Dark Circuits: Oil Money and Covert Activities

A 'brief' note for posts to come

I have about four massive posts up on the docket at the current moment, each requiring a bit of wrapping-up and a lot of polishing and editing, but it has been forever since I’ve posted on here so it seems only fair to put a little out as a preamble for what is to come.

I’ve fallen down a series of rabbit holes, all linked together: petrodollar recycling mechanisms, the Kissinger-led war against the Non-Aligned Movement as part of a battle over the soul of OEPC, high-level clandestine hijinks carried out by the U.S. Treasury Department, the confusing and fog-shrouded architecture of the Bush family business network, and the secret ties that bind together the elite environmental conservation complex, hot money, and paramilitary activities. The last might sound like a stretch but trust me, it’s connected in ways that are truly surprising.

Part of this research led me to a hunt for old issues of International Currency Review, a dreadfully hard-to-find publication edited by a very strange cat named Christopher Story, that ran a whole series of articles on the petrodollar and the wider—hermetically-sealed and generally suppressed—financial relations between the United States and oil-rich nations in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia is the key nation here, but Kuwait is vitally important to the overall picture.

I was unable to get my hands directly on any copies of International Currency Review, but Kantbot, the world’s leading expert on library science, nabbed some from the New York Public Library (thank you so much KB). The voluminous amount of material he’s sent across is far more than I’ve been able to digest, but one thing that popped out to me on a cursory glance-through is this chart: