Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Progressivism: Crowd Funding Terrorism

Over the years as an FSO and as chief--er, sole--blogger of this little blog, I have called a number of international developments right. Readers can go back over my writing on Libya, for example, and see that I called that right from the start of our ill-fated intervention. I think also called it right on Iran, Russia, Cuba, China, the EU, and on the chaos in North Africa and the Middle East resulting from our misadministration's disastrous policies. I noted at the beginning of the Obama regime that it gave foreign policy only a second thought, and what thought it gave sought to reduce US and Western influence and abandon traditional interests and allies.

I think I also called it right re fracking and the impact it would have on OPEC (see below.) The Progressive mainstream media, by and large, has missed what should have been a major story in 2015, to wit, the death throes of the once-mighty and much-feared, OPEC.

Founded in 1960 in Baghdad, OPEC became a major staple of international relations in following years. It encouraged members to seize control of their oil production and sought to control the supply and, of course, the world price of hydrocarbons. It was, perhaps, the most powerful cartel in history. Those of of us old enough to remember Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter recall how OPEC drove prices through the roof, and used oil as a weapon primarily against the West, but with considerable collateral social and economic damage throughout the world. You all know the history and don't need me to tell it. In short, during the  golden era of OPEC we saw fuel shortages in the US and Europe, and, most importantly, the rise of Islam as a global force. OPEC, oil, and the rise of Islam as a political and "military" power are very much intertwined. The most important members of OPEC were and are Muslim; the Saudis alone could dictate world prices and to a large extent controlled OPEC policies, and had a huge influence on the development of today's highly retrograde and murderous strain of Islam--I saw them at work, for example, in the 1980s among the Afghan refugees in Pakistan. The Saudis for decades served as one of the major promoters and funders of international terror--the understanding being that the terrorists would leave in peace the corrupt Wahabi guardians of Mecca (topic for another day: how that understanding has frayed.)

OPEC is dead as a major player on the international scene, and only can come back to life by Progressive insistence on making the West energy deficient--Do it for Gaia! As I have written before, America's remarkable "fracking" revolution has up-ended the world's energy market for the benefit of the West (also here and here). Not everybody agrees: Here, for example, is a thoughtful article claiming that reports of OPEC's death have been exaggerated. The main argument seems to be that the Saudis ARE OPEC--don't disagree--and that they aren't going anywhere--on that, I disagree.  Here and here, however, are a couple of interesting pieces laying out the serious long-term economic problems facing Saudi Arabia--and, of course, this info from our own government shows the dilemma facing OPEC. I find those convincing as well as another article which bluntly states,
So, what's going on now?

The answer, in a nutshell, is the shale revolution. The new technology for extracting oil and gas from shale reserves — which, let's remember, was opposed every step of the way by progressives, and is characteristic of a special American inventiveness — has proved a boon to the economy, and to employment, and even to the environment, since the revolution is driving a lot of oil and coal to be replaced by less-carbon-intensive natural gas.

OPEC is stuck in a Catch-22: Low prices mean they don't control the market anymore; but if they raise prices, they lose control of the market.

Investment in shale is only going to continue. And that means we may be witnessing one of the most significant geopolitical and economic events of the past 50 years: the death of OPEC.
That, as far as I am concerned, sums it up re OPEC, with, as stressed, the one caveat being that progressives do not stifle fracking and other moves, particularly in the US and Canada, to achieve energy independence.

All that should be good news in the fight against terror. And it is. Today's new terrorists cannot count on the sort of heavy-duty centralized financial backing that their ancestors in the PLO, for example, got in the 1960s and 70s. In addition, of course, we have the unlamented death of the USSR; the Soviet bloc provided major support for all sorts of terror groups that ran rampant in Europe and the Middle East during those decades and even into the 1980s. (For another day will be the discussion of Iran as a major financier of terrorism--I suspect they will not have the deep pockets of the Saudi regime, even with Obama's disastrous "nuke" deal which frees perhaps as much as $150 billion in frozen assets.)

We should be sitting pretty in our "war" with the Islamic terrorists. We're not. Most of us missed a major development that has almost nullified the victory over OPEC and the Saudis. I touched upon it in a discussion of the Boston bombers, but did not fully appreciate the magnitude of the phenomenon I was describing,
Our tolerant, liberal, and inclusive system was providing these clowns (their name, I will never write) with welfare. I guess that answers one of my early questions about how these creeps supported themselves. The older one, of course, had his idiot convert wife working 80 hours a week while he sat home and collected his, yep, welfare checks. The younger murderer got his citizenship, a scholarship and welfare. Yes, just as in the olden times when you gave your executioner a gold coin to encourage him to make a swift and painless job of the beheading, it seems we pay our executioners. Even more interesting is that these cretins' scumbag parents were also collecting, even though they did not live in the USA.
Progressivist policies are now second only to the Koran as the greatest support to international Islamic terror. The Progressive hatred for Western Civilization makes a perfect match with Islam's hatred for Western Civilization. As noted before, in effect, what we have is a Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact between Progressivism and Islam. We see in Germany, for example, this Progressive hatred translated into the active encouragement of Muslim "immigration" into the heart of Europe--perhaps as many as one million, mostly young men, in the past few months. The results are catastrophic, and we are only seeing the beginning. Even before this latest "refugee" crisis, we had hundreds of thousands of Muslim immigrants living in Europe, many if not most on some sort of public assistance--just like the murdering brothers in Boston--and seething with hatred for the "white dude" culture that took them in, feeds them, gives them housing, etc. The Progressive hatred for our Civilization is so complete that even when Muslim "refugees" attack favored constituencies of Progressives, e.g., women, Progressives make excuses for the Muslims and advise women to "cover up" and "keep an arms length" from men. Progressive media is full of stories worrying about the potential "backlash" against the "refugees" because of the stories (oh so carefully worded) of mass rapes and assaults by the "refugees."

As stated previously (here, for example), the Gates of Vienna have been breached, well, better said, opened from the inside. Our political betters have decided to transform fundamentally our culture into a copy of the savage cultures where Islam rules--and we are not to resist. Here at home, for one example, we see two Muslims go on a jihadist rampage in San Bernardino, and that prompts weepy calls from the bien pensants to disarm us.  I guess per that logic, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a call for Americans to get rid of their personal weapons. 

While our PC schools and media actively seek to undermine our will to resist, our taxpayer pounds, euros, and dollars now fund the terrorists. We are paying our executioners.



You can follow me on Twitter at Lewis Amselem@TheDiplomad


21 comments:

  1. The funding of terrorists is a special case of a general proposition: a combination of a welfare state and mass immigration are unsustainable. I thought that progressives approved, in a religion-like way, of sustainability.

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    1. Has a clickjacker. Also uses clickbank.
      leaperman

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  2. Sustainability has a very fluid definition.

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  3. Once upon a time the media understood that they played a key role in maintaining the stability of our society. Now they attempt to induce fear at every turn for ratings, which creates great openings for progressives to jump on to position their "solutions". When will the media realize that they are helping step us closer and closer towards a tragic and fatal "final solution"?

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    1. The "Fourth Estate" fifth columnists KNOW what they are doing and WHY they are doing it.

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  4. The economics of fracking vs the cost of conventional oil extraction with OPEC will be the deciding factor.

    Wells with complicated horizontal drilling and fracturing are still more expensive and have lower production rates and totals than the major fields in Saudi Arabia and the other fields around the Arabian Gulf.

    The delta in costs is partially offset by transportation costs - that's why the defeat of Keystone Pipeline was a win for OPEC. Keystone was also to serve to lower internal US transportation costs of bringing fracted oil to US markets.

    We are still in a period of dynamic change in oil markets where global demand is falling whilst lower priced oil is still coming on-stream. This will change.

    I see a stabilization of world oil prices happening considerably about the current price. While many of the minor OPEC players can't make the price cut, the Saudis and a few of the majors like UAE will till find profitable markets, once demand returns, as it will because of current lower prices.

    For a micro-example of how this works, Mr. Amselem is not scrapping his V-8s and buying a Prius now, is he?

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    1. "once demand returns" is prognosticative... Our economy is so margined and leveraged, it's like every market move that can possibly occur is already 'baked in'. I think our economic fate is more like a quantum path integral than a markov chain.


      - reader #1482

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  5. Mr. Mad,
    I am not quite as pessimistic, but I do believe things are going to get a lot more exciting. As is the way of the world the old order is going and strangely enough it's the "Progressives" who are desperately trying to hold onto the past. After struggling all these years they finally achieved the holy grail of "power" only to see it slipping away inexorably due mainly to their own policies. Of course they won't go without a fight and try to take all of us down with them, but going they are. I don't think I'll live to see much of the outcome of this change, but I will see a lot of the change itself.
    James the Lesser

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    1. Always count on the Left to turn on itself. Ideological purity always rears its ugly head, especially if the Left is seen as failing or better, when people begin to learn they ain't 10 feet tall and shove it all back in their faces.

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    2. conservatives turn on each other as well... in 2012, conservatives couldn't even get together to elect someone who, for all objective purposes, was 'clearly better' than Obama. Conservatives turned out in a trickle, at most.

      - reader #1482

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  6. There's nothing as conservative as the avant garde, James.

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    1. "There's nothing as conservative as the avant garde, James."
      You've got that right. The thing that would be funny except for the fact it affects us too, is the progressives (what an ironical title) are captured and entrapped by their own ideology and can do nothing else. An old Jethro Tull tune (Locomotive Breath) had a refrain:
      And he can't slow down,
      No he can't slow down,

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    2. James, now you've gone and done it! The power of suggestion demands I go dig out my old vinyl LPs...

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    3. Here you go Whitewall, turn it up and enjoy......
      https://youtu.be/bNCT6pA5I9A

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    4. Thanks James, I did. Still looking for my old LPs

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  7. Long ago,in 1973, when I was an officer in the Royal Navy I had a temporary posting in the British Ministry of Defence (yes, Defence). I took a room in what I believe you would call a Brownstone building in Westminster London. The landlady was called Eve Gordon-Cumming and she was something of a mystic. One of her clients was Sheik Yamani who at the time was the Saudi man in OPEC. Those of you old enough will remember that 1973 was the time of the Oil Crisis.

    Well, while giving me breakfast one morning, she told me that the previous afternoon Sheikh Yamani had visited her for a, lets call it a reading. He had put about 5 piles of papers on the table and said that he had to make a decision and these piles contained different answers. He didn't in any way explain what they were, merely that she was to indicate which of them contained the solution he was to follow. So she did. He said thank you, paid her, and very shortly afterwards the price of oil rocketed.

    I suppose I could have sold this story,but i was young and much more interested in the pursuit of a particularly attractive young lady.

    I wonder if much has changed.

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    1. Sounds similar to FDR setting the price of gold while in bed in his PJs.

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  8. It's just logic following from the basic precepts of liberalism and the fundamental constraints learned:
    a) the *only* goal of Liberalism: "Elimination of war."
    and
    b) the rule accepted in response to the events which occurred on 9/11/2001: "Rejecting Islam means war."

    For the liberal, the solution is a simple 'proof' via sentential calculus.

    If I were a godless liberal, I'd throw Christianity, Judaism, and the rest to the wolves as well, what would it be to me? "What? We're only going to get what we want if everybody becomes muslim? And nobody will get violent if we do so? Why aren't these madrassas already built?"

    Yeah, certainly Liberalists are en route to getting not quite what they bargained for in their own heads, but absent serious thought, it makes sense. It's the dream of any 19 yr old college student: "Peace in our time."

    There is not 'war looming'... there is 'war ongoing'.

    - reader #1482

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  9. "the defeat of Keystone Pipeline was a win for OPEC. " Yes, but not even Obama can keep the Saudi kingdom alive another year. They may be able to pump oil at the present depressed price but they can't fund their program of supporting every princeling and layabout Saudi loafer at this price. Things are about to get much hotter in Arabia. Obama has lit the fuse with his insane desire to arrange things in the middle east by supporting both Sunni and Shia.

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  10. Having been in the Army for the last 18 years I've come to the conclusion that support your own about the foreign policy consequences of the Obama administration. However, the Bush administration before that was equally inept when it came to Islamic terror.

    Good intentions do not workable solutions make.

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  11. "I guess per that logic, the attack on Pearl Harbor was a call for Americans to get rid of their personal weapons."

    Strange logic indeed. Notwithstanding the great success at Pearl Harbor, there was never a Japanese invasion of the mainland United States. Attributed to Admiral Yamamoto--misattributed according to Brooks Jackson, who cites Donald M. Goldstein not having seen it it writing, but forgetting that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence: "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." So personal weapons (maybe) acted as a deterrent when the military was too weak for its mission.

    Could we ever have a situation again in which our military is too weak for its mission? Nah, of course not. Everybody knows how well Democratic administrations have kept the military strong relative to its mission.

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