Beating Around the Bush By the Bourse

bourse / /n. (also Bourse) a stock exchange, esp. in Europe. ~Canadian Oxford Dictionary

Only bimbos believed Bush when he said it was WMD's that made him attack, invade, occupy and massacre Iraq. Most of us thought it was to steal Iraq's oil, but we were only partly right. What totally terrorized the tyrannical Texan tycoon was when Saddam played the oil bourse card in November, 2000. When Saddam started selling Iraqi oil in euro's, he jeopardized greenback hegemony as the world's supreme foreign exchange transaction currency. If this brilliant idea catches on, it will trigger the total collapse of the USA economy. The oil grab is a sideshow. The main feature is the oil bourse.

The Neocon global domination agenda is engendered by the denomination of global oil transactions in greenbacks. America prints out the bucks that are required for the purchase of oil, and the world has to produce stuff they can sell to get the bucks they need to buy oil. Printing Monopoly 'fiat' money only costs America the paper and green ink, so the USA dollar has been fattened on oil-enriched chicken feed since Tricky Dick delinked the buck from the bullion. The oil bourse scheme could so seriously setback US suzerainty that Saddam got stomped to smithereens. Krassimir Petrov, who teaches international finance in Bulgaria's American University, warns "should the Iranian Oil Bourse gain momentum, it will be eagerly embraced by major economic powers and will precipitate the demise of the dollar." Saddam was just the first wavelet in the coming tsunami. On March 20, 2006, Iran will start selling oil in euros.

Here's what the Bush cabal's Neocon Global Hegemony Manifesto, written in September 2000, has to say:

"At present the United States faces no global rival. America's grand strategy should be to preserve and extend this advantageous position as far into the future as possible. There are, however, potentially powerful states [read Europe, China, India] who are dissatisfied with the current situation and who wish to change it, if they can, in directions that would endanger the relatively peaceful, prosperous and free condition the world [read USA] enjoys today. Up to now, they have been deterred from doing so by the capability and global presence of American military power [read terrorist menace]. But as that power declines, [read currently being defeated in Iraq] relatively and absolutely, the happy conditions that follow from it will be inevitably undermined."

The latest Neocon ramp-up rhetoric for attacking Iran is a dreary fearmongering rerun of the same old lies that launched Bush's disastrous Iraq-attack. The same old WMD drumbeat is now rattling to attack and destroy Ahmadinejad's nascent civilian nuclear program. Bush will fail to get IAEA support to forward his Iran-sanctions feint to the UN Security Council, so there won't be any UN 'coalition of the willing.' Russia and China aren't interested, and Bush's Ambassador to India, David Mulford, has just ruined the nuclear carrot that Bush so carefully waved at India to get them to toe the US line. India has its nukes already, and hooking up the pipeline with Iran is more to their interest. This all makes a preemptive American or Israeli attack all the more likely, and the Neocon's insane desperation is such, that such an attack might just go nuclear.

Bush has stated that "All options are on the table.The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country." Freaky Dick's office has tasked STRATCOM to draw up a plan which includes a large-scale air assault on Iran using conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Condoleeza Rice says that "time had run out for talking to Tehran." John Bolton says that Bush "has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable." Newt Gingrich, who won't rule out a run for the presidency in '08, said, "If we don't have a very serious systematic program to replace the government of Iran, we're going to live in an unbelievably dangerous world. This is 1935 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is as close to Adolf Hitler as we've seen." Israel's Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said that Israel was preparing to protect itself if international diplomatic efforts failed to convince Iran to give up its nuclear program.

When the Neocons conquered the White House in 2000, the U.S. surplus was approximately $5 trillion. That's all gone and the domestic deficit now stands at somewhere around $500 billion. The world's largest debtor nation owes $8,193,150,090,487.56 as of this morning, and the American debt is mushrooming by over a billion a day. Foreigners hold 48 percent of the U.S. Treasury bond market, 24 percent of the U.S. corporate bond market and 20 percent of all U.S. corporations. With "W" walloping US whack like that, why in the world would anyone want dollars?

Here's how the Neocons hoodwinked and swindled the world:

From the Third World Traveler website, Sohan Sharma, Sue Tracy and Surinder Kumar wrote,

"Oil can be bought from OPEC only if you have dollars. Non-oil producing countries, such as most underdeveloped countries and Japan, first have to sell their goods to earn dollars with which they can purchase oil. If they cannot earn enough dollars, then they have to borrow dollars from the WB/IMF, which have to be paid back, with interest, in dollars. This creates a great demand for dollars outside the U.S. In contrast, the U.S. only has to print dollar bills in exchange for goods. Even for its own oil imports, the U.S. can print dollar bills without exporting or selling its goods. For instance, in 2003 the current U.S. account deficit and external debt has been running at more than $500 billion. Put in simple terms, the U.S. will receive $500 billion more in goods and services from other countries than it will provide them. The imported goods are paid by printing dollar bills, i.e., "fiat" dollars."

Here's the Neocons worst nightmare:

China has more than $800 billion reserved in a giant stack of basically green, ink-smeared paper. When Iran starts selling its oil in euros, why wouldn't China just go ahead and convert that stack of paper to euros and use real money to buy oil instead? In January 2002, Canada unloaded nearly 20% of its gold stocks in exchange for euros, thereby bringing its euro holdings to the equivalent of about US$14 billion. That's about 42 percent of the total US$33 billion in foreign deposits and securities held by the government. Just 2 years previous, euros accounted for the equivalent of about US$7 billion of Canada's reserves, only 23 percent of the total. The gold sale reduced Canada's U.S. dollar share to 55 percent from 75 percent. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela is brokering barter deals for trading oil with 12 Latin American countries thereby cutting out the USA cut. At the OPEC summit in September 2000, Chavez delivered the report of the "International Seminar on the Future of Energy." One of its key recommendations was that "OPEC take advantage of high-tech electronic barter and bi-lateral exchanges of its oil with its developing country customers." That would be the end of dollar hegemony over OPEC oil transactions.

The War Resisters League calculates that the cost of the US military runs about $643 billion annually. This obscene military expenditure, which supercedes the total of all other combined global military expenditures, is responsible for 80% of the American debt. When the world stops propping up the debt-ridden USA dollar, that will end the Neocon global domination project and the world's worst terrorist menace. This much, "W" clearly understands, and so too, apparently, do his quisling war-mongering Democrat counterparts. The Neocon oil-mens cabal has an even clearer understanding of Peak Oil, and its equally ominous implications for the American economy. This quote from Investment Banker Matthew Simmons—a key advisor to the Bush Administration and Cheney's 2001 Energy Task Force and the Council on Foreign Relations: "What peaking does mean, in energy terms, is that once you've peaked, further growth in supply, is over. Peaking is generally, also, a relatively quick transition to a relatively serious decline at least on a basin by basin basis. And the issue then, is the world's biggest serious question."

In this horrific context, it's not too difficult to understand why the Bush Neocon cabal is preparing to risk all to go on a global oil-stealing spree, and to attack Iran, perhaps even with nukes. It's also easy to understand the cringing wimp-ass non-response of the Democrats. There's no way America can win, and America's got everything to lose. As Gavin R. Putland puts it, "If this oil-currency-war theory is a delusion, the U.S. administration can easily discredit it—by declaring that the USA has no objection if oil exports to the Euro Zone are denominated in euros." The crash of the USA economy will wreak global economic catastrophe. Paradoxically, that crash is this world's only hope for evading global ecological catastrophe. We should support Iran's oil bourse. Bring it on!

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Dan Simpson: Invade Syria? Insane

U.S. forces have started fighting Syrians at Iraq's border. Can anybody say 'Cambodia'?

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

As I suspected six months ago, U.S. military and Bush administration civilian officials confirmed last week that U.S. forces have invaded Syria and engaged in combat with Syrian forces.

  An unknown number of Syrians are acknowledged to have been killed; the number of Americans -- if any -- who have died in Syria so far has not yet been revealed by the U.S. sources, who by the way insist on remaining faceless and nameless.

The parallel with the Vietnam War, where a Nixon administration deeply involved in a losing war expanded the conflict -- fruitlessly in the event -- to neighboring Cambodia, is obvious. The end result was not changed in Vietnam; Cambodia itself was plunged into dangerous chaos, which climaxed in the killing fields, where an estimated 1 million Cambodians died as a result of internal conflict.

On the U.S. side, no declaration of war preceded the invasion of Syria, in spite of the requirements of the War Powers Act of 1973. There is no indication that the Congress was involved in the decision to go in. If members were briefed, none of them have chosen to share that important information with the American people. Presumably, the Bush administration's intention is simply to add any casualties of the Syrian conflict to those of the war in Iraq, which now stand at more than 1,970. The financial cost of expanding the war to Syria would also presumably be added to the cost of the Iraq war, now estimated at $201 billion.

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

Others would see the attacks in Syria as a desperation political move on the part of an administration with its back against the wall, with a failed war, an economy plagued by inflation --1.2 percent in September, a 14.4 percent annual rate if it continues -- the weak response to Hurricane Katrina, grand jury and other investigatory attention to senior executive and legislative officials, and the bird flu flapping its wings toward us on the horizon. The idea, I suppose, is to distract us by an attack on Syria, now specifically targeted by U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad.

There is some question as to how America's military leadership feels about fighting Syria too, given its already heavy commitment in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. At least some U.S. military officials must wish that President Bush and his associates would move away from his administration's "Johnny One Note," hand-it-to-the-military approach to its problems, now to include Hurricane Katrina-type disaster relief and the newest possible duty, dealing with a bird flu epidemic.

And then there is the tired old United Nations. An invasion by one sovereign member, the United States, of the territory of another sovereign member (Syria), requires U.N. Security Council action.

What of the regional impact in the Middle East? Some observers have argued that destabilizing Syria, creating chaos there, even bringing about regime change away from the current government of President Bashar Assad, is somehow to improve Israel's security posture in the region. The argument runs that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the biggest regional threat to Israel; Bashar Assad's Syria is second. The United States got rid of Saddam; now it should get rid of the Assad regime in Damascus.

The trouble with that argument, whether it is made by Americans or Israelis, is that, in practice, it depends on the validity of the premise that chaos and civil war -- the disintegration of the state -- in Iraq and Syria are better for Israel in terms of long-term security than the perpetuation of stable, albeit nominally hostile regimes.

The evidence of what has happened in Iraq since the U.S. invasion in early 2003 is to the contrary. Could anyone argue that Israel is made safer by a burning conflict in Iraq that has now attracted Islamic extremist fighters from across the Middle East, Europe and Asia? Saddam Hussein's regime was bad, but this is a good deal worse, and looks endless.

Is there any advantage at all to the United States, or to Israel, in replicating Iraq in Syria?

For that is what is at stake. Syria in its political, ethnic and religious structure is very similar to Iraq. Iraq, prior to the U.S. bust-up, was ruled by a Sunni minority, with a Shiite majority and Kurdish and Christian minorities. Syria is ruled by an Alawite minority, with a Sunni majority and Kurdish and Christian minorities.

That is the structure, not unlike many states in the Middle East, that the Bush administration, by word and now by deed, in the form of U.S. forces fighting in Syria, is in the process of hacking away at.

It seems utterly crazy to me. One could say, "Interesting theory; let's play it out," if it weren't for the American men and women, not to mention the Iraqis and now Syrians, dying in pursuit of that policy.

What needs to be done now is for the Congress, and through them, the American people, and the United Nations and America's allies, the ones who are left, to have the opportunity to express their thoughts on America's expanding the Iraq war to Syria. A decision to invade Syria is not a decision for Mr. Bush, heading a beleaguered administration, to make for us on his own.