In these World Cup days, it is easy to see a U.S. Supreme Court's decision as a decisive financiers' goal scored against Argentina, but the game isn't over. The court let stand a lower court judgment requiring Argentina to pay $1.3 billion to creditors means different things to different people, but it is actually the human writ small.
For Argentina, and Argentines I know, it's a disaster that causes anxiety. Among Americans, most of whom are completely unaware of the news, those who are up on the events are scratching their heads: what are Argentines complaining about, didn't they borrow the money?
The International Monetary Fund has taken a position of concern about the possible repercussions well beyond the republic of the Southern Cone.
It does not take great theological acumen to realize that from the point of view of the Argentine pope this is an injustice. And it is. The Argentina bad debt was wrongly acquired. Worse, those who will suffer will be children without a meal at school, their teachers who may not get paid and otherwise needy people who never got the least benefit from the loans.
The debt doesn't just go back to the year in which the Argentine peso rapidly lost two thirds of its value overnight (when Argentines say "2001" they mean this event, not September 11). It goes back much earlier. There were the abysmal governments by military officers who borrowed to buy useless weapons (and certainly to fund their retirements) and at least one subsequent civil government (that of Carlos Menem), which essentially carried out a monetary scam, peso parity with the dollar.
To complicate matters, this is not fair in even for those of us who live in the wealthy First World. These investment pools are not just for millionaires (I mean, billionaires), men who fit the image of the fat Monopoly man with a top hat and cigar. These funds are freely sold to the common middle-class citizen who has some put away a little something for old age or medical expenses. This man or woman also had nothing to do with Argentine governments' waste.
Moreover, the Supreme Court didn't actually rule against Argentina. Rather, the justices simply declined to hear the case, without explanation as is common in most such petitions. And, actually, I don't see a legal issue in this matter. The bonds were developed and sold in accordance with current laws and their constitutionality is not in question, which is what the high court judges.
In Argentine eyes, the move will be seen as part of U.S. foreign policy, but Supreme Court justices cannot be removed unless they are charged with serious wrongdoing and their decisions can not be modified or President Obama, or Congress.
So it's not an American "trick." Nor a goal by a foreign soccer team. It is undoubtedly the result of a sad story, one very well known in Latin America. National leaders have been very bad, there have been too many dictators and even democracies have been undemocratic.
As to consequences, there are few countries that historically have been able to escape their debts as tried by Argentina under Presidents Nestor and Cristina Kirchner. Greece is trying today (using the Argentine "model," which some say is merely a bad example).
When someone does not pay a debt, he is considered bad debtor and the cost of borrowing goes up for the debtor because the risk of loss is higher. All loans follow this pattern going back to the Church's abandonment of its traditional condemnation of usury, a fact that coincided with the rise of Italian banking in the Renaissance (and ecclesiastical money needs for monumental works such as St. Peter's Basilica in Rome).
The great historical exception was Russia. In 1917, Lenin refused repay foreign debt (also internal debt, but that's another story), arguing that the debt belonged to tsars and not the people. He got as a response a military intervention by Great Britain, United States and other creditor countries from 1918 to 1920.
The Soviet Union won milityarily, but the nation was an economic pariah until the fall of the Communist Party. The ruble ceased to be convertible currency and Russia could not buy anything on the world market without paying for it with hard currency obtained through exports. However, the USSR had vast internal resources and made use of them to survive.
Partly in preparation for the eventuality of such an isolation the Kirchner governments have restricted and controlled trade and monetary exchange, a move that may have seemed crazy to anyone who did not consider the default problem. Like Russia, Argentina is one of the few countries in the world that is physically self-sufficient: it has enough food to feed all of Europe, let alone merely 40 million Argentines, plus it has oil, minerals and untold natural raw materials and industries.
It's not entirely insane to think that, with doors closed to external funding, Argentina must find a way to survive on its own.
But of course, for the IMF, which bears the responsibility the debt of all, this situation is a potential global disaster. The international economy depends on a degree of cooperation between all people, rich and poor, creditors and debtors.
Indeed, human beings are not independent and autonomous. We are born thanks to the love of our parents (in the best cases) or instinct, but not on our own. We survive at least the first 10 years thanks to someone who feeds, dresses and shelters us.
Human societies bear a resemblance to individuals. We all depend on each other. The owner of factory depends on workers and vice versa. Sellers on buyers. Professionals on those who don't have their specialized knowledge, and vice versa.
Societies also need one another. Think of Colombian Coffee, Brazilian bananas, Argentine beef, Sri Lanka's tea, Chilean copper and Venezuelan oil. Consider the cultural diversity that enriches us all: what would we read without Tolstoy, Mafoud, Cortázar or Naipaul? What would we listen to without Beethoven or Menuchin?
In short, this is one of those times when you have to wear the uniform of the human team. In fact, I think that's what everyone with the power of persuasion in this matter will wear. If not, we all lose.
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Friday, May 30, 2014
Europe is committing suicide again; we should let them
The Europeans tried to commit suicide beginning 100 years ago with what Churchill called a 30 years conflict with a long truce (that included the Stalin purges and the Spanish Civil War)—easily 150 million dead. Now, with these recent European Union elections, they're saying they want to do it again.
I say, let them.
Twice, the United States stepped into centuries of European ethnic and religious hatred leading to savagery of all kinds—a fair amount of it inflicted on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the form of colonialism.
We rescued France, which effectively lost both world wars. We gave the Germans the means to rebuild themselves (unlike the Soviets, who took everything that wasn't nailed down back to Mother Russia, where their incompetence could destroy German machinery better). The Marshall Plan and the U.S. nuclear umbrella allowed western Europe the longest and most widely felt prosperity they had ever known.
Yet, ever since the U.S.-Soviet bipolar world ended, the European uglies have been surfacing. The practice of "ethnic cleansing" took the world back to the Holocaust. The hatred of immigrants took the world back to Kipling's "white man's burden."
Their mishandling of the economic crisis, which may have started in United States but rippled through Europe thanks to European banks that eagerly overinvested in junk bonds, has now delivered Europe to levels of suffering not seen since the Great Depression.
True to their script, the Europeans are goosestepping back to fascism, austerity (for the many—not the politicians, not the bankers). The right-wingers, in classic capitalist self-contradiction, have run for and won seats in a useless electoral body (the European Parliament) that they want to implode from within—presumably to die in the ruins with it. Hurray!
Russia is dreaming of empire, France wants Napoleon back (Britain presumably wants Nelson back to defeat Napoleon again). Crimea, not heard of since Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" in the 19th century, is back in the newspapers—even though newspapers are on the verge of disappearing.
The Europeans are crazy and they deserve everything they choose to inflict on themselves.
I say this as a descendant of Europeans, but of the group of the few plucky Europeans who had the good sense to leave and try to start something better on the western shores of the Atlantic. We may not have succeeded—and some of our dumber cousins are trying to undo the democratic experiment.
At least, we knew not to repeat history. Of course, our own Mark Twain told us about the repetition in his famous aphorism: "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
I say, let them.
Twice, the United States stepped into centuries of European ethnic and religious hatred leading to savagery of all kinds—a fair amount of it inflicted on the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America in the form of colonialism.
We rescued France, which effectively lost both world wars. We gave the Germans the means to rebuild themselves (unlike the Soviets, who took everything that wasn't nailed down back to Mother Russia, where their incompetence could destroy German machinery better). The Marshall Plan and the U.S. nuclear umbrella allowed western Europe the longest and most widely felt prosperity they had ever known.
Yet, ever since the U.S.-Soviet bipolar world ended, the European uglies have been surfacing. The practice of "ethnic cleansing" took the world back to the Holocaust. The hatred of immigrants took the world back to Kipling's "white man's burden."
Their mishandling of the economic crisis, which may have started in United States but rippled through Europe thanks to European banks that eagerly overinvested in junk bonds, has now delivered Europe to levels of suffering not seen since the Great Depression.
True to their script, the Europeans are goosestepping back to fascism, austerity (for the many—not the politicians, not the bankers). The right-wingers, in classic capitalist self-contradiction, have run for and won seats in a useless electoral body (the European Parliament) that they want to implode from within—presumably to die in the ruins with it. Hurray!
Russia is dreaming of empire, France wants Napoleon back (Britain presumably wants Nelson back to defeat Napoleon again). Crimea, not heard of since Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade" in the 19th century, is back in the newspapers—even though newspapers are on the verge of disappearing.
The Europeans are crazy and they deserve everything they choose to inflict on themselves.
I say this as a descendant of Europeans, but of the group of the few plucky Europeans who had the good sense to leave and try to start something better on the western shores of the Atlantic. We may not have succeeded—and some of our dumber cousins are trying to undo the democratic experiment.
At least, we knew not to repeat history. Of course, our own Mark Twain told us about the repetition in his famous aphorism: "History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes."
Monday, April 28, 2014
All Hail St. Karol Wojtyla, Patron Saint of Priestly Pedophiles!
Jorge Bergoglio, aka Pope Francis, has sold out. For the 30 (million?) pieces of silver from tourism and holy trinkets that the Vatican is surely to reap, he has put on a spectacle sainting two popes in an unscrupulous and totally unnecessary way.
The Roncalli-Wojtyla compromise—meaning the balancing of the canonization as saints of John XXIII, the "good pope" beloved by many reform-minded people, with John Paul II, every conservative Catholic's favorite ecclesiastical fascist—has been in the works for some time. It's one of those deals favored by politicians, union leaders and the Mafia: a little bit for everyone, not enough for any one constituency and, most importantly, no power base gets rolled.
It's the sort of thing I would have expected from his predecessor, Pope Nazinger, the bemoaner at Auschwitz of how the poor Germans suffered (see here).
To be fair, Guiseppe Roncalli, aka John XXIII, could be called a good man. During the Holocaust, while he was a Vatican diplomat in Turkey, he personally forged hundreds of baptismal certificates to put under the protection of the pope a boatload of children being shipped to certain death by the Nazis. Years later, at the outset of the Second Vatican Council, he gathered the periti, or experts, in his office (one of them was Nazinger) giving them the warning: "the Church is not a museum."
Roncalli was an astute man of faith. He wanted to a faith that was alive. His view meshed with that of historian of religion Yaroslav Pelikan: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Still, was he a saint?
No such doubt arises with the Polish pope, Karol Wojtyla, who was from the outset the false John Paul. The original one, John Paul I, died in still suspicious circumstances at the onset of a money laundering scandal affecting the Vatican Bank. He had adopted the papal name John Paul as a way of signalling that he would steer a middle course between the openness of John XXIII and the retrenchment of successor Paul VI. Instead, JP1 died, and Wojtyla was elected, after which he effectively closed every window Vatican II had opened.
Back came the enormous rugs under which to sweep the corruption of the clergy. Wojtyla was especially protective of one Marcial Maciel, founder of a religious order called the Legionnaires of Christ (tip: mistrust religious groups with military or monarchical names). Maciel was found to have operated what was essentially a seminarian man-on-boy rape mill.
As John Paul II's press secretary, an Opus Dei operative in the Vatican, put it, Wojtyla could not imagine such a thing because of "the purity of his thought." Right! A man who lived through World War II, precisely where some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust took place, could not imagine pedophile or sex-abusing priests.
I know for a fact altar boys knew about "funny priests" for at least the past half century. Also that particular U.S. bishops knew such a thing was going. One of them thought he was making a joke when he remarked behind closed doors and in my presence, "We have to make sure seminary rectors don't screw the Hispanic seminarians." That double meaning was intended was shown by his own laughter and that of his peers.
You're going to tell me the pope at that time did not know? I have nice bridge for you in Brooklyn at a bargain price.
The Vatican may not care about raped altar boys and the Roman Curia may not give a damn about Pope Francis' the blessed poor, but they sure care about tourism to Rome. So I learned when I received the one direct contact from the Vatican while I worked for the U.S. conference of bishops quite some time ago.
They sent an officious little man to see if I could help organize a "pilgrimage." Johann Tetzel, the infamous seller of indulgences who enraged Martin Luther, put the religious marketing in slightly different but no less mercenary terms: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
They're still selling indulgences of a sort in Rome. This week it has been the massive orgy of tourism and saint swag selling brought on by the canonization, or sainting, of Roncalli and Wojtyla.
This is not good Christian leadership. It's a bad imitation of Elmer Gantry: put on a show for the fools who will always go for one (and sell them travel and baubles). All "for God." Because God needs your pilgrimages and your shopping for saint cards.
Referencing the Vatican's own purported beliefs, sainthood merely means that a dead person is living in the presence of God. Add to that the theology in the Nicene Creed and you get "the communion of saints," in which those in heaven are believed (at least by Catholics) to be able to hear from and intercede for the living here on Earth.
This is what the whole Catholic saint shtick is all about. Johnny is incurably sick, they pray to St. Holyguy. So St. H goes to God, "Hey, Creator of All, Johnny's sick, how about you slip him one of those superduper aspirins of yours and make him better?" Presto! A miracle through the influence of St. H!
The notion of revering certain Christians goes back to when they were killed for their beliefs during the Roman Empire. To be a martyr meant to be a witness to the faith to heroic proportions. Vatican press releases to the contrary, neither Roncalli nor Wojtyla quite qualify. OK, but not all saints on the church calendar were martyrs.
Indeed, my favorite children's hymn in the Episcopal Hymn Book begins "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God":
I mean, I'm not planning to issue an encyclical letter any time soon. Or ride around a 500-year-old piazza in a converted golf cart. O wear white dresses and a white yarmulke. What does a pope have to do with the problems and moral dilemmas facing thee and me?
Here's where Francis the rock-star pope has tripped up in his marketing of a faith we all now know he completely lacks. Pity. He had me fooled.
The Roncalli-Wojtyla compromise—meaning the balancing of the canonization as saints of John XXIII, the "good pope" beloved by many reform-minded people, with John Paul II, every conservative Catholic's favorite ecclesiastical fascist—has been in the works for some time. It's one of those deals favored by politicians, union leaders and the Mafia: a little bit for everyone, not enough for any one constituency and, most importantly, no power base gets rolled.
It's the sort of thing I would have expected from his predecessor, Pope Nazinger, the bemoaner at Auschwitz of how the poor Germans suffered (see here).
To be fair, Guiseppe Roncalli, aka John XXIII, could be called a good man. During the Holocaust, while he was a Vatican diplomat in Turkey, he personally forged hundreds of baptismal certificates to put under the protection of the pope a boatload of children being shipped to certain death by the Nazis. Years later, at the outset of the Second Vatican Council, he gathered the periti, or experts, in his office (one of them was Nazinger) giving them the warning: "the Church is not a museum."
Roncalli was an astute man of faith. He wanted to a faith that was alive. His view meshed with that of historian of religion Yaroslav Pelikan: "Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living." Still, was he a saint?
No such doubt arises with the Polish pope, Karol Wojtyla, who was from the outset the false John Paul. The original one, John Paul I, died in still suspicious circumstances at the onset of a money laundering scandal affecting the Vatican Bank. He had adopted the papal name John Paul as a way of signalling that he would steer a middle course between the openness of John XXIII and the retrenchment of successor Paul VI. Instead, JP1 died, and Wojtyla was elected, after which he effectively closed every window Vatican II had opened.
Back came the enormous rugs under which to sweep the corruption of the clergy. Wojtyla was especially protective of one Marcial Maciel, founder of a religious order called the Legionnaires of Christ (tip: mistrust religious groups with military or monarchical names). Maciel was found to have operated what was essentially a seminarian man-on-boy rape mill.
As John Paul II's press secretary, an Opus Dei operative in the Vatican, put it, Wojtyla could not imagine such a thing because of "the purity of his thought." Right! A man who lived through World War II, precisely where some of the worst crimes of the Holocaust took place, could not imagine pedophile or sex-abusing priests.
I know for a fact altar boys knew about "funny priests" for at least the past half century. Also that particular U.S. bishops knew such a thing was going. One of them thought he was making a joke when he remarked behind closed doors and in my presence, "We have to make sure seminary rectors don't screw the Hispanic seminarians." That double meaning was intended was shown by his own laughter and that of his peers.
You're going to tell me the pope at that time did not know? I have nice bridge for you in Brooklyn at a bargain price.
The Vatican may not care about raped altar boys and the Roman Curia may not give a damn about Pope Francis' the blessed poor, but they sure care about tourism to Rome. So I learned when I received the one direct contact from the Vatican while I worked for the U.S. conference of bishops quite some time ago.
They sent an officious little man to see if I could help organize a "pilgrimage." Johann Tetzel, the infamous seller of indulgences who enraged Martin Luther, put the religious marketing in slightly different but no less mercenary terms: "As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs."
They're still selling indulgences of a sort in Rome. This week it has been the massive orgy of tourism and saint swag selling brought on by the canonization, or sainting, of Roncalli and Wojtyla.
This is not good Christian leadership. It's a bad imitation of Elmer Gantry: put on a show for the fools who will always go for one (and sell them travel and baubles). All "for God." Because God needs your pilgrimages and your shopping for saint cards.
Referencing the Vatican's own purported beliefs, sainthood merely means that a dead person is living in the presence of God. Add to that the theology in the Nicene Creed and you get "the communion of saints," in which those in heaven are believed (at least by Catholics) to be able to hear from and intercede for the living here on Earth.
This is what the whole Catholic saint shtick is all about. Johnny is incurably sick, they pray to St. Holyguy. So St. H goes to God, "Hey, Creator of All, Johnny's sick, how about you slip him one of those superduper aspirins of yours and make him better?" Presto! A miracle through the influence of St. H!
The notion of revering certain Christians goes back to when they were killed for their beliefs during the Roman Empire. To be a martyr meant to be a witness to the faith to heroic proportions. Vatican press releases to the contrary, neither Roncalli nor Wojtyla quite qualify. OK, but not all saints on the church calendar were martyrs.
Indeed, my favorite children's hymn in the Episcopal Hymn Book begins "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God":
I sing a song of the saints of God,Then it goes on to say that "one was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green" and later "one was a soldier, and one was a priest, and one was slain by a fierce wild beast." But my favorite part comes in the third verse:
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.
You can meet them in school,And here's where Saints Roncalli and Woytyla make absolutely no sense as models. Who in this day and age can realistically draw for personal moral example from the deeds and circumstances of the chief gerontocrat of a worldwide religion of about 1 billion lemmings?
on the street, in the store,
in church, by the sea, in the house next door;
they are saints of God, whether rich or poor,
and I mean to be one too.
I mean, I'm not planning to issue an encyclical letter any time soon. Or ride around a 500-year-old piazza in a converted golf cart. O wear white dresses and a white yarmulke. What does a pope have to do with the problems and moral dilemmas facing thee and me?
Here's where Francis the rock-star pope has tripped up in his marketing of a faith we all now know he completely lacks. Pity. He had me fooled.
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