10/16/15

Obama Plans Takedown of Another U.S. Ally

President Obama failed to take out Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but now he’s going after Canada’s Conservative Party Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a big supporter of Israel and opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It’s a story the U.S. media won’t cover. But Judi McLeod of the Canada Free Press has been documenting how Obama is planning the “fundamental transformation” of Canada by taking down Harper’s government and bringing to power a progressive majority assembled from Canada’s Liberal Party and New Democratic Party (NDP), an affiliate of the Socialist International.

In a dispatch earlier this year, McLeod provided the facts about the interference of Obama campaign operatives in the Canadian elections scheduled for October 19. “In Canada, Obama’s campaign team is guiding the election campaigns of both the Liberals and the NDP,” she wrote. She urged the Harper government to investigate.

She explained why Obama is targeting Canada: “To the U.S., Canada is the country next door, to Obama it’s home of the architects of the maligned Keystone XL Pipeline and home to the world’s Number One elected defender of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Indeed, for the last seven years Harper has not only been supporting Israel but functioning as the leader of the Free World, in the face of Obama’s deal-making with America’s enemies and adversaries. In 2014, at the summit of G20 nations, Harper famously told Russian President Putin that he needs “to get out of Ukraine.” Putin replied with a lie, saying the Russians weren’t in Ukraine.

Harper has declared, “Israel is the front line of free democratic nations, and any who turn their back on Israel or turn a blind eye to the nature of Israel’s enemies do so in the long run at their own peril.”

In a recent speech to the Jewish Community Council of Montreal, he said, “Those who hate democracy and freedom, tolerance and openness, having been plotting attacks against Western nations, beginning with Israel, for decades, seeking to destroy our rare and precious way of life. We were told for years to just ignore the erosion of freedoms and the growing aggression of Putin’s Russia. Look where that has taken the world.”

Canada used to have a conservative cable channel, Sun News Network. But it went out of business earlier this year when the channel failed to get enough distribution to pay for expenses. Cable companies in Canada were carrying foreign channels such as Al Jazeera and Putin’s Russia Today, but wouldn’t carry Sun News. Brian Lilley, a former host on the network, said that the cable companies “didn’t like the message.” He explained, “They didn’t like that we were brash, we were very conservative. We were pro-business, pro-family, pro-oil, pro-Israel. We were pro-America…They decided to shut us down.”

Lilley and his former colleagues have formed TheRebel.media as a replacement, with special news coverage of national and international news. The group’sYouTube channel, with 1,500 videos, is the place to go for conservative coverage of the Canadian elections and other news. Their videos have already attracted millions of views. A report by Ezra Levant on the election describes reporters at Canada’s state broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC), as “liberals with press credentials.” Lilley has been leading a campaign to have the government, which provides about $1 billion to the CBC, sell the broadcasting entity to the private sector. Visitors can also get access to podcasts, columns and blogs, and contribute financially to maintain and expand this important site for news and information.

While the Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau campaigns for legal dope and injection centers for drug addicts, and the New Democratic Party proposes Bernie Sanders-style socialism for Canada, the Conservative Party of Canada has been on the side of individual freedom, traditional values and free enterprise. Harper has taken on the jihadists who want to destroy Western civilization and has spoken eloquently about the stakes for the Free World, such as in a 2014 speech to the Tribute to Liberty Dinner in Toronto. The topic on this occasion was the need to establish a Memorial to Victims of Communism in Canada.

“During the 20th century, communism’s poisonous ideology and ruthless practice slowly bled into countries all around the world, on almost every continent,”Harper said. “The result was nothing short of catastrophic. More than one hundred million souls were lost, an almost incomprehensible number. We must never forget that these are not numbers, they are not statistics. They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. Their futures, their potential, their hopes and dreams, were stolen from them. Our hearts break for those who suffered and we mourn for those who were crushed.”

After affirming Canada’s solidarity with Ukraine, in the face of Russian aggression, Harper described another current threat, international Islamic terrorism, and said, “…whatever it calls itself—Nazism, Marxist-Leninism, today, terrorism—they all have one thing in common: the destruction, the end of human liberty. My fear is this: as we move further into the 21st century, Canadians, especially new generations, will forget or will not be taught the lessons hard learned and the victories hard earned over the last 100 years. That they will fall even further in love with ease and convenience. And that they will not understand that their rights and their advantages, their peace and their security, were won by people willing to live and die for what is good and right.”

Harper, in power since 2006, has truly been the leader of the Free World over the last seven years. He is a reminder of what an American president should be standing for in the world. No wonder Obama wants to finish him off.

05/20/15

What’s Your Vision of Our Future?

By: Dick Manasseri

Jon McNaughton

Once you read:

Obama’s Betrayal of America: Stating, and now Proving, the Obvious

Think about your own vision for what happens to America – to our children/grandchildren:

Here’s mine:

Obama is favoring the Shia in Iran to hold back the Sunni-ISIS in Iraq.

He is OK with Iran having nukes and he knows that the Saudis can get nukes from Pakistan.

I believe that Obama/Putin/China want the threat of nuclear chaos in the Middle East to bubble over to a potential terrorist nuclear attack here; that combined with the spectacle of American cities on fire via anti-Cop jihad will bring the US to its knees with a declaration of martial law and suspension of the Constitution – an important milestone.

The resolution of hostilities and the threat of greater chaos here lead to a UN resolution and national referendum that it is OK to drop the Constitution indefinitely. We will need a strong leader to quell the chaos and align us with the governance of the UN.

Russia/China/Nuclear-Islam will call the shots and we will essentially become a colony of the UN with enclaves of people living in fear of each other needing the national police force to keep order and control. Third world enclaves will expand exponentially with open borders and unrestricted UN-driven refugee resettlement.

Our natural resources will be administered by the UN and China will begin to be paid back for our debt with our oil, coal, land, etc. Russia will get access to resources in Alaska and the Arctic. Islam will have growing enclaves within America plus much of the Caliphate secured in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and countless enclaves in Western Europe. Russia expands into Eastern Europe and South America. China gets much of the Pacific.

We are enslaved within a colony which was once free.

Comments from a friend: “Total police control. Spying on people. People get money by computer credits that can be removed based on a crime or bad behavior. Or just not going with the project/program.”

What’s in your crystal ball?

03/26/15

Russian Freedom Lovers Want Ted Cruz for President

By: Trevor Loudon
New Zeal

American Putinistas and other fools please take note.

From a friend in Moscow.

According to a poll conducted by the most popular pro-democratic radio/Internet-resource in Russia, the majority would like to have Ted Cruz as Russia’s head of state (no fake, no joke):

Ted Cruz has the “inspiration factor.” We haven’t seen that since Reagan. Russian freedom lovers loved Reagan too.

01/23/15

Mendacity is Still the State of the Union

By: Roger Aronoff
Accuracy in Media

Following last year’s State of the Union address by President Barack Obama, I titled my column “The State of the Union is Mendacity.” It is quite remarkable how little within it would need to be changed to have it apply to this week’s State of the Union. From the recovering economy, to negotiations with Iran, to the containment and defeat of “violent extremism,” to equal pay for women and the need to combat climate change, to a call for a minimum wage hike—there is little difference between the laundry lists presented by President Obama in 2014 and 2015.

But there is a major difference in the political climate.

“The most important omission [in the President’s State of the Union] was the fact that there were 83 fewer Democrats in the chamber this year than the first time he gave a State of the Union speech and dozens less than the number of his fellow party members that were there last year,” writes Jonathan S. Tobin for Commentary magazine. “The historic rejection of both the president’s party and his policies in last November’s midterm elections was treated in the speech as if it had never happened.”

Instead, America was treated to a laundry list of liberal agenda items, right after President Obama first said he would “focus less on a checklist of proposals, and focus more on the values at stake in the choices before us.”

“When we looked at what Obama actually proposed, all we found was a musty laundry list of liberal programs, most of which already got huge boosts in spending and failed to deliver on their promises,” comments Investors Business Daily.

Yet President Obama’s worn-out list was greeted with praise from the mainstream media. NBC Today Show co-host Savannah Guthrie cheered Obama as “displaying renewed swagger in his sixth address to the nation as he outlined a vision for the final two years of his presidency.”

The New York Times said that “It was hardly surprising that a president who expects so little from Congress devoted some of his speech to celebrating the things that he has accomplished against considerable odds.”

“In fact, he seemed so confident you would have thought he had just won another election,” asserted Jonathan Karl of ABC News.

President Obama’s comment that he has “no more campaigns to run” was greeted with applause and laughter, to which he retorted, “I know because I won both of them.”

Rather than pointing to how the 2014 election could be seen as a referendum on President Obama’s failed policies, Matt Lauer, co-host of NBC’s Today Show, asked Vice President Joe Biden whether he saw “that as a moment of disrespect? Was it a symptom of the very pettiness that the President was referring to?” He also salivated over a potential 2016 Biden presidential bid, asking, “You’re known as a guy who can work a room. Boy, are you good at that. Do you think you could work that room, Vice President Biden?” Lauer didn’t ask a single question challenging any of Obama’s claims or assertions from the night before.

While the mainstream media cheer, others have a more critical view of what Tobin calls Obama’s credibility gap “that is as wide as the Grand Canyon.”

“What Obama has delivered is not an address, but a black hole of lies in which each lie clusters next to a dozen more until it is impossible to see the light,” writes Daniel Greenfield. For example, “Obama insists on taking credit for an energy revolution that he battled every step of the way and continues to fight with his Keystone veto threat,” writes Greenfield. “Instead of admitting that fracking and cheap Saudi oil made the difference, he went on touting his solar and wind boondoggles that have cost a fortune.”

President Obama also touted such green energy “successes” in his 2014 address.

“Obama also claims to have beaten Putin,” writes Greenfield. “There’s only one minor problem with that. In the real world, Russia still controls Crimea. While in the unreal world, Obama controls CNN.”

And The Washington Post editorial board concluded the day after President Obama’s State of the Union, that there is a “pervasive disconnect in Western thinking about the regime of Vladimir Putin”—and that “Russian forces, after several weeks of relative calm” had just “launched a new offensive in eastern Ukraine.”

President Obama also asserted in his speech that “we’ve halted the progress of the nuclear program” in Iran and “reduced its stockpile of nuclear material.” He then threatened to veto any sanctions bill “that threatens to undo this progress.” He is referring to a likely bipartisan bill calling for additional sanctions if negotiations with Iran fall apart. The idea is to incentivize Iran to make a deal wherein it agrees to end its nuclear weapons capability, but President Obama says that if Congress were to pass such a bill, “the risks and likelihood this ends up at some point a military confrontation is heightened.”

“The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran,” said Democratic Senator Robert Menendez (NJ) the day after the President’s speech.

The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column took a look at the claims by the President of having “halted the progress of the nuclear program” and of having “reduced its stockpile of nuclear material,” and gave those claims three Pinocchios, meaning, “Significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.”

Regarding the President’s refusal to refer to “Islamic” terrorism or extremism, another Democrat took exception. She is Rep. Tulsi Gabbard who is and has been in the Army National Guard for more than a decade. She served a one-year combat tour of duty in Iraq starting in 2004, and a second tour in the Middle East a few years later. Gabbard is the first American Samoan and the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. Congress—now in her second term—representing a district in Hawaii. Gabbard was on Neil Cavuto’s show on the Fox News Channel, and told Cavuto:

Terminology in the use of this specific term is important…last night the President came and talked to Congress about coming to request an authorization to use military force. By his not using this term, Islamic extremism, and clearly identifying our enemy, it raised a whole host of questions in exactly what congress will be authorizing. Who will we be targeting? Who is our enemy? And unless you understand who your enemy is, unless you clearly identify your enemy, then you cannot come up with a very effective strategy to defeat that enemy. So this is what’s giving me great concern as we look specifically at this authorization, but also as we look at this overall issue of how do we defeat this threat of Islamic extremism that’s not just occurring in the Middle East, that isn’t just about this one group called ISIS, or another group called al Qaeda. It’s a much larger war, really, that is as much an ideological war as it is a military war.

Amidst the dangerously conciliatory stance that the President has adopted toward Iran, and the weak military effort to “degrade and defeat ISIL,” the media should praise Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for inviting Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to speak to Congress about the growing Iranian threat. Instead, Politico criticizes that “the Speaker didn’t consult with the administration before inviting Netanyahu to address Congress,” and the Speaker is “setting up his most dramatic foreign policy confrontation with President Barack Obama to date.” The speech is scheduled for March 3rd.

Not only is Congress a co-equal branch of government, with the ability to invite whomever they want, but President Obama made the highlight of his last State of the Union executive action—and going around Congress when they won’t comply with his agenda.

“He expects us to stand idly by and do nothing while he cuts a bad deal with Iran. Two words: ‘Hell no!’ … We’re going to do no such thing,” said Speaker Boehner.

The Speaker’s move is a show of support for Israel, and the Western leader who, more than any other, faces the daily threat of Islamic jihadist terrorism, and the very real threat of an Iranian regime that has explicitly stated on numerous occasions their plans to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

The White House has already announced that the President won’t be meeting with Netanyahu on that trip, saying that it’s too close to Israel’s election, also slated for March. It will be interesting to see what, if any, pressure the Obama administration puts on Netanyahu to cancel his planned address. Speaker Boehner is betting that Netanyahu has more credibility in this country on Iran and Islamic jihadi terrorism than President Obama does. And there is probably no one who can better speak to these matters with such authority and eloquence.

It should certainly make for a better speech than this year’s policy prescriptions recycled from last year, even if the media were determined to shower President Obama with undeserved, fawning praise for simply showing up.

01/6/15

HarperCollins Revisionist History and Geography Series

The People’s Cube

Red Square

Dedicated to HarperCollins, which recently published atlases scrubbed of the existence of the state of Israel, so as not to hurt the feelings of its Middle East customers. Reported by our friend and frequent contributor, Marion D.S. Dreyfus. Illustrated by Red Square, People’s Director.

Harper's Revisionist History and Geography

Hey, kids, who said History and Geography have to hurt? See how much cooler, more fashionable, and less painful they can be with Harper’s new textbook series, where every fact and location have been revised, updated and revisited. Just try these on for size!

* * *
Al Jazeera HQ have now inched across the continent to Vienna, closer to the station’s European audiences, in the hundreds of millions. Of course, Vienna has been the mighty capital of the Austro-Hungarian Caliphate since 1683, after the army of the Ottoman Empire and its fiefdoms commanded by Grand Vizier Mustafa Pasha liberated the city from the infidel occupiers who spoke in some gibberish, now-forgotten dialect. Vienna was chosen over the Islamic Republic of al-Andalus (known as Spain prior to 711 CE) due to superior in-house plumbing and more obedient servants.

Kim Jong Il, still ill, hands over the North Korean barrens to his daughter, Kim Jong Kimberly, a pretty little thing also fond of basketball. She is engaged to an American athlete, Dennis Rodman, who has just left the bedside of his former fiancée, Justina Bieber.

President Ted Cruz recently jailed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for crimes linked to Benghazi, along with an unspecified number of co-conspirators involved in the ambassadorial conflagration and deaths of many American servicemen and diplomatic corps. Her dresser and fashion consultant, Huma Abedin, was given special dispensation to visit Ms. Clinton, a widow, incarcerated as much for style abuses as incompetence in office. She has sort of renounced her Muslim Brotherhood linkage. Time will tell. (Kidding.)

The Antarctic, now in the bearish sphere of USSR influence, has been declared a Nyet-Go zone, as the Soviets under the leadership of General Secretary Leonid Putin extract minerals and precious commodities from the icy substrate, thereby increasing their country’s output to more than just oil, vodka and wooden nested dolls, to include permafrost yields.

The bastard child of Stanley Ann Dunham, a multi-married amateur anthropologist and former pornographer’s model for a petty Communist drug seller cum photographer in Chicago, was successfully aborted, following the opportune 1961 Roe v. Wade court decision. Ms. Dunham married a local boy, moved to Tallahassee, and began teaching Secret Byways of the Middle East, having instead of her first abortee tissue-waste two others, both Caucasian, moderate socialists in good standing, dabbling in comic-book culture. Both have purchased but rejected the annals of radicalism peddled by one Saul Alinsky, who piddled out before his little book gained much traction.

Saddam Hussein, still living large in his capacious palace in Baghdad, has genially handed the reins of his Iraqi domain to paradigms-in-chief, Cusay and Uday, for managerial continuity. The Hussein brothers appear often in the backrooms of clubs, dragging attractive young wives of other men into their lairs for a touch of R&R (rape and recuperation). Iraq continues its long, slow smolder as it is kept in check by the Hussein brothers.

The war in the disputed Falklands, waged by the British under PM Margaret Thatcher, assisted by an aged Winnie Churchill well past his sell-by date, was lost to the Argentineans, and the Brits turned tail and went back, frigates between their navy, to the Emerald Isle–but without their legendary millennial mini-territory. The islands are now dubbed the Malvinas everywhere, including the British texts taught to the largely Wahhabist students of the UK.

Sen. Edward Kennedy succeeded in re-election after he saved Mary Jo Kopechne from his sinking Oldsmobile following a senatorial after-hours carouse with senate aides attended by all-female secretaries and all-male Senate staffers. Kennedy is happily ensconced in a retirement home in Boca, frequently entertaining his playboy nephew, William Kennedy Jones, who is occasionally up to his old tricks, climbing trees as a prank, peering into women’s dorms. Hyannis, the longtime Kennedy family preserve, is now in the possession of Steve Jobs, still going strong in his creative electronics mold, though considerably poorer, given the failure of his pet computer innovations of the ’90s and ’00s.

Ahmadinejad, the little sad grocer in Tehran, is said to be becoming expert in the mystic arts of Hom’s exotic carpet weaving. His silken output commands fees in excess of $10,000 for a room-sized floor covering. Guaranteed to last. Diplomats to Iran’s peaceable kingdom are as usual enjoying the embassy, with its luxe pools and amenities.Having won the war, Japan has instituted mandatory Kan’ji calligraphy coursework in all secondary schools, with lunchrooms across the land featuring sushi, wasabi, and soy sauce with modified sodium. The Deutsche curricula have been suspended for the past 60 years, as the Midnight Sun emperor decided German was too taxing on the throat and vocal chords of most speakers. And since the Japanese beat all the rest of the armies in 1949, Germans and Germanica were dispensable.

The State of Israel, a never-was, has been economically excised from the atlases of Harper/Creations, to suit the mindset and offsets of their clients in the Middle East, from Sea to Bloody Sea. Funded by the recent great gas and oil finds in the Mediterranean, named al-Leviathan and al-Tamarisk, they have money to burn, among other things. Jordan, peaceful Syria, and Mahmoud Abash are currently running a quiet casino of Mafia-like accountability and incautious income. Palestinian marginals are still dispersed and hanging in with UNRWA in 57 Muslim countries. All are invited into the Magic Kingdom. C’mon down, and shukran, y’all.

Marion D.S. Dreyfus | Illustrations by Red Square, People’s Director

12/29/14

Did The Saudis And The US Collude In Dropping Oil Prices?

The oil price drop that has dominated the headlines in recent weeks has been framed almost exclusively in terms of oil market economics, with most media outlets blaming Saudi Arabia, through its OPEC Trojan horse, for driving down the price, thus causing serious damage to the world’s major oil exporters – most notably Russia.

While the market explanation is partially true, it is simplistic, and fails to address key geopolitical pressure points in the Middle East.

Oilprice.com looked beyond the headlines for the reason behind the oil price drop, and found that the explanation, while difficult to prove, may revolve around control of oil and gas in the Middle East and the weakening of Russia, Iran and Syria by flooding the market with cheap oil.

The oil weapon

We don’t have to look too far back in history to see Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and producer, using the oil price to achieve its foreign policy objectives. In 1973, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat convinced Saudi King Faisal to cut production and raise prices, then to go as far as embargoing oil exports, all with the goal of punishing the United States for supporting Israel against the Arab states. It worked. The “oil price shock” quadrupled prices.

It happened again in 1986, when Saudi Arabia-led OPEC allowed prices to drop precipitously, and then in 1990, when the Saudis sent prices plummeting as a way of taking out Russia, which was seen as a threat to their oil supremacy. In 1998, they succeeded. When the oil price was halved from $25 to $12, Russia defaulted on its debt.

The Saudis and other OPEC members have, of course, used the oil price for the obverse effect, that is, suppressing production to keep prices artificially high and member states swimming in “petrodollars”. In 2008, oil peaked at $147 a barrel.

Turning to the current price drop, the Saudis and OPEC have a vested interest in taking out higher-cost competitors, such as US shale oil producers, who will certainly be hurt by the lower price. Even before the price drop, the Saudis were selling their oil to China at a discount. OPEC’s refusal on Nov. 27 to cut production seemed like the baldest evidence yet that the oil price drop was really an oil price war between Saudi Arabia and the US.

However, analysis shows the reasoning is complex, and may go beyond simply taking down the price to gain back lost marketshare.

“What is the reason for the United States and some U.S. allies wanting to drive down the price of oil?” Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro asked rhetorically in October. “To harm Russia.”

Many believe the oil price plunge is the result of deliberate and well-planned collusion on the part of the United States and Saudi Arabia to punish Russia and Iran for supporting the murderous Assad regime in Syria.

Punishing Assad and friends

Proponents of this theory point to a Sept. 11 meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry and Saudi King Abdullah at his palace on the Red Sea. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, it was during that meeting that a deal was hammered out between Kerry and Abdullah. In it, the Saudis would support Syrian airstrikes against Islamic State (ISIS), in exchange for Washington backing the Saudis in toppling Assad.

If in fact a deal was struck, it would make sense, considering the long-simmering rivalry between Saudi Arabia and its chief rival in the region: Iran. By opposing Syria, Abdullah grabs the opportunity to strike a blow against Iran, which he sees as a powerful regional rival due to its nuclear ambitions, its support for militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and its alliance with Syria, which it provides with weapons and funding. The two nations are also divided by religion, with the majority of Saudis following the Sunni version of Islam, and most Iranians considering themselves Shi’ites.

“The conflict is now a full-blown proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which is playing out across the region,” Reuters reported on Dec. 15. “Both sides increasingly see their rivalry as a winner-take-all conflict: if the Shi’ite Hezbollah gains an upper hand in Lebanon, then the Sunnis of Lebanon—and by extension, their Saudi patrons—lose a round to Iran. If a Shi’ite-led government solidifies its control of Iraq, then Iran will have won another round.”

The Saudis know the Iranians are vulnerable on the oil price. Experts say the country needs $140 a barrel oil to balance its budget; at sub-$60 prices, the Saudis succeed in pressuring Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamanei, possibly containing its nuclear ambitions and making the country more pliable to the West, which has the power to reduce or lift sanctions if Iran cooperates.

Adding credence to this theory, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting earlier this month that the fall in oil prices was “politically motivated” and a “conspiracy against the interests of the region, the Muslim people and the Muslim world.”

Pipeline conspiracy

Some commentators have offered a more conspiratorial theory for the Saudis wanting to get rid of Assad. They point to a 2011 agreement between Syria, Iran and Iraq that would see a pipeline running from the Iranian Port Assalouyeh to Damascus via Iraq. The $10-billion project would take three years to complete and would be fed gas from the South Pars gas field, which Iran shares with Qatar. Iranian officials have said they plan to extend the pipeline to the Mediterranean to supply gas to Europe – in competition with Qatar, the world’s largest LNG exporter.

“The Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline – if it’s ever built – would solidify a predominantly Shi’ite axis through an economic, steel umbilical cord,” wrote Asia Times correspondent Pepe Escobar.

Global Research, a Canada-based think tank, goes further to suggest that Assad’s refusal in 2009 to allow Qatar to construct a gas pipeline from its North Field through Syria and on to Turkey and the EU, combined with the 2011 pipeline deal, “ignited the full-scale Saudi and Qatari assault on Assad’s power.”

“Today the US-backed wars in Ukraine and in Syria are but two fronts in the same strategic war to cripple Russia and China and to rupture any Eurasian counter-pole to a US-controlled New World Order. In each, control of energy pipelines, this time primarily of natural gas pipelines—from Russia to the EU via Ukraine and from Iran and Syria to the EU via Syria—is the strategic goal,” Global Research wrote in an Oct. 26 post.

Poking the Russian bear

How does Russia play into the oil price drop? As a key ally of Syria, supplying Assad with billions in weaponry, President Vladimir Putin has, along with Iran, found himself targeted by the House of Saud. Putin’s territorial ambitions in the Ukraine have also put him at odds with US President Barack Obama and leaders of the EU, which in May of this year imposed a set of sanctions on Russia.

As has been noted, Saudi Arabia’s manipulation of the oil price has twice targeted Russia. This time, the effects of a low price have hit Moscow especially hard due to sanctions already in place combined with the low ruble. Last week, in an effort to defend its currency, the Bank of Russia raised interest rates to 17 percent. The measure failed, with the ruble dropping another 20 percent, leading to speculation the country could impose capital controls. Meanwhile, Putin took the opportunity in his annual televised address to announce that while the economy is likely to suffer for the next two years and that Russians should brace for a recession, “Our economy will get diversified and oil prices will go back up.”

He may be right, but what will the effect be on Russia of a sustained period of low oil prices? Eric Reguly, writing in The Globe and Mail last Saturday, points out that with foreign exchange reserves at around $400 billion, the Russian state is “in no danger of collapse” even in the event of a deep recession. Reguly predicts the greater threat is to the Russian private sector, which has a debt overhang of some $700 billion.

“This month alone, $30-billion of that amount must be repaid, with another $100-billion coming due next year. The problem is made worse by the economic sanctions, which have made it all but impossible for Russian companies to finance themselves in Western markets,” he writes.

Will it work?

Whether one is a conspiracy theorist or a market theorist, in explaining the oil price drop, it really matters little, for the effect is surely more important than the cause. Putin has already shown himself to be a master player in the chess game of energy politics, so the suggestion that sub-$60 oil will crush the Russian leader has to be met with a healthy degree of skepticism.

Moscow’s decision on Dec. 1 to drop the $45-billion South Stream natural gas pipeline project in favor of a new pipeline deal with Turkey shows Putin’s willingness to circumvent European partners to continue deliveries of natural gas to European countries that depend heavily on Russia for its energy requirements. The deal also puts Turkey squarely in the Russian energy camp at a time when Russia has been alienated by the West.

Of course, the Russian dalliance with China is a key part of Putin’s great Eastern pivot that will keep stoking demand for Russian gas even as the Saudis and OPEC, perhaps with US collusion, keep pumping to hold down the price. The November agreement, that would see Gazprom supply Chinese state oil company CNPC with 30 billion cubic meters of gas per year, builds on an earlier deal to sell China 38 bcm annually in an agreement valued at $400 billion.

As Oilprice.com commented on Sunday, “ongoing projects are soldiering on and Russian oil output is projected to remain unchanged into 2015.”

“Russia will go down with the ship before ceding market share – especially in Asia, where Putin reaffirmed the pivot is real. Saudi Arabia and North America will have to keep pumping as Putin plans to uphold his end in this game of brinksmanship.”

Source: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Did-The-Saudis-And-The-US-Collude-In-Dropping-Oil-Prices.html

By Andrew Topf of Oilprice.com