Petrodollar system.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by storch, Mar 6, 2019.

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  1. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    All very interesting and chilling, but what does it have to do with the petrodollar war theory? I guess Lenin was right when he joked that capitalists would sell him the rope to hang them with.
     
  2. storch

    storch banned

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    Just dispelling the notion that ". . . dangerously violating a basic norm of international law by using poison gas on his Kurdish citizens" was any surprise to the U.S. or any heartfelt justification for invading. It was the petrodollar. You really don't get it that as soon as we invaded, killed hundreds of thousands of human beings who were not Saddam Hussein, created 4 million refugees, and destroyed their infrastructure, we changed the currency used to purchase oil back to the dollar. That priority is blindingly obvious even to the blind!
     
  3. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Was the petrodollar involved in the Persian Gulf War? Saddam was getting uppity, with his million man army, his giant cannon and all.. The poison gas was just one of several provocations that concerned U.S. decision makers, and it wasn't humanitarian sentimentality that peaked their interest. He started to threaten Israel. In April 1990 Saddam threatened to destroy half of Israel with chemical weapons if it moved against Iraq. Attacking a neighboring country, Kuwait, in violation of the U.N. Charter was the last straw. Superpowers might get away with things like that, but when their clients go off the reservation without permission, they need to be slapped back. (As a matter of fact, Saddam may have thought that he had permission when U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie seemed sympathetic at a briefing on Iraq's grievances with Kuwait, but boy was he wrong!) Saddam was obviously trouble and a threat to the status quo. John Esposito, 1997 (Political Islam) commented;"Saddam Hussein did what his Gulf patrons had earlier paid him to prevent."--challenging the regional balance of power. T

    Saddam continued to be trouble after the war. "In 1993, Saddam tried to assassinate former President Bush. ...In 1994, Saddam surged massive numbers of troops to the Kuwait border, threatening another invasion and forcing the U.S. to rush 30,000 troops to Kuwait to deter him – a game in which Saddam held the advantage. He shot regularly at U.S. and British planes enforcing the no-fly zones, hoping to capture a pilot. He supported terrorists and railed against Israel. Smelling terror in the wind, he draped himself in Islamism. ... In 1996, he uncovered and annihilated a CIA-sponsored coup attempt, humiliating the Agency. Meanwhile, Saddam repeatedly frustrated international weapons inspectors; and then, in 1998, he blocked inspections altogether." The First Gulf War and Its Aftermath - by Hillel Fradkin Lewis Libby Small wonder that the Neocons who came to power in the U.S. after the 2000 election had Saddam in their sights for removal. The petrodollar thing was just another provocation.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2019
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  4. Balbus

    Balbus Senior Member

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    Storch

    LOL I don’t get it because it doesn’t seem to be there I mean yes they would turn it back to dollars but that doesn’t prove any direct link and as I’ve pointed out the neo-con wanted the overthrow of Saddam years before he moved over to the Euro from the dollar.

    Saddam announced his intention in 2000 and it began [mainly] in 2001.

    But in 1998 the Project for a new American Century sent a letter to Clinton calling for the overthrow of Saddam and I believe it was a popular idea in neo-con circle before then and especially in PNAC.

    Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz the last two and John Bolton were actually amongst the signatories to that letter to Clinton.

    Is it strange then that when in government and they got the opportunity they followed through with what they were calling for in 1998?

    *

    It should also be pointed out that it seems the changeover had to be approved by the UN Security Council's Iraqi sanctions committee, which controlled the oil for food programme.

    Given the power of the US in the UN why didn’t they try and block it there it would have been a lot quieter and a hell of a lot cheaper than invading Iraq.

    But the thing is that doesn’t seem to have happened in fact –

    the Clinton administration said it wouldn't have a problem if Iraq received payment in euros rather than dollars for its oil.

    "As to the specific currency they choose, I don't think it matters," National Security Council spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington. "What is important is that we have control over his (Saddam Hussein's) pocketbook so he uses the money to buy food and not tanks." (Washington Post)
     
  5. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    The overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya seems even harder to explain in terms of petrodollars. The U.S. had a long history of hostility to him going back to Reagan's 1986 attack and the Lockerbie incident, but we were just one among many actors standing in line with grudges--including Al Qaeda, France, and the U.K. He had a long history of supporting subversive actions against sub-Saharan nations like Chad that put him at odds with France.The revolution that brought him down was part of the "Arab Spring" revolts that swept across North Africa from Tunisia. Gaddaffi's ruthless response with attacks on civilians brought UN action and imposition of a no-fly zone. France and the U.K took the lead in a military response by European countries, and the U.S. eventually followed. Were these countries, particularly the European ones, primarily motivated by concern over petrodollars which put the euro at a disadvantage in relationship to the dollar? And if that explains the U.S. entry, how do we determine that, when there were good reasons for supporting a cause that had already involved our NATO allies? Gaddafi was a problem child who seemed to be losing his grip in a geo-politically sensitive region that seemed to be undergoing sweeping change. According to many reports, Hillary Clinton played a leading role in opting for U.S. involvement against opposition from others in the Obama Administration. Did she have some special tie to petrodollars? Again, the theory may be true, but where is the evidence? Maybe in those missing e-mails? Russia, are you listening?
     
    Last edited: Mar 22, 2019
  6. Just because they had a problem with these guys long before doesn't mean the impetus wasn't the petrodollar. They had no justification for invading these countries. As soon as they switched from the petrodollar, they invented an excuse.
     
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  7. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    How do you know?
     
  8. Just seems to be the timing of what happened. And clearly switching from the petro dollar is not something "they" can allow to happen. So it makes sense.
     
  9. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    And there you have it. It's something we think "they" would do, and it happened before the military action in question, so it stands to reason. I gave you alternative theories by writers who also think they're in the know and had different explanations. Of course you could be right, and those of us who expect more proof may be forever out of touch with deeper truths. I might even be a brain in a jar in some alien kid's science lab and never be the wiser. C'est la vie.
     
  10. McFuddy

    McFuddy Visitor

    C'est ridicule. La conspiration est le rétrécissement de la classe moyenne, pas l'Irak.
     
  11. Meliai

    Meliai Banned

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    You're just saying that to throw the scent off your quest for the petrofranc
     
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  12. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Dr. Thomas Swan, an experimental psychologist specializing in cognition and culture, has some observations about conspiracy theories that might be pertinent here:
    "A common trait among conspiracy theorists is their need to derogate critics. Criticism must be devalued because it threatens the comfort provided by the conspiracy. This is done in one of two ways. Either the critic is too dumb to see the intricacies of the conspiracy, and is thus contributing to it by ignoring it; or they're actively helping the conspirators to cover up the truth. The unconsidered third option: that the critic is just not convinced by the evidence, is undesirable because it would create a reason to doubt the comforting belief.

    The two ways of derogating critics have distinct, self-serving functions. In believing that some critics are too dumb to see their special knowledge, theorists establish their superiority. In believing that other critics are part of the conspiracy, theorists are manufacturing evidence to support their special knowledge." 10 Reasons Why People Believe Conspiracy Theories
     
  13. storch

    storch banned

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  14. storch

    storch banned

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    I see. You haven't commented on the issue of just who was supplying these biological and chemical components to Iraq. It would seem that the U.S.'s concerns were somewhat disingenuous in light of their participation in Iraq's acquisition of these components. Did you forget reading that part of my post, or are you just ignoring it?

    You're right about Libya's invasion not really being about oil. It was about banking. Here is something that will clear up your confusion about that.

    In an article posted on the Market Oracle, Eric Encina observed:

    One seldom mentioned fact by western politicians and media pundits: the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State Owned. . . . Currently, the Libyan government creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, through the facilities of its own central bank. Few can argue that Libya is a sovereign nation with its own great resources, able to sustain its own economic destiny. One major problem for globalist banking cartels is that in order to do business with Libya, they must go through the Libyan Central Bank and its national currency, a place where they have absolutely zero dominion or power-broking ability. Hence, taking down the Central Bank of Libya (CBL) may not appear in the speeches of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy but this is certainly at the top of the globalist agenda for absorbing Libya into its hive of compliant nations.
    _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    Anyway, let's hear your version of why Iraq invaded Kuwait. This should be an enlightening exchange between the two of us.
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2019
  15. We don't necessarily think it, but I certainly do. I think you are out of touch with the deeper truth of what goes on among powerful men in the US. Your inclination, apparently, is to believe that they are perfectly innocent and don't have a larger agenda of any sort. To me this is a very convenient thing for a citizen of the United States to think. Therefore, nothing is ever wrong. You are safe and secure. What you see is what you get. You are a good, upstanding citizen of a responsible nation.

    So dig up another essay from another pseudo-intellectual psychologist to tell us why people who believe in conspiracies all need to be comforted. It's the other way around, actually. It doesn't comfort me in the least to know that the citizens of this country aren't really in control of this country. It doesn't comfort me to know that we're expendable to serve a larger agenda that we aren't publicly made aware of.

    And no, I don't need direct proof to know that powerful men conspire and have an agenda all their own. Yes, even in the Holy land of the United States of America. There is evidence of it happening in the past, and there's no reason to assume it doesn't still happen to this day. What do you think, they realized the petrodollar was on the way out in these oil rich countries and just kind of stuffed their hands in their pockets and looked at their shoes and kicked some dirt and said "Aw shucks"?
     
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  16. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Not really, cuz I'm not interested in following you down your rabbit hole. I'm more interested instead in why people believe conspiracy theories. You're supplying enough information for a whole new article on the subject.
    Why So Many People Believe Conspiracy Theories
    The 6 Reasons People Believe in Conspiracy Theories
    Why Do People Believe in Conspiracy Theories?
    https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/conspiracy-thinking-and-the-need-for-certainty/
    Beliefs in conspiracy theories and the need for cognitive closure
    Here's Why People Believe In Conspiracy Theories
     
  17. storch

    storch banned

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    I'll take that as a nonresponse, then.

    And if you really want to discuss why people believe conspiracy theories, then go start a thread about it. You can talk all you want about it there.
     
  18. Okiefreak

    Okiefreak Senior Member

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    Thank you. Since you're the OP, I take that as a go-ahead.
     
  19. ~Zen~

    ~Zen~ Ancient Mariner Administrator

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    This has got to be the most boring thread on this site.
     
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  20. storch

    storch banned

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    And yet, here you are . . .

    Like the guy who tells the waitress, "That sandwich tasted like shit; especially the last few bites."
     
    Last edited: Mar 23, 2019
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