Geopolitics – Apokalyps Nu!

09-04-19 01:46:00,

The United States have become the leading world producer of hydrocarbons. As from now, they are using their dominant position exclusively to maximise their profits, and do not hesitate to eliminate their major rivals in oil production, plunging their citizens into misery. Although in the past, access to Middle East oil was a vital necessity for their economy (Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr.), then a market over which they presided (Clinton), and then again a failing ressouce whose supply they wanted to control (Bush Jr., Obama), hydrocarbons have now become black gold (Trump). Thierry Meyssan retraces the evolution of this bloody market.

Economy depends primarily on the source of energy to which it has access. This need has always been one of the main causes of war. At one time, it was necessary to put slaves to work in the fields then, in the 19th century, to seize coal with which to feed machinery, and today we rely on hydrocarbons (oil and gas).

To avoid looking at this logic too closely, men have always invented good reasons to justify what they are doing.

Thus, today we believe
that Iran is being sanctioned because of its military nuclear programme (which it closed down in 1988);
that the installations and assets of the PDVSA (Venezuelan Oil) have been seized in order to transfer them from the dictator Maduro to Juan Guaido’s team (although it is the former and not the latter who was constitutionally elected President of Venezuela);
or again that the United States maintains its military presence in Syria in order to support their Kurdish allies against the dictator el-Assad (while in fact the Kurds are mercenaries who do not represent their people, and el-Assad was democratically elected).

These narratives have no real basis in truth and are contradicted by the facts. We believe them because we think we can make a profit from them.

The world market

Hydrocarbons represent the major world market, more important than foodstuffs, weapons, medicine and drugs. At first, they were managed by private companies, before becoming, in the 1960’s, the private hunting ground of states. As the economy developed, new actors stepped in, and the market became increasingly unpredictable. Besides this, from the end of the USSR until the return of Russia,

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20-10-18 08:39:00,

A cursory warning was left by renowned physics professor Stephen Hawking regarding a future where a race of superhumans, manipulating their DNA, would taking control of their own evolution. The warning came just before his death in March of this year.

The Washington Post in its article, “Stephen Hawking feared race of ‘superhumans’ able to manipulate their own DNA,” would explain (my emphasis):

Before he died in March, the Cambridge University professor predicted that people this century would gain the capacity to edit human traits such as intelligence and aggression. And he worried that the capacity for genetic engineering would be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy.

To be clear, Professor Hawking wasn’t warning about the technology in and of itself, but its monopolization by a handful of wealthy interests.

The Threat of Technological Monopolies

When we look at any chapter in human history, disparity in technology has always led to tragic episodes of exploitation, violence, atrocities and even genocide. The invention and use of firearms by Western Europeans against tribes everywhere from Asia and Africa to North and South America provide us one look at how huge advantages in technology have been abused against those who lack access to it.

The invention of the atomic bomb gave the United States a period of time where it held a virtual monopoly over nuclear weapons. It eagerly used not one, but two atomic bombs on the already defeated Japanese at the end of World War II. Before America’s nuclear monopoly was finally broken up by first Soviet and then Chinese nuclear weapon tests, the US had considered using further nuclear weapons during the Korean War and at at least two junctures during the Vietnam War.

Today, corporate monopolies over the very sort of biotechnology that will give rise to the race of superhumans Professor Hawking warned about, are already a source of constant, steeply controversial use and abuse.

Whether it is deceptive business practices by large agricultural corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Bayer peddling unsafe genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or pharmaceutical corporations seizing, then price gouging charity and publicly-funded breakthroughs like gene therapy, we can already see attempts being made to concentrate biotechnology in the hands of the wealthy,

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Categorie: Geopolitics

The geopolitics of oil in the Trump era, by Thierry Meyssan

The Geopolitics of Human Gene Editing | New Eastern Outlook