quillnews

The NewsWalker "travelogues": Vols. 2, 4

The stories I was hunting for turned out to be answers to questions we all share: where did we come from, where are we going and what does it all mean?  In my case, the quest for page one and tab fame came up wanting early enough so I could switch journalistic gears and begin a more private journey.  My media were letters to friends and colleagues, family, essays on my travels for work and on an amateur genealogical search that turned out to take many rewarding years.  This search also opened up the internet to me and heralded the new potential for publishing in the digital age.  Along the way I would confront my family's origins, and soak up the facts and stories of dozens of people in locations here at home, and some quite exotic places abroad.  Taken together these two volumes tell a story about the reconciliation between a father and son, about the forces of technical and social change to spur immigration and development, and how the constant economic demands of common people for more is the energy that powers our modern world.  The volumes I want to share are:

Wordsmith - Writing a Way Home (ISBN 1-928928-06-4) is a chronicle of journal entries written between 1980 and 1988 after I went to work for Mobil Oil Corporation, which at the time was at the center of one of the biggest stories of the day - the energy crisis. These entries portray a journey of discovery into the realities of modern industrial life, while enabling me to confront some of the causes and consequences of my family's past.  When edited later, I also learned this journal reveals a story of redemption for a father and son. (Volume 2 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)

White Monkey - A Journey Upstream (ISBN 1-928928-07-2) is a series of essays that describes travels to my ancestral headwaters in Ireland and Britain to investigate the origins of my own beginnings and later to my wife's home in Korea.  Also included in this narrative are travel essays that were about my work in the oil industry, and which allowed me to paint a portrait of today's oil industry and its interconnection with nations and trade.  Featured essays include profiles of events and people in Nigeria, Indonesia, Qatar, Korea, Scotland, England, Ireland and Hawaii, and also background into the causes of the largest corporate merger in history - Exxon's purchase of Mobil Oil. (Volume 4 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)

On the trail of the “Big One”: NewsWalker Vols. 1, 3, 5

Every young reporter is on the hunt for “the big one” – the story that will guarantee a page one headline, grab the readers’ interest and give the journalist a chance for newsroom fame.  At least that’s what it was like for me, back in the day, when I was starting out and wondering how to make it into the big time.   I didn’t know it at the time, of course, but “the big one” can also be a newsman’s white whale, consuming a life and spirit as completely as any other unattainable desire.   In time, if the reporter is lucky, he or she will grow to appreciate the smaller more balanced stories, the happy endings and the reports that merely herald the news: “all’s well.”  As for me, fate would open up opportunities elsewhere in the world, in my case the hunt for oil.  But my craft of writing never left me nor did my instinct for the scent of "the big one.” In calling attention to these three volumes in this post, I’m reminded that in their way, each book has the aroma of "the big one”.  When I was coming up, there were no bigger stories than President Kennedy’s assassination, the Vietnam War, and the tangled knot of the Middle East wars and the global oil business.  Even after I left the newsroom, it seems I still had the scent of "the big one" in mind as I went about the business of real life, and which I related in a series of diaries, letters and narratives.  Now these decades later, I realize that my big story would be a life lived in harmony with my family and colleagues, and fulfilling experiences in the rough and tumble of the real world. As a writer, though I may not have scored "the big one” as I had hoped as a young reporter, I still crafted a few books I’m happy to share: 

NewsWalker – A Story for Sweeney (ISBN 1-928928-03-X) A narrative of my years in the newspaper business, where my obsession to learn the story behind the news was rewarded over and over, but denied when I tried to unravel JFK’s murder.  Still my reporting did uncover a fuller context of the ethnic and tribal nature of the political world Kennedy came from and that sustained him, and which created a “mob justice” motive for his murder that is still not fully understood by the American mainstream.  (Vol. 1 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)

Blue Dragon – Reckoning in the South China Sea (ISBN 1-928928-05-6) – A narrative of Mobil Oil’s efforts from 1990-94 to return to oil exploration offshore Vietnam after the end of the embargo, and an insight into how actions are taken in DC for their political effects at home with little understanding of how destructive those actions can be abroad.   (Vol. 3 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)

Just Business Just War (ISBN 1-928928-11-0) – A behind-the-scenes look at the competitive global oil industry and how the US’s inability to come to grips with its energy appetites in today’s global marketplace reshaped the American oil industry, and created the conditions where war was necessary to protect American peace and security.  (Vol. 5 in the NewsWalker Series published by RavensYard)

Among St. Patrick's legacies

As March 17 approaches, it is time for Quillnews to take note of aspects Celtic that matter to me, which in the case of this post is a book entitled Ghosts of Kilrush, by Joe Riley, published by RavensYard and available wherever books are sold (ISBN 1-928928-13-7), and which is as charming an Irish reminisce as you are likely to find anywhere.  Author Joe Riley was, well, abandoned by his Yorkshire father in Kilrush, Co. Clare, as a very young boy, and luckily taken in by a local family named DeLoughery who - there is no other way to say it - were a Godsend to Joe. The DeLoughery family, and the entire Kilrush community, raised Joe as their own, giving him love, a home and protection. When Joe became a teenager, he did what many advertureous spirits do - hit the road. In Joe's case, he became a musician and rocker in Liverpool, a medical worker and manager, computer entrepreneur, eventually settling in Manila, Philippines where he lives with his family now.  Joe's early years in Kilrush were so enriching, Joe put his experiences growing up in that west Ireland village to words and created a poignant childhood portrait that is at once heart-wrenching, hilarious and a joy to read. 

I was introduced to Joe's manuscript a few years ago by a mutual internet buddy, Patrick Cusack, an entrepreneur in the Emerald Tiger's emerging high tech industry. Though living and working outside Dublin, Cusack is a native of Kilrush, Co. Clare, who loves his hometown and is among its most accomplished boosters. Patrick's joy of Kilrush arcana and lore, together with his internet savvy, had led Patrick to establish all manner of Kilrush-based relations around the worldwide web.  Patrick and I had begun a correspondence a decade ago as a result of genealogical work I was doing into my own family history, whose Irish roots are firmly planted in Kilrush, from which my ancestors Sinon and James Collins, father and son, emigrated to New York City in 1863.  Through Patrick's help I was able to enrich my studies of my family history and learn, among many other things, the correct pronounciation of my clan name, O'Coileain, is O Quill Awn.  (Editor's note: yes, that is one of the origins of this blog's name, Quillnews.)

Joe Riley's interest in finding a publisher for his Kilrush memoir had also led him to Patrick, who made the link: he knew of my Kilrush roots and the fact that I had become involved with some partners in a publishing venture, RavensYard, that was designed to use new printing and communications technologies to bring books to market. Through internet correspondence and file sharing, publishing magic would be made.  RavensYard's editors agreed with me that Joe had written a small masterpiece.  We put Joe's manuscript through RavensYard's editing gauntlet and released his book to rave reviews two years ago.  It has been a consistent seller in the US, Ireland, UK and Australia ever since.  Joe and his family even traveled from Manila to Ireland and were feted to a home town reception at which Kilrush's Mayor welcomed Joe and his praised his work for enabling Kilrush's community to share such loving memories.  Patrick and I were heartened to know that from our respective corners of the globe - Dublin, Manila, Fairfax - the three of us Kilrush sons, Patrick, Joe and I, had been able to use the most modern of technology to share with the world Joe's simple story of grace, love and redemption, a legacy perfect for St. Patrick.

Redemption stories rock

With the news that literary hoaxer James Frey has been canned by Random House (finally!), its time to remember that the sins of this one author do not take away from the value in the marketplace of the good old fashioned redemption story.  As the Redeemer showed, we all are, in our common humanity, sinners and we all need saving!  But aside from that larger point, my more narrow focus today at Quillnews is on a redemption story that a friend of mine wrote that is the real deal and not some poser hokus-pocus-poopsie from Media-Ville. For a story about the deprevations and evils from addition, and the potential redemption that comes from recovery, I recommend that Quillnews readers check out Snow Blind, by Douglas Kalajian.  This true life story of defense attorney Howard Finklestein has become a cult classic in South Florida, where Kalajian is a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, Finklestein the newly elected Public Defender for Broward County, and the scurge of cocaine has had such an impact on the region and its people. (RY Page)

Mi Tio Carlos, a poet still defying the silence

Growing up, I always figured my mother’s brother, Charles Savage, was about the smartest guy there ever was.  His accomplishments as a young scholar at Yale, in the Navy, and later as a pioneering researcher and psychiatrist were legend in the family.  He lived near Washington, worked in Nigeria, and in Palo Alto.  He was an early researcher in LSD treatments for alcoholism, and later became an expert in addiction treatments.  He worked with the Veterans Administration and as a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of  Maryland, and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, where he still performs Emeritus duties. Most recently Uncle Charles has donated his time as a medical missionary with the Episcopal Church in Guatemala, and with the health department of St. John, V.I. 

He and his beloved late wife, Ethel, who also was an accomplished educational psychologist, raised two children, my cousins, Emmy and Charles, who with their four children are devoted to him. Uncle Charles is also a genuine character, with a wealth of interests. These loving obsessions include poetry, Spanish language studies, and frequent all-season swims in the Severn River by his home near Annapolis.  After he turned 80, his passion for Spanish led him to attend extended graduate studies at Middlebury College over a course of several summers in Vermont, which resulted in his earning a masters degree in Spanish a few years ago, and the honorary title Tio Carlos in family councils. A volume of poetry he wrote in Spanish with English translations entitled Las Tintieblas en el Dia De Pentecostes y La Doncella y Las Presas (ISBN 1-888756-01-2) was published in 1999 by Prospector Press, P.O. Box 29175, Bellingham, Wash. 98228-1175.  A new review of the volume is here.   Some of Tio Carlos’ poetry is intensely romantic.  A recent example is here: 

DANTE’S FRANCESCA DA RIMINI

The ruthless storms relaxed an icy grip
and sent her torn disheveled soul to me
to sit in peace besides the waters still
besides green pastures and wind-softening trees.

We found a refuge from the whirling gust.
In warming us the sun dispelled our gloom,
brought freedom from our tantalizing lust
and drove away all thought of present doom.

But softly, Zephyr whispered in her ear
with promises of tenderness and  bliss
and, quietly allaying her cold fear.

brought visions of the roses and the wine
and pain and ecstasy beyond compare:
The violent winds have torn her soul from mine.

Tio Carlos embraced new communications technology early and corresponds via email regularly.  Over the years, we have visited often on holiday and family occasions.  He was one of my daughter Lee's earliest champions, and remained convinced, from when she was in Middle School, that she would realize her aspirations to be a doctor; a conviction he punctuated with a hearty "See, I was right," when Lee received her M.D. in 2003.  He was also a cheer leader of my research into family genealogy and an eager consumer of the arcania these studies unearthed.  We share a common passion for the story of our ancestor, Henry E. Savage, who was a Sergeant in Co. G, 16th Connecticut Vols. and who saw action at Antietam. (Holmes Regimental History, Roster, Lemieux History) The 16th suffered some of the worst casualties that day (The battlefield memorial to the 16th is illustrated above. 16th, 16th II). As quoted in a recent battle history: 

The 16th were part of Harland's brigade which crossed the Antietam to the south of the lower bridge at Snavely's Ford and ended up in Otto's corn field on the afternoon of Sept. 17. As part of the Union's left flank, they were mercilessly attacked and "used up" by Gen. A. P. Hill's veteran troops and therefore sustained extremely high number of casualties for their first "outing" as a regiment.

Henry, though a 22-year old Connecticut farm boy with only a month’s service in the Army, acquitted himself well that day and received his sergeant’s chevrons.  He would see action with the 16th later at Fredericksburg, and while garrisoned at Plymouth, N.C.  Sgt. Savage was captured during the battle of Plymouth and was imprisoned at Andersonville between April-December 1864.  On the anniversary of Antietam one recent Sept 17, Tio Carlos eagerly led me, my brother, Bill, and Bill's son, Townsend, on a family excursion over the battlefield at Antietam to trace the ill-fated steps of the 16th Connecticut that day in 1862.  With Tio Carlos’s quiet instruction, all of Henry Savage’s descendants that day considered the random consequences that can result when blind luck and destiny intersect in the unexpected crossroads that occur in any life, and which were so dramatically illustrated by the humanity of our ancestor, Henry Savage.   

In Henry’s case, he has survived his encounter with history. After his parole in a prisoner exchange, the young vet was hospitalized in Baltimore and mustered out in June 1865.  He returned to his Connecticut farm near Middletown, married and had five children, including a son, Willis Isaac, the father of my mother and Tio Carlos.  After nearly three centuries, Willis would be the last of the Savage family to farm that Connecticut land, earning a hardscrabble living for his wife and three children from his orchards and poultry.  Charles, like his two sisters, moved on to meet their destinies in the wider world beyond.   

A recent verse reflects on the old family farm.  Lamentation Mountain is located near the Savage family farm in East Berlin, Conn., where Tio Carlos' father had 16-acres that served the farm as "wood lots" for kindling and fuel against winter's cold.  The following verse by Tio Carlos recently won first place in the 4th quarter Rhyme Time Poetry Contest sponsored by ShadowPoetry.com.

Silence Falls on Lamentation Mountain
by Charles Savage, MD

The bell-like ringing of our axes fades
and silence drifts across the fallen snow.
As wearily we rest our careworn blades,
the campfire, too, has quietly burned low.

A sudden blast of wind, an icy breeze,
stirs up a sparkling glow from ebbing fire.
The frozen limbs in answer softly creak.
Their aging branches dance but start to tire.

My surly boots tramp down the darkening snow,
and mix it with the fallen leaves and mire
to form a resting place beneath the boughs.

We are the dying ones that still can cling
to life abandoned by our fellow leaves
while we defy the silence that snows bring.

Syriana (cont.): Even Hollywood's Hummer drivers get it right...

It's a good movie too.  Your editor, as a former oil company soldier and all around buttinsky on pop culture, sees Syriana as, how shall we say, a "learning opportunity" for Quillnews readers.  George Clooney's hit film is rich indeed and created enough lingering questions I can't seem to let it alone.  If you read through the screenplay available at the Warner Bros. website, you can see that trims and edit cuts were obviously made (no doubt for time) that made the resulting feature everyone is seeing very hard to follow.  As mentioned in earlier posts, Quillnews likes this movie anyway, though a more complete understanding of what the moviemakers had in mind is aided by a cheat sheet, a close viewing or two, and probably will be enhanced by the director's cut DVD that will no doubt be marketed shortly that includes all the scenes edited by cutters working for studio suits who insist major releases fit the theater viewer's clock.  As an former oil company soldier who is savvy to a few of the issues featured in the film, I found it worth the effort.  After reading the script more closely, I have a few more observations around the characters of Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) and his American advisor Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), and the "good guy" position that the screenplay has created for them and their points of view.  The killing of Nasir (along with Clooney's character) and Bryan's near-miss in the film's denounment creates the emotional power at the film's climax. The viewer is left with the belief that dark forces somehow manipulated by the all powerful oil companies, corrupt lobbyists and their henchmen in the CIA and US government are at fault. Hmmm. Setting aside any suspense film's requirement for the dramatic tension created by good guys and bad guys struggling in mysterious shadows, the good-guy positioning of Nasir and Bryan has a few weak spots, particularly when you consider the real-life terrain that Syriana's cleaver movie makers seek to illuminate.  Despite the positioning of Nasir as an enlightened and forward-thinking benefactor, I think if you placed this guy in real-life, he's actually acting like a spoiled ingrate whose petulence at his family's dysfunctions is causing him to do business deals that will hurt his people and waste their resources. Consider these three scenes:

A) In Scene 39, on page 27 -- The Emir, infirm and whose speech is slurred from a stroke, is shown signing a huge gas supply contract with Chinese oil executives and then reads a statement at the direction of his son, Prince Nasir. 

The Emir says: I am happy to welcome the Chinese to my country and optimistic you will not be nearly as greedy as the Americans.

B) In scene 89 on page 63 -- Prince Nasir is in Beirut speaking at a dedication ceremony for a Union of Arab Nations.   

Prince Nasir says: “We begin the process of empowering a new generation of Arabs with the skills and training necessary to succeed globally… our 13 point document is an agreement on principles calling for greater political freedom, good governance and transparency, advanced civil liberties and human rights, women’s rights and judicial reforms… However unlike Washington’s great Middle East initiative, we respect each country’s right to move at its own pace…”

C) In Scene 133 on page 89 -- Prince Nasir and his young American advisor Bryan discuss the Prince's vision for his Gulf emirite and his frustation with the US. 

Nasir says: “I studied at Oxford.  I have a PhD from Georgetown. I want to create a parliament. I want to give women the right to vote. I want an independent judiciary.  I want to start a new petroleum exchange in the Middle east and cut speculators out of the business. Why are the major oil exchanges in New York and London anyway. I’ll put all of our energy up for competitive bidding, I’ll pipe through Iran to Europe like you propose, I’ll ship to China, anything that achieves efficiency and maximizes profits for my people, profits which I’ll then use to rebuild my country.”

Bryan: “That’s great, that’s exactly what you should do.”

Nasir: “Exactly, except your President calls my father, says I’ve got unemployment in Texas, Kansas, Washington State.  One phone call later we’re stealing out of our social programs to buy overpriced airplanes.  We owed the Americans but we’ve repair that debt.  I accepted a Chinese bid, the highest bid. And suddenly I’m a terrorist.  I’m a Godless communist…” 

Now, what is being said and done here:

• Nasir is the older son in a family which derives its worldly position because of political decisions made 80 years before by British diplomats after winning a war that caused Britain and its allies millions of lives, and which caused the political hegemony that had ruled over Nasir's tribal homelands for centuries to collapse.
• The wealth that came to Nasir's family in the years hence came from the technologies, discoveries and economies largely created by the US and which today are secured by the military forces from the US, Britain and their allies who spend trillions on weapons and defense systems that keep this worldwide economic system secure and which also incidently guarantees that Nasir's family live in luxury and have more more wealth than all but a handful of human beings in history. 
• Despite the wealth and position that the British and American efforts have secured for his family and his people, Nasir's country remains a backward ruin because of their own social, cultural, and religious behaviors and because Nasir's family has been unwilling to change or reform their own dysfunctional ways. Still, Nasir gets his education in London and Washington and absorbs the values and beliefs of the obviously successful civilizations that are based there and asserts that he also wishes to create societies modeled on London and Washington in his own country...

But... in Syriana, Nasir calls the Americans "greedy" and awards a lucrative gas contract to Communist China, he says Washington's "great Middle East Initiative" (which Bush 43 launched after Sept 11 and which embodies the liberal values Nasir claims he holds dear and which real life site is here) does not respect his country's desire to "move at its own pace", and he whines that an American president even has the audacity to call his father every once in a while and ask that the Emir and his dependends cut back on the cavair, diamonds, Rolls Royce caravan tours, Riveria yachts cruises, Mayfair hotel stays and constant palace construction and renovations and that the Emir cut his US benefactors a bit market rhythm during an occasional domestic hardship stateside!  Hmmm.   

Okay, in the context of the movie, Nasir says for his decision to go with the Chinese, that the Americans called him a terrorist and a Godless communist and, we in the audience know, this is what led to Nasir's demise.  In real-life, of course, any real-life Nasir, were he as enlightened a benefactor the script positions him to be, would never be so stupid nor ungrateful to deliberately undermine US global interests, and upon whose protection and good will Nasir and his regime depend, by siding with China in a deliberate snub to the US. Not in this world. Sure, Nasir might cut a supply deal with China so they can buy some natural gas... so what?  China needs energy regardless, and gas they buy from Nasir is gas they don't buy someplace else. But for Nasir to turn down US technology and know-how for Chinese contractors and technicians who would actually construct and operate your energy infrastrure?  Hmmm. In exchange for what from China that Nasir can't already get merely by selling his gas?  What could China possibily have to trade that could equal what Nasir is now getting from the US and Britain?  Even the callow Bryan would tell Nasir to walk from that deal. Then again, maybe in Hollywood the default narrative bias against the US and its interests is so great they would blindly applaud a Nasir for this misguided act of "telling truth to power...", despite its mindless and suicidal narcisism. On the other hand, I still like the film. Syriana does get the main point right: when it comes to oil, the free people of the world won't let anything get between them and their fuel. Not even a handsome leading man. Even Hollywood Hummer drivers know that...  (Warner Bros., Script)

Syriana (cont.): No Roger, facts can be learned

As an unashamed fan of low-culture, Quillnews enjoyed watching overpaid make-believe artists indulge in their rituals of self-worship this week while tuned to the Golden Globes Awards. Lots of glitz, pretty bodies, handsome faces; as deep and nourishing as a hit of Reddi-Whip -- right out of the can. Watching with me was my daughter, Lee, a combo AFTRA member and MD, who is an honors graduate of the family educational curriculum known in some parts as the Collins College of Rock 'n' Roll Knowledge.  Lee can more than keep up with me on pop trivia and arcania, having learned that such specialized knowledge has no value at all except to enrich life's fun factor. Lee also appreciates her father's western chops as the author of God Dogs and knows I am a devotee of Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven. So she was psyched to see her favorite film this season, Brokeback Mountain, snare muchos kudos at the Globes ceremonies, and even be presented the best picture honor by Eastwood who, as Ang Lee said, is "the man himself." Tres cool, as such honors serve the people well, in a kind of pop culture-bending way.

Lee and I also agreed with the best supporting award to George Clooney for his work in Syriana, which we both saw a while back. We talked about that movie again. I noted that Roger Ebert has ranked it among the best of the year, and also wrote the following:

Syriana is a movie that suggests Congress can hold endless hearings about oil company profits and never discover the answer to anything, because the real story is so labyrinthine that no one -- not oil company executives, not Arab princes, not CIA spies, not traders in Geneva, understands the whole picture...  The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation. Just look at the behavior.

Lee read Ebert's remark and shook her head.  Having seen her father suit up as a oil company soldier much of her life, and accustomed to the vagaries, lingo, rhythms and nuances of the oil world, Lee found Ebert's observation wrong-headed.  "Just because the movie is confusing, doesn't mean the subject of oil has to be..."

Who am I to argue with that? She's my kid and she's right. Facts and history can be learned; the social, cultural and political dynamics of oil are more than knowable and are readily available to any observer of the public record who wishes to pay attention with an open mind.  One word of warning: the very last place to begin learning about the oil business and its impact on our world would be with Congressional hearings!  Ouch.  That crowd of public performers?  Forget it.  If recent performances are any indicator, what the people will get from that crew of show boats would be a preening, scripted demogoguery that today's journalists believe passes for congressional oversight in today's Media-ville.  Bizz.  Forget the Congressional hearings.  My vote would be to start with The Prize by Daniel Yergin, whose Pulitzer Prize winning history of the oil industry is a triumph of balance and insight, as is the PBS TV series based on Yergin's work. (For a more low-down personal account, I also am, of course, biased and recommend my own effort Just Business Just War).  In structuring any study of the oil industry and the modern world, I would also ensure that the lessons not be told from the standpoint of focusing on "oil company profits" as Ebert suggests.  This populist and largely political obsession with earnings is a complete diversion that does little but demonize the private sector in order to increase the public sector's role in energy production, but which unfortuantely reduces productivity, increases costs and causes prices to go up even higher.  Such corporate demonizing may have its uses, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that ExxonMobil's earnings, for example, are somehow to blame.  Companies are merely temporary instruments by which we all -- everyone everywhere -- obtain the energy we want at prices we can afford.  But the organization and structure of these entities are irrelevant.  Companies come and companies go. And at the current rate of private sector demise, the world will soon realize that we were all better off with past corporate hegemony in oil, compared with the state alternatives in Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia et al. (WS, WSJ)  The core issue with oil remains the limited areas where it is located and the demand by people everywhere to get at it.  That demand for oil is growing and won't go away, and how that oil is obtained to satisfy that global demand is what the modern world of Syriana is all about.  Stay tuned... 

Syriana: A cool movie, but off just so…

Quillnews was all set to think the worst about Syriana, the new thriller flick set in the shadowy world of Middle East politics, big oil and DC influence peddlars. Producer George Clooney's politics are well known, and this particular pic, written and directed by current hottie Stephen Gagnan, just off a screenwriting Oscar in '00 for Traffic, had all the earmarks of a typical Hollywood production from the we-are-all-so-much-smarter-and-more-moral-than-you-are set. But I was wrong.  It's pretty good.  Not because it makes any particular sense or has a strong story line that is easy to follow and summarize. Nope. It's an edgy Hollywood film all right, and just a bit too murky for its own good, actually; in the same way that Roger Altman flicks are such a pain because he works the sound so you can never quite hear what the characters are saying.  In the case of Syriana, it's ambitious narrative threads are so sparcely drawn, and so tangentially related, you need multiple viewings or a cheat sheet to keep up. (WB Promo, VDH, Max Boot, Yahoo, Roger Ebert)

No it isn't perfect. But what I like is the way that the movie weaves together otherwise baffling threads of modern life - oil, national security, politics, lobbying and government policy, interdependent global markets, human ambition, greed, terrorism - into one complicated knot and asks the viewer to make sense of it all and decide what is right and what should be done.  On that level, Syriana nails it.  Clooney and all the actors are terrific.  No heavy handed moralizing here, just a neat look-see at a world that rarely gets serious treatment in pop culture.  Some of the lines are great.

Damon's character to his oil shiek boss: "You want to know what the business world thinks of you? We think a hundred years ago you were living out here in tents in the desert chopping each others head's off, and that's exactly where you're gonna be in another hundred. So yes, on behalf of my firm, I accept your money."

Nelson's over-the-top DC bagman: "What is a sovereign nation, but a collective of greed run by one individual? Legitimized gangsterism on a global basis that has no more validity than an agreement between the Crips and the Bloods!... Corruption charges?  Corruption is government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That’s Milton Friedman.  He got a goddamn Nobel prize.  We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it."

Cool. But, over the top, a la Michael Douglas "greed is good" speech in Oliver Stone's Wall Street. Gagnan wrote a bunch of those cleaver lines. Plummer’s all-knowing fixer has a few, but Clooney's character calls him on it, in effect dismissing this glib DC weasel, saying: "I bet you impress your clients with lines like that..."  Then without batting an eye, Clooney's CIA op cooly lays out how he will kill Plummer's wife and kids if he doesn't do what he says.  Hmmm.  DC business as usual? Hollywood makes DC looks like a tough town!  Let's not forget: this is a movie.  It's story and characters are made up by a guy who is constructing a dramatic narrative for actors to play out in front of a camera lens.  With the right lighting, sound, edit cuts and tempo these flickering images of light and sound will have an emotional power that is the desire of the motion picture art.  Perhaps there may be some truth in the emotional power of the story, but the story is make-believe.  With that said as a caveat, I'd like to make a few serious observations about the film. Quillnews readers know that I was an oil company soldier, and I worked for years on oil projects and political issues just like those explored in this Hollywood cloak-and-dagger.  Food for thought:

1. Qatar:  The small Gulf emirate portrayed in the film reminded me of Qatar, whose giant North Gas field was a target of industry for years and whose emir was a dodderer, and whose two sons were rivals and couldn't stand each other. One eventually took over in a coup.  Mobil eventually got the contract to lead development of the North Field and link the emirate with the Asian LNG markets.  One of the reasons Mobil was taken over by Exxon was that the Qatar gas fields couldn't be developed soon enough to generate the income to keep Mobil independent. This LNG project in Qatar today is a massive economic and industrial collusus that is vital to the economies of East Asia.  Qatar is also regional home to the US military forces formerly located in Saudi Arabia, and HQ for the US coalition's military operations.that provide security of the world's oil supplies.  Qatar is very small but very important country.  Free people need to get smarter faster about how important that country is and why. 
2. Tenquiz: Mobil was the "smaller" company that got the 10% interest in the Tenguiz field in Kazakhstan in the early 1990s; that contract folded into Exxon after the merger in 1999. But Chevron also had a hunk of that Kazak field and hired all kinds of DC lawyers to figure out how to prevent Mobil from moving in on the Kazak field they had worked for years to get from the now-defunct USSR.
3. Characters & Personalities:  Some of the characters are familiar oil patch archetypes. The Texas wildcatter portrayed by Chris Cooper of Killen is spot on.  He’s just the portrait of the upstream exploration and producing guys I worked with for years. Plain spoken, obscene, unpretentious, contemptuous of mindless rules designed to cost money and prevent oil and gas development, and more than prepared to say so in a meeting with corporate stuffed shirts and puffed-up lawyers, who, after all, are nothing more than hired hands he's paying.  Peter Gerety nailed the portly chairman of Connex; he could have been Mobil's Allen Murray easy; same relaxed charm, same cool blue eyes.  Plummer's white shoe lawyer had just the right amount of snotty arrogance that passes for a professional polish in some high end DC law firm lobby shops.  No executive in industry trusts guys like this, even though they pay them millions for their help in managing a government with more ADHD hype artists, shape shifters, taxers and buttinskies than would ever be tolerated in the private sector.  Damon's financial wizard and Wright’s ambitious lawyer are well-known head office players as advisers and kitbzers.  What was not explored in depth was the inner life and pressures of the principle decision makers themselves – the guys who were responsible to make the decisions.  Too bad.  The closest we came was Cooper and Gerety who were unexplored, the "good" prince who stupidly thougth he could give an oil infrasructure job to the Chinese (Ha, as if!) and Plummer who was a hired-hand weasel and easy over the top villain. And what makes William Hurt so smart, or Clooney so dim? Where was the National Security Council and its task forces on Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq etc etc, and an awareness that all their work and efforts (and which would be carried out by CIA and Clooney) are explained to appropriate members of Congress, coordinated within various agencies and departments of the federal bureaucracy and approved by the NSC and the President, even though unscrupulous manipulators like Plummer's lawyer would tell their clients they are owed millions because they got everybody to do it?  (Ha, as if!)  Besides, not much stays hidden in this world.  (WB promo)
4. Iran: The business coalition in Syriana called the Committee to Liberate Iran (CLI), has a shadowy ill-defined back story presence, where every industry player and lawyer is a member and this membership is all somehow meant to explain what is happening in the story.  The idea in Syriana apparently is that getting access to oil in Iran is an industry goal, even to a point where in a political environment that takes place after Sept 11 and after Saddam’s demise, the nasty DC circuit can still brow beat Cooney’s CIA guy up because he is not sufficiently ready to see that it is US policy to open up to Iran…  Bizz.  Exactly wrong.  After Sept 11, Iran was terra no-go period for the oil industry.  In the wake of Sept 11, no corporate executive in the US would invest a nickel of shareholder money on an oil project in Iran, despite the dream of any DC fixer or oil field wildcatter.  Yes, an industry committee that worked to create policy consensus on engage Iran was formed in 1997 and it was called USA*Engage and its presense was widely felt in DC.  I was on its steering committee for five years.  It worked to end the US imposition of unilateral sanctions that prohibited American companies for doing business in countries the US didn’t like  – but ignored the fact that the business would go to foreign firms at American expense.  In the oil industry and national security terms, this meant giving influence and oil leverage to Russia, China and France.  This was a dumb policy that USA*Engage worked hard to remedy, and the Iran Libya Sanctions Act of 1995 (ILSA) was the chief reason the industry's effort was launched.  But all the Iran engagement talk was while Khatemi was in ascendancy, when reform in Iran still seemed possible and before Sept 11. After Sept 11, Iran showed it could not be trusted in the war against al-Qaeda, and within months Bush suspended all US efforts to re-engage Iran.  Furthermore, Iran in real life has become an even greater international pariah with its nuke program, and now that Iraq’s oil field are liberated to be developed for free world markets and in a way that enriches the Iraqi population not Saddam, the oil industry pressure to develop Iran is reduced.  So Syriana has the Iran angle dead wrong.
5. Saudi Arabia A: This is the elephant in the room that is not discussed in the film.  The omission of Saudi Arabia is so obvious that this had to be a marketing or business decision by Time Warner’s Warner Bros. unit for business reasons.  Investor or shareholder pressure?  This is particularly surprising because Bob Baer, the real life CIA vet whose book, See No Evil, was part of the inspiration of this movie, clearly targets Saudi Arabia and US relationship with that Kingdom because of our oil addiction as the fountainhead of our problems in the region.  Also, the reason that Qatar is now the base of US military forces is because Saudi Arabia is home to Mecca and UBL used US presence in the Kingdom as one the reasons for his jihad.  Overthrowing Saddam removed the need for the US to be in Saudi Arabia to protect the Kindgom’s oil fields from Saddam, while at the same time reduced Saudi Arabia’s leverage over world oil supplies.  This is the geopolitical mumbo jumbo that is at the core of the rationale for US action on Saddam, and the fact that these relationships are so little understood is one of my continuing regrets with the US political leadership who seem unable or unwilling to articulate these issues. 
6. Saudi Arabia B: Who paid for the jihad madrassa that nurtured and trained the laid off Pakistani oil workers and turned them into terrorists?  Why was the Saudi souces of these madrassas not discussed or explored?  Where did these crazy Imams come from, who paid their salaries and who produced the twisted religious screeds used to poison those teenagers minds and made them killers.  Why did this school exist?  In real life, the home for the funding of these schools has been Saudi Arabia and the curriculum the ultra fundamentalist intolerant version of Wahhabi Islam that gets its billions from oil income and whose adherents in Saudi Arabia have believed it is their duty to spent their wealth to spread their version of the faith.  (WSJ)
7. The Bottom Line: The best riff in the movie comes from hillbilly-talking Denton who made the over the top point about nation states being nothing more than Crips and Bloods and that corruption is what makes us free… etc.   In fact, his attitude toward governments and nations is accurate.  All nations and governments are artificial and often an impediment to market forces.  So?   His answer that it is corruption that makes it all work is exactly wrong.  (Editor’s aside:  Besides what this guy says on film can’t be trusted anyway.  Wasn’t this the actor who thought one of the Tuturro brothers turned into a toad in Clooney's other neat flick, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?)  No. It is not corruption.  What makes it all work is law and order freely granted by a sovereign people in a transparent democratic process. That’s what makes it work. But Denton's overall attitude is right.  Countries do come and go and so do governments and so do peoples and cultures.  Humanity will get what humanity wants.  And there is nothing sacred or special about corrupt royal families, autocracies and dictatorships in the Persian Gulf region that only have their positions, jobs and millions today because of the political deals cut by Europeans after World War One, mostly at the urging of the British Foreign Office.  These “kingdoms” and cultures and societies have been allowed to prosper and their wasteful, obnoxious ways tolerated by the rest of the world because they enabled the countries with the money and machines to get access to the oil they needed to sustain themselves.  But here is where Syriana has it right: the US and its partners will not allow any forces to get between its wealth-creating poverty-killing economic engines and that oil.  No force, no people, no family, no government, no ideology.  The oil is there and the free people of the world want it and they will do whatever it takes to get it.  On that, the filmmakers of Syriana have it exactly right.   

Postscript:  I wrote an essay about a visit to Qatar in 1994, and a book about oil mergers, downsizing, and the period in DC before and after Sept 11. (Complete list at left).  A PDF of Qatar essay is here.  The section from Just Business Just War on the action in DC 1997-02 is available for viewing in a PDF here.

(Update: Wearing smart Pajamas... The above post put on some spiffy duds Jan 7.  Pajamas Media featured this review of George Clooney's big oil thriller flick in its entertainment section. Cool.  PJ: thanks for the nifty notice.)

Words for Free – it’s a new year, and we’re giving ‘em away…

My son, Micah, Quillnews’ tech-guru and IT sherpa, and I were recently discussing the mission and management of RavensYard, a companion publishing venture he and I and four partners incorporated in 1998 to take advantage of the changing technology in the publishing industry. The application of print-on-demand technology and the new business operations pioneered by RavensYard is working.  RavensYard has assembled an impressive list of diverse titles from talented authors and is slowly building its credibility as a discriminating publisher of quality literary works. We also - to the delight of RavensYard authors and the satisfaction of their readers - are steadily selling books on line, at traditional bricks & mortar outlets, as well as at author’s appearances.  After six years of operations, we now have a positive revenue stream and a string of excellent books that are finding their audience.  To borrow a sports metaphor, RavensYard may not be in the same league as the New York Yankees of the mega-publishing world, but the fans who see RavensYard games know they are witnessing solid baseball played by pros. I have a few books that made it through RavensYard’s editing gauntlet, and like any writer, I would like to find more readers. So what now? I asked Micah. 

“Dad, just tell me one thing. What is more important: selling books or having people read your work?”

I thought about it for a moment and realized that sharing my ideas was the thing.  If we earned money, fine.  But the value for me at least was the story telling.  I told Micah that.

“So why don’t you just give your books away?”

Micah explained that the changing dynamics of the communications technology and consumer practices – web logs, internet file sharing, MP3 audio, streaming video, et al – are revolutionizing the economics of publishing.  (See Hugh MacLeod, Jeff Jarvis, among others).  Micah explained that in the new information and content marketplace, there are rewards for content creators and publishers who know when to give away their products for free!  The evolving market for creative works is proving that customers exposed to literary, audio or visual works online still become paying customers, but in non-traditional ways, and revenue streams exist for authors, publishers, artists -- that understand how to exist in the new evolving market for content.  With my Quillnews platform providing me with a controllable channel, and editorial control, it made common sense that I repackage and reconsititute my past works, and give this work new life to a larger audience.

As a writer, a publisher, and what is today called an ongoing content provider, I've learned that at the end of the day, what I want is for people to read my work and share my experience.  So in that spirit, Quillnews is posting selected excerpts from the travelogues and essays published in the NewsWalker Series, the volumes of my writings that are available from RavensYard in traditional trade paperback form. The excerpts posted on Quillnews in the column at left are in PDF format and vary in length.  They are being provided free of charge and for the private, non-commercial use of readers.  This will be destination reading for Quillnews readers who wish to read along as I traveled the world of news and oil from 1974-2002.  Let me know what you think.

VOA interviews Vietnamese-American novelist about her new romantic saga

The Voice of America's Vietnamese-language bureau interviewed novelist Uyen Nicole Duong recently about her debut novel, Daughters of the River Huong (ISBN 1-928928-16-1), which was released recently by RavensYard Publishing, Ltd.  The audio interview in Vietnamese is available in two parts at the VOA website here and here.  Ms. Duong's pioneering English-language novel is receiving enthusiastic notices in the US, Australia and in Vietnam. (QN)  The publisher reports that robust sales of the literary romance whose full title is:  Daughters of the River Huong - a Vietnamese royal concubine and her descendants.  More on Ms. Duong's is available at her website, which also has the publisher's annoucement and an interview with Ms. Duong.  RavensYard's website also has information about the author and her book.