It's NOT subject to supply and demand in the normal way.
It's a cartel.
It would almost be worth it to devalue the dollar like a weimar mark just to fuck these morons, and THEN string up the CEO's of Exxon, Chevron, Gulf, BO, Shell....all for being SHORTSIGHTED and not defining themselves as generic energy suppliers..thus creating batteries, solar and wind research technologies, sending these sand barons who create NOTHING back to their tents and nomadic life.
Only at our peril can the makers of US policy and the public they serve, continue to ignore the urgent message of Mr. Kelly.
He is said to be currently working on a new book about Saudi Arabia, but time is not on his side, a fact our policy makers have shamefully overlooked.
Here is a quote from the jacket of the linked book:
"All these melancholy consequences flowed from the failure of the Western powers to back the oil companies to the hilt from the early months of 1970 onwards, to stop Qaddafi in his tracks in the summer of that year, to prick the bubble of the shah's insensate illusions about his own power and consequence, and to help the companies to gain the upper hand of OPEC at Tehran at the outset of 1971. . . .The argument that was used at the time, and which has been used ad nauseam everr since, to justify the supine behaviour of the Western powers, and of the United States and Britain in particular, was that any show of firmness over oil prices would have brought retribution in the form of an oil embargo, something that the peoples of Western Europe and the United States were in no mood to tolerate. It is not an argument that reflects much credit upon those who made it, or upon those on whose behalf it was made. . ."
*****
Further, it is made clear with each statement coming out of Royal Saudi mouths -
Hugh Fitzgerald reminds us ""royals" for people who a generation ago were simply tribal chiefs "-
an oil embargo is not likely to be tolerated any better by the ever growing number of well greased "royals" (numbering in the thousands) or with the well funded religious elite.
The Saudi family is precariously enjoying their "royal" stature at the patient whim of their highly infuential cleric populations. ****
the events of which initiated this very same Saudi royal family to actively nurture and export Juhayman Al Otaibi's violent brand of Islam around the world - wahabbism.
The consequences of this forgotten crisis—which remains blotted out of history books in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim lands—last to this day. In tackling Juhayman’s brazen attack on its holiest shrine, the Saudi government showed sickening arrogance, cruel incompetence, and bewildering disregard for the truth. The royal family’s image was sullied forever. Many Muslims in Saudi Arabia and beyond, including the young Osama Bin Laden, were so repulsed by the carnage in Mecca that their loyalty started to fracture. In following years, they drifted toward open opposition to the House of Saud and its American backers. The fiery ideology that inspired Juhayman’s men to murder and mayhem in Islam’s holy of holies mutated with time into increasingly more vicious strains, culminating in al Qaeda’s death cult.
By a coincidence of global events, it is precisely this ideology that American policy makers—and the House of Saud—found right after the crisis in Mecca to be of great value on the Cold War battlefronts. Instead of being suppressed, Juhayman’s brutal brand of Islam was encouraged and nurtured as it metastasized across the planet since 1979. Today, hordes of his spiritual heirs are busy blowing up airplanes, tourist hotels, and commuter trains on four continents, self-satisfied smiles of true believers curling their lips.
The significance of the Mecca uprising was missed at the time even by the most sharp-eyed observers. Too many other threats preoccupied the West. The seizure of the Grand Mosque—the first large-scale operation by an international jihadi movement in modern times—was shrugged off as a local incident, an anachronistic throwback to Arabia’s Bedouin past.
But with the benefit of hindsight, it is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamist violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning, in the shade of the Kaaba. ***
Read Kelly . . . his writing style is excellent and very informative . . .the material makes for excellent entertainment, often reading like a fictional novel. Unfortunately, it's not fiction and our policy makers just refuse to realize it.
A BARREL OF CRUDE HAS GONE UP 50% SINCE JANUARY. NOTHING ELSE HAS. AND THE DOLLAR HAS OT GONE DOWN 50% IN RELATION TO ANY CURRENCY. SO WHY - WITH DEMAND FALLING - IS OIL BECOMING MORE EXPENSIVE?THE HUGE RUN-UP IN PRICES BEGAN WHEN THE YEAR BEGAN - AS THE SURGE HAS CALMED IRAQ AND AS OIL DEMAND ACTUALLY DECREASED GLOBALLY.THE FIRST WEEK OF EACH MONTH IS WHEN THE PRICE OF CRUDE JUMPS TO A DEGREE WAY UT OF PROPORTION FOR THE REST OF THE MONTH.Since January, there has been no "news" which justifies the enormous increase in the price of crude oil.There is no "news" in the first week of each month for that last six months which is responsible for the increase in the price of crude oil which occurs - like clockwork.I think this shows that the run-up in the price of oil is the result of a programmed effort to run-up the price - perhaps funded by OPEC as much as by fund managers with hedge-programs which tell them to switch from stocks when they decline and into commodities, especially oil (especially when it rises!) ---- a self-fulfilling prophecy.The make these huge stock sales and then huge oil buys in the first week of each month - and this sets the tome for the rest of the month - makes the prophecy and fulfills it.Go read the whole thing. Reliapundit has a series of charts which show the results.I was also interested in this comment:If you constrain the ability to ship crude oil, you raise the price of oil. Iran has corralled about a dozen VLCC off their coast, each full of oil, and each just riding at anchor. No ships, no delivery -- yields high crude oil prices. There are not a lot of VLCC just sitting idle in the world, it takes just a few not working to constrain supply.We now learn that Venezuela and Cuba are supplying help in idling the VLCCs and in funding the terrorist.I think Iran is testing the waters.
6 Comments
Close this window Jump to comment formDidn't the dinnerjacket have a private visit with the Royal family on a recent OPEC summit?
Here's one link:
link to Nov. 2007 story
OPEC 'upset at dollar,' Ahmadinejad says
AFPPublished: November 19, 2007
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:12:00 pm
Forbes magazine account of OPEC meeting last fall
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:16:00 pm
That Forbes article is funny, referring to Dinner-Jacket as both media-savvy and diminuitive.
LOL.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008 10:31:00 pm
It's NOT subject to supply and demand in the normal way.
It's a cartel.
It would almost be worth it to devalue the dollar like a weimar mark just to fuck these morons, and THEN string up the CEO's of Exxon, Chevron, Gulf, BO, Shell....all for being SHORTSIGHTED and not defining themselves as generic energy suppliers..thus creating batteries, solar and wind research technologies, sending these sand barons who create NOTHING back to their tents and nomadic life.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 11:55:00 am
It's a cartel . . .BINGO
Read J. B. Kelly's "Arabia, the Gulf & the West" © 1980, a critical view of the Arabs and their oil policy. J. B. Kelly worked for Sheikh Zayed and taught at Oxford and at the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin.
Only at our peril can the makers of US policy and the public they serve, continue to ignore the urgent message of Mr. Kelly.
He is said to be currently working on a new book about Saudi Arabia, but time is not on his side, a fact our policy makers have shamefully overlooked.
Here is a quote from the jacket of the linked book:
"All these melancholy consequences flowed from the failure of the Western powers to back the oil companies to the hilt from the early months of 1970 onwards, to stop Qaddafi in his tracks in the summer of that year, to prick the bubble of the shah's insensate illusions about his own power and consequence, and to help the companies to gain the upper hand of OPEC at Tehran at the outset of 1971. . . .The argument that was used at the time, and which has been used ad nauseam everr since, to justify the supine behaviour of the Western powers, and of the United States and Britain in particular, was that any show of firmness over oil prices would have brought retribution in the form of an oil embargo, something that the peoples of Western Europe and the United States were in no mood to tolerate. It is not an argument that reflects much credit upon those who made it, or upon those on whose behalf it was made. . ."
*****
Further, it is made clear with each statement coming out of Royal Saudi mouths -
Hugh Fitzgerald reminds us ""royals" for people who a generation ago were simply tribal chiefs "-
an oil embargo is not likely to be tolerated any better by the ever growing number of well greased "royals" (numbering in the thousands) or with the well funded religious elite.
The Saudi family is precariously enjoying their "royal" stature at the patient whim of their highly infuential cleric populations.
****
Conveniently forgotten is the terror of
November 20, 1979 at the Siege of Mecca
the events of which initiated this very same Saudi royal family to actively nurture and export Juhayman Al Otaibi's violent brand of Islam around the world - wahabbism.
The consequences of this forgotten crisis—which remains blotted out of history books in Saudi Arabia and many other Muslim lands—last to this day.
In tackling Juhayman’s brazen attack on its holiest shrine, the Saudi government showed sickening arrogance, cruel incompetence, and bewildering disregard for the truth. The royal family’s image was sullied forever. Many Muslims in Saudi Arabia and beyond, including the young Osama Bin Laden, were so repulsed by the carnage in Mecca that their loyalty started to fracture. In following years, they drifted toward open opposition to the House of Saud and its American backers. The fiery ideology that inspired Juhayman’s men to murder and mayhem in Islam’s holy of holies mutated with time into increasingly more vicious strains, culminating in al Qaeda’s death cult.
By a coincidence of global events, it is precisely this ideology that American policy makers—and the House of Saud—found right after the crisis in Mecca to be of great value on the Cold War battlefronts. Instead of being suppressed, Juhayman’s brutal brand of Islam was encouraged and nurtured as it metastasized across the planet since 1979. Today, hordes of his spiritual heirs are busy blowing up airplanes, tourist hotels, and commuter trains on four continents, self-satisfied smiles of true believers curling their lips.
The significance of the Mecca uprising was missed at the time even by the most sharp-eyed observers. Too many other threats preoccupied the West. The seizure of the Grand Mosque—the first large-scale operation by an international jihadi movement in modern times—was shrugged off as a local incident, an anachronistic throwback to Arabia’s Bedouin past.
But with the benefit of hindsight, it is painfully clear: the countdown to September 11, to the terrorist bombings in London and Madrid, and to the grisly Islamist violence ravaging Afghanistan and Iraq all began on that warm November morning, in the shade of the Kaaba.
***
Read Kelly . . . his writing style is excellent and very informative . . .the material makes for excellent entertainment, often reading like a fictional novel. Unfortunately, it's not fiction and our policy makers just refuse to realize it.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 2:22:00 pm
HerRoyalWhyness,
Great comment.
I'll check out that book. Thanks for telling us about it.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008 2:50:00 pm