Submitted by Tyler Durden on
01/04/2015 10:24 -0500
Iran has a –
very – long running dispute with the US about its nuclear technology. The US
wants Assad (Bashar Al-Assad) out of Syria, while Iran and Russia support Assad
(Russia’s sole proper base in the Middle East), who’s an Alawite (a Shi-ite
branch), a people historically persecuted by Sunni’s. ISIS (or Daesh in the
region) is Sunni. So are the Saudi’s. Iran is Shi’ite. Bahrain is ruled by
Sunni but has a majority Shi’ite population. And I could go on for a while. A
long while.
All this plays
into the oil game, the falling oil prices. Blaming OPEC for
the recent price fall is seeing the world from a child’s perspective. OPEC and
its major vote holder, Saudi Arabia, are no more to blame for the plunge than
the US, Russia or other non-OPEC producers. Everybody produces as if there’s no
tomorrow, and the Saudi’s have merely concluded that their only choice is to do
the same. It’s a race to the bottom.
The reason is
the fast declining demand for oil; China is nowhere near as mighty as we seem
to think, Europe is a basket case, emerging economies are being strangled as we
speak by the surging dollar and the Fed taper, and we’re just getting started.
It’s cute and all that nobody wonders how much virtual money has vanished into
the great beyond as both oil itself and the companies that get it out of the
earth have lost half of their ‘values’ in Q4 2014, let alone the countries that
depend on oil for their very existence. But cute doesn’t cut it.
Oliver Stone
talks about ‘Ukraine: The CIA Coup’. I’ve talked about exactly that all of last
year. While on vacation, Obama declares new sanctions on North Korea for
hacking a Japanese company only the FBI claims it was guilty of. While US
sanctions against Iran are ongoing.
America is
trying to control the world by throwing it into confusion, emboldened by poorly
understood theories about military superiority, and creating conflicts all over
the place that look like they will never be solved. Whereas all it would need
to do is make sure it secures itself, its own territory, not control the entire
planet.
That was always
a stupid idea. No big dream empire has ever lasted long enough to truly enjoy
the fruits of its dreams for more than ten minutes or so. They’ve all ended in
horrific bloodshed. The dark visions of impotent power hungry masters and
servants have thrown overstretched empires into lethal turmoil for many
thousands of years. It’s just that now, for the first time, it’s happening on a
truly global scale.
The result will
be the same; only, it’ll all go even more spectacularly wrong. It’s the way
things go. But they won’t go the way our deluded powerbrokers think they will.
That ‘mission accomplished’ message from W. back in the day is going to start
sounding a lot more stupider as time goes by. You just wait and watch.
I found this bit
interesting, from Reuters, it paints a good picture of how the
confusion-all-around ‘strategy’ is supposed to supposedly work:
The Iranian
deputy minister also criticized Saudi military involvement in Bahrain, which
has been gripped by tension since 2011 protests led by majority Shi’ite Muslims
demanding reforms and a bigger role in running the Sunni-ruled country.
Abdollahian said Bahraini authorities’ continued detention of Shi’ite
opposition leader Sheikh Ali Salman would have “serious consequences” for the
government there.
Tehran and
Riyadh accuse each other of interfering in the pro-Western Gulf island kingdom,
one of several countries where their power struggle has played out. They also
support opposing sides in wars and disputes in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.
Abdollahian dismissed United States efforts to fight Islamic State, also known
by its Arabic acronym Daesh, as a ploy to advance U.S. policies in the region. “The
reality is that the United States is not acting to eliminate Daesh (ISIS). They
are not even interested in weakening Daesh, they are only interested in
managing it,” he said.
The United
States and its allies have carried out hundreds of air strikes against Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria. Washington has also sent military support to Baghdad’s
Shi’ite-led government but its role in Syria – where it has called for
President Bashar al-Assad to step down – is more limited. Iran has sent
Revolutionary Guard commanders to help its Shi’ite and Alawite allies in
Baghdad and Damascus battle Islamic State and other Sunni fighters. But
Abdollahian denied that Iran conducted aerial attacks on Iraqi sites.
“On the ground,
where the U.S. should take serious action, there are no serious actions taking
place. The US is not doing anything,” he said,
accusing Washington of pursing a contradictory policy towards Islamist
militants. “One day they support Daesh, another day they are against
terrorism,” he said.
Abdollahian
reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to Assad, saying the
Syrian president must be involved in any political transition aimed at ending
more than three years of conflict. He also criticized the latest U.S. sanctions
on Iranian individuals and entities, saying they would not have a good impact
on Tehran’s talks with world powers over its disputed nuclear program. “The
United States must know that these actions make them bear a greater
responsibility should the negotiations fail,” he said. “If the other side is
honest in their actions, then we should expect these talks to reach a desirable
conclusion.”
And then why not
throw in a helping of Ambrose for good measure:
A sated China is
as much to “blame” for the crash in oil prices as America’s shale industry.
Together they have knouted Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The bear market will
short-circuit at Brent prices of $40, but not just because shale capitulates.
Marginal producers in Canada, the North Sea, West Africa and the Arctic will
share the punishment. The biggest loser will be Saudi Arabia, reaping the
geostrategic whirlwind of its high stakes game, facing Iranian
retaliation through the Shia of the Eastern Province where the oil lies, and
Russian retaliation through the Houthis in Yemen.
Mr Putin will
achieve his objective of crippling Ukraine’s economy and freezing the conflict
in the Donbass, but only by crippling Russia in the process. Controls will not
stem capital flight. Mr Putin will have to choose between a dangerous loss of
foreign reserves and a dangerous chain of corporate bankruptcies. He will
continue to pawn Russia’s national interest to Beijing in order to save his
Siloviki regime, but wiser heads in Moscow will question how a perpetual
dispute with Europe and the revival of a dying NATO can possibly be in Russia’s
interest. They will check his folly.
Ambrose sees
only what fits his preconceived notions; pity, he could have been a great
journalist. Putin didn’t seek a fight with the west, and his people, wiser
heads or not, won’t blame him for being in one, quite the contrary. The most
pervasive emotion in Russia today is deep-seated anger, versus the US, EU and
NATO, for their blatant betrayal of both the country itself and the deals that
were made ‘when the wall came down’.
Obviously,
there’s plenty folk in Moscow, as there are in Kiev, that look to sell out to
the US and scrape a million left and right out of that, but Russia is not
Ukraine. You can’t just send in Victoria Nuland with $5 billion, organize a
street party and expect to change another regime. Pepe Escobar clarifies why,
to an extent:
[..] it will be
all about further moves towards the integration of Eurasia as the US is
progressively squeezed out of Eurasia. We will see a complex geostrategic
interplay progressively undermining the hegemony of the US dollar as a reserve
currency and, most of all, the petrodollar.[..] Internationally, the Chinese
will accelerate their overwhelming push for new ‘Silk Roads’ – both overland
and maritime – which will underpin the long-term Chinese master strategy of
unifying Eurasia with trade and commerce.
Global oil
prices are bound to remain low. All bets are off on whether a nuclear deal will
be reached by this summer between Iran and the P5+1. If sanctions (actually
economic war) against Iran remain and continue to seriously hurt its economy,
Tehran’s reaction will be firm, and will include even more integration with
Asia, not the West.
Washington is
well-aware that a comprehensive deal with Iran cannot be reached
without Russia’s help. That would be the Obama administration’s sole – and
I repeat – sole foreign policy success. A return to the “Bomb Iran” hysteria
would only suit the proverbial usual (neo-con) suspects. Still, by no accident,
both Iran and Russia are now subject to Western sanctions. No matter how it was
engineered, the fact that stands is that the current financial/strategic oil
price collapse is a direct attack against (who else?) Iran and Russia. [..]
Russia’s government
debt totals only 13.4% of its GDP. Its budget deficit in relation to GDP is
only 0.5%. If we assume a US GDP of $16.8 trillion (the figure for 2013), the
US budget deficit totals 4% of GDP, versus 0.5% for Russia. The Fed is
essentially a private corporation owned by regional US private banks, although
it passes itself off as a state institution. US publicly held debt is
equal to a whopping 74% of GDP in fiscal year 2014. Russia’s is only 13.4%.
The declaration
of economic war by the US and EU on Russia – via the run on the ruble and the
oil derivative attack – was essentially a derivatives racket. Derivatives – in
theory – may be multiplied to infinity. Derivative operators attacked both the
ruble and oil prices in order to destroy the Russian economy. The problem is,
the Russian economy is more soundly financed than America’s. [..]
Moscow’s key
mistake was to allow Russia’s domestic industry to be financed by external,
dollar-denominated debt. Talk about a monster debt trap which can be easily
manipulated by the West. The first step for Moscow should be to closely
supervise its banks. Russian companies should borrow domestically and move to
sell their assets abroad. Moscow should also consider implementing a system of
currency controls so the basic interest rate can be brought down quickly.[..]
Russia does not
need to import any raw materials. Russia can easily reverse-engineer virtually
any imported technology if it needs to. Most of all, Russia can generate — from
the sale of raw materials – enough credit in US dollars or euros.[..]
Replacing
imports with domestic Russian manufacturing makes total sense. There will be an
inevitable “adjustment” phase – but that won’t take long. German car
manufacturers, for instance, can no longer sell their cars in Russia due to the
ruble’s decline. This means they will have to relocate their factories to
Russia. If they don’t, Asia – from South Korea to China — will blow them out of
the market.
The EU’s
declaration of economic war against Russia makes no sense whatsoever. Russia
controls, directly or indirectly, most of the oil and natural gas between
Russia and China: roughly 25% of the world’s supply. The Middle East is bound
to remain a mess. Africa is unstable. The EU is doing everything it can to cut
itself off from its most stable supply of hydrocarbons, prompting Moscow to
redirect energy to China and the rest of Asia. What a gift for Beijing [..]
Now imagine
Russia and China jointly investing in a new gold, oil and natural
resource-backed monetary union as a crucial alternative to the failed debt
“democracy” model pushed by the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street, the
Western central bank cartel, and neoliberal politicians. They would be showing
the Global South that financing prosperity and improved standards of living by
saddling future generations with debt was never meant to work in the first
place. Until then, a storm will be threatening our very lives – today and
tomorrow.
Escobar is
nowhere near right on all accounts, but he has some good points. The US enters
this self-fabricated and self-desired ‘battle’ with a huge debt disadvantage.
However, it holds the reserve currency, and stories about the demise of the
petrodollar are way premature. That petrodollar rules well over 90% of all
international trade, and it’s going to take a lot of time before that changes
in a substantial way.
But countries
like Russia and China have plenty revenue coming in in dollars, plus they have
huge dollar reserves. It’s not a winnable fight for the power behind the power
in Washington, but they’ll fight anyway, partly because that’s all they want
and understand, and partly because they won’t do the actual fighting. The way
we’ve set up our societies assures the worst possible people rise to the top.
That’s just the way it is. And the way we are.
Still, America
is never going to control the entire world. And any attempt to achieve that
goal will take it further away from it. But a lot of people will be killed in
that doomed attempt. And down the line the fighting will go on until there are
so few people left, and so little organization, that all that remains is
communities of a scale people can actually comprehend. That seems to be the
only possible outcome as long as we allow for the psychopaths among us to
decide who gets to have their fingers on the nuclear buttons.
But before that,
we’ll have other shades of entertainment, we’re not done yet by any means.
Angela Merkel just told Der Spiegel that she can live with Greece leaving the
eurozone. Though that would blow up the entire edifice. I don’t know that I
would call her a psychopath, but I have no confidence in anyone who floats to
the top in any of our present political systems. And Europe can’t stomach any
one country leaving.
It’s high time
for a new model and for new people. But the
old ones, and their utterly and dramatically failed economies, hold the power,
the media, the money, everything. So what other way out is there but mass
fighting, mass casualties, a complete overthrow of everything that exists
today, probably nuclear bombs dropping, and in the end a world none of us would
recognize, let alone be able to survive in?
It’ll take a
while yet to get there, and it won’t be a pretty while by any stretch of the
imagination. The powers that be are not done yet pretending to rule the
universe and playing God. We should kick ‘em all out today, but we won’t.
Because we’re all too much like them.
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