It's all about the oil, stupid!

 

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

It was about the oil in Libya; it was about the oil in Iraq; it still is about the oil in Venezuela; and it's now about the oil in Iran. "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" by Pulitzer Prize-winning Daniel Yergin captures the fascinating stories behind the global hunt for oil.

 

 

Daniel Howard Yergin (born February 6, 1947) is an American author, economic historian, and consultant within the energy and economic sectors. He has authored or co-authored several books on energy and world economics, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power", "The Quest - Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World", and "The New Map - Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations".

 

 

But before you launch into this eight-part video of the book, you may want to listen to this insightful commentary on what's going on with Trump's naval blockade. Why can't a man like Sacks be US President?

 

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Canberra Accounting Services

 

I anglicised my German name GÖRMANN by dropping the second 'N'; however, to keep the German Ö-sound, I replaced it with 'OE' instead of going with the more common GORMAN. Now I always have to spell it out to people: G as in GNAW, O as in PEOPLE, E as in GIVE ...

 

Those bronze plaques cost me almost as much to obtain as the qualifications so boastingly mentioned on them, so when I dismantled my office in Canberra, I took them along as a reminder of another life before I eventually fastened them to the wall of my retirement home at "Riverbend".

Being of advanced age, it was hard enough keeping my own balance let alone that of other people, and so I didn't expect nor did I want to do any more accounting work in my retirement. That was until that memorable day when a little old Chinese lady knocked on the door.

It took me quite some time to disabuse her of her discombobulation — there you have it, two rarely-used words squeezed into one sentence! — that the also mentioned "Dip.Ac." stood for "Diploma in Acupuncture".

(Actually, she wasn't all that old, and I almost asked her to take her clothes off! I've left the plaques on the wall in case she comes back.)

 

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If you want to know who of your family and friends went where and came back when.

 

 

If you want to know who of your family and friends went where and came back when, simply go to www.naa.gov.au. Click on "RecordSearch", then on "Passenger arrivals", and type in the "Family Name", and select from the displayed search results - which you can enlarge to 200 per page - by clicking on the displayed icon in the "Digital copy" column.

There's just one limitation: your family member or friend must've travelled BEFORE 1973 because, for privacy reasons, later Incoming Passenger Cards are not yet available in the public domain.

(If your family or friends weren't deported here for stealing a loaf of bread but came, like me, as free settlers, you can also find their original migration documents. Stay on "Basic search" and type in as keyword their family name and, if known, the year of their arrival. If the documents are readily available, click on the icon displayed in the "Digitised item" column. If not, click on the "Item title" and, in the next window that opens up, on "Request copy" and follow the instructions.)

 

 

I've just found my best friend's Incoming Passenger Card when on the 9th of October 1972 he flew down from New Guinea, where we both had lived, to Brisbane, from where he took the XPT to see me in Sydney.

 

 

After several years in New Guinea, I had just accepted a big promotion to Group Financial Controller in the head office of the company whose Bougainville contract I had helped to kick off. My mate Noel had come to Sydney to ask me to join him on an island-hopping adventure through the Indonesian archipelago. After all the hard work on Bougainville, I was due for a break and could easily have asked for a couple of months' leave but, as always, put my career first, and so Noel left without me.

Sydney never agreed with me, and I was soon back in the islands, that time in the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. More than fifty years later, my career no longer counts for anything whereas two months hopping from island to island would still be a treasured memory today.

Regrets, I've had a few ...

 

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Autumn at "Riverbend"

 

 

Autumn at "Riverbend". The nights are getting a bit coolish, and the mornings are definitely no longer 'get-up-and-go early mornings' but 'stay-in-bed-until-the-sun-warms-up mornings', but the still long days are absolutely glorious.

And BHP had another good day as well, after China permitted their state-backed iron ore buyers to purchase some BHP cargoes. BHP promptly jumped 3.2% to $56.10 after an intra-day high of $56.42. It's still well down from its all-time high of $59.39 on 3 March, after which, on the same day, it dropped to $57.70, and kept dropping until it had bottomed at $46.06 but closed at $47.11 on 23 March. What a ride!

It's about all the excitement I get these days, apart from watching HARD QUIZ on the ABC and the Donald's psychopathic rantings. Now we have that Mexican stand-off of a double bluff in the Strait of Hormuz and a holy war with the Pope. Frankly, headline fatigue is beginning to set in and I want to stop hearing about all this s*"t and get back to normal.

Although, on second thoughts, Australians, who wouldn't know about Gundagai if it weren't for the song about the dog, ought to be grateful for all those geography lessons. I mean, who'd ever heard of Asaluyeh, Khorramshahr, Mahshahr, Bushehr, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas— well, maybe Bandar Abbas. Even I who has spent three years in the Middle East, can barely point out the location of Israel (although that's mainly due to the fact that the location of Israel was always omitted on Arabian maps).

 

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow corridor between Iran and Oman, linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the wider Arabian Sea, is at its narrowest point only thirty-three kilometers wide. That is a tiny gap to be holding the keys to the world’s bank account.

 

I have always regretted that, when I still worked and lived there, I never visited Petra, that "rose-red city half as old as time", so maybe, when all this is over and we're still alive, I book myself a holiday to the Strait of Hormuz which looks like an amazing place in the above video clip.

 

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Methinks she's addressing our Labor government

 

 

Not that you would hear any Australian whinge as well as she does. What happened to our own whinging? We've gone all woke and weak at the knees. Mustn't rock the boat. Mustn't complain. Well, look at what we ended up with: LABOR!

Funny new pronouns for 'non-binaries', our prime minister marching in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, and Labor's NDIS costing us more than defence, education, and Medicare COMBINED. We are sick!

Right! Got that off my chest, didn't I? Feeling better already! Perhaps we should send her a ticket to come here and stir up the place a bit.

 

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