Iraq, Iran, and Venezuela - a common thread

In 2000, Iraq switched away from selling oil for dollars, to selling oil for Euros. Then we went to war with Iraq.

Syria is trying to build a competing pipeline to oil to the European market. So we went to war in Syria.

In 2019, Venezuela and Iran created petro cryptocurrencies to use for oil trade. Now we're going to war with Iran. I suppose Venezuela was a little too close to home for an actual invasion, but we came close, didn't we?

Our entire foreign policy is being used exclusively to support the use of the USD as the global reserve currency. And the reason for that is because we're propping up our economy with debt. We could end this game tomorrow by eliminating our importing of oil, which happens to equal the amount of our trade deficit. But Big Oil isn't finished extracting - every last penny from you and me.

A dollar is only worth a nickel today, and these despicable characters will continue to siphon off every last bit of our national wealth until the whole thing crumbles. By design. Because then they'll just redraw the lines of the map to make this country a place where you and I live with less freedoms than we have now.

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Lookout's picture

The 1992 draft Defense Planning Guidance (DPG), crafted by then-Defense Department staffers I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz, and Zalmay Khalilzad, is widely regarded as an early formulation of the neoconservatives’ post-Cold War agenda, laying out a series economic and military objectives that were intended to ensure a U.S.-led unipolar global system. Although it was widely panned at the time, many of the ideas proposed in the document have persisted to this day, having played a particularly influential role in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the launching of the “war of the terror.”
https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/1992_draft_defense_planning_guida...
from '92 -
1992-Draft-Defense-Policy-Guidance.jpg

You might want to add Obummers successful coups in Honduras, Ukraine, and Brazil, as well as Trump's recent Bolivian coup. Time for the empire to collapse!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

bondibox's picture

@Lookout @Lookout I think that was then, and while we're certainly still following that trajectory I think the dynamics have shifted. Before it was a matter of economic dominance, now it's a matter of economic survival, and the difference is the gigantic amount of federal debt. The national wealth has been squeezed out of us.

For the past 20 years, that debt has gone to continuing the futile endeavor of petrodollar warfare only so that we can continue our futile consumption of fossil fuels, all the while the perpetrators deny the existence of global warming, fracking contamination, etc.

What we've been doing is not sustainable and it will lead to an ugly end. The solution is simple and at least ever since GM quashed the EV1 we've been prevented from implementing it. Maintaining the status quo is draining our wealth, and the solution would preserve it. And still we are prevented from implementing it.

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F the F'n D's

Lookout's picture

@bondibox

What we've been doing is not sustainable and it will lead to an ugly end.

Considering we print our own money, national debt isn't the problem...personal (mainly college and cars) and corporate debt will drive the crash IMO. The loans to unprofitable fracked (and backrupt) wells may create a bigger issue than the mortgage crash in 2008.

All our sanctions are doing a good job creating other means of currency exchange -

A Russian newspaper has revealed that senior authorities from Russia and China have signed an agreement to ditch US dollar and other major international currencies in mutual trade and instead use their own national currencies.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/06/29/599734/Russia-China-national-c...

I think Iran and Venezuela (and maybe Cuba) are part of the new exchange as well. Good bye petrodollar. I'm for whatever it takes to bring this empire to its knees (without a war).

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13 users have voted.

“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Bob In Portland's picture

Ukraine's strategic value for the US is almost never reported in the US media. The most obvious is that it is up against Russia, and Russia has been the target of the West since the end of WWI.

Ukraine's fascist history and alliance with the Nazis during WWII is important. It provides the West with people willing to throw themselves into battle to destroy Russia. The US has been nurturing these fascists for seventy years. This element was going to eventually be used by the US.

In the battle to control oil and gas worldwide Ukraine also played a very important part. Russian gas pipelines cross Ukraine, which not only provided important income for Russia, but also natgas in return to Europe. A large part of US military intervention in the last twenty years has been to make the EU dependent on American-controlled energy. Syria's plan to create a pipeline with Iraq and Iran was destroyed with the US destruction of that country. Now that Russia's Nord Stream II is about to be completed despite US interference, and other southern pipelines are inching forward, US plans to create a huge flow of LNG shipments to Europe has pretty much evaporated. Ukraine's strategic value, to include giving the US use of Crimea as a deepwater port to extend its power into central Asia, is gone. All the children of the CIA importation of Ukrainian fascists after WWII who occupy our national security apparatus must see the value of their homeland sink to being merely cannon fodder if the US ever does try to create a land war there.

Now it appears that the US empire has overextended itself. It cannot control Iran and Iraq anymore. The House of Saud and the little kingdoms with radical Sunni royal families and restive Shia populations that ring the Persian Gulf are all in jeopardy now. If just some of those oilfields are controlled by the Shia the US grip on the Middle East will be weakened precipitously. The Houthi rebels showed how ineffective the Patriot missile systems are in defending the Saudi oil industry. If enough pressure is mounted against the House of Saud the royal family may be buying up property in Miami soon.

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@Bob In Portland

The most important part of your statement is this:

The US has been nurturing these fascists for seventy years.

The particular nazi armed groups we sponsor represent the fascism in our government that has constituted military industrial treason here since the 1930s.

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CB's picture

both the dollar AND the euro for payment of Libya's oil. He wanted to use the gold backed dinar for all African commodity trades. For this, Nicolas Sarkozy called Libya a threat to the financial security of mankind.

H: FRANCE'S CLIENT & Q'S GOLD. SID
From: Sidney Blumenthal
To: Hillary Clinton

Date: 2011-04-01 15:44
Subject: H: FRANCE'S CLIENT & Q'S GOLD. SID
...
On April 2, 2011 sources with access to advisors to Salt al-Islam Qaddafi stated in strictest confidence that while the freezing of Libya's foreign bank accounts presents Muammar Qaddafi with serious challenges, his ability to equip and maintain his armed forces and intelligence services remains intact. According to sensitive information available to this these individuals, Qaddafi's government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli.

This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French.franc (CFA).

(Source Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According to these individuals Sarkozy's plans are driven by the following issues:

a. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil production,
b. Increase French influence in North Africa,
c. Improve his intemai political situation in France,
d. Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world,
e. Address the concern of his advisors over Qaddafi's long term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa)
...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM]

American global hegemonic power is based entirely on the ubiquitous $US. Destroy the dollar, destroy the ability for the US to project power. They feed on each other to the detriment of both humanity and the environment.

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