ANALYSIS INFORMATION FROM A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

PETROFILM.COM

Institute for Empathic Dialogue Creation and Conflict Resolution

Harald Dahle-Sladek

Founder and Editor-in-chief

 Основатель и главный редактор

بنیانگذار و مدیرمسئول

創始人兼總編輯

THE UNITED STATES AND IRAN

A Question of Dignity in our Time.

An open letter to the President of the United States of America Joseph Biden

As we speak, we are sitting on a wreck in the middle of a turbu-lent river moving this way or the other in the direction of total annihilation. Five hundred million people in the Persian Gulf and nearby regions will be drawn into this conflict; five hundred million dead and those who will envy death. And that is just the very beginning.

Prime minister Neville Chamberlain walked that road when he proudly came back from Munich with the signatures of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and pulled the world into global mayhem. That will be as thin tea in comparison to this conflict. The Iran, China, Russia axis will guarantee that.

This conflict is not about twenty percent enrichment or twenty one percent enrichment. Neither is it about a small state in the middle East in conflict with a large state in the middle East. We are way beyond that.

The people of the United States – or America as we said when I grew up – tend to reach out to their God every time this great nation is mentioned, “God bless America” they say with near-fanaticism in their voices. The world is not interested in that. What we are concerned about is what deeds does America do.

Wars instigated on false premises, such as the war in Iraq where millions of people are uprooted, wars in North Africa where more millions are uprooted; the creation and support of the Islamic state of Iraq and Levant, the terror organization ISIS, the Vietnam war, the denial to reciprocate the Islamic republic’s assistance to the United States engagement in Afghanistan; are these mediocre and dehuma-nizing and politically embarrassing achievements also being blessed by their God?

There was once a Man who said, “If you read my words and adhere to my teachings, you will be like branches in me that bear fruit. An My Father will see to that you will produce more fruits. I give you (spiritual) Joy, so that your (spiritual) joy may be complete.” Is the United States adhering to these words and live after them, so that it’s deeds – it’s fruits – will be good and permanent?

This scenario is not about percentages of refined Uranium. It is about Dignity. When I was a young boy at eleven, I admired America. I used to look at beautiful advertisements in color of beautiful, American cars surrounded by beautiful admiring people. And my friends did too!

Will the next generations of children in the world continue to admire America the way we did when I grew up? That is what this conflict is about. Because, what are we as human beings when our Dignity is gone, and only the raw, cognitive, hyper rational embodiment in all its ugliness shine through in a seductive, but evil and degrading manner. Yes, I ask, “What are we?” Nothing.

As the United States is lost for solution to the ongoing dilemma with the Islamic republic, I advise President Joseph Biden to comprise dignity and to lift all present sanctions on Iran. Thereby securing the position of an esteemed United States – put spirituality in the words of the leaders and adhere to the teachings of the “God” that it so dearly and often does in public. Restore our confidence in the “Beacon of Hope and Democracy”.

This, Mr. President, is what is needed to solve the deadlock: Rise above mediocracy, restore human Dignity and guarantee that the next generations of kids will continue to admire America.

Seal of

the Foreign Ministry

Tehran

Seyed Mohammad Hossein Adeli PhD

Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs

 Ambassador to England, Canada and Japan.

  Governor of the Central Bank of Iran.

INTERVIEWED IN THE FOREIGN MINISTRY TEHRAN

APRIL 2002 AND MAY 2003

To the left Dr. Adeli: Great disappointment. To the right Editor-in-chief of Petrofilm.com Europe Mr. Harald Dahle-Sladek: Frustration was high!

IRAN-US-AFGANISTAN RELATIONS

THE SUCCESS OF

THE UNITED STATES

IN AFGHANISTAN  ALSO CAME AS THE ACTIVE SUPPORT FROM IRAN

Revolutionary icon Khomeini, Leader Khamenei



A GOLDEN OPORTUNITY

for Washington to better its relations with Teheran

went out of the window!

 CLICK PICTURE PLAY VIDEO

Dr. Adeli explains Iran's view regarding Iran-US-Afghanistan relations

Dr. Adeli: "Great disappointment!"



This interview was conducted in Dr. Hussein Adeli's office in the Foreign Ministry in Tehran. It was the first of two meetings that Harald Dahle had with Dr. Adeli. The first was in April 2002, and the second meeting was held in May 2003.

During this interview, which was made in April of 2002,  it became quite clear to the Editor-in-Chief that the rejection of the United States to appreciate what Iran had done for the superpower in Afghanistan, neither did not sit well with the upper echelon of the Islamic Republic, nor was it well received by the Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs His Excellency Hossein Adeli.

This would have been a Golden Opportunity for the United States to better its relations with Iran, but in wain. Washington was not ready to hand Tehran a firm handshake!

Dahle: -Tehran has sent an invitation to Washington for a meeting and better the relations between the two sides. I understand that the United States has rejected this initiative. How do you view the current relations with the U.S. after this disappointment?

Adeli: -Well, actually our relations with the West in general has improved a lot during the last, may be four, five years.

Dahle: -Yes.

Adeli: -Specially with the policies that have been followed by President Khatami, Dialogue among Civilization, the Rule of Law, the Principles of Civil Society, the elimination of tensions between Iran or other countries, the elimination of misunderstanding. All of these policies have been seriously followed by Iran in its Foreign Policy and has contributed to the relations with all countries except the United States. And with the West in general we have been able to exchange delegations on the level of Foreign Minister and head of Governments.

Dahle: -Aren't the operations of the United States in Afghanistan very much based on the early assistance from Iran?

Adeli: -But with the United States, it is unfortunately to see that even developments in Afghanistan, which owes a lot to understanding and effective assistance from Iran, has not, I believe, been able to penetrate into the hearts or the minds of decision makers in the United States.

Dahle: -Without the help from Iran in Afghanistan, you say that the United States would not have been where they are now?

Adeli: -I think that there is no doubt, even in the American eyes, that what we now see in the situation in Afghanistan owes a lot to Iranian assistance, Iranian understanding. The military success of the United States owes a lot to understanding and appreciation from Iran, and also the political process in Afghanistan owes the same thing. 

-And may be that was a very unique opportunity for the United States to reciprocate these kinds of understanding, and to seize and stop those kinds of policies that are pursued by them, in the past couple of decades. But apparently there is still not a very strong sign from that side!

Dahle: -Iran has friendly relations with many countries in the world, so why not also with the United States?

Adeli: -Off course, the general policy of Iran is to have friendly relations with every country in the world, including the United States, provided that this kind of relationship would be based on an equal footing, on a mutual beneficial sort of relationship. So, this is why I think that, as the policies of the United States, which are normally a unilateral policy, we hope that one time they would join the other countries of the West and devel-oping countries, and would join that kind of understanding of Iran; that the developments in the region would open their eyes, and that they would adopt a new policy towards our country!

Dahle: -Thank you Dr. Adeli.



The Stealthy Civil War OF

  the United States

 Polarization of the American society became more evident under President Donald J. Trump.

We have become aware of the violent culture underpinning American politics of today, even though such incidents are usually not acknow-ledged or reported, but often repressed and denied. The outcome of the first American civil war fought from 1861 to 1865 decided who should be included in the winner’s club and steer the new nation into the future.

The second American civil war, which is fought in our own time by stealth, is deciding who shall not be included in the winner’s club. It is against these two contradictory scenarios that many of the violent political deaths that has occurred in the United States speak more clearly to us, stand out in a way we have not realized before and warn us. Stay vigilant folks. Help fight terrorism, domestic and foreign. Report suspicious incidents to the authorities. Have a blessed day, cheers!



THE DIGNITY OF HUMAN VALUES

In the past months or so I have published articles and information that I have written concerning Iran one way or the other. I have done this to emphasize the importance of not isolating Iran. Isolating Iran in a coherent, hyper-rational and near genocidal way runs contrary to dignity of human values, as well as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court ICC. The United States does not recog-nize the ICC. Of good reason, because it knows very well that many of its former and present leaders would be indicted regarding war crimes and crimes against humanity. But USA aside; the ongoing, dehumanizing, and genocidal attitude towards an entire population, it’s leadership, the people of Iran, and denying them lifesaving medical assistance is equal to genocide.

PROPAGANDA FOR A DEADLY SCENARIO

It is our solemn duty to warn against what is happening, regardless which country it might be.  The use of nuclear pre-emptive strike against a people and nation is a crime against humanity. The case of the Islamic Republic in our time is a test-bed for human dignity in the Western culture.

A culture which has proven again and again that it is capable of extermination of civilizations such as the Jews in Europe between 1941 and 1945; the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945;  the overkill terror bombing of the civil population of the German cities of Dresden and Hamburg by the American and British Air Forces on February 13, 1945. And in our time denying the people of Iran medical supplies among other highly needed goods. These examples are connected. Hiroshima has happened once, and it can happen again. We have no guarantee that it will not happen again.

The ongoing media propaganda from United Against Nuclear Iran UANI plays right into the hands of the instigators of this pre-war and deadly scenario.

TAIWAN

   尊重中國歷史權利。

   台灣屬於祖國。

再次，西方與中國歷史和合法權利的脫節創造了一個危險的先例。台灣是並將永遠是中華人民共和國。中華皇龍一甩尾巴，怒不可遏。中國人民團結起來！台灣統一祖國的日子到了。

RESPECT CHINAS HISTORIC RIGHT

TAIWAN BELONGS TO THE MOTHER LAND

Again, the Western disconnection of Chinas history and legal rights has created a dangerous precedence. Taiwan is and always will be Peoples Republic of China. The Imperial Chinese Dragon whips its tail and is angry. People of China unite! The day for Taiwan unification to the Motherland has come!



HONG KONG

中國的法律權利

法治是中國的基石。 祖國擁有在其自己的領土後院香港實施法律和秩序的合法權利。 無需徵得任何其他國家的許可。 在西方，這既不是很好理解也不是很受歡迎。 西方在民主和“權利”方面天真爛漫的言論常常被表現為政治壓迫，並被用作宣傳。 香港是祖國； 只有一個。

CHINA’S LEGAL RIGHT

Law and order are the corner stone of China. The Motherland has legal right to impose law and order in it’s own territorial backyard, Hong Kong. Without having to ask any other country of permission. In the West, this is neither not very well understood nor liked. Western naivete spun in terms of democracy and “rights” are often presented as political oppression and used as propaganda. Hong Kong is the Motherland; and there is only one.



SPIRITUALITY IN EUROPE ON A SHARP DECLINE

The decline of Spirituality in the West in general, the weakening and the right-out abolishment of the Christian faith in many places today, and the materialization and dehumanization process reflected in the general coldness between people, gives reason for great concern.

Norway's King Haakon IV, "What happened to spirituality in Norway?"

In the Norwegian society of today, Man is undoubtedly being reduced to the weight of his own body. The newspapers write about losing and gaining weight every, single day. "It's all about meat, meat and more meat," says Harald Dahle, "and nothing about Man as a Spiritual being in God. In their educations Norwegians learn nothing about Spirituality, but every-thing about fiscal policies and fancy theories." He reflects on the Norwegian's Laissez-faire type mantra "to Enjoy.“ With the full blessing and encouragement of an authoritative and non-spiritual State, off course! You know, the Norwegians does not really have anything of spiritual value, and this is why they so desperately try the become what they are not and can never be, canonized.

The decline of Spirituality in the West in general, the weakening and the right out abolishment of the Christian faith in many places today, and the materialization and dehumanization process reflected in the general coldness between people, gives reason for great concern; in Norway, however, this is "business as usual", a stroke of death before the curtain fall. Before we as less civilized and empathic people criticize religion and spirituality in the Islamic Republic of Iran today one should first explain and understand the collapse of Christianity as a main factor in the western societies of today. In the Age of conspicuous consumption, oil and gas, sexual "freedom" and decline of conservative values the Norwegian society is identified with an overwhelming absence of piety in combination with a cold, disdained and superfluous inter-human relations almost devoid of human dignity. Just as it was in the last days before the fall of the decadent, Roman Empire!

On the streets of Oslo, the Norwegians bow their small and worried heads down towards their large, active-matrix organic light-emitting diode screens on their cell phones. And that they do all day! And it is the only time ever when the Norwegians bow their heads! On the walls of the houses in capital Oslo, there are not the minutest sign of spirituality. No, al-fresco paintings of the apostles, the Blessed Virgin Mary, a cross, some ornaments pointing towards a cultural connection with continental Europe. Nothing! The capital is chemically, organically, and spiritually devoid of any sign of a higher and dignified purpose in life. Alongside country roads leading through walleyes and over plains, through small towns and barren fields there is not a single cross, no memory built for an ancient, Christian pilgrim who shall have walked and died there. Not a signpost pointing towards a time when Norway was a country belonging together in spirit with the other Christian nations on the grand mainland of Europe.

THE SLIPPERY SLIDE TO HUMAN CATASTROPHE “In my work dealing with people and dialogue, “says Harald Dahle, “I have come to learn that many of us are not capable if viewing another human being right in front of ourselves with warmth, empathy and humanness. I believe this defect to be one of several primary causes for disharmony, conflict and war!" This phenomena bears special relevance to the people of Norway who actually live on an "island" - with the North Sea on one side and the forest and mountains bordering to Sweden and Russia on the other - and can do as they damn well please without having to take into account the more aristocratic and refined continental European culture further south. "I was in Munich already in 1956 and was raised in Sissach in Canton Basel Land in Switzerland," says Dahle whose father became a Swiss citizen. Harald Dahle, it sets the Norwegian cold and minimalistic Lutheran Church, controlled by the Department of Church -and Culture, in a certain perspective!

"The German philosopher, sociologist and composer Teodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno, left picture, has also had opinions about the "coldness between people phenomena: “Without the chilly and disdained behavior between people, the extermination of the Jews would not have taken place in Germany” he warned. Adorno was a leading member of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, whose work has come to be associated with thinkers such as Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse , for whom the works of Freud, Marx and Hegel were essential to a critique of modern society. He is widely regarded as one of the 20th century's foremost thinkers on aesthetics and philosophy, as well as one of its pre-eminent essayists. As a critic of both fascism and what he called the cultural industry, his writings - such as Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), Minima Moralia (1951) and Negative Dialectic (1966) - strongly influenced the European New Left.



Picture of the day

Russians meet Norwegians sheltering in a mine in Finmark

 The underdogs crawl out of the cave!



A NUCLEAR WAR FOR TALLINN?

Hello friends!

In a September 2014 speech in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, President Barack Obama articulated and strongly affirmed that com-mitment:

We will defend our NATO Allies, and that means every Ally. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single Ally. Because the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London.

This view is good, in theory, but is it wise to risk a global nuclear melt down because of Tallinn and Riga? We don't think so!

The newly published RAND Report underlines that despite President Obama’s bold words in Tallinn, a series of RAND wargames clearly indicates that, NATO’s current posture is inadequate to defend the Baltic States from a plausible Russian conventional attack.The games employed Russian forces from the Western MD and the Kaliningrad oblast, a chunk of sovereign Russian territory that sits on the northeastern border of Poland, along the Baltic Sea coast, totaling 27 maneuver battalions in a short-warning attack to occupy either Estonia and Latvia or both and present NATO with a rapid fait accompli.

In a September 2014 speech in the Estonian capital of Tallinn, President Barack Obama articulated and strongly affirmed that commitment: We will defend our NATO Allies, and that means every Ally. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single Ally. Because the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London. This view is good, in theory! But is it wise to risk a global nuclear meltdown because of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius? I don't think so! And I think I have Germany with me on this.



The continuous eastward expansion of NATO towards the borders of Russia, despite the guarantees given by the West to Gorbachev in 1989 that this would not happen;The deployment of the Aegis anti-missile defense system in Romania, Poland, Turkey and Spain. These weapons, equipped with MK41 launchers, can be used for defensive missions (air, land, sea), but also for offensive attacks with nuclear weapons.

The planned permanent rotational deployment in the Baltic States, Poland and Romania, of four battalions of 1,000 troops each, and heavy military equipment; The creation of a “Nordic Front” against Russia, comprised of an alliance of NATO members Denmark, Iceland and Norway, and of NATO's “Partnership for Peace” (Sweden and Finland); The modernization of nuclear weapons, in particular the B61-12 bomb and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) Cruise Missiles, based in Germany. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein said of these weapons: "The so-called improvements to this weapon seemed to be designed... to make it more usable, to help us fight and win a limited nuclear war."

To escape the current countdown to nuclear war, we also call on our government to create without delay the conditions for a new global peace and security architecture, based on the win-win cooperation proposed by the BRICS, cooperation which Europe and the United States, in their own interests, should join in. The vast efforts we deployed in the 20^th Century for war, must be mobilized today for peace and mutual development! The German Bundeswehr is planning to deploy its soldiers in Lithuania as part of NATOs mission aimed at containing possible Russian aggression

ЯДЕРНАЯ ВОЙНА ДЛЯ ТАЛЛИННА?

Здравствуйте друзья!

В своем выступлении в сентябре 2014 года в эстонской столице Таллинне президент Барак Обама сформулировал и решительно подтвердил это обязательство:

мы будем защищать наших союзников по НАТО, а это означает каждого союзника. И мы будем защищать территориальную целостность каждого союзника. Потому что защита Таллинна, Риги и Вильнюса так же важна, как и защита Берлина, Парижа и Лондона.

Эта точка зрения хороша в теории, но разумно ли рисковать глобальным расплавлением атомной энергии из-за Таллинна и Риги? Я так не думаю.

В недавно опубликованном Отчете RAND подчеркивается, что, несмотря на смелые слова президента Обамы в Таллине, серия военных игр RAND ясно указывает на то, что нынешняя позиция НАТО недостаточна для защиты стран Балтии от правдоподобного нападения российских войск. В играх использовались российские войска из Запада MD и Калининградская область, часть суверенной российской территории, которая находится на северо-восточной границе Польши, вдоль побережья Балтийского моря, в общей сложности 27 батальонов маневров в атаке с коротким предупреждением, чтобы оккупировать либо Эстонию и Латвию, либо обоих, и представить НАТО быстрый свершившийся факт

В своем выступлении в сентябре 2014 года в столице Эстонии Таллине президент Барак Обама четко сформулировал и твердо подтвердил это обязательство: мы будем защищать наших союзников по НАТО, а это означает каждого союзника. И мы будем защищать территориальную целостность каждого союзника. Потому что защита Таллинна, Риги и Вильнюса так же важна, как и защита Берлина, Парижа и Лондона. Это мнение хорошо, в теории! Но стоит ли рисковать глобальным ядерным кризисом из-за Таллинна, Риги и Вильнюса? Я так не думаю! И я думаю, что у меня есть Германия со мной на этом.

Непрерывное расширение НАТО на восток к границам России, несмотря на гарантии, данные Западом Горбачеву в 1989 году, что этого не произойдет, развертывание системы противоракетной обороны Aegis в Румынии, Польше, Турции и Испании. Это оружие, оснащенное пусковыми установками MK41, может быть использовано для оборонительных задач (воздушных, наземных, морских), а также для наступательных атак с применением ядерного оружия.

Запланированное постоянное ротационное развертывание в Прибалтике, Польше и Румынии из четырех батальонов по 1000 военнослужащих и тяжелой военной техники; Создание «Северного фронта» против России, состоящего из альянса членов НАТО Дании, Исландии и Норвегии и «Партнерства ради мира» НАТО (Швеция и Финляндия); Модернизация ядерного оружия, в частности бомбы B61-12 и крылатых ракет дальнего радиуса действия (LRSO), базирующихся в Германии. Сенатор США Дайан Файнштейн сказала об этом оружии: «Казалось, что так называемые усовершенствования этого оружия были разработаны ... чтобы сделать его более пригодным для использования, чтобы помочь нам сражаться и выиграть ограниченную ядерную войну».

Чтобы избежать нынешнего обратного отсчета времени до ядерной войны, мы также призываем наше правительство незамедлительно создать условия для новой глобальной системы мира и безопасности, основанной на взаимовыгодном сотрудничестве, предложенном БРИКС, сотрудничестве, которое Европа и Соединенные Штаты, в их собственных интересах, должны присоединиться. Обширные усилия, которые мы развернули в 20-м веке для войны, должны быть мобилизованы сегодня для мира и взаимного развития! Немецкий бундесвер планирует разместить своих солдат в Литве в рамках миссии НАТО, направленной на сдерживание возможной российской агрессии.

Petrofilm.com reports from the Islamic republic of Iran. Click and Play.

Qasem Soleimani

Petrofilm.com reports from Tehran Friday Prayer Click and Play.

IRAN

CLICK AND PLAY Harald Dahle-Sladek Founder and Editor-in-chief Petrofilm.com Europe and His Excellency Mehdi Mirmoezi Deputy Minister of Petroleum, President of National Iranian Oil Company NIOC (NIOC Headquarter Tehran 2002)

Editor-in-chief Harald Dahle-Sladek and President of NIOC Mehdi Mirmoezi

IRAN

The case of the Islamic Republic in our Time is a test-bed for Human Dignity in the Western Culture. 



ISOLATIONISM LEADS TO WAR

Creating dialogue and common ground with the pariah of the West, the Islamic republic of Iran. To the left his excellency Seyed Hossein Adeli Deputy Foreign Minister for Economic Affairs, Governor of the Central Bank, Ambassador to London, Ottawa and Tokyo receiving Harald Dahle-Sladek editor-in-Chief Petrofilm.com in the Foreign Ministry Tehran April 2002 (and in May 2003). Dahle, ”Isolating Iran and dehumanizing its population might trigger another Hiroshima, and we cannot afford that.”

Did the United States Lifting of Sanctions between 2016 and 2018 really take Place?

Dear readers and friends. Although, one can argue that the so-called lifting of US Sanctions between 2016 and 2018 really took place, there is reason to believe that when the Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC takes a sharp and unpleasant look at foreign individuals having done business with Iran and Iranian assets in that same period, it will arrive at the conclusion that the phrase “lifting of sanctions" does not mean a thing.

If your intentions are to knowingly circumvent US politics with Iran we think that is a very bad idea and it will have consequences. So, stop hiding behind phrases like "lifting of sanctions" and "the US opens up for trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran." Because it never happened!

President Donald J Trump signed sanctions towards Iran into law.

WHITE COLLAR CRIME

The new Global Geo Services GGS

Keeper of the Iran multi-client PC2000 Seismic Survey Data

Mr. Bjørn Ursin-Holm President: "US Sanction did not apply!"

In violation of US Sanctions and Article 25 of the International Criminal Court, Individual criminal responsibility, and in violation of Office of Foreign Assets Control OFAC under the Department of Treasury, GGS owner and CEO Mr. Ursin-Holm sold PC2000 seismic survey data in 2014 for NOK 50 million, USD 5.481.000.- to one undisclosed foreign oil company. In a phone conversation with Mr. Ursin-Holm in May 2019, Mr. Ursin-Holm revealed to Petrofilm.com that, “We are going to open a bank in England…”



The PC2000 Seismic Survey

and the PC2000 Seismic Survey Data Library.

THE PC 2000 SURVEY DATA WERE PROCESSED AT IMPERIAL COLLEGE

The Persian Gulf is located in the region with the largest petroleum potential in the world.  The PC-2000 (Persian Carpet) is one of the largest Multi Client 2D surveys ever undertaken.  PC 2000 covers the entire offshore Iran in the Persian Gulf and the Oman Sea.  The PC 2000 has been collected in exclusive partnership with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), and the data has so far been licensed to 18 oil and gas companies.

   The PC 2000 seismic database covers the entire Iranian offshore with a 2x2 km seismic grid.  These data will serve as the main tool in all future exploration offshore Iran.  The library consists of a total of 90,700 line kilometers (LKm) of standard offshore library, 11,700 Lkm of shallow water as well as 3,600 Lkm of Transition Zone.  In addition the library consists of 3,250 sq.km of 3D (Pseudo 3D) data. The Pseudo-3D projects was completed over structures with a very high potential i.e. the F and G structures located less than 100 km to the Northwest of South Pars, -the world’s largest gas/condensate field.

   GGS has collected gravity data which covers substantial parts of the PC 2000 grid.  The coverage is especially good for the Oman Sea, the strait of Hormuz, the Lavan Area, and in the shallow water parts of the Northwestern Gulf.

All gravity data has been collected using a-state-of-the-art “Chekan-am” gravity-meter.  In addition to raw datasets, the following maps are supplied:  bathymetry, Bouguer anomaly, high pass Bouguer anomaly with 100 km & 50 km cut off, and also free air anomaly. Many of the wells in the Persian Gulf are located in areas with steeply dipping strata.  Additional seismic lines become especially important in tying such wells to the PC 2000 grid.  GGS has collected 10 km well ties over most wells in the Persian Gulf.

The Jewel in the Crown Seismic Data

Onboard the seismic survey vessel Bin Hi 504 North of the Persian Gulf. Chris Farlow explains the newly prosessed survey data showing promising signs of oil deposits under the beach of Transistion Zone One at Hendijan. Video by Harald Dahle-Sladek.

GGS offers high quality interpretation of all PC 2000 data at low cost.  Most of the data has been interpreted by senior staff at Robertson Research , with long experience in the Middle-East.  The interpretation is supplied in digital format, easily imported into any interpretation software as well as maps at a 1:250.000 scale. GGS has used considerable resources in pointing out different play types in the PC 2000 area.  The Atlas is considered a valuable, supplementary tool in offshore exploration.  The atlas is presented on an area by area basis.

   As a service to its clients GGS has compiled general well data into 6 separate databases.  Key information includes: main tops in depth (time) + some logs when available. In co-operation with Enres International, GGS has done high resolution, high quality well correlation of wells offshore Iran using state-of-the-art digital techniques, analyzing and recognizing astronomically driven cyclicity.

In co-operation with Exploration Geosciences (UK), GGS has prepared a geological study of the Oman Sea based on the first 1900 km collected in the Oman Sea.  As well as addressing the hydrocarbon potential of the Oman Sea, this study places the region in a global geological framework. Examples include “Stratigraphic Columns around the Gulf of Oman Area”, “Hydrocarbon Maturity windows”, “Gas Hydrates and DHI’s and Accretionary Margins (Analogues or One-offs)” and“Seismic Examples Montage”.

   Together with  Nigel Press Associates (UK) GGS has developed a satellite-based study of the surface of the Oman Sea, revealing hydrocarbon seeps not related to ship spill.  Such seeps can contribute in identifying hydrocarbon generating strata on a regular basis and are valuable indicators that new or underexplored parts of offshore basins contain a mature source and hence help risk reduction at an early stage. Numerous undrilled structures and stratigraphic prospects have been found from preliminary interpretation of the PC 2000 seismic data.

Bushehr Iran January 2000: Harald Dahle-Sladek points in the direction of the PC 2000 Seismic Survey where he had monitored the progress of six seismic vessels over three years, before heading back to Dubai the same day.

Intel, UAE, and Iran!

Seeking a glimpse of an intelligence battlefield of the future, one need looks no further than the tiny Persian Gulf mini-state of Dubai, which is one of the principalities that comprise the United Arab Emirates.

 Only about 17 percent of Dubai’s 2.2 million inhabitants are Emiratis. The rest come from India, Pakistan, the Philippines, and over two dozen other nations; among them are several thousand American expatriates, all of whom have flocked to Dubai because of the emirate’s massive wealth.

From an intelligence standpoint, Dubai is critically important because it has become a global financial powerhouse, replacing Beirut as the banking center and tax shelter of choice for the rich and powerful of the Middle East. If there is a major business transaction taking place anywhere in the Middle East or Near East, whether a sale on the world petroleum market or a major construction project, chances are very good that a bank or investment house in Dubai is financing the deal.

From left: Harald Dahle-Sladek Editor-in-chief of PTEROFILM.COM at an exhibition and seminar regarding Irans Free Trade Industrial Zone Islands in the Persian Gulf held at the University of Kish on Kish Island, seen here together with Iranian business men representing industry and trade. Picture by Reza Shaeri MJF. April 2000.

Over the past decade, Dubai and the other principalities comprising the United Arab Emirates have become the principal source of financing for Mullah Omar’s Taliban guerrillas and all of the Afghan drug kingpins. According to a leaked September 2009 State Department cable, “It comes as no surprise that Taliban financing originates in and transits the UAE to Afghanistan and third countries. Afghan drug proceeds, including laundered funds, both transit the UAE and are invested here. Cash couriers are believed to carry the majority of illicit funds to and from Afghanistan.” The cable went on to note that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration believed that “over $2 billion in drug proceeds has transited through the UAE over the last three years.”

Dubai’s position as the leading banking center in the Middle East has made it a mecca for spies from around the world. According to senior U.S. intelligence sources, Dubai is today the principal listening post for monitoring what is taking place across the Persian Gulf inside America’s arch-nemesis in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran, led by an aging conservative religious autocracy that derives its strength from feeding its people with the notion that they are beset on all sides by enemies.

The Iranian government’s aggressive, some would say confron-tational, attitude toward the United States over the past thirty years, its sponsorship of international terrorist groups, its work on building a nuclear weapon, and its development of long-range ballistic missiles capable of hitting Israel and perhaps even the United States have kept the country near the top of the list of the U.S. intelligence community’s most important targets for almost three decades.

The CIA has had no station inside Iran since Washington broke diplomatic relations with the regime after Iranian militants stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran on November 4, 1979, and took sixty-six embassy staff members hostage, including the entire CIA station headed by Thomas L. Ahern Jr. This has forced the agency to improvise. In the 1980s and 1990s, the CIA’s “Iran station” was situated inside the I. G. Farben Building in downtown Frankfurt, Germany, from where the agency directed its global efforts to recruit and run agent networks inside Iran. But try as it might, the agency’s efforts to penetrate Iran during this time period were marked by one failure after another, with the single greatest loss occurring in April 1989, when Iranian security forces rolled up virtually the entire CIA network of agents inside Iran.

For the last two decades, the agency’s “Iran station” has been hidden away inside the U.S. consulate in Dubai because of its close proximity to Iran, which is only one hundred miles to the north across the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian presence in Dubai is massive. Not only does Iran maintain a sizable embassy in Dubai, complete with a large complement of intelligence officers, but according to a leaked State Department cable, banks in Dubai currently hold about $12 billion of Iranian government money, which the Tehran regime secretly uses to finance terrorist groups, its overseas weapons purchases, and its clandestine acquisition of nuclear technology.

By monitoring the flow of money in and out of Iranian government bank accounts in Dubai, the U.S. intelligence community has determined that despite strict United Nations economic sanctions, a number of major Europe an oil companies have continued to covertly purchase large amounts of Iranian oil and natural gas on the international petroleum market, knowing full well that the Iranian government uses the proceeds from these sales to finance its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. According to an American intelligence official, as long as Iran can continue to freely sell its oil and natural gas on overseas markets, “traditional diplomacy and economic sanctions are unlikely to ever work.”

As valuable as Dubai may be to the CIA as a base from which to spy on Iran, it does not come close to compensating for the agency’s lack of a presence on the ground in Tehran. In theory, the CIA should not have to be content with watching Iran from the relative comfort of the skyscrapers of Dubai. Compared to North Korea, where a siege mentality and acute paranoia are the norm, Iran is far more open. Thousands of Americans visit Iran every year, many of whom are Iranian expatriates who have settled in the sunny climes of Southern California and are now American citizens. They just can’t do any business there, which would violate the economic sanctions that are currently in place to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

There is also an enormous reservoir of residual friendship toward the United States among young Iranians born since the 1979 seizure of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, who now comprise 50 percent of Iran’s population. Thanks to modern technology, like satellite television, cell phones, and the Internet, Iran’s under-thirty set are well versed in Western culture and, unlike their parents, generally well disposed toward improved relations with the West, including the United States. Walk down any street in downtown Tehran and you will find yourself surrounded by teenagers and twenty-something college students who want to talk about America and their desire for better relations with the West.

The Editor-in-chief with the English pilot at the Creek in Dubai after flying to the inland mountain-range and back.

An American television film crew filming a documentary about Iran in 2009 was taken aback by the eagerness of young Iranians to criticize their government on camera, even with a team of glum Iranian plainclothes secret police standing just off to the side. One young Iranian man even went so far as to walk past the plainclothesmen flaunting a copy of Newsweek that the Americans had given him, which contained an article highly critical of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In another time, their earnest candor would have gotten the youths arrested and perhaps even a stiff prison sentence for, as one of the wittier of the students put it, “revealing state secrets.” This time, the Iranian plainclothes security men observing the affair, perhaps having teenagers of their own at home, decided that the prudent thing to do was nothing and hope that it would not end up on the nightly news.

In this more permissive environment, America’s clandestine intelligence collectors should thrive. But because there is no CIA station inside the country, it is very difficult for the agency to recruit agents or gather firsthand intelligence information. Unable to operate from inside Iran, the CIA has been forced to try to recruit and run agent networks inside Iran from outside the country, which as any intelligence professional will tell you is an extremely difficult proposition, especially given the effectiveness of the Iranian security services in rooting out spies.

The CIA’s Baghdad and Kabul stations have been infiltrating Iranian-born agents into Iran since 2003 with marginal success. The agency has been forced to largely depend to some degree on the intelligence services of a number of friendly European and Middle Eastern governments with embassies in Tehran to provide it with much of what it knows about what is going on inside Iran.

The CIA is not the only branch of the U.S. intelligence community actively spying inside Iran. The National Reconnaissance Office’s fleet of spy satellites keeps very close tabs on Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom and on the Iranian missile test ranges at Semnan, Shahrud, and Garmsar. American spy satellites are currently maintaining a constant vigil on a new missile launch facility fast approaching completion with the help of North Korean technicians at Semnan east of Tehran.

According to Michael Elleman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, who is the author of a new study of the Iranian missile program, this new facility will be used to launch a spy satellite into space on top of a large new booster rocket called the Simorgh, which many analysts believe is the prototype of an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile. According to Elleman, “The launch, if it occurs as scheduled, will set off a fire-storm, especially by proponents of missile defense” in the United States who want to build a massive new defense system designed to shoot down these missiles before they can strike the United States.

The Eitor-in-chief at the French TOTAL supply base on the island of Kish.

The National Security Agency also devotes a significant amount of its SIGINT intercept resources to listening to Iranian military and internal security communications networks every day of the week. For example, NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), keep a sizable number of Farsi linguists at the huge NSA listening post at Menwith Hill in northern England listening around the clock to Iranian communications. U.S. Navy and Air Force reconnaissance aircraft based in the Persian Gulf States of Bahrain and Qatar, and Air Force U-2 spy planes and Global Hawk high altitude reconnaissance drones based at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates, fly daily SIGINT and imagery collection missions along Iran’s borders with Iraq and Afghanistan and along Iran’s Persian Gulf coastline. Without live sources on the ground inside Iran, however, these technical intelligence sources are limited in terms of what they can tell us about what the Iranian regime is up to.

The need to know what the Iranian government’s intentions have never been greater, as the U.S. intelligence community has become increasingly concerned about the direction that Iran is headed. Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iran has rapidly become a regional political and military power whose influence is seen to be on the rise. According to three Middle Eastern intelligence officials interviewed in 2009 and 2010, Iran, as a matter of national policy, is exporting instability throughout the Middle East, the Near East, and South Asia through coercive tactics, such as its continuing lavish support of terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. According to Lt. General Ronald L. Burgess Jr., the director of the DIA, “Iran uses terrorism to pressure or intimidate other countries and more broadly to serve as a strategic deterrent.”

Iran is also continuing to provide clandestine support to a number of extremist Shiite groups in Iraq. The U.S. intelligence community has a substantial volume of reliable intelligence showing that not only are the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) and Iran’s covert intelligence organization, the Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, running massive intelligence-gathering operations inside Iraq, but, according to leaked State Department cables, Iran is also providing weapons and money to extremist Shiite political and militia groups in Iraq opposed to the continuing U.S. military presence in that country.

Shahram Amiri, the Iranian nuclear scientist who returned to Tehran left behind some $5 million he was promised by the CIA as part of "benefits package" offered by the CIA's National Resettlement Operations Center, US officials told ABC News. "Anything he got is now beyond his reach, thanks to the sanctions against Iran," one US official said. "We've got his information and the Iranians have him." When Amiri defected, the CIA offered him $5 million for information about the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Typically, the CIA places these kinds of funds in escrow so that an informant is only paid bit by bit, at the agency's discretion.



There is some circumstantial evidence that Iran has covertly become involved in the war in Afghanistan. In September 2007, British forces in Afghanistan captured a shipment of Iranian-made advanced IEDs destined for Taliban fighters in Helmand Province. The British intelligence community’s evaluation of the matter, according to a leaked State Department cable, was that it demonstrated that Iranian intelligence operators belonging to the Quds Force were now engaged in the same sort of mischief in Afghanistan that they had exported to Iraq for years. But the British report left open the question of whether the Iranian government knew what the Quds Force operatives were up to, quoting a senior British official as saying that the Quds Force “may have attempted to conceal its activities from other branches of the Iranian government.”

The best that the U.S. intelligence community could conclude at the time, according to a DNI briefing, was that it was “likely” that the Iranian intelligence services were supporting the Taliban because they were the “enemy of my enemy,” that is to say, the United States. Now the U.S. intelligence community believes that the Iranians were just being prudent, supporting both sides in the conflict to ensure that they have a seat at the table regardless of who wins the war in Afghanistan. As a matter of policy, Iran has consistently opposed the Taliban, whom Tehran clearly views as an equal threat to its security as the American military presence in Afghanistan, if not a greater one.

According to a little-noticed presentation to Congress made by DNI Denny Blair in February 2009, “Iran has opposed Afghan reconciliation talks with the Taliban as risking an increase in the group’s influence and legitimacy. Iran distrusts the Taliban and opposes its return to power but uses the provision of lethal aid [to the Taliban] as a way to pressure Western forces, gather intelligence, and build ties that could protect Iran’s interests if the Taliban regain control of the country.”

The Iranian government has gone out of its way to maintain friendly relations with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his closest advisers. According to U.S. intelligence sources, CIA surveillance of the activities of senior Iranian diplomats and intelligence officers in Kabul has revealed not only that the Iranian ambassador in Kabul, Feda Hussein Maliki, is a frequent visitor to Karzai’s presidential palace but also that the ambassador has for years been giving Karzai’s chief of staff, Mohammad Daudzai, a plastic bag filled with cash once a month. The sums involved have never been specified, but according to the New York Times, the payments over the years have totaled in the millions of dollars.

Senior U.S. intelligence officials believe that Tehran’s motive in making these large cash payments to Karzai is to drive a wedge between Washington and the Afghan government. According to these officials, Tehran has also been making comparable payments to two other members of Karzai’s kitchen cabinet, Information and Culture Minister Abdul Karim Khoram, and Education Minister Farooq Wardak, who are infamous in Kabul diplomatic circles for their attempts to use their positions of influence to push Karzai away from his alliance with the United States. According to a leaked State Department cable, these three men “provide [Karzai] misleading advice and conspire to isolate Karzai from more pragmatic (and pro-Western) advisors in a purposeful effort to antagonize Western countries, especially the United States.”

But it has been Iran’s extremely controversial nuclear weapons development program that has dominated the U.S. intelligence community’s interest in Iran since it began working on the project back in 1985. The CIA’s “Iran station” in Dubai has covertly tried to disrupt Tehran’s nuclear program for more than a decade by tracking Iranian clandestine purchases of nuclear related technology from countries such as the People’s Republic of China and North Korea using money held in Iranian government bank accounts in Dubai. Thanks to cooperation from the UAE intelligence services, the U.S. intelligence community has been able to interdict some of these clandestine nuclear shipments, but American officials admit that most of these shipments have managed to get through despite their best efforts.

Information provided by an Iranian dissident group in 2002 led to the discovery of a secret underground uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, located halfway between the cities of Isfahan and Kashan in central Iran. According to U.S. intelligence sources, the discovery of Natanz led the CIA in 2004 and 2005 to use its Predator unmanned drones to conduct secret reconnaissance overflight missions over the facility and the deployment sites for Iran’s long- range ballistic missile units. Some of these drone missions were conducted from Balad Air Base in Iraq; others were launched from Karshi-Khanabad Air Base in Uzbekistan. The Iranians formally protested these overflights, but the U.S. government refused to confirm or deny that it was behind these secret flights.

Five years later in 2007, intelligence information provided by the NSA revealed that a team of Iranian engineers, led by a shadowy figure named Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, had been diligently working on designs for a nuclear weapon to be carried by one of Iran’s new generation of long- range ballistic missiles, but that this work had been ordered halted in 2003 shortly after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. This new information formed the basis for a controversial November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on the Iranian nuclear program, which concluded, “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

But two years later, according to senior American intelligence sources, the intelligence community had to reverse many of its 2007 findings after an Iranian nuclear physicist named Shahram Amiri defected in May 2009 while making the pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia. Sources confirm that Amiri’s defection was entirely voluntary, facilitated by the cooperation the CIA received from the Saudi General Intelligence Directorate.

The information Amiri brought with him was deemed so important that the CIA offered him a $5 million cash reward. The CIA leaked his name to the press in March 2010, describing his defection as “an intelligence coup.”

But in July 2010, Amiri returned to Iran without the $5 million in cash that the CIA had given him, claiming that he had been kidnapped by CIA officers in Saudi Arabia. The CIA formally denied the allegation, claiming that Amiri had been a willing defector whose information had significantly enhanced the U.S. intelligence community’s knowledge of the Iranian nuclear program.

In the U.S. intelligence community, the Amiri re-defection was a huge embarrassment, the latest in a string of high-level defectors dating back to the 1970s who later chose to return home. In the eyes of some intelligence officials, Amiri’s re-defection was a stark reminder of the peril innate in placing one’s faith in human agents with all their foibles.

Despite doubts about Amiri’s reliability, the U.S. intelligence community stuck by the information he provided. Based in part on the information provided by Amiri, as well as information provided by the Mossad, on September 27, 2009, President Obama and the leaders of Great Britain and France publicly accused Iran of building a secret underground uranium enrichment facility one hundred miles south of Tehran on the grounds of an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps base at Fordow, located outside the holy city of Qom. At the time of the announcement, the Qom site was far from complete, but the analysts believed that at the rate construction was going it would be ready by 2010.

The discovery of the secret uranium enrichment facility outside Qom dramatically changed how the U.S. intelligence community assessed the Iranian nuclear program. What it boiled down to was this: All of the intelligence indicated that the Iranians were not being truthful when they said that their nuclear program was intended solely for civilian purposes. Rather, the intelligence indicated that the Iranians had built just enough centrifuges at Natanz and Qom to process enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon, but not anywhere near enough for a civilian nuclear power reactor.

In August 2010, the National Intelligence Council issued a draft National Intelligence Estimate that essentially reversed most of the conclusions of the November 2007 estimate on the Iranian nuclear program. Based in part on information provided by Amiri, the 2010 intelligence estimate concluded that Iran was indeed developing nuclear weapons components and secretly enriching nuclear material that could be used in a nuclear weapon. But the estimate added that it was not known whether the Iranian government had made the decision to go one step further and actually build a nuclear weapon.

According to a 2011 interview with Michael Eisenstadt, the director of military and security studies at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the Iranians currently have enough enriched uranium for three to four nuclear weapons, but they would probably like to have a stockpile of uranium sufficient for about one hundred bombs, even if they do not actually move ahead and build the weapons themselves. Just having the raw materials on hand along with a viable bomb design would be as sufficient a deterrent as having the bombs themselves.

Deep differences remain within the U.S. intelligence community as to whether Iran has resumed work on building an atomic bomb. When asked in late 2010 for his opinion as to whether Iran was actively working on a nuclear weapon, one senior American intelligence official could only shrug his shoulders and say, “Your guess is as good as mine.”

GCHQ's beyond top secret Middle Eastern internet spy base

Exclusive Above-top-secret details of Britain’s covert surveillance programme - including the location of a clandestine British base tapping undersea cables in the Middle East - have so far remained secret. Government pressure has meant that some media organi-zations have declined to reveal them

The Seeb spy base on Northern side of Oman

The secret British spy base is part of a programme codenamed “CIRCUIT” and also referred to as Overseas Processing Centre 1 (OPC-1). It is located at Seeb, on the northern coast of Oman, where it taps in to various undersea cables passing through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian/Arabian Gulf. Seeb is one of a three site GCHQ network in Oman, at locations codenamed “TIMPANI”, “GUITAR” and “CLARINET”. TIMPANI, near the Strait of Hormuz, can monitor Iraqi communications. CLARINET, in the south of Oman, is strategically close to Yemen.

British national telco BT, referred to within GCHQ and the American NSA under the ultra-classified codename “REMEDY”, and Vodafone Cable (which owns the former Cable & Wireless company, aka “GERONTIC”) are the two top earners of secret GCHQ payments running into tens of millions of pounds annually.

The actual locations of such codenamed “access points” into the worldwide cable backbone are classified 3 levels above Top Secret and labelled “Strap 3”.The true identities of the companies hidden behind codenames such as “REMEDY”, “GERONTIC”, “STREETCAR” or “PINNAGE” are classified one level below this, at “Strap 2”.

After these details were withheld, the government opted not to move against the Guardian newspaper last year for publishing above-top-secret information at the lower level designated “Strap 1”. This included details of the billion-pound interception storage system, Project TEMPORA, which were revealed in 2013 and which have triggered Parliamentary enquiries in Britain and Europe, and cases at the European Court of Human Rights. The Guardian was forced to destroy hard drives of leaked information to prevent political embarrassment over extensive commercial arrangements with these and other telecommunications companies who have secretly agreed to tap their own and their customers’ or partners’ overseas cables for the intelligence agency GCHQ. Intelligence chiefs also wished to conceal the identities of countries helping GCHQ and its US partner the NSA by sharing information or providing facilities.

According to documents revealed by Edward Snowden to journalists including Glenn Greenwald among others, the intelligence agency annually pays selected companies tens of millions of pounds to run secret teams which install hidden connections which copy customers' data and messages to the spooks’ processing centres. The GCHQ-contracted companies also install optical fibre taps or “probes” into equipment belonging to other companies without their knowledge or consent. Within GCHQ, each company has a special section called a “Sensitive Relationship Team” or SRT.

BT and Vodafone/C&W also operate extensive long distance optical fibre communications networks throughout the UK, installed and paid for by GCHQ, NSA, or by a third and little known UK intelligence support organization called the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC).

The leaks reveal that every time GCHQ wanted to tap a new international optical fibre cable, engineers from “REMEDY” (BT) would usually be called in to plan where the taps or “probe” would physically be connected to incoming optical fibre cables, and to agree how much BT should be paid. The spooks' secret UK access network feeds Internet data from more than 18 submarine cables coming into different parts of Britain either direct to GCHQ in Cheltenham or to its remote processing station at Bude in Cornwall.

Among the cables specifically identified in one document as currently being intercepted or “on cover” are an Irish connection, Hibernia Atlantic, landing in Southport, and three European connections landing at Yarmouth, Dover, and Brighton.



جنگ ایران و عراق آزادسازی خرمشهر 

CLICK AND PLAY

THE LIBERATION OF KHORRAMSHAHR 

Petrofilm.com travel along the border Between Iran and Iraq and Reports from the Liberation of Khorramshahr

Dahle's frame grabs from the car: We are on the Iranian side. To the right can be seen the high voltage electricity lines shot in half by Sadam's Scud Missiles. To the left are the new constructed electricity lines. Iraq is 1600ft to the right from the war-ridden electricity masts. From Abadan International Airport in direction of the Persian Gulf. Sixty-five kilometers to Mahshahr, Moon City, and two hundred and fifteen to Ahvaz. Frame grab from video by Harald Dahle-Sladek. North of the Persian Gulf in Iranian waters: From the bridge of seismec survey vessel Bin Hain 504: We spot a myserious oil tanker with lanterns shut off waiting to sneak out of the Gulf after sunset. Frame grab by Harald Dahle-Sladek.

CLICK PLAY PETROFILM.COM VISION OF IRAN VIDEO

PETROFILM.COM

 ANALYSIS INFORMATION FROM A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

Click and Play John Snow News at 10 Reporting from Khorramshahr

Khorramshahr was liberated street-by-street.

CLICK AND PLAY STREET FIGHTS IN KHORRAMSHAHR

Iraqi soldiers taken prisoners by Iran.

 

EUROPE

Muhammad Cartoon Drawings in the Last days of a Waning Christian Faith.

Muslims must find other ways than killing people in Europe to express their frustration over Muhammad cartoon drawings. It is not acceptable. However! The Europeans must show dignity and piety towards non-Christian religions and beliefs. History has shown, that in Europe, this is an illusion.



This is not a cartoon drawing.

Prophet Muhammad, the Messenger of God

The fanaticism of European right-wing politics intertwined with Christian beliefs, supported both on the Catholic as well as on the Protestant side proves this correct. The Vatican’s support of the Independent Ustaše State of Croatia, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska NDH, between 1941 and 1945. Pope Pius XII betrayed the Jews, collaboration with the Nazi Party to withdraw the Catholic Center Party which paved the way for Adolf Hitler to become Chancellor.

European anti-Muslim feelings go back to the Middle Ages and earlier. Military Christian orders like Knights Templars, the Knights Hospitaller, Order of St James, Order of Calatrava, Sovereign Military Order of Malta and order of St John are Catholic and Protestant successors of the Nights Hospitaller. In 1053, for the Battle of Civitate, the Knights of Saint Peter was founded as a militia by Pope Leo IX to counter the Normans. In response to the Islamic conquests of the former Byzantine Empire, numerous Catholic military orders were set up following the First Crusade.

The founding of such orders suited the Catholic church's plan of channeling the devotion of the European nobility toward achieving the Church's temporal goals, and it also complemented the Peace and Truce of God. The foundation of the Knights Templar in 1118 provided the first in a series of tightly organized military forces for the purpose of opposing Islamic conquests in the Holy Land and in the Iberian Peninsula as well as Islamic invaders and pagan tribes in Eastern Europe which were perceived as threats to the Church's supremacy.

In Europe, Freedom of expression, Article 19 in UN’s Charter, is hyped up as basis for a collective European downgrading  of Prophet Muhammad. But, as the Europeans twist and bend their argumen-tation for making the Prophet look hilarious and even get the support of State leaders, empathy, respect, and dignity among Western cultures is waning like fog on an October, cold morning.

The Knights Order have been replaced by the Military Western Alliance, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Denmark, Norway, and Spain. Hyped-up illegal wars under the pretext of weapons of mass destruction have erased Islamic cultures from North Africa till Iraq and Afghanistan. Such is the lack of respect for Prophet Muhammad in the West, that a war on Iran will seem “justifiable”, “in our interest” and blessed by the Christian supre-macies. Muhammad cartoon drawings in the last days of a waning Christian European faith is a serious warning sign of wars to come!

IRAN

 MANOUCHEHR MOTTAKI

FOREIGN MINISTER IN PRESIDENT MAHMOUD AMEDINEJAD'S GOVERNMENT

    From U.S. Dollars to

A Basket of Currencies!

Manouchehr Mottaki interviewed by Harald Dahle

Dahle: - Your Excellency Mottaki, Iran is shying away from trading in US Dollars. Why is that? 

Mottaki: - Central Bank Governor Valiollah Seif said last week that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had welcomed his suggestion of replacing the dollar with the euro in foreign trade, as the “dollar has no place in our transactions today”. I believe this has been a good decition by the Central Bank Governor.

Dahle: -I understand that Iran is relying on a basket of currencies, such as the Euro and the Yen.

Mottaki: -Tehran has been trying for years to move away from the dollar, although much of the country’s international trade is still conducted in dollars and ordinary Iranians use them for travel and savings.

Dahle: -I understand. Bank transactions involving the dollar are already difficult for Iran because legal risks make U.S. banks unwilling to do business with Tehran. Foreign firms can be exposed to sanctions if they do Iranian deals in dollars, even if the operations involve non-U.S. branches.

Mottaki: -France will start offering euro-denominated credits to Iranian buyers of its goods later this year to keep its trade out of reach of U.S. sanctions, the head of state-owned French investment bank Bpi-France said in February. The threat of U.S. sanctions has destabilized Iran’s foreign exchange market in recent month

Dahle: -Khamenei on Wednesday blamed foreign enemies for the “recent issues in the currency market” and asked Iran’s intelligence services to defuse the plots against the Islamic Republic. Police spokesman Saeed Montazer al-Mahdi was also quoted by ISNA saying that 39 currency exchangers have been arrested “for disrupting the market” and 80 unlicensed currency exchange shops have been shut down in recent days.

SEAL OF THE FOREIGN MINISTRY

 THE FOREIGN MINISTRY

AMBASSADOR ALI AHANI

"NORWAY WAS ONE OF THE LAST COUNTRIES IN EUROPE  TO ESTABLISH GOOD AND SUSTAINABLE TIES WITH THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF IRAN"

Ambassador to Europe and America, the present Ambassador to Paris, the sencond time, His Excellency Ali Ahani and Harald Dahle-Sladek in Dr. Ahani's office in the Foreign Ministry Tehran, April 2002.

Picture below from the video during the interview. From Left the translator, Ambassador Ali Ahani and Editor-in-Chief Harald Dahle-Sladek. (C)2002 Harald Dahle Oslo.

In 2000 Norway finally entered the Islamic Republic of Iran. Then, the Foreign Department in Tehran had waited for twenty years or more wondering why Norway, with its specialized deep-water technologies, had not come and helped Iran to build the South Pars project, and other offshore and onshore projects.

When I arrived the Foreign Department in Tehran in April 2002 the mood was somber, to say the least. Ambassador Ali Ahani was angry. The Norwegian Foreign Department had for years played on both sides of the street cultivating contacts with opposition groups to Iran, like the Mujahidin Kalk MEK. The attitude from the Norwegians had been cordial, but stiff, and had not reflected the greatness in the Iranian culture and its people. Tehran was very hurt.

Dahle-Sladek: -With regards to Norway and Iran relations Ambassador Ahani, I notice some slight irritation on your part, why is that?

Ali-Ahani: -In fact, the Islamic Republic of Iran and Norway have many opportunities. In addition to the economic and industrial cooperation we have oil and gas. I would like to emphasize the importance for us to finalize the oil and gas projects in the South along the Persian Gulf, as well as in the Caspian Sea. Norway and Iran are two important oil producing countries and can cooperate and coordination in the world oil market and stabilize oil prices, which would be in the interest of both oil producers and oil consumers.

Dahle-Sladek: -You mentioned that the Norwegian Foreign Minister Jan Pettersen's visit to Tehran was a kind of watershed. Could you please explain that?

Ali-Ahani: In fact, in the past years, our relations lacked the sufficient momentum to further expand our relations. And in fact, compared to other countries in Europe, our relations with Norway were lagging behind. The visit of your Foreign Minister to Tehran show the firm determination of your country for the expansion of the relations with Iran. And certainly, there is such a political will and enthusiasm on the part of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran!

Dahle-Sladek: -Thank you Dr. Ahani.

Picture below: Foreign Ministry Tehran. From left, interpretor. At center, His Excellency Ambassador Ali Ahani; today Ambassador to Paris; to the right Editor-in-Chief Harald Dahle-Sladek from Petrofilm.com

THE STATE OF THE WORLD AS LIED TO IN THE MEDIA

1938 REVISITED?

One mistake, and the world as we know it is gone. One slightest error, and the civilization that we so proudly and arrogantly cling to will dissolve into fine dust encircling our desolated planet.

But, that fact does not seem to bother anyone. Wrapped in hyper-logic exasperations of the most desolated sort, mankind is rapidly drifting towards its own disintegration; proclaimed by rational world leaders as “a sustainable future” with “zero emission”. It is all a lie! There is no “sustainable future” and “zero emission” is a fantasy product presented, while death and destruction are filling our lungs.

And I am not referring to the ongoing pandemic. Not at all. That, after all, is a minor incident in the Grand drama. In 1993 I went with the Norwegian-owned buoy-tanker Anna Knutsen from Antwerp in the Netherlands to the Statfjord C buoy on the Norwegian side. We collected 200.000tons of crude and brought it back to Teesside in England. There are twenty and more tankers shuttling up to Norway every month collecting crude. Each of these giants evaporate enough carbon-gas to destroy life in a small town. Multiply that with 2000, because that is the daily gift of poisonous vapor which Norway, in all it’s green, self-proclaimed hype, gives back to mankind. Just a thought.

Here is another one. In 2003 I visited Fushun in North-East China. What’s so interesting about Fushun, you might ask? Fushun is the place of the Ping Ding Massacre. The one that Japan committed towards the local, Chinese population there. But, again, that is a minor incident in the Grand drama. For centuries Fushun’s West Pit has been the largest open-pit coal mine in Asia. It contributed greatly to China’s new prosperity, before it was shut down in 2019.

 We will accept any solution – and I underline “any” – to advance the economy. We will even burn down the Rain Forrest in Brazil. The common longue of renewable oxygen in the world. While lame European Union and the United States watch by and do nothing.

 We are on the edge of an unfathomable deep abyss. From where there is no hope of survival. Just as it was in 1938 in the German Reich. They believed in the cause and failed. We believe in our cause, and we are failing. Again. These days as we are living are the days of 1938 revisited. Our leaders are not qualified to bring mankind safely forward. Covid-19 has proved that. We are going down on a first-class ticket with no possibility of return. Amused? Have a wonderful day!



Monuments Carved in Granite on Barren Fields

A warning sign for our time.

When one talks about Life, it is pertinent to ask, what life does one mean? The entire life, or just selected parts of it? The parts that we like and prefer and leave the rest not to be mentioned? The person who says she “loves me”, but ignore everything that I have achieved after I came out of the hospital?

The people who will walk a mile with me, but say “no thank you” to carry my burden and walk another mile? The ones who never invited me for a cup of tea, but proclaim seriously that I am a “friend”? The ones who admire their own achievements highly, but never had time to visit me once? What life are they adhering to? The one in parts, or the one in totality?

I want to be seen in totality; I do not want that my life be selectively butchered and twisted into something it is not. My articles are monuments in stone in a barren landscape devoid of humanism. They are there to warn and to encourage, but not to be neglected.

In today’s vain world, where it has become so increasingly popular to talk IN a mobile phone, instead of empathizing WITH and showing human DIGNITY; where one is accustomed to appreciating media hype, political lies, lack  of responsibilities leading to mass starvations and mass death; in such a world and coldness between people, the abnormal has become the trend, and sadly this is what we adhere to.

In such an inter human setting, the message is clear, why bother to respect the other person right in front of ourselves. It is so much easier to babble because the spoken word carries no longer any commitment, it is free, it does not cost anything to say this or the other. Life is easy when one is free not to engage in another person’s life-and-death experiences, when it is so much more convenient to look at a movie.

People who ignore monuments carved out in granite on barren fields are confirming themselves to the believes of death and destruction. We who write and warn have the humanistic right to say this. It is our task in life. Not to be kind to death and destruction, but to admire and encourage Life. We expect the same from others as we expect from ourselves. And if “the other” fail, we must go forward alone, and warn. That is our destiny. 

THE USTASHA REGIME AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF FASCISM 1941-1945

Anti semitism today has many faces - it is not a requirement, however, to be a Jew in order to be treated as ein Jude. 



Hello friends and welcome to Hell! When we have to do with human beings there are par-ticularly three words that comes to mind, empathy, respect and dignity. What you will read and watch here are the opposite of those three words, combined in one common slogan, "fascism". The seed of fascism lies within ourselves, in the general public, and it is there waiting to pop out at the right time under a charismatic fascist leader.

Harald Dahle-Sladfek: -In my own work dealing with people and dialogue in general, I have come to experience that many of us are not capable of viewing another human being right in front of ourselves with warmth, empathy and humanness. I believe this defect to be one of several primary causes for disharmony, conflict and war. I call this phenomena, "The coldness between people.

The German philosopher Theodor Adorno also points in this direction saying that, "Without the lack of warmth between people, Holocaust would never had happened."

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Teodor Ludwig Wiesengrund Adorno

German philosopher, sociologist and composer.

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Karl Jaspers

Wesen der Existenz (Gespräch 1960)"If it has happened once, it can happen again."Karl Jaspers, German philosopher

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Hannah Arendt

- Das Wagnis der Öffentlicghkeit (uber Karl Japsers)

Johanna "Hannah" Arendt was a German-born, American political theorist.

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Erich Fromm

- Anatomie der menschlichen Destructivitet (Gespräch 1974)

Erich Fromm at his writing desk in Locarno, Switzerland

 The unholy symbiosis between the Vatican and the Independent State of Croatia NDH.

What is most disturbing, is the symbiosis between the religion, represented here in the Catholic Church, and the political elite, students and ordinary men and women adhering to the fascist Ustasha movement. It is most disturbing and horrific in nature. Why is it important to understand this evil?

It is important because through our study of what happened, we will remember the victims, think of them in a respectful way and through this process better identify ourselves with them. Why is that necessary? Because the tendencies and seed to fascism lies deep within ourselves, and it is our duty as human beings to deny the entry of those characteristics. Thank you, and have a good day!

The Fanatism of Ustasha Continues in our own Time!

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"Za dom - spremni!" - "For the homeland - ready!"

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Jasenovac consentration camps allong the river Sava

The VATICAN

"God and Croatia!"

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     "There is no such thing as the innocent blood of Jewish children. All Jewish blood is guilty, and the Jews must die because that is the punishment for that sin."

                                                                                          Pope Pius XII

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Catholic Holocaust - Nazi Ustasha Genocide in Croatia, NDH

St. Peters Church, Rome

Aloysius Stepinac

Catholic Cardinal of Zagreb 1937-1960

Pope Pius XII appointed Cardinal Stepinac as Military Vicar of the Ustashe Army

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Aloysius Viktor Stepinac, 8 May 1898 - 10 February 1960, was a cardinal of the Catholic Church as well as Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960, including the fas-cist rule of the Ustaše over the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Criatia, Nezavis- visna Drsava Hvratska (NDH) from 1941 to 1945 during World War II.

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In a show-trial orchestrated by the Yugoslav Communists, Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac was charged with high treason and co-operation with the enemy occupier, the founding of a military vicariate, plotting the demise of the political system and propaganda against the state. 

He was tried by the communist Yugoslav government after the war and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Ustaše regime. He served his 16-year sentence first in prison, then confined to his home village of Krašić. He was made a cardinal in 1953. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II.

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On October 19, 1946 he was sent to a maximum security prison in Lepoglava where he served his sentence until December 5, 1951. He was allowed to celebrate Mass and to read theological books, but was held in strict isolation and subjected to consistent humiliation and stress. It seems he was being poisoned as well, which greatly influenced his health. According to witnesses in the process of his beatification, he was on the list of prisoners sentenced to death.
His record during World War II, conviction, and his subsequent martyrdom and beatification remain controversial. On 22 July 2016, the Zagreb County Court annulled his post-war con- viction due to "gross violations of current and former fundamental principles of substantive and procedural criminal law".

Ante Pavelić

Fascist leader of Croatian Ustasha 1941-1945

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The Vatican and the Independent State of Croatia

Poglavnic Ante Pavelic left, with Papal Emissary Ramiro Marcone.

Ante Pavelić, 14 July 1889 – 28 December 1959, was a Croatian fascist dictator who led the Ustaše movement and the Independdent State of Croatia, Nezavisna Drsava Hvratska (NDH), established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia during World War II with the support of both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany While in power, Pavelić pursued genocidal policies against ethnic and racial minorities such as Serbs, Jews, and Romani.

Nazi Croatian Death Camps

Jasenovac Death Camps, cruelty beyond imagination.

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Jasenovac consentration camp #5 Stara Gradiska. The complex consisted of five camps (logor). They were located along the river Sava. Logor 1 Krapje, Logor 2 Brociece, Logor 3 Ciglane, Logor 4 Kozara, Logor 5 Stara Gradiska. Roman Catholic Church has been directly involved in genocide against Serbs in Croatia.

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Vatican-Croatian Genozide, one million Orthodox Martyrs of the Jasenovac consentration camp complex.

The Ustasha Jasenovac extermination camp #5 Stara Gradiska: Two Catholic nuns with im-prisoned Serbian children, together with five visiting Ustasha officers who have come to ensure themselves that these children never will be able to see green grass again. Photo from the Museum of Genozide in Yugoslavia.

 DAS DEUTSCHE REICH

Magnum Crimen

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The unholy symbiosis

between the Catholic Church and Fascist Croatia

One of the most disturbing chapters in war-time Europe, not to be forgotten! The Ustasha symbol, the Cross, knife, pistol and hand grenade!

Croatian Ustasha flag

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The Ustasa's hand-in-glove relationship with the Vatican

The Fuhrer, Poglavnik, Ante Pavelic in the military boots beloved of fascistleaders is seen surrounded by enthusiastic Franciscans brothers. Upon the etsablishment of the Ustasha Regime led by Pavelic, Franciscan priets deserted their vocations and incited attacks on Serbs, Jews and Roma settlements, tortured, killed and expropriated their victims in dozens of villages in Croatia and Bosnia. The Vatican did nothing to stop it!

CROATIA, NDH

CATHOLISISM AND EXTREME RIGHT-WING POLITICS IN THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA, 1941-1945.

 Independent State of Croatia's Fuhrer Ante Pavelić greeted by Hitler on 9 June, 1941  upon his arrival at the Berghof for a State visit.

The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drzava Hvratska, NDH) was a puppet state set up in 1941 by Mussolini and Hitler. On its coat of-arms the “U” stands for the name of the Croatian fascists, Ustasha. However, those living under its terror read it as ubica which means "murderers". Wartime Croatia has been called "one great slaughter- house."

Fascist Ustash Fuhrer, Poglavnic, Ante Pavlic greets head of the Catholic Church Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac with a "Golden Handshake".

Aloysius Viktor Stepinac (Croatian Alojzije Viktor Stepinac, 8 May 1898 - 10 February 1960) was the Croatian Catholic Archbishop of Zagreb from 1937 until his death in 1960, including the genocidal rule of the Ustase over the Axis puppet state the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945 during World War II.

 He was tried by the communist Yougoslav government after the war and convicted of treason and collaboration with the Ustaše regime. He served his 16-year sentence first in prison, then confined to his home village of Krasic. He was made a cardinal in 1953. In 1998 he was declared a martyr and beatified by Pope John Paul II. His record during World War II and his subsequent martyrdom and beatification remain controversial.

 During World War II, on 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by Nazi-Germany, who established the Ustaše-led NDH. As archbishop of the puppet state's capital, Stepinac had close associations with the Ustaše leaders during the Nazi occupation, issued proclamations celebrating the NDH, and welcomed the Ustaše leaders.

 Despite initially welcoming the Independent State of Croatia, Stepinac subsequently condemned the Nazi aligned state's atrocities against Jews and Serbs. He objected to the persecution of Jews and the Nazi laws, helped Jews and others to escape and criticized Ustaše atrocities in front of Zagreb Cathedral in 1943. Despite this, Stepinac never broke with the Ustaše regime and continued to attend public gatherings at their side.

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    The Vatican's Holocaust in Croatia 1941-1945: Nazi Croatia Death Camps

The Vatican and Pope Pius XII supported the Nazi's and brought Adolf Hitler to power. Future Pope Benedict XVI, joined the Nazis as a young man, picture above upper right corner. 

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The heinous crimes of the Catholic Church in Croatia

Above from left, Andrija Artukovic, the Interior Minister of Croatia, with Vatican Legate Ramiro Marcone, and Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, at an Ustasha ceremony. After the war archbishop Stepinac was indicted for war crimes against humanity and died in prison.

Genocide of the Serbs in our time

OPERATION STORM 1995

Croatia invades Serbian Republic Krajina (SRK) and creates a genocide. The Catholic Church backs Croatia. Below mass exodus of Serbs at Banja Luka

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Associated Press (AP) from Banja Luka 8.8.1995

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"Operation Storm"

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The Clinton Plan

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Genocide of the Serbs, NATO bombing of Serbia

Author Samantha Power: “No other atrocity campaign in the twentieth century was better monitored and understood by the U.S. government than the Bosnian genocide.” 

         The Independent State of Croatia, NDH  

 Catholic clergy's involvement with the Ustaše

Execution of prisoners.

at the Jasenovac consentration camp in Croatia which was run by a Franciscan military Catholic chaplain Miroslav Filipović. He was reportedly stripped of his status by the church but was hanged in his clerical robes. 

 Catholic Franciscan Brother and Priest Miroslav Filipović-Majstrovic, Comander of Jasenovac Consentartion Camp, Croatia, NDH

The Priest of Satan

Franciscan priest Miroslav Filipović-Majstorovic center reads mass during celebra- tion in Banja Luka. On his right stands the Ustasha Veliki Zhupan with number nine on his chest the Governor of Banja Luka.

Above from the left: Ustasha officer Miroslav Filipović-Majstrovic as commander of the Jasenovac consentration camp where more than 700 000 people vanished. At center, Miroslav as Catholic priest. Unspeakable crimes were committed inside the Jasenovac logor (camp). Below, mothers and children taken to Jasenovac consen-tration camp for extinction guided by armed female Ustasha guards.

Jews, Serbs and gypsies marching to slaughter, with the full support of the Vatican

The Dehumanizing Catholic Ustasha Regime

The Catholic church in Croatia is responsible for huge crimes against Humanity, all under the blessing of the Vatican and Pope Pius XII. Equally, the Norwegian police instigated harassment and deportation of all the jews that they could lay their hands on and sent them express to the cremation ovens in the consentration camps in Poland. The Norwegan Police has never been indicted for it's participation in administrative genocide of the Jewish people.

BOOK REVIEW

 In August 1982 I was making two films in and around Bangkok. It was at that time I became a member of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand, FCCT. One early evening I was standing in the Bamboo Bar part of the FCCT premises on the second floor of the Oriental Plaza in 1 Chartered Bank Lane near Hotel Oriental. In comes Neil  Davis, who was the President of FCCT at the time. All smiles, he came to me and said, "I wish you welcome to us" as he wrote down his greeting for me on a piece of paper. Nothing characterizes Neil better than this, open and friendly, including and empathic. He had something for all of us. Thank you, Neil, we miss you! Below is Neil to the left with the barman and a friend. The book by Tim Bowden his highly recommended reading.

Book By Tim Bowden

One Crowded Hour - Neil Davis, Combat Cameraman.

This bestselling biography of Neil Davis was first published in 1987 by William Collins and is still in print. Neil Davis covered front line combat in the Indo China War for an action-packed eleven years. Davis brought enduring images of the horror of modern war directly from the battlefront to the world’s television screens.  He was the only western cameraman to film with the South Vietnamese army and once actually managed to cross over battle lines to film with the Viet Cong. Davis also covered the war in Cambodia and Laos.

His most memorable scoop was to take the only film of the North Vietnamese Tank 843 smashing down the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon – the symbolic moment of the end of the war. Ironically in September 1985, having survived so much war, Neil Davis was killed while filming an attempted coup in the streets of Bangkok. Incredibly his still-running camera captured his own death. This book tells the life story of this remarkable and complex man – a legendary gambler who often relied on his intuitive sixth sense to stay alive, and who was equally at home with presidents and street beggars.

"One Crowded Hour"

 NEIL DAVIS COMBAT CAMERAMAN 1934-85

        Harald Dahle gives Australian War Memorial        handwritten greeting which Neil Davis gave him in the Foreign Correspondents Club, FCCT Bankok, August 1982.

 The Honorable Brendan Nelson

   AO BMBS FRACP (Hon) FAMA

FCCT Bamboo Bar August 1982

Niel Davis sitting left. Everybody that was there in the Bamboo Bar that evening wrote their name to wish me welcome to the FCCT. Niel Davis was the first to sign on with the "Warmest Welcome" to FCCT. At the time Niel was the President of FCCT.

 THERE WAS A COUP IN 1985

Swedish cameraman Claes Bratt at the center of the picture, holding his 16mm film camera and smoking his trade mark sigarette.



NIEL DAVIS

(1934-1985)

FRIEND AND VETERAN NBC CAMERAMAN IN THE VIETNAM WAR

NBC Cameraman Niel Davis, born in Tasmania, lies dead on the street in Bangkok after being hit by a shrapnel from a firing tank. His soundman was also hit.  My friend’s untimely death on 9 September 1985 meant that his ‘as told to’ story now had to be a biography, with his many friends and colleagues providing essential information and photographs about his varied life and career. Fortunately journalists and camera people have largely endorsed One Crowded Hour. I think Neil would have haunted me forever if they hadn’t! I’m sorry he wasn’t able to read it, and I still miss him. 

PAUL VOGLE

 (1932-2001)

I met Paul in Bangkok Post where he worked; that was in 1982. He was a generous and mild mannered person, with a huge experience from the Vietnam war. Paul and I discussed the rumors of the socalled "yellow rain" the poisenous chemical that was used as a defoliant over dense vegetation in Vietnam. I said to Paul that I could be interested to go in (to Vetnam) and investigate these rumors. He thought it a very exciting idea, but we didn't explore it further as there obviously were many un- knowns and dangers connected to the "yellow rain" poisonous defoliant.

The fall of Saigon April 29, 1975

An Air America helicopter crew member helps evacuees up a ladder on the roof of 18 Gia Long St. in Saigon on April 29, 1975, shortly before the city fell to advancing North Vietnamese troops. An erroneous caption once described the helicopter as atop the U.S. Embassy. File Photo by Hugh Van Es/UPI

UPI corresponden Paul Vogle, one who did not make it back for the tenth aniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, despite the almost two decades he spent in Vietnam. Vogle's memorable account of the last flight from Danang in 1975 was one of the thruly great stories to come out of the war.

 A genuinly professional journalist.

WASHINGTON, April 28 (UPI) - It was April 29, 1975, the last day of the Vietnam War, and people were desperate to get out of Saigon.

UPI photographer Hubert Van Es captured what became an iconic image of the fall of the city: a line of people trying to board a helicopter atop a building.

Van Es died in 2009. But in a recollection of the event for The New York Times in 2005, he told the story of the photo - and why most people are mistaken about what it shows.

About 11 a.m. that day, the evacuation of the foreign press corps began. Van Es, along with UPI Bureau Chief Alan Dawson and reporter Paul Vogle, decided to stay longer. About 2:30 p.m., Van Es was the only photographer in the office when he was alerted that a helicopter had landed on the roof of a nearby apartment building where the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station chief and some officers lived.

"I grabbed my camera and the longest lens left in the office - it was only 300 millimeters, but it would have to do - and dashed to the balcony," he wrote in the Times piece. "Looking at the Pittman Apartments, I could see 20 or 30 people on the roof, climbing the ladder to an Air America Huey helicopter. At the top of the ladder stood an American in civilian clothes, pulling people up and shoving them inside."

It took off with only about a dozen people inside. Van Es rushed to transmit the photo, which in those days was done via radio signal.

Somewhere in the editing process, an erroneous caption was attached, stating that the helicopter in the photo was atop the U.S. Embassy roof, since that had been the main evacuation site -- and the scene of much panic and chaos as North Vietnamese troops were closing in.

Dan Southerland, who had landed in Vietnam as a rookie reporter for UPI before moving on to the Christian Science Monitor, recalled watching South Vietnamese civilians pressing to get through the embassy gates to safety.

In a recent interview with UPI, Southerland said he assumed many of the South Vietnamese people he knew would be mistreated under the new regime. So he spent his last days in Saigon attempting to arrange for several people to get onto military airplanes or helicopters.

"Fortunately, I was able to get several Vietnamese out, but I was unable to persuade my old interpreter to leave," said Southerland, who is now an executive editor with Radio Free Asia. "He was convinced that the Communists would do him no harm because he was relatively poor. He was wrong. He was interrogated and beaten up and finally had to flee a few years later by boat."

Ken Englade was a UPI field reporter from the Saigon bureau who worked seven days a week for three weeks at a time in the northern part of South Vietnam. Late on the 29th, he, too, was at the embassy gates.

"We had a staff meeting... to decide who wanted to try to make it off the embassy roof and who wanted to stay," he said in a recent interview.

He, Vogle and and UPI staffer Bert Okuley decided to evacuate.

"When we got to the embassy, there was a large but subdued crowd in front of the gate," Englade said. "We had to force our way through. Vietnamese were forcing slips of papers into our hands with their names in the belief that someone inside would recognize them and come to their rescue. It didn't happen."

"I also had to fend off several women who tried to give their babies," Englade said. Englade, Okuley and Vogle were about halfway through the crowd when Vogle, tears streaming down his face, said, "'I can't do it. These are my people.'"

Vogle turned around and walked back. Meanwhile, UPI audio editor Tom Foty, who now anchors radio newscasts for CBS News, was in New York City, taking Dawson's final radio spots and putting them on the network for subscribers: "I was on duty when the North Vietnamese troops marched into Saigon."

CBS TV aired those reports in its nightly broadcast anchored by the legendary journalist Walter Cronkite, who had also begun his career at UPI.

 LAST PLANE OUT OF DANANG

Journalists can work a lifetime and never get that elusive "BIG story," the one that splashes your byline across the front page, "top fold," of the New York Times or leads every evening broadcast on television network news. But Paul Vogle did, and it nearly cost him his life.

It was March 1975. The final victorious Communist offensive was sweeping down the length and breadth of South Vietnam. Da Nang, the country's second-largest city, was about to fall, and UPI sent Vogle to cover the final moments.

Ed Daly, the pistol-packing, tough-talking president of World Airways, was sending two of his 727 airliners north to pick up refugees from the terror-stricken Vietnamese port city.

The scene at the former U.S. air base there was one of utter chaos. Thousands of panicked civilians as well as deserting South Vietnamese troops lined the 10,000-foot asphalt strip.

World Airways chief pilot Ken Healy first made a low-level pass over the runway, then decided to set the bird down while the other aircraft circled overhead. That's when all hell broke loose.

The plane taxied toward the old Air Vietnam ramp where civilians were anxiously waiting. But suddenly, jeeps and other vehicles full of angry South Vietnamese soldiers, chased the plane, it's ramp open to the tarmac.

The deserting troops tried to fight their way aboard, ahead of screaming Vietnamese women and children. They knew this was the "last flight" out of Da Nang.

Paul Vogle described the frenzy into his cassette tape recorder:

MOBS OF PEOPLE ARE PUSHING AND SHOVING, THOUSANDS TRYING TO GET ABOARD. THE PLANE IS TAXIING AWAY FROM THE MOB.

THE CREW IS SCARED. THE MOB IS PANIC-STRIKEN. THERE'S A MAN WITH AN M-16 (RIFLE) POINTED AT US, TRYING TO GET US TO STOP.

WE'RE LOADING MORE PEOPLE. THE PANICKED CROWDS ARE RUNNING AFTER US. WE JUST PASSED A POTHOLE IN THE RUNWAY. A JEEP, A PICK-UP TRUCK, JUST CRUMPLED UNDER AN ENGINE . . . THEY'RE IGNORING THE ENGINES ... PEOPLE ARE GRABBING AT THE STAIRS.

SOLDIERS ARE RUSHING THE PLANE RIGHT NOW. DALY IS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RAMP. HE'S TRYING TO PUSH THE SOLDIERS BACK. WE'RE BEING MOBBED!"

[At this point, Vogle's humanity shines. He stopped being a newsman long enough to shout to the wild crowd in Vietnamese: IT'S ALL RIGHT. IT'S ALL RIGHT. WE'VE GOT ROOM FOR EVERYBODY. DON'T PANIC." But the mob is crazed with fear. They continue to claw at the ramp. The huge mass of people weigh heavily on the stairs, and the plane is in danger of being over-whelmed and unable to take-off.]

MEN WITH GUNS ARE FIGHTING EACH OTHER. THE PILOT GOOSES THE ENGINE.

[The roar of screeching jets in the background can be heard as Healy keeps the plane moving.]

PEOPLE ARE STORMING ABOARD, SHOUTING . . . PUSHING . . . SOLDIERS, CIVILIANS. PEOPLE ARE CLIMBING UP ON THE WINGS NOW . . . THEY'RE FALLING OFF!

SOLDIERS ARE FIRING INTO THE AIR TO SCARE OTHERS AWAY . . . WOMEN AND CHILDREN ARE LYING ON THE GROUND. SOME ARE TRYINGTO LIE IN FRONT OF THE WHEELS!

[The engine noise picks up, and Vogle is now screaming into his recorder:]

A MAN JUST FELL OFF THE RAMP . . . I SEE A BODY, COVERED IN BLOOD. THEY'RE (THE VIETNAMESE) HANGING ONTO THE STAIRS, BUT ARE FALLING OFF AS WE TRY TO GET AIRBORNE."

Healy threw the throttle, and the over-loaded jet surged into the air, headed for the temporary safety of Saigon.

Bangkok, Thailand. At that time the FCCT was located in the Oriental Plaza building's first floor and had even a "Bamboo Bar"My Australian girl friend at the time and me with pretty long hair on the balcony of Hotel Montien, Bangkok.

The flag of Tasmania, the  birth place of Neil Davis

The Australian war Memorial

Brendan Nelson