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WILL PATCHING
WILL PATCHING is a Special Contributing Editor at Cyrano’s Journal Online on politics and comparative culture. With an abundant supply of humor and resilience, Will has done his share of roaming and observing about the world, and led a rich an improbable life (businessman, onetime RAF jet pilot, restaurateur malgré in Thailand, Junk (ship) cruise operator in the making, Hollywood scriptwriter-in-waiting, etc.). As befits a bona fides member of the CJO editorial team, Will is a reformed workaholic mammonist with a total lack of respect for the babblings of the mainstream media and a healthy suspicion of all politicians' words and actions. His eclectic writings range from blogs on politics and current affairs through to short stories and thriller novels. He can usually be found exploring the South China Seas from his base in Thailand or, more easily, at www.willpatching.com.
Despite (or perhaps because of) this peripatetic existence, Will has managed to cultivate an astute and uncompromising eye for social and political matters, and the myriad, often puzzling, contradictions that underscore so much of what passes for civilized human behavior in this chaotic world. Below we offer a short random sampler of Will's essays. This is only a sampler. As such it does not include every article by Patching on this site. [Be sure to conduct a search of our archives for more recent materials.]
We are happy to welcome Will Patching to our circle of activists, writers and editors.
—Patrice Greanville [8.10.08]
America’s Gas Guzzling Hypocrisy
Many pundits in the US believe developing nations are the culprits responsible for oil prices doubling from around $68 per barrel a year ago to their current dizzy heights.
Rising demand from China and India has undoubtedly had an effect although other offenders have been identified too: the greedy oil companies for profiteering, those nasty A-rabs running an ‘illegal’ cartel called OPEC, and mysterious evil speculators with their esoteric hedge funds that somehow create billionaires by manipulating gas prices in ways normal people cannot fathom…
Life, liberty and an SUV: Why we can’t all live like Americans.
With a massively successful economy based on US corporations infiltrating* every society across the globe, combined with a media machine pumping out images of affluence beyond most people’s reasonable expectations, America provides the role model other nations are eagerly pursuing.
Rampant capitalism, measured by GDP growth, is the Holy Grail, especially in the developing world. With the decline of the socialist Soviet Union, and China’s capitalist economic reforms, there is seemingly no viable alternative.
The US President justifies torture by claiming he is facing a “struggle for civilization”. I say he has already lost it.
“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
— George W Bush, May 24, 2005
Almost thirty years ago I joined Britain’s Royal Air Force. My induction into the military way of life included Escape and Evasion training (similar to US forces’ SERE – Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape). In theory, by undergoing some relatively minor hardships during training, I would be better prepared in the event I was shot down over enemy territory...
Dear Mr. President,
Although I am not an American citizen - a simple fact of genetics and geography for which I apologize, as I know this makes me something of a “non-person” in your eyes - I would ask you to read and reply to this letter.
Please, if only momentarily, try to respond as you should in your self-proclaimed role as “Leader of the Free World.”...>
“Sinn Fein was the political front for Catholic terrorists, the self-styled Irish Republican Army (IRA), whose aim was to remove the British from Northern Ireland, at times using indiscriminate bombing against civilian targets. Its leaders proudly declared they would achieve their aims with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other… and Sinn Fein were welcomed by the White House for years, even at the height of their bloody campaign. The IRA was ‘de-designated’ as a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department in 1994 – because peace talks were underway in Northern Ireland. Yet the political wing of Hamas, despite being democratically elected to the Palestinian assembly in 2006, has been shunned, even having offered a ceasefire.”
