.. . . plus c’est la meme chose.” ” the more things change . . . the more they stay the same.” Or as Karl Marx said, “History repeats itself . . . first time tragedy, second time farce.”

But while events in the Middle East are certainly a tragedy of epic proportions, with so many thousands of innocents being slaughtered without pity or compassion, it is certainly beyond farce. What to me is most sickening is the hypocrisy of the American government (President/State Department/CIA) who piously slap Israel’s wrists and threaten to withdraw their support, while continuing to provide the means to wage war.

In my mind they are the enablers of this conflict. They are using the Israeli’s as their spear carriers to enable them to promote a proxy war against Iran. And there are precedents in my 40 years experience working in the Arabian/Persian Gulf.

The very first story in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, concerns events around the Buraimi Oasis in The Emirates.in the 1950s. At that time the Emirates were a British Protectorate, and Saudi Arabia lay within the American sphere of influence. ARAMCO, the Arabian American Oil Company, armed the Saudi Police and encouraged them to invade the Buraimi Oasis in order to move the border in their favour (and many years later that proved fruitful because a giant oilfield was discovered in the disputed territory). This whole crisis was later characterised as “A neat little war between the USA and The Limies.”

Perhaps more relevant was the Americans backing the Shah of Iran to overthrow a democratically elected government so that they could usurp British interests in oil rich Persia.

With the the overwhelming tragedy now unfolding in the Middle East my book is more relevant than ever. While not dealing directly with the Palestine/Israeli conflict, that is the background against which my stories of the expatriate experience of life in the oilfields of the Persian/Arabian oilfields are told. If nothing else they are authentic, based on events I witnessed myself, or were told to me by a reliable source.

I have no wish to profit from human misery, so I am offering my book as a 5 day free download on Amazon’s Kindle starting on Wednesday 23 October. I do this in the hope that many people will read it and gain some insight into the mentality that drives this atavistic Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As Uncle Tom says in my book:

“We understand the problem . . . we don’t understand the people.”

Or as another character, Ray says,

“They write backwards . . . they read backwards . . . and they think backwards.”

So much time spent looking in the rear view mirror and not the road ahead.