THE US Dollar Thread (merged)

[zed]

I've seen Wayne Madsen's articles on various sites and consider him a credible source. This really scares the hell out of me because I can honestly believe Bush/Cheyney would go for it...

[Grimnir]

I don't believe an attack on Iran would help Bush's popularity: a) it would be viewed as a blatant political maneuver, b) people already believe or suspect that the Iraq war was a sham, they're not going to buy another "they have weapons of mass destruction!" (even though it's probably true this time), c) It would rekindle draft fears.

If anything, he has plans to attack immediately after the election.

Plus, I have to ask, if Bush is so dishonest and so sinister that he would do something like this, why didn't he plant WMD's in Iraq? I wouldn't vote for the man in a million years, but I have trouble believing he's as evil as this article makes him out to be.

[leal]

The dollar rate seams to slide:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pi ... news_index

Foreigners added to their holdings of U.S. securities at the slowest pace in 10 months in August, eroding demand for the dollar.

[tdrive]

The dollar rate seams to slide:

Dollar is sliding against everything as we speak. The largest drop is against the Swiss franc and Evro. Freaky halloween.

Cheers,

[zed]

Grimnir: Michael Ruppert's recently released book "Crossing the Rubicon" presents very convincing evidence that the Bush administration engineered 9-11 to facilitate the conquest of the Middle East's oil reserves.

Given how much the country supported Dubya after 9-11 it would really help his poll numbers if a similar attack (appearing to come from Iran?) was launched before the election. Considering most foreign intelligence agencies (Russia, Israel, Germany, etc) knew something was up before 9-11, it doesn't surprise me that they would smell another such operation ahead of time. However this time instead of standing by they may be actively interfering in world capital markets. Very scary to think about..

[Grimnir]

Grimnir: Michael Ruppert's recently released book "Crossing the Rubicon" presents very convincing evidence that the Bush administration engineered 9-11 to facilitate the conquest of the Middle East's oil reserves.

But again, if they're really so evil and so clever that they could pull something like that off and cover it up, why did they screw the invasion up so badly? Why is the oil situation worse than before? Why haven't they imposed martial law? Why are they honestly frightened of losing the election--couldn't they just rig it? And why didn't they plant WMD's to justify the invasion? Surely that would have been pocket change compared to all the work that went into planning the attack. I'd like to ask Ruppert the same questions. It seem to me that, at worst, they knew something was up and chose not to act because they thought it would further their agenda, then were suprised when they found out how bad it turned out to be.

[MrBean]

But again, if they're really so evil and so clever that they could pull something like that off and cover it up, why did they screw the invasion up so badly?

Hitler was smart enough to pull of the burning of Reichstag scam to get absolute power, stupid enough to invade Russia and screw it up.

[zed]

But again, if they're really so evil and so clever that they could pull something like that off and cover it up, why did they screw the invasion up so badly? Why is the oil situation worse than before? Why haven't they imposed martial law? Why are they honestly frightened of losing the election--couldn't they just rig it? And why didn't they plant WMD's to justify the invasion? Surely that would have been pocket change compared to all the work that went into planning the attack. I'd like to ask Ruppert the same questions. It seem to me that, at worst, they knew something was up and chose not to act because they thought it would further their agenda, then were suprised when they found out how bad it turned out to be.

They are evil - clever is debatable. The fraud of 9-11 becomes more evident by merely examining what happened. Of course questioning the government is unacceptable in 'post 9-11 America' (in the corporate mass media anyway). Worshipping the government is all that is allowed. I'm sure the founding fathers would love how things have turned out.

My best guess that the goal of the invasion was to install a puppet government that would be pro-American (done). The extent of the resistance was obviously not factored into their plans - maybe they did not anticipate it? Of course the story is not over with Iraq - one day we will need the oil more critically than today and part 2 of the plan may come into place. This possibly including a partition of Iraq and more single-minded focus on the oil resources.

The threat to the petro-dollar may have been another factor in Saddam's removal 'ASAP' even with poorly laid plans. The petro-dollar is the US' last economic weapon and Saddam was undermining it by pricing oil exports in Euros. Interestingly Iran has proposed an alternate oil exchange using euros which is another economic challenge to the petro-dollar. Its not clear what will happen but there is already war bluster from the Bush administration toward Iran. Clearly, undermining US hegemony in oil markets is a good way to get put of the US hit list.

One thing that seems possible is that the Iraq invasion was architected by Bush political appointees and not veteran intelligence operatives like those in the CIA. The failures of Iraq may be attributable to this - certainly I would think the CIA and their 'friends' (Mossad etc) could plant some WMD or provide better intelligence about the country. It's possible the Iraq invasion was rushed due to the 2004 election and not all pieces were in place. It's also possible they are Machivellian and feel that once Saddam is gone, people will forget about spurious motives for the invasion. There are many who believe that and don't care if their government lies to them to justify wars. Tax cuts and lies - Republicanism at its finest!

As for the election, we will see. I put nothing past the Bush administration and my cynical side tells me the fix is already in (electronic voting machines being the most likely conduit). I hope for the sake of the republic that nothing funny goes on, but the level of partisanship today tells me that interference and politically motivated vote manipulation are extremely likely.

I havent't finished Ruppert's book but to my knowledge it does not cover Iraq, which is really an enormous topic all by itself. To my knowledge, he hasn't researched Iraq very much at all.

[Grimnir]

Back on the original topic, the NY Times has just broke a story reporting the disappearance of a huge stockpile of explosives from Iraq:

Huge Cache of Explosives Vanished From Site In Iraq

Free registration is required, but that's what http://www.bugmenot.com is for.

[some_guy282]

But again, if they're really so evil and so clever that they could pull something like that off and cover it up, why did they screw the invasion up so badly?

Who says the invasion went badly? For all we know it could be going exactly according to their plan. After all, oil in the ground is oil in the bank. The longer Iraqi oil stays under the ground, the more valuable it becomes to them. It makes more sense to start pumping it out as fast as they can after the decline is well under way. Faking an incompentent post war strategy to keep things chaotic so oil pipelines are destroyed is the perfect excuse to keep it underground, if that's where they want it.

Why is the oil situation worse than before?

Because of geological factors that they have absolutely no control over.

Why haven't they imposed martial law?

Because the American people wouldn't go for it - yet. One more attack and they very well may.

Why are they honestly frightened of losing the election--couldn't they just rig it?

You're assuming their fear of losing the election is genuine. As far as I'm concerned, all the election coverage currently under way in the mainstream news is nothing but theater. For all we know Bush and Kerry are both playing for the same team and nothing will change under a Kerry presidency. Even the terrible mainstream media points out that Kerry's foreign policy is remarkably similar to Bush.

And why didn't they plant WMD's to justify the invasion?

I've often wondered this myself, but maybe they don't need to? Before the invasion even happened, I was amazed to see polls that indicated a majority of Americans felt the war would be justified even if WMDs were never found, even though they were the alleged reason for the invasion in the first place. Besides, in the public's eye Bush is still perceived as being the stronger candidate in terms of handling Iraq, despite all the problems they're having.

I'd like to ask Ruppert the same questions. It seem to me that, at worst, they knew something was up and chose not to act because they thought it would further their agenda, then were suprised when they found out how bad it turned out to be.

Very often I see arguments like yours raised against the case for government involvement in 9/11. "But it just doesn't make any sense" is what it all boils down to. And you know what? You're right. There are a lot of facts that just don't mesh and don't seem to make sense.

So what? We don't live in a rational world. Using your logic there is no way Martha Stewert is guilty of those stock crimes. After all, why would she commit such a crime to save a measly couple million dollars when she stood to lose (and did) so much more? Nevertheless, she was convicted by a jury of her peers because the evidence proved her guilt. Can you imagine if such a defense were successful in a court of law? I could just imagine this scene being played out in pre trial hearings.

LAWYER: Your honor, I move for dismissal. My client is innocent. My client has been an upstanding law abiding citizen all his life. He would never kill his mother, it just doesn't make any sense that my client did this. He loved his mother!

PROSECUTER: You know what? You're right. I never thought of it that way. I never should have indicted him in the first place. It doesn't make any sense that he'd kill his mother. I mean... she was his mother!

JUDGE: Well, I'm still curious as to why he was found holding that smoking gun that did kill her. But you're probably right. It doesn't make any sense to me either. This poor man has suffered enough to be charged with killing his own mother. He'll probably need lots of therapy to recover from the trauma. The $10 million in insurance money ought to cover the therapy bills though. Case dismissed.


Arguements like yours completely ignore the weight of the vast amount of information that points to government involvement in the attacks. There is tons of information that completely flies in the face of the official story of 9/11 and has yet to be explained. David Ray Griffin, author of The New Pearl Harbor has said there are literally dozens of smoking guns that prove government involvement in the attacks. The 9/11 Commission conveniently ignored the important questions, and so has the mainstream media. I wont bother to list the facts, they've been mentioned in this forum before. But I encourage you to seek them out on your own. Ruppert's book Crossing the Rubicon would be an excellent start. If you don't want to buy the book, you can read the archives of his excellent site www.fromthewilderness.com , or look for other 9/11 Truth sites.

When I first heard the allegation that the US government was behind 9/11, it didn't make sense to me either. I literally laughed out loud and dismissed it completely. Later I just became aware of the individual facts presented by themselves, without making any accusations. The facts alone were enough to sway me. I came to the conclusion myself because it's the only conclusion you can come to once you are aware of all the facts. Facts about pre 9/11 intelligence, huge anamolies the day of and inconsistencies in the timeline, physical evidence, evidence of the coverup... I didn't even understand WHY they would do such a thing, I just knew that they did. I only came to fully understand the motivations (such as peak oil), and that there is historical precedent for such an event (Hitler and the German parliment) later.

Arm yourself with information. Make yourself aware of the facts and unanswered questions about 9/11 that the mainstream media is completely ignoring. Read books like Crossing the Rubicon and The New Pearl Harbor. Once you've done that, then you can make an informed decision on what you think really happened.

[savethehumans]

Zed and some_guy: it's nice to know some of the other people who have a good and truthful reading list! I'm on the last few chapters of "Rubicon" now, and check out FTW several times a week--not to mention THIS site (duh) and others....the truth is amazing--so much so that The Powers That Be don't worry about the truth-tellers (who'd believe them?)--which gives us in the know a good advantage and one heck of a road block (who believes us?).

It's hard not to get discouraged, or even overwhelmed at times. But we are the type of people who HAVE TO KNOW. It is a blessing and a curse! So we will keep on seeking TO KNOW. At least we have places like this board, where we can share our thoughts and give each other empathy!

[gg3]

However, Putin did sign Kyoto, bringing it into force. What I find interesting about the mainstream media's treatment of Putin is that he is always shown in photographs taken from slightly above him looking down, and with his eyes glancing to the side. That is, these photographs deliberately convey the impression of "sneaky."

Regardless of the etiology of 9-11, attacking Iran would be the height of stupidity. Iran doesn't even have a credible capability yet, their uranium enrichment facility is still a long way from completion, so there is still plenty of time for negotiation. Given that the head of Iran's oil production, Dr. Bhaktiari, speaks freely and vigorously about peak oil (he's also a participant on this board), it's more likely that Iran is primarily seeking to supply its own energy needs with nuclear power so it can sell more of its oil to the world as the price goes through the roof. Reason it out, that would be the logical thing for any oil-producing nation to do.

The smart thing for Iran to do right now would be to declare that it was putting its nuclear enrichment program on hold pending further international negotiations. In essence stall for time, at least until after the election, and if Kerry wins, after he's sworn in. That is, don't give Bush an excuse to invade on 3 November.

Here's another piece for you.

Over the summer came the news item that someone high in the Bush Admin had leaked to one of Chalabi's people (i.e. Iranian spies) the fact that the US had successfully decrypted the top-level Iranian cipher systems. (Leaking that kind of stuff is a serious crime, that item was "top secret / SCI-crypto", and SCI means "sensitive compartmented information", which only goes out to a small list of individuals, listed by name, so those are your possible suspects, and yet no one has been charged...)

The immediate result would have necessarily been that Iran upgraded its cryptographic systems, presumably to a level it felt the US couldn't read (or could only read with much difficulty and delay; public-key systems such as RSA and its derivatives including PGP are not impenetrable).

This in turn would result in a backlog of Iranian ciphertext intercepts awaiting cryptanalysis, similar to the backlog of cleartext intercepts awaiting language translation prior to 9-11. (People at NSA are already majorly pissed-off at the Bush Admin for making their jobs harder, and this is a classic case.)

So then the Bush Admin has an excuse: "Look at all the traffic we can't read!" and then, "Look, there's been an *increase* in the traffic, we still can't read it, but it *must* mean something bad is going on!" This becomes a rationale for increasing the rhetoric level and building public support for some kind of aggressive move on Iran.

Much like the bad intel on Iraq, except this time the "proof" is *itself* "negative." Instead of "we have pictures of mobile anthrax labs" (which are later not found, creating a credibility problem), it would be "we have traffic we can't read, which means something sinister is afoot!", and there is no way to disprove that point later.

With Iraq, there was no way Saddam could "prove a negative" (prove he *didn't* have WMDs). With Iran, it's starting to look like there'll be no way that American critics, much less Iranian officials, can "disprove a negative" (disprove that the unread traffic is not sinister).

Watch out folks, this is not good. My item above is only one datapoint, but it's consistent with the others we've seen, and there are probably many more we haven't seen yet.

Y'all better get out there and vote, and then do volunteer work watching the polls for the rest of the day.

[Grimnir]

Let me try to boil it down to the basic questions:

-What things were "they" hoping to accomplish with the attacks?
-Did they accomplish these things? If not, why not?
-Why haven't they used similar tactics when it would have helped them the most?
-If the goal was to justify an invasion of Iraq, why didn't they blame Iraq in the first place instead of Afghanistan?

I read most of Ruppert's site months ago and agree that "something" was up, but I don't think "the administration planned it for political gain" is the only possible explanation.

[some_guy282]

Let me try to boil it down to the basic questions:

-What things were "they" hoping to accomplish with the attacks?
-Did they accomplish these things? If not, why not?
-Why haven't they used similar tactics when it would have helped them the most?
-If the goal was to justify an invasion of Iraq, why didn't they blame Iraq in the first place instead of Afghanistan?

I read most of Ruppert's site months ago and agree that "something" was up, but I don't think "the administration planned it for political gain" is the only possible explanation.

1. They wanted to get the American public behind the war in Afghanistan (which they had been planning for months in advance) and the war on terror in general so they could make a grab for the world's last remaining oil reserves. They also wanted to use it as an excuse to crack down on US civil liberties in advance of the police state that will be necessary to control the rioting masses in light of peak oil.

2. Yes, things have worked out pretty well for them.

3. For the most part they haven't had to. Invoking 9/11 alone has been enough to scare the American public into accepting just about anything this administration has pushed on them. Plus, staged terror attacks take longer to plan than real ones. It took them years to plan 9/11 and lay the groundwork for the myth they would later push on the public.

4. In a sense they have blamed Iraq. Recent polls show a majority of Bush supporters believe there was a link between 9/11 and Saddam. Immediately after 9/11 though, they weren't blaming Iraq because they didn't need to. It's all about the oil, and the immediate goal after 9/11 was the Caspian Sea. They thought there was plenty of oil to be found there, and once Afghanistan was conquered it would be theirs for the taking. Problem was, once they actually got into the Caspian, they found there was much less oil than was originnaly thought. It was only then that the mad dash to demonize Iraq began. I'm sure they had plans to go after Iraq anyway, but the lack of oil in the Caspian accelerated their plans. 9/11 also laid the groundwork for a possible future invasion of Saudi Arabia though - just look at where most of the alleged hijackers came from.

You're right - mere "political gain" isn't nearly enough of a motive for 9/11. The motive is peak oil.

[StayOnTarget]

Someguy - Don't forget the "unsolved" anthrax attacks.

Hmmm... anthrax sent to liberal media outlets and powerful democratic members of congress just after 9/11. Anthrax that was traced to US labs, yet no arrests after 3 years. It was after these attacks that the patriot act got ramrodded through congress.


One need only read the Project for a New American Century website to see the will buried within the rhetoric. The neocons needed 9/11.


From and earlier post on another thread:

1) Its a basic idea. Elements of the agencies and the administration charged with protecting Americans were either criminally negligent or criminally complicit. There's really no gray area. If you want to give them the benefit of the doubt and say they were merely negligent there's no way to explain the fact that noone was fired, in fact many were promoted after 9/11.

2) Follow the money. Remember the federal goverment offered victims families an avg payout of 1.65 million dollars each in exchange for their legal right to sue. I don't recall the goverment giving anything to victims families of the Oklahoma city bombing.

http://tinyurl.com/52lc2

3) If not for 9/11 the political will would not have existed to invade Afghanistan (for the pipeline), then Iraq (for the oil reserves).

[zed]

Ruppert also makes a good point about the 9/11 insider trading. The trading you heard so much about in the month after attacks and then was dropped from the mass media. The Kean Commission omits any serious discussion of this very obvious line of inquiry.

Anyway, Ruppert documents how the level of trading in United and American Airlines in the days before 9/11 (and even the morning of 9/11) were far beyond normal levels. The government has released few actual records of the trading and one of the involved institutions (Deutsche Bank) ultimately has ties to the CIA. Considering the insane amount of surveillance of world financial markets, it is preposterous to think the US government could not figure out who profited from trades. Ruppert concludes that foreign intelligence agencies (who had advance warning of 9/11) probably were responsible for much of the trading and that pursuing that line of inquiry would simply reveal the obvious - that 9/11 was not a surprise attack to many at the highest levels of world power.

[Ferretlover]

link

From the 8 November the dollar will no longer be a valid currency in Cuba. Residents have until then to exchange their dollars for Pesos convertibles. There will be no penalty for owning dollars like there has been in the past.
"the population can maintain, without restrictions of no type, any amount of dollars or another freely convertible currency" However people who want to exchange dollars for PC's will pay a fine of 10%

Castro asked the Cubans that live on the outside to send money to their relatives in Cuba in other currencies, such as euro, the British pound, frank Swiss and Canadian dollars to avoid this fine.

The official reason is the new policy of the US towards Cuba but I think that the decline of the dollar also has to do with it. A lot of people were complaining that the dollar loses its value so quickly and I've met many Cubans which were expecting that the government would make a shift to the Euro soon.

A number of countries have abandoned the dollar recently (Iran, Turkey , Russia, Cuba). Considering that about half the printed dollar bills are floating around in foreign countries as a reserve currency this represents a significant move. If all those bills make their way back to the US it will lead to a tremendous depreciation of the dollar.

[sulayman]

A number of countries have abandoned the dollar recently (Iran, Turkey , Russia, Cuba). Considering that about half the printed dollar bills are floating around in foreign countries as a reserve currency this represents a significant move. If all those bills make their way back to the US it will lead to a tremendous depreciation of the dollar.

I never knew that Russia and Turkey had abondend the dollar. When did that happen?

I guess it would depreciate the dollar and weaken its value further. Would that count as a negative feedback loop?

[smiley]

I never knew that Russia and Turkey had abondend the dollar. When did that happen

?

Euro catches on in Russia

Russians are buying more euros than dollars for the first time since the new European currency became available, according to the central bank.
The swing may signal the weakening grip in Russia of the US currency which has dominated the economy here for most of the past decade.

It comes after a 15% fall of the dollar against the euro this year.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2264012.stm

Last year I went to Turkey and everything is in Euro's now (Rental cars, hotels etc), wheras it used to be in dollars just a few years back.

[sulayman]

I see, but in Turkey then it is a concious decision by the people rather than a Government enforced policy like in Cuba....right?