Peak Oil, Iran, and F-16 Diplomacy

A couple weeks back my Western Thought teacher asked us if we knew anything about Peak Oil, something that none of us knew anything about since the mainstream press hasn’t really made a big deal out of it…but is becoming harder and harder to ignore. As I have done more research, I have found some interesting articles and have given them some due consideration.

The first is by Doctor Krassimir Petrov and it is exceptionally well-written and intelligent, but I found it to be a bit optimistic; perhaps a bit too optimistic, especially considering the current state of American politics and government. Dr. Petrov seems to believe that when the Dollar loses it’s stranglehold on the world due to the combination of Euro competition and Peak Oil that gold will become the new currency, but he is confident of American passivity towards our ever more tyrannical government, a situation I see changing once the dollar begins to collapse. Nor is Dr. Petrov the only person with this view as you can see in this article.

This is a counter article about the Iranian Oil Bourse. It's interesting, but the author makes some claims that don't really hold up under scrutiny. Compared to the other two articles, this one comes across as macho chest-thumping. “We’re Da Supapowa! We can do what we want and the rest of the world better learn to like it!” seems to be the gist of the whole affair, with plenty of omissions and half-truths liberally (and I use that term loosely) scattered throughout. Engdahl claims “F-16 Diplomacy” is what keeps America's economy strong, and to a point, he is correct. We do have 130 military installations around the world, but that includes "bases" that are little more than way-stations like Tazsar, Hungary which is jut there to fly from Germany to Bosnia or elsewhere.

American military doctrine since WWII (America’s last hurrah) has been geared towards fighting two wars at once, but that doctrine began changing with the successful collapse of the Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan’s “Evil Empire” bugaboo. The "Global War on Terror" is a fucking joke that isn't very funny, and the US cannot just invade Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and any other country that disagrees with us because occupations NEVER work unless you are welcomed by the majority of the nation you are occupying. And the US does not enjoy the support of the majority of the people of Iraq any more than it did in Viet Nam, another well thought-out American attempt to export democracy at gunpoint. Another point of interest between Engdahl and Petrov is the omissions that Engdahl makes…for instance:

More than a year before President George W Bush declared his "shock and awe" operation against Iraq, he made his now-infamous January 2002 State of the Union address to Congress in which he labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, as a member of the "axis of evil" trio. This was well before anyone in Tehran was even considering establishing an oil bourse to trade oil in various currencies.

Yes, this speech was made before Tehran announced plans to sell their oil in Euros, that is true. It is also true that this speech was made after Saddam Hussein decided to sell Iraq’s oil in Euros. Amazing how much difference a little omission here and there makes, isn’t it? His claims about China's reluctance to "rouse the American Dragon" are also dubious since China has to keep its Yuan devalued in order to keep its 1 BILLION member workforce employed. China also has a 200 billion dollar trade deficit with the US that we cannot seem to do anything about. And as for the EU not adopting a Gold Standard, there is a very simple reason for that: there isn’t enough gold on planet Earth to back an economy of 750 million people in an industrialized high-tech world, a fact that Engdahl is well aware of, but as long as you act like it’s not an issue the average person will ignore it also.

And just to make sure this is clear; you can't use Nuclear Weapons as a threat against China, India, Pakistan, Israel, Great Britain, France, and Russia since THEY ALL HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS TOO. Maybe they can’t hit the US, but oddly enough damn near all of them can hit one of our 130 military bases and kill every American citizen there.

As Peak Oil becomes more of an issue to the global economy in general, and the US in particular, we have to ask ourselves some serious questions, not the least of which is “What the fuck do we do now?” I found a brilliant article on the future of Post-Peak Oil America, but cannot find it again…in its place I offer this one, which is just as good and another which is also interesting. The authors raises some very good points about an economic collapse that becomes more and more possible every week. As I watch the price of gas at the pump I keep expecting it to hit $3 a gallon, a record high where I live, which means that it will be $5 a gallon in places like Hawaii and LA. And when it gets that high, get ready for hell, people because the shit will hit the fan then, I assure you.

Mogadishu Jones advises you to invest now in canned goods and shotguns.