Collapse, Part 1: Greece

When systems are broke and broken, collapse is the only way forward. The theme this week is collapse. It’s a big, complex topic because there are as many types of collapse as there are systems. Some systems appear stable on the surface but collapse suddenly; others visibly decay for decades before finally slipping beneath the […]

China’s Multi-Billion Dollar Loans To Venezuela Face Uncertain Future

As China’s economy expanded rapidly over the last two decades, the country massively increased the amount of money it spent on loans and investments abroad, in a bid to secure vital natural resources. Now, it appears, one of those investments is showing signs of going badly awry, according to a Wall Street Journal report. State-owned China […]

Harmful chemicals found in oil field water used for irrigation

Testing of recycled oil field wastewater used on about 45,000 acres of farmland in the Central Valley shows the water contains small amounts of potentially harmful chemicals, including oil, benzene and acetone. Local water regulators in April ordered comprehensive testing of the irrigation water to check for the presence of chemicals used in oil production. […]

WikiLeaks Says It’s Leaking Over 500,000 Saudi Documents

WikiLeaks is in the process of publishing more than 500,000 Saudi diplomatic documents to the Internet, the transparency website said Friday, a move that echoes its famous release of U.S. State Department cables in 2010. WikiLeaks said in a statement that it has already posted roughly 60,000 files. Most of them appear to be in […]

Iran Holds Out Improved Oil-Contract Terms

Officials say if sanctions are lifted, Western companies could negotiate longer-term, more profitable deals. Iran is prepared to offer longer-term and more-profitable contracts to international oil and gas firms but expects substantive partnerships with Iranian companies, said oil-ministry officials, signaling how the cloistered country will try to entice billions of dollars in energy investments after […]

Day Of Reckoning For Fossil Fuel Industry

The fossil fuel industry is facing its day of reckoning – and not just because one of the world’s most prominent religious leaders, Pope Francis, is calling for action. In fact, the industry’s moment of crisis has been in the making for years, as a variety of trends – from rising production costs to cheaper […]

An Affirming Flame

According to an assortment of recent news stories, this Thursday, June 18, is the make-or-break date by which a compromise has to be reached between Greece and the EU if a Greek default, with the ensuing risk of a potential Greek exit from the Eurozone, is to be avoided. If that’s more than just media […]

Sins of Omission: Stories The Media Overlook

Jenna Orkin, Court Dorsey (Project Unspeakable) and Rob F. (Worldwatchers.info) discuss the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King as well as the environmental disaster of 9/11 and other stories distorted or shunted by the mainstream media.

Iran is playing the world for suckers

The dovish case for negotiating with Iran on its nuclear program always was an “if-then” proposition. If Iran was prepared to give up its military nuclear program in exchange for inducements, then wouldn’t that be great? The answer, of course, is that it would be. But is Iran really prepared to do that? Iran hawks […]

Kunstler: Jeb and Hil

T he Floridian clod seeking to don the mantle of Millard Fillmore made an amazing foreign policy speech at an economic conference in Berlin last week. Inveighing against Russian President Vladimir Putin, he gave a very vivid impression of a man who has no idea what he is talking about. “Russia must respect the sovereignty […]

Ethical Population Control

No one wants to talk about population control, but we already consume more resources than the planet can sustain. As we approach 9 billion people there are ethical and humane solutions to this controversial problem. In 1804 there were 1 billion people on the planet, around 200 years later there is 7 billion; and in […]

Peak Oil in the Congressional record

Even the most ardent techno-optimists and economists admit there are limited supplies of fossil fuels, but that we don’t need to worry for a long time. It appears they have succeeded in convincing the government they’re right, because there are only 2 documents about planning for peak oil that I’m aware of at the federal […]

China, Iran strike deal on oil

Oil and gas deals between China and Iran are set to change. Last week, several news agencies in the region, including the Iran Daily and Trend News Agency said that Iran and China have agreed that China would pay in cash for the oil and gas it buys from Iran. China is currently the biggest […]

Gazprom Seeks A Way Around Ukraine By 2019

Gazprom has vowed to entirely cut out Ukraine as a transit hub for natural gas exports to Europe. The conflict with Ukraine has scrambled the longstanding energy relationship between Russia and Europe. The European Union imports around one-third of its natural gas from Russia, but having seen those flows cut off multiple times in the […]

Pragmatic Conservation

The last few years have seen a big debate among leading conservationists over the future of parks and protected areas. On one side are groups like The Nature Conservancy that work with foreign countries to site hydroelectric dams so they are less destructive of river systems and with big corporations to protect wetlands and reduce pollution. […]

Gazprom Now Settling All Crude Sales To China In Renminbi

Two topics we’ve deemed critically important to a thorough understanding of both global finance and the shifting geopolitical landscape are the death of the petrodollar and the idea of yuan hegemony. Last November, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died And No One Noticed,” we said the following about the slow motion demise of the system […]

Egypt Seeks to Reduce Fertility

Egypt aims to reduce its surging fertility rate over the next 15 years, a government minister said Tuesday, in an effort to address overpopulation concerns in the Arab world’s most populous country. With around 90 million people — a population the United Nations projects to hit 103 million by 2030 — Egypt has struggled for […]

G7 leaders agree to phase out fossil fuels

Leaders of the world’s top economies Monday (8 June) gave a boost to global talks on tackling climate change by saying the global economy should be decarbonised by the end of this century. The high-level backing by G7 countries – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US – increases the likelihood of […]

Islamic State to Issue Its Own Currency

They have paraded their own flag, formed courts and ministries, issued passports and even license plates. Now, the leaders of the Islamic State, the violent jihadist group that has seized parts of Syria and Iraq, have created their own currency, part of a grandiose plan to restore the caliphate era that dominated the Middle East […]

Iran and Saudi Arabia on a collision course over oil

After a week of meetings of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) in Vienna, one thing is clear: Iran and Saudi Arabia are on a collision course that could eventually break the world’s largest oil producing group apart. Faced with Saudi Arabia’s stubborn determination to keep Opec pumping at full choke, Iran’s oil […]

Day After EPA Finds Fracking Does Not Pollute Water, Top Oil Regulator Resigns Over Water Contamination

Put this one in the awkward file: just hours after the EPA released yet another massive study (literally, at just under 1000 pages) which found no evidence that fracking led to widespread pollution of drinking water (an outcome welcome by the oil industry and its backers and criticized by environmental groups), the director of the […]

Yemen Fire Scud Missile Into Saudi Arabia

Just two days after reports indicated that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels were prepared to participate in UN-brokered peace talks with Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s government in exile, clashes on the Saudi border have intensified. On Friday, the Saudi press agency said it had used Apache helicopters and artillery to repel a Houthi-led advance, killing “dozens” […]

OPEC finds oil output consensus: ‘Don’t rock the boat’

OPEC is set to carry on pumping oil nearly flat-out for months more, content that last year’s shock market therapy has revived demand and knocked back growing competition. With oil prices having stabilised at around $65 a barrel, some $20 above their January lows, there’s little appetite within the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries […]

How Long Can OPEC Maintain Its Current Strategy?

The six-month clock is up. OPEC is convening this week in Vienna, as it does every six months, to discuss and decide on how the group will coordinate. The November 2014 meeting was one of the most widely covered in years. After leaving its collective output quota unchanged for several consecutive meetings in a row, […]

Saudi Arabia to boost defence spending

Saudi Arabia is on track to become the world’s fifth-largest military spender by 2020 as it boosts its defence budget by 27 per cent over the next five years despite lower oil prices. With regional conflicts worsening the oil-rich kingdom‘s neighbours, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also planning to increase spending on their […]

Arab air strikes pound Yemen

Efforts to coax Yemen’s warring factions into talks have made some progress, officials said on Monday, as warplanes from a Saudi-led coalition mounted more air strikes on the country’s dominant Houthi militia. An Arab alliance has been bombing the Houthis since March 26 in a bid to restore exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to power. […]

America is no longer ‘indispensable’

After six decades serving as the global policeman, the United States is now signalling its retreat from the world. With the Middle East engulfed by the flames of sectarian conflict, Europe’s borders menaced by the threat of war and China starting to flex its muscles in Asia-Pacific, it is clear the world has entered a […]

ISIS is making the biggest threat to oil prices even worse

Thick black smoke rising from the Baiji oil refinery could be seen as a dirty smudge on the horizon as far away as Baghdad after fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) set fire to the enormous processing plant just over 100 miles north of the capital last week. The decision […]

Iran provides some information in UN nuclear inquiry

The U.N. nuclear watchdog said on Friday it had made incremental progress but no breakthrough in its inquiry into whether Iran may have researched an atom bomb, a sobering message that may dim chances for a deal between Tehran and big powers next month. Diplomats view Iran’s reluctance to open up to investigators from the […]

We Need a New Economic System

As the 2016 election begins to come into focus, economic populism appears to be the order of the day. The Center for American Progress, the Campaign for America’s Future and National People’s Action, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Bill de Blasio and the Roosevelt Institute have all in the last few months released programmatic calls to […]

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