Energy Crises & Global Power Shifts: The Struggle for Stability in Israel, Iran, and Beyond
The Great Simplification #152 with Helen Thompson
If you’ve followed TGS for some time, you’ve heard me speak about The 5 Horsemen – the biggest risks for humans and civilization in the coming decade. Today’s episode delves into one of the most rapidly escalating: geopolitics.
In today’s episode (recorded on November 11th), I’m joined by Political Economy Professor Helen Thompson to explore the evolving understanding of energy's role in international relations, particularly in the context of recent conflicts in the Middle East. We discuss the challenge of anticipating the volatile changes in energy supplies, the complexities of navigating information in a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, and the role of global powers like BRICS and OPEC.
How will resource conflicts continue to shape the long-standing tensions in the Middle East? What would a transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world mean for the global geopolitical landscape and its energy implications? Given how connected these issues are to the delicate balance of our world, how can we increase awareness and preparation for future crises?
In case you missed it…
In this week’s Reality Roundtable, I sat down with documentarian Damon Gameau and three young activists featured in his documentary film The Future Council, to discuss their experiences grappling with the complex challenges of transforming a system that is actively harming our planet and what they think should be done to save humanity from itself.
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Thank you Nick for getting a few very important rebuttals into the discussion, e.g., Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Thank you Tristan for telling it like it is. Thank you the great simplification for showing us the good, the bad, and the ugly during this critical time!!
What the US, the UK, and Israel are doing in the Middle East is sowing murder, mayhem, and ecocide.
The people of Gaza do not deserve to starve to death and be bombed and burned alive every fricking day. (n.b., Israel also burns farms of gazans practicing permaculture, and murders the farmers.) that super pisses me off.
The people of Iraq did not deserve George Bush. I support the ICC arrest warrant for Netanyahu - genocide is a crime against humanity.
I’m an atheist but would like to shout from the mountain top: GOD bless the Yemenis. Thank the GODDESS for the global south. Thank the former Emir of Qatar for Al-Jazeera, the best news channel in the world, in English and Arabic. Thank you to Gen Z students around the USA and the world. You are our hope.
Helen Thompson: “no reason to be optimistic…”
Nate: …”the well suited ones would not have been elected…” when referring to politicians… this is priceless, I will be inserting this into future conversations… and attributing the quote to NH.
Dougald Hines recently said that we are already living in collapse; it’s just not evenly distributed.
Yes - oil. Oil and gold. For different reasons, these resources are useful lenses with which to examine power and politics. Their common connection being their capacity to expand carrying-capacity through violent socio-ecological displacement. AKA: war.
John Perkins (guest suggestion) writes of this in 'Confessions of an Economic Hit-Man".
This is the same Helen (slightly improved version) who poorly represented the conflict of Ukraine+NATO vs Russia conflict on this channel back in '23, and seemed to have no knowledge of President Biden's hand in the Ukranian coup, nor the Nordstream bombing (both recorded and on public record). Recommend instead Pulitzer Prize winning ex-NYT journalist, Chris Hedges as an alternative geopolitical guest.
Less than 20 mins in, Helen suggests Putin conscripts on an 'ethnic' basis - whilst at the same time entirely ignoring that the US #empire recruits the black, brown, and poor to serve their dystopian global effort as though the structural violence of capitalism isn't, in itself, a 'forced conscription'. Uncritical, unreflexive thinking from an 'expert' who has previously demonstrated she is not across her brief. Oh ...she goes on... "Israel isn't safe" A nuclear armed, apartheid, state with the Empire's military and financial backing, exacting colonialist #genocide over 70 years, doesn't feel 'safe'. Regarding Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel, let's get real - it's all Palestine.
"Suffering of Israel" (50 mins approx) This is a logical false equivalency. What is called 'Israel' is the systematic, accelerating and escalating, ethnic cleansing (thanks Nate) of the region, and this genocide for the project of 'Greater Israel' will continue whilst US military support continues. In this regard, the USA under President Biden, is entirely complicit with ongoing genocide and should be prosecuted along with Netanyahu in the Hague. #JustCollapse