Iraq

Don't Read This ... It's Totally Irrelevant, Old News, Who Cares, Americans Are Above the Law, We're Exceptional (and Anyone Who Criticizes anything our Government Does is a Commie Fascist Turruristicalist Moooooslim)

The waistline bubble began to expand at just about the same time as the debt bubble...

ExxonMobil, for one, appears to have had enough, announcing recently that it may pull up stakes in Iraq’s south and stick to the Kurdish north, where the business arrangements are more flexible and the security situation more manageable, at least outside of Kirkuk. So is Iraq too risky an investment? It depends how far ahead you want to look. For the next two years, we will probably see more of the political status quo, largely thanks to Iranian intervention, which is the only thing keeping things from falling apart at the seams right now. Further down the road, in the absence of a major increase in foreign investment and socio-economic improvement, we are likely to see the start of a failed state, a renewed civil war as more and more provinces jump on the autonomy bandwagon creating tensions among Sunnis and Shi’ites, and a bloody conflict over Kurdish independence.

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 …

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.

As we all know, what matters isn't our nominal earnings, it's what our earnings can buy that counts. If it takes an hour of labor to buy four gallons of gasoline, it doesn't really matter if we're paid $1.60 an hour and gasoline costs 40 cents a gallon or we're paid $16 an hour and gasoline costs $4 per gallon. Ditto $16,000 an hour and $4,000 per gallon. What matters is if our hourly wage once bought eight gallons of gasoline and now it buys only four gallons. This is called purchasing power, and rather naturally the Status Quo has worked mightily to cloak the reality that our purchasing power of the bottom 95% of wage earners has been declining for decades. Until oil no longer matters, our real earnings and our economy remain hostages to the cost of oil.

• Rajoy’s Deepening Budget Black Hole Outpaces Spain’s Cuts (Bloomberg)
• ECB May Need to Cut Rates Given Deflation Risk, IMF Says (Bloomberg)
• Global Recession Risk Rises (WSJ)
• Romney Leads Obama in Pew Likely Voter Poll After Debate (Bloomberg)
• IMF Sees Global Risk in China-Japan Spat (WSJ)
• Republicans shift tone on taxing the rich (FT)
• Romney casts Obama's foreign policy as weak, dangerous (Reuters)
• Europe Salutes Greek Budget-Cutting Will, Raising Aid Prospects (Bloomberg)
• U.S. Downgrade Seen as Upgrade as U.S. Debt Dissolved (Bloomberg)
• IMF Says Most Advanced Nations Making Progress Reducing Deficits (Bloomberg)
• Eurozone launches €500bn rescue fund (FT)

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

To grasp what is really occurring here we must look at how authoritarian Middle Eastern regimes (or, indeed, authoritarian regimes in general)  function. Authoritarian regimes  must maintain a cloak of authority. Tyrants do not attempt to look or sound weak; they try to project an aura of invincibility and indefatigability. We saw this during the last Gulf War, where Iraq’s information minister Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf — nicknamed Baghdad Bob in the American media — shot off hundreds of absurd statements during the war about how Iraqi troops were crushing the Americans, quite in contrast to the facts on the ground and right up until American tanks were rolling through the streets of Baghdad. Baghdad Bob was not deluded. He was merely playing his role, and trying to project an aura of regime invincibility — providing propaganda for domestic consumption to keep the Iraqi population loyal to Saddam Hussein. It was a dog and pony show.

There is a popular belief in the Middle East that Washington’s foreign policy, particularly as it relates to this precarious region, is largely driven by America’s dependency on, and insatiable appetite for Arab oil.  One can make a good argument for that. Had Syria been a major oil producing country chances are the US would have already dispatched military forces to impose a pax Americana and to put a stop to the horrific fighting that has been slowly, but without any doubt, ripping Syria apart and dismantling the infrastructures that make the Syrian state what it is today. Even if the war was to end today it would take years for Syria to return to its pre-war position from an economic and military perspective.

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?