Geopolitics:<\/strong> What do Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Gulf oil sheiks and President Obama have in common? They all want to halt the U.S. energy revolution in fracking. No wonder so many of them are endorsing Obama.<\/p>\nPresidential candidates always attract a few embarrassing endorsements, but the numbers of rogue dictators lining up to call for Obama’s reelection is striking.<\/p>\n
Obama “is an honest man who really wants to change much for the better,” cooed Russia’s President Vladimir Putin to RT state television after hurling verbal thunderbolts at Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n
It was “widely viewed as Putin’s most direct endorsement of Obama,” the Moscow Times reported.<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez also weighed in: “I hope this doesn’t harm Obama, but if I was from the United States, I’d vote for Obama,” he said, since both were “fighting the extreme right.”<\/p>\n
Chavez also noted that Obama said: “Venezuela is no threat to the interests of the United States.”<\/p>\n
Such endorsements from dictators are very much a pattern for Obama, and an unusual one, given that the world’s tyrants don’t endorse foreign leaders unless their self-preservation is at stake.<\/p>\n
Obama fits that bill, because the No. 1 goal these dictators all have is to slow or halt U.S. fracking, which poses a mortal threat to their fiefdoms.<\/p>\n
The U.S., remember, stands on the edge of an energy revolution with so many technologically new and innovative ways to extract its available oil and gas.<\/p>\n
Combined with a massive bounty in nature, it stands to become “the Saudi Arabia of shale” if fracking takes off. That’s a threat to petrotyrants’ global energy dominance and use of energy for political power.<\/p>\n
Don’t think it’s not already happening:<\/p>\n
Venezuela’s state Foundation National Cinematheque has been financially linked to “Gasland,” a 2011 anti-fracking documentary whose aim was to paint fracking in the U.S. as dangerous. The film was nominated for an Academy Award and Venezuela’s embassy in Washington openly whined on Twitter that the only reason it didn’t win was its Venezuelan involvement.<\/p>\n
Arab Gulf states are in the anti-fracking film business, too. This week, the Heritage Foundation’s Lachlan Markey found that United Arab Emirates-owned “Image Media Abu Dhabi” financed “Promised Land,” a Matt Damon film that shows U.S. oil and gas companies as greedy behemoths out to poison America’s small towns.<\/p>\n
Russia, according to a report this week by the Associated Press, is bankrolling anti-fracking efforts through environmental groups in a bid to defend its own monopoly on energy. Already, Russia has targeted Western Europe to stop development of its shale oil resources, but industry sources believe it’s going on here, too.<\/p>\n
Putin himself has condemned the “dangers” of fracking with unusual intensity in speeches and Russia’s state gas company, “Gazprom” has accused American energy companies of “hiding data” on fracking.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia has been accused of financing radical environmentalist groups through foundations to undercut oil sands production in Canada, which is America’s top supplier.<\/p>\n
All this signals something big is at stake in global power politics: fracking, which threatens petrotyrants as no nuclear weapon ever has. The Gulf states, Venezuela and Russia derive their power solely from their dominance in energy production, not by their economies.<\/p>\n
If fracking and the combination of investment, high tech, expertise and geography enable the U.S. to produce natural gas at $3 a unit, while Russia can only do it at $10, the threat is obvious.<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to the endorsements Obama has collected. Obama has the support of petrotyrants, while Mitt Romney, who vows to unleash America’s energy revolution, has their fury.<\/p>\n
It adds up to a reality of America’s natural dominance in energy being tamped down by Obama, as petrotyrants cheer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Global Plot Vs. U.S. Fracking Investors.com\u00a0 Posted 10\/03\/2012 06:39 PM ET Geopolitics: What do Hugo Chavez, Vladimir Putin, Gulf oil sheiks and President Obama have in common? They all want to halt the U.S. energy revolution in fracking. No wonder so many of them are endorsing Obama.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,106,110,85,54],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3155","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-energy","7":"category-enviros","8":"category-fracking","9":"category-leftism","10":"category-obama","11":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3155\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}