This oil topic fascinating to me (and it seems an ever increasing of the planetary population).
In the interest of simplification, or at least reiteration -
Assuming its broadly uncontroversial that WoT/WWIV has two conspicuous poles:
(1) Cultural pole associated with monotheistic totalitarianism / Abrahamic civil war (room for much discussion on definition), &
(2) Economic pole in which oil is overwhelmingly prominent, due to integrated imbalance where Islamic world generally marked by stunted industrial development and vast oil reserves (thus ensuring a gradient in the system - characterized by one-way oil flow from the Islamic world to the West). This is intensified by the fact that the 'ideological/religious' (more discussion needed) heartland of the Ummah is simulataneously the linchpin of the world's oil supply -- it even seems that Zealotry directly correlated to oil abundance (Lee Harris has a plausible argument - 'fantasy ideology ' - for why this might happen).

Questions:
a) Can we analytically dissociate this system for the purpose of analysis before re-synthesizing it, or is it so entangled that oil sloshes over into religion without clear boundaries?
b) Is it possible, kindof DeLanda-style, to make progress here by simply describing the system from a suitably wide-angle clear-eyed empirical perspective? Especially, is it possible to hack out suggestive metaphors and replace them with rigorously descriptive terms?
c) How crucial is Thomas Gold to all this? (seems to me v. important - but does that mean analysis hangs on speculative geology?)
d) How does the functioning of this petropolitical-religious nexus affect the understanding of hyperstitional mechanisms in general?

can I just add one more question -

what does petropolitics have to do with crazed oppression of women (clearly a key part of Islamofascism and therefore WoT)? - guess there is at least a possible (Marxist) answer that has something to do with labor (see Lee Harris)??

also Nick or Reza

don't really get how you see Gold's contribution - can you explain?

Anna - Three major dimensions at least:
(1) PETROPOLITICS. If oil is not a fossil fuel it is more abundant, distributed differently, and to a degree 'renewable' - each aspect has huge strategic consequences.
(2) MEMETIC. OK, know Ccru UEL are going to replace this language, but there's a Deep Hot Biosphere craze growing that will have an impact irrespective of its ultimate scientific reliability. Interesting hyperstitional issues about how oil-related beliefs become economically/politically operational.
(3) MYTHIC. If the tellurian Oil-blob was never sedimented, but instead welled-up out of original ('cosmic') hydrocarbon geochemistry it is evidently a very different type of entity, one that was not 'built by the strata' for a start. [PS. On this, qabbalism strongly reinforces the cosmic-hydrocarbons hypothesis - OIL = 63].

Nick

a) Well, honestly I think it’s possible to reach such an analytical level but as an Iranian I’ve been exposed to oil for too long and now, can’t clearly see the boundaries. ... think Iranians live in some kind of inter-dimensional realm between islam and oil, two burning spaces, this is why they have managed to survive for such a long time.

Additional note: I finally succeeded to read Spengler’s article ... brilliant ... unfortunately, contemporary intellectualism (bubble-thinkers) is so busy with its quotidian survivalist / conservative lines of thought which can hardly understand the crucial aspects of such discussions (let alone their elements and compositions). Sorry, enough for the boiling rage. What I was going to mention is: I think Ali Sina is not completely irrelevant; Islamic movements have undergone a radical dissociation from their source line; a second Islam is rising through the body of the old one, and it can creatively makes everything religious upon contact; the process is so drastic that secular options of this panorama are violently erased (it never falls into the trap of secularization). This somehow complicates our analytical positions since we can not safely use Islamic religious patterns which may help us in the analysis.

However, for the start, let’s try your second question (suggestion): disintegrating the discussion into empirical matrices which can hold clearly descriptive entities. I eagerly follow your guide here. What / Where is the best point for initializing this analytical process?

c) as you mentioned very important ... your second question: well, I don’t think so; its relation to speculative geology is incrementally getting hyperstitional mainly because of its chemical bond to religious compositions and their epidemic dispersion, the common belief that oil resources are depleting and WoT’s thirst to assimilate all oil-oriented subjects; on the other hand, Gold’s speculative geology has already been subverted by polytical currents; reading Gold’s essays, we can realize that he knows well how his discussions are developed through a political atmosphere rather than on a concrete geologic bedrock ... following his new essays, it is obvious that he doesn’t try to escape it; instead he tries to push his discussions further into extravagant political conclusions. But what do you think?

d) How does the functioning of this petropolitical-religious nexus affect the understanding of hyperstitional mechanisms in general?

This question is both v important and deep ... need more time to think about it.
-------------------

Anna

>>> what does petropolitics have to do with crazed oppression of women (clearly a key part of Islamofascism and therefore WoT)? - guess there is at least a possible (Marxist) answer that has something to do with labor (see Lee Harris)?

Again, a very interesting and important question but I need more time to think. honestly, I hadn’t thought about it ... sorry,it's a symptom of my atrophied masculinity, I guess. I’m sure you have deeply worked on this question ... could you share your explorations / answers?

Reza

can't say I've 'deeply worked on this question' but do think its vital. Seems clear that the rise of religious fundamentalism has a lot to do with a backlash against feminism (understood very basically as women's increased power, economic independence and growing importance in public life).

what this has to do with petropolitics - I'm not sure - except that perhaps oil based economies -- where women do not have to work -- help create the socio-economic conditions that keep women secluded and highly dependent.

- immediate problem with this is that it does not seem to apply to Afghanistan where anti-women psychosis was most acute.

Would be very interested in your opinion and experiences (I've heard conflicting stories about Iran - some claim strict segregation of the sexes others that in the private sphere at least things are quite relaxed).

Also curious about whether you think gender politics is shifting in the WoT

Anna, just a pathetic answer:

Yes, the situation in Iran is quite different from Afghanistan; women’s life in Iran mainly runs though Persian patterns; it’s not an exclusively Islamic thing (of course, it has been entangled with Islamic customs which somehow fit the strictly Persian patterns). The majority of Iranian women has a different view about economic independence and growing importance in public life; unlike western women (let’s say American women) they have no interest for total equality with men on all private / public levels. For example, I have frequently heard a similar sentence from Iranian women, “since America has run out of effective human resources, it has started to collect fresh supplies through its feministic policies (in which women can reach men on all levels of social activities.)” Most of iranian women find this degree of equality dangerous, irrelevant and ridiculous. First as you know, iranian women rarely stay single in their life. The family cannot be uprooted from the iranian culture. After marriage, men should pay a considerable amount of money to women for various reasons (Mah’rieh, Shier-Bahaa), especially in the case of divorce (of course, Mah’rieh is always grantable). The amount of money in cities is usually so high that men cannot afford if it is requested by woman; they either should pay it monthly or go to prison. No one here considers Mah'rieh as a symptom of economic reliance or a social disrespect to women but as a ‘right’ which belongs to women; they can get it whenever they wish regardless of situation. The recent laws concerning Mah’rieh are particularly harsh to men. On the other hand, iranian women like the rest of middle eastern women tend to accumulate gold and jewelry both for their ornamental and economic value. All this has established a stealth matriarchal system in the private sphere on which men are ironically dependent and can do nothing about it. In the public, however, the atmosphere around women is a bit dense and it is mostly because of the government policies. Obliged to follow these policies, men cannot reform the situation (because such policies are enveloped within Islamic laws which are hard to fight); the harsh public sphere is mainly rises from the way women should appear in public (of course, it is increasingly becoming an insignificant factor esp. in growing cities).

>>> Also curious about whether you think gender politics is shifting in the WoT

Well, IMHO, it is a bit difficult to answer since WoT is comprised of very diverse gender / sexual patterns and structures on the islamic front (most of which are not decipherable by western analyses); however, the dominant trend in Arabic countries is that male-female dynamics is progressively polarized: men are losing control of the private sphere and establishing harsh sexual segregation in the public sectors; this triggers the emergence of secret micro-matriarchal structures and matrilineal tendencies in the private sphere.

Reza

think your last point especially fascinating - trying to figure out a way to approach it hyperstitionally

wondering whether you agree that the gendered polarization of public-private spheres corresponds to the economics of oil? Also wondering how you think this fits with 'Islamic Apocalypticism' ?

Anna, thank you, interesting questions ... if you don't mind i'll answer them later, think the whole issue can be discussed in one separate post (i'll work on it). for now, i'm curious about petropolitics and China ... what is the general perspective?

Nick, what do you think about Anna’s questions, especially the second one?

>> curious about petropolitics and China ... what is the general perspective?

V. pertinent q.
Most definitely a huge upheavel in Chinese petropolics right now, because economic growth has been so strong they've become a major oil consumer and their indigenous sources of supply are running out.
Think now this has become a foreign policy issue of the front rank for Beijing, and it's only going to get more intense - involves questions about relations with Russia, naval expansion and shipping routes, the entire central Asia 'great game v.2.0', Mideast diplomacy ... etc.
[I'll focus more attention on this and do an update.]

Not sure what to think about Anna's q.s yet, but maybe related to another issue i've been thinking about: how to conceive the connection between the generalized 'devil's excrement' role of oil as a source of tyranny, corruption, instability and social destruction (in producer countries) with the specificity of it's relation to Islam.
Given that oil seems to have thoroughly screwed up Venezuela, and seems set to toxify Russian 'democracy', is there a particular Oil/Islam nexus that can be isolated from the overall pattern of despotic petropolitics?

>>> Think now this has become a foreign policy issue of the front rank for Beijing, and it's only going to get more intense - involves questions about relations with Russia, naval expansion and shipping routes, the entire central Asia 'great game v.2.0', Mideast diplomacy ... etc.

Very interesting ... so China has already been seduced to WoT as a potential strategic agency? This reminds me of the hyperstitional perspective on China’s complicity in WoT in the popular videogame “Command and Conquer: Generals”.

Reza - China's insertion into WWIV quite complex and even contradictory - think it will try to be patient as usual, so there's probably plenty of time to figure it out.
On the 'devil's excrement' question: do you think there's a relatively clear way to specify the Oil / Islamic Apocalypticism relation that differentiates it more or less reliably from the residue of non-islamic oil-fuelled disorder on the planet?

>>> On the 'devil's excrement' question: do you think there's a relatively clear way to specify the Oil / Islamic Apocalypticism relation that differentiates it more or less reliably from the residue of non-islamic oil-fuelled disorder on the planet?

Well, for now, I can think of a few reasons [needles to say, very crude at this time] but first of all: Toxin-attack against nervous system of all collective organizations is one of the intrinsic functions of the Tellurian blob and is inevitable. However, Tellurian blob can participate with certain collective agencies (the cult of the blob) as both fuel and a dynamic lubricant on which things are moving forward (Anna, we should provide you with some materials on Oil as the Tellurian lubricant and its link to the Gog-Magog Axis; you might find them interesting).

1. Oil-toxin industry is utterly ruinous for un-collective blob summoners (Latin America is an example) i.e. oil producers: in the case of the islamic front, oil toxicity has been mutated into a kind of favorable parasite (a strategic symbiosis between oil and Islam’s burning core) because oil is welled-up on an ‘Islamic Continent’ not a geopolitical boundary; or in other words, ISLAM has made a pertropolitical network (linked by Islamic / religious protocols and currents) for the Islamic front which has a high tolerance of feeding the blob-parasite and on certain level, accompanying it or positively participating with it (again, the interconnection between Tellurian Omega and Islamic Apocalypticism).

2. Islam perceives Oil as an ultimate Tellurian lubricant or a radical field of tacticity (again the discussion on tactics and oil); it does not merely perceive oil as a production-based motor-grease [1] but mainly as a lubricant current or a tellurian anti-vitalist flux on which everything is mobilized inevitably (oil goes everywhere and so things dissolved in it or floating on its surface).

3. Oil trade in ‘islamic’ network of petropolitics is primarily used to recharge the islamic network neither the wealth of country nor the production spheres. For America, ‘oil trade’ recharges oil fields but for the islamic front it recharges what we call here Hezb-o-Allah, the legion of Ghiamat [Qiyamah]; while oil makes other populations weaker, it makes Hezb-o-Allah and their bonds stronger.

[1] Instrumentalizing oil in production is like feeding on Devil’s excrement and its byproducts; there is always the danger of being poisoned to death or even worse.

Reza - the analysis you are embarking on here is absolutely critical IMHO and deserves some careful thrashing out.
I'm very interested in the role of 'lucid agency' in the account you are giving. When you say "Islam perceives" are you suggesting that an explicit strategic discourse exists, or that the actual unfolding dynamics indicate the existence of an implicit 'alliance' between the Tellurian blob-vector and the Islamist agenda?
As footnote q. to this, how are the fissures within/between Islamist movements to be conceived here - is there an unconscious Islamist metaprogram (perhaps even Z-programmed) ensuring an ultimate convergence of disparate concrete currents?
[apolgies -have to break post]

[cont.d]
But sticking to the oil patch - there also seems to be a continuing importance of the 'finite fossil fuels' question, since if WWIV marks a culmination of Great Oil Politics it is obviously being scheduled, perpetuated, perhaps even in more intimate ways 'timed' by the reserves, consumption, substitution possibilities and extraction economics of oil.
Is the 'end of the oil age' (an intriguing hyperstitional operator in itself) synchronized with the inmplicit historicity of Islamic Apocalypticism? (worth remembering Sheikh Yamani's remark: "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones ...")
Final point for now: Assuming that part of what is at stake here is the emergence of new petropolitcal hyperstitions (most prominently, 'the blob'), can we produce a taxonomy of existing hyperstitional structures in this area, e.g. liberal ('markets will sort it out'), green ('omigod we're running out of everything including oil' /'omigod we're boiling Gaia in her own juices'), Western WWIV superhawk ('gotta tech-up to hydrogen and stop buying that raghead terror-sauce'), Al-Qaeda exoteric ('Allah says fair price for oil is US$144 a barrel'), Islamic esoteric ...

Very exciting discussions

>>> I'm very interested in the role of 'lucid agency' in the account you are giving. When you say "Islam perceives" are you suggesting that an explicit strategic discourse exists, or that the actual unfolding dynamics indicate the existence of an implicit 'alliance' between the Tellurian blob-vector and the Islamist agenda?

Good point ... actually both of them ... looking back to Islamic ideology industry especially after Iran Revolution, we can trace hundreds of books following the same thread we are discussing here: “OIL is our holy gold” (or water?) or “OIL is the gift of Allah to Islam”, “OIL is our weapon”, “OIL ; sometimes, even it has been compared to Zamzam water in Mecca.

(Note - for those who might be unfamiliar with Zamzam: http://i-cias.com/e.o/zamzam.htm)

Also keep in mind: ‘Zamzam Cola’ is the Iran’s answer to Coca and is getting popular in Saudi Arabia and Gulf countries; from ‘Islamonline’:

“RIYADH, August 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Iranian soft drink Zamzam Cola, considered a viable Islamic substitute for U.S. global rivals Pepsi and Coca Cola, has started selling in the Saudi markets, the product agent said Tuesday, August 20.” (http://www.islamonline.net/english/news/2002-08/20/article38.shtml)
Zamzam (ABJAD) = 94

>>> As footnote q. to this, how are the fissures within/between Islamist movements to be conceived here - is there an unconscious Islamist metaprogram (perhaps even Z-programmed) ensuring an ultimate convergence of disparate concrete currents?

Yes, even without its intrinsic Z-program, Islamism can be conceived as a collective agency with violent continuous fissions within itself that rushes toward an ultimate convergence which has no survival value, its Ghiamat or Islamic Apocalypse. Fissures between islamist movements as Motahari suggested have fertilized Islam (having the role of strategic feedforward) to reach its ultimate goals ‘more prepared and more patient’, he continues, ‘although they are actually slowing the process, but making Islam ready to accept and interlock with its goals’.

Here I should add, War and Peace have absolutely different meanings and functions in Islam. Suffice to say, the ultimate slogan of iran during the war with iraq as another islamic country (you can still see it on walls in any district) was: WE EXPORTED ISLAM BY WAR. The same thing is at work for the violent fissions between islamic movements. Islam is internally so diverse and collectively complex and disordered that merely wars between its movements can maintain its collective dynamism and its unsolid integrity for reaching an ultimate Z-infested convergence.

And as the last note: It’s rather a long time that I’m working on this question and still exploring its tentacles but I can’t really give a consolidated answer; maybe I have selected wrong ways to explore this question or am too dumb to grasp the answer ... so I appreciate some discussions from your side on this question.

>>> But sticking to the oil patch - there also seems to be a continuing importance of the 'finite fossil fuels' question, since if WWIV marks a culmination of Great Oil Politics it is obviously being scheduled, perpetuated, perhaps even in more intimate ways 'timed' by the reserves, consumption, substitution possibilities and extraction economics of oil.
Is the 'end of the oil age' (an intriguing hyperstitional operator in itself) synchronized with the implicit historicity of Islamic Apocalypticism? (worth remembering Sheikh Yamani's remark: "The stone age didn't end because we ran out of stones ...")

I guess the hyperstitional program of ‘finite fossil fuels’ or as Gold suggests ‘The Myth of Fossil Fuels’ does not extinguish the burning current of Islamic Apocalypticism but violently accelerates it, rendering it as a sudden cataclysm which might be too fast for us to grasp the panorama in its entirety. According to FFF program, as soon as oil fields are depleted, a continental revolution on the islamic front happens, its main source of energy is derived out of years of economic repression, petropolitical retroproduction and overpopulation (“Islam needs more children”) and finally hungry but religiously and biologically ‘hot’ populations who now search for their Holy Gold (their religious food) in the western mines of Europe and America.

>>> Final point for now: Assuming that part of what is at stake here is the emergence of new petropolitcal hyperstitions (most prominently, 'the blob'), can we produce a taxonomy of existing hyperstitional structures in this area, e.g. liberal ('markets will sort it out'), green ('omigod we're running out of everything including oil' /'omigod we're boiling Gaia in her own juices'), Western WWIV superhawk ('gotta tech-up to hydrogen and stop buying that raghead terror-sauce'), Al-Qaeda exoteric ('Allah says fair price for oil is US$144 a barrel'), Islamic esoteric ...

LOL ... well, I should think about it but for now, these quotes remind me unit quotes in videogames, particularly RTS (Real Time Strategies) games which are based on the same hyperstitional protocols of clashes between civilizations. In Generals (I named it before), the Islamic GLA (Global Liberation Army) campaign have interesting quotes, you can hear these per-click quotes from each unit; guess, it’s helpful for this purpose, especially their toxin (oil) tractor which is one of the most pestilential weapons:

[With some changes:]

Hehe, aged to perfection
Potency guaranteed
We have generous portions
My own special brew
Would you like to try some?
Fresh out of the land
...
Something for the masses

Guess, the blob cult uses all the above taxonomies (or unit quotes) you mentioned in a very ironic, twisted way, as you can see in the example of Toxin Tractor, a cutting-edge new weapon of Islamic GLA.

Nick, read the first paragraph again, just detected a missing part in the previous version:

Good point ... actually both of them ... looking back to Islamic ideology industry especially after Iran Revolution, we can trace hundreds of books following the same thread we are discussing here: “OIL is our holy gold” (or water?) or “OIL is the gift of Allah to Islam”, “OIL is our weapon”, “The Great Satan loves oil and we have it more than anyone”; sometimes, even it has been compared to Zamzam water in Mecca.

Great stuff Reza - exposing this material to the Oecumenon from perspective of Hyperstitional coldness is an intriguing prospect (it obviously cuts through the cultural pieties of all the antagonists in a viciously diagonal fashion).
Specially agree with the implication of T. Gold as an accelerator - crucial.
Link to game clicks also excellent - they're the subliminal 'order words' of the age.
We're about to drop off into the abyss - let's try and re-start this discussion with some slight variation in angle - any suggestions?

Thanks Nick ... for now: any possibility to develop a THING-like hyperstitional model (esp. for analytical purposes) for the technocapitalist warmachines which fuse with islamic warmachines running through oil? How do they exactly function? (or parallel to the Thing’s medical files found in Antarctica: how do they hunt?)