The emergence in natural gas prices on planet markets is the responsibility of Russia and Vladimir Putin himself. Thus, this bandit duo is besides liable for the overall increase in the cost of living, inflation and evident signs of stagflation felt by the globalised capitalist economy. These are facts as well known and attached to the statements of energy marketplace experts specified as Joe Biden and Mateusz Morawieckithat they no longer request any further command. Isn't it?
The first “crisis that was not”
Not really. Not really. In fact, not at all, which is precisely the same as in the erstwhile equally massive operation of changing the financial system, covered by energy panic. This is, of course, about the alleged 1973 oil crisis, which everyone knows was caused by the blackmail of arabian oil producers, avenging in the United States and Western Europe for supporting Israel during the Jom Kippur War, which is simply a 300-percent untruth. As many as 300 – as there was no first fuel marketplace crisis at first, but on the contrary, the inflationary policy of the US government and the national Reserve triggered a price surge under the Western system, to which oil producers only reacted late. That's how it worked. Overturn the Bretton Woods strategy for post-war economical growth, anchoring a dollar in a gold parity.
Secondly, it is the United States, and in peculiar their State Secretary, Henry Kissinger in fact, they pressured allies, led by pre-revolutionary Iran, to proceed their policy of raising oil prices, primarily so that the funds obtained in the depreciated dollar would be utilized immediately on mass arms purchases. The link between the energy and war-arms sector sounds familiar, doesn't it?
And thirdly, triggering crisis psychosis has led to permanent securitisation of concepts of energy securitywho have since been included in the memorable SpeakRichard Nixon of April 18, 1973, it entered permanently into the dictionary of Western propaganda, infecting our part of Europe with it after 1990. The investigation of the erstwhile manipulation will allow, hopefully, to realize the scale and importance of the transformation of capitalism, for which 1 of the smoke screens remains the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The crisis that has not existed for a long time is no longer part of the conspiracy explanation domain, and the series of events known to global consumers as "oil shock" is taught at universities as an example of a successful political marketing operation. Books like Carbon DemocracyTimothy Mitchell[and] they are treated as academic complementary readings, leaving no illusions as to the intent of the actions of American executives (i.e. the Western) of economical policy, who, utilizing the acquainted and present slogans of the "limits of growth" or the "energy crisis" (which so concerns not only oil, although at the time nothing threatened the supply, nor the prices of coal and natural gas) have ordered billions of people to wake up in the planet of different consumption and especially another real incomes than those to which the post-war generation has been accustomed. It was thanks to specified tricks that people born (such as the author of this text) in the 1970s had virtually no chance to hear in their lives a different description of the state of the economy than the crisis, although at the same time the global profit rates in trillions grew someway only invariably.
Energy, arms and currency Spiral
The theoretically historical series of events was and is known. On October 17, 1973, eleven days after the outbreak of another Arab-Israeli war, six arabian oil-producing states announced a 5% simplification in oil supply and further cuts each period in which the United States will proceed its active support for the Zionist business of Palestine. In the West, especially in the United States and UK, there was a panic with queues in front of distributors, anticipating the end of the combustion engine, even a partial regulation of fuel sales, tightening velocity limits, extinguishing lights in public facilities, etc. In a word, it was more or little like a black gas crisis scenario, in front of our eyes attached to the Russian-Ukrainian War, although in practice launched much earlier, in parallel with the European Union's political decisions aiming to accelerate the energy transition towards renewable sources and speculation in the gas market.
Indeed, the foundations of changes in the energy marketplace have already been developed in the late 1950s. It was created by then by global capitalism, after a decade and a half, by the aspiration of war with the keynesism of reconstruction and the start of the arms race. The consequence to the request to sustain continuous accumulation expansion must have been expansion, both geographically and massively, in both related cases requiring a continuous increase in oil usage and its derivatives. However, to proceed this process, including the first phase of diversification of production (primarily to Japan), The United States had to free itself from the gold anchor first, to replace the dollar recovery mechanism[ii], both as a consequence of the free creation of its course, and of the request for good which oil-producing countries could buy from the main consumer country, the US, thereby speeding up turnover and creating a justification for further overproduction of the world's most crucial and completely nonexistent good: virtual money.
Incidentally, the propaganda of "energy safety threats" was already increasing in the late 1960s.[iii], and preparations to make the dollar the main safeguard of the planned global debt effectively eliminated the pound, and thus the UK from its own function in the transformation. Importantly, however, since the current consequences of successive capitalist changes are besides mainly borne by a dollar – a pound sterling, freed from propaganda links with the euro and despite formal depreciation, it can be considered again as part of a possible basket of currencies that could replace national Reserve tickets in global settlements. The fight for the form of the energy market, including in peculiar the LNG invasion and the large return of atomic energy, are so besides elements of the large financial competition and the defence of the dollar against the competition of national currencies and their alliances.
Fear and margins grow...
Similarly, at the beginning of the 1970s, the increasingly evident drive to detach the American currency from the gold standard, and thus to devalue itself, simply had to trigger the reaction of states measuring their own income as a share of oil sales profits in relation to the gold parity. OPEC, which never wanted to be a cartel, nor did it actually, at least in its early years, act in this way, was, however, faced with the facts achieved, peculiarly the expanding maximisation of the profits of western oil companies, which are actual retailers of retail prices. Again, this is akin to the current situation where the increase in the margin of distributors exceeds the increase in prices per hubbach gas, with presently little impact on the retail price at the final customer.
There is much more analogy. An crucial component of the American strategy was in the 1970s no only controlled management of instability in the oil extraction areabut besides deterrence of allies in peculiar from energy cooperation with the russian Union. But unlike today, despite the ongoing Cold War and the direct American business – then the national Republic authorities Germany was able not to bend, actively participating in the improvement of the russian mining manufacture in Siberia, thus gaining energy diversification over time, in our times under American force drastically and unilaterally liquidated. Incidentally, the situation of Western Europe was much more comfortable before the half century than it is today, as in practice the alleged arabian embargo (and so mostly fictitious towards the pre-shipped tankers and the fast end of the war with Israel) had more than a limited impact on the European markets, inter alia due to the support given to them by... Saddam Hussein, in advance excluding Western European partners from any sanctions and restrictions applied by maker countries[iv]. And yet the Americans and fuel companies succeeded in imposing a communicative about energy shockto confirm the effectiveness of the management strategy for controlled deficiency. That's what started in 1973. Permanent Scare of Mankind another breakdown and blackout, and this is due to subsequent wars and geopolitical breakthroughs (the Iranian Revolution, the business of Kuwait by Iraq, etc.), and this is simply a long-lost exhaustion of deposits, but someway inactive worth using, and this is during our times a climate crisis and a planetary apocalypse. During this period, the war in Ukraine so remains only 1 of many scares, which in the final consciousness of consumers make full resignation of acceptance and for speculation and manipulation of energy prices, and for the macroeconomic and even civilizational transformations. The average recipients of propaganda – and energy – are full satisfied with the message "gas is expensive/prices are rising = by Putin and Russia!’, It was the same as he was guilty of the game of evil Arabs before the half century.
And we don't even want to think about who's making money out of it anymore.
Konrad Hand
[and] T. Mitchell, Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil, London, 2011, pp. 175-176.
[ii] Op. cit. p. 156.
[iii] Cf. study of the Ford Foundation “A Time to Choose: America’s Energy Future”, published on October 17, 1974, but summarizing the Energy Policy task launched in 1971, investigating the increasing psychosis of fuel scarcity and energy, for: R. Vitalis, Oilcraft: The Myths of Scarcity and safety that Haunt U.S. Energy Policy, Stanford, CA, 2020, p.58-59.
[iv] Op. cit, p. 67-69.
