Posted on 01/20/2006 4:40:58 PM PST by hubbubhubbub
Ah, this dolt is way behind the curve. The world doesn't really even run on dollars anymore. It runs on credit, the future, promises.
That's it.
Don't like it, go to all trade goods. No one is stopping you. Life would be like..like...any rural third world pit.
Thxs, for your interesting points..
Why should the Euro or any other currency be any more desirable than the dollar? It seems more likely to me that our foreign trading partners would simply start be insist on payment via some sort of international barter.
YAWN!!
Barter would make Islamic Iran deliriously happy.
The populace is already living at a subsistence level that AhmadiNejad can sustain through barter. Even employed workers have been searching through garbage bins to find enough food to feed their families. Many have not been paid for months and months.
Nor is there anyone internally who can firmly oppose his (and Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi's) emerging dictatorship backed by the IRGC commanders he has put in place in all serious government positions.
The recent Falcon air crash took out all the top IRGC commanders of the Ground forces, who were virtually Rafsanjanis only available military backing.
The new leadership - unlike the old guard Clerics - has few if any assets worth protecting against international currency crashes.
With substanial oil and natural gas reserves he has "oil barter currency" more than sufficient unto the day.
And finally, as the disruption to most of the rest of the world occurs, he glories in achieving his Hojatieh apocalyptic philosophy, which promotes misery, death and destruction and opposes efforts to prevent it.
May I humbly suggest that doubters about the serious disruption that may happen with the destabilization of the US Dollar through Iranian action and consequently of the Euro and the domino effect that occurs, still think in terms of rational input and global responsibility being shown by all countries.
Instead of a Pol Pot lunacy that may not be powerful enough to do harm on purpose but can create untold damage by entering the game and upsetting long established apple carts. Some of which currently teeter-totter at a point of imbalance where a slight shove can tumble them like a house of cards. Beyond the power of any economy or group of economies to counteract the cataclysm.
I have no personal wealth, nor investments in gold, just an expertise about Iran and a working knowledge of intertwined world economies.
What seems to throw off accurate analysis and assessment is cultural experience, mindsets based purely on Western logic and the recent past. This tends to skew the picture and mislead the analysts as it misses the utterly inconceivable that's now present in the shadows.
Thanks for the ping. Yes the Iran problem is very big, antagonists do challenge the status quo and yes, sometimes analysts are wrong for more reasons than are worth counting. You've painted a clear picture of your perception of Iran but given no indication of how it should be or how to achieve how it should be. What are some of your opinions, analysis and suggestions to resolve the problem?
In the past, when time frames permitted, I had suggested psyops as a weapon of choice to undermine and weaken the Mullahs, followed by a government in exile - such as the one being adopted with the leading Syrian defector and some selective, dark Special Ops activity from perhaps Baluchistan to remove key individual targets.
I had hands-on experience with psyops when I tried to help deal with a dozen urban guerilla tacticians brought into the Soviet embassy in Tehran to destabilize the Shah and orchestrate the daily activities of the anti-Shah groups like the MEK, the Fedayeen and the pro-Khomeini Hezbollahs.
The overthrow of the late-Shah, in case someone still does not know, was initiated by the Soviets and assisted through Jimmy Carter, whom many in Europe called the best Soviet President the Americans ever had.
The Marxist-Islamist MEK and Fedayeen would have been in power today had it not been for the only organized structure left in Iran after the fall of the Shah being the hundreds of mosques throughout the country. Similarly to more recently in Iraq, the clerics took charge of neighborhoods, then towns etc., leading to the implacable hatred between the MEK and Mullahs we see today.
Seeing "their" revolution stolen out from under them, the MEK bombed, assassinated and otherwise killed the clerics at the highest levels.
They fought against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war, not as enemies of the Iranian populace but as foes of the Mullahs, in an effort to remove them.
Ever since they have been hunted down and abused even more stringently than Iranian students. Among whom they also numbered. And in turn they have used similar tactics to retain a following of what has become a counter-productive but virulently anti-Mullah personality cult of Massoud and Mariam Rajavi.
Note, however, that having the MEK in power would be as bad if not worse than the Mullahs, even under President AhmadiNejad.
Also, their becoming labeled a terrorist group, originated in an effort to negotiate with the Mullahs who fear and hate the MEK and offer them assurances that America would not back or support their staunchest enemy group.
To cut this short, there is no one-step solution I can think of, since there is no charismatic figure or leader, not even among the Monarchists, who can achieve step one - to eradicate the Mullahs. The young Shah cannot afford to spill the amount of blood needed for him to take over power without it coming back to bite him.
Nobody else has the military means or an adequate number of followers inside or outside Iran.
A drastic possibility, which might work, is a two step one. A government in exile that becomes recognized by the Wetern world and unleashes the MEK (no, I do not like them either, I'm being an analyst/tactician) into Iran.
They do the killing for everyone, demand and receive temporay power and then are removed in phase two, perhaps violently - as murderers for the blood they shed. Much easier to achieve than uprooting hte Mullahs. Unless Putin steps in with total backing of the new MEK government, then we have a problem as bad or worse as before.
Now, with Hojatieh driven AhmadiNejad at the helm and nuclear cabability perhaps emerging as soon as March, a virtual destruction of some 5,000 military and nuclear related targets in a single series of bombing raids seems the only option. Sounds horrible, is horrible. Got any better ideas?
Some collateral damage can be reduced if targets and sites built and hidden below towns and neighborhoods receive ample, early warning of being bombed and people are urged and told to leave - or stay at their own risk. No exact date needs to be given away.
Giving up these targets would not help Iran much as they do not have the means to defend so many sites against an armada of bombers.
Please don't label me a warmonger for laying out strategy that might, just might work to stop a lunatic regime from killing millions of us or sending us into financial difficulties that would make our lives resemble those in Iran - even if only for a while.
Wow, where we you a few months ago?
Recently, I was posting some articles for a friend who held similar views (He has some personal history on/in Iran) and some personal kowlege of these things.
We both postulated on the possible use of the MEK as part of a coordinated effort to oust the Mullah's controlled system in Iran.
Welcome aboard and how long have you been lurking??? :)
Thank you.
Lurking for quite a while, finally came out of the shadows to share some experience by posting - now that Iran has become such a threat.
About your friend, I'm glad that I'm not the only one who thinks this way. Two is better than one. :-))
Interesting ideas.
I am very much anti-Marxist - as are most Freepers - but the Communists at least were not such flakes that their big aim in life was to die. Communism simply wanted to dominate us, but because it's a crummy system, it couldn't do so and collapsed.
The Mullahcracy of Islam, on the other hand, is much more dangerous. They want to die and take the whole world down with them.
I think the US is between a rock and a hard place. The Mullahs are bad, the MEK is bad, but there's nobody in between who seems to have the clout to mobilize the probably many Iranians who simply want to get on with their lives and possibly go to Europe or the US to study and come back and build a business and start a life in Iran.
I think that the only thing that is holding the US back is that there are obviously many folks in Iran who just want to get along and have a life (and not kill Jews, Americans, etc.).
What he brought up though, was interesting.
What if these countries just decided to dump dollars?
What if they DID decide to purchase oil with Euros?
While their costs might be higher due to exchange rates, Their decision to go off the dollar and create their own trading block financially IS a de-stabilizer.
The dollar is not a necessity to purchase anything anymore, especialy with an Iranian oil source that can only be closed through an act of war ourselves.
It is the response to this that would prove interesting, for if their little trading bloc took wings, slowly but openly, inflation a divestment in the US due to investors losses based on inflation would be an act of war.
What is sad, is that the MEK seems to be the only local game, with the only trained people who hold the ideology to actually carry it out...unless things are being done in secret that we are unaware of.
Everyone must gather information, analyze and according to their own needs and their station in life make investment decisions that protect their own net worth.
1. Very big if
2. There is no stable currency, period.
3. True, we have food but its production is dependent on abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels.
Ignorance is a personal choice.
Our military is stretched very thin right now. No one wants a draft.
Time will tell
See post # 34
"Why should the Euro or any other currency be any more desirable than the dollar?"
Because there are folks, especially in the Arab world, that hate the U.S.
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