Category: Uncategorized

Joining Some Dots in the Eastern Mediterranean

In most cases, following world events to understand their evolution, is a matter of being patient. The daily barrage of online predictions and projection is both futile and nerve-shredding. Only having the patience to follow what is actually happening and linking various facts on the ground to build evidence, can provide accurate analysis and comprehensive understanding. This isn’t new.

‘Duck Theory’ is usually the most solid tool – if it sounds like a duck, walks like a duck and looks like a duck… it’s a duck. If we can combine Duck Theory with ‘Follow the Money’ methodology then accurate forecasting of medium-term future outcomes becomes credible, rather than hurried and half-baked blog posts and podcasts. I’m going to summarise and join some important dots currently swirling around the eastern Mediterranean, place them in an extended chronological order and then suggest a credible evolution of the current crisis.

Dot 1 – Production of Natural Gas

Since around 2009, significant deposits of natural gas have been discovered under the eastern Mediterranean Sea in or close to the territorial waters of Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus. It was thought that Turkey might also benefit but the Turkish government has decided to focus instead on similarly large  discoveries in the Black Sea.

Source – Middle East Institute

www.mei.edu/publications/eastern-mediterranean-gas-discoveries-progress-and-what-watch-2023 

All of the countries involved have been working to negotiate a settlement around the all too obvious regional issues in order to prepare the production phase of the gas fields and attract the major international investment needed to design and construct the necessary domestic and export infrastructure: supply pipelines to markets, onshore facilities, offshore extraction systems etc. The resolution of legal issues has been complicated by historical problems such as the non-recognition of Israel by Lebanon, stalling a settlement on gas fields that straddle the countries’ borders.

Of more immediate concern is that the long-standing military/political conflicts that exist along the coast lines of the Hamas-governed Gaza Strip, Israel and Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon make the introduction of crucial and substantial outside investment almost impossible to envisage.

Additionally, the consequent delays in developing the eastern Mediterranean gas fields has made the situation in European and US markets more difficult in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and it’s detrimental effects on Russian gas production, supply and pricing.

Dot 2 – Establishing an Economic Infrastructure

The Chartered Cities Institute is a Washington DC based organisation that researches, advises and assists in the establishment of communities specifically designed to facilitate economic growth.

Keeping it simple, Charter Cities exist within existing state borders but create their own legal, commercial and social cultures based on achieving economic success unhindered by national government restrictions. Services, facilities and infrastructures will be financed by private investment and will be operated and administered by private corporations. If we want to see what Charter Cities may look like we only have to think of what Dubai, Qatar and Abu Dhabi have become in the last 25 years.

Source: https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/

The Charter Cities Institute has produced a handbook outlining a bare bones model of how they envisage a Charter City being established and administered in the interests of creating growth out-with the traditional state frameworks and regulatory infrastructures. For more information, you can download the handbook here:

Governance Handbook

Equally interesting is a world map produced by the Charter Cities Institute identifying locations where Charter Cities could most successfully be established. Find the Charter Cities map here:

https://newcitiesmap.com/map

For the purposes of this piece, we should note that Gaza City was identified as a potential site for economic development as early as 1975, initially as part of the drive to make the Gaza strip economically viable in its own right. The international community discussed funding the construction of sea and airports in addition to other major infrastructure projects. As we know, none of these things ever happened and were never going to happen once Hamas displaced the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority in Gaza in 2006.

Source: www.usip.org/palestinian-politics-timeline-2006-election

In light of recent events and the need to begin serious production of the natural gas fields, the original mission of what is now the Gaza Charter City may already have been considerably revised.

Dot 3 – Military Action

The whole world knows what happened in Israel on 7 October 2023.

The appalling and unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israel invited a response so brutal, at least equal to Russia’s ruthless, larger-scale invasion of Ukraine, that the international community has become (even more) fractured as a result. Every normal civil society institution in Gaza has been destroyed. There are no hospitals, no schools or universities, no formal infrastructure for the supply of food, water, energy and medicines and no viable residential areas. The territory is now riven with disease and starvation. In fact it is obvious that a population cannot return if there is nothing to return to.

I think we can clearly see that Israel’s objective, in its military response to the Hamas’ attack, has been to clear Gaza and with it the coast between the Egyptian and Lebanese borders. Already we see reports of Israel building transport infrastructure and permanent military positions in the Gaza strip. The Israeli government has already made clear that it will take control of all security activities there after the military operation has ended.

Additionally, Israel has also gone part-way to ‘stabilising’ parts of neighbouring Lebanon, notably south Beirut and its shoreline. At the time of writing the recently established cease-fire agreement between Israel, Lebanon and Iran-supported Hezbollah seems to be holding but it remains an extremely fragile proposition.

Dot 4 – The Accumulation of Investment Capital

A question that some have found troubling centres on the lack of support for the people of Gaza and more recently Lebanon from the economic giants among the Arab states. The politics of the Arab world are considered by many to be unfathomable, with their multiplicity of clashing interests and changing alliances. This common perception is down to a general lack of understanding and a high degree of lazy projection applied to the reporting of Middle Eastern issues. However there are two constants amid the complexity.

Both the main Arab actors in the existential conflict with Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas are supported to a greater or lesser extent by the Islamic Republic of Iran which, being Persian with the vast majority of its population speaking Farsi,  is not a member of the Arab world. In addition, the dominant branch of Islam in Iran is Shia. The populations of the Arab Gulf states and Saudi Arabia are predominantly of the Sunni branch of the Muslim faith. Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, they and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia combined with the United Arab Emirates have developed and supported sharply divergent interests, to say the least and this is reflected in their support or lack of it for both Hezbollah and Hamas.

I referred earlier to the economic power, fuelled by oil production and historically strategic trading know-how, of the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia. Their global investment network is perhaps the most extensive in the world and they have huge funds to back it up. The business of the modern day Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. truly is business.

As an example, the UAE are heavily involved in the growing economic development taking place in Rwanda, working with the Rwanda government on investment and operational projects.

Source: www.rwandainuae.gov.rw/actualites/info-details/rwanda-private-sector-taps-into-investment-and-trade-opportunities-at-uae-rwanda-business-forum-2023

In the case of Saudi Arabia, the Public Investment Fund of Saudia Arabia is estimated to have assets of over 925 billion dollars and is clearly one of the richest sovereign wealth funds in the world. The investment opportunities presented by a stable economic environment along the coastline of the Eastern Mediterranean are obvious but they have not been realisable until now. Why waste those investment opportunities by getting heavily involved in an endless war?

Summary

By applying ‘Duck Theory’ and ‘Follow the Money Methodology’, we can trace the evolution of a narrative that will become more common as the global climate crisis worsens and the Earth’s natural resources, including carbon energy, dry up.

There are large deposits of natural gas under the Eastern Mediterranean. To extract and export the gas from those fields would go a significant way to solving the supply issues that many countries are currently experiencing.

The large scale investment required to develop the gas fields and build the infrastructure required to deliver the gas to its markets exists but has been slow to materialise. This is because the political/military situation in the region has been extremely unstable for many years and returns on any investment do not seem to be guaranteed; one large terrorist attack, a political impasse or military crisis could close the whole project down at any time.

The greatest threat to the development of the gas fields was perceived to be the very existence of Gaza as governed by Hamas. That threat has now been largely removed and the coastline has been cleared for development from the Egyptian border as far as an area inside Lebanon.

Apart from the facilities required to extract and export the gas, the coastline offers further opportunities for development: commercial, industrial, residential, tourism, transport infrastructure, seaports and airports. We will see how quickly this starts to happen.

And what about the Palestinian Arabs? Will they agree to become the ‘locally-sourced’ labour force?

The New Age of Oligarchs

During the first half of the twentieth century, when climate change became irreversible, the making and hoarding of money became the most important dynamic in human society. There had been a time when people could focus on a number things in their lives; things like career success, rewarding relationships, the creation and appreciation of art and being kind. However by 2001 that was beginning to change and it happened so quickly that very few people saw it coming.

Money became its own religion with its own set of goals and values that fractured the over-arching philosophy that told everyone they were all in ‘this’ together; shared a complex set of responsibilities and behaviours, told us that there were limits and boundaries. In support of this philosophy people, generally elected other people to make laws that reflected and upheld those values.

So, when and how did this philosophy start to collapse?

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that things started to go south with the Financial Crisis of 2008, as good a place to start as any. Overnight there was no money, period. But this can’t happen, there must be money how can there not be money? And, given the kind of economic, commercial and political systems that that we had been building for centuries it is a simple fact that there must be money or we are right back where we started; exchanging goods for salt or coloured beads or whatever.

So, in order for there to be money, governments around the world bailed out the banks and financial institutions, allowing them to continue doing whatever it was they did with money. Where did that money come from? Well apart from all of the people who pay tax (us), who knows but came it did, lots of it. And it was given to the very people who had lost all the money in the first place, without penalty. That is the very moment that the people of Earth realised that the few people who actually have a very great deal of money are exempt from any of the struggles that the rest of us face, including obeying the law.

I believe that the wealthy people came to the same conclusion at exactly the same moment, from a different perspective of course. They began to see that they they could actually do exactly what they wanted and no-one would stop them. They could commit fraud, refuse to pay their bills, stuff their pockets with public money and hide it in foreign bank accounts, never be required to pay tax in their home countries, buy property wherever they felt like and evade all of their legal and financial obligations while sailing the seven seas in their luxury yachts.

More importantly, very wealthy people understood that they no longer needed to beg amenable politicians in their own or other countries for favours on behalf of their businesses. Instead they could actually buy the politicians, indeed they could buy entire political parties and have them govern on their own behalf. The link between politicians and the people was now broken, instead it was the wealthy people owning politicians who worked against the interests of the general population.

But wouldn’t the people rise up and protest? No! The wealthy people realised that systems of regulation and probity had been relaxed to the extent that they could buy all the newspapers, TV stations and more importantly all the new-fangled social media platforms that they could afford. The general population could hardly protest against this coup of the wealthy if they were starved of any truthful analysis of what was happening; fed instead on a diet of confusing, contradictory nonsense every single day.

Worse than that, the wealthy owners and their political puppies could fill the airwaves with distrust, blame, division, outright lies and infantile trivia; confounding rational discussion while they accumulated greater amounts of money. One rule of economics used to be that a country could only be considered to have a successful economy if as many of its citizens could contribute and have enough money to easily buy goods and services from their fellows. A country that is owned and governed by a small number of very wealthy people simply doesn’t care what happens to the vast majority of citizens or their economy.

For example, the British were persuaded to leave the European Union by a minority of wealthy people. Because the E.U. was about to stop wealthy Europeans sending their money offshore thus obliging them to pay their taxes at home. Such a feat of national suicide was possible because the wealthy people owned the British government and virtually all the popular channels of information. They could control the debate and its outcome in their favour.

The late Alexei Navalny’s organisation, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, once estimated that the modern Russian state and its economy served the interests of 600 wealthy families. Those families were generally known as Oligarchs. If you were to look at most of the political cultures around the world, at the time of Donald Trump’s second presidency, you would find exactly the same dynamic. And so at the very moment the human world of climate change needed political cultures and systems based on the traditions and values of the revolutionary American and French constitutions – transparent, collective and brave – we got instead a mush of Soviet post-Stalinist fear, conservatism and unbridled elite self-interest.

All the Things the Scottish people Want

“Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them.”
― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Now and again I read about all the things that the Scottish people want.

The topic has always interested me greatly and for a period of my life I devoted a lot of time to finding out, with the ultimate intention of giving it to them. Now, having left Scotland fifteen years ago, I read about what the people of Scotland have wanted at different times, from a variety of on-line sources. One thing that has particularly struck me in all this reading is that the people of Scotland’s wants have coincide precisely with desires of each of the writers that turn up on my computer screen.

Thus we have the people of Scotland wanting independence from the United Kingdom and its government at Westminster while, at the same time, wanting to stay in the United Kingdom and play their full part in that age-old, tried-and-tested social, economic and political system. I have read that the Scottish people want to continue leading the progressive, social democratic world as they always have and also retain their centuries-old traditions and customs as an ancient Celtic nation.

In the latest twist we discover that the Scottish people are perfectly happy to see the civil and human rights of over half the population, I’m talking about women, pushed aside to make way for a small number of people, initially men, who believe they can invent a new gender science without discussion, peer review or compromise. Those among the people who care about contemporary gender issues are still trying to digest this one while a long-serving ‘First Minister’ has been destroyed by it.

I lived in Scotland from the age of zero until around 47. I’ve studied and engaged with every generation, social class and gender in a relatively profound way and I can, with reasonable certainty, confirm that the people of Scotland want pretty much the same as everyone else. They want peace, security, stability, hope in the future, adequate accommodation, warmth, light, food on the table, well-clothed, educated and happy children and the means to get on with their daily lives.

They want good roads, schools and hospitals. The people living in the islands want to know that their trade and supplies will be guaranteed by proper ferry services. Everyone wants to be sure that the Scottish economy will develop and grow sustainably now and in the future. They have had enough of fantasies peddled by fanatics, they want sensible answers to sensible questions concerning their future in Scotland.

The Scottish people want to be taken seriously and not to be anyone’s socio/political laboratory. It’s time for all the little activists and fanatics to get out of the way, taking their little causes with them.

I imagine snow

here because there is no

snow. I see it driven through

neon beams above the street

that light lone, fading footprints

on no-longer pavements

now level with the road. I hear

the blizzard whistling among

telephone lines while every other

sound is baffled by drifts. I

imagine hating it because I can’t

hate it here. Matches postponed,

the frozen wool of cairngorm sheep,

forced to eat hay on the grey News

of winter. I imagine frozen fingers

released from sodden gloves, cold

blood on painless barbed wire cuts.

January 2023

Happy New Year

I wish everyone a new year of good health, the peace to enjoy it and the love to appreciate it.

Being, in the main, an optimist, I continue to hope that the human race will grow up. That we will realise that countries are only arbitrary lines on the map within which various strands of DNA allow themselves to believe glorious manufactured myths about themselves, wave colourful pieces of cloth in the air and fear the
strands of DNA next door.

I like to hope that we will manage to understand that we, the human race, are destroying our home at an exponentally increasing rate. That the idea of doing something about it and saving ourselves is not a dastardly left wing plot.

I’d like us to care less, or not at all, about money. To stop building, testing and using increasingly lethal and destructive weapons. Because, inevitably we will all kill each other while striving to own and profit from the Earth’s resources. We will all die because we will either blow each other up or suffer catastrophic hunger and thirst unless we change.

I’d like us to realise that, as a species, we have not advanced one inch since the fall of the Roman empire. We may have smart phones and breathtaking surveillance technology, be able to fly non-stop from London to Sydney and transplant hearts but or basic social, economic and political structures have not changed since the early Middle Ages.

In 2023, ownership of everything remains concentrated in the hands of a very small and very wealthy ’nobility’. Their economic power allows them to evade laws and fiscal responsibility despite some of them being strangely ill-educated. They control most of the sources of mass information, leaving the rest of the people intellectually isolated and unable to understand, at the simplest level, what is happening in the world and why.

As an optimist, I hope that 2023 may see us start to move forward from our Medieval comfort zone. To challenge the nobility and be aware of their weakness- their dependence on us. To break out of the prison they have built for us from their vast profits and seek answers to questions that most of us never think to ask.

Raw

Gulls ripple over the lake

in the flag-less putting green.

Driftwood strews across

the promenade from the night’s

high-tide violence. Scraps

brought from another shore.

Cheeks freeze in the tang

of a north wind, slicing

the river from Cowal. Hands

will crack-red in the salt spray.

Spring denied, a final storm.

Pale tourists huddle by the WC.

April 2022

Guernica Pilgrimage

At rest now,
a birdsong tomb
asleep in the lush
of its unmade hills.

Prim streets grill
in an old siesta sun.
A young woman smiles
in the horrifically kempt,

wood-creaking, museum.
A loud child’s laugh, echoes
across the sparse park
where the tree stump

chars within its colonnade.
The roots of a people stretch
far deeper in their soil
than any bomb can reach.

October 2019