Rudyard Kipling's 'The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows', first published in the fall of 1884 and later collected in the 1888 Plain Tales from the Hills collection, is the recollections of a half-caste opium addict six weeks before his death. Gabral Misquitta's entire life revolves around the lashes of his addiction. The opium den in Coppersmith's Gully, near the mosque of Wazir Khan, is both home and hearth, ruin and salvation. Isabelle Eberheardt's well-known story, 'The Oblivion Seekers', similarly recounts addiction to the same substance. While Kipling was a writer who requires no introduction, Eberheardt was somewhat more obscure. Her life reads as a tale that might have come from Kipling himself. (Please reference 'Miss Youghal's Sais', first published in the spring of 1887.) She fled from her native Geneva to North Africa in 1899. She spoke Arabic fluently, formally converted to Islam, and typically dressed as a man in order to enjoy greater freedom and mobility. In October of 1904 she died in a flash flood in Algeria when the walls of her clay house collapsed inward, trapping and drowning her.
In 1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was killed (assassinated) in a gun battle in Riyadh. His nephew, Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed, allegedly fired three bullets at him with a pistol at point blank range during a royal audience. It has been observed that the word 'assassin' may be derived from 'Hashshashin', a militant Sunni sect, thought to be active in the Middle East in the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic society killed members of the Abbasid elite for political or religious reasons.
In 1942 Iran reached an agreement to allow British and Soviet troops into the country in order to protect the petroleum-rich nation from German offense. The agreement stipulated that all foreign troops would leave Iran within six months of the end of the war. By 1944 however the Allies had begun to demand oil concessions from Iran. Thirst for petroleum had by no means been satiated when the war began to reach its end in 1945, and of course by that time Great Britain and the United States had changed their attitudes toward the Soviet Union. When Truman took over from Roosevelt in April 1945 the to-be Cold War policy on the Soviets began to become doctrine, and Iran became a test case for a new boldness in international affairs. The Soviets feared that they would be denied the oil they needed from Iran and supported a rebel group based in the north. The United States reacted by accusing the Soviets of interfering with the affairs of a sovereign state. The Soviet Union negotiated an oil deal with Iran and removed its troops; almost immediately Iran reneged on the deal and violently put down the rebellion in the north.
Interestingly, the oil companies know very well that in less than 30 years they will not only be charging very high prices, but that they will be uncompetitive with renewables. -Paul Hawken
It seems that one of the most fundamental aspects of the procurement of petroleum in the past century has been its symbiosis with the modern global economy, in which nation states though sovereign are submitted to economic, political and military pressure in total competition for limited resources. When we discuss renewable energy, corn fields for ethanol and bio diesel and dozens and hundreds of other strategies, do we consider that competition over such instruments of global economy almost always cause some form of direct or indirect exclusionary competition? Whether the commodity is tea, opium petroleum, or the slave trade - abolished in Britain 200 years ago - somebody always suffers.
He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers. -Henry B. Adams
In 1975 King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was killed (assassinated) in a gun battle in Riyadh. His nephew, Prince Faisal Ibu Musaed, allegedly fired three bullets at him with a pistol at point blank range during a royal audience. It has been observed that the word 'assassin' may be derived from 'Hashshashin', a militant Sunni sect, thought to be active in the Middle East in the 8th to 14th centuries. This mystic society killed members of the Abbasid elite for political or religious reasons.
In 1942 Iran reached an agreement to allow British and Soviet troops into the country in order to protect the petroleum-rich nation from German offense. The agreement stipulated that all foreign troops would leave Iran within six months of the end of the war. By 1944 however the Allies had begun to demand oil concessions from Iran. Thirst for petroleum had by no means been satiated when the war began to reach its end in 1945, and of course by that time Great Britain and the United States had changed their attitudes toward the Soviet Union. When Truman took over from Roosevelt in April 1945 the to-be Cold War policy on the Soviets began to become doctrine, and Iran became a test case for a new boldness in international affairs. The Soviets feared that they would be denied the oil they needed from Iran and supported a rebel group based in the north. The United States reacted by accusing the Soviets of interfering with the affairs of a sovereign state. The Soviet Union negotiated an oil deal with Iran and removed its troops; almost immediately Iran reneged on the deal and violently put down the rebellion in the north.
Interestingly, the oil companies know very well that in less than 30 years they will not only be charging very high prices, but that they will be uncompetitive with renewables. -Paul Hawken
It seems that one of the most fundamental aspects of the procurement of petroleum in the past century has been its symbiosis with the modern global economy, in which nation states though sovereign are submitted to economic, political and military pressure in total competition for limited resources. When we discuss renewable energy, corn fields for ethanol and bio diesel and dozens and hundreds of other strategies, do we consider that competition over such instruments of global economy almost always cause some form of direct or indirect exclusionary competition? Whether the commodity is tea, opium petroleum, or the slave trade - abolished in Britain 200 years ago - somebody always suffers.
He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers. -Henry B. Adams
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