A Muslim View of Venezuela’s Oil Diplomacy the US dollar and the Free Market

It would be a mistake if the Government of Trinidad & Tobago were to respond to Venezuela’s ‘Petrocaribe’ oil initiative from a limited commercial perspective, and fail to measure the long-term moral, political and security costs to this country if we were to stay out of the regional oil alliance.

As we study an alliance for subsidized oil that has already been embraced by the Caribbean (except Barbados), and which can only increase in regional importance as the price of oil continues is mysterious ascent, we should look carefully at our strategic environment in which Venezuela’s geographic proximity to this country features prominently. We should also weigh with equal care the obvious benefits for us and for the rest of the Caribbean if we were to patiently forge with Venezuela a mutually beneficial partnership role as producers and suppliers of oil for the Caribbean. It would be quite wrong to interpret Venezuela’s oil diplomacy as a case of the use of oil as a geo-political weapon. Critics should, rather, recognize Venezuela to be responding, and quite legitimately so, to those who long ago embraced oil as a weapon. The fact is that the Euro-world-order has used every possible means, fair and foul, to acquire control over the oil resources of the world. They did so in order to first get the world ‘hooked’ on oil for energy, and then to so exploit that dependence on oil to their advantage that they could eventually deliver Pax Judaica, i.e., the Messianic world-order, to the Euro-Jewish State of Israel.  Part of that strategy now appears to be their connivance in the creation of an OPEC oil cartel over which they exercised a significant measure of control through their oil-producing client-States who were members in the cartel, and who, in turn, fixed an OPEC price for oil with which all member States had to abide. Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) has prohibited the resort to fixed prices. Islam, the religion, is uncompromisingly insistent that the free market must determine prices.

While it is true that increases in the price of oil made the Petrocaribe initiative possible, and that a flood of petrodollars has financed the socio-economic programs that have actually broadened the Venezuelan government’s support base, one cannot deny the fact that Petrocaribe responds to oppressive oil prices in a manner that assists the oppressed. It is hence morally commendable. There is neither economic, nor moral rationality in the corrupt exclusive pursuit of profit, especially when profits are contrived and exorbitant and are foisted upon buyers by a cartel that fixes prices in accordance with a political agenda.

A Trinidad and Tobago that has previously instituted its own oil diplomacy amongst its Caribbean neighbors that is quite similar to its neighbour’s, cannot fail to recognize the moral merit of the Venezuelan initiative.

Petrocaribe is clearly inspired by Simon Bolivar’s anti-imperialist legacy. He liberated Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Venezuela from Spanish imperial rule. He founded Bolivia that was named after him. And he even spent time in exile in Jamaica and in liberated black Haiti. Venezuela’s oil diplomacy consequently has a potential to resonate beyond the Caribbean amongst those who seek emancipation from today’s new slavery. To the extent, therefore, that the ruling black elites in Barbados and Trinidad & Tobago remain aloof from this anti-imperialist oil alliance that clearly rattles the slave master, they risk being perceived to be either comfortably ensconced at his feet, or shaking with terror of his whip.

One of the major causes of the US dollar’s survival as the international currency has been its ‘imperialist’ role as the currency of so-called choice for the transaction of international trade in general, and trade in oil in particular. But this most-favored monetary status has given USA a unique opportunity for the unjust acquisition of the wealth of others. In fact a Princeton scholar once described it as “legalized theft”.

Dr. Muhammad Mahathir was also quite vocal in his denunciation of this “dollar imperialism”, and he actually succeeded, before leaving office as PM, in forging an agreement with several of Malaysia’s trading partners to replace the ‘dollar’ with ‘gold’ for clearing balance of payments in bilateral trade.

The Petrocaribe agreement does not appear to anticipate an abandonment of the ‘dollar’ as the oil currency. But recent increases in the price of oil may be due more to efforts that seek a meltdown of the US dollar than to market forces of supply and demand. Indeed we may now be located at a moment in ‘monetary’ time quite similar to that which witnessed the demise of the Pound Sterling as the international currency and its replacement by the US dollar.

The unjust international monetary system that emerged in 1944 from the Breton Woods Accord, and which collapsed in 1971, appears about to be replaced by something more dangerous and unjust. All the Prophets of Allah Most High used ‘real’ money with ‘intrinsic value’ (i.e., gold and silver). That money was long ago completely abandoned. ‘Artificial money’ with ‘no intrinsic value’ that first emerged as paper money, is about to assume the extraordinary form of invisible and intangible ‘electronic’ money. We may now be witnessing the conclusion of an extraordinary plot that would cause the collapse of the US dollar and would replace it with a new international monetary system of ‘electronic’ money. The Jewish-controlled international banking system would then have unprecedented control over the creation and confiscation of money.

Venezuela could eventually realize the disadvantage of continued OPEC membership and may then take steps to recover the freedom with which to seek to replace the US dollar with gold, i.e., for fixing the price of oil. That country has already forged remarkable anti-systemic provisions for barter trade as well as for the transport and storage of oil. “Petrocaribe also provides highly preferential oil pricing for its Caribbean members, with Venezuela picking up 40 pct of the cost if oil is selling over 50 usd a barrel, as it is now.  If it should hit 100 usd a barrel the agreement provides for Venezuela to pay 50 percent for signatory countries, with a grace period extended from one to two years.  Venezuela would also foot the bill for shipping oil to Petrocaribe participants directly, and would help set up local storage facilities across the Caribbean.”  It is also possible that Petrocaribe may, eventually, realize the need for financing the development of solar energy in these islands in the sun.

Venezuela’s Caribbean partners in Petrocaribe appear to be already resigned to an eventual oil price of 100 usd a barrel as the US dollar continues its irreversible slide into the museum of monetary history.  Perhaps this was the catalyst that gave them the courage to all embrace the anti-systemic oil alliance.

The United States has criticized the oil subsidies for having compromised the ‘free market’. Perhaps what was meant was the ‘fair market’. But subsidies have always been part of the strategy through which the developed West has continuously corrupted markets around the world. Venezuela’s initiative cannot compromise a free and fair market that already does not exist anywhere. Indeed the rising price of oil may itself be monopolistic, manipulated, contrived and unjust
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In addition, oil is quite different from farm produce or manufactured goods. It is Allah’s gift to mankind and, in the context of the modern industrial economy, ought to be made available at a price that is just and equitable. In other words the ‘free’ market ought, also, to be a ‘fair’ market. If the same laptop computer can be offered for sale in markets around the world at different prices, why should oil be different? Does Venezuela not have the right to differ with USA in respect of what constitutes a ‘fair’ (subsidized) market price for oil in the Caribbean market?

Both Presidents Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez appear to be of the opinion that the critical moment in a horrible energy plot affecting all of mankind has arrived with the American war on Iraq, which, in Nelson Mandela’s view, was pursued for control over Iraq’s oil. An oil dictatorship seeks to impose itself upon mankind and to rule the world at the point of a sword dipped in oil. My own Islamic scholarship recognizes the Euro-Jewish State of Israel as the principal benefactor of that oil dictatorship, and goes on to anticipate the moment (around the corner) when Israel would suddenly and dramatically emerge from behind all the masks to assume formal leadership of that dictatorship.
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History is being made at our doorstep. And it is not yet clear whether PM Manning’s reluctance to sign the Petrocaribe regional oil agreement that was signed by the rest of the Caribbean (except, of course, ‘little England’) reflects a discomfort with the direction of the movement of that history. There seems to be little understanding on the part of the PNM government of this country of the nature of the Euro-world-order and of the role that usurious capitalism in general, and oil in particular, has been playing, and is about to play one last time, in the new enslavement of mankind. Yet the recent Iranian presidential election reveals the same anti-imperialist sentiment amongst the Iranian masses as is to be found just next-door in the Venezuelan masses that support Chavez.
Petrocaribe, and its sister Petrosur South American oil alliance, are sure to provoke the Euro-world-order to greater anger against Venezuela’s defiant Hugo Chavez. They will surely make another attempt to depose him. There are a number of different options available for effecting what is hypocritically described as ‘regime change’.

If Chavez were to be assassinated, and his anti-imperialist government overthrown, it is quite likely that his heavily armed supporters would offer armed resistance, and that Caracas would explode and become another Baghdad. ‘Massa’ would, of course, demonize that armed resistance as ‘terrorism’. But Iraq and Afghanistan would arrive at our doorstep, and that would have terrifying implications for those who are perceived to be Massa’s clients. T&T should therefore consider joining the Petrocaribe regional oil alliance on the basis of moral integrity, enlightened self-interest, and our security imperative, while yet pursuing negotiations that would address our legitimate commercial concerns.