Chaotic Current Events and How Expats Worldwide are Effected

By Jamie Douglas

In the last few weeks, we have seen, in several countries with sizeable expatriate communities, not just from the USA and other Anglo nations, long time authoritarian regimes imploding, while some are in the process of disintegration or exploding into outright civil war, forcing many Expats to grab what they could, and get the hell out of Dodge, or rather Cairo, or Bahrain, or Libya. That infamous domino theory is working its way thru North Africa and the Middle East, and most of those who had to evacuate had to leave virtually everything behind. And you may rest assured that many of them will come back eventually to looted houses and destroyed properties.

Most of these refugees are not retirees seeking a safe haven for their income or a cheap place to sip Mai-Tais while awaiting the grim reaper. In fact they were gainfully employed by multinational corporations, some as petrochemical engineers and professionals in the IT industry, which set them up comfortably with their families, their kids attending private schools, while others from the Balkan nations, Pakistan India, the Philippines etc. were working in more menial jobs, but nevertheless making a better living than they could in their home countries.

The USA decided that instead of donating or selling the surplus grains they were producing cheaply to poor nations, they would turn it into ethanol to feed their hungry SUV’s. All that, while the price of basic commodities such as wheat, corn and rice have gone thru the roof. The Egyptian government was able to pretty much downplay the food riots, where many lost their lives, while the infant death rate from hunger surged worldwide. And now the US House and Senate have decided to mandate an increase in the amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, which will soon be gobbling up more untold thousands of tons of edible grains.

This is how the USA is destabilizing the world now. It’s the politics of hunger. Even Al Qaeda was caught unaware of the impending fall of the dictatorships throughout the region.

But the fact is, tens of thousands of Expats had to run, taking with them only what they could carry. Then there is also Venezuela, a country in the Western Hemisphere, where there are several hundred thousand Expats from all over the world, many employed in the energy industry, but also in other industries, high and low tech, along with all the retirees living there. Hugo Chávez is the Moammar Gadhafi of the Americas, a former member of the army who overthrew the government and now acts like a totalitarian madman. His gig will be up sooner, rather than later, and I will not predict how that will play out, but you can bet that there will be a mass exodus of foreigners from Venezuela, while the poor masses that are now the backbone of his Bolivarian Revolution will go on a looting rampage before order can be restored. Mark my words!

Now to another subject: the frogs and earthquakes I wrote about a little while back. On Tuesday, February 22, Christchurch in New Zealand was hit by a second and this time very deadly earthquake. The damages are enormous and my sympathies go out to my many friends in Canterbury. The historic Cathedral where the Wizard used to preach his anti-American rhetoric is destroyed, and most of the city is under water, with many still trapped inside the rubble of collapsed buildings, fires raging out of control, with the fire brigade’s efforts severely hampered by all the broken water mains.

Now, a few days ago, a pod of 100 pilot whales beached themselves on Stewart Island, and those that did not die outright had to be euthanized. Over the last few days, there has been a tremendous amount of seismic activity in that region. Note that the last entry was at 10:10 AM, a couple of hours before the mighty one hit.

So with all that seismic activity occurring, it would not surprise me if the beaching of the pilot whales was somehow related to the tremors. But scientists, knowing everything that goes on in whales’ brains, immediately proclaimed that the two events were not related at all! Very interesting. Did the whales telegraph the scientist who made that bold declaration that their pending suicide had nothing to do with magnetic or other anomalies that were happening in preparation of this catastrophic event in Christchurch? Please note that this has happened more than every 4 or 5 years, as the photo in this link illustrates. The last major one occurred on September 23, 2010. The previous big earthquake occurred September 4, 2010, almost three weeks after the last big mass suicide or disorientation of pilot whales. Could they be related? Perhaps! Perhaps not, but for a “scientist” sitting in his office in Auckland to make such a broad declaration, to me demeans the term “scientist.”

My condolences go out to all the families that have been affected, not just by this natural disaster, but also by the manmade disasters in the Middle East and North Africa, where a mad dog has decided that his holding on to power is worth opening fire from aircraft on his own people.

But his day of reckoning is coming. As I suspected all along, the orders to blow up the Pan Am flight over Lockerbie, Scotland seem to have originated from him. As reported in yesterday’s edition of the respectable Swedish newspaper Expressen, Gadhafi’s former Justice Minister, Mustafa Mohamed Abud al-Jeleil, claims to have proof that it was in fact Moammar Gadhafi who issued the orders for that barbaric terrorist act. Even the Libyan military has turned against him, as in the dramatic case of the two brave Air Force Pilots who defied orders to attack the protestors in eastern Libya from the air, and instead set their Mirage Jet for a course into the ground as they were bailing out. The wheels of justice at the International Court in The Hague grind slowly, but with any kind of cooperation between the European nations that are flying their citizens out around the clock, Moammar Gadhafi will at last be tried for his crimes against humanity. Better late than never.

Reduce our dependence on fossil fuel. Park your gas guzzling SUVs and walk a little more. Your heart and lungs will appreciate it almost as much as your descendants will.

Jamie Douglas

Patagonia

To contact Jamie regarding this article, email: jamie@expatdailynews.com

Jamie Douglas is an Adventurer, Writer and Photographer with an amazing array of Nikon equipment, and a lifetime of experience traveling and documenting. To contact him for assignments and new adventures. email: jamie.douglas [at] yahoo.com

See more expat articles by Jamie at Expat Daily News Latin America.

 

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