What better way to mute demands for a return to sound money and the gold standard, than by making them equivalent to jihadist terrorism? Why, there are none, which is why some were thoroughly amused to see that yesterday the Islamic State's so called media center, the al Hayat, released a video whose production qualities are nothing short of Hollywood (or San Fernando valley at worst), in which the latest and greatest "jihadist terrorist group" that was a byproduct of US intervention in the Middle East, announces it is preparing to take on the Fed itself with, drumroll, "the return of the gold dinar."

As Bloomberg reminds us, the Islamic State’s Shura Council last year tasked its Beit al Mal, or treasury, with minting the coins, which come in several denominations made of gold, silver and copper.

The coins may not be there, but instead ISIS released a 55-minute propaganda video with the latest in straight to YouTube special effects, in which the ISIS voiceover actor says, in perfect English, "as history repeated itself, one of the great forms of corruption that the earth came to witness was the dark rise of bank notes, borne out of the satanic conception of banks, which mutated into a fraudulent system of enslavement orchestrated by the Federal Reserve in America - a private corporation and system that would, through the use of deceit and force, deprive people of their due, by imposing upon them the usage of the piece of paper that came to be known as the dollar bill."

It is the Federal Reserve bank note that they alone print, and that would go on to replace gold and silver which Allah created as the standard mediums of exchange for the purchase of goods and services. Allah blessed the songs of the Khilafah and gave them the ability and foresight to break from the shackles of the Federal Reserve system and to restore the gold dinar, and the silver dirham as the ultimate measure of goods and services beginning in the birth place of the Islamic State.

The punchline: "the currency is meant to break the shackles of “the capitalist financial system of enslavement, underpinned by a piece of paper called the Federal Reserve dollar note."

It just gets better from there and for the next hour, the video basically goes through the failings of not only the dollar as the Fed's currency of choice, which since 1971 is no longer backed by any hard asset, but does a surprisingly good job of explaining the pitfalls of fractional reserve banking (30 minutes into the clip), which as many have witnessed first hand, nearly resulted in the collapse of capitalism, then several years ago, the Lehman failure showed that should financial counterparties fail, there is not nearly enough underlying assets to satisfy existing credit claims. It gets so funny, ISIS even bashes the petrodollar system (38 minutes in), and quotes Jim Rickards (39 minutes into the clip) as supportive of its "evil" observations.

What is implied, is that it does all this by making such observations and thoughts indicative of affiliation with ISIS, and hence, terrorism.

As Bloomberg adds, "the group first announced its intention to issue its own money in November 2014, about five months after it seized the northern Iraqi city of Mosul and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced a caliphate. In the video released Saturday, it gave no reasons for the delay in issuing the coins. It didn’t explain where the coins were being minted, nor how they’ll be distributed or replace currencies circulating in the territory the group occupies in parts of Iraq and Syria."

Minting the coins is relatively easy ... as goldsmiths in Mosul imported machines from Italy in recent years, each one able to produce about 5,000 coins a day. The metals probably come from banks the group seized, ransoms, the homes of Christians and other minorities who fled, he said. In the video, Islamic State refers to Caliph Abd al Malik ibn Marwan, who introduced the first Arabic-script coinage of the Islamic empire, free of figural representation, in around 696 AD. The militant group said its 21-carat 1-dinar coin weighs 4.25 grams, while the 21-carat five-dinar coin weighs double that. Three dominations of silver dirhams and two of copper coins were minted for smaller transactions, it said.

What is surprising is that despite all the talk there is actually zero such coins in circulation: "Each coin bears an inscription that reads, “The Islamic State, a caliphate based on the doctrine of prophecy.” The 1-dinar coin also shows seven stalks of wheat, which the group said is meant to represent “the blessing of spending in the path of Allah.” The five-dinar coin bears the image of a map of the world.

Residents interviewed by phone from Mosul and Ramadi, the western Iraqi city captured by Islamic State in May, said so far they hadn’t seen any coins, received details of how the currency swap would work, or been told what the prevailing exchange rate might be. They said families have been preparing for this moment for some time.

“They’ll only be used in these areas and people will only buy these coins for their daily needs and expenses,” said Baghdad-based economist Basim Jameel. “Nobody outside their control will accept the currency and I don’t know how they’ll keep up with demand, as they are losing resources day after day,” he said. “At the end of the day, this is a media propaganda tool.”

Actually no, they won't: as Bloomberg also notes, "since Islamic State is classified as a terrorist group, the coins can’t be traded legally." But the point of the propaganda video is not to promote ISIS coinage, which will never exist; the point - as the nuanced, C-grade made in Hollywood propaganda goes, is to pitch an anti-Fed, anti-fractional reserve, pro-gold standard ideology, and make it equivalent to the evil terrorist thoughts spread by the Islamic Jihadist group.

And just like that, Austrian Economics has been reduced to a terrorist ideology, and anyone harboring the same "evil" misconceptions as those spread by the "Islamic State's" media propaganda outlet have become an enemy of the US state.

So how to avoid becoming accidental drone fodder? Why by renouncing all evil, terrorist thoughts of a "satanic conception of banks" and a "capitalist financial system of enslavement, underpinned by a piece of paper called the Federal Reserve note." In fact, just swear on any given Keynesian Economics 101 textbook and you should be ok.

And just remember: BTFD, and have faith in the Fed, and you won't be suspected of harboring pro-ISIS thoughts!

The video that was "made by ISIS" and which is really just a 55 minutes crash course in Austrian Economics - which is now apparently equivalent to terrorism - can be seen below, at least until the website administrator removes it because it is too evil, and anyone caught watching its evil anti-Fed message deserves to be droned.



The Rise of the Khilafah and the Return of the... by golddinar