Surviving Capitalism (Not) : Petrodollar Warfare: The Common Thread Linking Venezuela and Iran

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Friday, February 15, 2019

Petrodollar Warfare: The Common Thread Linking Venezuela and Iran

Click here to access article by Kei Pritsker and Cale Holmes from Internationalist 360°.

The U.S. is able to dictate these econo-warfare policies through its disproportionate control of the world financial system. Iran has been sounding warnings about this strategy for some time and has been a vocal advocate of creating a new global financial system that will bypass U.S. control of the existing global financial system. Iran, though, is not the only country interested in such an arrangement. Russia, China, and Venezuela have all found themselves facing arbitrary economic penalties levied by the U.S. and have also taken steps to wean the world off the dollar and use alternative currencies to conduct business, a global trend that could seriously impact U.S. dominance over the world economy. But in order to understand where “King Dollar” is going, we have to understand where it came from.

Few Americans understand that their living standards, such as they are, are dependent upon the dominance of US petrodollars throughout the world. Should the petrodollar system collapse, the transnational capitalist Empire collapses. The Empire's collusion with the medieval government of Saudi Arabia and its satellites has made this possible, and the article explains much of this historical background.