quillnews

Fort Lauderdale’s “Help Me Howard” overcomes cocaine’s power

Howard Finkelstein, the subject of a chilling profile of recovery from cocaine’s destructive power in Snow Blind by Douglas Kalajian, has finally realized his dream to take over the Broward County, Fla. Public Defender’s Office.   Finkelstein was the subject of an insightful profile in last Sunday’s Miami Herald by reporter Sara Olkon.  Snow Blind was published by RavensYard, remains a strong seller from Amazon and is a favorite among law enforcement officials, drug recovery professionals and those familiar with, as one reviewer put it, the "wild geography of South Florida...Kalajian will shock the hell out of a witch."  Quillnews is a long time colleague and pal of Palm Beach Post reporter Doug Kalajian, Snow Blind’s author, and enthusiastically recommends this cracker jack book. 

Howard Finkelstein’s story is a story of the seductive power of drugs, combined with the potential for recovery when an addict has the will and the support of loving family and friends.  Broward County can be proud of their public defender.   Don’t be surprised if you see Snow Blind snatched up by the movies someday!

Iran: Playing poker with Bush 43

On the morning Bush 43 took the very high road in his inauguration address, telling the world the mission of the US was to eradicate tyranny, the Administration’s bad cop gave the nuke-happy rulers of Iran – identified as number 2 in the Axis of Evil three years ago – something more to think about – an Israeli sneak attack!

Imagine the emails the desk officers in Iran’s missions in the DC and NY received from their home capital with the urgent question: “What is Bush talking about? The Ayatollahs want to know: Is that cowboy serious?” Before responding, those embassy officers will mull over recent developments for guidance:

1) An article in that week’s The New Yorker said Rumsfeld has taken hold of US black ops and has people around Iran now targeting what to hit with daisy cutters or worse;

2) Bush 43 said in an interview Monday that he could not rule out the use of military force if Tehran could not be persuaded to abandon its nuclear efforts;

3) New Sec State Rice told Senators Tuesday the Administration condemned Iran for its support of terrorism and its hostility toward Israel. She included Iran among six “outposts of tyranny.” Senator Biden told Rice: "There may be nothing we can do to persuade Iran not to develop weapons of mass destruction." What will the US do then?

4) On the morning of the day he was sworn in, Cheney told a radio interviewer that it wasn’t all up to the US. Iran was "right at the top" of the administration's list of world trouble spots, but Israel "might well decide to act first" to destroy Iran's nuclear program. The Israelis would let the rest of the world "worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterward."  (Quillnews’ publisher, RavensYard, has a great fictional thriller, Total Jihad, that tells of what Israel is prepared to do to ensure its survival.)

5) Cheney said Germany, France and Britain are trying to negotiate with Iran on what all believe is a "fairly robust, new nuclear program." The US says it supports the talks but refuses to join. The US knows Iran's rulers are liars and killers. They still want to have Rushdie killed! The Brits take this very seriously; it was the UK in ’98 that lifted its trade and diplomatic ban when they were told the ’89 Rushdie fatwa was lifted. Now its back on, now what?

6) Cheney reiterated the statement that Rice said that now is the time for an American emphasis on diplomacy and the US supported European efforts on Iran. But Cheney added, "At some point, if the Iranians don't live up to their commitments, the next step will be to take it to the United Nations Security Council and seek the imposition of international sanctions."

Nob diplomats from the EU may dismiss the rhetoric of the Administration’s good cop as so visionary to be meaningless, but that same community is not able to avoid the logic of Cheney’s statement and the credibility of the US. Ask Iran’s neighbors: Afghanistan and Iraq, if Bush 43 will do what he says?

And what did Bush 43 tell Iranian dissidents Thursday at noon? "...Today, America speaks anew to the peoples of the world: All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you. Democratic reformers facing repression, prison, or exile can know: America sees you for who you are: the future leaders of your free country. The rulers of outlaw regimes can know that we still believe as Abraham Lincoln did: 'Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.'..."

Quillnews believes this is huge. As Holmes told Watson: The game is afoot. Iran has been on top of Bush and Cheney’s list for years. (See Just Business Just War for details.) 

World Oil: who’s in charge here?

The WSJ has an excellent profile of Italy’s ENI, the state-run oil company that is about the third the size ExxonMobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil company. The article focuses on the geopolitical realities of the world’s oil industry, how the companies are tied to their countries of origin and how the political balance of power on energy has shifted – away from the US and toward… what?

Stay tuned… The story is far from over.

When Quillnews was an oil company soldier these realities were part of your editor’s daily routine for years and years; your editor witnessed first hand the consequences of this turmoil in the oil industry after the break up of the Soviet Union and put much of it in writing. (See Just Business Just War for details). Money quote from the WSJ profile:

“For decades, the Big Oil club was dominated by U.S. firms backed by U.S. diplomatic muscle. But now four of the world's six largest publicly traded oil companies are European: UK’s BP #2, UK/Netherlands’ Royal Dutch/Shell #3, France’s Total #4 and Italy’s Eni #6. (Ed. Note: The US firms among in top seven are ExxonMobil #1, ChevronTexaco #5, ConocoPhillips #7).

“One reason for the reshuffling was the flurry of mergers in the late 1990s. But the Europeans also have had access to parts of the world where U.S. companies can't easily operate, either because they are resented or because of Washington foreign policy. Eni, for example, prospered through gambling on rogue regimes in Libya, Algeria and Iran as well as the wobbly former Soviet republics. Eni's diplomatic strategy often mirrored Italy's: It used its reputation as a non-threatening power to win entry where U.S. and other rivals weren't welcome.”

Do Puritans’ descendants – Dean Democrats – form only a regional party?

In the post-election analysis, there is interesting thinking going on, both within the Democratic Party, and on the right, as well, as the Republicans consider the consequences of becoming a majority party. On NRO Rich Lowry, Buckley’s successor at National Review, writes that Democrats are no longer a national party. That might be a bit much, since Democrats poll in significant near-majority numbers everywhere – check out the purple politics item in Quillnews (Item1/2).

Then there is former conservative operative Michael Lind, now reborn just to the left of center, who has written an outstanding political analysis in the American Prospect about the 21st Century consequences of the political culture founded by Puritans of New England. Lind’s question: Is the Democratic Party becoming the New England Party? Lind’s onto something. Years ago, Quillnews began research into family history – becoming an investigator into the origins of your editor’s own beginnings. The purposes for this were many and not your editor’s focus here. (For details read: One Life at a Time).

During this research, your editor discovered historian David Hackett Fischer, whose brilliant Albion’s Seed – Four British Folkways In America, should be required reading in every poly sci course in America, and a definite must-read for those who pay for or work in the multibillion dollar election campaign industry that soaks up some much of the public’s attention. Lind’s essay compliments Fischer’s analysis. Lind contents that the current Democrats' obsession on anti-militarism, intellectual elitism, and reformism – fashionable among today’s so-called progressives – has all-American roots. These political biases, which characterize much of the blue staters’ agenda (particularly among Dean supporters), have their roots in New England’s Puritan religion which lost its theological strain while evolving into one of America’s most influential (though minority) political ideologies.

Despite its basis in American history, this ideology will not win an election in the US anymore. Anti-militarism will lose in any national election held while the US is under jihadist attack. The sooner the national Democrats get over their anti-Bush anti-Iraq narrative, and get serious about supporting the US anti-jihad campaign, the sooner they will win elections. It's not too complicated.

China & Venezuela – don’t throw us into that briar patch!

With all the focus of Saudi Arabia as a critical oil producer that has a problematic political problem, it is easy to forget how important nearby Venezuela could be in the oil price balance. Indeed, a trio of US Senators visited Venezuela recently and indicated how important Venezuelan oil could be to the US. The problem of course is that Venezuela’s leader, Hugo Chavez, is working overtime to become this generation’s Castro.

Saudi Arabia, with its reserves of 250 billion barrels of oil, and in exporting 8 million barrels a day to world markets, gets all the attention as the current arbiter of world oil price stability, as well as being ground zero for jihad. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is one of the top four major oil exporters to the US, with Canada, Mexico and Venezuela the other three.

The US’s immediate northern and southern neighbors are well integrated into US markets and political thinking, but Venezuela is another matter. Venezuela possesses the largest conventional oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere with up to 100 billion barrels of oil (or so), and exports 2.3 million barrels of oil a day, more than 90 per cent to the US.

Venezuela has already reached into US markets with its purchase of CITGO (BoSox fans know the CITGO sign over Fenway) and in possessing more than a million barrels of crude oil refining capacity at gasoline making plants in Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, New Jersey, and Illinois.

Moreover the oil industry is central to Venezuela’s future: petroleum represents a third of the country’s GNP, half of the government’s revenues, and 80% of its export earnings. Though Venezuela is a big investor in the US and responsible for manufacturing up to a million barrels of gasoline a day, political linkages are another matter. Venezuela’s politics are populist with a strong bias toward state socialism. Since Chavez took over in ’98 he has made his leftist political bones insulting the US, western capitalism and trying to cozy up to Castro and other anti-Americans on the world stage. Now comes word that Senator Lugar, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has ordered an investigation into China’s investments and future interest in Venezuela’s oil, and whether the US might “lose” that oil to China.

Quillnews loves investigations on US oil supplies, but let’s not get bent out of shape on China’s interest. The China National Petroleum Corp has been investing in Venezuela since ‘01. And having China reach out in conventional ways through investments in the oil markets is a good thing. And way better than China’s earlier indications that it would go “take” oil resources through the forces of its newly constructed blue water navy. See Blue Dragon for details about China’s past intimidation tactics in the South China Sea offshore Vietnam. (Items 1/10, 1/7, 12/23) With one in five human beings in their political domain, China better start worrying about its oil supplies and quick, and the US should be careful that our own political ideology doesn’t lead our own political yahoos into launching a distracting China-bashing exercise. Quillnews doesn’t mind the bashing, but let’s have it over something real – say like slave labor, political and religious persecution, or even better, China's not figuring out how to put their North Korean puppet out of business for good.

If Venezuela’s Chavez figures he can get Venezuela supplies to China, well, that’s fine only he’s going to have to move it on boats. And those boats that supply China can allow the boats originally going to China to go someplace else… There might some regional dislocations, grades of oil not matching refining capacity on a short term basis. For example, the Louisiana and Texas refineries gave gotten used to running Venezuela’s crude. But it is a world oil market; more for one means more for all. Obviously China needs supplies from somewhere to fuel it’s growth. If the Chinese can invest in Canada, US, Russia, Iran (and who knows India and Kazakhstan et al), it makes sense they start talking to Venezuela too. If they can talk sense into Chavez and get his industry up to speed, all the better. Quillnews wishes China: Buenos Lucko.

Directors from the Golden Age – our culture’s pop mechanics

Being a pop culture nut, Quillnews is a sucker for the edgy films mass produced by the Warner Bros. studios in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Luckily this fancy can be indulged on TCM, which runs these movies regularly. Thanks, Ted. This affection for the slam bang movies – crime, cowboys, comedy, melodrama all with the noir quality of a cool director’s eye and the short-hand lingo favored by the hard news tabloid writers that trained Quillnews back in the day – has instructed your editor in all manner of tastes.

RavensYard, the independent publisher for which I also write, has a title that captures this era. Kingdom Come by West Straits features as its protagonist a director from that era, the legendary Hal Lee, and tells a terrific tale about the making of a routine studio film that turned out to be a cult classic. This accidental impact of Lee’s film on the wider culture was unintended by the people working on the film, who were consumed by the ordinary pressures of aging, artistic expression and a studio’s internal struggles over money and authority. It’s a great read.  The female characters are particularly strong and well drawn.

With these films in mind, I wrote my colleague, West Straits, the author of Kingdom Come, a seasoned writer and talented observer, and asked him to discuss the origins of his characters and his story. Straits, just recuperating from a few rounds with the flu, wrote this note in reply:

Back in the ‘70’s there was a spate of bios and auto-bios of Golden Age movie directors, Raoul Walsh among them. He was a cowboy from Orange, NJ, an actor then director, and one of the wild men of movies. Another was Wild Bill Wellman, former WWI Lafayette Escadrille pilot, and a total crazy. Henry Hathaway was another, also Vic Fleming. These fellows were paid by the studio rajahs but never subservient to them. All they had to do was provide saleable product, within budget, without killing too many actors.

They weren't skinny, pale "auteurs" as we have today. They were two-fisted drinkers and brawlers who could-would knock down actors and techs who displeased them and got in the way of putting film in the can. None of them went to “film school.” Most did not even graduate high school. By the 20s and 30s they were making more money than they could conceive and they spent it on wine, women, gambling and song. They had little or no respect for the junk merchants who ran the studios, and little for the movies they made on its assembly lines.

If anything, Hal Lee is an amalgam of Wellman and Willy Wyler, perhaps the most intelligent of the bunch, though himself a tyrant on his sets. Jack Ford was another--almost in a class by himself, a rogue Maine-Irisher with a mean streak who made sentimental movies, and classic westerns. He was one of Kate Hepburn's early Hollywood lovers, though their vinegar-vinegar couple hood straines contemporary credulity. I enjoyed all the bios and auto-bios as they recounted an era long gone and their like is not seen today.

PS: I am rereading in my recuperation this week a book I first read in 1955-- Ben Hecht’s auto-bio, called “A Child of the Century.” Hecht wrote about 60 movies and was for a time the highest paid Hollywood writer. He and his pally, Charley MacArthur, another Chicago reporter, are best known today for “The Front Page,” and “Twentieth Century.”

Ben Hecht was a writer's writer, and his accounts of being a wet-ear Chicago reporter are laugh out loud funny. He and a fellow reporter lived for a time in a Chicago whorehouse because the rent was low, and they didn't realize what was going on downstairs. His accounts of the Hollywood of the 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, are equally juicy, dealing with the half-wit rajahs, their no-wit yes men, and the idiotic actors raised to celebrity from their natural levels of bordello and cab driving. There was a good movie made of some of this material in 1969, called “Gaily, Gaily.” And it's impossible to find today though it's one of the funniest films made about newspapers.

An Abbas win isn’t surprise; peace will be...

Bush 43 is looking at the half empty glass and calling it half full with the successful election of Abbas as PA chief. It may be conventional wisdom that Carter helps provide legitimacy to the election and stability to the situation; the snap of Carter with Abbas is still unsettling. Quillnews believes Abbas will have to show the world his chops and put down the killers in his midst. If not, Israel can rely on the security of a strong fence. (Item 12/15). Abbas' rhetoric in the campaign has been forgiven by those still hoping in the “peace process.” We’ll see. Will he ignore Hamas and Hezbollah, their Syrian and Iranian bankrollers and enablers, and be able to tame the poisonous political culture Arafat and his gang spent 30 years nurturing? Defenders of Israel will not buy another Oslo without seeing security action by Abbas. RavensYard, a Quillnews partner, has published Total Jihad by Eric L. Rozenman, an excellent thriller that tosses all these elements into a suspense blender. Rozenman, a seasoned DC hand, paints an apocalyptic vision of what appeasement could bring, and underscores in his novel the truth that Israel will never give in to terrorists. Publisher notes about the book give further background.

Small world

Not too many years ago, an earth quake off the coast of Sumatra and tsunamis in South Asia would have been, well, like from so far away. Not today. The unspeakable devastation has been visited upon peoples close enough to the heart to be Quillnews neighbors.

When Quillnews was an oil company soldier, I spent lots of work and travel time between 1990-95 in Aceh Province, on the northern tip of Indonesia’s western most island of Sumatra – the epicenter of recent events. My duties then were of the routine now called civil affairs – development of social infrastructure (schools, clinics, and cultural exchanges), professional training and government relations.  These duties were occasioned by the discovery in 1972 of the Arun gas field -- totaling some 15 trillion cubic feet of gas – in the middle of, what was then, nowhere. The company’s wildcatters from Texas and Alberta had told state-side suits they were hunting oil; when gas – not oil – was found business managers wanted to abandon the resource. Only the savvy of the company’s ex-pat oil general, who hung out in Jakarta and Singapore, let’s call him Mr. Small, saved the day. He envisioned compressing the gas into a liquid, transporting it on ships to markets in Japan where it could decompressed into a natural gas form and be sold at a huge profit. This act of industrial-commercial imagination was a master stroke that would change the region. It earned Mr. Small a promotion state-side and subsequent early retirement when the change of venue proved not to agree.

As a result of the discovery, the company's local subsidiary, which had signed a production sharing agreement with Pertamina, Indonesia’s state petroleum enterprise, would grow from 7 employees in 1967 to more than 1,500 at one point; 95% of whom were Indonesian. In addition, the PT Arun LNG plant was built in Aceh – with the company’s help -- by Pertamina, in which several more thousand Acehenese were employed.

It happened this industrial development, employment and wealth creation in Aceh was happening in the remotest and western-most province in the Indonesian federation, inhabited by an independent minded, pious and cranky ethnic group who did not like outsiders – particularly the Javanese who ruled Indonesia from Jakarta, the nation’s capital, on the island of Java.

When Quillnews worked in those parts, the Arun field had been developed with up to 82 production wells in seven collection clusters, and producing 2.2 billion cubic feet of gas, 118,000 barrels of liquid condensate, and 8,450 cubic meters of liquefied petroleum gas each day. This field supplied 25% of the entire LNG market in the Pacific, represented half of the gas exported by Indonesia and was an essential energy source to Japan, the economic engine of East Asia, and to Korea. In contrast, recent production tallies from the Arun and satellite fields in Pase/South Lhok Sukon and the North Sumatra Offshore field totaled 745 million cubic feet of gas per day. A narrative of the corporate consequenses of this decline and those days is here.

The industrial linkages made possible from the Indonesian discovery, the incredible petroleum wealth created for Indonesian development, and the creation of the LNG trade now are the cornerstone to trade links that are cementing the growth of Asia with the creation of Qatar’s North Field, the most significant petroleum field in the Middle East. The fact that the gas field is located in Qatar for markets in Asia just as both regions were set to brew as cauldrons of humanity is a Providential benefit as it gives everyone an alternative to Saudi energy supplies from a comparatively enlightened Persian Gulf state.

But the development in Aceh also exacerbated an indigenous rebel movement, which not only has a local insurgent flavor with deadly consequences, it also became embroiled in the fundamentalist movement underway in Islamic world, and exploited by Al-Qaeda wannabes, and who make first world terror-fighters extremely anxious. The company continues to react, as it did in August 2002, to accusations in its correct corporate litigation mode to law suits brought on behalf of the war’s victims. The government in Jakarta denies all. The WSJ earlier this month made sure the world noted the stakes with the Osama-style gangsters in Indonesia, and warned the Indonesian government that its kneejerk reaction of denial in the traditional Javanese style just was not on! A typical treatment of the matter from the MSM’s Time magazine last June reported the MSM view to outsiders. Tourist essays about Aceh warn of trouble. Aceh remains remote.

Despite these problems, the Indonesian LNG trade is also being touted by advocates of economic development as a model for others – as the way countries with remote gas resources can exploit their resources. Russia has vast gas in Siberian and frozen tundra to the north, a potential LNG resource. Fuel sources from smaller gas discoveries in the South China Sea and coastal Brazil as LNG could give the world alternatives to Middle East petroleum – just as the world needs it. A contemporary exec from the company touted Indonesia’s importance during a recent visit.

Still, the obscene tape from Osama, released as the earthquake’s misery spreads, in which he praises murders in Iraq insults the intelligence and humanity of the world. This guy is truly evil. And today’s news is grim. Though local company spokesman report damage to production facilities outside the town of Lhokseumawe was slight, 4,000 lives were lost in town. Even the rebels in Aceh called a cease fire. Damage to the facilities was light. Markets remain calm, for now. The world today is a small neighborhood.

Stay tuned...

China's blue water navy - stay tuned

When Quillnews was an oil company soldier, conversations often turned to the energy appetite building in China, and how China was likely to solve its energy supply problem. China’s energy demands to fuel its economic growth are insatiable. China has 4% of the world’s GNP, but 21% of the world’s population and an economy that is growing at a rate of 8% a year. The US, by contrast, has 4.5% of the population and a third of the world’s GNP, and growth rates half that of China. China does not have the petroleum resources at home it needs, but it’s people demand more, now. It is in the world's interest that China get it. How?

In the post-Soviet world in the 1990s, it looked like China was going to turn away from its traditional brown water navy, and build up its blue water fleet, or as they called it “active offshore defense.” This was behind Vietnam’s Blue Dragon drama, and the dispute over the Spratley and Parcel Islands in the South China Sea. Oil soldiers in those days often envisioned the Chinese Communist Party policy planning directors instructing the PLA go “get the energy” needed to keep the Chinese economy going. Chinese pilots were to antsy, they even shot down a US surveillance plane and held the crew for a couple of weeks just after Bush took office in 2001. Expect more of this down the road. Halprin in the WSJ thinks the peril remains great.

Back in the day, conversations occurred with Chinese how investments and market forces often will do the job easily. Today, the demand for energy in China is still high and going higher – but it looks like the leaders of people’s paradise are working a few more angles: the Chinese have been sniffing to make investments in the Iraq and Iran oil patch, and now are investing in oil projects in Russia (Item 12/21) and in Canada! The world’s base line oil price is now about $40 a barrel, owing to the demand from China. You hear a lot about how China is lending the US the money to finance our trade deficits. Hey, it’s a cooperative world – our arms to calm petroleum zones keep oil prices within reach of China’s pay grade and that keeps our economy going. How long will this continue? Time Asia had a pretty wrap up last October, but the MSM was too worked up about Vietnam era records of a couple of Yale Bonesmen to notice. China is talking about it, if a rim man has a conversion rate for the RMB (people’s money) at the copy desk…

Again, along with Putin’s chat (Item 12/21), expect Condi’s PhDs at State to do some work on this. In the world of oil, everything is connected to everything else.

Stay tuned…

Again the Dutch...

There is something fitting about having the people of The Netherlands again confront the frictions of history; the Dutch have been at it for centuries. One of western civilization’s most accomplished people, carving their country from the lowlands of coastal Europe and remaining fiercely independent despite the pressures of larger neighbors, the 16 million inhabitants of The Netherlands again have to confront the conflict between order and freedom, liberty and licentiousness, piety and tolerance, license and liberty. Today the Dutch are on the front lines of Europe’s confrontation with the islamofascists, who have flourished because of the liberties and tolerance the Dutch have enabled. The barbarity of the conflict will surely grow. Count on the Dutch to prevail.

When Quillnews worked as an oil industry soldier, I worked in The Netherlands first in 1983 and was in Rotterdam the day of the Beirut bombing; at the time the contentious issue was Pershing Missiles to confront the Soviet expansion, but hostility toward the American visitor dampened with news of the first shot in the next century’s great conflict. Later in the early 1990s, the question was commercial tolerance – how could a non-Dutch company find a home in the domain of Royal Dutch Shell? With a robust offshore oil and gas producing industry in the Dutch North Sea, the government believed it was wise to have some non-Dutch around to keep Shell in line. Americans have a special relationship with the Dutch – America's Pilgrims found refuge in Holland before migrating to Plymouth in 1620, and the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam formed the tolerant commercial culture that enabled New York City to become the home of free market democratic capitalism. Islam also has a special relationship with the Dutch, as Islam remained Indonesia’s dominant religion despite three centuries of Dutch colonial and commercial occupation of the Asian archipelago. Compared to others, the Dutch were pussy cats. As one Batak told your editor: "Three years of the Japanese, made us forget three centuries of the Dutch!" American descendants of Dutch tolerance of course were the ones who vanguished the Japanese -- capped by a nuke. Yankees learned tolerance only goes so far.