Fill Up While You Can

As I write this, daytongasprices.com lists local gas prices as low as $2.69. We haven’t seen prices that low in forever. There’s a couple reasons for it.

The good news is despite President Obama’s war on oil and thanks to oil shale, the US is on the verge of surpassing Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer. Bloomberg reports, “The U.S. will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s top oil producer by 2015, and be close to energy self-sufficiency in the next two decades, amid booming output from shale formations, the IEA [International Energy Agency] said.” Oil and gas production in the US is booming, and that’s about the only economic sector that is. The private sector still provides. The laws of supply and demand still work.

But that’s not the real story. The best lies are based on half-truths, and that’s what’s going on here. The establishment wants us to believe that suddenly, in just the last few weeks, US production has ramped up so much that it drove down prices. All hail Obama!

Of course that isn’t true. In an interview with Indian newspaper The Economic Times, legendary investor Jim Rogers tells what really drove down prices. The Times explains, “Even as crude oil prices have dipped to all-time lows, Jim Rogers of Rogers Holdings told ET Now that the decline is 'artificial'. ‘Some of this (oil price decline) is artificial. OPEC is trying to drive down prices because of Shale competition. The oil situation is very artificial at the moment.’”

I hate to disagree with Rogers, but even he’s only half right. OPEC was dumping oil, but not because of shale competition. OPEC doesn’t exist to drive prices down. It exists to keep them high. In fact, these low prices are causing problems for the Saudis. Vox presents another piece of the story. “Oil that's below $90 a barrel will throw the Saudi budget into deficit. But the Saudis have a big cash stockpile accumulated over the years,” Vox reported. “Oil that cheap will cause much more serious budgetary problems for the Saudis' regional rival, Iran. It's also bad for Russia, whose behavior in Syria has been at odds with Saudi policy. And Saudis hope that cheap oil will also crimp American production, effectively putting a floor under further price drops.”

The reality is these low prices are driven more by politics than economics. The economics are bad for the Saudis. “Of course this is not an uncontroversial strategy. Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the ultra-rich Saudi investor potentate, recently released an open letter criticizing the Kingdom's official strategy of complacency,” Vox continued. “Even the biggest budget reserve will eventually go broke, after all, and further technical innovations could keep Bakken production profitable even at levels where it doesn't currently make sense.”

But the political elephant in the room oddly unmentioned in any stories about this recent, sharp fall in gas prices is the upcoming US election in which Republicans are threatening to take over the Senate. If they do, they’ll be able to force Obama into a bunch of unpopular vetoes, improving their chances at winning the presidency and both houses of Congress in 2016. This is why this midterm election is the most expensive in history, with nearly $4 billion being spent. The bigger and more powerful the government gets, the more wealth there is to be stolen in each election. Therefore the more money gets spent on each election.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Bloomberg informs, “Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest crude exporter, said it cut production by 408,000 barrels a day last month amid signs of a supply glut and Brent oil trading below $100 a barrel.”

The article continues, “The Saudi decline is the largest monthly drop in production since December 2012, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Other estimates collated by OPEC, based on secondary sources, show that the kingdom cut output by 55,200 barrels to 9.86 million a day last month.”

The party is over. The Saudis know how long it takes to turn oil into gasoline. They cut production in order to drive up prices right after the US election. They’re helping Democrats because Obama has kindly agreed to blow a bunch of Syrians to bits and bomb Syria back into the stone age for them. In the Sunni-Shia regional civil war our government has dragged us into, Shiite Iran is enemy number one for the Sunni Saudis, and taking down President Assad in Syria is a stepping stone to attacking Iran. Obama helped the Saudis arm and train Sunni Islamic State [ISIS] fighters, and he’s destroying oil facilities in Syria. The Saudis drove down the price of gas in an evil quid pro quo. Not to mention Saudi Arabia continues to sell oil in dollars.

So fill your gas tank with cheap gas while you can. After election day, prices will climb back over $3 a gallon, then back over $3.50, in hopes of extending the life of the doomed US dollar.

Schizophrenic Middle East Policy

Iraq as we knew it is gone. In a modern blitzkrieg, fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also called ISIL), allied with Sunni militias and carved the Sunni Triangle out of Iraq. Formerly called al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the main enemy US troops fought during the Iraq surge, al Qaeda kicked the organization out of the al Qaeda umbrella for being too vicious. Pictures of ISIS fighters executing Iraqi soldiers, the same Iraqi soldiers Americans paid with blood and treasure to train for eleven years and who, despite greatly outnumbering the rebels, collapsed like a child’s backyard tent in a rainstorm, flood the internet. ISIS is enforcing Sharia law in every town it conquers.

Taking advantage of the situation, the Kurds took Kirkuk, effectively declaring their independence. Iraq is effectively split along tribal lines: Kurds to the north, Sunnis in the west, and Shia to the south.

President Obama and his minions feigned surprise, but they’re lying. This result was predicted during the debate before the US invaded Iraq, and has been repeatedly predicted since. Reminding us that even a broken clock is right twice a day, then-Senator Joe Biden advocated dividing the country along sectarian lines to prevent just this kind of result once the US pulled out. He was roundly ridiculed. Obama even created a secret plan to stop ISIS from taking over Iraq a year ago. It failed.

In 2007, Ilana Mercer wrote, “Once we decamp, some Saddam-like strongman will fill the power vacuum left. The dictator to emerge from the ruins of Iraq will impose Sharia, pray to the hidden Imam, and compel women to walk about in black nose bags. We had it good with Saddam because he was secular, an enemy of fundamentalist Islam. Can we have back what, in our folly, we fouled up? No.” Oh, for the good old days of Saddam.

But this rebellion wasn’t only predictable; the US precipitated it with its policy in Syria. For years the US has been arming the Syrian rebels, and ISIS is the main fighting faction of those rebels. The US claims it doesn’t arm ISIS, but that’s a pretense. It directly arms supposedly moderate rebels knowing full well those rebels funnel the weapons to ISIS fighters because they’re on the forefront of combat. Arming the other factions just enables team Obama to implausibly claim “plausible deniability.” And not only is the US arming ISIS through its rebel allies, US proxies Saudi Arabia and Qatar are arming ISIS directly. Even Washington Post propagandists were forced to admit the civil wars in Iraq and Syria are really one war, and the US is on both sides.

It’s easy to think of any government as a monolithic entity, but like every other organization, the reality is it’s made up of individuals, each with their own goals. The US government is arming both sides, either as a matter of policy or it’s being done by different factions in the government. Iran is enemy number one in the Middle East, followed by Syria, and the Iraqi government is an ally of both, so it’s likely the US is secretly backing ISIS to weaken the Shiite-controlled government of Iraq. Maybe that’s why Iraqi soldiers claim they were ordered to abandon Mosul to the rebels.

The New York Times reports, “‘What we see in Iraq today is in many ways a culmination of what the I.S.I. has been trying to accomplish since its founding in 2006,’ said Brian Fishman, a counterterrorism researcher at the New America Foundation, referring to the Islamic State in Iraq, the predecessor of ISIS.” With the NSA collecting every electronic communication in Iraq, it’s not credible that US agents were unaware ISIS always intended to attack Iraq. They gleefully destroyed old WWI treaty barriers between Iraq and Syria and triumphantly tweeted about erasing the Sykes-Picot Agreement that created that boundary.

Now Obama is sending 575 non-combat troops equipped for combat, whatever that means, back into Iraq. He calls 300 advisors, as if Iraqi troops need advice. He’s flying surveillance missions with fighter planes. He plans to oust Prime Minister Maliki and replace him with someone less friendly to Iran. He’s marching the US back into war one step at a time even though 74 percent of Americans are against going back. The Sunnis don’t want Americans there. The Shiites Americans would supposedly be protecting don’t want Americans there. The military doesn’t want to go back. The only people who have something to gain are the warmongers and war profiteers who instigated this disaster in the first place. They claim everything was great while the US was in Iraq while shamelessly proclaiming their support for the troops they killed before and the ones they plan to kill in the future.

Justin Raimondo summarizes, “If ever there was a crisis entirely created in Washington, what is happening in Iraq today is a textbook case.” The last thing we need is to get more Americans killed and create more terrorists by returning to Iraq.

Kidnapped Schoolgirls Used as Political Pawns

The news is filled with outrage of the kidnapping of hundreds of Nigerian schoolgirls by an Islamic terrorist group called Boko Haram. On cue, President Obama’s underpaid women howled with rage. “Howls of fury erupted from leftist women’s groups in the US, and from President Barack Obama’s liberal warrior women, Susan Rice and UN ambassador Susan Powers,” reported Eric Margolis. “Hillary Clinton lost no time in jumping on this vote-winning issue.”

Every civilized person should be against the kidnapping of anyone, not just schoolgirls, and politicians can’t lose by feigning outrage about this reported kidnapping. Michelle Obama was so incensed, she tweeted. That ought to scare the kidnappers. She also gave the presidential address about the kidnappings. I didn’t realize she had been elected president. Maybe she’s trying to be co-president, like Hillary was with Bill. Maybe she’s planning to follow Hillary’s model and ride her husband’s coattails to her own political career. Apparently that’s what apex feminist role models do.

But it’s suspicious how this concern for kidnapped schoolgirls being forced into marriage suddenly appeared. And one might wonder where the outrage is for other, say American, kidnapped children. It’s reminiscent of the way leftists suddenly supported gay marriage when it became politically advantageous.

Kidnapping children and making them brides is nothing new. Bride kidnapping is so commonplace, Wikipedia has a page on it. “Bride kidnapping has been practiced throughout history around the world and continues to occur in countries in Central Asia, the Caucasus region, and parts of Africa, and among peoples as diverse as the Hmong in Southeast Asia, the Tzeltal in Mexico, and the Romani in Europe,” it states. Given reports chimpanzees and even dolphins kidnap females for sex, it’s likely kidnapping child brides is older than humanity, and the modern version an expression of an animal instinct.

Aggression should never be tolerated, but when leftists, who support massive, institutionalized aggression against every aspect of people’s lives, suddenly howl in concert as if at the moon in response to one specific act of aggression, one of many they never cared about before, I question their motives. They were unmoved when the fascists they raised to power in Ukraine immolated protesters. They were unmoved when thousands of Afghans were buried alive in mudslides. They are motivated by neither humanitarianism nor compassion. Yet the Nigerian schoolgirl kidnapping sparks their outrage. Their orchestrated response stinks of cynical, political motives engaged in for personal gain.

Margolis notes, “American foreign policy reacts to oil and gas as my cats do to catnip. Now, under the pretext of deep concern for the missing schoolgirls, the US and Nigeria’s former colonial master, Britain, are rushing intelligence agents and special forces to this vast nation of 170 million, Africa’s largest. ...

“Nigeria is Africa’s leading oil and gas producer. Over 40% of its exports go to the United States, supplying 10% of America’s energy needs. Nearby Angola has become another major energy supplier to the US.”

Boy, it would be convenient if something happened in Nigeria that would provide a pretext for sending in US troops, like a mass kidnapping of schoolgirls. The Christian Science Monitor, hardly a bastion of conspiracy theorists, is skeptical of the story. “For all the urgent headlines and advocacy, however, what is still missing are basic facts,” it reported. “It is unclear how many girls were abducted, who they are, who did it, at what time, and exactly how – a dearth of solid information that has deepened the distress and anger in Nigeria and spurred global calls for action.”

And the Nigerian government is acting suspiciously. “Nigerians want an explanation, for example, as to why local people say they have seen the girls traveling in the countryside – and this under the extreme crackdown known as emergency rule – but that the military has not given details nor staged a rescue.”

This story is so bizarre that the Nigerian government claims the head of Boko Haram, although seen on videos with supposedly kidnapped schoolgirls, is dead, killed long ago. Kevin Barrett reports, “Many Nigerians wonder whether Boko Haram really exists. The supposed radical Islamic organization has been blamed for the killings of thousands of people. Yet details about the group are so murky that many observers suspect it may be more mythical than real. According to one theory, the real killers are mercenaries paid to stage false-flag ‘Islamic terror’ in order to justify foreign intervention in oil-rich Nigeria.” That would explain why then-Secretary of State Clinton refused to designate the group as terrorists.

This could be a movie plot, a combination of The Mouse That Roared and Wag the Dog with the rulers of both countries winning. Nearly 30 US troops are already searching for the schoolgirls. The US is flying manned reconnaissance and drones, another expansion of the stupidest empire in history.

Shortly after US troops started their search, two bombs exploded, killing 118 people. As always, US rulers, and in this case Nigeria’s too, will profit from the intervention, but it will incite more terrorism, and people of both countries will pay with blood and treasure.