Tag Archives: Brexit

Whatever happened to The Global Village

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A few years ago it was the orthodoxy – the body of ideas that all right thinking people should adopt without question – to talk about the world as one big global village. Globalization a.k.a. Americanization would bring peace and prosperity, and universal Happyness.

Then came 9/11 – and then the GFC of 2008.

Nobody talks much about the Global Village any more, and DAVOS – the Olympus of the Gods of Globalization – was poorly attended this year.

When you reach your 80s, with a mind reasonably intact, then Karl Marx’s “History repeats itself, first time tragedy second time farce,” or the more elegant French saying, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose,” resonate ever more strongly.

Do people remember these financial scandals of recent times?

– LOHNRO
– Investors Overseas Services
– Slater Walker
– BICC
– Icelandic Banks
– Societe General
– Barings Bank
– Northern Rock
– Lehman Brothers
– Bernie Madof
– Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac

And all the other nefarious dealings – and at times sheer incompetence – of the financial community? The unacceptable face of capitalism.

Or further back in time:

– The Great Depression of the 1930s

And even further back:

– The South Sea Bubble of 1720
– The Dutch Tulip Mania Bubble of 1636

And yet we continue to try and build a global society based on get-rich-quick speculative bubbles (a.k.a. financial derivatives and hedge funds) so that the filthy rich can get even filthier. There is currently about 8 times more out in paper than actual assets exist in the world. And if I have sparked your interest read Loretta Napoleoni’s excellent book ROGUE ECONOMICS for a more detailed and informed analysis.

Last year the wealth of the top 1% in the world increased by 18%, and the wealth of the bottom 50% decreased by 10%. I guess you could call that balance? Does anybody wonder why Trump, and BREXIT – and even ISIS (DAESH). These represent the backlash to the ruthless greed of the people who contribute nothing, merely seeking to make money from money, and ruin the lives of normal people. And of course they will fight endlessly to maintain their supremacy. Hence the howls of rage against Trump and Brexit.

My book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” concerns the flotsam and jetsam that washes up in The Arabian/Persian Gulf. Expatriate American and British workers who are victims of the West’s ruthless and heartless financial system. And my work in progress, GULF II “The Beginning of Sorrows” concerns one man ruined and brought to the end of his tether by the GFC, the Global Financial Crash of 2008.

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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The Glass Slipper – or Cake and Eat it effect

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In a recent TV series that accurately depicted life in the UK in the recent past, one of the female characters said she was “Still waiting for the glass slipper.” She clung to the fairy tale romantic dream of a Prince Charming coming along to sweep her off her feet. In the meantime she cheated on her husband, and destroyed her marriage.

This adolescent, entitled, narcissistic dream typifies the state of denial that exists in Western Society. The belief that we are entitled to everything life can offer – and then more.

Here in Australia we have a female MP who is being investigated for abusing her staff, and her expense entitlements. Her defence is that she is a single Mother with 3 children, and needs her political staffers to babysit, and shop, and to use private limousine services to save time, so that she can do her job.

Sorry lady, you brought 3 children into the world, and that is your priority – not your political career. You cannot climb Everest, dive the Pacific depths, and sail single handed around the World – and still be home for tea. You can’t have your cake and eat it.

And on a global scale that is what is happening. An adolescent, Quixotic view prevails. Dreaming the impossible dream. Seeing the World as it ought to be (in your own egocentric opinion)- and reacting badly when having to deal with the world as it is. Donald Trump, for all his failings, sees the World as it is – and deals with it. And so do the Brexiteers, sick and tired of the Franco-German Axis trying to rule Europe.

Germany, having failed to dominate Europe by military might is consciously, or unconsciously, trying to dominate by financial might. And France, consciously or unconsciously, is collaborating (please read the book “Le Silence de La Mer” by Vercors).

The parallels with the 1930s are alarming. A global financial meltdown, followed by civic unrest, and the rise of right wing nationalism. All because of Germany’s overriding need to dominate (after losing two World Wars), and the French to demonstrate intellectual and cultural superiority because Britain brought down that other European tyrant, Napoleon (the degree of Anglophobia in Europe is frightening). And once again it is down to uncouth Britain to save Europe from itself. The Brexit Remainers are of course Petainists. Old, tired, and afraid of standing on their own two feet.

“Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.”

The overriding theme of my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, is that Western Governments persist in trying to make the Middle East conform to their view of how it should be – democratic, free market, capitalistic – and not see it as it is. They understand the problems. They do not understand the people.
As one of the characters in one of my stories says, “The Arabs read backwards, they write backwards, and they think backwards.”

Simply stated, their mindset is different. “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

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

Brave New World

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With BREXIT, and the election of Donald Trump, I hope we have finally shaken off the 20th Century, and it’s 1960’s Civil Rights Industry philosophy of entitlement – and (16 years too late|)  we are finally ready to embrace the 21st century, and an era of democracy of the people, for the people, by the people.

     It is a shame that this movement has had to be led by people like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump, and I sincerely hope that it does not lead to ultra-nationalism, – but the neo-liberals and neo-Cons have brought this on themselves. The excesses of libertarianism and globalization have led to an autocracy with a narcissistic obsession with wealth and celebrity, and has led to the destruction of millions of lives – and is the root cause of the present refugee crisis.

I have decided to issue a revised edition of my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” because its message, issued in 2011, is starkly relevant today. In the climax of the book the protaganist says:

“New Labor, and the neo-liberals, had lost the plot. He hated these upper-class toffs with their Nanny’s milk still in their mouths. They were not Socialists or Liberals – they were high Tories with a social conscience addicted to their entitlement to rule. And the aphrodisiac of serious wealth had become their ultimate addiction.”

If you want insights into the present chaos and confusion in the Middle East, from Sykes-Picot, and the Balfour Declaration, to Britain’s neglect of its mandates in The Gulf, and the 5 fold increase in crude oil prices that funded the rise of fundamental Islam, until the events of 9/11, read my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”. Although it is a work of fiction, it is journalistic because the stories start from real events I witnessed – or were reported to me by reliable sources during my 40 years in The Gulf.

It is written from the points of view of those sources,  archetypal expatriates who washed up in the the Arabian/Persian Gulf. They were victims of power-mad politicians’ proxy wars,(The Buraimi Oasis, the Dhofar Campaign, the Viet Nam War),  greedy finance house excesses (IOS, BCCI, Lonrho, Lloyds of London etc.) – and in some cases just victims of avaricious Western wives, and out-of-control, drug-crazed teenage children.

You can preview my book on AMAZON’s Kindle Websites for the USA and UK, Germany and Spain, and download it if you have a Kindle.

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

     www.feedaread.com