A joke, yes. We will laugh in the car.
Oil spiked up the other day bacause Iran elected a new president, who is quite conservative. He was one of the founders of the student movement, who back in the 70's, decided that the US's embassy workers were all spies and took them hostage. Iran is also building up its nukes and more importantly, Iran has the second-largest pool of untapped petroleum in the world, an estimated 125.8 billion barrels and 16% of the world's natural gas. Iran has become a major oil supplier of China, whom it does not have a problem selling oil to, like it does us, because we are the Great Satan. It will be interesting to watch what happens concerning Iran in the months and years ahead. We currently have Iran surrounded. We have troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and naval ships in the Persian Gulf. So if we go to war with Iran, there's the oil reason (a fairly logical one, why we can't admit that we go to war for the valuable resource that is oil is beyond me, our entire economy depends upon it). Then there is the "Iran is developing nukes" reason, which may be what they tell us is the reason, but I doubt that's the real reason, any more than WMD is Iraq. Note: this is a really good reason for Israel to attack Iran however, or for the US to in order to protect Israel. There's also another reason that may come into play here, when I was a Mormon boy, talk about Armeggedon was interesting talk. It was fun to try and figure out the rantings of the biblical prophets. The great war is called the battle of Gog and Magog. Gog is Russia (or something like that) and Magog is Persia (aka Iran) and these countries will invade Israel. Please don't quote me on any of this bullshit. Here's a site that explains it better than I would ever want to. Now I don't put a lot of stock into these stories, but some people do, just the kind of people that are running our country at the moment. I think these stories are of use to them because they provide an easy exit strategy during these difficult times (we'll all be dead soon, so let's party!) and it helps them make sense of complex international relations. But they're dangerous in the sense that they become quite literally self fulfilled prophesy. If evangelicals continue to occupy the White House and the Congress then we can pretty much gaurantee that this scenario will play out exactly how it is spelled out in the Bible, not because the Bible is true, but because this is how those in power want to see it played out.
