Afghanistan

Schmitt ? Strauss ? University of Chicago ? Neocons, Obama  ? Banzai!!!

In a surprising (if not quite shocking) move, late on Friday Canada blocked Petroliam Nasional Bhd.’s C$5.2 billion takeover of Progress Energy Resources Corp. saying the bid by the Malaysian state-owned company "wasn’t in Canada’s national interests." As BusinessWeek explains, "in what investors say is a test case for the $15.1 billion bid by CNOOC Ltd. of China for Calgary-based Nexen Inc., the Canadian government said it “was not satisfied that the proposed investment is likely to be of net benefit to Canada,” according to an Oct. 19 statement from Industry Minister Christian Paradis." While it is unclear precisely what would be of "net benefit to Canada" what is certain is that the Progress Energy move will crush investor spirits who in recent months have expected a flurry of foreign bids coming for local energy names, only to be left at the altar courtesy of government intervention. And while the outlook for foreign driven M&A in Canada has just been Ice-9'ed to a degree not seen since the BHP Billiton government-denied acquisition of Potash Corp (watch the arbs scurry out of Nexen at first trading opportunity), China is wasting no time, and is rapidly reorineting itself away from increasingly energy-protectionist governments and to "greenfield" national interest expansion opportunities. Such as Afghanistan. As Reuters reports, in a historic development, and in a key staking of regional energy claims, a Chinese oil firm, China National Petroleum Corp, has just started oil production in the country which still has thousands of US troops on the ground. Expect this issue also to suddenly be of paramount importance in next week's final presidential debate.

Nice Job Creating More Terrorists, You Morons …

From a "Europe in pieces" to a "Europe of peace" and back?

Everyone is aware of a multitude of problems that besets our world, however the nature of these problems and why they exist is distorted by the media and by governments all over the world. Our leaders, corporate heads, military top-brass etc. all have a fairly good idea of what is really happening, they just don’t want us – the ignorant masses known as the general public to know what they know. The multiple crises on this planet are caused by our insane mode of living – one that seems to be dominated by economics. Our way of life (unfortunately now for most of the world) depends on an ever-expanding economic system, for if it is not expanding it is contracting. This system was all well and good while there was plenty of capacity for continued expansion, but unfortunately for all of us the limits of expansion are not far off.

And so another disingenuous display of avoiding saying anything definitive about anything specific is complete. Without doubt the winner of this evening's 'round-table' is Martha Raddatz. Despite the incessant interruption and grinning/laughing/anger/frustration of Biden (and Ryan bringing up a 'car-crash' - awkward), the two candidates had relatively equal talking time (via CNN Biden Won 41:32 vs Ryan 40:12) but Ryan pipped Biden by 7,434 words to 7,425! Picking a winner is tough - so we won't - but Obama's odds rose from a pre-debate dump to 61% to over 64% (this morning's levels) - but stopped rising once the candidates began to discuss Afghanistan and Syria and when Ryan 'summed-up', Obama's odds crashed back to unchanged at 61.2%. Ryan won the drinking game 32 to 26.

Since the end of the Second World War, the major powers of the world have lived in relative peace. While there have been wars and conflicts  — Vietnam, Afghanistan (twice), Iraq (twice), the Congo, Rwanda, Israel and Palestine, the Iran-Iraq war, the Mexican and Colombian drug wars, the Lebanese civil war — these have been localised and at a much smaller scale than the violence that ripped the world apart during the Second World War. Hopefully, the threat of mutually assured destruction and the promise of commerce will continue to be an effective deterrent, and prevent any kind of global war from breaking out. Nothing would be more wonderful than the continuing spread of peace. Yet we must be guarded against complacency. Sixty years of relative peace is not the end of history.

The Wars in the Middle East and North Africa Are NOT Just About Oil ... They're Also About GAS

Weekend Mideast News Roundup

While some have blamed last night's 'performance anxiety' on the President's efforts to save our economy and not having time to practice, and others at Romney's 'bullying' of the moderator, it seems Al Gore has come up with the real reason - it's the altitude, stupid!

Those who rally behind the modern concept of America rally behind a façade — an empty shell devoid of the heart and soul that gave life to this once great experiment. It is time for us to decide what kind of Americans we wish to be: the deluded rah-rah puppets of a desiccated totalitarian society, or the watchmen on the wall. Will we be the keepers and protectors of the vital core of the American identity, or will we be fly-by-night consumers of the flavor-of-the-day political carnival, eating every tainted sample from the elitist platter in an insane attempt to replace our free heritage with a sleek, sexy, rehashed form of top-down feudalism?

The conventional validation for perpetual war in the Middle East does not hold when looked at rationally.  When the ideas of nationalism and statist glory are wiped away, the state appears as it really is: institutionalized exploitation of the masses by the few.  The undertaking of war masks this reality for a short period while accelerating the pace at which liberty is stripped away.  In the end, wars are waged to fulfill the sadistic desires of government leaders and to give them an opening to tighten their grip on society.  The parasitic class which makes up the state doesn’t just war with other states; it conducts war against the citizens it claims to protect.

The problem we are going to face at some point as a nation and in fact as a civilization is this: there is no well-developed economic theory inside the corridors of power that will explain to the administrators of a failed system what they should do after the system collapses. This was true in the Eastern bloc in 1991. There was no plan of action, no program of institutional reform. This is true in banking. This is true in politics. This is true in every aspect of the welfare-warfare state. The people at the top are going to be presiding over a complete disaster, and they will not be able to admit to themselves or anybody else that their system is what produced the disaster. So, they will not make fundamental changes. They will not restructure the system, by decentralizing power, and by drastically reducing government spending. They will be forced to decentralize by the collapsed capital markets. The welfare-warfare state, Keynesian economics, and the Council on Foreign Relations are going to suffer major defeats when the economic system finally goes down. The system will go down. It is not clear what will pull the trigger, but it is obvious that the banking system is fragile, and the only thing capable of bailing it out is fiat money. The system is sapping the productivity of the nation, because the Federal Reserve's purchases of debt are siphoning productivity and capital out of the private sector and into those sectors subsidized by the federal government.

Regular readers are aware that periodically, usually weekly, Zero Hedge presents critical naval updates demonstrating the positioning of key US maritime assets, primarily strategic aircraft carriers. The location of these indicates far more what US foreign policy is focused on at any moment, than propaganda distributed for general consumption via the coopted media. Today, however, instead of focusing on aircraft carriers, using Stratfor analysis, we present several broad "curious" US and French military developments.

Will Israel Launch a False Flag Against Iran to Start War?