Some thoughts about Saudi Arabia

So, why does the USA cuddle up to Saudi Arabia, a nation whose state religion is a form of Islam that requires the death or forced conversion of everyone who isn’t a Muslim? How come eleven (?) Saudis, organised by a the son of a Saudi millionaire, fly a plane into the WTC and damn near manage to fly planes into the Pentagon and the White House, and Bush sends the army to attack – wait for it – Iraq? Why did Obama have to go to Saudi Arabia and kiss ass?

It’s about the oil, dummy. It always was. It really is that simple.

The oil under the sands of the Arabian Peninsula is the greatest material prize in human history. If we discover Lasseter’s Reef, all that will happen is that the price of gold will nosedive. Gold isn’t all that useful. But oil – oil is another story. Never mind the energy – where do you think plastics come from? Fertilizer? You think we want to go back to making things out of wood and sheetmetal? You think we want to return to an age when almost everyone was engaged in simply growing the food?

Back in the 1950’s, the USA purchased it. Made a trade for it. The oil. All the oil. Oh sure, they didn’t take delivery right away, but what they bought was a right to unlimited amounts of the stuff. The deal was: the Sauds would sell their oil only in US dollars (which the reserve bank of the USA prints out of thin air for nothing), and would invest their profits only in US treasuries (a debt that you never have to make good is no debt at all, and in any case US treasuries have been paying 0% for over a decade).

In return, the USA would provide the House of Saud with “security”. That’s the USA’s main export, you know. “Security”. The wars are trade shows. The military bases are shop-fronts. All selling “security”. And what might “security” be? It’s when someone agrees to kill your enemies for you. Oh, and also to not kill you. Call it “protection”, if you like.

That’s why “gas” in the USA is so cheap – they are always shocked at the price of petrol when they come overseas.

This isn’t some conspiracy theory, by the way. It’s well-established history. The US/Saudi agreement established the “petrodollar”, on which the whole economy of the late 20th century was based. You have heard the term, right? It is totally a thing.

But, there’s a couple of things going down at present. First, Saudi Arabia will run out of the stuff – God isn’t making any more at present. Oh, there’s still plenty left, but we can see the horizon. The day will come – maybe in our lifetimes – when SA can no longer uphold its end of the deal.

Second, the USA has been busy losing wars for several decades, now. Turns out that you can’t actually defeat a modern nation by anything short of genocide. The days are long gone when defeating a nation was a matter of forcing its king to bend the knee and job done. Genocide, you know, is an expensive affair when the people you are trying to genocide shoot back and plant IEDs (unlike German Jews, or Tasmanian Aboriginies). That is: it’s starting to look like the USA can’t hold up its end of the deal either. Gays and women in the military (something abhorrent to Islam), and Central Americans streaming over the undefended US border. It’s not a good look, you know?

Machiavelli said that the primary concern of the Prince is war. If you can’t warfight (as they put it these days), then you don’t have a principate. Or an empire, as the case may be.

The USA has unrivalled control of airspace. How much gas, do you think, does a fighter jet or a bomber consume? How much diesel does an aircraft carrier – let alone a carrier group – chew through every minute? How much does a tank, an APC, a chopper need? And how much do you need to run the generators that power the electronic frippery that no modern infantryman can fight without?

Oh sure, if the price of oil rose dramatically, the USA and the west could still afford to field an army and blow the shit out of places that choose to diss us. Or can we? Can we really? Money, money, money – it’s seriously a thing. “Gold is the sinews of war”. Machiavelli disagreed, but he may have been wrong about that one.

So Trump can pound the table about whathisface the journalist, but the USA cannot break its symbiosis with Saudi Arabia. Not without doing it the hard way (or inventing Mr Fusion – the power source of the future).

But neither can King Whatshisname turn off the spigot, or raise the price to $400 a barrel (same thing, really) as he has threatened to do. Because the West must have its oil, the military must have its oil, and if the Saudis attempt to withhold it in any serious way, we will just fucking come and take it. If the deal is off, then that means the deal is off, doesn’t it? Kinda important, when one of the terms of the deal is “protection” and you yourself are a family man.

Oh sure, these days it wouldn’t be as overt as that. There’ll be a “Color Revolution” or some shit. But that’s how it is, and everyone who pays attention knows it. Remember Saddam Hussein, who decided to try to sell his oil to the Europeans in Euros? Yeah. That.

This will all simmer down and be forgotten. So what if the Saudis decided to off some dissident, and a whole bunch of people are upset about it? Neither side can actually do anything about it, public outrage notwithstanding. Happily, people are fickle, stupid, and have short memories. It will go the way of all the other crises.

The world will just keep rolling on exactly like it is until the oil runs out, or the USA cannot field an effective fighting force, or someone actually does invent Mr Fusion.

Everyone who pays attention knows it.

The Honeybadger

So, The Bachelor. Why do I care? Because I don’t dare browse my usual internet content at my new job, I limit myself to news.com.au because there’s a link to it in the SOE setup, and news.com.au is loaded with crap about The Bachelor.

Seems The Honeybadger knocked back all the ladies. What a bastard! So many to pick from – he owed it to Australia to marry one of ’em!

Here’s what I think.

We can all agree, I’m sure, that it would be unreasonable to pick a girl and tell a dude he has to marry her. I’d say it would also be unreasonable to pick a dozen mostly identical girls and tell a dude to pick one. And all those bachelorette hopefuls were mostly identical.

“Identical?” you exclaim? “Identical? Why – some were blonde, and some weren’t!”

Were any of ’em – for instance – short? Maybe Mr Badge deep down yearns for a little pocket rocket to make his life complete. Were any of ’em – say – thicc? A little cushion for the pushin? Or: did any of ’em have truly big tits?

Nope, nope, and nope. They were all tall-ish, skinny models.

Were any of ’em asian? Maybe Mr Cummins has yellow fever. Maybe he has a thing for dusky temptresses from the subcontinent, so: were any of ’em Indian? How about black? Or – going the other way – were any one of these bachelorettes a milky-translucent-skinned green-eyed ranga? Molly Ringwald had her fans, you know.

But let’s get away from the merely physical.

Were any of ’em shy? Or demure? Or were all of them perfectly comfortable in a dress with a “neckline” plunging all the way to the navel?

Were any of ’em – oooh, I dunno – a fiery Mediterranean type? Maybe Mr Cummins has a thing for women who yell in Spanish or Italian, or Maltese women who truly believe in revenge.

Were any of ’em sincerely religious?

Naaah. There very format of the show makes it impossible. They were all models looking to get their faces and bodies on TV.

Were any of them really financially smart, a self-made millionairess from her own investments? Was any of them a waify, distracted art-girl? A nose-ringed anarchist? Or how about a country girl that can butcher a whole pig, no worries?

I’m sure at least some of them wanted children. So: how many of them could cook a family meal? Do a roast like it’s not really a big deal, it’s just what we usually have on a Sunday?

See what I’m saying? Don’t get me wrong: don’t accuse me of saying that a girl must be all of these things. Being one of them, or one of the millions of other types of individual is perfectly fine. There’s nothing in the least wrong with being a skinny cookie-cutter model with a white girl ass and no hips and I’m sure all of these women have their admirers. But insisting that Nick is obliged to marry a girl like that? When that’s just not what he happens to be into?

Hell no.

At least he takes marriage somewhat seriously. Seriously enough, at least, to not commit to someone because a TV producer tells him that Australia expects it.

It’s a stupid TV show. Its premise is bonkers. And it’s mainly some of the worst kinds of people who would want to be on it. They’ll never put an honest man on the show again – they’ve learned their lesson. From now on, every bloke playing the season’s bachelor will be an impossibly handsome gay guy with a wholly invented and scripted back story.