Tom Foolery

A few weeks ago Stryker had a special guest on his broadcast.  According to Stryker he's a fellow Texan named Tom Larsen who goes by "tlar" in dinar forums.  I would like to address some of the nonsense that I heard in this show, but first I would like to acknowledge all of the wonderful people who have made donations to me to allow this blog to continue busting gurus and exposing this scam.

The following people have contributed to DDB:

That's right.  No donations.

Now let's take a look at all of the organizations that have paid DDB over the course of this blog.

Notice that there are no currency dealers paying me ... no membership dues ... no post-RV program fees .... and no "millionaire" seminar revenues.  And the information here has been far more accurate than the information people get on the dinar sites that receive funds from the members.  Just something to keep in mind before wandering over to some guru's blog or forum.



Okay, among other things tlar said that Iraq's budget is based on a rate of 1.16 dinar to the dollar.  WRONG!  It's based on the current rate of 1,166 dinar to the dollar.  Iraqis place a decimal where we place a comma, and every year some guru gets it wrong when they look at the budget numbers.

tlar also claimed that Bush said the war would pay for itself.  I've been waiting for nearly three years for somebody to provide any evidence to back that claim.  For the 100th time, Bush never said that.  There was no plan to snag trillions of dinar and RV them.  It's guru BS.

Stryker and tlar

Then tlar claimed that Iraq has $250 billion to back 2.7 trillion dinar which isn't true, but even if it was it would only mean a possible RV of about a dime, yet tlar thinks that the new value is going to be more than 86 cents.He went on to claim that the US Treasury has at least 5 trillion dinar, which I've stated repeatedly is disproved by a federal indictment stating that they only have a nominal amount for daily transactions.  They could have left that out of the 80+ counts listed in the indictment, but they were confident enough of that fact to include it. 
Then he said that nobody knows what "delete the zeros" means.  The only people who don't know what it means are dinar speculators who refuse to accept what the CBI has clearly stated repeatedly.  It means redenomination and it has always meant that, even before the IQD was ever conceived and printed.     

Then the biggest doozie of all, the dinar in bank accounts won't go up in value but the cash will.  What economics book did he get that from?  Revaluations affect all currency - paper and electronic, not that the CBI has stated that any revaluation is forthcoming.
     
A month after this broadcast when the current crisis hit in Iraq, Tom said that Maliki would be gone within 48 hours.  Wrong again.  He followed up that Tom Foolery with this gem:

"Here it is guys. You can believe or not believe at you own discretion. This my friends is a CIA operation pure and simple the purpose of which is to remove Maliki under the guise that terrorists are over running the country. I know some will say I sound like a quack and some will judge me as such. I don’t care anymore.

Recently the CIA set up an operation that a refinery was supposed to be taken over by ISIS. This was to be a shock to the economic system bringing everyone to the conclusion that this was an attack on western interests requiring western involvement. The refinery was left intentionally undefended and open to invasion by insurgents..

The news originally reported the refinery was taken over by the ISIS. As it turned out an Iraqi officer noticed that the refinery was not well protected so he moved in and brought his forces with him. They repelled the attack by the ISIS and they killed approximately 40-50 ISIS terrorists. The news recanted and said the refinery was back in control of government forces. This CIA plot was foiled.

Three of Malikii generals ordered their troops to lay down their arms and abandon there assignments. All three of these generals have asked for asylum in the US. Had they not done this there might have been a lot of blood shed instead of cities being lost without a shot being fired. What and why did they abandon?

The Kurdish disputed territories and the Sunni enclave cities were given up without a fight. The net result, the map of Iraq has been redrawn. Things that would have never been done through negotiation with Maliki’s government are now corrected. Sunni’s are once again in control of Sunni areas as is the Kurds once again in control of Kurdish towns.

Maliki hasn’t got a clue as to why his army has collapsed without fighting. He is like a chicken with his head cut off running around threatening court martial and executions. The CIA is working their magic. Maliki won’t leave so there is more heat being tuned up.

So what’s next?

Next week the new government will be formed. Pressure is being put on the coalition. GET ER DONE. As far as I have been told, it is imperative that once the government has been announced we will see two things.

The first is world support for the new government in fighting terrorism.

The second is an RV.

For some reason it seems to be extremely important to those in control that Turki pull the trigger on or a little before July 1st.

So that’s what I know. Please by all means, judge me on this as you will. I am prepared to be full of Shiite before this is over. Watch this as it unfolds." ~ Tlar

So according to tlar, the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States is behind the beheadings, mass graves, and barbarian behaviour of ISIS inside of Iraq in an effort to oust Maliki from power.  (While there's no confirmation of the mass graves within Iraq, you can read about similar acts in Syria here.)  I don't think any comment is really necessary. 
 

Tom comes across as a decent guy who isn't a scammer, and perhaps that's the most dangerous kind of guru because people who might not follow the blatant scammers might be more inclined to listen to a guy who speaks with such certainty about things that they don't understand.  But he doesn't understand either, and therein lies the problem.

There was a time when I listened to gurus like tlar folks, because I was impressed and perhaps intimidated by all the jargon and the overwhelming amount of information that they prattled off.  But when I noticed that they never got anything right I set out to educate myself, and I soon discovered that it's not that complicated.  If I can do it you can do it.  Quit listening to the likes of Stryker, tlar, Breitling, Frank26, Adam Montana,  ... etc. and do your own due diligence.  It's your money.  Don't entrust it to hack gurus that you don't even know.     

A Few Thoughts on the Situation

Soooo ..... did we RV yet?  All kidding aside, the current situation in Iraq is an unmitigated disaster.  Let's just forget about the dinar for a moment and think about the ramifications.  Turkey to the north is concerned because dozens of Turkish diplomats have been taken hostage by ISIS.  Shia-controlled Iran to the east is offering military assistance to fight off the invasion.  Syria to the west is also concerned, since a Sunni-led revolution next door in Iraq could pose an ongoing threat to their government which is seen as Shia-supported.  When their government faced resistance from ISIS they found Russia among their supporters so we could assume that Russia would support the Iraqi government in this conflict as China already has.  Saudi Arabia to the south is mainly Sunni, and some of the funding for ISIS came from there.  The Saudis have offered resistance to the Shia influence in the region and will no doubt be watching for any signs of renewed uprisings in their area.  Allowing an anti-western entity like ISIS to gain a foothold in the region is a huge mistake, and sooner or later it's one that is going to draw US military involvement again.  But it's hard to isolate this one foreign policy screwup, because it stems from a long line of miscues going back decades. 

Shah of Iran

Ayatollah Khomenei

In 1978 there was an Islamic uprising inside of Iran.  At the time Iran's leader was the Shah, a US ally who followed his father into power in 1941.  In 1951 he was forced from power and fled Iran after a failed coup attempt.  He was restored to power two years later in a CIA funded and orchestrated coup under Eisenhower.  In 1979 he faced another political threat as cries came to "oust the fascist Shah", largely coming from forces loyal to Ayatollah Khomenei, an exiled Muslim cleric.  When he came to the US for medical treatment radicals in Iran stormed the US embassy and took State Department employees hostage for over a year.  President Carter had the option at the time of authorizing a CIA covert operation similar to what Eisenhower had done in 1953 which could have kept a US ally in power, but he refused.  He naively thought that American interests would be better served by non-interference.  As a result the Shah was deposed in 1979 and Iran became an anti-American theocracy under Khomenei.

This led to an Islamic fundamentalist movement that spread throughout the Muslim world.  Prior to the deposition of the Shah the Arab world was becoming westernized.  Young Arab boys listened to the Beatles and watched American movies.  Young Arab girls wore blue jeans and makeup.  That all changed after the Ayatollah came to power. 

In the photo above you can see Osama bin Laden (from Saudi Arabia) wearing bell bottoms during a ski trip to Europe around 1971.  This was very typical of younger Arabs in that day.  It's quite a contrast from the way that younger Saudis and Iranians dress today.  Had we been willing to stand by the Shah it's likely that this would be the norm now instead of the fundamentalist code that is currently being imposed, and it would be much more difficult to radicalize them.

As Iran's radical government became more powerful they posed a threat to the reign of Saddam Hussein next door in Iraq.  Saddam's government was secular, as opposed to Iran's theocracy.  Religious elements in Iran were trying to inspire their fellow Shias in Iraq to overthrow Saddam.  A war ensued, and the US armed Saddam in order to limit Iran's power in the region.  But while Saddam was seen as an ally at the time, he eventually became more of a threat as he pursued WMD and nukes and eventually invaded his neighbors in Kuwait and had troops amassed along the border with Saudi Arabia prior to Desert Storm.

Beirut barracks bombing

During the Reagan administration in 1983 terrorists blew up buildings being used as barracks by US and French forces in Beirut, Lebanon.  Nearly 300 US and French soldiers died in that attack.  Reagan's focus was on winning the cold war against the Soviet Union, and he didn't seem to know how to prevent or respond to the threat from religious radicals.  His successor George H. W. Bush didn't seem to fare any better as Al Queda emerged following Desert Storm in response to US military presence in Saudi Arabia.



Kenyan embassy bombing

Under Clinton US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed by Al Queda in 1998.  Clinton's response was minimal, launching a missile attack against a pharmaceutical facility in Sudan that was never conclusively linked to Al Queda .  He seemed more focused on fighting Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević (who posed no threat to US national security) than Bin Laden, and when Saddam Hussein refused access to UNSCOM inspectors in 1998 Clinton passed up an opportunity to go to the UN and put a coalition together to deal with the situation as his predeccesor had, and again resorted to dropping a few bombs.  This was the best time to act on this as the international community had the will at that time to hold Saddam accountable because of his defiance of UNSCOM.  Instead, the US drifted into a policy of containment, the same policy more or less that was pursued with Al Queda.

Bush being informed of the attack on 9/11

When George W. Bush took office in 2001 there was an excellent opportunity to abandon the containment policy with both Saddam and Bin Laden, but Bush's focus during the campaign and during the first months of his presidency was on education.  He wanted to be known as "the edcuation president", and in fact was sitting in a classroom on 9/11 promoting his education program when the attacks occurred.  It wasn't until after the attacks that his focus shifted toward national security and the war on terror.  He responded to 9/11 by invading Afghanistan to attack Al Queda and remove the Taliban who were harboring them.  He then proceeded to pursue a second war in Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein and install a democratic government which would be friendlier toward the US and its allies, but that spread US forces too thin and stalled the progress in Afghanistan.  The Iraq war itself went well, but the post-war phase was a disaster.  What was expected to take less than half a year ended up taking eight years and cost over 4,000 troops and upwards of $1 trillion, and killed countless Iraqi citizens as a war of insurgency dragged on, a war that seemed to catch the Bush administration completely off guard.  Saddam was a Sunni Muslim and a Bathist, so as a result Sunnis and Bathists were alienated by how the Coalition Provisional Authority set up the new government and military.  That alienation continued into the Obama administtion.

Which brings us to today.  The rapid advancement of ISIS into Iraq seems to have caught Obama sleeping, and he is just now talking with advisors about how to respond where he should have been on top of things weeks or even months ago with a plan in place to prevent the current crisis.  Since coalition forces pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011 Sunnis have been marginalized by the government of Maliki, who is a Shia.  The advancements that have been made by ISIS in Iraq were due more to the lack of support for the Iraqi government by Sunnis than by the prowess of ISIS' forces.  There were many reports of military leaders instructing their men to abandon their posts.  Loyal forces don't do that.  As a result it would appear that Iraq is headed for a full blown civil war.    

What is the solution?  I could be wrong, but at this point I think it's too late to bring the country back together under the current government.  Even if Maliki doesn't win a third term the die is cast.  Either the UN oversees a breakup into three seperate countries for the Sunnis, Kurds, and Shias, or a civil war follows that could draw in Iran, Saudi Arabia, and God knows who else.  The time to prevent the current dilemma has come and gone, and both Republican and Democrat presidents share the blame.  For the sake of the Iraqi people and the international community, I hope our leaders can handle the situation today better than they have in the past.




 

  

   

Crisis in Iraq

I've been enjoying a break from the dinar over the last few weeks, but recent developments inside of Iraq have compelled me to write again.  The second largest city of Mosul fell into the hands of Islamic militants, along with Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit.  Hundreds of thousands of people fled their homes amidst the fighting and turmoil.  Many Iraqi soldiers apparently fled as well, inspiring Maliki to call on Iraqi citizens to take up the fight.  The situation is now chaotic to the point of threatening the fragile democracy that was left behind when coalition forces left at the end of 2011. 

While we can assign political blame to either Obama for allowing the situation to deteriorate to this point with apparently no plan or willingness to act, or to his predecessor Bush for creating the mess in the first place with seemingly no well-thought-out plan for the post-war Iraq, the facts are not very encouraging.  Iraq may well be headed toward toward either a failed state or an Islamic theocracy like their neighbor Iran.  The best case scenario would be a return of coalition forces to an occupied state like they had three years ago, a step back rather than forward for Iraq's new government. 

One report stated that the miliant group ISIS stole $429 million worth of dinar (500 billion dinar) from a bank in Mosul.  That being the case, how can anybody believe that any revaluation is now possible?  To raise the value of the dinar now would only increase the value of the currency held by the forces trying to topple Iraq's government.  A much more likely scenario would be for the government to act now to carry out the currency reform plan to demonetize the IQD, thereby leaving the currency that ISIS stole worthless.  That of course would also leave the currency held by dinar speculators worthless.  Whether they'll do that or not I won't venture to guess, but it's safe to say that the "RV today, cash in tomorrow" BS has never been more obvious, and the idea of the dinar being released on a free float where it will skyrocket in value has never been more laughable.

Despite the current crisis dinar gurus were doing their best to calm their followers and keep their crumbling empires intact.  "Maliki is behind this because he knew he was losing the election."  "Saudi Arabia and Iran are behind it."  "It's actually good for the dinar investment because it gives Maliki more clout."  "Iraq needs the RV now more than ever!"  Blah, blah, blah ..... What did you expect?  You think these guys are going to just toss away this gravy train of dinar investors buying their investment crap and providing ad revenues for them by admitting that the RV is dead?  Of course not!  These guys are unconscionable and incorrigible.  They'll milk this dinar thing for all it's worth until a better scam comes along.

At this point I'd like to remind everybody of what I wrote in my first post called "RV Reality Check" in September of 2011.

"Don't put any more into the dinar than you can afford to lose. PERIOD!!! Anybody who tells you it's a sure thing and that you're buying a winning lottery ticket is either stupid or dishonest. Some have the idea that you can always sell your dinar and recoup most of your money. Really? Have you tried that? A lot of people bought their dinar from currency dealers who are no longer in business. You can try selling your dinar on ebay but you'll have to take an even bigger hit there. And even if you could sell back to the dealer you bought from, who's to say that the dinar won't go down in value? I mean anything could happen. An earthquake. A meteor. Civil war. A coup. War with Iran. If the dinar is ever completely devalued I can assure you that none of the dinar dealers will give you a plug nickel for them. There's absolutely no guarantee that you won't wake up tomorrow and find that every dollar you invested in the IQD is gone."

http://dinardouchebags.blogspot.com/2011/09/rv-reality-check.html

That warning has never been more applicable than it is today.  Hold on to those dinars at your own peril, folks.  But even if somehow Iraq's crisis were to be magically resolved, I maintain as I have from day one of this blog that nobody will get rich by holding dinar.  It's just not possible from the standpoint of economics.

I feel for the people of Iraq.  They've been through over thirty years of war and tyranny, and now this.  I also feel for the hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who have been duped into buying dinar in the belief that it could experience a substantial revaluation and change their lives.  After nearly three years of blogging about this topic and warning people about the scam and scammers however, I have to admit that my compassion is wearing thin.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mosul-seized-jihadis-loot-429m-citys-central-bank-make-isis-worlds-richest-terror-force-1452190

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2654861/Escape-Mosul-150-000-Iraqis-overnight-refugees-flee-terror-al-Qaeda-splinter-group-taken-countrys-second-biggest-city.html