I have discovered in the last year or so that my most popular essays are not those on philosophical discernment, analysis of geopolitics, or the minutiae of information warfare. What resonates most is when I speak from the heart, and my own experience echoes that of the reader. It is cathartic to have our hopes and hurts acknowledged, and for someone to bear witness to our shared struggle.
In a sense the title of this essay is odd, given that introduction. Occam’s Razor is a tool of pure logical thinking: a heuristic that directs us towards the explanation with the fewest assumptions. This divides the more plausible answer from the less plausible one, encouraging us to keep our cosmology simple and not invent magical interventions to justify our beliefs. It is imperfect, can be misused, and the problem misframed: that is why it is only a helpful heuristic, and not a hard law.
My view is that the struggle of the past few years has been a kind of “Occam’s Mirror”, which has shown us the world more clearly, including ourselves and those around us. One part of humanity has sunk deep into a hypnotic psychosis, and performed the most absurd and dangerous rituals on themselves and their children. The other part of humanity has looked on in horror at the engineered fear, trashing of human rights, and mass participation in a death cult.
This mirror has helped us to see far more clearly who we are, and what we stand for. I sometimes wonder what those who come after us will make of this bizarre period in history. Just as Occam’s Razor divides the likely true from the likely false, “Occam’s Mirror” separates the real from the unreal, and helps us to tell that story. A spiritual war depends on you substituting a false reality for the observed one, and dedicating your energy to wickedness. So what have I observed gazing into this reflected horror show of deceit and dissidence, and what have I learned?
The easiest place to begin is with myself. A (now former) friend once observed that I am very “values-driven”, as if it were a charming defect in a world of realpolitik. What I have learned is that nothing will make me sell out to lies or wickedness, or sacrifice a fellow human for my own selfish interests. I have many faults and failings, and make endless mistakes that are a cause for embarrassment. Just none of that really matters; those are issues of personal morality, and not an ethical failure in dealing with the innocent, notably children.
The refusal to budge is extremely painful in a context where the masses have been brainwashed and hoodwinked into supporting downright evil authority. I have lost sleep many nights churning over the personal betrayals, the stunning self-justified wrongdoing, and the absence of love and care in my direction. Those who have adopted collectivist ideals and communist methods are willing to try to break my will for my apostasy from their depraved mania.
They have tried to force me into subjugation to sustain their own delusions. It saddens me, but I have found that I can live with persistent sadness. I have discovered that I cannot be broken by ostracism, false witness, denouncement, hijacking of my parental role, loss of normal family joys, neglect, or lack of resources. Quite the opposite: the more they try to control me, the more determined I become not to let it happen. The quiet and sensitive person I am in private has located a warrior inside, and unleashed him. Circumstances have forced me to fight, and I have come to rather relish it.
The same former friend taught me in any upheaval to pay attention to what isn’t changing. I tend to avoid writing about my own spiritual beliefs in public, especially as there is little agreement over terminology, and easy misunderstanding. Occam’s Mirror has, however, greatly clarified where I stand. What you worship — i.e. hold in such esteem that you are willing to die for — is your invariant “pole star”. I do not worship temporal institutions, and do not accept them as arbiters of morality or reality. The distress of the last few years has forced me to look inside and grasp my spiritual core, and acknowledge its unchanging relationship to the cosmos.
When I survey those around me, what do I see in the mirror? On the one hand, there are the egotistical ones, whose surface veneer of good manners and civil discourse hides a ruthless dedication to lazy selfishness and cowardly unaccountability. I now understand why pride is the worst of the sins, since it triggers an endless doubling down; the person who was conned cannot admit to it, so they magnify their error until the cost becomes catastrophic. Looking back, I can now see the origins of their own downfall, in a mix of wicked spirit, and early life trauma.
The people who we thought were friends turned out to be merely acquaintances with a shared context and past. They didn’t understand who we really are in terms of our values, and neither did we see them clearly for who they are. The scamdemic in particular has resolved such misconceptions, as you cannot hide whether you are a colluder or resister. Those with whom we share a blood relationship may have notionally been family, but many have belatedly realised there was no true love there, and that duty was one-way.
We are having to build new families of choice, as our families of origin have abandoned our delight in life for an adulation of death. Once someone starts to suffocate and imprison children, indoctrinate them into premature and perverse sexualisation, and inject them with poisons, there is no going back to how we used to relate. Occam’s Mirror has shown the stark divide between those willing to engage in human sacrifice, and those who will resist it with all their might — and make sacrifices to do so.
To discover that your parents or siblings will maim and sterilise their own children for group approval is disturbing, but at least we now know. No matter how difficult things have been, there is no way I would want to go back to the world we had 5, 15, or 25 years ago. I have looked in the mirror, and seen both the beauty and ugliness in far starker terms than ever before. I am no longer confused by claims that prettiness is putrid or vice versa. The transvestigated false idols in the mass media look hollow and pathetic. In contrast, fluffy clouds and fruity bushes have become magical wonders of everyday living.
I have found who my true friends are, and it is those who will not compromise when it comes to harming children. Each of us faces personal strife, life setbacks, and the occasional sagging morale. There has been a toll extracted by this psychological warfare, social division, and barbaric genocide. Yet none of these loyal friends ever discusses with me whether we should switch from the narrow to the broad path. The protection of the young from predation is literally the issue we are willing to die for. This clarity of purpose engenders a deep mutual trust; there is no cheap virtue signalling.
Whether it is photographic art, doggie rescue, shoe making, protest meetings, or vegetable gardening, there is always some kind of activity that we can turn to in order to generate routines, order, and stability among the chaos. When I look in the mirror at me and my collective, we have jettisoned a lot of the baggage of “successful professional progress”, and narrowed our lives down to a few things that really bring us joy through care and creativity. There has been a shift in what generates meaning, and the leisure pursuits of those still “in the matrix” seem bizarre and irrelevant.
For many of us, the dominant theme of The Great Awakening so far is “The Grating Waiting”. We know that the election fraud in America is being exposed; we know that the demon jabs will bring untold woe; we know that the mass media’s lies will collapse; we know that we’ve been subjected to biocide and poisoning; we know that everything hidden is being brought into the light for cleansing. Eventually…
The timelines are long because the alternative is civil war or relapse into tyranny; only the slow attrition of mind control can spring us from this prison of degraded consciousness. I have had to reframe patience from being a form of existential punishment into an achievement, in order for it to appeal more to my own attainment-seeking and impatient character. The waiting as become such an embedded feature of life one almost wonders how we will cope when the final torrent of shocking events hits us.
What I see in the mirror is how I and those close to me have found a (sufficient) place of inner peace and calm. We have been forced into radical acceptance of what is, and that all events, however awful, may have a higher purpose. From necessity have have had to learn forgiveness and detachment, while not abandoning unconditional love. The attacks upon us have made us police our boundaries vigorously, and let go of those relationships which no longer serve us. We may not be happy on any particular day, but we can always be choose to be grateful and aim for a more realistic contentment.
If anyone from the future wishes they could have been here to experience these events, I urge you not to get into that time travel machine for a temporal vacation in the early 2020s. It is a mess, and not a particularly endearing one. We have had to go through this difficult process of seeing ourselves, those close to us, and our society in the mirror, and it is not a pleasant picture. The paradox of change says we only transform when we fully identify with what is, so this “vision of the vile” was a mandatory preparation for the storm to come.
We are about to be called upon to comfort those whose illusions are shattered, bodies wrecked, and children poisoned. This process of uncomfortably staring at our own reflection has given us the grounding to know what is real and what is not, and what is “our personal nonsense” to own versus the madness of others. We have learned how to navigate ethical labyrinths by refusing to take the dead ends that lead us into harming others for our own interest. I trust future generations benefit from our critical self-examination in the mirror, but please — don’t regret having missed out.
We continue our series here from Charles A. Weisman’s book Is Universalism Of God? — in this instance we will look at how universalists mis-characterize and misappropriate episodes involving the Samaritan people in order to help promote their Marxist multi-racial agenda. Weisman writes,
The Samaritans
In the New Testament there are several different verses involving the people called Samaritans, who are often used to support the idea that Jesus was promoting the concept of a multi-racial church, and was condemning ethnocentrism. This is so, it is said, because the Samaritans were [allegedly] a mixed-blood people not of pure Hebrew stock — or non-Israelites. These universalists will refer to the parable of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-36); to Christ’s conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well (John 4:5-26); the healing of the Samaritan leper by Jesus (Luke 17:ll-19); and the preaching of the disciples in Samaria (Acts 1:8; 8:5,14). These verses are used to show that God is now [supposedly] changing His plan to include all races in the New Covenant.
Before we examine these verses, we need to first ascertain the racial identity of the Samaritans at the time of Christ by examining the history of the people and land of Samaria.
The History of the Samaritans
Scripture states that Samaria was an Israelite province, which was formed by the ten tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. It was conquered by Assyria in721 B.C., who had then deported its inhabitants and replaced them with aliens:
The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthat, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of Israel; and they took possession of Samaria and dwelt there. (2 Kings. 17:24).
Although the king of Assyria (Sargon) deported a great portion of the population, it is evident that he left many Israelites in the land [see John D. Davis, A Dictionary of the Bible, 1935, p. 671]. On the walls of the royal palace at Dur-Sarraku, Sargon of Assyria recorded the fact that he deported 27,290 inhabitants from the “city” of Samaria, which he rebuilt and repopulated with other peoples. It says nothing about a de-portation of all the cities or region of Samaria. Speaking on this matter the Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary states:
“It seems clear that the policy of deportation applied particularly to Samaria as a city and not as a region. Jeremiah 41:5 for example, seems to imply that a remnant of true Israelites remained in Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria a century later, so a substratum, or admixture of Hebrew stock in the later composite population must be assumed.”
The policy of deportation was to take the more prosperous citizens. The total number of Israelites deported from the northern kingdom is unknown, but it probably was a majority as seems to be indicated by 2 Kings 17:18-23. [One Bible authority says, “It has been calculated that not more than one in twenty was taken captive.” Peake’s Commentary, p. 353. However this amount seems to be too small].
This could be numbers up to a few million. However the number of Israelites left in Samaria was also significant. After the Assyrian captivity king Hezekiah of Judah (c. 710 B.C.) sent runners “Throughout all Israel and Judah” asking them to come to Jerusalem to keep the Passover and return to the LORD God, and “then He will return to the remnant of you who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria” (2 Chr. 30:6). The messengers went through regions of Ephraim, Manasseh, Zebulun, and Asher (vv. 10,1 1). In the reign of king Josiah (c. 612 B.C.) various tribes of Israel in Samaria still existed (2 Chr. 34:6,9). Thus a significant portion of Israelites remained in Samaria along with the alien people. Regarding this mixed population, one Bible authority states:
“These [alien peoples] intermarried with the Israelites left, and were joined by another group in the reign of Asshurbanipal (650 8.C., Ezr. 4:10). The Israelite element, however, proved the strongest in influence and was possibly the strongest in number.”
A New Standard Bible Dictionary, ed., M. Jacobus, Funk & Wagnalls Co., N.Y., 1936, p. 805
The mixed population resulted not only in some mixed blood types, but a mixed religion. At first the people “did not fear the LORD; therefore the LORD sent lions among them, which killed some of them” (2 Kgs. 17:Z). This is a punishment which God would only bring upon Israelites. So later they asked the king of Assyria to send them an Israelite priest to teach them the ways of God. The king (Esarhaddon) granted the request, and also sent some of the other Israelites and foreigners (Ezra 4:2). When Babylon conquered Jerusalem and took the people captive, they also left Israelites in Judah (2 Kings 25:12).
This body of people came to be called “Samaritans” named after Israel’s capital city of Samaria. Upon the return of the Judahite exiles from Babylon, a great amount of antagonism and rivalry existed between the Samaritans and Judahites. This perhaps started with the division of the kingdom with each setting up their own capitals — Jerusalem and Samaria. When the Judahites returned to Jerusalem, the Samaritans wished to help them in the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem, saying:
“Let us build with you, for we seek your God as you do; and we have sacrificed to Him since the the days of Esar-haddon king of Assyria, who brought us here” (Ezra 4: 1f)
But their offer was rejected by the Judahites, to which the Samaritans took offense; and from this time on the Samaritans threw every obstacle in their way:
“In the first part of the reign of Artaxerxes I (465-424 B.C.) the Samaritans obtained permission to destroy the walls of Jerusalem just being constructed by Ezra. Proceeding to Jerusalem, they compelled the builders to cease building (Ezra 4:7-23), and burned the gates (Neh. 1:3). When Nehemiah fortified the city (444 B.C.), he met serious opposition from the Samaritans (Neh. chapters 4, 5); and they tried to assassinate him (ch. 6).”
A New Standard Bible Dictionary, p. 805
Hence arose a deep-rooted enmity between the two peoples which afterwards increased to such a degree as to become proverbial. Since the Samaritans were not allowed to have anything to do with the Temple, they built their own on Mt. Gerizim at Shechem. The Samaritans pointed to passages in their Pentateuch which gave them a strong case over Jerusalem as the proper site of the Temple. The Judahites claimed there were discrepancies and additions in the Samaritan text compared to their own text. Thus for centuries both Judahites and Samaritans firmly believed that their own form of the sacred text was the right one, and the vested interests on either side were fiercely defended [see The Interpreter’s Bible, Abingdon Press, N.Y., 1952, vol. VIII, p.526]
A controversy arose between the two nations when the son of the high priest of Judah, married the daughter of Sanballat, the governor of Samaria. For this offense Nehemiah had him expelled (Neh. 13:28):
“In the reign of Darius Nothus [405 B.C.], Manasses, son of the [Hebrew] high-priest, married the daughter of Sanballat, the Samaritan governor; and to avoid the necessity of repudiating her, as the law of Moses required, went over to the Samaritans, and became high-priest in the temple which his father-in-law built for him on Mount Gerizim. From this time on Samaria became a refuge for all malcontent Jews [Israelites]; and the very name of each people became odious to the other.”
The Popular and Critical Bible Encyclopedia, ed., Rev. Samuel Fallows, Howard-Severance Co., 1908, vol. III, p. 1512
Thus from this time on Samaria became a refuge for the Israelites in Judah which were either dissatisfied with the policy of the Israelite leadership, or were rejected by them. These Israelites naturally had animosity toward their former nation of Judah, as did the Judahites toward them. This further added to the reproach and dissension between the two nations.
Around 330 B.C., Alexander the Great had taken over the land of Palestine by defeating Darius, the last king of Persia (1 Mac. l:1). Alexander “had greatly honored the Jews,” and when he “had thus settled matters at Jerusalem, he led his army into neighboring cities.” He visited the city of “Shechem” which was then the “metropolis” or capital of Samaria, which was “inhabited by apostates of the Jewish nation.” [see Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, bk. XI, ch. VIII, sect. 6.]
The Samaritans in Shechem — seeing that Alexander honored the Israelites — determined to profess themselves to be Israelites. Josephus says that when the Israelites of Judea were in prosperity or victorious, the Samaritans claimed that they were kinsmen of the Israelites, and derive their genealogy from the posterity of Joseph; but when the Judahites were in adversity, they declared that they had no relationship to them, but were sojourners, that come from other countries [see Josephus, Ibid. bk. IX, ch. XIV, sect. 3; bk. XI, ch. VIII, sect. 6.] This was easy for them to do — for they were made up of apostates, malcontents, and other sorts of Israelites, and well as many mixed blood Israelites and aliens.
The population of the Samaritans was also enlarged by Israelites who converted to paganism under Antiochus:
“The [Samaritan] sect was later reinforced by the accession of converted Jews [Israelites] under Antiochus Epiphanes [175 B.C.], when, by denying their affinity with the Jewish religion, the Samaritans were exempted from persecution.”
A New standard Bible Dictionary. ed., M.w. Jacobus, Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1936, p. 805.
Around 168 B.C., King Antiochus made an expedition against Jerusalem, and pretending peace, got possession of the city by treachery. He slew many of the inhabitants, plundered the Temple, burnt down the finest buildings, and built an idol altar upon God’s altar, and sacrificed a swine upon it. He also issued a decree requiring the Judahites to worship the pagan gods and to abandon their law (I Mac. 1:20-64). The Samaritans, seeing the sufferings of the Judahites, no longer confessed they were kindred to them, but told Antiochus they were a colony of Medes and Persians. They followed his commands, and thus were spared from his onslaught.
Many Israelites, out of fear of the penalty that was upon them, also complied with the king’s commands and converted to the new religion as did the Samaritans [see Josephus, Antiquities, bk. XII, ch. V, sect. 4-5.] After Antiochus died, these Israelites were rejected by the patriotic Israelites. And so the Samaritan population increased with the addition of these Israelites who converted to the pagan religion.
First Century Samaritans
By the 1st century A.D., the territory of Samaria and Judea increased in size so that the two regions overlapped and had no real definitive boundary between them (see map below). In fact, both Samaria and Judea were one Roman province.
The history of the Samaritans shows that by the time of Christ, a considerable number of them were Israelites — they were not just a mixed blood people. It also shows that the hatred and enmity that the Judean Israelites had for the Samaritans was not just due to their alien and mixed population. There were many centuries of religious squabbles and political disputes between them. However, by the time of Christ their religion became more in line with the Judeans, perhaps due to the Israelite influence among the Samaritans:
“The Samaritans….boasted of being Israelites, and with some degree of justification — for there was probably a considerable Jewish [Israelite] element in the population. Their worship, originally a compromise with heathenism, was now purely Jewish. They kept the sabbath, and the Jewish feasts, and observed circumcision and other traditional ordinances.”
J.R. Dummelow, A Commentory on the Hoty Bibte, Macmillan Co., 1960. p.781
The majority of the population of Samaria was probably of mixed-blood or alien types, but to say it was entirely so is wholly unwarranted. It would not be unreasonable to say that it was composed of 60% non-Israelites and 40% Israelites. It would not be justified to assume one in Samaria was a non-Israelite, any more than it would be to assume that someone from Detroit, Chicago or Atlanta was nonwhite just because 60 to 75 % of the population of those cities is nonwhite. It is also true that Judea, though mostly inhabited by Israelites, contained some mixed-blood people — Canaanites, Edomites and Syrians. Israel had always mixed with foreign people when they were living in the same area, yet the extent of such intermarriages never reduced the population of Israelites to any significant degree. But it always did increase the number of mixed breeds.
When Christ had a debate with the Judean people, they called Him a Samaritan — “thou art a Samaritan” (John 8:48). Here these Judean people were looking right at this perfect example of an Israelite and said he was a Samaritan. Obviously the Judeans did not perceive a Samaritan as one of another race or a non-Israelite. To them the use of Samaritan meant “heretic, a person unworthy of credit” [see Adam Clarke, Commentary on the Bible, vol. 5, p. 581] The term Samaritan was not used in a derogatory manner due to one’s racial status, but rather as to one’s religious status. The Judean people did not like Christ’s preaching or theology — and that was the basis for the schism between them. Thus the presumption or insinuation that Samaria in the 1st century A.D. was composed of l00% mixed-blood and non-Israelite types is a rather unsound and outlandish notion.
The Samaritan Woman at the Well
The Samaritan woman whom Jesus conversed with at Jacob’s well is a particular revealing story. Jesus not only asked her for a drink from the well, but explained to her things about eternal life and how to worship God.
When Jesus spoke of giving the woman “living water” instead of the water in the well, her response indicates she was an Israelite. She said to Jesus, “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well?” (John 4:r2). She not only asserted that she was descended from Jacob — referring to him as her “father” — but by the use of “our” she was acknowledging that she was of the same racial stock as Jesus. These are not words that a mixed-blood person could make. Note that Jesus did not rebuke or correct her in this regard, nor did He refer to her as a “dog” as He did concerning the Canaanite woman (Matt. 15:26).
The woman of Samaria is “not a reference to the city of Samaria, which was too far away, but to the territory of the Samaritans” [see The Wycliff Bible Commentary, ed., C.F. Pfeiffer, Moody press, I966, p. 1080]. The city of Samaria probably had a greater portion of mixed race and alien races in it than the smaller villages and rural areas. Just as is the case with many of our major cities in America today — cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Chicago — are predominately nonwhite. But the outer suburbs and rural areas are mostly white. Likewise there was a difference between the city or cities of Samaria, and Samaria itself (compare Matt 10:5 and Acts 1:8).
When the woman came to the well to pull out water, Jesus asked her for a drink. The woman is surprised by the request on account of the tension and schism between Judeans and Samaritans (John 4:9).
The Good Samaritan
In Luke 10, a lawyer asked Jesus how to inherit eternal life, so Jesus asked him what is written in the law. The lawyer read the law (Deut 6:5; Lev. 19:18) which says to love God with all of your heart and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. Jesus said he had answered correctly. But not being satisfied, the lawyer asked, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus proceeds to tell the parable of the good Samaritan, in which a man traveling falls among thieves, is robbed, stripped of his clothes, wounded, and left half dead. A priest came by and walked around him — a Levite did the same. But a Samaritan man bandaged his wounds, put him on his own animal, and took care of the man Jesus then asks,
“Which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?” The reply was, “he who showed mercy on him.” Then Jesus said, “Go and do likewise.” (Luke10:30-37).
This parable is often used by universalists and humanists to promote the idea that Christ viewed all races as standing on the same footing — and that a person of any race can be our neighbor. The basis of this idea rests upon the erroneous belief that the Samaritan man was a non-lsraelite or person of mixed blood. There are several problems with this interpretation. The first is the false assumption that the Samaritan was of a non-Israelite race. Christ knew of the age-long conflict and enmity between the Judeans and Samaritans. He knew that a Samaritan could be a non-Israelite or an Israelite. He thus used the Samaritan as the one who was a neighbor, knowing that the lawyer would not normally pick him as such over a priest or Levite.
Secondly, the concept of neighbor that was being discussed was originally derived from Levitcus 19:18, which qualifies a neighbor as a kinsmen:
“Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself: I am the LORD” (Lev 19:18).
The concept of neighbor included only those who were of “thy people.” The previous verse says, “‘Thou shall not hate thy brother.” Christ was further qualifying the concept by showing that status alone is not what makes one a neighbor. The lowest and most degraded Israelite who is helpful to others is a neighbor; however, one is not a neighbor just because of their high-class standing in the community.
Another problem with the universal perspective on this matter is that it disregards or transcends other conditions, circumstances or qualifications prescribed by the law of God. The universalist, in effect, says that anyone under any circumstances can be our neighbor, as long as they do a good deed or even has the potential to do so. And so a person of any race, creed, religion, or moral character can become your neighbor since doing a good deed is the only condition or qualification to be considered.
Based upon this position, a murderer, rapist, arsonist, prostitute, burglar, sodomite or pirate who does a good deed or is helpful to others would be our neighbor. A Buddhist, idolater, witch doctor, communist, or Satanist will at times do good deeds. It could then be said by Universalists that they are our neighbor, and we should not be bothered by their presence among us. They should be welcomed as part of our congregation or community.
If a neighbor is without any other qualification than that of doing a good deed, it will result in many contradictions with the whole word of God. If God condemns murder, prostitution, theft, idolatry, homosexuality, divination, and witchcraft, then those that engage in such acts cannot be regarded as our neighbor, even if they may do some good deed or help someone.
It also cannot be said that because a witch, a sodomite or Baal priest does a good deed that we should not discriminate against all witches, sodomites or Baal priests. Likewise, if God commands segregation of his people, then other races cannot be our neighbors even if some of them do a good deed.
If — at the time that Israel was entering the promise land — and one Canaanite did some good deed (as did Rahab) — that could not be used as a pretext to leave all the Canaanites in the land and nullify God’s commandment on the matter. [Note: Rahab was allowed in the land by contractual agreement (Josh. 2: 12-14)]. But a Universalist or an egalitarian would use this to establish a new rule to have all Canaanites remain in the land as equals.
To say that the good Samaritan was or could be one of another race is no different from saying he could be a murderer or and idolater. That is not the point Christ was trying to make.
It is interesting to note that this concept of the good Samaritan is used by the anti-Christ Establishment as a psychological ploy to promote and to get white Americans to accept pluralism, integration, equality, and multiculturalism. On nearly every TV or radio talk show, they will at some time have a guest who is regarded or labeled as a “racist” or “white supremacist.” They then will use their good samaritan concept to show the error and foolishness of racial separation and inequality. They will ask the white “racist” guest hypothetical questions such as:
-If you were drowning and a black man saved you, wouldn’t you be grateful? -If you were injured and the only ones around to help you were a black M.D. or white man not versed in medicine, which one would you want to come to your aid? -If a Chinese man discovered the cure for a deadly disease you had, would you take his treatment? -If your wife was threatened to be raped by a white man, and a Mexican came and warded off the white man, which of these two men would you want to live in your neighborhood? -Would you rather do business with a dishonest white man who has cheated you, or an honest black man?
Of course, in all of these hypothetical cases you are forced to be in favor of the nonwhite person because he is the good Samaritan. He is acting as a neighbor and you must regard him as an equal — one who can marry your daughter, and who can never be the subject of segregation or discrimination.
This distorted universalist perspective on the good Samaritan always leads to integration. After all, how do you tell a neighbor that he has to leave the neighborhood? It can’t be done. He cannot be excluded from the nation — for the concept of a neighbor is similar to that of citizen — one who is a member of a nation.
Just like the Universalist and humanist Christians, the anti-Christ Establishment uses a rare exception to destroy the rule. It is not what one black or Mexican person has done, but what are the average characteristics of each race. How productive or burdensome are they to society? How much crime do they cause? What is the moral and intellectual level of each race? How much does each race support true Christian and American values? The distorted “good Samaritan” argument keeps us from looking at — or even acknowledging — these facts and statistics. The reason for doing so is obvious — as it would show the striking difference between the races, and the higher state of the white race.
The viewpoint that the good Samaritan was a mixed blood individual — and that such a person can or should be our neighbor — always leads to integration and interracial mixture. The mixing of the white race with the colored destroys what the white race has been for thousands of years. That is not just an average — it will happen 100 percent of the time.
The universalist argument will further allow all undesirable individuals to be our neighbor which naturally results in social distress, crime, moral debauchery, socialism and multi-cultural laws which restrict individual rights and free enterprise. The dangers and pitfalls of this distorted perspective of the good Samaritan parable are obvious. It is clearly going far beyond what Christ was trying to teach.
Christ was not trying to teach that the good Samaritan was a mixed blood person — and that as a result of this we should have multi-racial and pluralistic congregations, neighborhoods, communities or nations. The meaning of the story is clear –it is simply inculcating the duty of benevolence we are to give to persons of all kinds, not just friends, but strangers and foreigners as well, as it is to be assumed they are good people until shown to be the contrary.
July 30, 2022: Information Clearing House-- As in a Greek tragedy whose protagonist brings about precisely the fate that he has sought to avoid, the US/NATO confrontation with Russia in Ukraine is achieving just the opposite of America’s aim of preventing China, Russia and their allies from acting independently of U.S. control over their trade and investment policy. Naming China as America’s main long-term adversary, the Biden Administration’s plan was to split Russia away from China and then cripple China’s own military and economic viability. But the effect of American diplomacy has been to drive Russia and China together, joining with Iran, India and other allies. For the first time since the Bandung Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in 1955, a critical mass is able to be mutually self-sufficient to start the process of achieving independence from Dollar Diplomacy.
Confronted with China’s industrial prosperity based on self-financed public investment in socialized markets, U.S. officials acknowledge that resolving this fight will take a number of decades to play out. Arming a proxy Ukrainian regime is merely an opening move in turning Cold War 2 (and potentially/or indeed World War III) into a fight to divide the world into allies and enemies with regard to whether governments or the financial sector will plan the world economy and society.
What is euphemized as U.S.-style democracy is a financial oligarchy privatizing basic infrastructure, health and education. The alternative is what President Biden calls autocracy, a hostile label for governments strong enough to block a global rent-seeking oligarchy from taking control. China is deemed autocratic for providing basic needs at subsidized prices instead of charging whatever the market can bear. Making its mixed economy lower-cost is called “market manipulation,” as if that is a bad thing that was not done by the United States, Germany and every other industrial nation during their economic takeoff in the 19th and early 20th century.
Clausewitz popularized the axiom that war is an extension of national interests – mainly economic. The United States views its economic interest to lie in seeking to spread its neoliberal ideology globally. The evangelistic aim is to financialize and privatize economies by shifting planning away from national governments to a cosmopolitan financial sector. There would be little need for politics in such a world. Economic planning would shift from political capitals to financial centers, from Washington to Wall Street, with satellites in the City of London, the Paris Bourse, Frankfurt and Tokyo. Board meetings for the new oligarchy would be held at Davos’s World Economic Forum. Hitherto public infrastructure services would be privatized and priced high enough to include profits (and indeed, monopoly rents), debt financing and management fees rather than being publicly subsidized. Debt service and rent would become the major overhead costs for families, industry and governments.
The U.S. drive to retain its unipolar power to impose “America First” financial, trade and military policies on the world involves an inherent hostility toward all countries seeking to follow their own national interests. Having less and less to offer in the form of mutual economic gains, U.S. policy makes threats of sanctions and covert meddling in foreign politics. The U.S. dream envisions a Chinese version of Boris Yeltsin replacing the nation’s Communist Party leadership and selling off its public domain to the highest bidder – presumably after a monetary crisis wipes out domestic purchasing power much as occurred in post-Soviet Russia, leaving the international financial community as buyers.
Russia and President Putin cannot be forgiven for having fought back against the Harvard Boys’ “reforms.” That is why U.S. officials planned how to create Russian economic disruption to (they hope) orchestrate a “color revolution” to recapture Russia for the world’s neoliberal camp. That is the character of the “democracy” and “free markets” being juxtaposed to the “autocracy” of state-subsidized growth. As Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov explained in a press conference on July 20, 2022 regarding Ukraine’s violent coup in 2014, U.S. and other Western officials define military coups as democratic if they are sponsored by the United States in the hope of promoting neoliberal policies.
Do you remember how events developed after the coup? The putschists spat in the face of Germany, France and Poland that were the guarantors of the agreement with Viktor Yanukovych. It was trampled underfoot the next morning. These European countries didn’t make a peep – they reconciled themselves to this. A couple of years ago I asked the Germans and French what they thought about the coup. What was it all about if they didn’t demand that the putschists fulfil the agreements? They replied: “This is the cost of the democratic process.” I am not kidding. Amazing – these were adults holding the post of foreign ministers.[1]
This Doublethink vocabulary reflects how far mainstream ideology has evolved from Rosa Luxemburg’s description a century ago of the civilizational choice being posed: barbarism or socialism. The contradictory U.S. and European interests and burdens of the war in Ukraine
To return to Clausewitz’s view of war as an extension of national policy, U.S. national interests are diverging sharply from those of its NATO satellites. America’s military-industrial complex, oil and agriculture sectors are benefiting, while European industrial interests are suffering. That is especially the case in Germany and Italy as a result of their governments blocking North Stream 2 gas imports and other Russian raw materials.
The interruption of world energy, food and minerals supply chains and the resulting price inflation (providing an umbrella for monopoly rents by non-Russian suppliers) has imposed enormous economic strains on U.S. allies in Europe and the Global South. Yet the U.S. economy is benefiting from this, or at least specific sectors of the U.S. economy are benefiting. As Sergey Lavrov, pointed out in his above-cited press conference: “The European economy is impacted more than anything else. The stats show that 40 percent of the damage caused by sanctions is borne by the EU whereas the damage to the United States is less than 1 percent.” The dollar’s exchange rate has soared against the euro, which has plunged to parity with the dollar and looks set to fall further down toward the $0.80 that it was a generation ago. U.S. dominance over Europe is further strengthened by the trade sanctions against Russian oil and gas. The U.S. is an LNG exporter, U.S. companies control the world oil trade, and U.S. firms are the world’s major grain marketers and exporters now that Russia is excluded from many foreign markets. A revival of European military spending – for offense, not defense
U.S. arms-makers are looking forward to making profits off arms sales to Western Europe, which has almost literally disarmed itself by sending its tanks and howitzers, ammunition and missiles to Ukraine. U.S. politicians support a bellicose foreign policy to promote arms factories that employ labor in their voting districts. And the neocons who dominate the State Department and CIA see the war as a means of asserting American dominance over the world economy, starting with its own NATO partners.
The problem with this view is that although America’s military-industrial, oil and agricultural monopolies are benefitting, the rest of the U.S. economy is being squeezed by the inflationary pressures resulting from boycotting Russian gas, grain and other raw-materials exports, and the enormous rise in the military budget will be used as an excuse to cut back social spending programs. That also is a problem for Eurozone members. They have promised NATO to raise their military spending to the stipulated 2 percent of their GDP, and the Americans are urging much higher levels to upgrade to the most recent array of weaponry. All but forgotten is the Peace Dividend that was promised in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved the Warsaw Pact alliance, expecting that NATO likewise would have little reason to exist.
Russia has no discernable economic interest in mounting a new occupation of Central Europe. That would offer no gain to Russia, as its leaders realized when they dissolved the old Soviet Union. In fact, no industrial country in today’s world can afford to field an infantry to occupy an enemy. All that NATO can do is bomb from a distance. It can destroy, but not occupy. The United States found that out in Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan. And just as the assassination Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo (now Bosnia-Herzegovina) triggered World War I in 1914, NATO’s bombing of adjoining Serbia may be viewed as throwing down the gauntlet to turn Cold War 2 into a veritable World War III. That marked the point at which NATO became an offensive alliance, not a defensive one.
How does this reflect European interests? Why should Europe re-arm, if the only effect is to make it a target of retaliation in the event of further attacks on Russia? What does Europe have to gain in becoming a larger customer for America’s military-industrial complex? Diverting spending to rebuild an offensive army – that can never be used without triggering an atomic response that would wipe out Europe – will limit the social spending needed to cope with today’s Covid problems and economic recession.
The only lasting leverage a nation can offer in today’s world is trade and technology transfer. Europe has more of this to offer than the United States. Yet the only opposition to renewed military spending is coming from right-wing parties and the German Linke party. Europe’s Social Democratic, Socialist and Labour parties share American neoliberal ideology. Sanctions against Russian gas makes coal “the fuel of the future”
The carbon footprint of bombing, arms manufacturing and military bases is strikingly absent from today’s discussion about global warming and the need to cut back on carbon emissions. The German party that calls itself Green is leading the campaign for sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas, which electric utilities are replacing with Polish coal and even German lignite. Coal is becoming the “fuel of the future.” Its price also is soaring in the United States, benefitting American coal companies.
In contrast to the Paris Club agreements to reduce carbon emissions, the United States has neither the political capability nor the intention to join the conservation effort. The Supreme Court recently ruled that the Executive Branch has no authority to issue nation-wide energy rules; only individual states can do that, unless Congress passes a national law to cut back on fossil fuels.
That seems unlikely in view of the fact that becoming head of a Democratic Senate and Congressional committee requires being a leader in raising campaign contributions for the party. Joe Manchin, a coal-company billionaire, leads all senators in campaign support from the oil and coal industries, enabling him to win his party’s auction for the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee chairmanship and block any seriously restrictive environmental legislation.
Next to oil, agriculture is a major contributor to the U.S. balance of payments. Blocking Russian grain and fertilizer shipping threatens to create a Global South food crisis as well as a European crisis as gas is unavailable to make domestic fertilizer. Russia is the world’s largest exporter of grain and also of fertilizer, and its exports of these products have been exempted from NATO sanctions. But Russian shipping was blocked by Ukraine placing mines in the sea lanes through the Black Sea to close off access to Odessa’s harbor, hoping that the world would blame the world’s imminent grain and energy crisis on Russia instead of the US/NATO trade sanctions imposed on Russia.[2]At his July 20, 2022 press conference Sergey Lavrov showed the hypocrisy of the public relations attempt to distort matters:
For many months, they told us that Russia was to blame for the food crisis because the sanctions don’t cover food and fertiliser. Therefore, Russia doesn’t need to find ways to avoid the sanctions and so it should trade because nobody stands in its way. It took us a lot of time to explain to them that, although food and fertiliser are not subject to sanctions, the first and second packages of Western restrictions affected freight costs, insurance premiums, permissions for Russian ships carrying these goods to dock at foreign ports and those for foreign ships taking on the same consignments at Russian harbours. They are openly lying to us that this is not true, and that it is up to Russia alone. This is foul play.
Black Sea grain transport has begun to resume, but NATO countries have blocked payments to Russia in dollars, euros or currencies of other countries in the U.S. orbit. Food-deficit countries that cannot afford to pay distress-level food prices face drastic shortages, which will be exacerbated when they are compelled to pay their foreign debts denominated in the appreciating U.S. dollar. The looming fuel and food crisis promises to drive a new wave of immigrants to Europe seeking survival. Europe already has been flooded with refugees from NATO’s bombing and backing of jihadist attacks on Libya and Near Eastern oil-producing countries. This year’s proxy war in Ukraine and imposition of anti-Russian sanctions is a perfect illustration of Henry Kissinger’s quip: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.” Blowback from the US/NATO miscalculations
America’s international diplomacy aims to dictate financial, trade and military policies that will lock other countries into dollar debt and trade dependency by preventing them from developing alternatives. If this fails, America seeks to isolate the recalcitrants from the U.S.-centered Western sphere.
America’s foreign diplomacy no longer is based on offering mutual gain. Such could be claimed in the aftermath of World War II when the United States was in a position to offer loans, foreign-aid and military protection against occupation – as well as manufactures to rebuild war-torn economies – to governments in exchange for their accepting trade and monetary policies favorable to American exporters and investors. But today there is only the belligerent diplomacy of threatening to hurt nations whose socialist governments reject America’s neoliberal drive to privatize and sell off their natural resources and public infrastructure.
The first aim is to prevent Russia and China from helping each other. This is the old imperial divide-and-conquer strategy. Minimizing Russia’s ability to support China would pave the way for the United States and NATO Europe to impose new trade sanctions on China, and to send jihadists to its western Xinjiang Uighur region. The aim is to bleed Russia’s armaments inventory, kill enough of its soldiers, and create enough Russian shortages and suffering to not only weaken its ability to help China, but to spur its population to support a regime change, an American-sponsored “color revolution.” The dream is to promote a Yeltsin-like leader friendly to the neoliberal “therapy” that dismantled Russia’s economy in the 1990s.
Amazing as it may seem, U.S. strategists did not anticipate the obvious response by countries finding themselves together in the crosshairs of US/NATO military and economic threats. On July 19, 2022, the presidents of Russia and Iran met to announce their cooperation in the face of the sanctions war against them. That followed Russia’s earlier meeting with India’s Prime Minister Modi. In what has been characterized as “shooting itself in its own foot,” U.S. diplomacy is driving Russia, China, India and Iran together, and indeed to reach out to Argentina and other countries to join the BRICS-plus bank to protect themselves. The U.S. itself is ending the Dollar Standard of international finance
The Trump Administration took a major step to drive countries out of the dollar orbit in November 2018, by confiscating nearly $2 billion of Venezuela’s official gold stock held in London. The Bank of England put these reserves at the disposal of Juan Guaidó, the marginal right-wing politician selected by the United States to replace Venezuela’s elected president as head of state. This was defined as being democratic, because the regime change promised to introduce the neoliberal “free market” that is deemed to be the essence of America’s definition of democracy for today’s world.
This gold theft actually was not the first such confiscation. On November 14, 1979, the Carter Administration paralyzed Iran’s bank deposits in New York after the Shah was overthrown. This act blocked Iran from paying its scheduled foreign debt service, forcing it into default. That was viewed as an exceptional one-time action as far as all other financial markets were concerned. But now that the United States is the self-proclaimed “exceptional nation,” such confiscations are becoming a new norm in U.S. diplomacy. Nobody yet knows what happened to Libya’s gold reserves that Muammar Gadafi had intended to be used to back an African alternative to the dollar. And Afghanistan’s gold and other reserves were simply taken by Washington as payment for the cost of “freeing” that country from Russian control by backing the Taliban. But when the Biden Administration and its NATO allies made a much larger asset grab of some $300 billion of Russia’s foreign bank reserves and currency holdings in March 2022, it made official a radical new epoch in Dollar Diplomacy. Any nation that follows policies not deemed to be in the interests of the U.S. Government runs the risk of U.S. authorities confiscating its holdings of foreign reserves in U.S. banks or securities.
This was a red flag leading countries to fear denominating their trade, savings and foreign debt in dollars, and to avoid using dollar or euro bank deposits and securities as a means of payment. By prompting other countries to think about how to free themselves from the U.S.-centered world trade and monetary system that was established in 1945 with the IMF, World Bank and subsequently the World Trade Organization, the U.S. confiscations have accelerated the end of the U.S. Treasury-bill standard that has governed world finance since the United States went off gold in 1971.[3]
Since dollar convertibility into gold ended in August 1971, dollarization of the world’s trade and investment has created a need for other countries to hold most of their new international monetary reserves in U.S. Treasury securities and bank deposits. As already noted, that enables the United States to seize foreign bank deposits and bonds denominated in U.S. dollars.
Most important, the United States can create and spend dollar IOUs into the world economy at will, without limit. It doesn’t have to earn international spending power by running a trade surplus, as other countries have to do. The U.S. Treasury can simply print dollars electronically to finance its foreign military spending and purchases of foreign resources and companies. And being the “exceptional country,” it doesn’t have to pay these debts – which are recognized as being far too large to be paid. Foreign dollar holdings are free U.S. credit to the Unites States, not requiring repayment any more than the paper dollars in our wallets are expected to be paid off (by retiring them from circulation). What seems to be so self-destructive about America’s economic sanctions and confiscations of Russian and other foreign reserves is that they are accelerating the demise of this free ride. Blowback resulting from US/NATO isolating their economic and monetary systems
It is hard to see how driving countries out of the U.S. economic orbit serves long-term U.S. national interests. Dividing the world into two monetary blocs will limit Dollar Diplomacy to its NATO allies and satellites.
The blowback now unfolding in the wake of U.S. diplomacy begins with its anti-Russia policy. Imposing trade and monetary sanctions was expected to block Russian consumers and businesses from buying the US/NATO imports to which they had become accustomed. Confiscating Russia’s foreign currency reserves was supposed to crash the ruble, “turning it into rubble,” as President Biden promised. Imposing sanctions against importing Russian oil and gas to Europe was supposed to deprive Russia of export earnings, causing the ruble to collapse and raising import prices (and hence, living costs) for the Russian public. Instead, blocking Russian exports has created a worldwide price inflation for oil and gas, sharply increasing Russian export earnings. It exported less gas but earned more – and with dollars and euros blocked, Russia demanded payment for its exports in rubles. Its exchange rate soared instead of collapsing, enabling Russia to reduce its interest rates.
Goading Russia to send its soldiers to eastern Ukraine to defend Russian speakers under attack in Luhansk and Donetsk, along with the expected impact of the ensuing Western sanctions, was supposed to make Russian voters press for regime change. But as almost always happens when a country or ethnicity is attacked, Russians were appalled at the Ukrainian hatred of Russian-language speakers and Russian culture, and at the Russophobia of the West. The effect of Western countries banning music by Russian composers and Russian novels from libraries – capped by England banning Russian tennis players from the Wimbledon tournament – was to make Russians feel under attack simply for being Russian. They rallied around President Putin.
NATO’s trade sanctions have catalyzed helped Russian agriculture and industry to become more self-sufficient by obliging Russia to invest in import substitution. One well-publicized farming success was to develop its own cheese production to replace that of Lithuania and other European suppliers. Its automotive and other industrial production is being forced to shift away from German and other European brands to its own and Chinese producers. The result is a loss of markets for Western exporters.
In the field of financial services, NATO’s exclusion of Russia from the SWIFT bank-clearing system failed to create the anticipated payments chaos. The threat had been so loudly for so long that Russia and China had plenty of time to develop their own payments system. This provided them with one of the preconditions for their plans to split their economies away from those of the US/NATO West.
As matters have turned out, the trade and monetary sanctions against Russia are imposing the heaviest costs on Western Europe, and are likely to spread to the Global South, driving them to think about whether their economic interests lie in joining U.S. confrontational Dollar Diplomacy. The disruption is being felt most seriously in Germany, causing many companies to close down as a result of gas and other raw-materials shortages. Germany’s refusal to authorize the North Stream 2 pipeline has pushed its energy crisis to a head. This has raised the question of how long Germany’s political parties can remain subordinate to NATO’s Cold War policies at the cost of German industry and households facing sharp rises in heating and electricity costs.
The longer it takes to restore trade with Russia, the more European economies will suffer, along with the citizenry at large, and the further the euro’s exchange rate will fall, spurring inflation throughout its member countries. European NATO countries are losing not only their export markets but their investment opportunities to gain from the much more rapid growth of Eurasian countries whose government planning and resistance to financialization has proved much more productive than the US/NATO neoliberal model.
It is difficult to see how any diplomatic strategy can do more than play for time. That involves living in the short run, not the long run. Time seems to be on the side of Russia, China and the trade and investment alliances that they are negotiating to replace the neoliberal Western economic order. America’s ultimate problem is its neoliberal post-industrial economy
The failure and blowbacks of U.S. diplomacy are the result of problems that go beyond diplomacy itself. The underlying problem is the West’s commitment to neoliberalism, financialization and privatization. Instead of government subsidy of basic living costs needed by labor, all social life is being made part of “the market” – a uniquely Thatcherite deregulated “Chicago Boys” market in which industry, agriculture, housing and financing are deregulated and increasingly predatory, while heavily subsidizing the valuation of financial and rent-seeking assets – mainly the wealth of the richest One Percent. Income is obtained increasingly by financial and monopoly rent-seeking, and fortunes are made by debt-leveraged “capital” gains for stocks, bonds and real estate.
U.S. industrial companies have aimed more at “creating wealth” by increasing the price of their stocks by using over 90 percent of their profits for stock buybacks and dividend payouts instead of investing in new production facilities and hiring more labor. The result of slower capital investment is to dismantle and financially cannibalize corporate industry in order to produce financial gains. And to the extent that companies do employ labor and set up new production, it is done abroad where labor is cheaper.
Most Asian labor can afford to work for lower wages because it has much lower housing costs and does not have to pay education debt. Health care is a public right, not a financialized market transaction, and pensions are not paid for in advance by wage-earners and employers but are public. The aim in China in particular is to prevent the rentier Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) sector from becoming a burdensome overhead whose economic interests differ from those of a socialist government.
China treats money and banking as a public utility, to be created, spent and lent for purposes that help increase productivity and living standards (and increasingly to preserve the environment). It rejects the U.S.-sponsored neoliberal model imposed by the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization.
The global economic fracturing goes far beyond NATO’s conflict with Russia in Ukraine. By the time the Biden administration took office at the start of 2021, Russia and China already had been discussing the need to de-dollarize their foreign trade and investment, using their own currencies.[4] That involves the quantum leap of organizing a new payments-clearing institution. Planning had not progressed beyond broad outlines of how such a system would work, but the U.S. confiscation of Russia’s foreign reserves made such planning urgent, starting with a BRICS-plus bank. A Eurasian alternative to the IMF will remove its ability to impose neoliberal austerity “conditionalities” to force countries to lower payments to labor and give priority to paying their foreign creditors above feeding themselves and developing their own economies. Instead of new international credit being extended mainly to pay dollar debts, it will be part of a process of new mutual investment in basic infrastructure designed to accelerate economic growth and living standards. Other institutions are being designed as China, Russia, Iran, India and their prospective allies represent a large enough critical mass to “go it alone,” based on their own mineral wealth and manufacturing power.
The basic U.S. policy has been to threaten to destabilize countries and perhaps bomb them until they agree to adopt neoliberal policies and privatize their public domain. But taking on Russia, China and Iran is a much higher order of magnitude. NATO has disarmed itself of the ability to wage conventional warfare by handing over its supply of weaponry – admittedly largely outdated – to be devoured in Ukraine. In any case, no democracy in today’s world can impose a military draft to wage a conventional land warfare against a significant/major adversary. The protests against the Vietnam War in the late 1960s ended the U.S. military draft, and the only way to really conquer a country is to occupy it in land warfare. This logic also implies that Russia is no more in a position to invade Western Europe than NATO countries are to send conscripts to fight Russia.
That leaves Western democracies with the ability to fight only one kind of war: atomic war – or at least, bombing at a distance, as was done in Afghanistan and the Near East, without requiring Western manpower. This is not diplomacy at all. It is merely acting the role of wrecker. But that is the only tactic that remains available to the United States and NATO Europe. It is strikingly like the dynamic of Greek tragedy, where power leads to hubris that is injurious to others and therefore ultimately anti-social – and self-destructive in the end.
How then can the United States maintain its world dominance? It has deindustrialized and run up foreign official debt far beyond any foreseeable way to be paid. Meanwhile, its banks and bondholders are demanding that the Global South and other countries pay foreign dollar bondholders in the face of their own trade crisis resulting from the soaring energy and food prices caused by America’s anti-Russian and anti-China belligerence. This double standard is a basic internal contradiction that goes to the core of today’s neoliberal Western worldview.
I have described the possible scenarios to resolve this conflict in my recent book The Destiny of Civilization: Finance Capitalism, Industrial Capitalism or Socialism. It has now also been issued in e-book form by CounterPunch Books.
Notes.
[1] “Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s interview with RT television, Sputnik agency and Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, Moscow, July 20, 2022,” Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry, July 20, 2022. https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/1822901/. From Johnson’s Russia List, July 21, 2022, #5.
[3] My Super Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (3rd ed., 2021) describes how the Treasury-bill standard has provided America with a free ride and enabled it to run balance-of-payments deficits without constraint, including the costs of its overseas military spending.
[4] Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson (2021), “Beyond Dollar Creditocracy: A Geopolitical Economy,” Valdai Club Paper No. 116. Moscow: Valdai Club, 7 July, reprinted in Real World Economic Review (97), https://rwer.wordpress.com/2021/09/23.
Michael Hudson’s new book, The Destiny of Civilization, will be published by CounterPunch Books next month.
Prof. Hudson is Chief Economic Advisor to the Reform Task Force Latvia (RTFL). Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Killing the Host (2015) Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971). For more of his writing check out his website: http://michael-hudson.com.
The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
