Tag Archives: Politics

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.

Weaving Magic Carpets

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Before the West’s greed for cheap oil and its consequences – the carve up of Assyria by the French and British after WW I, the Balfour Declaration and the problems of Palestine, the Gulf Wars and the events of 9/11 – we had a much more romantic view of the Middle East. It was the land of Scheherazade’s “Tales of a 1,001 Nights” where every night a wife used her feminine imagination to take her husband on a magic carpet ride to prevent her execution (so the brutality has always existed).

These tales, produced during the Islamic Golden Age, are actually a collection of folk tales from Persia and South Asia, probably based on the Persian Pahlavi “Hazar Afsan” (A Thousand Tales). And the tribal women of Southern Persia still weave their magic in the form of hand woven carpets and saddle bags that are now recognised as works of art.

When I worked in Iran (Persia) my Iranian friends wanted me to buy carpets. But they insisted on sophisticated and elaborate silk Qum, Kashan and Tabriz carpets. I preferred the tribal rugs of the Qashq’ai whose vegetable died natural wools, and geometric designs glowed from the walls of the carpet stalls in the Bazaars.

The nomadic tribes of Southern Iran persist in leading their harsh traditional lives in spite of the efforts of The Shahs (and the Ayatollahs) to settle them in villages and carve up their rich grazing lands into farms for themselves and their cronies. Every Spring the tribes and their flocks trek from the winter grazing in the lowlands over the snow and ice-capped Zagros mountains to the rich summer grazing in the high valleys, and back down again in the Autumn – hopefully before the blizzards. Many suffer frostbite and some die, slipping away on the ice.

Beg, borrow or steal – or even rent or buy on DVD – Anthony Howarth’s amazing documentary PEOPLE OF THE WIND to see the incredible hardships these people endure to follow literally in the footsteps of their forefathers. And read the story TRIBAL WEAVING in my book THE GULF “Reaping the Whirlwind”  to see how tribal women, as a defence against the coarseness and constant upheaval of their lives, use their inherent feminine artistry to weave their magic carpets to traditional designs that keep alive their cultural heritage and their tribal myths.

Their lives may be hard and short, but they are lived with an intensity and passion that is missing in The West. TRIBAL WEAVING is a story of love.

You can preview and download – or buy in paperback – my book by following my URL:

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