The Dawson Declaration -- A resolution adopted at Gold Rush 21

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

The Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee's Gold Rush 21 conference concluded today in Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, by adopting the Dawson Declaration, appended here:

THE DAWSON DECLARATION

Resolved by the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee's Gold Rush 21 conference at Dawson City, Yukon Territory, Canada, on Tuesday, August 9, 2005:

Having come to the heart of gold country to inquire into the condition of the monetary metals and the industry that produces them, we conclude and declare:

While governments affect to have no use for them anymore, the monetary metals are of greater importance than ever because of their ability to hold value independent of arbitrary government power. So ownership of and free trade in the monetary metals are basic human rights against expropriation.

While the monetary metals are unique as assets of intrinsic value that cannot default because they are no one's liability, this also has become their crippling weakness. For in being no one's liability, the monetary metals have had -- unlike their competitors, government-issued currencies -- no sovereign defenders.

Indeed, for years now the monetary metals have had few defenders at all, the gold mining industry's trade organization having been dominated by short-selling corporations that have obtained metal at the sufferance of the issuers of government currencies, the central banks. This has left the monetary metals almost helpless against competing currencies.

Since they issue competing currencies, governments have a powerful interest in suppressing what is perceived as the value of the monetary metals. Governments have achieved this suppression through strategic and often surreptitious lending and dishoarding of their metal reserves. While it is seldom officially acknowledged as such, this is the manipulation of currency and commodity markets that should be free and transparent.

This manipulation of the currency and commodity markets has become the primary mechanism of imperialism, projecting and maintaining the power of the international reserve currency, the U.S. dollar, and its issuer, the U.S. government, and compelling other countries to sell their exports for less than fair value.

To assist in the suppression of the monetary metals and at the urging of the International Monetary Fund, IMF member governments engage in deceptive accounting of their gold, deliberately confusing gold in the vault with gold that has been leased or swapped or whose ownership otherwise has been impaired.

In the absence of a government currency's direct and fixed convertibility to the monetary metals, the only purposes for government reserves of the monetary metals are currency intervention and market manipulation. To preclude this manipulation, governments should sell their reserves openly by a date certain, except metal needed for coinage.

As defenders of the monetary metals, we do not necessarily maintain that they should be the only means of exchange. We do not worship the golden calf or the silver bull; we are not idolaters. To the contrary, we believe that individuals and nations alike have the right to decide what they will use as money, even as we acknowledge that freely traded gold and silver are simply the most convenient guarantors of economic liberty.

Accordingly, we will:

* Defend the crucial place and purpose of the monetary metals and the industries that put them into circulation.

* Encourage the use of the monetary metals as parallel official currencies and in commerce and savings.

* Investigate, expose, and oppose attempts to subvert the monetary metals.

* And support giving the monetary metals a sovereignty of their own, the sovereignty of humanity above the nations.

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