'The phrase petrodollar warfare refers to a hypothesis that one of the driving forces of United States foreign policy over recent decades[when?] has been the status of the United States dollar as the world's dominant reserve currency and as the currency in which oil is priced. #The hypothesis: Most oil sales throughout the world are denominated in United States dollars (USD).[1] According to proponents of the petrodollar warfare hypothesis, because most countries rely on oil imports, they are forced to maintain large stockpiles of dollars in order to continue imports. This creates a consistent demand for USDs and upwards pressure on the USD's value, regardless of economic conditions in the United States. This in turn allegedly allows the US government to gain revenues through seignorage and by issuing bonds at lower interest rates than they otherwise would be able to. As a result the U.S. government can run higher budget deficits at a more sustainable level than can most other countries. A stronger USD also means that goods imported into the United States are relatively cheap. Political enemies of the United States therefore have some interest in seeing oil denominated in euros or other currencies. -- In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions under the Oil for Food program to euros. When U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the USD. The Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran takes this theory as fact. As retaliation to this policy seen as neoimperialism, Iran has made an effort to create its own Iranian Oil Bourse which has sold oil in Gold, Euros, Dollars, and Japanese Yen since its opening. The theory is supported historically by Iranian intellectuals as a move made by the American elites after World War II with the Bretton Woods Act, taking away Gold backing from the Pound Sterling and discreetly starting the eventual pegging of Gulf Arab Oil producers' currencies after Britain gave them independence in 1961 and 1971. These countries were further secured militarily after the Gulf War in 1990. This pegging of the currencies along with the exchanges being exclusively in USD in only two places, the IPE in London and NYMEX in New York City, has given the United States a near monopoly, with growing economies such as India and China waiting in line for orders. Critics say this revolutionary move by Iran in creating a rival market may also be one of the reasons for the ongoing energy-related US competition with Iran.'

'The war rhetoric from Washington towards Iran is again being ramped up - just ahead of the second round of high-level international talks on the country's nuclear program. US military top brass claim they would need just three weeks to defeat Iran's armed forces.' -- Let the dollar circulate

'Every year India spends $12 billion on purchasing oil from Iran, but now it is using gold instead of dollars. India might not be alone; China has suggested it would jump on board with India. New Delhi and Beijing account for 40 percent of the Iranian oil exports.' -- Competition is a sin!

'...a hyper-regional war aimed primarily at Pakistan and Iran could entail a draft and, of course, a steady demand for new fiat money from the Federal Reserve to fund the whole charade. Troublesome young people in Europe and the US will be taken off the street and retrained by competent sergeants. All this is going through the perfervid brains of Pentagon planners even as we write. War seen this way is a fungible, powerful tool. Mostly it is generated to create social cohesion in our view and just as importantly to distract people from focusing on the source of their frustration and anger, which is more often than not their own ruling elite. Is a super-regional war – a kind of World War III – something the elites are currently working to induce? It would change everything. We recall after World War II that the Anglosphere elites were able to create a new economic system featuring a reserve dollar and global financial infrastructure. Is it a solution destined to reoccur?'

'The Western mainstream press does not often delve into the Sunni/Shia split because such details would tend to undermine the larger dominant social theme which is that "Islam is the enemy." A monolithic Islam is a benefit to the West's power elite, which seeks to consolidate wealth and authority in Europe, Britain and America by cultivating an outside threat. -- It is certainly counter-intuitive to argue that the Iraq war ends up being waged to provide Iran with more influence in the region, and certainly we do believe in its arrogance that the elite intended to win the Iraq and Afghanistan wars outright (and has not yet fully given up on either objective). But perhaps the elite may have to settle for a fallback, which includes military occupation of certain bases, proxy politics and increased geopolitical tensions. Sounds strange? As dedicated power-elite meme watchers, we consider almost anything within the realm of possibility these days.'

'...the war going on now in the Middle East and Afghanstian is intended to subdue once and for all those entities that remain stubbornly unintegrated into the Western system of finance and governance. There are other such areas of course, in Africa especially, but it the Pashtuns (and perhaps the Punjabs) who present the most difficulties. From this perspective we can see that the war being fought today in Afghansitan (and increasingly in Pakistan) is a critical one for the West not because Afghanistan is at the center of amorphous trade routes but because Afghanistan is the epicenter of unameliorated tribal entities. To maintain that these wars—and the war in Afghanistan especially—are merely a CIA and Pentagon two-sided action is cynical. Beyond this it is chauvinistic. Is the idea then that the Pashtuns and Punjabis are mere pawns or puppets of the Anglo-American axis? These are ancient tribes. The war is in earnest. To us the meme that the "West controls all" is another promotion.'

'Iran has never directly threatened Israel with nuclear weapons – even if it had them. Israel on the other hand is said to have up to 400 nuclear missiles or more, though Israel has never confirmed their existence. States, in fact, usually do not commit suicide. The idea that a nuclear Iran would suddenly start lobbing nukes at Israel strikes us as preposterous. It is a serious situation. Boycotts are not inevitably a prelude to war, but they are often destabilizing and can well be a cynical prelude to action. From the standpoint of the power elite, there is likely an upside to the chaos and ruination that a strike (especially a nuclear one) on Iran would create. War is always "the health of the state" and an active war waged against Iran would put turn a series of regional conflicts into a kind of mini-world war. Certainly both Europe and America would end up on some kind of war-footing with all the further curtailments of humans rights that such "emergency" measures imply.'

'The Iranian Twitter Revolution meme is thoroughly debunked in Cloud Culture ...a third of Iranians have internet access and the number of Twitter users in the country during last June’s unrest amounted to just 0.082 per cent of the population. “It’s clear that its influence in co-ordinating a serious challenge to a powerfully entrenched regime was wildly overstated,” the report notes. The idea that Iran was undergoing a Twitter Revolution incorrectly characterised and even trivialised what happened last summer, says Parvin Ardalan, a leading Iranian women’s rights activist who attended the protests. “It was much deeper and wider than that. It involved people from every level of society,” she argues, adding that the focus on Twitter, Facebook and other social media helped bolster the Iranian regime’s claims that the protests were part of a western conspiracy to destabilise the country.'

Proxy war: exporting the Afghan ethnic civil war to Pakistan to prevent a non-dollar resource corridor between Iran and India/China.

'RT interviews German journalist Jurgen Elsaesser, author of the book "Iran: facts against Western propaganda". He thinks Tehran has every right to produce nuclear energy. And fears that "extremist Israeli government could provoke war with Iran at any time".'

'"Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them," said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation. "When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means—such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime—I couldn't believe they'd ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless."'

"Written in 1954 by one of the coup's chief planners, the history details how United States and British officials plotted the military coup that returned the shah of Iran to power and toppled Iran's elected prime minister, an ardent nationalist. The document shows that: #Britain, fearful of Iran's plans to nationalize its oil industry, came up with the idea for the coup in 1952 and pressed the United States to mount a joint operation to remove the prime minister. #The C.I.A. and S.I.S., the British intelligence service, handpicked Gen. Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and covertly funneled $5 million to General Zahedi's regime two days after the coup prevailed. #Iranians working for the C.I.A. and posing as Communists harassed religious leaders and staged the bombing of one cleric's home in a campaign to turn the country's Islamic religious community against Mossadegh's government."

"If Ahmadinejad was in fact the winner, then there is an attempted coup going on in Tehran right now, and it is being led by Mousavi and his western-backed supporters. But for the demonstrators facing repression in Tehran, the conviction that they have been cheated has created its own momentum in what is now a highly polarised society. That is given more force by the fact that the protests are underpinned by a split in the theocratic regime, of which Mousavi and his allies are a powerful component. -- Last Friday, even before the polls had closed in Iran, the US president ­commented that people were ­"looking at new possibilities" in Iran, just as they had in Lebanon's elections the previous weekend. ...the implications of his remarks were not lost in Iran, where the US is still spending hundreds of millions of dollars in covert destabilisation programmes." -- So will the Russia-China-Iran mutual protection pact stay in place? Got oil?

"Stacy Summary: Stay tuned for the shocker that comes from minute 01.36. [embedded YouTube] The interviewee casually mentions that Mousavi was responsible for executing thousands of political dissidents. Was anyone else aware of this??? I should imagine Rummy and Dick are thinking if they stay quiet for a decade or so, they, too, could possibly return as reformist heroes to the twitterverse?" -- What have the tweeple got themselves mixed up in?

'Qashqavi said the West should let Iranian courts resolve the controversy over alleged ballot fraud. He cited the disputed U.S. presidential election in 2000 when the Supreme Court stepped into rule the winner of the close race between Al Gore and George W. Bush. “No one in that race encouraged American people to stage a riot. It went to the courts,” he said. “If there was a protest in their own country, police would not issue a permit. Why don’t they treat us the same way? This is a racial mentality—that Iranians belong to the third world. This is a dual standard.”'

America, FUCK YEAH!

'#4. Watch Your Back: Not only is it hard to be sure that what appears on Twitter is accurate, but some Twitterers may even be trying to trick you. Like Rick’s Café, Twitter is thick with discussion of who is really an informant or agent provocateur. One longstanding pro-Moussavi Twitter account, mousavi1388, which has grown to 16,000 followers, recently tweeted, “WARNING: http://www.mirhoseyn.ir/ & http://www.mirhoseyn.com/ are fake, DONT join. ... #IranElection11:02 AM Jun 16th from web.” The implication was that government agents had created those accounts to mislead the public. ABCNews.com announced that Twitter users who said they were repeating (“retweeting”) the posts from its reporter, Jim Sciutto, had been fabricating the material to make Mr. Sciutto seem to be backing the government. “I became an unwitting victim,” he wrote.'

"The claim is made that Ahmadinejad stole the election, because the outcome was declared too soon after the polls closed for all the votes to have been counted. However, Mousavi declared his victory several hours before the polls closed. This is classic CIA destabilization designed to discredit a contrary outcome. It forces an early declaration of the vote. The longer the time interval between the preemptive declaration of victory and the release of the vote tally, the longer Mousavi has to create the impression that the authorities are using the time to fix the vote. It is amazing that people don’t see through this trick. -- Commentators are "explaining" the Iran elections based on their own illusions, delusions, emotions, and vested interests. ...there is, so far, no evidence beyond surmise that the election was stolen. However, there are credible reports that the CIA has been working for two years to destabilize the Iranian government." -- Another "win" for social media

"I have been spending at least a third of my working days in Tehran this past week not reporting what might prove to be true but disproving what is clearly untrue. Fantasy and reality make uneasy bedfellows, but once they are combined and spread with high-speed inaccuracy around the world, they are also lethal. Sham elections, the takeover of party offices, a massacre on a university campus, an imminent coup d'état, the possible overthrow of the whole 30-year old Islamic Republic, the isolation of an entire country as its communications are systematically shut down. We have, in fact, reported all the censorship... The footage of a brutal police force assaulting the political opposition on the streets of the capital has shocked the world. Rightly so, although no one has made comparison with police forces who batter demonstrators on the streets of Western Europe... There are special codes of morality to be applied to Middle East countries which definitely must not apply to us."

"Political organizers use these tools because they create a multiplier effect—not only do you get a story about the campaign but then you also get a story about the fact they are using social-networking tools. So you get two stories for the price of one. The international media loves [the] social-networking world. But in India or in Iran, their use is still somewhat limited." -- "There is this romantic notion that the people tweeting are the ones in the streets, but that is not what is happening. The hubs are generally not people on the ground, and many are not in the country." -- "Governments like Iran, Syria, and Egypt are really struggling with how to continue limiting information. No matter how hard these governments try to block communication, now there is always going to be a hole. This really is a case study in how technology can affect closed societies."

Comment: ericlr: "I would have never thought in a million years to see anon, piratebay, and the CIA all working together on something. It’s heartwarming in a way."

"@NishantK But again this isn't only protest. It's tactics: Opp'n sez they're leveraging DDoS to demand reopening of media."

'...we should also be conscious of the journalistic dangers of depending solely on the tweets and blog posts of inexperienced, and oftentimes politically biased, citizens on the ground. In the last 48 hours alone, the internet has been flooded with misinformation about the political turmoil in Iran. I have personally read widely differing accounts on the number of protesters and casualties at demonstrations, the percentage of fraudulent votes, the personal damage inflicted in university dorms etc… While major news sources are pressured into some degree of due diligence and fact checking before publishing information, citizen journalists are not held accountable for their contributions. -- If we cannot find a way to verify citizen reports for factual accuracy, or provide some independent assessments of the quality of news they are disseminating, then the risk is that all citizen reporting from the field will be discredited simply by virtue of it being written by ordinary citizens.'

Nico Pitney: "I'm liveblogging the latest Iran election fallout. Email me with any news or thoughts, and click here to support the post on Digg."

(boingboing mirror) "#3. Keep you bull$hit filter up! Security forces are now setting up twitter accounts to spread disinformation by posing as Iranian protesters. Please don’t retweet impetuosly, try to confirm information with reliable sources before retweeting. The legitimate sources are not hard to find and follow. -- #5. Don’t blow their cover! If you discover a genuine source, please don’t publicise their name or location on a website. These bloggers are in REAL danger. Spread the word discretely through your own networks but don’t signpost them to the security forces. People are dying there, for real, please keep that in mind. -- #7. Do spread the (legitimate) word, it works! When the bloggers asked for twitter maintenance to be postponed using the #nomaintenance tag, it had the desired effect. As long as we spread good information, provide moral support to the protesters, and take our lead from the legitimate bloggers, we can make a constructive contribution."

'“...appealed to the media not to use Twitter names because, they say, doing so could put people’s lives in danger.” One of the difficulties of asking us to not identify our anonymous sources is that, given how easy it is to stage hoaxes on Twitter, we have tried to identify those feeds that seem most reliable and we have reason to believe are actually coming to us from inside Iran. In other words we have tried to point only to feeds that have established a reputation for accuracy in the past few days. That said, it is entirely likely that the authorities in Iran may well be monitoring these Twitter feeds themselves and we will refrain from identifying individual feeds from now on.' -- With no verifiable usernames and the spread of Tehran timezone spoofings, it is '...impossible for journalists to trust that any Twitter feeds are in fact coming from inside Iran.'

'“We turned our collective power and outrage into a serious weapon that we could use at our will, without ever having to feel the consequences. We practiced distributed, citizen-based warfare,” writes Matthew Burton, a former U.S. intelligence analyst who joined in the online assaults, thanks to a “push-button tool that would, upon your click, immediately start bombarding 10 Web sites with requests. -- ... online supporters of the so-called “Green Revolution” worry about the ethics of a democracy-promotion movement inhibitting their foes’ free speech. -- Burton—who helped bring Web 2.0 tools to the American spy community... admits to feeling “conflicted” about participating in the strikes... he suddenly stopped. “I don’t know why, but it just felt…creepy. I was frightened by how easy it was to sow chaos from afar, safe and sound in my apartment, where I would never have to experience–or even know–the results of my actions.” -- Push-button cyberwarfare

"...rumors can have a longer lifespan on a network of sympathetic blogs, Facebook postings and Twitter feeds. None of this is to excuse the behavior of the government after the election results came out. Or to diminish the bravery and courage of the people who are out in the streets in Tehran getting beaten. But what if it’s based on a lie? A Twitter-fueled, mass delusion of a lie? That the one third of people who voted for Mousavi convinced themselves, via a social media echo chamber that selectively picked rumors and amplified them until they appeared true, that they in fact represented two thirds of the country? And then tried to bring down the government based on that delusion? Maybe it’s not the case this time. But doesn’t this entire episode seem to show how such a thing could happen? And then what?" -- And a whole new reality was set into motion.

"The value of Tweets right now is less the information they contain than the solidarity they promote. Twitterers are bearing witness to what's happening around them, and calling out into the darkness of cyberspace for confirmation. I'm here. You're here, too. We are present. Twitter, for all its faults, and the Internet, for all its insubstantiality, nonetheless serve as the strands of an existential telegraph. By resisting those who would censor history in real time, those flinging messages into the ether are demonstrating their freedom of speech—or, rather, their freedom to speak in spite of all efforts to the contrary. This mere gesture of freedom—the ability to connect to others and confirm one's experience of the world—is what social networking is all about. While this may or may not be enough right now to topple an unjust government, the opposition, in demonstrating that this freedom is now a permanent right, has already claimed victory." -- The network is flowing.

'"ALL internet & mobile networks are cut. We ask everyone in Tehran to go onto their rooftops and shout ALAHO AKBAR in protest #IranElection" That a new information technology could be improvised for this purpose so swiftly is a sign of the times. It reveals in Iran what the Obama campaign revealed in the United States. You cannot stop people any longer. You cannot control them any longer. They can bypass your established media; they can broadcast to one another; they can organize as never before.'

"Iran has converted financial reserves into gold to avoid future problems, an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in comments published on Saturday, after the price of oil fell more than 60 percent from a peak in July." Iranian officials in July denied reports Iranian banks were moving funds from Europe, with one report suggesting as much as $75 billion had been withdrawn and converted into gold or placed in Asian banks, because of a threat of tightening sanctions. -- Wow.