Recommended Reading
Many commentators have speculated that this will create a new geopolitical balance, one that will weaken the traditional oil and gas producers of the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia. But the impact of the shale revolution on the global oil and gas supply chain is misunderstood.
The role of Middle East oil exporters in the global economy remains secure and the direct impact of US shale on the global market is commonly overestimated.
Crude oil comes in different density grades (heavy or light) and with different levels of sulfur. Shale oil is light with little sulfur, yet many US refineries are designed to accommodate heavy sulfur-rich crudes, typically imported from Canada, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. These refineries cannot be easily recalibrated to refine light sweet shale crude oil, which means that heavy high-sulfur crude oil will continue to be imported into the US oil refining and petrochemical supply chain.
Arabian crude oil share predominately exported eastward to Japan, China, and Korea. This supply chain will remain unchanged. Simply put, US shale oil cannot easily offset traditional Arabian oil supplies to Asia — the oil requires different refining capabilities and there is geographic logic in the existing supply chain. The immediate impact of US shale oil production is to reduce imports of light oil from producers such as Nigeria.
War on the Rocks (Adam Elkus) – The Odd Sheikh Out: A Complex Problem
Small Wars Journal – California-Raised Kids vs. Mexico’s Violent Cartel and Recent Santa Muerte Spiritual Conflict Trends
Global Guerrillas- Bossnapping
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross – Interpreting al Qaida
Science News – Thinking hard weighs heavy on the Brain
The Volokh Conspiracy – Ninth Circuit to Hear Challenge to Obamacare’s “Platonic Guardians” January 28
Venkatesh Rao –Consent of the Surveiled
Slightly East of New – Can America Win Wars? and Boyd Conference in San Diego
That’s it!
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Charles Cameron:
January 21st, 2014 at 12:44 am
My comment addresses the second article you linked to by the Bunkers — I’d have posted it at SWJ if I’d been able to find the comment box!
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First off, I’d like to express my appreciation to the Bunkers for their continuing monitoring of the situation in Mexico, including the religious aspects.
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I have a few comments about nomenclature, but first I want to say that bringing the attention of the “action-reaction cycle” to the SWJ and Zenpundit readerships is a significant service, and that the concern expressed regarding the “older and more benign form of Santa Muerte” and the current status of its adherents in a sort of limbo is an important one. My grateful thanks.
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As to nomenclature, I’d first like to mention that terms like “spiritual conflict” “spiritual warfare” etc now have three meanings — one relating to the internal combat of the soul, as exemplified by Dom Lorenzo Scupoli’s The Spiritual Combat (1589, now perhaps better known in Orthodox circles) — one used largely in and around the Pentecostal circles associated with C Peter Wagner and the New Apostolic Reformation movement, and meaning prayer campaigns to remove demons stated to overshadow specific cities and geographic areas (eg the Everest and Ephesus “operations”, cf Michael Reid, Strategic Level Spiritual Warfare: A Modern Mythology? p. 154) — and one for cultic clashes such as the Mexican examples the Bunkers describe. The Bunkers’ phrase, “potential spiritual insurgency” nicely avoids any confusion. And there are interesting parallels here with the uses of the word jihad, no?
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Second, I’d like to ask the Bunkers what exactly they mean by the “deification” of narco based Santa Muerte. Do the narcos consider her a saint or a deity — and is there in fact any difference in their minds between the two?
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The issue of heresy and blasphemy is another interesting one, and here I’d note that celebrating the Eucharist in a chapel devoted to Santa Muerte would be a blasphemous desecration, but not a heresy — as I understand it, a heresy is an aberrant theological position or belief, while desecration is an act — and a blasphemy can be either verbal or enacted. Thus “the heresy charge being leveled against Santa Muerte and its worshipers by the Church” makes sense, while “such a mass — potentially what has been labeled a ‘black mass’ in this instance — would be considered a heresy” doesn’t. Furthermore, I suspect “black mass” isn’t a category in Catholic theological terms, though it certainly is in common parlance.
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On the issue of “contaminated” souls of the Templars, Joshua Partlow’s article gives a vernacular significance to his use of the word “contaminated” —
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I hope this hasn’t been too nit-picky — folk religion is none too orderly, while Catholicism is intensely so, so deciphering quite what certain terms mean when used by one or the other, or in communications between them, is a tricky business, albeit analytically worthwhile.
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Thanks again, and please keep us updated.
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Charles