We reported in Pressenza, in 2011 and 2014 the role that Saddam Hussein’s Oil-for-Euros may have played in the Iraq War, similar to Gaddafi’s Gold Dinar:
“Attempting to understand what is happening in Libya without looking at the global crisis runs the risk of oversimplifying things. We could say “It’s the Oil, stupid!”, and we would be of course right, but only partially so. Gaddafi – not a nice man, to be sure, but not worse than other autocrats in the region – committed the same crime Saddam Hussein did. He attempted to upset the hegemony of the dollar by proposing that oil transactions move to the Gold Dinar, a Euro-like currency for the whole of Africa. This was eminently doable, in particular because Gaddafi was sitting on a nice large pot of Gold. It would also make Africa financially independent and less available for exploitation.
“As it happened, some years back Saddam had moved his oil transactions to the Euro, and OPEC was looking into following suit. Many analysts believe this would have led to a fall in the value of the dollar of up to 40%. And then the US started to talk about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), which of course this was, at least for the dollar.”
New revelations arising from Hillary Clinton’s email cache add details to what many considered at the times ‘conspiracy theories’.
According to Foreign Policy Journal newly disclosed emails show that Libya’s plan to create a gold-backed currency to compete with the euro and dollar was a motive for NATO’s intervention:
“The Threat of Libya’s Oil and Gold to French Interests
“Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians, an April 2011 email sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.
“The email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
“Most astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating as a prime African currency.”
As the markets begin to show signs similar to the pre-2007/2008 crash (it could not be any other way as the banking system has resisted all attempts to separate its speculative side form the ‘real economy’) and the Middle East war-induced refugee crisis begins to shake public awareness, it is time to review the direction of international, national and personal ways to organise the system.
A new sensitivity is emerging
…that puts the value of human beings above money, proposing ways to ensure access to health, education and basic needs to everybody. This entails doing away with speculation, favouring workers participation in management and profits, cooperatives, universal basic income, and many other proposals from organisations that see an open future as long as we manage to take a new direction. The best way to fight terrorism is to create a world free of injustice and discrimination. We may still have fanatics but they will not have followers.
This is the moment for active nonviolence: a drive to change the system without resentment and revenge, no matter how angry we may be about the ‘Davos crowd’. Unless we realise at the root of the megaconcentration we see today there is fear, we will not be able to offer reconciliation as a strategy to bring them into the project for a different, more humanised world. We must also resist the pressure from the corporations-owned media that try to make us look stupid if we join in the new proposals: Plan B for Europe (DiEM25), Jeremy Corbyn, Podemos, Rethinking Economics, Indignados, Occupy, and all the anti-war and antinuclear movements. To Margaret Thatcher’s TINA (there is no alternative) we must say WATA (we are the alternative).
