Thanks to Trump, the Iranian Mullahs Are Going Bankrupt

[nsdp + 449]

On 12/23/2019 at 4:24 PM, SERWIN said:

The latest I read was that the Dems are proposing that the counties that are "sanctuaries" will not get the state tax dollars that they would normally get from the state. I was thinking though, the counties are collecting a lot of those tax dollars with the sales taxes they collect for the city and state. What if they just decided to KEEP those dollars instead of turning them over to the state? Hmmmmm.....

Serwin, you haven't even the slightest clue about how sales tax collection works.   Probably less than 8 % of sales taxes are collected in cash where the local authorities might be able to intercept the funds.   We are an electronic financial system  where the money resides in the banking system in ledger form .  There is very little  thatyour friendly local tax collector can take the sheriff to go seize.  If they try withdraw it out of the bank without a Federal court order, they will become guests of honor at the Robert Stroud Suite in Leavenworth and get to meet some of my clients who are taking extended vacations there. Cash is used in the underground economy that pays no sales tax.  90+% of sales taxes collected in Texas for example come in the form of electronic  remittances by by the banking system to the Comptroller in Austin.  Only after the Comptroller has taken the states share do the residue dollars to to local governments.   Credit card or debit card payments are split electronically into the merchant payment and the sales tax goes into a trust account so the merchant never has possession of the funds.

Tom, Trump's sanctions have hurt the general population, but but the Mullahs have money laundering operations though India and China on a barter basis.  2/3's of China's strategic reserve fill is Iranian oil if you tested it. Same thing goes in India.  The Iranian government also uses Iraq's Shia government to commingle  Iraqi and Iranian crude on the open market.  Since they come from fields straddling the borders; you cannot test to see if a molecule is Iraqi or Iranian. It is also a significant part of the "increased" Iraqi oil production over 2.5 million b/d   I spent 20 years on the Federal Public Defender's A Panel focused on white collar crime; most of it in the oil patch dealing with Iraqi sanctions between 1990 and 2003.  Some were Oscar Wyatt's transactions.  The Iranian government is one of the most effective money laundering operations  in the world.  Because most of it  is government to government,  our sanctions are relatively weak and not really effective at the levels we want to target.  

Edited December 25, 2019 by nsdp

[Marcin + 519]

27 minutes ago, nsdp said:

.  The Iranian government is one of the most effective money laundering operations  in the world.  Because most of it  is government to government,  our sanctions are relatively weak and not really effective at the levels we want to target.  

Yeah it gets really bizarre when lawyer Speaks about sovereign foreign countries conducting perfectly legal transactions as money laundering just because they are not in line with unilateral US sanctions. I am not astonished I watched this many times, people so brainwashed that they forget who they are. More in China or North Korea, but disease of blind indoctrination knows No borders

[nsdp + 449]

14 hours ago, Marcin said:

Yeah it gets really bizarre when lawyer Speaks about sovereign foreign countries conducting perfectly legal transactions as money laundering just because they are not in line with unilateral US sanctions. I am not astonished I watched this many times, people so brainwashed that they forget who they are. More in China or North Korea, but disease of blind indoctrination knows No borders

The government to government payments are considered a form of laundering due to Nazi "acceptance" of Belgian, Czech, Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and other nations I may have missed, gold reserves as "settlement for costs of occupation" during WWII. By declaring the transfers to be money laundering, the Allies were able to get the International Bank of Settlements to reverse the transactions. The gold reserves were returned to the rightful owners.

I would say "Willful Blindness" rather "brainwashed" because the later implies coercion affecting the normal thinking process rather than intentional disregard of the facts. 

Edited December 25, 2019 by nsdp
clarification

[Marcin + 519]

2 hours ago, nsdp said:

The government to government payments are considered a form of laundering due to Nazi "acceptance" of Belgian, Czech, Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and other nations I may have missed, gold reserves as "settlement for costs of occupation" during WWII. By declaring the transfers to be money laundering, the Allies were able to get the International Bank of Settlements to reverse the transactions. The gold reserves were returned to the rightful owners.

I would say "Willful Blindness" rather "brainwashed" because the later implies coercion affecting the normal thinking process rather than intentional disregard of the facts. 

So you compare US under Trump to Nazi Germany, just because US wants NATO members to pay their fair share of costs of US military protection ?

Situation is different as countries you mentioned were under German occupation during WW2 and US military is on the territory of NATO countries on the basis of the agreements signed before US military crossed borders of this countries. US just wants them to pay their fair share of common defense costs so as they do not have a free ride by US taxpayer, and it is not a payment for military occupation like in Nazi Germany case you mentioned.

I do not know how it compares to third countries like for example: India and Iran that you mentioned in your previous post trading oil for gold.

India and Iran are countries without US military presence, but it is just the coincidence. You get this wrong, prerequisite of legality of transaction between 2 sovereign countries is not the presence of US military on their territory

[RichieRich216 + 454]

Could not happen to a nicer group of people!

[nsdp + 449]

3 hours ago, Marcin said:

So you compare US under Trump to Nazi Germany, just because US wants NATO members to pay their fair share of costs of US military protection ?

 

Situation is different as countries you mentioned were under German occupation during WW2 and US military is on the territory of NATO countries on the basis of the agreements signed before US military crossed borders of this countries. US just wants them to pay their fair share of common defense costs so as they do not have a free ride by US taxpayer, and it is not a payment for military occupation like in Nazi Germany case you mentioned.

 

I do not know how it compares to third countries like for example: India and Iran that you mentioned in your previous post trading oil for gold.

 

India and Iran are countries without US military presence, but it is just the coincidence. You get this wrong, prerequisite of legality of transaction between 2 sovereign countries is not the presence of US military on their territory

Marcin ,let me correct some extensions of logic you make.

1.  I have NOT said that all Government to Government transactions are fraudulent.  99.99% of all currency transactions made through the International Bank of Settlements  are NOT fraudulent.  I take exception to your statement " sovereign foreign countries conducting perfectly legal transactions as money laundering just because they are not in line with unilateral US sanctions."  I gave you a specific case in point that is NOT based on unilateral sanctions but International treaties  regulating commerce.  Now that was not done under US laws, it WAS DONE under the various Hague and Geneva Conventions in the International Court of Justice. In the more specific case of Iraq it was done under the authority of the UN Security Council resolutions regulating  and limiting  Iraqi trade trade to Emergency Items for the maintaining the health and welfare of the Iraqi citizens.   The payments made by Oscar Wyatt and Coastal States were  funneled into the pockets of Saddam and the Tikrit crowd.  That was not an automatized purpose under resolutions of the UN Security Council.  The transfers between Iran and India and China violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran ratified.   Mr. Trump's withdrawal from the UN Resolutions probably cancels our rights to complain since we are a no longer a party to the UN Resolutions. .   The UN Resolutions and the Nuclear Non Proliferation treaty  have nothing to do with the presence of US troops anywhere in the world.

2. US military is on the territory of NATO countries on the basis of the agreements signed before US military crossed borders of this countries.  The provisions came about  in recognition of  the basing of  existing garrisons of the British Army of the Rhine in Belguim, Netherlands,  Denmark, Greece and what in 1955 become the Federal Republic of Germany, the garrisons of Canada in Germany, and US Garrisons in Germany, Italy, Turkey and the Sixth fleet in the Med(Plus France until 1960).  The NATO charter originally spelled out 3 % of GNP as the basis of the treaty.   GNP skewed heavily to the US because it includes overseas investment  and excludes foreign investment in the measured country.  Since the US was 55% of the total world economy in 1946 the European nations were essentially getting a deeply discounted ride. 

This has been a Republican talking point since Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House in 1995.  It is not the position of 100% of the American public.

3. Please do not attribute the positions  of the current administration to me personally.   Remember I worked for the Federal Public Defender's Office.   It was my job to see that the DOJ did not run roughshod over the rights of individuals and prevent overreach of the Constitution by DOJ . This is a right guaranteed to every one citizen or not by the Constitution of the United States. https://www.uscourts.gov/educational-resources/educational-activities/facts-and-case-summary-gideon-v-wainwright  I have taken an oath to Preserve, Protect, and Defend the Constitution of the United States. 

Please do not  jump to conclusions when you do not have a grasp of ALL the essential facts.

Edited December 26, 2019 by nsdp
spelling omitted words

[remake it + 288]

11 hours ago, nsdp said:

The government to government payments are considered a form of laundering due to Nazi "acceptance" of Belgian, Czech, Austrian, Italian, Hungarian and other nations I may have missed, gold reserves as "settlement for costs of occupation" during WWII. By declaring the transfers to be money laundering, the Allies were able to get the International Bank of Settlements to reverse the transactions. The gold reserves were returned to the rightful owners.

Gold found in the Reichsbank by the USA at war's end was disbursed in accordance with the The Agreement on Reparation from Germany, on the Establishment of Inter-Allied Reparation Agency and Restitution of Monetary Gold so do you have a reference for where the gold reserves were and how they were treated?

4 hours ago, nsdp said:

The payments made by Oscar Wyatt and Coastal States were  funneled into the pockets of Saddam and the Tikrit crowd.  That was not an automatized purpose under resolutions of the UN Security Council.

Not automatized but instead the de facto practice of thousands involved but Oscar was singled out on purely personal grounds.

Edited December 26, 2019 by remake it
Added a link

[remake it + 288]

5 hours ago, nsdp said:

The transfers between Iran and India and China violate the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty which Iran ratified.

Again curious as to what you are talking about here although you do note how the USA rides roughshod over its international obligations.

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

On 11/26/2019 at 8:42 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

P.S. getting used to the cold weather again here in the U.S.  Been a couple decades.  Wearing bright colors because it is deer hunting season, and I want hunters to be able to see me when I'm walking around.  My family shot 4 deer on opening day of deer season.  Going to be eating venison all winter.

I've been labelled locally as "borderline hyperactive" which sounds about right, except for the 'borderline' part.

Fun to be adventuring again, and totally enjoying the freedom to freely speak my mind again without the very real threat of being arrested or worse - just for saying words.

Still same ol’ same ol hot and wet here Tom...😂

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

1 minute ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Still same ol’ same ol hot and wet here Tom...😂

Getting used to the temperature change here.  Added a humidifier in the house, not used to the bone dry heated air; tropical air is generally saturated with water.  Hope you had a great Christmas.

On Christmas Day, had wild deer, geese, turkeys and rabbits running around outside in the fields about 1/2 km from the house.

And a wild rabbit around 10 meters from the kitchen window:

(Rabbit is just above the center of the photo ^ below the pine tree .  Forum software compresses the heck out of photos, so not sure if you can make out the rabbit.)

[Douglas Buckland + 6,308]

Miss all of that! Change of seasons, hunting, fishing, etc... I’ll get back to Colorado (Western Slope) in June.

[Marcin + 519]

1 hour ago, Douglas Buckland said:

Miss all of that! Change of seasons, hunting, fishing, etc... I’ll get back to Colorado (Western Slope) in June.

Climate Change has stolen winter. It is the end of December and there was no snow yet in Warsaw this year. It is the first such year in my memory, Christmas yet the weather more like at Easter.

[Common sense + 1]

They gave you a lot of space to write a Trump love letter. You draw no conclusions and the current president’s actions have lost a lot of people money, including American oil industry. Trump brandishing the authority of his office while openly behaving or threatening to behave like the corrupt third world leaders he admires or reviles depending on the week is not good foreign policy. So some dictators are hurting? They are hurting because the energy paradigm globally is changing in addition to embargo, et al.  Too many factors influencing the price of oil.  We can’t join you in giving credit to Trump for destroying the economy of a former Puppet country that we lost control of during the Carter years; the collateral damage being the mullah bank accounts.  I do not think your article has a predicate. Pump your propaganda elsewhere.

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

20 hours ago, Marcin said:

So you compare US under Trump to Nazi Germany, just because US wants NATO members to pay their fair share of costs of US military protection ?

 

It's not like NATO members agreed to send the US money, they agreed to spend a percentage on their own defense.

It's doesn't save or make the US any money unless they cut their own spending, or sell weapons to other countries.

Edited December 26, 2019 by Enthalpic

[Enthalpic + 1,496]

10 hours ago, Tom Kirkman said:

Getting used to the temperature change here.  Added a humidifier in the house, not used to the bone dry heated air; tropical air is generally saturated with water.  Hope you had a great Christmas.

On Christmas Day, had wild deer, geese, turkeys and rabbits running around outside in the fields about 1/2 km from the house.

And a wild rabbit around 10 meters from the kitchen window:

(Rabbit is just above the center of the photo ^ below the pine tree .  Forum software compresses the heck out of photos, so not sure if you can make out the rabbit.)

Careful with those logical metric units; people might think you're Canadian.

Happy holidays.  Don't let your lips get too chapped with the dry air.

Our rabbits have been completely white for a while now...

Edited December 26, 2019 by Enthalpic

[remake it + 288]

1 hour ago, Enthalpic said:

It's doesn't save or make the US any money unless they cut their own spending, or sell weapons to other countries.

Surely they are not going to profit from the defense of other nations like the Nazi's did?

[frankfurter + 562]

On 11/26/2019 at 12:53 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

Not sure of Trump's end game for Iranian government, except for the hardline religious dictators to relegate power.

Look at what happened with North Korea.  No more endless threats from North Korea to destroy the U.S. in a nuclear war.  North Korea's rhetoric got dialed down from 11 to maybe a 5 .... much more maneagable now, nuclear war averted.

 

Your comments and the tone of the article indicate you consider the result to be a great victory of sorts. 

May I ask a simple question?  How has Iran ever threatened the USA?  Has Iran stationed soldiers in countries adjacent to USA?  Has Iran blown a US airliner out of the sky?  Has Iran frozen any US assets or stolen US funds from any bank accounts? 

You do know the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected government, and thereafter installed a brutal dictatorship, don't you?  Might you know the sanctions account for millions of deaths from malnutrition and lack of medicines?

I know I will be demonised for the above, but the facts are clear who is the aggressor, threat, and criminal. 

 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

On 12/26/2019 at 4:45 PM, Tom Kirkman said:

Getting used to the temperature change here.  Added a humidifier in the house, not used to the bone dry heated air; tropical air is generally saturated with water.  Hope you had a great Christmas.

On Christmas Day, had wild deer, geese, turkeys and rabbits running around outside in the fields about 1/2 km from the house.

And a wild rabbit around 10 meters from the kitchen window:

(Rabbit is just above the center of the photo ^ below the pine tree .  Forum software compresses the heck out of photos, so not sure if you can make out the rabbit.)

Can see Roger (Rabbit).  You're going to have to start going back to feet and yards again, young man!

[Tom Kirkman + 8,860]

6 hours ago, frankfurter said:

Your comments and the tone of the article indicate you consider the result to be a great victory of sorts. 

May I ask a simple question?  How has Iran ever threatened the USA?  Has Iran stationed soldiers in countries adjacent to USA?  Has Iran blown a US airliner out of the sky?  Has Iran frozen any US assets or stolen US funds from any bank accounts? 

You do know the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected government, and thereafter installed a brutal dictatorship, don't you?  Might you know the sanctions account for millions of deaths from malnutrition and lack of medicines?

I know I will be demonised for the above, but the facts are clear who is the aggressor, threat, and criminal. 

 

In a nutshell, I consider Saudi Arabia and Iran to be the worst absolute dictatorships in the world, with North Korea at number 3.

North Korea got mostly defanged, with Trump and Kim meeting face to face amicably.  North Korea is a puppet state controlled by China.  The threat of nuclear war instigated by North Korea has been dialed down from 11 to maybe a 2 ... a far more acceptable threat level.  North Korea will still be a pawn utilized by China in the ongoing trade tussle between Xi and Trump.

Saudi Arabia's absolute religious dictatorship (with zero "rule of law" except for the random rulings of the absolute religious dictatorship) has improved somewhat, with Al-Waleed's nefarious wings clipped.  MbS is no saint, but he is a significant improvement over the dark Al-Waleed influence.

Iran's absolute religious dictatorship is currently the biggest threat to the world in terms of unhinged dictatorships, involved in massive money laundering (especially with the EU) and refusing to follow its signed agreements.  Once Iran's Islamic Extremist Dictator gets a nuclear weapon, the world will become a far worse place.  

All of this is simply my own opinion.  I have previously voiced all of the above (hey, I am approaching writing 20,000 comments in my own name on various forums in the last half decade or so, I write a lot).

Clearly, many people will disagree with me.  No issue at all, especially as my views tend to be fairly far afield from mainstream.  What I wrote above is the "nice" version - in my view the reality is far, far darker.  And this is not a suitable forum for that kind of darkness.

Please do feel to disagree, I'm used to it.

 

 

[GunnysGhost + 157]

"US Under Trump Compared to Nazi Germany"

BWAHAHHA!

Let's be real here.  We DO live under Fascism.  In simplest terms, Fascism is Corporate thought control.

- I'm banned on Twitter for saying that there are not 47 Genders.  Yup.

- I'm banned from YouTube for promoting the GoFundMe for building the Wall. 

 

Under no circumstances did I threaten anyone.  I simply didn't regurgitate the NaziCommunistHippie Proper Gander.

 

I don't care whether you're Democrat or Republican.  The fact that all the tech companies are singling out and silencing, combined with their enormous wealth and power is all you need to know that you're not free to do as you please in this country. 

Repeat, you already live under a Fascist Dictatorship.  But it is not Trump. 

Google, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook dictate what you can see and hear. 

 

Democrat-allied big tech silencing and censoring = Fascist.  Deal with it.

 

Edited December 27, 2019 by GunnysGhost

[GunnysGhost + 157]

On 12/18/2019 at 10:29 AM, Tom Kirkman said:

Probably worthy of another thread, but since this one went there:

I know that's the rational way of dealing with the problem, however I actually believe the Fascist Democrats have a real advantage here. 

Trump's response to mass shootings has been incorrect.  He has not addressed that ANTIFA members have been caught trying to buy automatic weapons illegally in order to stage more mass shootings as a form of gun martyrdom.  And instead of calling out ANTIFA as terrorists, we are ignoring that:

Orlando Shooter = Democrat ; Congressional baseball game shooter = Bernie Fan ;  New Zealand shooter = Chinese Communism fan ; San Antonio shooter = 'Radicalized by NZ shooter' ; Dayton shooter = Warren Fan ; LA Nightclub shooter = Admitted Gun Control Martyr ("I'm going to shoot a bunch of people to prove nobody should have guns") ;

Americans have had rifles for close to 300 years.  We've only had ANTIFA for 3 years.  ^^^^ No connections?  Really? 

MSM immediately labels a left-wing nutjob a 'right wing nationalist' as soon as they touch a gun.  Logic?  "well they had a gun so obviously NRA", ignoring the whole martyrdom aspect.  "I shouldn't be trusted with a gun so nobody should."

Smoking gun that these are ANTIFA?  NONE OF THEM ARE NRA MEMBERS.  NONE!  You'd think a right-wing gun fanatic would be NRA, No?

And we keep saying "wait for the next election" but what has that gotten us?  The VA congress. 

Now we do have Peach Mint stalled in the House.  What are they waiting for?  

 

Any guesses? 

 

No?

 

Oh c'mon folks I'm softballing this one.... ok fine, its another a Democrat-staged mass shooting.  Then they'll have MSM help them flood the Senate with pearl clutchers and they'll get their Peach Mint of Orange Man Bad.  The Senators will claim that the mass shooting means "its time to have a conversation" and they'll appear blameless for being complicit in a BrownShirt style manufactured crisis. 

This is a weak point of the Trump administration.  The Fascist Democrats know it.  Now, we might come out of this winners if cooler heads prevail, but unfortunately that means having to endure several more mass shootings in the meantime because the Democrats have only that same tool in their toolbag.  All because we won't label the proven hyper-violent ANTIFA as terrorists. 

[GunnysGhost + 157]

I know this forum is about Oil Price Predictions, but I'll make a prediction that I think affects us all, so here it is:

Since it is politically expedient for the Democrats that there is a Mass Shooting in VA to get their bill passed, by default there WILL be a mass shooting in VA. 

Confiscation will proceed as a result.

Nevermind that it was ANTIFA all along but that's not for us to know now is it?

I'll put the keyboard down now and go do some actual work

[REG CROWDER + 5]

I took a look at what the International Monetary Fund has to say about Iran's economy. Based upon the IMF's chart, the worst is over for Iran's GDP and inflation. https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/IRN

[REG CROWDER + 5]

I think Frankfurter made the essential point. The United States doesn't bring Democracy or freedom to anybody. At the end of World War II the most vibrant Democracy in the Middle East was Iran. Then the US and UK overthrew the government, installed a puppet military dictator and sent their torture trainers in to teach the new military government all the arts of state terrorism. The Iranians will fight amongst themselves when they disagree but they will NEVER against allow themselves to come under the power of the United States or the United Kingdom. And this whole thing may blow over soon. Saudi Arabia is quietly trying to calm things down with Iran.

[GunnysGhost + 157]

On 12/27/2019 at 4:39 PM, GunnysGhost said:

I know this forum is about Oil Price Predictions, but I'll make a prediction that I think affects us all, so here it is:

Since it is politically expedient for the Democrats that there is a Mass Shooting in VA to get their bill passed, by default there WILL be a mass shooting in VA. 

Confiscation will proceed as a result.

Nevermind that it was ANTIFA all along but that's not for us to know now is it?

Bump.  My over/under on this is 18 hours from now.