Sunday, May 20, 2012

The Gold Dinar, the Silver Dirham and a Resurgent Political Islam-Part II

By Younus Abdullah Muhammad
PS:
THIS EX-BROTHER OF OURS WAS RELEASED 7YRS IN ADVANCE DUE TO HIM COMPROMISING WITH THE KUFFAR, I.E. BECOMING A MURTAD WITH HIS COMPLETE ALLIANCE WITH THEM IN ASSISTING TO PLOT, PLAN AND PUT BEHIND BARS OUR MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS UPON HAQQ !!!

THIS IS HIS NEW/CHANGED TO OLD SELF NOW VIEWS:
An extremist’s path to academia -- and fighting terrorism

FOR MORE INSHA'ALLAH ONE CAN SEARCH, READ AND WATCH NEWS ON GOOGLE.
 


HOWEVER LET US BENEFIT FROM THE ARTICLE AS THIS WAS WRITTEN WHILST HE WAS A MUSLIM !

 
Part 2: Accounting the Historical Antecedents of Today’s Fiat Financial Facade

I have a silver ounce here, and this ounce of silver back in 2006 would buy over 4 gallons of gasoline. Today it’ll buy almost 11 gallons of gasoline.” - Congressman Ron Paul confronting Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke on March 1st, 2012

Our biggest worry is interest rates, not default. Under default the whole financial system would be at risk! (Chuckle, chuckle!).” - Chairman Bernanke during that same hearing.

In part 1of this series we discussed the Prophet Muhammad’s prophesies dealing with the prevention of the Muslim World’s use of the Dinar and Dirham and the petrodollar system that grants the U.S dollar financial control (link here): 

Alan Greenspan is a patriarch of today’s international financial system. As chairman of the U.S Federal Reserve, the ‘Maestro’ as he was known, oversaw a period of rapid expansion in the 1990’s attributed to a new, U.S.-led global economy. Then suddenly in late-2007 the entire financial system and in turn the interconnected world of globalisation, nearly imploded and stood on the precipice of potential collapse. By 2009, Alan Greenspan was forced to testify in front of congress and admitted that his free market  worldview was “fundamentally flawed”. A year later he would release his memoirs and make another controversial admission-exclaiming that the fraudulent invasion of Iraq in 2003 was largely about oil.
Such a statement would have meant little had it come from someone other than the Fed’s chairman at the time of the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is impossible to imagine that Greenspan was not consulted by a Bush administration determined to go to war. The collapse of the internet bubble and the attacks of 9/11 produced modest recessions in 2001 and 2002 and war had the potential to calm both volatile markets and the fear of contagious radicalism in the Middle East. That the Iraq war was about oil and not WMD’s or links to Al-Qaeda is not particularly shocking, but the admission confirms the connection between military intervention, control over the flow of oil in the Middle East and the U.S. dollar’s preponderance.

In order to prove that the new American economy could not be derailed by the attacks of 9/11, President Bush encouraged patriotic consumption and Greenspan kept interest rates low to further bloat public and private debt. This policy paved the way for the Global Recession of 2007-08. However one thing conveniently missing from Greenspan’s memoirs is an account of similar events in 1975-76, when he was an economic advisor to President Gerald Ford, during a period when the international monetary system also faced collapse. Understanding the relationship between the historical precedents that birthed the present monetary system in 1971 and through the grounding of the petrodollar scheme in 1976 is to highlight a rationale for the West’s present interest in the New Middle East and the necessity to perpetuate that status quo in order to preserve the dollar-dominated, fiat financial fraud.

The current monetary system is an outgrowth of the overwhelming significance of capitalism in the 20th century, a century dominated by the British Empire upon which “the sun never set”, but that coalesced with American ascendancy especially in the wake of World War II. Today’s Anglo-American Empire represents a conspicuous continuation of imperialist processes common throughout history. It is consistent with imperial experiences that a monetary order accompany expansion, so as to facilitate the underlying necessity to subjugate foreign populations, facilitate natural resource extraction, and force political consolidation. Before the U.S dollar, it was the British Pound Sterling. In fact, all empires draw from monetary, as well as military mechanisms of control.

The U.S dollar’s role is of enhanced manipulation however. It is a fiat currency that grants the potential for comprehensive foreign domination while leaving the veneer of independence in the hands of proxy stakeholders on the periphery. Such sophistication is conducted through a guise of united sovereign nations, actually controlled by a global network of independent central banks, complicit in maintaining elite interests and upholding the dollar’s global reserve currency role.

International and domestic dollar dominance is an example of what economists term ‘financial repression’. As a paper (and increasingly electronic) currency, there is no cost to the issuer. But as a legal medium of exchange that may be used to purchase goods and services, this power facilitates a transfer of wealth to elite class of primary benefactors with initial access to money under the monetarist scheme. It was this power of money creation granted by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 that accessorized a private banking cartel’s control over the currency followed by the dollar’s international repressive role.

It is hardly a coincidence that America’s entrance into transoceanic conflict coincided with it's adoption of the European model for independent central banks. Dollar diplomacy was introduced in 1912 when president Howard Taft commented that a policy of,  "Substituting dollars for bullets... is one that applies alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and the legitimate commercial aims.” This shift occurred just as the independent U.S Federal Reserve transposed the model of the Bank of England in the United States. As Thomas Jefferson once remarked, “banking establishments are more powerful than standing armies”, and by 1916, after a massive propaganda campaign, the previously isolationist U.S. entered World War I on behalf of Britain. Then president Woodrow Wilson, who had declared in 1912 that “our domestic markets no longer suffice, we need foreign markets”, clothed the U.S Empire’s first internationalist endeavor as the “war to end all wars”, and “to make the world safe for democracy”.

World War I initiated American ascendancy. President Wilson removed restrictions on loans to England in 1915 and J.P Morgan and Co. facilitated massive debt that solidified Wall Street’s function as a financial epicenter while Britain became a market for American exports. The era was a period of consolidation but by the time World War II concluded, the dollar had assumed its predominant role and the financial forces that controlled it sought to consolidize with global gains. As Professor Carrol Quigley,  privy to the historical documents of the international financiers, described it, “The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was determined to use the financial power of Britain and the U.S to force all the major countries of the world to operate through central banks free from all political control, with all questions of international finance to be settled by agreements by such central banks without interference from governments.”

This system was known as Bretton Woods and pegged every country’s currency to a fixed exchange for the U.S dollar, while preserving a gold reserve semblance by pegging the dollar’s value to $35 per ounce of gold. It was the dawn of an Anglo-American empire facing only the challenge of an impending cold war with Communism.

The early period of the Bretton Woods era witnessed Europe's reconstruction, the formulation of the United Nations, World Bank, the IMF and other transnational institutions and was powered by American manufacturing prowess, a certain degree of growth and development, and effective regulation like the the Glass-Steagall Act which separated Wall Street investment banks from commercial banking institutions and, in turn, checked the potential for rampant speculation affecting the entire financial system. Firms like J.P. Morgan, tellingly implicated in a plot during the Wall-Street-Federal Reserve induced depression for orchestrating a Fascist Coup against the Presidency of F.D.R, retreated to the City of London which was set up to operate as a regulation-free tax haven for Financial Capitalism. Slowly but effectively the City of London and Wall Street firms adulterated any potential for Bretton Woods to promote decolonization and sovereign development. Banksters backed F.D.R's successor Harry Truman and pushed a Foreign Policy Doctrine that merged the U.S Military with big business. What Charles E. Wilson, President of General Electric applauded in 1952 as the “permanent war economy,” great for business, would be classified by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as the “military-industrial complex,” a threat to democracy at large. Cold war policy portrayed an ideological struggle between capitalism and communism but in reality offered a bonanza for banks and business that thrust forth a form of Neocolonialism, the precursor to today's globalization and terror wars.

Vietnam was the hallmark of this rise to power. In 1976 Samuel Huntington issued a report through the Trilateral Commission entitled, “The Democratic Distemper.” He foresaw that by the end of the 20th Century, “the United States was the hegemonic power in a system of World order,” and was candid about high finance's role. He admitted that “Truman made a point of bringing a substantial number of non-partisan soldiers, Republican bankers and Wall Street lawyers into his administration,” and described the empire formulated then but continuing to today,
To the extent that the United States was governed by anyone during the decades after World War II, it was governed by the President acting with the support and cooperation of key individuals and groups in the executive office, the federal bureaucracy, congress, and the more important businesses, banks, law firms, foundations and media which constitute the private sector's “Establishment.”

By 1976 that “Establishment” had adulterated almost all of Post-World War II era reform, and had induced a near monetary catastrophe as a consequence of the Vietnam War. Today that monetarist empire continues only because the Establishment developed and maintained its petrodollar scheme.

            While Britain's financial empire consolidated cultural influence in America through Wall Street and institutionally through the Federal Reserve, a similar shift in the military and diplomatic realm pushed the U.S towards replacing Britain and France in the Middle East. This process had always centered around preserving petroleum interests via exclusive relations with the Saudi State.

America's initial inroads into the Muslim World occurred in 1933 when Standard Oil of California was granted 60-year oil expropriation right in Saudi Arabia for only 35,000 British pounds. ARAMCO (Arabian American Oil Company) was founded, and oil Companies received a 75% stake. By 1944, FDR announced that, “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States,” and the U.S. described its Mideast policy in a National Security Council Memorandum exclaiming, "our principale aim should be to encourage the emergence of competent leaders, relatively well disposed to the west." In 1953 the CIA organized a coup against the democratic Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadeqq to  impose the Shah and preserve Western Oil concessions. By the time of the 1956 Suez Crisis in Egypt, where the U.S prevented British, French and Israeli attacks to hinder Suez Canal nationalization, it was clear U.S empire would go-it alone in the Middle East (see Nixon's Memoirs).

Oil interests soon brought military engagement, From 1952-63 the U.S established Saudi Arabia's Dharan Air Base and began to secure a military presence in the Muslim World.
The 'Establishment' used the dollar-based, Bretton Woods model to expand Western Corporate “development” while the Military-industrial complex solidified authoritarian regimes by expanding the international arms trade. Then suddenly in 1964 the syndicate of finance-corporate-military imperialism initiated the War in Vietnam. Intervention inspired a long protracted struggle against a peasant population that  lasted until 1972 and debt from war in the aftermath nearly collapsed the international monetary order.

The Bretton Woods monetary system offered an implicit maintenance of the gold standard. Technically all dollars were ultimately redeemable for gold. However, as the U.S print dollars and ran deficits to fund the War in Vietnam, France under the administration of Charles de Gaulle was exchanging its accumulating surplus dollars for gold. The affects reduced U.S economic influence internationally and caused current account deficits to deepen. As Britain threatened to follow France, a sudden announcement from President Nixon on August 15, 1971 shocked the world and officially ended all convertibility of the U.S dollar for gold.

The Nixon shock completely removed any semblance of a gold standard and nations switched to full fiat money with fluctuating rates of exchange. The global economy would run on monopoly money minted by the Federal Reserve. Where the Bretton Woods era established an international central banking network, the potential for today's Post-Bretton Woods era of central-planned, neocolonialist casino capitalism was born. On the eve of the occasion, the rest of the world was solvent and the U.S. faced impending bankruptcy with over inflated dollars draining its gold. Today almost Every nation is indebted, holds dollar reserves and so has vested interests in the perpetuation of the system, thus the halls of high finance, in control of the currency, reign supreme.

The conditions that were to eventually stabilize the Post-Bretton Woods paper money order could not have come about without the complicity of proxy regimes in the Arab World. In August 1971, as the Nixon administration was establishing the fiat order, Gulf nations were decolonizing. Bahrain obtained independence from Britain in that same month and immediately signed an agreement with the U.S for a maintained naval presence. By December, the six remaining sheikhdoms formed the United Arab Emirates. These nations along with Saudi Arabia were guided by the seven major oil companies and encouraged to form the OPEC Cartel. They originally planned to price oil in their own currencies, however the U.S intervened through powerful factions of the House of Saud to guarantee pricing in dollar denominated terms. With the removal of the gold benchmark a form of oil benchmark was born, where the commodity that powered the global economy would force net importing economies to retain or acquire dollar reserves. This helped sustain demand for dollars, quell inflation, prevent alternatives and prevent economic collapse. However such an alteration did not prevent the global economy from falling into conditions reminiscent of those the dollar system faces today.

As the coffers of OPEC nations started accumulating dollar bills, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, the largest OPEC producer, invested those dollars in ways that could have developed the Muslim nation. He built infrastructure, schools, hospitals and mosques.  And then he projected his interests outside the county thinking in terms of the Muslim world generally, expanding from the colonial confines of the nation state. He initiated a plan called ‘Operation Breadbasket to invest billions to develop the Sudan’s arable land and make it the home of grain and wheat sufficient to feed the Muslim world. But he also had identified the Zionist-Communist conspiracy and its central banking network publically and openly. By 1973 the global economy was shocked by the Arab- Israel war.  King Faisal implemented an oil embargo against the U.S, eventually raising the price per barrel four-fold.  As a consequence Henry Kissinger and Arthur Schlesinger began to identify Gulf oil as crucial to the “National interest”.  Western economies would slip into recession from 1973-75 and King Faisal was promptly assassinated in March of 1975 by a U.S educated Saudi Prince.

            Faisal’s heir King Khalid immediately signed a deal for protection from internal subversion in exchange for production increases at U.S request. The leaders of the Arab world followed suit.  Khalid substituted autonomous development plans for projects developed completely by foreign firms that could serve as an additional subsidy. ' Operation Breadbasket’ was discontinued, erased from the memory of time.  From that point forward dollars were sent to invest in U.S treasury bonds or back to Wall Street for foreign control, as the era of petrodollar recycling was born.
           
            The recession of 1973-75 was truly systemic.  Pan-American Airlines was bankrupted by rising energy costs as European governments over extended their debt obligations. To satisfy energy demands they borrowed from Wall Street bankers which created the potential for default and contagious collapse of the entire Euro zone.Theses condition let to mass social unrest.  Gas stations ran out of fuel, motorists lined up for blocks to fill their tanks and protesters took to the streets of European and American cities demanding change.  The price increases acted like a tax and reduced purchasing power across the board.  Inflation was already a concern from the billions spent on Vietnam.  However the introduction of petrodollar recycling ultimately led to major profits for the oil companies and global finance. Costs to business were passed onto the consumer further dividing the rich and poor.  Years of inflation would follow, combated by heightened interest rates from the Federal Reserve.  High interest rates reduced the incentive for investment and manufacturing sought to exploit slave labour overseas.  The world transitioned towards financialized globalization and the ‘Establishment’ lifted concern.

            There is absolutely no mention of this potential collapse or the negotiations that occurred in any memoir of the Ford administration but it is a fact that Alan Greenspan, then an economic advisor, pleaded with the Shah of Iran to lower oil prices or face the insolvency of the entire international system.  Additionally, the Maestro also sent a memo to Nelson Rockefeller in 1975 appealing for politicians to discuss the effects of rising oil prices and for the first time to “confront its dependence on oil”.  The Shah refused but the assassination of Faisal and deal with Khalid led to Saudi’s flooding of the market and breaking Iranian resistance.  Social unrest with the West and the Iranian Revolution of 1978 was largely a consequence of the Shah being unable to fund his entire regime.

            35 years later, conditions are similar.  The West faces the prospect of a double-dip recession, rising oil prices and political and social unrest at home and in the Middle East.  There are several strong parallels.  In 2007 the average price of gasoline was $4 per gallon which led to a fall in U.S demand, a decrease in automobile sales and unemployment due to rising costs.  Such a scenario sparked the collapse of the housing bubble which in turn crashed the banks.  Increased demand in China compensated for the fall in U.S demand and helped keep prices high while pushing the system to the brink of destruction.  In Europe the recession exposed the pending insolvency of Ireland, Greece, Spain, Iceland and Portugal and commodity inflation ignited the social unrest of the Arab Spring.  In Europe and America there is social unrest but corporate profits are high.  Saudi Arabia has continuously tried to boost supply and signed a $60 billion arms deal to maintain the dollar system despite calls inside of OPEC to diversify the currencies.  Still, the global economy falters.

In early 2012 the U.S. economy is growing but there are new inflammatory concerns as a rise in gasoline prices generated a great deal of controversy.   However all of discussion centred on supply and demand with virtually no identification that rising gas and oil prices have much more to do with the dwindling value of the dollar bill.  As the events of 1971-76 led to average levels of inflation at 12-14% throughout the late 70’s and early 80’s, a similar period of future inflation looms large.  Against a basket of currencies over the last 10 years, Federal Reserve policy has induced a fall from 1.2 to .80 for the dollar index.  It is only because the dollar has a global reserve role that the U.S.  is unconcerned with deficits.  However BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) Nations are already trading in their own currencies and rating agencies have threatened to downgrade the U.S. currency.  Any push to alter the petrodollar scheme would lead to all-out warfare, but the direction the economies of the Middle East head will largely shape the future.

The non-oil producing, fledgling democracies of the Arab world can make or break the present system.  The Middle East and North Africa are quickly becoming the home of international competition between the West and China.  The U.S seeks to guarantee participation in the dollar-dominated order which could determine whether the enormous deficits accrued since 9-11 lead to inflation, increased borrowing costs, and ultimately the austerity that could force the Anglo-American empire to retreat from “policing” the world on behalf of U.S led globalisation.
           
It is now time for citizens of the Muslim world to determine whether they will accept subservience or whether they want to demand the economic self sufficiency that is necessary for true sovereignty.  Regardless, the world may soon be forced to recognize it has reached peak globalization.  In 2010 the economy also showed signs of recovery but as soon as growth ensued the price of oil returned to $90 per barrel, pushing up prices everywhere and cancelling any recovery.  Still, to discuss the dollar’s role in this reality is to be branded a conspiracy theorist.  Oil is the lubricant that powers the world and dollar bills offer the liquidity that facilitates international transactions.  Truth be told both systems are unsustainable.  Any breakdown in petroleum or currency exchange could spur global catastrophe.

The recession of 1973-75 was followed by a decade of rampant inflation. Any return to economic growth now would only  induce similar conditions. Yet today the U.S. is $16 trillion in debt, to raise interest rates to quell inflation could also induce a collapse.

Stability is therefore contingent on preserving the petrodollar scheme and inserting new Arab democracies into the fold of neoliberalism. Such an outcome would spur investment and absorb excess dollars into a new Middle East . It would also satisfy the system's need for constant imperialist expansion.

            The new Islamist regimes seem all too willing to embrace such  haphazard circumstances. Allah (SWT) sheds light on their condition in the Holy Quran saying:

مَثَلُ الَّذِينَ اتَّخَذُوا مِن دُونِ اللَّهِ أَوْلِيَاء كَمَثَلِ الْعَنكَبُوتِ اتَّخَذَتْ بَيْتًا وَإِنَّ أَوْهَنَ الْبُيُوتِ لَبَيْتُ الْعَنكَبُوتِ لَوْ كَانُوا يَعْلَمُون

The likeness of those who takes protectors other than Allah is the likeness of a spider who builds a house, but verily, the frailest of the houses is the spider's house - if they but knew (29:41)

It is the perfect metaphor. The Anglo-American establishment has crafted a web around the economies of the world. Like the spider, this  web  was cautiously woven to attract its prey, drawing it towards its sphere of  influence. As the spider uses its prongs to suck the guts and soul but  leaves behind an external carcass, the shell of sovereignty is presented by democracy promotion but the  soul of the  nation is sacrificed by depending on the " Establishment". Such  is the nature of the dollar system and the network can only be unspun through a return of the Islamic alternative .

In 1966 Alan Greenspan was of the persuasion that," Deficit spending is simply a scheme for confiscation of wealth, gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statistics antagonism toward the gold system." It seems his views weren't always fundamentally flawed. However his memoirs describe nothing about his conversion. Yet his story may ultimately be retold for, like Greenspan, the dollar system gives the appearance of stability yet, like the spider's house, its interconnected nature and fraudulent composition could suddenly unfold leaving all participants discredited.

There is a stable alternative in the gold dinar and silver Dirhams but getting there requires a genuine and comprehensive Islamic transformation.

In part 3 we will Inshallah analyze the present state of the global economy in a bit more detail before talking about the Islamic solution. Wa Allahu A'alam!

Younes Abdullah Muhammad is a Muslim-American Master of International Affairs. He is presently residing in solitary confinement in Virginia (U.S.) He is the founder of Islampolicy.com and can be contacted at Islampolicy@gmail.com

PS:
THIS EX-BROTHER OF OURS WAS RELEASED 7YRS IN ADVANCE DUE TO HIM COMPROMISING WITH THE KUFFAR, I.E. BECOMING A MURTAD WITH HIS COMPLETE ALLIANCE WITH THEM IN ASSISTING TO PLOT, PLAN AND PUT BEHIND BARS OUR MUSLIM BROTHERS AND SISTERS UPON HAQQ !!!

THIS IS HIS NEW/CHANGED TO OLD SELF NOW VIEWS:
An extremist’s path to academia -- and fighting terrorism

FOR MORE INSHA'ALLAH ONE CAN SEARCH, READ AND WATCH NEWS ON GOOGLE.

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