[FNC: Though a bit of a rant, this is the first plausible attempt I've seen which tries to explain why news sources in the United States are not reporting on the Iran Oil Bourse.  (Roughly, it's because anyone who benefits from the American Empire benefits from hiding how we tax other nation-states.)  A related mystery is how the bias of, say, Rupert Murdoch to, say, suppress information on how forcefully the dollar is being defended is propagated downward to the individual editor and newsgatherer.  It's almost certainly not by written policy statements: such a statement would be leaked. ]

January 27, 2006 – Has BUSH forgotten about the Iranian Bourse?  That is a very good question. It would be an even better question if a reporter sitting in the White House Press Room asked it to White House Press Secretary, Scott McClellan. Unfortunately no member of the White House Press Corps has ever asked this question.  Why not?  The rest of the world seems to think it’s an important question, so why isn’t the mainstream media in the United States sniffing this story out like presidential semen on a pretty blue dress?  It is a disgrace that ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News are purposefully ignoring the story of the Iran Oil Bourse.  It is shameful that Americans have to get Iran Oil Bourse news from sources such as Aljazeera and Gulf News.  To understand why news sources in the United States are not reporting on the Iran Oil Bourse requires an understanding of how paper money is printed in the United States and who profits from the process. 

So who’s saying what, and where?  Perhaps the last time a meaningful U.S. news source has opined on the Iran Oil Bourse occurred on August 30, 2005 in The Christian Science Monitor when it published ‘Iran’s oil gambit – and potential affront to the US’ by Staff Writer Howard LaFranchi.[1]  LaFranchi started his article with the question, “Is the biggest threat Iran poses to the United States really its nuclear ambitions – or is it petropolitics?”  That’s another good question.  Here are key points made in the LaFranchi article:

• The Iran Oil Bourse would be a euro-denominated exchange in oil, natural gas, and other petroleum products
• If successful, the Iran Oil Bourse would compete with London’s International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) – both owned by American companies
• “If the billions of dollars in oil sales ever got into euros, experts say, that could dry up the demand for dollars that the heavily indebted US economy depends on, and could mean big trouble for the US economy”

To find additional “mainstream” media coverage on the Iran Oil Bourse, inquiring Americans must look towards the mainstream media outlets overseas. 

On January 24, 2006, Gulfnews.com published an article titled, ‘Iran’s new bourse may threaten the dollar’, by Linda S. Heard, Specialist Writer on Middle East Affairs to Gulf News.[2]  Here are the key points made in the Heard article:

• “In March 2006, Iran is scheduled to open its own oil bourse that will trade in euros.  But even before it can open its doors, Iran is being accused of harbouring a clandestine weapons programme and is being threatened with sanctions or worse”
• “It should also be stressed that Iran’s moratorium on uranium enrichment negotiated with Britain, France, and Germany, was voluntary”
• “A growing number of experts believe Iran’s new oil bourse is more of a threat to US interests than nuclear missiles”
• “Editor and analyst Ryan McGreal points out that America’s greatest export is currently the dollar and when “the balance of reserve holdings starts to shift from dollars to euros, that’s very bad news for America’s system of dollar hegemony”

On January 21, 2006, Middle East News Service, Aljazeera Publishing and Aljazeera.com, which is not associated with the controversial Arabic Satellite Channel known as Jazeera Space Channel TV station whose website is Aljazeera.net, published an article titled, ‘End of the West’s economic arrogance.’[3] The key questions and points in this piece are as follows:

• “Has BUSH forgotten about the Iranian Bourse?  
• Have Europeans forgot about the Iranian oil that will be delivered to Western Europe via pipeline?”
• “The Tehran government has a developed plan to begin competing with New York’s NYMEX and London’s IPE with respect to international oil trades…”
•  “Tehran’s future plans pose an obvious encroachment on U.S. dollar supremacy in the international oil market”
• “What we see in today’s tension between Washington and Tehran extend beyond the publicly stated concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear intentions.  It appears similar to what happened with Iraq before the war was launched”
• “Military operation against Iran relates to the macroeconomics of ‘petrodollar recycling’ and the unpublicized but real challenge to U.S. dollar supremacy from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency”

On August 26, 2005, Asia Times published an article by Toni Strata titled, ‘Killing the dollar in Iran’.[4]  Toni Straka is a Vienna, Austria-based independent financial analyst and portfolio manager, who worked as a financial journalist for over 15 years and now evaluates global market trends. He runs The Prudent Investor, where this piece first appeared.  Here are the key points made in the Straka article:

• “Until now, oil has been solely priced, traded and paid for in the greenback on markets in both London and New York”
• “Especially in the case of Iran, it does not make sense to accept dollars only for its much-desired commodity. Given that Iran is seen as a hostile country by the current US administration for its intention to build its own nuclear reactors, one wonders whether the new IOB will not try to attract buyers other than Americans. Iran has recently announced that the new oil exchange will start up its computers in March 2006”
• “The oil exchange would strive to make Iran the main hub for oil deals in the region and most deals will be conducted via the Internet. Experts from London's International Petroleum Exchange (IPE) and the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) have reportedly confirmed the feasibility of the project”
• “Weaned off the almighty commodity, the US dollar can have a deeper impact on the US economy than a direct nuclear attack by Iran”
• “The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco published a paper about the progress of the diversification of central banks' reserves around the world. It concluded that the dollar's position is on the decline in many countries”
• “Only one major actor stands to lose from a change in the current status quo: the US, which with less than 5% of the global population, consumes roughly one third of global oil production”
• “As this development poses a very real danger to the superior status of the greenback and the interests of the US, the "president of war" can be expected to take a strong line against the winds blowing from the Middle East”

Each of the articles referenced above basically make the same point – that the value of the U.S. dollar could be threatened if oil is able to be purchased around the world with any currency other than the U.S. dollar.  In addition to the overseas coverage of the looming threat to the U.S. dollar, alternative U.S. news sources found on the Internet are sounding similar alarms.  So why is the Iran Oil Bourse a non-issue for our nation’s newspapers and television news?  The answer is the Federal Reserve System and how this separate, non-federal power structure makes money out of nothing (prints it) and loans it to the federal government at face value ($1, $5, $10, $20, $50, $100, etc.) plus interest. 

The U.S. dollar is nothing more than a piece of printed-paper.  There is no anchor to it.  No gold, no silver, nothing whatsoever that makes it have value to anyone of us other than our faith in its ability to be exchanged for goods and services.  It is called fiat money, and the U.S. government does not control it or print it.  The Federal Reserve does. Here are some Federal Reserve Banking Cartel fast facts:

• The Federal Reserve System was enacted on December 23, 1913 with the passage of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913
• The federal government of the United States of America owns no stock in the Federal Reserve
• The Federal Reserve is a tax-exempt, for-profit corporation
• “Member Banks” own the Federal Reserve
• The “Member Banks” are private corporations
• Federal Reserve Notes (U.S. Dollars) are debt notes
• Federal Reserve Notes are back primarily on the Power of the US Congress to lay tax, on behalf of the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel, on the people (you and me).
• When the U.S. Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 it transferred the power, and its constitutional mandate to coin, issue, and regulate our country’s money to a private corporation.
• Since that time, the United States of America has borrowed every piece of so-called U.S. money in circulation today from a private corporation, which in turn charges the federal government and the taxpayer, face value plus interest. 
• Therefore, under the present Federal Reserve System our nation’s debt can never be paid off because all money in circulation – every single penny, is borrowed.  To pay off all debt in the United States of America would result in absolutely no coin or paper money remaining in circulation
• The Federal Reserve System only works if we the people are slaves to the state of perpetual debt

Despite these fast facts, most Americans believe that the money in their wallets is American money, and that is exactly what the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel wants us to believe, and so does the majority of the U.S. Congress.  Why Congress?  The U.S. Congress loves deficit spending, that’s why!  Without being able to borrow from the Federal Reserve, Congress would not be able to be engaged in all that is wrong with Congress today.  It would not be able to employee 2.5 million civilian federal employees.  It could not sustain 1174 federal agencies.  It could not pass federal mandates that basically blackmail the states to follow suit or else risk losing federal funds that most states need just to meet their annual budgets.  Members of Congress would have no funds available to bring home to their constituents and no method to fund private interest groups that can ensure his or her re-election. 

According to one of a very few good guys in the U.S. Congress, Congressman Ron Paul (TX), the “Federal Reserve policies benefit big spending politicians who use the inflated currency created by the Fed to hide the true costs of the welfare-warfare state.”[5]  Congressman Paul went on to say, “Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy.” 

How many Americans believe the U.S. Congress has not surrendered its constitutional authority over monetary policy to a private corporation?  Sadly, most have no idea.  Enter the Iran Oil Bourse.  Is it possible for the President of the United States of America or the U.S. Congress to announce that the American people need to start preparing for a significant collapse in the U.S. economy because the stability of the U.S. dollar will be in grave danger if enough countries around the world dump the U.S. dollar in favor of the euro once Iran opens the Iran Oil Bourse, without the American people demanding to know how our currency became so vulnerable in the first place?  There is no way on God’s green earth that the federal government could make such a statement without the American people getting awfully curious about our woeful money system.  Such a statement coming out of Washington DC could ignite widespread panic and an unavoidable demand for the truth; and the government would no longer be able to hide the truth from the American people.

With a warning like this coming from the federal government, Americans would run on the banks for sure, trying to withdrawal all their cash, and when they did, the people would quickly discover that only five percent of a bank’s deposits would be available for withdrawal.  The banks simply do not have the people’s money on hand.  How could the banks have all deposits available for withdrawal when forty-percent of all U.S. (cartel) currency is held by other countries?  This is the real threat to the federal government and the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel that both fear.  So much so, that they will commit our sons and daughters to fight and die in wars, even under false pretenses, if that’s what it takes to prevent you and me from breaking the shackles that bind us and our labor as collateral to the private corporations that make up the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel. 

 So what about the mainstream media in the United States?  What is its role in this scandal that has censored the free press in regards to the Iran Oil Bourse?  The media needs to be involved in the cover-up.  How could they not be?  They are reporting the ‘nuclear threat Iran poses to the U.S.’ story like it’s gospel.  Few indeed are the editorial pages around the country that are balking at the Iranian hardliner rhetoric coming out of the White House.  Even overtly liberal presses are spreading the ‘Iranian weapons of nuclear destruction’ line.  Why?  How does the mainstream media fit into a syndicate designed to prevent the average, hardworking, taxpaying American from understanding the authentic source and meaning of the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel? 

That’s fairly simple.  The Federal Reserve Banking Cartel members own a significant portion / shares of the mainstream media – that’s why.  If researched enough, this fact is not difficult to prove.  Thankfully, there is a shortcut to this truth. It is called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).  The CFR is another non-federal government entity that some say actually governs the United States.  There is ample evidence to substantiate that allegation also, but such an examination here would be a distraction.  Instead, the focus needs to center on the current list of the CFR Board of Directors.  It should be pointed out that nearly every single member of the CFR directly prospers from the Federal Reserve System.  Here the list.

Council on Foreign Relations - Board of Directors [Accessed January 25, 2006]

• MONEY - Peter G. Peterson -- Chairman; Senior Chairman and Co-Founder, The Blackstone Group
• MONEY - Carla A. Hills -- Vice Chairman; Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Hills & Company
• MONEY - Robert E. Rubin -- Vice Chairman; Director/Chairman of the Executive Committee, Citigroup, Inc.
• Richard N. Haass – President; Former State Department Director of Policy Planning and lead U.S. official on Afghanistan and Northern Ireland (2001-2003), and principal Middle East advisor to President George H.W. Bush (1989-1993).
• MONEY - Peter Ackerman -- Managing Director, Rockport Capital, Inc.
• Fouad Ajami -- M. Khadduri Prof. of Middle Eastern Studies, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University
• MONEY - Madeleine K. Albright -- Principal, The Albright Group LLC
• LAWYERS - Charlene Barshefsky -- Senior International Partner, Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP
• MEDIA - Jeffrey Bewkes -- President and Chief Operating Officer, Time Warner, Inc.
• Henry S. Bienen -- President, Northwestern University
• Stephen W. Bosworth -- Dean, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
• MEDIA - Tom Brokaw -- NBC News
• MEDIA - Lee Cullum -- Columnist, Dallas Morning News
• LOBBYIST - Kenneth M. Duberstein -- Chairman and CEO, The Duberstein Group, Inc.
• MONEY - Martin S. Feldstein -- President, National Bureau of Economic Research
• MONEY - Richard N. Foster -- Managing Partner, Foster Health Partners, LLC
• Helene D. Gayle -- Director, HIV, TB & Reproductive Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• MONEY - Maurice R. Greenberg -- Chairman & CEO, C.V. Starr & Co., Inc.
• MONEY - Richard C. Holbrooke --Vice Chairman, Perseus LLC
• MEDIA - Karen Elliott House -- Publisher, Wall Street Journal
• MONEY - Michael H. Moskow -- President, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
• Joseph S. Nye, Jr. -- Distinguished Service Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• LAWYERS Ronald L. Olson -- Senior Partner, Munger Tolles and Olson LLP
• Thomas R. Pickering -- Senior Vice President for International Relations, The Boeing Company
• MONEY - David M. Rubenstein -- Co-Founder and Managing Director, The Carlyle Group
• MONEY - Richard E. Salomon -- Chairman, Mecox Ventures, Inc.
• Anne-Marie Slaughter -- Dean, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
• Joan E. Spero -- President, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
• Laura D'Andrea Tyson -- Dean, London Business School
• MEDIA Vin Weber -- Partner, Clark & Weinstock
• MEDIA - Fareed Zakaria -- Editor, Newsweek International

Officers and Directors Emeriti:

Leslie H. Gelb (President Emeritus)
Maurice R. Greenberg (Honorary Vice Chairman)
Charles McC. Mathias, Jr. (Director Emeritus)
David Rockefeller (Honorary Chairman)
Robert A. Scalapino (Director Emeritus)

As you just read, the Board of Directors of the CFR is a tapestry of bankers and media types with a few social intellectuals, institutions, and a defense contractor stitched into the fabric of this farce just for good measure.  What the CFR has actually accomplished to favorably influence foreign policy, after all, it calls itself a foreign relations think tank, is not immediately apparent.  What is obvious though is that the reason the mainstream media is not reporting on the Iran Oil Bourse is because they are partially owned, or part of the syndicate which cannot afford for the American people to know the truth about their money.  To allow the people to know the truth is to provoke we the people to rise up and demand the immediate abolishment of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the reclamation / return of our currency to a gold / silver anchor; consequently ending the wealth confiscating scheme of the Federal Reserve and Federal Income Tax structure, once and for all.

This, my friends is the reason why the syndicate suspects are not talking about, or reporting on the Iran Oil Bourse.  If confronted, they will deny or attempt to minimize / discredit these allegations.  This should come as no surprise.  If the suspects involved are good at anything, they’ve proved it is lying to the American people and the world. 

So what do we do, now knowing what we now know?  We must spread the word and relentlessly demand that our local newspapers cover this story for all that it is worth, for if we do not, wars and rumors of wars will persist at our expense.  Americans must demand that 2006 candidates for U.S. Congress pledge to abolish the Federal Reserve System [!!] if elected or re-elected.  We also need to reconcile our votes for Democratic and Republican Party candidates against the fact that the only political party in the United States of America that has made the abolishment of the Federal Reserve System part of its Party’s Platform is the Libertarian Party.   To vote for the problem while expecting a solution is to be part of the problem.  Think about it.  The immediate security and stability of the United States is in your hands.  Will you continue to rollover for the Federal Reserve Banking Cartel, or will you now rise up? 

It’s time for We the People to awaken, rise, and take back our currency and country. 

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