Oil Swell

At the beginning of this year, things in an already perpetual downward spiral started off with a bang with the killing an Iranian General, Qasem Soleimani, known for his brutality.  That happened in the first week of January.

This came as a complete surprise, since embassies weren’t notified of it.  The argument basically boiled down to, "We didn't want to alarm the embassies about an imminent attack! That's why we didn't tell them!"  The flimsy excuse given was that “Soleimani was threatening to blow up our embassies!” without showing any evidence or benefit from it.

"I didn't see any evidence, but I believe there would've been an attack!"

Trump likely did this ill-advised move in an effort to curry favor along the likes of Obama killing Osama Bin Laden.  (“Obama will start a war with Iran to re-election!”) But apart from Military veterans heavily invested in the subject, Soleimani failed to register on the public radar.  Bin Laden took down the Twin Towers.  What did Soleimani personally do to the Americans?  Trying to emulate Obama in his last year without understanding the moves taken is so typical of Trump.

There were fears of retaliation that could’ve potentially led to another war, either through subvert sabotage, preferably targeting Trump properties, or price gouging of oil.  After a tense conflict between Russia and Saudi representatives (Russia wanted to encroach their oil depositories, and Trump LUVS rich dictatorships), Trump fought for increasing their shares, because what Americans needed right now were higher gas prices.

A little over a week later, the storage space for oil reserves has become so overcrowded, because not as many people are driving around and using up as much oil as expected, so they’ve had to stockpile the excess oil, which is costing them money, driving demand down to the point where it’s in the negative integers, so they’d wind up owning others money.  As much as Trump has been labeled the Reverse Midas for bankrupting surefire things (wine, casinos, steaks),  tanking the oil market was not something that was on anybody’s Bingo cards.

Wars in the Middle East have started due to a decline in oil.  This could be the first time that a war was instigated solely due to a surplus of oil.

All this is just a long-winded way of giving some background for the following pages.  I meant to show these scans two months ago, but couldn’t recall the exact book I first read them in.  I thought it might’ve been in a memoir or autobiography, or even an anthology.  So I scoured through the archives of three libraries, trying to narrow down where I might’ve seen it.  All I could recall was that it was in black and white, with cartoony facial expressions, and possible bleeds across the panels.  I got the panels part wrong, but everything else right.  By the time I finally found what I was looking for, everyone had forgotten what all the fuss was about.

It's only recently that things have turned around so that the events have made my intended post relevant again.  Before I go into the relevant scans, here's some history from the third book of Arab of the Future.  Riad's father is a mass of contradictions, where he has multiple opposing ideologies reflected throughout his worldview.

In the course of trying to find what I was looking for, I thought the relevant scans would've been in Economix, since it certainly fit the profile, but that book only devoted a single page to the topic.

It was only when I finally found the comic I was looking for in A People's History of American Empire: A Graphic Adaptation of Howard Zinn's research.  It's a disturbing look into the brutal tactics implemented that I never would've bothered reading it otherwise.

Practically an entire chapter is devoted to the CIA's contribution to the coup d'état on Iran, which has the hallmarks of a well-crafted thriller, even as the outcome is never in doubt.

There's also some extra information about the Shah, which I've included, along with a certain fanatical Religious extremist.  The Ayatollah Khomeini didn't come out of a vacuum.

Because the interests of powerful people didn't align with progressive movements, they did their utmost best to quash any attempts of advancement to the detriment of society.  As a result, we're now in an age where people are so desperate for miracle cures that they'll do anything, no matter how harmful it is to them.

I want to highlight one of the sections from earlier.  At the time, I thought that this deal would've been passed over by the public since no one would've willingly accepted having such obvious demerits among its positives.  Nowadays, I'm not so sure.