Posted on 07/09/2014 6:38:30 PM PDT by Lorianne
Veteran journalist and author, James Howard Kunstler, is worried about the violence heating up in the Middle East–especially Saudi Arabia. Kunstler says, “Saudi Arabia is between a rock and a hard place, or should I say Iraq and a hard place. Both sides that are now contending in Iraq, the Shiite and the Islamic State or caliphate, are both not friendly with Saudi Arabia. When we talk about Saudi Arabia, we have to make a distinction. We are really talking about the Saud Family and their Kingdom and their gripe on the Kingdom. . . . Now, they are stuck between the Iran sponsored Iraqi government—Shiites and the Sunni Islamic State rebels who do not want to see the Saudi Kingdom continue.”
There is no viable peace process anywhere in the Middle East, and Kunstler goes on to say, “We’ve never really seen much disorder in Saudi Arabia in our lifetimes. The kind of disorder that is going on all over the Middle East and North Africa has simply not been happening in Saudi Arabia. So, really, all bets are off. This ISIS, Islamic State, group is a true black swan. It came out of nowhere about three of four weeks ago and dismantled the 8 year and several trillion dollar project of nation building, and 4,500 American lives lost, that the U.S. has been carrying on. We really don’t know where they are going next. We don’t know where this thing is going. This thing is literally a loose artillery shell on the deck of the ship of history.”
Kunstler goes on to point out, “You probably noticed that we are not shooting at anybody because we don’t know what to shoot at and how to do the shooting right now. Just about everything we have done in the entire region has been counterproductive and has produced more chaos. It may be an unfortunate fact there is not much more we can do. Life is tragic, and there are consequences to the things we do to people, and societies make bad choices and they have to live with them, and we have to live with the bad choices we’ve made with the interventions in the Middle East, and we have no idea where this thing is going.” I think you and me and just about everyone else would not like to enter some sort of World War III situation. If Saudi Arabia goes off-line, I think you going to see an awful lot of stress in the global economy. I think there are a lot of people in Washington at this moment that are very, very nervous. We just aren’t seeing it.”
Kunstler also says that society is totally unprepared for what is coming. His upcoming book, “A History of the Future,” continues a fictional story of what America is like after a societal meltdown caused by the loss of cheap oil. Even though this is fiction, it is anchored in massive research Kunstler does on oil, energy and the economy. Kunstler says, “I wrote this nonfiction book back in 2005 called “The Long Emergency.” That really kind of laid out the initial case for peak oil and the financial shenanigans that were under way and were disrupting the banking system and really the capital formation system in the whole developed world.” After that, he wrote of series of fictional books about what life would be like after a real economic crash. Kunstler says, “I wanted to get to the readers in a visceral way to tell them what the consequences of these disruptions might be. These people are living an 1830’s lifestyle again, and there has been a considerable die-off in the population. I wrote a book for each of the four seasons and this latest one, “A History of the Future.” In this book, the nation has broken up into several breakaway nations. I think this book is disturbing but a lot of fun.”
[snip]
No one will be happier than Obama to see oil cut off and Russia the only major exporter.
I have some gripes regarding SA....
The Saud family has a gripe on the Kingdom?
I kept hearing this, if so our intel community sucks.
If Saudi Arabia goes down, who will take their place in buying off Congress?
Really? They are hell bent on imposing one flag on all moslems, and then converting the rest of the non-moslem world to islam. They will continue to pursue that objective unless and until stopped violently.
It's not that nobody knows where this thing is going. It's just that nobody wants to admit, much less deal with the reality of it.
I’m not worried about a lack of oil from the middle east.
As our domestic supply ramps up, the Chinese (whose consumption is continuing to increase quickly) are becoming the ragheads’ big customer.
They’re not going to conduct business like Europe or the US does. That oil will be extracted and shipped to China no matter what ISIS, Al Queda, or Iran has to say.
ISIS?
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