The Liberty Tree Lantern

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China’s former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. “Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable,” he told the Asia and Africa Review. “We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security.”

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region’s conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. “One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations,” he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China’s extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America’s power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China’s growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China’s reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America’s trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington’s control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. “The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies,” a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. “The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won’t be able to use the US dollar.”

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years’ time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

“These plans will change the face of international financial transactions,” one Chinese banker said. “America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate.”

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Folks, the reason for all of this is because we have not taken care of our INDIVIDUAL responsibility to be educated as to: 

• The one and only meaning of freedom and liberty as defined by our founding fathers.
• The purpose and meaning of The Constitution
• The meaning and purpose of The Declaration of Independence
• To understand that The Constitution is a set of LAWS that We The People wrote, established and ordained on All Three Branches of the U.S. Government to make sure that they do not do what they have done to us, our country and, in the process, our DOLLAR and our economy.
• To realize that it is an encumbrance upon all of us, individually, to be informed and to enforce the laws that we wrote, established and ordained on all three branches of the U.S. Government.  This means that it is our responsibility to talk about all these things, that you “might” call politics, although in reality it really isn’t politics it is law, morality, principles and economics, wherever you go because it directly impact your lives, our economy, our freedom, our liberty and your personal income and potential.  We have become uneducated (about freedom and Constitutional principles) and how to enforce our own laws on our own Government.  Do you even know the last ten words, which allow us to hold our Government entirely accountable and to redress infringements, of the first Amendment?
• We all must realize that we CAN do something about all of these things if we are educated with regards to the tenets, purpose, spirit and intent of the Constitution and our ultimate authority that we were individually given by our creator.
• We all must understand and PERSONALLY IMPLIMENT the 28 Freedom Principles.
• Do you know that Thomas Jefferson wanted that only gold coins would be used for our currency?  If this were still true and there was no “Central Bank” Federal Reserve “System” we would be as wealthy as our minds have been programmed to think we are in this real world MATRIX that only exists in our minds because we have been led to believe that paper and ink in the form of FEDERAL RESERVE “NOTES” are worth 100 cents when in the real world, outside of The Matrix, they are really worth only 2 – 3 cents, which is exactly worth the world will value our dollars in less than three years.
• If you ‘think’ in your mind you are getting paid $50.00 per hour, in the real world, outside of the Matrix of your mind, you are really getting paid only $1.00 an hour.  Soon the entire world will revalue the dollar to the true reality of this.  When the world does this will you really drive to work and actually work for a dollar an hour when a single gallon of gasoline costs you $100.00 and a loaf of bread costs $80.00?  This is what is going to happen in LESS than three years; All because you thought you had more important things to do than talk or care about what you ‘think’ is politics when it is NOT politics but it is your very life, your rights, your money, your freedom and your liberty.  But you just didn’t care to talk about it.  How about if you go out some place RIGHT NOW, IF NOTHING ELSE go to a tavern and have a beer and START TALKING ABOUT ALL OF these things you should have been talking about all along?  Where ever you go you need to start learning and talking about all of these things to your friends, relatives and people you just bump into at the beach or camping or whatever you do.  You all have to start caring enough to at least talk about all of this so that we can unite and do what we must do to ENFORCE the LAW on our Government.
• We must realize that the entire collapse of The MATRIX, our economy that only exists in our minds, is a blessing because until THE MATRIX is totally destroyed we will never be free of the tyrants and despots in all three branches of the U.S. Government and the cartel of twelve privately owned banks, who ultimately control them and us through monetary supply and manipulation, called THE FEDERAL RESERVE “SYSTEM” who created The MATRIX in the first place, through Constitutionally contemptuous legislation by usurping tyrants.
• The utter collapse of The MATRIX is going to be a horrible hardship for a few years, about five or so, and we may even need a Re-Revolutionary War to ENFORCE The Law in The Constitution on our Government, but if we stay the course the vast majority of common average Americans will become wealthy through hard work, the blessings of God and being able to keep our own earnings and choose for ourselves and our families how and on what we will spend our money (gold and/or silver coins) on.
• Pray, people, for the collapse of the Matrix, be ready and prepare to survive the hardships and be ready to fight physically if necessary, for the rule of LAW of The Constitution to the full force and effect of it word for word, in spirit and intent, as it WAS meant on the day it was ratified.
• If you don’t want to see war than support We The People Congress.  This organization and the NEW Continential Congress, is our ONLY chance to avoid it; by peacefully holding every single member of all three branches of the U.S. Government accountable to the LAWS in The Constitution.