Tag Archives: Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia Is Very Finished

Sometimes video scripts come easy. 6 years ago I predicted that Saudi Arabia as we know it would be done by 2030. Today I double down on that by addressing the most common objection to the idea I have gotten by far. A week or so back someone tweeted at me that Saudi Arabia was safe because people will always need oil. Within five hours of receiving that tweet I had this script written and ready to go. The world doesn’t have to give up on oil to end the Saudi royal family. We just have to use like 5-10% less of it. In today’s video I describe this simple, under acknowledged economic point, with graphs and the results of a real world experiment that Covid was generous enough to hand us in 2020.

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US Middle East Withdrawal Isn’t Happening…

It’s been a while since I’ve looked at US involvement in the Middle East in depth. I’ve been doing a deep dive into the history of Yemen for months now, but that was mostly pre-1983, when the US decided to make the Middle East our daily problem with the founding of Centcom. Over the past month or so I’ve dived deep, not just into the “Greater War For the Middle East” (as Andrew Bacevich calls it) but also into the unified combatant command structure that is solidifying US empire all over the world. My view on all of this is… somewhat grim. I hope the video isn’t too much of a downer.

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Saudi Arabia Wants You To Vote Republican

Some analysts I trust have gotten a little too complex on this topic. Yes, there are many concrete reasons why Saudi Arabia’s intervention in the oil market at the beginning of this month makes sense. The fact that prices have not risen much since the announcement is an indication of just how quickly the world recession is destroying oil and gas demand. But the fact remains that Saudi Arabia decided to make this cut a month before the November mid-term elections. This is a calculated slap in the face to Joe Biden and the Democratic party. It is not, however an insult to the United States as a whole, as I explain in today’s video.

https://www.npr.org/2021/09/12/1036389448/biden-declassifies-secret-fbi-report-detailing-saudi-nationals-connections-to-9-
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/us/jared-kushner-saudi-investment-fund.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/9-11-investigation-saudi-connections-operation-encore-fbi

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How Yemen Beat The Cold War | Yemen vs. Empire 3

This one was a bit of an ordeal, honestly. A full 30 minutes of produced video, which is only part three of four, got a bit daunting. Every step of the way was a bit of a struggle. I hope it’s worth watching. Heading back to do more YouTube Drama before I attempt “Yemen vs. Empire” Part 4.

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How Yemen Beat The Ottomans | Yemen vs. Empire

I have been working on this one for years. For years I have said that this channel is about politics and history, but with this series I would like to make that more real. In three (or maybe four) videos, my hope is to cover many of the high and low points of the past 500 years of Yemeni history, while also providing an in depth, informed take on Yemen’s current status. I think today’s video is a good start. Wish me luck!

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How To Use Ukraine Against China

I feel like I’m weirdly a lot more optimistic about American power today than most of the US media is. Today I lay out why I think that may be. The US is reacting to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as some inexplicable horror, another step back towards history’s chaos, and another sign that the American world order is falling to pieces. As more of a cynic, and a student of foreign relations, my sense is that the US world order has been falling apart since at least 2003. What Russia has done in Ukraine, is give us a second chance. By conclusively setting himself up as a more destructive and dangerous actor than the US government, Putin has given the US world order a new lease on life.

What’s vital in this moment is that we seize that opportunity. Europe is now back on our side in ways it hasn’t been for two decades. What we should do now, is try to win over the rest of the world by improving our relations with old enemies that no longer matter. To it’s credit, the Biden administration is already trying to do this with Iran and Venezuela. Unfortunately, they are being blocked by their efforts to do so, and not just by Republicans. I think it’s a failure of understanding. US government and media don’t understand just how bad the situation was, and how valuable a window Russia has given us. Today’s video is my attempt to explain the situation.

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Saudi Arabia Makes Biden’s Democracy Summit A Joke…

I’ve been meaning to talk about this for a while. Heck, and one point, I thought I might make a multi-video series covering all the ways the Gulf Monarchies worked to destroy the Arab Spring. It’s a vital point that gets over-looked. Yes, as my “Everybody’s Lying About Islam” series documented at length, Saudi Arabia’s century of power and wealth has been terrible for world Islam. The Saudi Wahhabi project has been a sort of cultural genocide against what was a much more diverse body of Islamic practices half a century ago. That matters. But beyond the religious aspects there is the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are proselytizing monarchists as well. They have extraordinary wealth and influence in Washington, DC, and for the past 10 years they have used it to crush democracy across their region. This is the real tragedy of declining democracy this century. The Arab Spring could have made 2011 a new 1776, or 1989. Instead Arab Democracy was strangled in the cradle by a set of absolute monarchies that simply would not exist without the United States.

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Saudi Arabia Is The Stock Market

That old, way over-quoted saying, attributed to Keynes, keeps reverberating in my head lately. “The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent”.

Almost three years ago, I put out a video mocking Saudi Arabia’s investing strategy, calling it plainly irrational and irresponsible, and destined to end in tears. Well, so far it looks like my prediction is a failure. In fact, this investing strategy may be the most successful thing that MBS has done, staving off financial disaster for his country, and in the process making himself just as valuable to US politicians as Saudi Arabia was back in the 20th century when we needed their oil.

This one was interesting. The fact that I need to produce longer videos kind of ambushed me here. I intended to focus on how the MBS-Khashoggi issue is a side-show to what our true priorities should be, but the need to correct my older video on Saudi investing kind of swallowed my scripting process, drawing in Gamestop and some media critique.

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SPACs Are An Economy Crashing Scam

Today’s video is about something that seems quite boring on the surface. The folks who are pushing SPACs, or Special Purpose Acquisition Companies, desperately want you to believe that they are boring. Just another way to structure capital markets! They’re anything but that. They’re exactly the sort of thing that blows up markets and sinks economies. This may not look like geopolitics on the surface, but it’s likely that SPACs will have world-wide significance. I suspect you’ll be getting ahead of the game if you understand them now.

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Should US Empire Be This Channel’s Next Topic? | Thucydides Trap 2

This one almost ended up as another channel trailer. I initially produced a video making fun of the Thucydides Trap when it was first publicized in the Atlantic over five years ago. I thought it was a profoundly silly concept from the start. Unfortunately, it’s become a phenomenon. Just go to Google News and type in “Thucydides Trap” and you’ll find that it is mentioned at least weekly in one article on US-China relations or another. This misuse of the concept is quite sad, because Thucydides actually does have a very useful story to tell policy-makers in the United States. In today’s video, I lay out that story, and use it as the foundation for my pitch for the third of three options for this channel’s next new project. You now have the all the information you need to vote!

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