Oil rigs in the Permian Basin of Texas are still being built even at $45 oil, defying shale skeptics

Oil prices have tumbled to a three-month low as surging supply once again exposes the chronic global glut and threatens to perpetuate the energy slump for another year.

US crude contracts crashed through key technical barriers to $42.40 yesterday (7/26) before recovering slightly in late trading on profit-taking. They have fallen by 9% over the last four sessions.

Speculators have given it an extra push. Data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the US shows that 52 hedge funds have taken out large short positions, betting that the summer sell-off still has a further leg to run.

Prices are unlikely to re-test the February lows of $26 when asset prices were tumbling across the world and markets were in a full-blown ‘China panic,’ pricing in a global recession that never happened. 

The latest oil tremors reveal little about the underlying health of the global economy, which has so far shrugged off Brexit fears and may be accelerating.

The UN Commission of Experts identified 1,600 actual cases of rape in the Bosnian War that took place in the former Yugoslavia over a period of years. In Germany, 2,000 Moslem migrants sexually assaulted 1,200 women in a single night in cities across Germany.

The former was considered one of the worst war crimes of the decade. Its perpetrators were bombed and then faced war crimes trials. The perpetrators of the latter received a slap on the wrist.

In Cologne, Hassan and Hussein were handed suspended sentences. Hassan, who had demanded that a man hand over two women to him by bellowing, “Give me the girls, give me the girls - or you're dead” was tried as a juvenile offender and was sentenced to community service and an integration course.

That’s because, given a choice between protecting women and sexual predators, the left chooses rapists – if they are Moslem.

On June 30, Hallel Yaffa Ariel, a 13-year-old girl, was asleep when she was murdered in her own bedroom. She had just graduated 8th grade. It was her summer vacation and she was taking it easy. The Moslem terrorist who broke into her bedroom stabbed her over and over again. Eventually he slit her throat.

The mattress that she slept on was soaked in blood. Her room with its casual teenage disarray, clothes tossed around carelessly, was stained red with the last gush of life from the girl who had played there, danced there and dreamed of the future that would never be hers.

The murder happened in Israel, but Hallel was an American citizen. Her government not only failed to protect her, it financed her bloody death. And it will go on rewarding her killer’s family.

The United States has officially condemned Hallel’s murder. Its current government however will do nothing to stop the Palestinian Authority from funding terrorism. Instead it will usE its power to continue funding it. Hallel was not the first American to be murdered by Moslem terrorists this year. She was the seventh.

The South China Sea has become the most dangerous fault-line in the world. Beijing and Washington are on a collision course over these contested waters, the shipping lane for 60% of global trade.

To The Point has been predicting this for years.  The prescience of that prediction became quite clear today.

This morning (7/12), the International Court of Justice in The Hague has ruled against China, that it has no “historic title” to areas of this sea stretching all the way to the ‘nine dash line’ - deep into the territorial waters of a ring of South East Asian states.

Beijing has as expected dismissed the verdict with scorn, accusing the tribunal of “shamelessly abusing its authority.” The state media said the country “must be prepared for any military confrontation” with the US, and must not flinch from war if provoked.

It is the latest in a series ominous developments in Asia and Europe that are rapidly subverting the Western international system and setting off a global rearmament race with strong echoes of the late-1930s.

I once tried the organic alternative to the herbicide Roundup for clearing weeds from garden paths: a flame-thrower.

It was brutal for the environment, incinerating innocent insects and filling the air with emissions. Next week I might have to go back to that. Roundup, the world’s safest, cheapest and most effective weedkiller, may be illegal within days in Europe.

Roundup (chemical name glyphosate) was due to have its licence extended for 15 years. Normally it would have been nodded through.

But this time the relevant French and German ministers, Segolene Royale and Barbara Hendricks, nervous about the Greenie vote, have blocked the renewal, and the best that farmers and gardeners can hope for is an 18-month extension till after French and German elections.

Yet almost everybody agrees that glyphosate is safe: the European Food Safety Authority, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment, the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the World Health Organization, my own British government.

Even at absurdly high concentrations, lab tests show it is only one-tenth as carcinogenic as coffee – and you don’t drink Roundup.

[Skye’s comments on the Forum re the HFR last week (07/01) are so insightful many TTPers requested they be a full article.  We are happy to comply]

A TTPer asks, “Skye, your doubts on Trump (e.g. on tariffs and trade) are justified but a little more substance would help for an observer who retains an open mind on the subject.   What is evil?   This visceral distrust (of Trump) may be justified but what is the alternative Biden, Clinton and 2 to 3 Supreme Court justices?”

I don’t think that Trump is evil (unlike Hillary).  I do believe that he is mistaken about many things, and most importantly about what it would take to get him elected.  He is a prisoner of his own egotism.  His belief that his name can replace campaign funding with a billion dollars is what will give us those ‘Crats and their Supreme Court nominees.  I am obviously very unhappy with that prospect.

4 to 8 years of Clinton II are likely to create a lot more desperation. I do not want to see voting from the rooftops with .338 Lapua ballots.  That almost always ends very badly. 

I would love to read of as many other possibilities as smart TTPers can imagine.  We need to consider as many alternatives as possible from as many minds as possible.  A productive first step would be to stop wasting effort arguing about the relative qualities of Trump and Hillary.  Of course, the latter is truly horrific, but unless the former undergoes an unexpected sea change with respect to campaign funding actions, we will be stuck with the latter.