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Vladimir Putin now seems to have made a bad miscalculation in invading the Ukraine. Fracking is now rapidly driving down oil prices, taking away both his political leverage and his income. Because he has alienated almost everybody, there will be no bailout package, unless perhaps from China. Because everyone knows this, the run on the currency and the economy is that much more terrible.
Did anyone else notice that his face looked very puffy in his recent press conference? I suspect Putin's health is suffering from the stress. He must know his head is on the block.
But how was he so stupid as to get himself into this situation? It's not as though the effects of fracking were not inevitable and predictable a few years ago. Yet he chose to alienate everyone at just the wrong moment.
In related news, fracking is probably also why Cuba and the US are suddenly reopening relations. The lower oil price is killing Venezuelan government finances, already in grievous shape. Venezuela had been subsidizing Cuba, saving it from a desperate fate after the collapse of its Soviet sponsors. Now Venezuela in turn is forced to stop doing this. So Cuba is probably obliged to make some deal the US before the bottom falls out, in hopes of ending the embargo and boosting their economy. Perhaps even for the sake of having a basket for their case to fall into. The shocking thing is that Obama got so little in the negotiations at this point.
Iran will surely soon also show the strain. Just at a time they too have alienated everyone with their nuclear programme.
At the same time, cheaper oil is bound to boost the US, first of all, and the developed West generally.
It seems almost like supernatural aid, doesn't it? God suddenly drops a miracle in the US's lap, like when the Berlin Wall suddenly fell.
That may be so, but a simpler explanation is simply that evil, and evil people, are also necessarily stupid. Because they are stupid, they are always playing the short game, unable to calculate things very far forward, so that over time they are guaranteed to lose. An obvious example was Saddam's fight to the death in Iraq to protect a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction that it turned out he mostly did not have. He probably genuinely believed he had them. Dictators who rule by fear and corruption necessarily become sourrounded by people who will never tell them the truth, but only what they think they want to hear, and what they think will be to their own personal benefit.
North Korea's cyber attack on Sony falls into the same category: “B” for “boneheaded.” For no material gain, they have revealed their current cyber sabotage capabilities and alerted the US public to the threat. This guarantees that Western defences will be good and solid if and when it really matters to North Korea. And rather than blow their cover while accomplishinng nothing, they have probably accomplished the very thing they wanted to prevent. Virtually everyone in the West is now dying to see “The Interview,” it has had the best free publicity campaign a movie could ever get, and even if Sony is too crazy to release it on DVD, North Korea has effectively laid down a challenge to all hackers everywhere to ensure that it is indeed widely seen by any means necessary.
Long-term, does North Korea believe it can really win a hackers' war against the US?
Did anyone else notice that his face looked very puffy in his recent press conference? I suspect Putin's health is suffering from the stress. He must know his head is on the block.
But how was he so stupid as to get himself into this situation? It's not as though the effects of fracking were not inevitable and predictable a few years ago. Yet he chose to alienate everyone at just the wrong moment.
In related news, fracking is probably also why Cuba and the US are suddenly reopening relations. The lower oil price is killing Venezuelan government finances, already in grievous shape. Venezuela had been subsidizing Cuba, saving it from a desperate fate after the collapse of its Soviet sponsors. Now Venezuela in turn is forced to stop doing this. So Cuba is probably obliged to make some deal the US before the bottom falls out, in hopes of ending the embargo and boosting their economy. Perhaps even for the sake of having a basket for their case to fall into. The shocking thing is that Obama got so little in the negotiations at this point.
Iran will surely soon also show the strain. Just at a time they too have alienated everyone with their nuclear programme.
At the same time, cheaper oil is bound to boost the US, first of all, and the developed West generally.
It seems almost like supernatural aid, doesn't it? God suddenly drops a miracle in the US's lap, like when the Berlin Wall suddenly fell.
That may be so, but a simpler explanation is simply that evil, and evil people, are also necessarily stupid. Because they are stupid, they are always playing the short game, unable to calculate things very far forward, so that over time they are guaranteed to lose. An obvious example was Saddam's fight to the death in Iraq to protect a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction that it turned out he mostly did not have. He probably genuinely believed he had them. Dictators who rule by fear and corruption necessarily become sourrounded by people who will never tell them the truth, but only what they think they want to hear, and what they think will be to their own personal benefit.
North Korea's cyber attack on Sony falls into the same category: “B” for “boneheaded.” For no material gain, they have revealed their current cyber sabotage capabilities and alerted the US public to the threat. This guarantees that Western defences will be good and solid if and when it really matters to North Korea. And rather than blow their cover while accomplishinng nothing, they have probably accomplished the very thing they wanted to prevent. Virtually everyone in the West is now dying to see “The Interview,” it has had the best free publicity campaign a movie could ever get, and even if Sony is too crazy to release it on DVD, North Korea has effectively laid down a challenge to all hackers everywhere to ensure that it is indeed widely seen by any means necessary.
Long-term, does North Korea believe it can really win a hackers' war against the US?
Clearly, there is no long-term thinking involved.
Everywhere and always, the devil has the tactical advantage. Everywhere and always, St. Michael and the angels have the strategic advantage.
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