"The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation."uhhmm, I guess that was then and this is now:
Barack Obama
Saudi Arabia's foreign minister said today that dialogue — not protests — is the way to bring reform and warned that the oil-rich nation will take strong action if activists take to the streets..... Prince Saud al-Faisal... said his regime would cut off any finger raised against the regimeSaudi Arabia is losing its fear. Guardian UK.
It's very difficult to predict what will happen on Friday. My guess is that there will be protests. The larger protests will be in the eastern region and mostly by Shia Muslims. I also expect smaller protests in Riyadh and Jeddah. What tactics the security forces use will greatly influence not only the demonstrators but also the people watching from their homes. If undue violence is used against the demonstrators, it could possibly ignite the same fuse that led to full-blown revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.Erste Oil Special Report: "Force Majeure - Middle East". zerohedge.
Could the political unrest spread to Saudi Arabia?IEA confirms peak oil was in 2006. (according to Energy Watch Group).
It’s quite possible. Yemen is in flames. Bahrain is at least seriously shaken. And they’re both right on the borders. And the Saudis in the eastern province have a huge population of Shia that they’ve treated very badly. And Iran is almost certainly using Hezbollah and Al-Quds [Iran’s revolutionary guard] to stir things up in the Gulf, in Bahrain, in Yemen, and quite possibly soon in Saudi Arabia. We just don’t know.
Will the U.S. work to quell those movements in Saudi Arabia, considering what would happen to oil markets?
If we will not even criticize Ahmadinejad in the mildest terms when a year and half ago he stole the election and there were millions of Iranians in streets risking their lives, and the most we could say is “Hmm,” then how in the world does anybody think that we can affect something in that part of the world? How are we going to keep Iran from funding Hezbollah and the Al-Quds force from creating disruptions and problems in much of the Gulf, when we won’t even criticize them?
There's a presumption out there that things look tough in the Middle East, but that soon enough -- maybe by summer -- they will sort themselves out, and becalm the volatile prices of oil and gasoline. Not so, says veteran oil analyst Edward Morse, a student of history who correctly called the 2008 oil bubble while everyone else was still throwing money into the pot. "This is not a one-off disruption," Morse says. Instead, we're in a new age of geopolitical risk that threatens to disrupt the region for a decade or even longer.Lurching toward the peak. Marc Brodine.
What would the world be like today Jimmy Carter had been listened to by the Western world, instead of being demonized by Big Oil and booted out of office as a "whiner"? With the U.S. no longer backing Arab petro-tyrannies and occupying Arab territories, there would probably have been no 9/11. There would have been no Iraq War. There would have been no BP oil spill. We would not be facing an oil price shock today that could cripple our economies and leave backing some of the worst dictators in the world. The Copenhagen climate summit could well have established a path to dealing with global warming, rather than burying it. If we pursue Drilling As Usual, what unnecessary disasters will they curse us for 30 years from now?
America had best prepare itself for a long haul and reorganization of our hold in the oil-producing world. The Middle East and North Africa revolution has only begun.
Both the Spanish civil war (1 million killed 1936-39), which divided both Europe and America between pro-Nazi and pro-Soviet camps, and the 1992-95 Bosnia war that killed about 100,000 civilians and displaced 2.2 million, found the United States on the side of the Muslims. Both are models of how quickly such conflicts can escalate into global crises.
Iran has another, more challenging strategic interest, one it has had since Biblical times. That goal is to be the dominant power in the Persian Gulf.
For Tehran, this is both reasonable and attainable. Iran has the largest and most ideologically committed military of any state in the Persian Gulf region. Despite the apparent technological sophistication of the Gulf states’ militaries, they are shells. Iran’s is not. In addition to being the leading military force in the Persian Gulf, Iran has 75 million people, giving it a larger population than all other Persian Gulf states combined.
Outside powers have prevented Iran from dominating the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire, first the United Kingdom and then the United States, which consistently have supported the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It was in the outsiders’ interests to maintain a divided region, and therefore in their interests to block the most powerful country in the region from dominating even when the outsiders were allied with Iran.
With the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, this strategy is being abandoned in the sense that the force needed to contain Iran is being withdrawn. The forces left in Kuwait and U.S air power might be able to limit a conventional Iranian attack. Still, the U.S. withdrawal leaves the Iranians with the most powerful military force in the region regardless of whether they acquire nuclear weapons. Indeed, in my view, the nuclear issue largely has been an Iranian diversion from the more fundamental issue, namely, the regional balance after the departure of the United States. By focusing on the nuclear issue, these other issues appeared subsidiary and have been largely ignored.
Commercial real estate loans and residential housing will continue to be a significant drag on economic performance. Until the mass of over-built homes and commercial properties are liquidated credit will remain tight and unemployment will remain high.includes much more on the FDIC Q4 banking report
The unfortunate fact remains that credit for most of America is still tight, banks are still trying to repair their balance sheets, and the overlying problem is real estate, the detritus of the Fed’s reckless monetary policy. Credit expansion fueled by the Fed’s easy money policy of the early 2000′s drove private debt to fuel housing over-production, and drove commercial debt to fuel commercial real estate (CRE) over-production. It was the greatest such expansion of money and credit the world has ever seen and it went primarily into real estate. We are now facing the consequences of that expansion and boom: the bust.
latest sell-off was triggered by the arrest of a Shi’ite cleric in the Kingdom’s Eastern Province after he called for democratic reforms and a constitutional monarchy. The province is home to Saudi Arabia’s aggrieved Shi’ite minority and also holds the country’s vast Ghawar oilfield, placing it at the epicentre of global crude supply. "Unrest in this region can have fatal consequences for the world," said JBC Energy. "The plunge on the Saudi stock exchange can be interpreted as a sign of waning trust."
protesters have "the right to appeal for help from Iran" if Saudi military units interfere in the struggle. Tanks were seen crossing the 17-mile causeway from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain on Tuesday
And once religion is involved, which of course means Iran, then all bets are off especially if Saudi sends reinforcements to support the Bahraini status quo.
