Tag Archives: Persian Gulf

Reaping the Whirlwind Part 2

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Yesterday I posted a blog that expressed my belief that the USA unintentionally created the war between Iran and Israel that threatens the whole of the Arabian/Persian Gulf (and indeed the whole world economy) by deposing a legally elected government, and installing a corrupt Shah and his cronies. This enabled the Ayatollahs to walk into Iran without any resistance. Today I want to reinforce that by proposing that the situation has been made much worse by America’s unconditional support for Israel.

In my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” one of the characters says that Israel, “is the spear carrier for the Yanks in the Middle East.” In other words American support for Israel was a calculated foreign policy move so that they could use the threat of unleashing a militarised Israel on any of the Gulf states that did not bow to the USA’s interests. Unfortunately, it now seems that the Americans are the spear carriers for the Israelis. They can now threaten their neighbours with unleashing American military might on them if they do not bow to Israel’s demands. And Netenyahu’s demands far exceed Trump’s original aims of ridding Iran of a nuclear threat.

When I worked in Saudi Arabia, my highly educated young graduates (with engineering degrees from American Universities) that I was mentoring, told me that the Israeli’s were not to be trusted. They wanted to own or control the whole of the Middle East. At the time I thought it ridiculous, but look at the current situation. The threat to annex the West Bank, the invasion (for the 4th time?) of Southern Lebanon, and their proposal for all out war on Iran.

THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, is a collection of linked short stories based on my 40 years experience of living and working in the Arabian/Persian Gulf. The stories are based on real events I have witnessed, or were told to me by expatriates who have lived there for a long time. As such, they give insights into the realities of the situation in this fascinating region that is the cradle of our civilisation.

My book is available in paperback at www,FeedaRead.com, of as an ebook on Amazon’s Kindle.

Reaping the Whirlwind 1

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Dazzled by the Imperial splendours of India – the jewel in The Crown – and distracted by Byzantine politics in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus, The Arabian/Persian Gulf became a neglected backwater of the British Empire that allowed the USA to develop the Saudi Arabian oilfields, and usurp British interests in Persia (Iran). The Americans deposed the democratically elected government of Mosedeq, and replaced him with the corrupt Shah and his cronies.

The situation became so bad that Ayatollah Khomenei was invited to fly in unopposed and to install a deeply religious regime. As the Iranians say, “We used to drink in public, and pray in private. Now we pray in public and drink in private.”

It was American greed for oil, their naivete, and their unconditional support for Israel that has created what they perceive as a threat to Western democracy. As Ray Horrocks, a character in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” says:

“The Yanks understand the problems, they don’t understand the people. The Iranians write backwards, read backwards, and think backwards.”

My book is a collection of linked short stories featuring the flotsam and jetsam of expatriate Westerners who wash up in the Arabian/Persian Gulf. It highlights, and gives insights to the clash of cultures that has led to the present conflict.

THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” is available in paperback from http://www.ReadARead.com, or can be downloaded as a ebook from Amazon’s Kindle.

Tomorrow the World

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I have made my book of short stories THE GULF Reaping the Whirlwind a free download on Amazon’s Kindle for 5 days starting Monday 25th September.

I have done this because I believe that although first published in 2011 it has now become relevant again.

The book is a series of linked short stories supposedly written by a journalist featuring the ex-patriate human flotsam and jetsam that washup in the Arabian/Persian Gulf working in the oil industry.

The principle thread that runs through the stories is a critique of a soulless Western society that has forced these people to abandon their families in order to find employment and survive. But the underlying thread is the destructive effect that the discovery of huge deposits of strategic oil, and the consequent flow of billions of dollars of petro-dollars, has had on the region.

When I worked in Iran in the 70s my young Iranian trainees were keen to educate me about how the CIA engineered a coup to oust Mossadeq, the democratically elected Prime Minister, and install the corrupt Shah and his cronies, so that America could control Iranian oilfields.

And more recently, when I worked in Saudi Arabia, my young Saudi trainee engineers were keen to tell me that Israel, backed by the USA, were intent on taking over not just Gaza and the West Bank, but the whole of the Middle East and its oil wealth. And just look at recent events. Not just the appalling invasion of Gaza, but the bombing of Iran, Syria, Iraq, Qatar and Yemen.

I leave it to your judgement.

Plus ca change …………..

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.. . . 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.

“Reaping the Whirlwind”

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Events move so fast these days that, until recently, I thought my book THE GULF, “Reaping the Whirlwind, published just ten years ago, had become history. It is a collection of character studies of typical Western expatriates, the flotsam and jetsam of modern living, washed up in the Arabian/ Persian Gulf for whatever reason.

But the background to those stories is the Arab/Israeli situation that, with recurring financial crises, the rise of China to a world power, and the resurgence of Russia under Putin, had been swept from the headlines. Now, with the horrific events unfolding in Gaza my book is relevant again.

Anybody who has ever worked in The Gulf will have been confronted with the atavistic Arab/Israeli conflict. Sometimes, if you are lucky, it will be a well-educated, well-travelled Arab, who will concede that it is a domestic dispute over land between cousins, but will insist that the Israeli Zionists will never be satisfied until they own all of the Holy Lands.  If you are unlucky, it will be an Islamic religious zealot who will reference his beliefs and his claims to The Holy Lands back 4,000 years to the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham), and his first-born son Ishmael.

To Western sensibilities this seems ridiculous, but as Uncle Tom (one of the insightful characters is my book) says,

 “The West understand the problems, they don’t understand the people.”

Or, as Ray (a more down-to-earth character in my book) says,

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

            If you are interested in the back-story to the present horrific events in Gaza, first read John Keays insightful book, “Sowing the Wind”, that explains the policy errors or the past that have led to the present day tragedy in Gaza. Then read my book, THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”, which can be downloaded from AMAZON’s Kindle app, or it can be reviewed and bought as a paperback from my UK publisher:

Feedaread.com

P.S. In spite of the serious tone of this blog, my book is not a polemic. It is a series of stories about ordinary people surviving in an extraordinary landscape – a world as it is, and not as we wish it was -, and it is a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit finding humour and hope, despite the slings and arrows of their outrageous lives.

What happened to the “Real World”

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Still grappling with my return to good health and the frightening virtual world I now live in.

Obviously the COVID pandemic dominates everything. Living in NSW Australia, I am baffled by the State and Federal governments declaration of FREEDOM DAY just before Christmas, and their decision that life was back to normal, no need for precautions and just “let it rip’ and go out dancing and drinking.

Result! Overnight infections went from between 1-200 to 20,000, and as a consequence the daily death rate went for 1 or 2 to close to 100. And of course it is not the fault of the politicians. It was “the peoples” fault for not acting responsibly.

It reminds me of Donald Reagan’s comment on professional politicians. “They are like diapers. They are full of shit and need changing regularly.”

Perhaps worse in the longer term is that the unfettered internet has blow away two basic pillars of our democracy: An accused person is entitled to:

  1. A presumption of innocence
  2. Once accused, that the case is “sub judicae’

Now all the crazies on the internet, and most of the “legitimate” media, seem to feel free to conduct a trial by media that destroys all chance of a free trial. Investigative journalism is one thing – advocacy journalism is quite another, and should be banned.

And finally, the internet has become a monster that needs feeding with ever more scandalous gossip, and gives sustenance to people who, in previous times, would have been reviled. Nowhere is that more clear than the Harry and Meghan soap opera. Here is a man who was born into the privileged world of the British Royal Family. Who holds titles, and commissions, bestowed on him by The Queen (and has inherited multiple fortunes from his royal connections) yet seems to feel free to diss and undermine his grandmother, an old woman at the end of a life of faultless service to her people and her country. What a low life.

He should be stripped of his titles, and members of his regiment should present him personally with 4 white feathers (look it up).

For sure, my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” is now a historical novel, based as it is in a world where duty, and honour, and patriotism (but not ultra-nationalism) still counted for something. With the speed of change now full throttle, (and with The Queen almost certainly dead and buried) maybe in another decade it will truly be historical, and will be as popular as novels from the Tudor era.

Or maybe there will be a huge corrections, and people will grow sick of the narcissistic excesses of the internet and PR dominated advocacy journalism – and view my book as something of value.

Vain Hope????????

Jerusalem

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The tagline to my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” is:

‘It’s all about Oil’

Certainly in my working lifetime in the 20th Century international oil industry that appeared to be true. But in the new Millenium, the brutal Palestine/Israeli conflict became ever more prominent, and then with 9/11, the Gulf War, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian Civil War, came the rise of Da’esh (ISIS), which seemed to be the ultimate in atavistic and barbaric behaviour.

But in Biblical terms, Da’esh are absolutely within the context of Middle Eastern history. For the past 3,000 years, ever since Abraham(Ibrahim), it has always been the scene of cruel, bloody and brutal conflict. And maybe it always will be, for this is the site of Armageddon.

‘It’s all about Religion’

I have just watched Simon Montefiori’s documentary JERUSALEM that traces the history of this, the most Holy of Cities, from Canaanite paganism, through Judaism, Christianity and Islam. And the number of times it has been besieged, destroyed and rebuilt – all involving unbelievable levels of cruelty and barbarism – is mind boggling.

And after each destruction they rebuilt the city and its temples and shrines over the ruins of the religious sites of the previous occupiers, sometimes using the same stones. In exactly the same way The Holy Bible built on The Torah, and The Holy Qu’ran built on the Old Testament and the New Testament – and is proclaimed as the Final Testament. Yet we are all ‘People of the Book’ – followers of the same one God.

I have to admit that the focus of my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” is very narrow in terms of the religious strife that has riven the Middle East throughout the centuries. To try and correct this I am writing a sequel, GULF II “The Beginning of Sorrows”, based on the Biblical Quotation:

“And ye shall hear of wars, and rumours of wars: see that ye are not troubled, for all these things must come to pass – but the end is not yet. For Nation shall rise against Nation, and Kingdom against Kingdom: and there shall be Famine, and Pestilences, and Earthquakes in divers places. All these are The Beginning of Sorrows.”

In the meantime, if you want insights into the chaos and confusion in the Middle East from Britain’s neglect of its mandates in The Gulf, and the 5 fold increase in crude oil prices that funded the rise of 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 (BCCI, Lonrho, Lloyds of London, IOS 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

Lest We Forget

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At the moment I am watching a CNN documentary about the 1970s. An era that saw the advent of cable TV, the 24 hour news cycle, NIXON and the Watergate scandal – and the ignominious end of the VIETNAM War.

And it is that last segment that resonates with me. I lived in the USA in the mid-1960s, and many of my young colleagues were drafted to fight in Viet Nam. I was even taken off a bus to Canada and questioned by the FBI as a potential draft dodger. Fortunately I had already done military service in the UK, and was not eligible for the draft.

And one of my best friends here in Australia fought in the Viet Nam war. In fact we first met on vacation in Viet Nam.

 The CNN segment on the war ends with a clip of the presenter standing in Arlington Cemetery among the endless rows of white headstones marking the graves of young Americans who died in Viet Nam, and he says,

“If any future President ever thinks of going into a foreign war again, he should visit this place before he makes that decision. The Viet Nam War cost America 7 trillion dollars, the lives of 56,000 young Americans, and more than a hundred thousand wounded – some of whom will never recover from their injuries.”

He spoke those words in 1974 – and what he didn’t say was that it was all to no avail. When the Americans left Viet Nam after 10 years of bloody conflict the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese swept into Saigon and took over the South.

Now think Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The body-bags still keep coming home (although figures are no longer published) – and the cost escalates to unimaginable numbers, not just in trillions of dollars, but in civilians killed and maimed and forced to flee their countries as refugees. Will no American President learn the lessons of (recent) history and heed George Washington’s words:

“Interventionists are the result of refined education on minds of a peculiar structure,”

If you want insights into the recent history, and the chaos and confusion in the Middle East read my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”. It is written from the points of view of the archetypal expatriates who washed up in the the Arabian/Persian Gulf prior to the events of 9/11. They were victims of power-mad politicians’ wars, greedy finance house excesses – and in some cases just victims of avaricious Western wives, and out of control drug-crazed teenage children.

It is based on my 40 years in the international oil industry, most of it spent in The Gulf. You can preview it on AMAZON’s Kindle Websites for the USA, 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

Why am I a Sceptic/Cynic?

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I had a happy childhood. I am by nature optimistic – and yet I am sceptical of everything I see and hear – because:

My first management role was as Group Leader of SHELL’s jet fuel lab near Heathrow. My first project was the field testing of a water detector that had been developed by SHELL’s prestigious Amsterdam Research Laboratorium – and I, and my 3 research assistants, could not make it work.

Under intense pressure from my boss – and feeling like a failure who had fallen at the first fence – and in the throes of a panic attack at 3 am, I thought the unthinkable. What if Amsterdam were wrong? It took me and my assistants a morning in the lab to show that they were wrong.

I rushed to my boss shouting “Amsterdam are wrong.”. He was aghast. “You can’t say that,” was his reponse. And I had to invent a bullshit technology invoking Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle to explain the difference between lab results and field experience. The SHELL Water Detector is still in safe use at most of the world’s airports – thanks to my 3 am panic attack.

Very much later, I was the Manager of SGS Redwood’s Production Laboratory in Aberdeen that devised the crude oil Production Allocation scheme for the EKOFISK field with the Norwegain Petroleum Directorate; and for Occidental’s PIPER/CLAYMORE oilfields. On that basis we were invited to participate in the development of a scheme for the vastly more complex Sullom Voe Terminal project along with SHELL, ESSO, BP and ICI.

Test samples were sent to all the labs for analysis – and the results were sent to a Cambridge PhD for collation and analysis. He issued a report that made no sense to anybody. Les Berqvist from ESSO then asked the 64K question, “What is the baseline you have used to compare the results?” His confident answer, “My results, of course.”

Instead of applying well known statistical methods to analyze all results, including his own, he had made the vain and arrogant assumption that his results were the most accurate – and he was hostile, embarrassed and defensive when he was found out. Contrary to popular belief, scientists are human. They are frequently vain, intellectually arrogant, insecure and desperate for recognition. And under intense pressure to conform to orthodox beliefs in order to attract funding.

Think what George Orwell said:

“At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas, which it is assumed right-thinking people will accept without question.”(GlobalWarming) ”Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban.” (think the late Dr. David Kelly, and Iraqi WMD)

Just like the scientists, the neo-Cons and neo-Liberals are so certain of their righteousness that they feel justified in spinning their half truths – and their outright lies. Tony B-Liar is still maintaining it was right to get rid of Saddam Hussein, in spite of the hundreds of thousands killed and being killed, maimed and being maimed in Iraq and Syria, the millions of refugees being displaced into Jordan, Turkey, and on into Europe – and the rise of ISIS, a far more terrifying and effective terrorist group than Al Qa’eda. He needs to seek asylum – in a psychiatric unit.

If you want more insights into the chaos and confusion that preceded all this read my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”. It is written from the points of view of the archetypal expatriates who washed up in the the Arabian/Persian Gulf, prior to the events of 9/11. They were victims of powermad politicians’ wars, greedy finance house excesses – and in some cases just victims of avaricious Western wives, and out of control drug-crazed teenage children.

It is based on my 40 years in the international oil industry, most of it spent in The Gulf. You can preview it on AMAZON’s Kindle Websites for the USA, 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

Stop the World – I want to get off

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Am I the only sane person on this planet?

At the present moment there is 11 times more financial instruments being traded worldwide than the total World GDP. A massive bubble waiting to burst. Here in Australia private debt is 250% of GDP, and yet, in order to buy a house young couples are being encouraged to extend themselves, and borrow 8 times their joint incomes.

Yet the cause of the most recent Global Financial Crisis was the Banks and investment houses selling mortgages that they knew people could not afford (i.e. they committed fraud) and then bet against those toxic financial instruments so that they made billions when they failed. And nobody went to jail.

And the IMF have admitted that they allowed Greece to draw down 2,000 times more than the agreed safe borrowing limit. And, of course, nobody can find the papers on that, or who was responsible for signing it off.

Stop the World I want to get off.

Now the neo-liberal urban elite are decrying BREXIT, in spite of the fact that there are already 8.5 million immigrants in the UK, with more to come, in a country about a third the size of New South Wales, with a permanent population of 60 million. And the much vaunted trade with Europe is running at a Euros 89 Billion deficit per year for the UK. The EU is dominated by an anti-British bureacracy in Brussels, run by a drunken old fool, that has actively encouraged, and funded the transfer of British manufacturing and technology across to Eastern Europe.

Stop the World I want to get off.

And now on a global basis it is predicted that Robotics, and the “Internet of Everything” will be a new Industrial (Digital) Revolution that will throw millions of people out of work. And still we hear that Globalization – a euphemism for Americanization – the only way for mankind to proper.

Are we all going to emulate a society whose only philosophy is “Get rich quick”? A violent society riven by racism, where almost every citizen owns a gun: with 20,000 gun murders a year (including massacres in schools, colleges and gay clubs), with 200,000 aggravated assaults and 200,000 (reported) rapes a year – where 2.5 million citizens are in jail with a further 1 Million on parole – and where the President and Commander in Chief of 40% of the world’s miltary with his/her finger on the trigger is either going to be an ego-maniac jingoist with a ridiculous combover, or a crazed geriatric chipmunk with an adulterous husband: a Wall Street puppet whose CV is littered with shady business dealings who has shown ignorance of, or cavalier disregard for, even the most basic disciplines of national security.

Stop the World I want to get off.

But I guess it was always so. Look at the chaos in the Middle East, whose past is littered with fools, carpetbaggers, despots, religious zealots and power crazed politicians – and outright thieves. If you want insights into how it got into such a mess read my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”.

It is a linked series of character studies of archetypal expatriates who wash up in the the Arabian/Persian Gulf, victims of powermad politicians’ wars, greedy finance house excesses – and in some cases just victims of avaricious Western wives, and out of control drug-addled teenage children. Welcome to the modern world.

It is based on my 40 years in the international oil industry, most of it spent in The Gulf. You can preview it on:

www.amazon.com

or

www.amazon.co.uk

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