulf because of the perfidy of women. Typically they were veterans of politicians’ wars like the BURAIMI Oasis, the DHOFAR Campaign and the Vietnam War, whose wives or girlfriends cheated on them, seduced by cheap promises and false glamour.

THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, deals with the effect that fabulous oil wealth brought to the region after the quadrupling of crude oil prices in 1972 as seen through the eyes of those expatriates. You can preview my book on Amazon’s Kindle Websites at:

www.amazon.com www.amazon.co.uk

and read the comprehensive 5 Star reviews it has received, and download it if you have a Kindle.

If you prefer a real book in your hands, you can preview my book, and order the paperback from my UK publisher:

www.feedaread.com

Marie Antoinette’s cake

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Maybe, finally, what I have been writing about for the last 30 years is beginning to enter the mainstream.

At a recent conference of the political elite in Sydney, Peter Varghese, the former Head of the Australian Foreign Affairs Department said:

“ . . . I wonder whether this is a gathering of the Ancien Regime and we are all eating cake at Marie Antoinette’s party. One day we might wake up to find the peasants are revolting.”

The only thing he got wrong is that the peasants have already revolted, hence Trump, Brexit and here in Australia Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party.

The political elite/progressives agendas are based on the ideas of the 1960s Permissive Society, outmoded ideas that have failed catastrophically to meet the needs of Western societies. Every indicator of civilized life is going backwards: divorce rates, drug abuse, violent crime, home ownership etc.

For the first time in many generations the present young adult generation will not have as good a life as their parents. This is all the consequence of laissez faire capitalism, and laissez faire neo-liberalism.

Maybe a sea-change is on the horizon? On TV the American series MADAME SECRETARY, and in books the successful Inspector Brunetti series of Donna Leon, are based on successful marriages and happy families – and not the usual divorced, recovering alcoholic, omniscient and frequently violent protagonist that is the noir norm these days.

The only disturbing factor for me is that MADAME SECRETARY still clings to the 19th Century attitudes of American exceptionalism and its divine right to re-create the world in its image, ignoring the realities of its own violent, drug crazed, money obsessed and fractured society.

Donna Leon, who is herself an American, but expatriated to Venice for many years, has a much more realistic view of the world as it is, and not as we wish it to be:

“ . . . how to persuade the Romanians to stop picking pockets, the Gypsies to stop sending their children to break into homes . . . in Venice. And on the mainland . . . asking the Moldovians to stop selling 13 year-olds and the Albanians to stop selling drugs . . and the possibility of persuading Italian men to stop wanting young prostitutes and cheap drugs.”

And, in the same vein as Donna Leon, I try to present the Middle East (or more precisely the oil-rich Arabian/Persian Gulf region) as it really is, and not as The West wish it to be.

In my first book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, I dealt with the effect that fabulous oil wealth brought to the region after the quadrupling of crude oil prices in 1972. In the book I am writing now, GULF II “The Beginning of Sorrows”, I am dealing with the ongoing effects of that wealth which lead to the disastrous wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

You can preview my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, on Amazon’s Kindle Websites at:

www.amazon.com www.amazon.co.uk

and read the comprehensive 5 Star reviews it has received, and download it if you have a Kindle.

If you prefer a real book in your hands, you can preview my book, and order the paperback from my UK publisher:

www.feedaread.com

Fake news

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If Donald Trump achieves nothing else he has exposed the rumourmonger uselessness of the media, including the Internet, with his rapid responses to the lies and propaganda the progressives try to spread against him. He has been so successful that The New York Times is now promising to switch to fact based journalism, as if this was a new initiative. Naively I always thought that journalists existed to report the facts.

In fact, of course, I haven’t believed in journalists for a very long time. As a young, politically engaged student, I attended a dock workers’ strike meeting. Amid all the rabble rousing, and Trotsky trouble makers trying to bring down the government, I identified 3 genuine issues that needed attention. No media that I could find reported these issues for at least 2 weeks: they concentrated instead on the rabble rousing or police brutality, depending on the political leanings of their editor.

And here in Australia journalism now seems to be an extension of the public relations industry. One so-called news program interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger recently, and never even mentioned his time as Governor of California, let alone his illegitimate child. All they did was promote his latest movie.

And at the moment we have the case of a 22 year old Australian woman caught leaving Bogotá with almost 6 kilos of cocaine in her luggage. Trying as I do to apply the Western principle of the presumption of innocence, I still find it hard to accept that the media are simply not asking the hard questions:

  1. Why would a 22 year old woman take a holiday in Columbia two months before her wedding? It’s not a prime holiday destination. What was her motive? And has she ever travelled there before?????

  2. Who paid the ticket? Apparently it was bought anonymously in Hong Kong.

  3. Knowing Columbia’s reputation for drugs why would anyone accept 18 misshaped packages tightly wrapped in plastic from a stranger who claimed they were sets of headphones?

  4. And who is this stranger? Why is he untraceable?

Instead of focussing on these fact based issues, the media are running interviews with her Mother and her fiancée. Predictably, they are saying she’s a lovely innocent girl who has been set up. This is the standard excuse trotted out by every drug mule that’s ever been caught. Such emotional interviews add nothing to the narrative, and in fact, serve only to deflect attention from the facts.

And now the Mother, the fiancée, and the girl herself are arguing over the rumoured one million dollars she has been offered for her exclusive story. Who says crime doesn’t pay, and the media don’t fund it? Remember the Australian TV documentary crew who funded a Mother trying to snatch her child off a Beirut street? The media no longer report the news they try to make it. Gonzo journalism at its worst.

That’s why I made the narrator of my book of short stories a journalist trying to write as honestly as possible “the first rough draft of history” – and being frustrated by editors interested only in headlines and deadlines – and pleasing their owners.

My book is based on hard fact, heightened by the fictional consequences for the flawed characters featured in the stories. The flotsam and jetsam of expatriates who wash up in The Arabian/Persian Gulf.

You can preview my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, on Amazon’s Kindle Websites at:

www.amazon.com www.amazon.co.uk

and read the comprehensive 5 Star reviews it has received, and download it if you have a Kindle.

If you prefer a real book in your hands, you can preview my book, and order the paperback from my publisher:

www.feedaread.com