This morning's story in the Guardian that US diplomats believed Saudi Arabia to have overstated their oil reserves should ring alarm bells around the energy world. Every time there is a debate about whether Opec should raise production to lower oil prices, many commentators argue it is irrelevant: that the Middle East doesn't have as much oil as it says and that it can't raise production enough to bring prices down. If this is true, it has serious consequences for the oil price. If Opec doesn't have the slack to up production and bring prices down, they will have a lot further to go above the $100 barrier. The thing that makes this cable so significant is that the information comes from a former Aramco insider: Sadad al-Husseini, former head of exploration at the Saudi oil monopoly. – Financial Times Blog
Dominant Social Theme: Thank goodness for WikiLeaks and Julian Assange who has led the way in exposing the most important hidden secrets of our time.
Free-Market Analysis: WikiLeaks in our estimation becomes an evermore-obvious charade, and Julian Assange its conductor. We've been writing about it for months now, and each new leak raises our suspicions. None of the high-profile leaks with the exception of the first – a damning video of American helicopter pilots machine-gunning Iraqi civilians and Reuters reporters – have proven especially embarrassing to the West or overly inconvenient to the powers-that-be. In fact a number of them seemed to advance Western promotional and intel efforts, casting Western foes in a bad (or at least scary) light.
This latest cable data dump (see excerpt above) showing that oil reserves are massively over-estimated fits right into other scarcity memes of the Anglo-American power elite. These dominant social themes are used to frighten the Western middle class into offering up their wealth and power to designated global, elite institutions such as the UN and its international satellites. In numerous articles we have presented the case that Peak Oil is a greatly exaggerated phenomenon and that the Anglosphere attempts to create artificial energy shortages to boost profits and global governance. This latest WikiLeaks cable dump supports the elite meme as we have analyzed it.
In an addendum to the original blog, excerpted above the FT blogger adds, "Update: I'll leave the blog below intact, but really I should point out that the reason the oil price hasn't moved is that the person quoted in the Wikileaked cable, Sadad al Husseini, is a well-known peak oil theorist who has said this in public many times before." This is a predictable modus operandi for WikiLeaks. Nothing is quite what it seems. The leaks always seem to end up being warmed over news long been available.
In the past few weeks, WikiLeaks has dribbled out US cables (presumably they are diplomatic cables) speculating that Al Qaeda is trying to build a nuclear "dirty bomb" and also trying to gain access to various kinds of chemical and biological weapons. (Speculations of AMERICAN diplos, mind you.) Then there was an engineered media furor surrounding a hand-off of a list of high-profile tax evaders. It turns out that the individual doing the leaking had done the same thing two years previously (perhaps with the same names?) and been put in a Swiss jail as a result. Why would an organization dedicated to "transparency" provide the media with such a calculated spectacle?
Each WikiLeaks "release" only seems to confirm the dreary conclusion that the entire enterprise is a kind of concoction intended to facilitate Western intelligence interests and further reinforce Western messaging. Is this so farfetched? It is a well-documented fact that Wall Street funds were funneled overseas (via the Red Cross) to help gain victory for the Red communist factions (and Lenin) during the Russian Revolution. And it is just as certain that Anglo-American elites created the economic conditions that allowed for the rise of Adolf Hitler – and then provided massive industrial funding as well. The American Bush family was directly involved in this latter transaction.
For this reason we identified Assange as a key figure in an upcoming global, elite promotion almost from the very beginning when we wrote a fictionalized speculation called "Comes a Blond Stranger." We weren't positive then and we won't make a definitive statement now, but the evidence continues to pile up. If we are correct, it may be in fact almost impossible to overstate the importance of Julian Assange and his role in the "history" that the elites are now busily creating. He could end up being the first leader of a world government – a six-foot-four (or five or six) inch blond rebel with an electronic cause and a commitment to global transparency (see below).
Too strong a statement? The WikiLeaks saga seems to be a strangely chilling exhibition of exactly how the Anglo-American power elite creates its fear-based promotions. In the case of WikiLeaks, the promotion departs a little bit from the ordinary scarcity meme. But it falls well within the parameters of what we have concluded is the normal course of business for the Anglosphere – which creates "great man" mythologies to galvanize social change.
It is no coincidence in our view that one now finds Assange and his WikiLeaks at the center of many recent "historical" events. WikiLeaks leaked cables were said to be central to the recent Tunisian revolution because they revealed the corruption of the Ben Ali family which shocked average Tunisians. WikiLeaks then leaked cables purporting to show that American intelligence handlers helped trained Egyptian "youth" for up to two years or more to destabilize the Egyptian regime via various revolutionary activities. (America is thus cast as ludicrously pro-democracy within a Middle East context.)
The promotion of Assange himself also provides evidence that WikiLeaks is a manufactured episode. Long before Assange received his million-dollar-plus book contract, we speculated that he would soon be embarked on some sort of publishing endeavor. (We were just surprised at the speed with which it occurred.) As it turns out, the book contract is not the only item to come his way. He is to be subject of a major motion picture and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (shades of Barack Obama).
One can ask exactly what Assange has done to deserve such mainstream media attention; but to ask that question is to answer it. He is being promoted. He is a "special deal." The judicious use of elite honors, sizeable publishing contracts and adulatory (though always slightly controversial) motion pictures is in our view a potential giveaway. That's how these promotions tend to work. It seems reasonable to the average individual who is not trying to follow these issues closely. But to anyone willing to peer more closely the manipulations are perhaps startingly evident.
Now some anomalies … first on the list are the sexual assault charges. We're not sure these are part of the plan. We note where Assange fled once the charges were filed – to Britain where presumably those who back him can better control events. The relationship between Assange and British powers-that-be go fairly deep in fact. He apparently has had a fairly close relationship with Economist editors. The magazine is a major elite mouthpiece, but Assange wrote for the magazine and even was awarded a prize. Then there is the handling of WikiLeaks leaks. Assange wanted them issued through newspapers such as the New York Times and the UK Guardian – thus bestowing renewed credibility on these dying mainstream publications.
Assange has a fascination with transparency (we have written about this as well), which we believe is another up-and-coming elite promotion. Transparency works well as a faux-rallying cry for Internet rebels such as Assange because it does not imply a wholesale change in the way that modern societies are built or operate. Governments, according to Assange, are not intrinsically bad – even regulatory democracy itself is tolerable. What is necessary is accountability, provided by far-seeing democratic activists such as himself.
Assange apparently only took over WikiLeaks about four years ago. Now it is true that the promotion – if that is what it is – may have been gestating for far longer. Yet this is a short period of time. Elite promotions such as the EU and the war on terror can take decades to mature. The somewhat rushed nature of the putative Assange promotion is therefore, perhaps, a giveaway. The Internet in our view caught the elite by surprise and the roll-out of Assange-as-rebeltech-hero is a somewhat hasty response.
The apparent rushed nature of the Assange promotion may be providing other benefits – a point that takes some explaining, but bear with us. Begin with evidence that the power elite has grown increasingly sloppy and authoritarian in the 21st century. Dominant social themes that took decades to cultivate are basically promoted regardless of resistance nowadays. (Global warming comes to mind. There is little popular belief in it anymore, but governance continues to be developed for it as if the meme's credibility had never been shattered.)
With so many of its dominant social themes essentially foundering in the era of the Internet, the powers-that-be may have launched their "blond stranger" promotion without fully vetting the consequences. We would argue that many blogs and ‘Net news forums have come to the same sorts of tentative conclusions we have regarding Assange. Given the suspicions that Assange now arouses, his WikiLeaks contributions can be looked upon as a kind of key to elite memes.
What the elite has provided us with, therefore, is a kind of Rosetta Stone exposing its manipulations. One only needs to analyze WikiLeaks actives to understand what the power elite wishes to emphasize and how it wishes to frame the argument. (Assange is on the record, by the way, as downplaying any inconsistencies with the 9/11 narrative and expressing irritation that people still question the official US story when there are so many other "real" problems to tackle.)
Ironic is it not? In a somewhat panicked reaction to the Internet, the powers-that-be may have miscalculated. Perhaps they intended to co-opt the credibility of the Internet for their own purposes; instead they have inadvertently provided us with a road map to their manipulations, and even their intentions.
We are not making a definitive statement, only offering up conjectures regarding what may be (yes, just may be) one of the most important – and ill conceived – of elite promotions in the entire history of the modern Anglosphere conspiracy. The chances are (if such conjectures are correct) that the elite is committed to Assange and WikiLeaks. And perhaps this makes such suppositions even more useful. Simply watch Assange and WikiLeaks to understand what the elite wishes to promote and why. WikiLeaks becomes a window into its collective soul.
