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Post by stutefish on Jan 19, 2007 14:17:54 GMT -4
What happens when conspiracy theories are ignored because of conditioning?
What happens then is that conditioning causes conspiracy theories to be ignored. Are you claiming that's what's going on here?
What if the term conspiracy theory is used as a weapon to control dissent by governments and the media?
If the term is being used as a weapon to control dissent by some entities, then dissent is being controlled by some entities using this weapon.
Are you claiming that is what is going on here?
When events are leading to a conclusion that has been openly pointed out by dissenting people who are subsequently dismissed as conspiracy nuts, who are the conspirators then?
If the people making the conclusions are dismissed as conspiracy nuts, the conspirators could then be anybody or nobody.
Are you claiming that there's a conspiracy to dismiss dissenters as conspiracy nuts?
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Post by 3onthetree on Jan 19, 2007 21:26:36 GMT -4
What happens then is that conditioning causes conspiracy theories to be ignored. Are you claiming that's what's going on here?That would be yes. Conditioning is very important, you must instill some myths into your population, the grand purpose, the history of fighting for truth justice and the democratic way. Conditions the populace to rally round the flag when the actor gets a bullhorn. To go against the tide of patriotic conditioning and stand apart from the happy cheering whooped up mob would at best get you ignored, at worst get you lynched. If the term is being used as a weapon to control dissent by some entities, then dissent is being controlled by some entities using this weapon.I'm glad you agree. Although I think I said governments and the media specifically. Yes they do use the term as a weapon, dissenters from the sheep in the lead up to the Iraq war were not just called conspiracy nuts, the media went much further, if you didn't rally with Jr you were a traitor. If the people making the conclusions are dismissed as conspiracy nuts, the conspirators could then be anybody or nobody.It's pretty clear who the conspirators are, they leave a paper trail and one document gives a glimpse of their use of distraction and deception. www.retakingamerica.com/files/northwoods_documents.pdfCuba is not the problem this time. video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=1283250336175505194&q=petrodollar
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Post by gillianren on Jan 19, 2007 23:50:20 GMT -4
Look, I believe conspiracies happen. I believe our government is flawed. I just don't believe our government is simultaneously so competent and so incompetent as the CTs would have you believe--that they can pull off these byzantine plots at all yet leave evidence that's so obvious that some schmuck online can piece it together even though experts in the field are all fooled. It's dumb.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 20, 2007 11:40:30 GMT -4
What happens when conspiracy theories are ignored because of conditioning?
If you are concerned about this then stop putting forward bogus conspiracy theories.
Saddam used his only weapon on mass destruction, trading oil in euros instead of greenbacks from November 2000. Guess which country is planning to open it's own oil exchange trading in euros only of course.
And how would trading oil in euros be a catastrophe?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jan 20, 2007 11:54:25 GMT -4
It's "Truth, justice, and the American Way," and I wish people were a little less PC about it.
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Post by 3onthetree on Jan 20, 2007 22:33:55 GMT -4
It's "Truth, justice, and the American Way," and I wish people were a little less PC about it. I wasn't being politically correct, you're forgetting America's minion nations, Great Britain and Australia throw about the truth justice and democracy line too. It looks like both these nations have signed up for the duration. Interesting that your'e from Texas, that's where it all started. ;D From here. www.financialsense.com/editorials/petrov/2006/0120.htmlThis isn't a conspiracy theory, it's just business as usual.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 22, 2007 11:55:20 GMT -4
In 1971, as it became clear that the U.S. Government would not be able to buy back its dollars for goldThe US government quit promising to pay gold for dollars long ago. We had fiat money long before Nixon dropped off the gold standard. The Bretton Woods gold standard was a post WW2 imposition designed to stabilize currency values by each country managing its monetary policy to keep their respective currencies near a fixed exchange rate with a common commodity, gold. The dollar was even more exchangeable for gold after the US left Bretton Woods because US citizens could now own gold, which they had been prohibited before. Although the prohibition never kept anyone who wanted to own gold because gold jewelry could always be purchased. The dollar could by exchanged for gold more freely after the demise of Bretton Woods as before. There was just a discontinuation of a fixed exchange between gold and the dollar. it prepared an alternative arrangement to hold the world hostage to its fiat dollar: during 1972-1973 it struck an iron-clad arrangement with Saudi Arabia—to support the rule of the House of Saud in exchange for accepting only dollars as a payment for Saudi oil.Conjecture with no support The economic essence of this arrangement was that the dollar was now backed by oil.This makes as much since as saying the dollar is backed by coffee because you can exchange dollars for coffee. If, for any reason, the dollar lost its oil backing, the American Empire would cease to exist, because it would no longer be able to tax the world by making them accumulate ever more dollars.This begs the question that foreign dollar holders can be taxed for holding dollars. With no mechanism given. I could go on but I am not as fast a typist at this as some others here. 3, did you notice that the article you quoted was originally on the web site www.lemetropolecafe.com/, a subscription web site for “gold investors and contrarians from all sectors of the financial world”. These site typically appeal to panic and people that think the sky is falling. Sort of like many HBs. This is not a good place to learn about the real economy.
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Post by 3onthetree on Jan 23, 2007 4:24:36 GMT -4
The US dollar is not backed by gold, period. After Nixon closed the gold window to avoid paying out gold ounces for dollars the world still used the US dollar as reserve currency. Twas a miracle. Enter OPEC, by agreement with the USA, OPEC agreed to trade oil for dollars only, the Saudi royal family is mentioned in dispatches during these negotiations but that's another story. Oil became the surrogate backer of the US dollar purely because of the volume and the critical need for trade, if you want oil, and everyone does, you need dollars to buy it. Maybe there is something wrong with this guy too that you can point out. www.atimes.com/global-econ/DD11Dj01.htmland then there's this bloke. www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul303.htmlThe fact is that the Euro being traded for oil in place of the US dollar is a real threat to the US. Not some crap about Iran having the bomb, Iran is surrounded by nations with the bomb anyway.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 23, 2007 10:16:55 GMT -4
The US dollar is not backed by gold, period. After Nixon closed the gold window to avoid paying out gold ounces for dollars the world still used the US dollar as reserve currency. Twas a miracle. The point is that the government was not under obligations to pay out gold for dollars when Nixon ended the Bretton Woods agreement and hadn't been for years. The U.S. government was only required to manage its exchange rate to a trading range for gold. They did this by having a large gold reserve that could be used or threatened to be used to manipulate the price of gold and kept it artificially low. Bretton Woods had become obsolete as Europe had recovered from WW2 and probably couldn't be sustained for much longer anyway, so the threat was loosing credibility. So Nixon just pulled the plug. After that gold floated freely and rose from around $35 IIRC to over $700. A bull rally to match the best of them, no matter the asset.
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Post by AstroSmurf on Jan 23, 2007 12:44:19 GMT -4
Now, I am far from an economist, but would it be fair to say that the economy had expanded faster than the available gold reserves?
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Post by echnaton on Jan 23, 2007 16:07:13 GMT -4
I don't have any figures at hand, but i think it is fair to say that if you looked at the gross world product from today vs 100 years ago and at gold reserves over the same time, the economy would have grown substantially more than reserves. The growing need for currency is one reason why gold (and silver) coinage was abandoned and eventually money was delinked from hard assets.
But I sure like the ring a silver dollar make when I flip it.
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Post by 3onthetree on Jan 25, 2007 8:14:43 GMT -4
So, have we established that the US economy benefits greatly from the fact that the US dollar is used as reserve currency for two thirds of the worlds trade? And is used exclusively as the currency of trade for oil with OPEC and has bugger all to do with gold.? It's not all doom and gloom, there is the plunge protection team to pull the US markets out of the poo, and the fact that at the moment there aren't enough Euros in circulation to rival the US hegemony so there must be more to it. Bloody upstart Muslims, who do they think they are? Do they really think they can create their own little empire based on oil and right wing religious principals. Bloody copycats.
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Post by echnaton on Jan 25, 2007 10:22:49 GMT -4
So, have we established that the US economy benefits greatly from the fact that the US dollar is used as reserve currency for two thirds of the worlds trade? And is used exclusively as the currency of trade for oil with OPEC and has bugger all to do with gold.? Is this a retraction of your claim that the dollar was backed by a requirement to pay out gold for dollars until Nixon withdrew the country from the Bretton Woods agreement?
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Post by 3onthetree on Dec 11, 2007 7:58:18 GMT -4
Ha, funny how this thread stopped in time at a strawman response. Anyway it took a while but it's all come to pass. I think I cited Ron Paul in a post too, back when he was a real nobody. Not just a MSM blacklisted one. [quoteTEHRAN (AFP)--Major crude producer Iran has completely stopped carrying out its oil transactions in dollars, Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari said on Saturday, labeling the greenback an "unreliable" currency. "At the moment selling oil in dollars has been completely halted, in line with the policy of selling crude in non-dollar currencies," Nozari was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency. "The dollar is an unreliable currency, considering its devaluation and the oil exporters' losses," he added. The world's fourth-largest oil exporter, Iran has massively reduced its dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of U.S. pressures on its financial system. The U.S. has successfully encouraged major European and Asian banks to cut their dealings with Iran in a bid to make the Islamic republic give way on its controversial nuclear program. Washington has also blacklisted major Iranian banks for alleged support of terrorism and seeking nuclear weapons, charges denied by Tehran. Iran has reduced its assets in dollars held in foreign banks and urged OPEC to take collective action to price oil in other currencies such as the euro, instead of the U.S. currency which is used across the world at present. The decline of the dollar, which has weakened considerably against the euro and other currencies in the past 12 months, has affected the revenues of OPEC members because most of them price and sell their oil exports in the U.S. currency. ][/quote] www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20071208%5cACQDJON200712080440DOWJONESDJONLINE000007.htm&
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Post by echnaton on Dec 11, 2007 11:27:08 GMT -4
The decline of the dollar, which has weakened considerably against the euro and other currencies in the past 12 months, has affected the revenues of OPEC members because most of them price and sell their oil exports in the U.S. currency.
This is a really limited view of the situation. Oil and dollars are both commodities. They are frequently traded for one another but have value separate from that transaction. Value that is relative to a great many other commodities. For instance oil is valued relative to natural gas, and one may be substituted for the other. Oil is also valued relative to a horse and any number of other sources of energy.
Currencies have value as well, and like other commodities that are in the same class, dollars and euros are substitutes for each other. Both serve as a very liquid medium of exchange for most other commodities and products.
The fall of the dollar in value against other currencies, does not change the value of petroleum relative to its substitutes. Thus we see that as the dollar falls, the price of oil in dollars goes up. If this did not happen, oil would become much cheaper around the world, instead oil stays more stable in price against the euro and the yen while inflating against the depreciated dollar. That way everyone is paying a similar value. despite the decline in the dollar.
Iran is not getting cheated by the fall in the dollar because the price received in dollars has gone up so much. Though it would not surprise me that they really believe they are getting cheated, given their lack of grasp of reality in other ways.
This is not to say that the fall of the dollar is not a problem for anyones economy. As the worlds reference currency (the base off which most other currencies and commodities are measured), large swings in value do have an effect. If you are selling oil under a long term, fixed price dollar contract this can get painful. It makes financial guys sweat . But Iran, like everyone else, can hedge their contracts for changes in currency values to minimize the effect.
I have not seen any studies on the matter of the relative disadvantage of oil exporting countries from the decline of the dollar, but my guess is that it is a lot less than the above quote would imply. If Iran had been pricing oil in euros, the price received in euros would not have risen as much. The purchasing power of a barrel of oil is not tied exclusively to the currency in which it is sold.
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