Tag Archives: Persian Gulf

Final Solutions

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How do you escape the Palestinian/Israeli conflict?

The stories in my book — THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” — deal with expatriate lives in the Arabian/Persian Gulf in the 40 years following the oil price hike of 1972 when the region developed rapidly from a sleepy and neglected backwater of the British Empire into a world of  glitzy Americanized excess. Yet the last chapter THE BEGINNING is set in Israel. Why? Because anywhere and everywhere you go in the Near/Mid East — quite apart from the thousands of Palestinian refugees you will meet working in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Dubai and the UAE — you will be asked countless times what you think of the Jahud – the Jews.

And then you will be told that they will never be satisfied. Greater Israel is not just the West Bank, they want Jordan and across ancient Assyria to the Ur of Chaldea, in fact the whole of the Fertile Crescent – and even the holy sites of Islam – Mecca and Medinah. The other side of this coin is that Hamas will never be satisfied until Israel is driven into the sea and ceases to exist.

In this atmosphere of mistrust is any solution possible: it is The Balkans raised by a factor of 1000 or more. And just like The Balkans it is innocent children who pay the highest price. This bitter conflict between Semitic tribes randomly kills civilians by the thousands, leaving behind just as many orphans whose blighted future depends on the goodwill and hard work of charities trying to survive in the face of Israeli aggression.

In my book you can read one small story of Layla, a Palestinian Middle East Airlines cabin attendant who converted to Christianity and opened an orphanage outside Ramallah. And you can see that WWI, the war to end all wars, and WWII, the just war against Fascism that among other things liberated European Jews only led to even more pain and suffering.

You can preview my book at:

www.amazon.com/author/mikerichards

and download it if you have a Kindle. Or you can buy it as a paperback from:

www.thebookdepository.co.uk

who offer free delivery worldwide.

The iron Curtain – and the Irony of Iron Man

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It is ironic that the rigorous training schedules of the West’s Iron Man competitors grew out of Eastern Europe’s ruthless selection of gifted children to live their lives as elite athletes to prove the superiority of Communism over decadent capitalism. And that irony deepens when you consider that the pastime of competitive running for sport grew-out from dedicated amateur athletes: British Oxbridge graduates running for the joy of it. And the fashion for jogging and marathon running en-masse grew out from dissolute British colonial administrators’ bored with boozing and eating public school comfort food. They called themselves “drinkers with a running problem”, and founded the Hash House Harriers.

The Hash was founded in the Selangor Club in Malaya before WW II, based on the British public school Hares & Hounds paper chase.  A few good runners would speed off and leave a paper trail for the snuffling hounds to follow. It wasn’t that serious, and there were “Tiffin Wagons” along the way to provide liquid refreshment. The idea caught on rapidly with British colonial expats, and “Kennels” were established in Kabul, Sinai, Addis Ababa and The Falklands. It died off during the war, but was revived shortly after, and kennels were established again wherever British expats gathered. There is even one in New York (and there was one in The Green Zone in Baghdad during the Second Gulf War).

For the elite few the running was more serious, and led to “Chariots of Fire” privileged Oxbridge graduates like Dr. Roger Bannister and Christopher Chataway, who gave their all to break the 4 minute mile barrier, and establish British dominance of middle distance running for two decades. The response of the Eastern Bloc took the form of athletes like the original Iron Man, Czech colonel Emile Zatopek, who pushed through his pain threshold by sheer willpower and swept aside the Oxbridge amateurs. The West worked hard to catch up, and the fierce determination of American athletes to sacrifice all and to win at any cost re-established dominance.  But “win at all costs” comes at a price (not the least the present drugs in sport scandals) – and for a while at least the Russians and their satellites found that finishing second and relying on charisma sometimes has its benefits.

Read my story THE MAN WITH THE FACE OF A FISHERMAN, based on The Hash House Harriers and the Bahrain half-marathon, in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”. You can preview the book, and download it in Kindle by following my URL:

www.amazon.com/author/mikerichards

Or if you prefer hard copy you can purchase a paperback with free delivery worldwide from: www.thebookdepository.co.uk

Thanks for your support

VIVA ESPANYA

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I have not posted for over a week because we have moved back to Spain after 11 months in Australia – and I had forgotten what fun Spain is. Nothing works. We have had problems with water, electricity, Sat TV and finally with internet – only overcome this morning. But what is most scary is how quiet Spain is as a consequence of the GFC and the Eurozone crisis.

We arrived in Barcelona mid-morning, picked up a hire car and drove to the airport TRYP Hotel as usual, too tired after 22 hours of flying to attempt the 500 Km drive home. Usually the roads around the hotel are jam-packed and it is difficult to find parking. There was a 60% availability of parking spaces. And next morning when we left at 7 am – normally rush hour in a busy commercial centre like Barcelona – there was very little traffic on the roads. And we had the main highway from Tarragona to Valencia – the Autopista del Mediterraneo – almost to ourselves. Few people can afford the tolls?

How long will it be before the young people will rebel against 40% unemployment and cause serious, and I mean serious, civil unrest?

And still the incompetent and corrupt politicians, and the greedy and incompetent bankers and financiers, insist that laissez faire capitalism (where 1% of the population control 90% of the wealth, and want even more) is the correct system for a civilized society.

Perhaps now I will find the motivation to finish my second book GULF II “The Beginning of Sorrows”. In the meantime you can access and review and download my first book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind” by following my URL:

http://www.amazon.com/author/mikerichards

This shows through the stories of expatriates washed up in The Arabian/Persian Gulf the consequences of the West’s botched foreign policies and greed for cheap oil. History repeats itself – first time tragedy, second time farce.