Kunstler: Merry Christmas to All

And this solemn night a great stillness falls upon the land as the Leviathan of Washington is sent to its room to get its mind straight, and the USA gets on with collapse in earnest. There will be no visions of sugarplums for the Deep Staters as the government enters its induced coma, only premonitions […]

Oil policy twists and turns in 2018 – the Capital Crude top 10

There were 56 episodes of Platts’ Capitol Crude podcast this year, covering nearly everything US oil policy touched from Boulder, Colorado to Beijing, China. Here are 10 of our favorite episodes from 2018: February 20 – Free at last! Just days after leaving his position as a top energy policy adviser to President Trump, George […]

The Great Saudi Muddle

Does the Senate want Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman to own up to the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi?  Is it really seeking an end to Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression against Yemen?  The answer to both questions is: kind of, sort of, not really.  That’s the takeaway from a couple of resolutions the chamber approved […]

What Will Oil Prices Be In 2019?

After a run up earlier this year, crude oil prices have been collapsing in recent months. Prices dropped nearly 25 percent in November alone, the biggest monthly loss in a decade, as traders stress over a possible glut in global supplies. Record production in the United States, Russia and Saudi Arabia has helped plummet oil […]

Baghdad’s Green Zone opens its gates to public after 15 years

For 15 years, most Iraqis have been unable to access the heart of Baghdad. But the tall concrete walls and barbed wire that have closed off the Green Zone for years are finally coming down. The Green Zone, a 10 square kilometre area in central Baghdad, has been partially open to the public since December […]

Endless War Has Been Normalized And Everyone Is Crazy

Since I last wrote about the bipartisan shrieking, hysterical reaction to Trump’s planned military withdrawal from Syria the other day, it hasn’t gotten better, it’s gotten worse. I’m having a hard time even picking out individual bits of the collective freakout from the political/media class to point at, because doing so would diminish the frenetic […]

The Psychological Warfare Behind Economic Collapse

The concept of using the economy as a weapon is not an alien one to most people. Generally, we understand the nature of feudalism and how various groups can be herded onto centralized plantations to be exploited for their labor. Some people see this as a consequence of “capitalism,” and others see it as an […]

This Isn’t News. This Is War Crimes Apologia.

The fact that George W Bush has given Michelle Obama two pieces of candy is once again making headlines in mainstream outlets like Time, The Hill, and Newsweek. He has not given her any new pieces of candy since the last time he did so at his father’s funeral. He also has not ceased to […]

“Saudi Arabia Is Going Bankrupt” Taleb Exclaims After Seeing Kingdom’s Latest Budget

In all the noise surrounding the latest market moves, political news and frenzy over tomorrow’s Fed rate hike (or pause), an important development was missed by many when Saudi Arabia released its budget for 2019 earlier on Tuesday, which at 1.106 trillion riyals, or $295 billion – the largest in the kingdom’s on record – […]

Brexit: Stage One in Europe’s Slow-Burn Energy Collapse

Everyone’s talking about Brexit. Some about the French riots. But no one’s talking about why they are happening, and what they really mean. They might think they are, but they are usually missing the point. On 6th May 2010, the Conservative Party took the reins of power for the first time since 1992, propped up […]

What Would The End Of OPEC Mean?

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries – the oil market institution that has exerted an unyielding power over the price of crude for nearly 60 years – is now in deep crisis. The latest OPEC meeting in Vienna offered new insights into the cartel’s raging civil war that is tearing it apart and threatens […]

Caitlin Johnstone: Imagine If Saudi Arabia Was Not A US Ally

The US Senate has voted 56 to 41 to sorta-kinda eventually end America’s part in the Saudi-led war in Yemen, one step out of a great many that will need to happen in order to end the worst humanitarian crisis on the face of the earth. The joint resolution still allows US drones to patrol Yemeni […]

Kunstler: Sleepwalkers Awoke!

Andrew Sullivan called it “the Great Awokening” in a shrewd New York Magazine column this week. He refers, off course, to earlier episodes of American religious hysteria, namely the Great Awakening of the 1730s that featured the Rev. Jonathan Edwards raining sulfur and brimstone down on guilt-wracked New Englanders, and then the Second Awakening of […]

Why is it so Easy to Lie to Us? The Case of Russia and Climategate

Our media feed us routinely with lies and the story of the involvement of the Russian Secret Service with the Climategate hack is just one of them. I thought it was worth discussing it here in light of the fact that it is one of the most blatant lies I could ever find. Also a […]

How Plutocratic Media Keeps Staff Aligned With Establishment Agendas

Why do mainstream media reporters within ostensibly free democracies act just like state media propagandists? Why are they so reliably pro-establishment, all throughout every mainstream outlet? Why do they so consistently marginalize any idea that doesn’t fit within the extremely narrow Overton window of acceptable opinion?Why does anyone who inconveniences western establishment power always find […]

OPEC’s Bigger Problems

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) decision to cut oil production by 1.2 million barrels a day (b/d), together with Russia and a few other non-OPEC producers, may have garnered the organization’s members a few extra dollars temporarily, but it belies larger problems ahead for the 57 year old cartel. OPEC has weathered many […]

Maduro: All Venezuelan Oil Will Be Sold In Petro Cryptocurrency

Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro said on state television that Venezuela would put in place in 2019 a program to sell all its oil production in the Petro cryptocurrency, which the leader is touting as the first state-backed oil-backed digital currency. Gradually, Venezuela will sell all its oil production in Petro, Maduro said during a visit […]

Kunstler: Capture the Flag

A titanic battle between Mr. Trump and his antagonists looms in the political gloaming of the new year. It may not be resolvable by conventional means since the Intel and Justice agencies have been leading a two-year coup-by-subterfuge against the president, with Robert Mueller as the spearhead, leaving a slime-trail of sedition and prosecutorial misconduct […]

The Bush legacy in the Gulf

Last Saturday, as world leaders and the international media reacted to news that George HW Bush had passed away, three landmark towers in Kuwait City were lit up with the portrait of the former US president and the US and Kuwait flags. This was one of many tributes to a man Kuwaitis credit with liberating […]

Iran Again Threatens To Block Key Oil Transit Choke Point As U.S. Aircraft Carrier En Route

Here we go again: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has once more threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, which is vital to up to one-third of all global oil shipping as it’s a key transit choke point in the Persian Gulf. On Tuesday Iranian state broadcasts carried his words, saying “if someday, the United States decides to […]

How George H.W. Bush Was Groomed to Become President

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary looks back on George H.W. Bush and the role of political grooming in America. As the US political establishment pays its sometimes gushing respects to George H.W. Bush, who died on November 30, some journalists have dared to remind us who he was, what he did and where he came from. […]

The CIA’s Evidence Linking Saudi Crown Prince to Khashoggi Killing

How did the CIA conclude that journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed on the orders of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman? WSJ’s Warren P. Strobel has an exclusive look at the secretive evidence behind the assessment. Photo: Reuters

Qatar is pulling out of OPEC

OPEC is losing one of its oldest members. The small, gas-rich state of Qatar said Monday that it will leave the oil cartel on January 1 after nearly 60 years. The country’s state oil company, Qatar Petroleum, made the announcement in a series of tweets. “The withdrawal decision reflects Qatar’s desire to focus its efforts […]

Kunstler: The Ghost of Christmas Present

Apparently one additional world leader turned up in Buenos Aires without fanfare this weekend. The General Secretary of the North Pole, known popularly as Santa Claus, took his latest-model hypersonic sleigh to the G-20 Meeting, and made sure that the global financial elite would find their Christmas stockings stuffed with sugarplums one last time before […]

The Great Power Politics Behind Nord Stream II

Nord Stream II is proving to be one of the most politically contentious pipelines of all time. The project is making gradual progress, but remains vulnerable to the fragile state of the EU-Russian energy relationship. This took another body blow November 25 with the Russian seizure of two Ukrainian gunboats and a tug boat by […]

Palin Was Right: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill!’

Like the rooster that takes credit for the sunrise, President Barack “You Didn’t Build That” Obama woke up the other day and decided to take credit for another thing he had nothing to do with. The president who said that companies like Solyndra were the hallmark of a future in which workers drove Chevy Volts, […]

Debt, Death, & The US Empire

Yosemite Sam Gets Worried About Federal Debt In a talk which garnered little attention, one of the Deep State’s prime operatives, National Security Advisor John Bolton, cautioned of the enormous and escalating US debt. Deep State operative John Bolton, a.k.a. Yosemite Sam [PT] Speaking before the Alexander Hamilton Society, Bolton warned that current US debt […]

Kunstler: Deep Quandaries of the Deep State

Watergate had tragic Shakespearean overtones, with Nixon as King Lear, but Russia-Gate — perhaps the last gate America goes through on its giant slalom run to collapse — is but a Chinese Fire Drill writ large. The reason? In 1973, we were still a serious people. Today, the most lavishly credentialed elite in history believe […]

The Khashoggi killing had roots in a cutthroat Saudi family feud

Behind the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi lies a power struggle within the Saudi royal family that helped feed the paranoia and recklessness of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Eventually, this rage in the royal court led to the death and dismemberment of a Washington Post journalist. The opening scenes of this family feud took […]

Everyone Not Exporting Arms To Saudi Arabia Is Halting Arms Exports To Saudi Arabia

Only after Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered did the major networks like CNN finally discover Saudi atrocities in Yemen and a horrid human rights record and history of crackdown on dissent at home. While perhaps we might say better late than never, it’s interesting to now see pieces being written about “the latest […]

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