By Anna Von Reitz
An "ounce" is universally acknowledged to be a measure of weight. In Europe, even recipe ingredients are measured by ounces or grams, pounds or kilos, that is, by weight, instead of by volume --- cups, etc.
So, no surprise that gold and silver and other precious stuff has been measured by weight in Europe and elsewhere for centuries, even though the origins of this practice have been purposefully obscured along with a lot of other history.
And, true to the practices of the Liars, it is also no surprise that there are many kinds and varieties of "ounces" used to do this measuring. The English went so far as to use two different kinds of ounces---- one for Imperial use, the Troyes Ounce introduced by Henry II, and one for Commonwealth use, the Common Ounce, also known as the Avoirdupois Ounce.
Please note that a Troyes Ounce weighs 31,1035 grams, while a Common Ounce also known as an Avoirdupois Ounce weighs 28.3495 grams.
They will try to tell you that "Avoirdupois" simply means "goods sold by weight", but what it actually implies is "goods sold tax prepaid" --- the King deducted a tax on Commonwealth gold, so his Imperial Troyes "ounces" were always slightly heavier than the Common "ounces" of mere merchants and he always got his share of the take in exchange for his Hallmark.
This basically amounts to a one-tenth tariff on gold bought, sold, or traded outside the Royal Vaults.
In the aggregate, this one-tenth tariff does add up --- and leave it to the English to have two weights both called "ounces" --- one used internationally (Troyes ounce) and one used domestically (Common or English ounce).
And the Troyes ounce is not exactly equivalent to a Troy ounce nor to a Spanish ounce.
True to form, the English adoption of the Troyes ounce, purportedly named after Troyes, France, seems to be a convenient semantic deceit to conceal a deeper and still more duplicitous meaning---an effort to confuse the actual Troy ounce with the similar-sounding Troyes ounce, and over time, succeed in calling both or either a "Troy" ounce.
A Spanish ounce, or "onza", weighs 437.5 grains -- which translated into grams equals 28.3495 grams, the same as the Common English ounce. Together they make up the Common Ounce used in international trade.
And then, there is the actual Troy ounce, which weighs 480 grains, or 31.10 grams, which is slightly less equivalent to the British Imperial Troyes ounce, at 31.1035 grams.
These are parallel systems with the Troy ounce slightly less than the Troyes ounce, and the Spanish onza being equal to the English Common ounce.
But where did the names for these specific weights come from?
The Troy ounce existed for thousands of years prior to the creation of the Troyes ounce used by King Henry II, a fact that was deliberately and stubbornly obscured along with the existence of Homer's Troy and the source of Troy's wealth, which was the actual motivation for King Agamemnon's assault.
Anyone familiar with Ancient Greek culture should step back when considering the idea that over thirty Greek kings went to war over a woman, no matter how beautiful.
Even as a teenager, with a very limited exposure to Greek men, I had a few guffaws over that one, and read Homer with a jaundiced eye---- wondering what was really going on?
Troy was famous for its vast gold horde, the quality of its coinage, the beauty of its jewelry which surpassed that of the Crete, and its advanced knowledge of metals. Shields and swords and body armor from Troy were stronger, lighter, and more beautiful than any other armaments available in the Bronze Age.
They were the arms manufacturers of the Ancient Mediterranean and together with their Carthaginian Cousins who transported Trojan goods as far as Cornwall and Ireland, they were the dominant cultural and economic force of the Eastern Mediterranean. Not the Greeks.
The Greeks only achieved fame after they became rich off of looted Trojan gold.
The history of the heroes of Troy stretched back Millenia even in Homer's day. And who were these men, whose lives were celebrated by Homer eight hundred years after the Fall of Troy?
Akkadians and Anatolians, and their Cousins, spread all the way from Turkey west across Northern Greece to Bosnia and Croatia, south to North Africa, east to Babylon and India, the same fierce people who gave birth to Alexander the Great and Hannibal.
The Greeks sacked Troy and murdered the Trojans and they carried off vast stores of wealth as their reward, but there were always rumors of even greater stockpiles that the Trojans hid.
And later, more rumors about the missing wealth that Alexander the Great acquired in his lightning fast conquest of the known world.
The Romans reasoned that there was still an incredible gold hoard to be had, and they looked for it everywhere they had outposts. When they found the Trojan Hoard, it took thirty (30) years to pack it overland to Rome and sequester it in tunnels under the city at a deeper level than the catacombs, which were used as a deterrent to superstitious thieves.
It was this hidden wealth, not the prowess of arms and engineering, that led to the growth and expansion of the Roman Empire.
Later, when the Roman Catholic Church became aware of the gold resources of Rome, the gag order regarding the source of this wealth clamped down even harder. Indeed, even the existence of the gold, much less its provenance, was kept secret on pain of death. And even the existence of Troy was denied.
It was a mythical city, we were told. A legend. Like King Arthur and the Round Table.
So it remained until the nineteenth century when amateur archeologists and linguists began unraveling the centuries-old lies and rediscovering the culture of Ancient Turkey. And Troy. And the link between the Trojans and the Cathaginians. And the link between the Trojans and Persia. And the link between the Trojans and the Croatians and Slavs.
It turns out that the wealth of Rome isn't the wealth of Rome. It's Trojan wealth that the Greeks took from the Trojans by guile and force of arms, only to have the Romans do the same to them. Karma. This conundrum continues to be reflected in the relations between the Church of Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church to this very day.
The immediate question is -- what kind of ounce is the basis of the American dollar?
The Coinage Act of 1792 referred to a dollar that was at least 90% silver and weighed 26.73 grams; the "ounce" had been redefined again, to allow for an even heftier tariff of more than 10% assessed against our currency to pay back war debts.
We were being spanked and the peaceful members of the British Commonwealth rewarded.
Over the years the meaning and content of the "ounce" has continued to prove variable. The 1986 American Silver Eagle (not a dollar, notice) is defined as one Troy ounce of 99.9% silver.
The American Silver Eagle looks like a dollar, spends like a dollar, has a weight like a dollar, but like Jacob, the Liar, who started out as a Hebrew and became an Israelite, it's not a dollar, because no such official weight and measure was established by a Federal Republic Congress.
No Federal Republic Congress has met since 1860. And the Federation's Continental Congress in receipt of the Federal "Powers" is still in the process of taking shape.
So we can be sure that regardless of the muddle of different ounces and the different purities of silver adopted, no actual United States Silver Dollars have been struck since 1860.
The last official American United States Silver Dollar was the Seated Liberty Dollar of 1860. It was 90% silver and weighed in at 26.96 grams. If you find one in good condition, it is worth $268 in the current market.
Interestingly, the pieces of paper proclaiming themselves to be United States Dollars weigh exactly 1 gram each, and if exchanged on a weight basis would approximate one fiat dollar per gram of silver in a Seated Liberty Dollar.
What you should be taking home is that the value of any piece of paper representing a dollar must be based on actual assets in the physical world, and it has to be that way, or we are engaging in a swindle.
When the value represented by a paper dollar dwindles as a result of inflation or other market factors, the value reappears on the "other side of the ledger" as an increase in the value of the physical asset underlying the paper.
The up and down of the commodity prices underlying currencies, whether gold or oil, is what determines the "representative value" of the currency, and that is why we are concerned about the de-coupling of the "dollar" from the oil commodity standard, and also, concerned about commodity price rigging of gold and silver, which has been a problem since the days of Troy.
Meanwhile, don't take any wooden nickels or ten gram dollars.
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