Tag: history

Debt-Cancellation in Ancient Greece

Jesus said debts should be forgiven. So did the ancient Greeks, as Rev. Matt points out.

One of the most consistent arguments made against the policy of society wide debt forgiveness is this: “You need a Christian or believing (in the sense of ancient Israelite) nation for it to work. It cannot work in a nation like ours because it is non-Christian, so either people will not go for it, or they will abuse it and it will not work.” Almost every time I have made a case for debt forgiveness somebody makes this argument. But it is a fallacious one, both historically and logically.

It is fallacious logically because there is nothing inherent to many pagan philosophies saying that debt cannot be forgiven. Forgiveness, liberty and debt cancellation were all concepts that existed before either Israel or Christianity had graced the face of the earth. Indeed, the most ancient usage of words that can be translated as “liberty” were pagan words referring to debt forgiveness.

It is fallacious historically, because we have countless examples throughout history of ancient societies practicing debt forgiveness. From the ancient Sumerians, Akkadians, and other Near Eastern societies, on through to Greek city states and the Roman public, we see that debt forgiveness was either practiced, debated, or offered in various contexts. In fact, many ancient pagan leaders saw it, correctly, as an effective means of shoring up popular support for their reign, and limiting the damage their nobles could do to both their reign and their society.

Many examples of debt forgiveness in pagan societies can be given, here is one from ancient Athens,

“Now later writers observe that the ancient Athenians used to cover up the ugliness of things with auspicious and kindly terms, giving them polite and endearing names. Thus they called harlots “companions”, taxes “contributions”, the garrison of a city its “guard”, and the prison a “chamber”. But Solon was the first, it would seem, to use this device, when he called his cancelling of debts a “disburdenment”. For the first of his public measures was an enactment that existing debts should be remitted, and that in future no one should lend money on the person of a borrower.”

Debt enforcement and the refusal to cancel fraudulent debts such as student loans is neither moral nor Christian. Precisely how is it “progress” for a modern society to be observably less moral and less forgiving than ancient pagan societies?

DISCUSS ON SG

The False History of Constantinople

The chronological revisionist historian Gunnar Heinsohn died in February. Among his intriguing theories is that the foundation of Constantinople by the Emperor Constantine is a temporal exaggeration constructed to provide additional support the historical primacy of the Bishop of Rome in line with the fictitious Donation of Constantine.

Eusebius’s Life of Constantine appears to be part of the popes’ industry of counterfeit history. The centerpiece of that program was the Donation of Constantine. As I wrote in my latest article, “it is no exaggeration to say that European history was, to a large extent, shaped—and doomed—by this single papal forgery.” This false Donation was the keystone of a great historical hoax by which Rome claimed universal supremacy over Constantinople. Significantly it was not until the mid-15th century, when Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, that the Donation was recognized as a forgery. As I argued in “A Byzantine View of Russia and Europe,” it is important for the future of Christendom that we in the West recognize that our point of view on this centuries-old rivalry has been shaped by papal propaganda.

The deception, I came to suspect, has been so thorough and systematic that it has tampered with the chronology—the ADN of history, so to speak—, resulting in a historical sequence of events from Rome to Constantinople which has never ceased to puzzle historians. Consider for example that, according to Ferdinand Lot, a respected pioneer in the study of Late Antiquity, “the foundation of Constantinople is a political enigma,” for which Lot finds no other explanation than: “Constantinople was born from the whim of a despot in the grip of an intense religious exaltation.

New Rome, in his mind, was to be all Roman. He transported part of the Senate there and had palaces built for the old families he attracted there. The laws were all Roman. The language of the Court, of the offices was Latin. … And here is what happened: Constantinople became a Greek city again. Two centuries after its foundation, the descendants of the Romans transplanted into the pars Orientis had forgotten the language of their fathers, no longer knew anything of Latin literature, considered Italy and the West as a half-barbaric region. By changing their language they had changed their soul. Constantine thought he was regenerating the Roman Empire. Without suspecting it, he founded the Empire so aptly called “Byzantine”.[13]Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde antique (1927), Albin Michel, 1989, p. 49-50.

My suspicion that this scenario is unrealistic has kept growing as I learned, among many other things listed here, that Constantine was a native of the Balkans who had never set foot in Rome before he conquered it from Maxentius. Nor had his predecessor Diocletian, who was also from the Balkans and resided in Nicodemia, on the east shore of the Bosphorus, at a time when Rome was “a dead city.”[14]Ibid., p. 2. (Ferdinand Lot, La Fin du monde antique (1927), Albin Michel, 1989, p. 49-50.) And isn’t it awkward that that Romans saw themselves as descendants of immigrants from Asia Minor, a belief illustrated by Virgil’s Aeneid and by the very name of Rome (Romos is a Greek word meaning “strong”). One source I hadn’t mentioned is the Latin historian Herodian (c. 170-240), who tells a revealing story about the Romans’ attachment to the goddess Cybelle, “mother of the gods”, and their sense of kinship to the Phrygians from Anatolia:

When Roman affairs prospered, they say that an oracle prophesied that the empire would endure and soar to greater heights if the goddess were brought from Pessinus to Rome. The Romans therefore sent an embassy to Phrygia and asked for the statue; they easily got it by reminding the Phrygians of their kinship and by recalling to them that Aeneas the Phrygian was the ancestor of the Romans. (Book 1, chapter 10)

One of the most puzzling issue is the enduring controversy about the use of the term “Romans” (Rhomaioi) by which the “Byzantines” named themselves, and this controversy is symptomatic of a deeper cognitive dissonance. Let me illustrate this with a recent book by Greek-American historian Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium (2019). The author takes issue with the habit among Byzantinist scholars to underestimate the significance of the Byzantines’ self-identity as “Romans”. In reaction to one typical statement by those he calls “denialists” that, despite their “shrunken circumstances,” the Byzantines “found it difficult to abandon their sense of being Rhomaioi, ‘Romans’,”[15]Andrew Louth, Greek East and Latin West: The Church AD 681-1071, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007, p. 20. Kaldellis writes: “This sounds instead like a displaced metaphor for what is going on in modern scholarship: We would like to abandon the term Roman in dealing with the Byzantines, but we cannot quite do so, because it is written all over the sources.”[16]Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Belknap Press, 2019, kindle l. 629-641 .

Kaldellis shows that the Byzantines understood their Romanness in an ethnic sense: in Constantinople and in its surrounding provinces lived a majority of “Romans” together with minorities such as Slavs, Rus’, Jews, Armenians, Persians, Arabs, Franks, Bulgars, Goths, who were citizens of the Empire, but were not regarded as “Romans”. Having convincingly established that “the Romans of Byzantium saw themselves as an ethnic group or nation,” Kaldellis asks:

Did the Byzantine Romans believe that they were collectively descended from the ancient Romans too? / This is harder to document. It probably formed only a vague aspect of Romanness in Byzantium; I doubt many people thought about it in explicit terms. But it was presupposed in many discursive practices. Merely by calling themselves Romans they asserted a continuity between themselves and the ancient Romans, whose default, unreflexive mode in traditional societies was generic.[17]Ibid., l. 1489.
(Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Belknap Press, 2019, kindle l. 629-641 .)

Kaldellis’ insistence that Byzantines were implicitly referring to their ancestors from Italy when calling themselves “Romans”, coupled with his inability to give any evidence of it, shows that it is an unsubstantiated presupposition. A mong the eight “snapshots” Kaldellis provides to “highlight the ethnic aspects of Romanness in Byzantium,” none of them indicate that Byzantines thought they descended from Italian or even Western immigrants, and three of them indicate the exact opposite:

  • In a story from the Miracles of Saint Demetrios of Thessalonike, we hear about people captured in the Balkans by the Avars and resettled in Pannonia, on the south bank to the Danube. Although they married local women, sixty years later, “each child received from his father the ancestral traditions of the Romans and the impulse of their genos,” and “this large people longed to return to its ancestral cities.” By their ancestral cities, these “Romans” meant the Greek-speaking Balkans.[18]Ibid., l. 217-229. (Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Belknap Press, 2019, kindle l. 629-641 .)
  • In 1246, the population of Melnik wanted to be ruled by the Roman basileus rather that the Bulgarian tsar because, they said, “we all originate in Philippopolis and we are pure Romans when it comes to our genos.” Philippopolis is a Greek city founded by Philip II of Macedon, about 200 miles west of Constantinople, in today’s Bulgaria.[19]Ibid., l. 288. (Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Belknap Press, 2019, kindle l. 629-641 .)
  • Basileios I (867-886) settled people from Herakleia in his newly founded city of Kallipolis (Gallipoli) on the coast of southern Italy. A twelfth-century addition to the history of Ioannes Skylitzes comments: “This explains why that city still uses Roman customs and dress and a thoroughly Roman social order, down to this day.” Herakleia, or Heraclea Pontica, is a Greek city on the Black Sea coast, about 200 miles east of Constantinople.[20]Ibid., l. 883. (Anthony Kaldellis, Romanland: Ethnicity and Empire in Byzantium, Belknap Press, 2019, kindle l. 629-641 .)

In the first two instances, we have people equating their being Roman to their origin in the Balkans, not in Italy. In the third instance, we have people living in Italy calling themselves Romans specifically because they originate from Asia Minor—and presumably regarding their Italian neighbors as non-Romans.

So Kaldellis reads in his sources the exact opposite of what they say, because he takes as an unquestionable postulate that “Roman” means “from Rome, Italy”, or in a vaguer sense, of Western descent. If he had been consistent and unprejudiced in his quest for the ethnicity of the Byzantine Romans, he would have noticed that they referred to Italians not as Romans, but as Latins. (He should also have taken note that even the inhabitants of today’s Greece, from Late Antiquity throughout the Middle Ages, called themselves either “Romans” or “Hellenes”, never “Greeks”.[21]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Greece)

Kaldellis himself documents that the Byzantines not only called themselves Romans, but called their Greek language Romaic: “for most of their history the Byzantines did not think that their language made them Greek; to the contrary, their ethnicity as Romans made their language ‘Roman,’ or Romaic.” Still, Kaldellis accepts the premise that “they were Romans who had lost touch with the Latin tradition,” and concludes, “The Byzantines had two Roman languages, one the language of their ancestors (Latin) and another their language in the present (Romaic),” without even trying to solve the mystery of how they forsook their ancestors’ language, despite their strong ethnic sense of identity.[22]Kaldellis, Romanland, op. cit., l. 2136-2226. Kaldellis, in l. 2088, adopts the dubious claim, made by Carolina Cupane, that when Byzantines mention “the language of the Romans”, they sometimes meant Latin rather than Greek, but then he only provides evidence to the contrary.

These embarrassing facts, and many more mentioned in previous articles, point to a very fundamental misunderstanding which can easily be traced back to a sleight of hand by the medieval papacy, who tried to copyright the name “Roman” by erasing its eastern origin, and, with a fabricated legend of saint Peter, usurp Constantinople’s prestige as being the cradle and the capital of Christian civilization. The mystery of the original “Romans” ties up with some other historical mysteries such as the real ethnic origin of the Goths, or with a possibly related occultation of the historical role of the Slavs in Western civilization, theories which have been brought up in interesting comments under my previous articles, but about which I have yet to get a sufficient grasp.

Sticking to the controversy of who were the original Romans, I was more than intrigued when I learned that, based on stratigraphy alone, Heinsohn argued that the chronological sequence between Rome and Constantinople has been falsified. (Anatoly Fomenko makes the same claim based on a different and questionable method of investigation, arguing for a “Roman-Byzantine shift” of 333/360 years.) This is illustrated by the sequence of construction—from bottom to top—of the so-called Arch of Constantine in Rome, which is so inconsistent with the standard chronology that scholars assume that the three top stages were fitted with reliefs looted from earlier but unknown imperial buildings. This illustration, reproduced by Heinsohn in his very last article, “Constantine the Great in 1st Century AD Stratigraphy,” dated February 2023, is from the Wikipedia page. The temporal paradox is also illustrated by the aqueduct built by Hadrian (117-138 AD) in Byzantium. “This is considered a mystery,” Heinsohn notes, “because Byzantium’s actual founder, Constantine the Great (305-337 AD), did not expand the city until 200 years later.” In Heinsohn’s corrected chronology, “Hadrian’s aqueduct carries water to a flourishing city 100 years after Constantine, and not to a supposed wasteland centuries earlier. The mystery disappears. When Justinian renovates the great Basilica Cistern, which gathers water from Hadrian’s aqueduct, he does so not 400 years, but less than 100 years after it was built.”

I don’t know enough to have an opinion on this particular chronological revisionism, but given what I know about the Nicene Creed vs the Niceno-Constanipolitan Creed and my opinion that Daniel Rohl’s New Egyptian Chronology (despite its obvious flaws) is at least a step in the right direction, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it turned out that the establishment of the Byzantine Empire turns out to be rather more complicated than it is presently described.

It certainly strikes me as very unlikely that such an obvious strategic location would be essentially unsettled prior to the Roman Emperor’s inexplicable decision to move his capitol city.

And I am very, very dubious about the “new” empires that have appeared in precisely the same place, albeit a different time, than the “missing” empires of the historical past. After all, if there is one thing we have absolutely had burned into our minds these last few years, it is that the knowledge of the current experts is not necessarily to be trusted over the traditional wisdom of the past.

DISCUSS ON SG

Project Castaliaberg

Okay, so we’re definitely going to need a better name. Anyhow, my recent research into history books has taught me how inaccessible even some fairly basic public domain history books published in the 19th century already are, in that they’re not on Gutenberg, they’re not on Unz, they’re not actually on Google Books, and they’re not available to anyone who isn’t capable of compiling and utilizing a custom Hathi Trust scraper that won’t always work anyhow.

We have a relationship with a professional scanning service that will scan and OCR books for a reasonable price, and I was thinking about making use of them for three old books I recently acquired which are not readily available in ebook. Initially, we’ll make these high-quality ebooks available to History, Library, UATV, and Arkhaven subscribers, with the idea that if there is sufficient interest and popularity, we can set the project up in its own right with full access for the public down the road.

What do you think? Is this of any interest to you? Do you think it is a worthwhile endeavor? The idea is not to replace Gutenberg or the other digital book repositories, but rather to fill in the blanks that they are missing for one reason or another even in the event they don’t become too converged to be useful.

DISCUSS ON SG

There is No Thucydides Trap

And WWIII has already begun, so Ron Unz is incorrect to imagine that the lunacies of the neocons have saved the USA from the inevitable war with China et al.

The reality is that over the last year the Neocon-orchestrated war against Russia has collapsed any American hopes of forming a strong anti-China coalition.

For generations, India has had a troubled relationship with China and just a couple of years ago a bitter border skirmish had prompted a national ban on TikTok. But India and Russia had been strong allies throughout the Cold War and most of India’s military equipment is still Russian, while it has also benefitted from a very lucrative trade in refining and selling sanctioned Russian oil. So India has now clearly moved towards the Russia-China bloc.

In recent years, China has become the largest market for Saudi oil, while Russia is the other leading member of the crucial OPEC+ cartel. With both those countries joined together in a tight embrace, a Saudi shift away from its longstanding American alliance was hardly so surprising, but it still generated shockwaves.

Japan’s energy needs have led it to begin importing Russian oil despite the Western campaign of sanctions, so even our strongest ally in the Far East may be starting to reconsider its options.

In his 2014 analysis, Mearsheimer had logically presented Russia, India, and Japan as the three most important members of the balancing coalition that America would create against China, but we have now lost two or possibly all three of those countries.

The First World War lasted so long and cost so many millions of lives because the two contending coalitions were evenly matched, with the rising power of Germany so immensely strong that an alliance of the next three European powers—Britain, Russia, and France—could barely fight it to a draw over four years, and only American intervention finally turned the tide at the end. As Niall Ferguson cogently argued in The Pity of War, a swift German victory would have essentially resulted in the creation of the EU a century earlier and with negligible bloodshed.

But if the British government of the time had been so mad as to deliberately provoke a conflict with Russia on the eve of that war, thereby driving the Czar into the arms of his German cousin, the resulting realignment would have ensured a quick victory for the Kaiser, or more likely a German-led coalition too strong to even be opposed.

As envisioned by Mearsheimer, an America allied with Russia, India, Japan, and the NATO countries would have constituted a better than even global match for China, thereby allowing a highly aggressive American policy in the South China Sea. But Neocon blunders have now produced an entirely different correlation of forces, one so unfavorable to our own country that any armed conflict has become much less likely.

In his book, Allison considered a long list of geopolitical transitions over the last 500 years, and one of the few that avoided any bloodshed occurred when American power surpassed that of Britain early in the twentieth century. As he tells the story, by the time the British government considered challenging American dominance in the Western Hemisphere, our country had already grown too powerful to resist and their military leaders vetoed the idea. Lord Salisbury, the British Prime Minister, later wistfully reflected that if his country had intervened in the Civil War decades earlier and helped split the U.S. into rival, hostile nations, matters might have later played out very differently.

In similar manner, I think the developments of the last year have fostered the growth of a China-aligned global coalition far too powerful for America to directly confront, with even our subservient military leaders probably recognizing that reality.

Ron Unz is a smart and reasonably well-read individual. But, first of all, there is no such thing as a “Thucydides Trap”. It’s nothing more than a term coined by a Clown World pseudointellectual designed to capture the media’s attention and make other pseudos feel smart when stating the obvious, and it doesn’t even make sense, as anyone who compares the positions of Athens-Sparta to USA-China will immediately recognize.

“The front of the paperback edition was packed with a remarkable ten pages of glowing endorsements by a long list of the West’s most prestigious public figures and intellectuals, ranging from Joe Biden to Henry Kissinger to Gen. David Petraeus to Klaus Schwab.”

The “Thucydides Trap” is just another form of historical squid ink meant to obscure the observable patterns of the Empire That Never Ended from those capable of recognizing them. The only utility of the term is that one knows better than to take seriously anyone using it.

Second, China has been at war with the USA since 1999. It has been at war with Clown World since 2015. The fact that this war has been “unrestricted”, to use the Chinese word, rather than “hot” is irrelevant with regards to the possibility that the war might be avoided. But war that has already begun cannot, by definition, be avoided.

The historical truth is that empires always end. But other than a vague sense of discomfort, anomie, and being past the peak glory days, the citizens of the empire seldom realize that the imperial age has ended until it is long gone.

DISCUSS ON SG

Hoaxacaustian Exposed

A Jew named Joseph Hirt who has spent years lecturing American schoolchildren about his experiences at Auschwitz now admits, after being threatened with exposure, that he was never there and those experiences are entirely fictional.

An Adamstown man who has claimed for many years that he escaped from Auschwitz now says he was never in the concentration camp and apologized for saying he was.

“I was wrong. I ask forgiveness,” Joseph Hirt, 91, wrote in a letter delivered to LNP Wednesday evening.

“I am writing today to apologize publicly for harm caused to anyone because of my inserting myself into the descriptions of life in Auschwitz. I was not a prisoner there. I did not intend to lessen or overshadow the events which truly happened there by falsely claiming to have been personally involved,” Hirt wrote.

“It wasn’t about me. I was wrong in using an untruth (my presence) in an attempt to enhance the important truth of the suffering and death of so many – not only Jewish people, but also others held in disdain by the Nazi movement. I was wrong. I ask forgiveness. I used poor judgment and faulty reasoning, risking a sullying of the truth I was trying to share.”

Hirt’s story was brought into question a few weeks ago by history teacher Andrew Reid, a New York man who was born and raised in Lancaster County.

Reid first questioned Hirt on April 15 when he attended a presentation in Lowville, New York, along with several of his students from South Lewis Central School District in Lewis County, New York.

He launched his own investigation, which culminated in a 25-page document he sent to media outlets and organizations that had written about or hosted Hirt, “unknowingly perpetuating his false claims to an even greater audience,” Reid said.

Reid challenged Hirt to apologize publicly and said that if he did not, he would petition the district attorneys in Lancaster and Lewis counties to launch a criminal investigation.

I expect the complete falsity of more of these hoaxes, including but not limited to the Bear & Eagle Cage, the Nazi Masturbation Machine, the Ballpoint Diary of Anne Frank’s Perverted Uncle, and the Flaming Rollercoaster of Death, to finally be admitted due to the fact that the one man who absolutely and unquestionably possesses all the historical facts and figures related to “the Holocaust” is Vladimir Putin.

Remember, my dear readers, which military liberated all of the “death camps” and which current nation is therefore now in possession of all of the meticulous German records of those camps.

DISCUSS ON SG

Explain it Like I’m Five

E.O Wilson had Richard Dawkins to explain his work to the masses. Apparently I have Skarn of the Razorforce to talk to the Bears, as he explains what the Tree of Woe and I have been pointing out about how the decline of the US military and NATO’s failure in Ukraine means the end of the USD-based Clown World economic system.

Can someone please explain to me like I am five as the real cause and effect of the recent TOW on VP? I can’t follow. It doesn’t make sense to a point where I can’t even ask a question.

Currencies have to be backed by something for them to be accepted. For the majority of history it has been precious metals. The US was on a gold standard but defaulted in 1933. WW2 gave the US the chance to become the global currency of choice due to holding the rest of the world’s gold. Thus Bretton woods agreement in 1944. However, the US continued to spend more than it earned, using credit to cover the difference. The rest of the world started asking for gold instead of dollars, coming to a head in 1971, when Nixon closed the gold window (ie no more exchanging foreigner held dollars for gold). To replace this, an agreement with the Saudis was reached to only allow the exchange of OPEC and Saudi oil in US Dollars, restoring the foreign demand for US dollars. The consequence was the US had to prevent oil from being traded in any other currency than USD.

However, between the constant USD printing and debt, making dollars less valuable to hold, the weaponization of the currency exchange and holdings system, and weakness of US is now allowing countries to bypass the USD, it’s all over but the tears, unless the US wins decisively in Ukraine and elsewhere, which doesn’t seem likely.

Thanks so much. it is the last part that I can’t follow, How is the weaponization of the currency allowing countries to bypass the USD?

The weaponization makes USD less valuable because foreign reserves held by countries can now be seized if the US doesn’t like your country’s policies. Such reserves are usually held in country of origin or close, aka Yen in Japan, to facilitate transactions. Or the SWIFT banking system. So stealing Russia’s USD and Euro reserves makes the carrot less attractive due to sovereign risk, at the same time the stick (US military interventions, sanctions, etc) is also weakening.

That’s a useful and reasonable summary that successfully gets the point across in a manner that most people should be able to understand despite the media’s best efforts to keep them in the dark. In support of these conclusions about the consequences of the US failure in Ukraine, it might be useful to read this recent observation by the Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran.

The US is no longer the power it once was, and has failed to rally the Arab world against Iran and curtail its nuclear program, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a speech to senior officials on Tuesday.

“Facts show that America was weaker under Obama’s administration than Bush’s administration. The US was weaker under Trump’s administration than the way it was under Obama’s administration. The US is weaker under [Joe Biden’s] administration than it was under Trump’s administration,” Khamenei proclaimed, according to Iran’s Tasnim news agency.

Khamenei noted that the US has failed to rally its Middle Eastern allies against Iran, declaring that “what has happened is the opposite.”

The Ayatollah went on to note the rise of several “anti-American” governments in Latin America, the declining importance of the dollar in global trade, the political chaos in Israel, and the diplomatic consequences of the EU “taking the brunt of the war” in Ukraine on Washington’s behalf as examples of the US’ waning influence.

By the way, the original Bear should be respected for doing the smart thing, and asking for a detailed explanation to help him understand the matter at hand rather than nodding, smiling, and pretending that he understood when he didn’t. Never forget that the difference between understanding a concept and having heard of its existence is greater than the difference between knowing about it and not knowing about it.

UPDATE: Nassim Nicholas Taleb isn’t too worried about the dollar’s status as the reserve currency… yet.

You will only start worrying about the dollar status as a reserve currency when you see long lines outside the Brazilian, Russian, Iranian, and Chinese consulates full of young professionals seeking immigration visas.

Of course, by then it will be too late. And there are already signs of smaller corporations establishing themselves in Russia and China, in particular, in preparation for the Great Bifurcation.

UPDATE: Start worrying.

About 300 German residents are ready to move to the Nizhny Novgorod region. By the end of 2023, this number of applicants can reach 1,000 people, said Olga Guseva, director of the department of external relations of the region. According to her, such activity is due to the fact that Germans see great potential in cooperation with the Nizhny Novgorod region in the automotive industry, construction, infrastructure development .Most of the people who want to relocate are specialists in the field of metalworking: welders, machine operators, technologists, as well as shipbuilding and the automotive industry.

DISCUSS ON SG

Contemplating De-dollarization

The Tree of Woe takes a victory lap concerning his prediction about the end of the US dollar hegemony:

In his novel Goldfinger, Ian Fleming famously said “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.” We’re well past three events. This is not a “trend”. This is a globally coordinated action against the petrodollar and there’s no mistaking what it means.

It means the Petrodollar System that has served as the bedrock of world finance since the 1970s is over.

It means I’ve been proven right even faster than I expected.

What is altogether depressing, yet not at all surprising, is how the press coverage of these shocking events has (a) utterly misunderstood their causality and (b) grossly underestimated their gravity. I’m going to use article over at VisualCapitalist.com as my punching bag because it so perfectly captures everything that’s wrong with our mainstream elite… Being either ignorant of or unwilling to acknowledge the petro-military basis of our financial order, VisualCapitalist.com then proceeds to misdiagnose the reason for the dollar’s precipitous decline, writing:

Concerned about America’s dominance over the global financial system and the country’s ability to ‘weaponize’ it, other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony…

They have entirely confused cause and effect. Other nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony since, well, since the dollar has been hegemonic. All prior “tests” have resulted in the destructing of whichever regime was performing the test. Ask Muammar Gaddafi how his gold dinar worked out.

As I documented in Running on Empty (now available as a book!), since 1971 America’s dominance over the global financial system has been based on America’s military dominance over the Middle East. Now that America’s military dominance has declined, athe country’s dominance over global finance has declined, too. Therefore, the honest way to report the news would be to say:

Unconcerned about America’s purported military dominance and tired of the country’s increasingly punitive attempts to ‘weaponize’ the dollar to make up for it, nations have been testing alternatives to reduce the dollar’s hegemony…

Because that is what is actually happening. Of course no one will say that.

And what will be the consequences of this global event? Our friends at VisualCapitalist.com assert:

Despite these movements, few expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon.

And they’re right. Very few experts expect to see the end of the dollar’s global sovereign status anytime soon. That’s because the majority of experts are too stupid to realize it’s already ended.

He’s absolutely right. It’s already over, and every single day, we’re seeing more countries taking steps to free themselves of the economic chains imposed by the petrodollar. The key, as the Tree of Woe repeatedly points out, is that the decline of the US military combined with the rise of the Chinese and Russian militaries, means that the nations of the world are free agents for the first time in seven decades.

As I pointed out in a recent Darkstream, the reason all the Clown World intellectuals declared the absolute necessity of winning the war in Ukraine, much to the confusion of the people of the USA and Europe who don’t understand why Ukraine matters when Afghanistan didn’t, is because Ukraine clearly shows the limits of US military power. And the whole system rested on the idea that any nation that attempted to evade the dollar tax would be punished with military invasion and regime change.

But the global superpower is no more. Everyone can see that the Empire has no army. Which means the nations are now free to buy and sell as they choose, in whatever medium of exchange they choose, rather than having to pay a tax to the US bankers on every single transaction. And the rapidity with which each of the steps taken by countries from Argentina to India, and from Brazil to Malaysia, indicates the eagerness with which the peoples of the world seek to free themselves from their dollar chains.

DISCUSS ON SG

Mailvox: Day One Interest

A Libraria subscriber inquires as to the reception of the new Castalia History series.

What has the day 1 interest been? Lots of subscribers?

I would say the first-day interest has been very encouraging. We are currently at 108 subscribers, which is very good because we estimate that the series will need least 120 on an ongoing basis in order to support itself going forward. This number is relatively small because we are piggybacking on the infrastructure necessary for operating the Library, but it’s good that the series will be able to support itself, and eventually, become a net contributor toward building the infrastructure for future projects.

I have learned that Easton acquired two of the other Landmark books besides The Landmark Caesar, which is a pity, but I have already acquired several works that are strong candidates for books 2, 3, and 4. One important question that requires contemplation is when the right time to introduce the first two-book series will be, because some of the better and more important works I have in mind will require two, or in some cases, even three books. It’s just not practical – or even possible – to publish Gibbon in a single volume, for example.

But those longer works can wait. We already have a plethora of historical riches from which to choose, and we’re fortunate to be able to begin the series with such an excellent edition of Thucydides.

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Never Trust the Science

You’d literally be better off just flipping a coin at this point. And that’s a conclusion based on statements by some of the most reputable scientists in history of the United States.

  • The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness. —Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet
  • lt is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine. —Dr. Marcia Angell, physician and editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine
  • The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful. —Arnold Seymour Reiman (died 2014), Professor of Medicine at Harvard University and former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine
  • Everyone should know that most cancer research is largely a fraud, and that the major cancer research organisations are derelict in their duties to the people who support them. —Dr. Linus Pauling, (died 1994), two-time Nobel Prize winner in chemistry

Remember this when people tell you to “trust the science”. You cannot. You simply cannot trust a profession that is filled with liars, grifters, and propagandists, in addition to many otherwise honest men and women whose careers are being held hostage by the interests that control their scientific field with an iron fist.

The New Atheists could not have gotten it more wrong. Not only is science not inherently in opposition to Christianity, science requires Christianity in order to operate freely, honestly, and openly. And it is the construction of a false concept of intrinsic conflict between Revealed Truth and Reliable Falsification that has permitted science to be corrupted and rendered unreliable.

Let reason be silent when observation and history directly contradict its theoretical conclusions constructed in the complete absence of relevant information.

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Castalia History Series

Castalia House is delighted to present its second leather book series, the Castalia History subscription. Join the Castalia History Book Club and you will receive a deluxe leatherbound book published by Castalia Library four times per year. Subscribers will also receive significant discounts on non-subscription Castalia History books.

The first History Book Club book (April-May-June, #1) is THE LANDMARK THUCYDIDES edited by Robert B. Strassler. It is the comprehensive guide to the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and is correctly considered to be one of the first and most important classics of history. Both monthly and annual subscriptions are available.

Castalia Library subscribers should note that they will be able to purchase Castalia History books at the subscriber’s price if there are any books remaining after the History subscribers receive their books.

THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR
By Thucydides, 431 BC

The city of Epidamnus stands on the right of the entrance of the Ionic Gulf. Its vicinity is inhabited by the Taulantians, an Illyrian people. The place is a colony from Corcyra, founded by Phalius, son of Eratocleides, of the family of the Heraclids, who had according to ancient usage been summoned for the purpose from Corinth, the mother country. The colonists were joined by some Corinthians, and others of the Dorian race. Now, as time went on, the city of Epidamnus became great and populous; but falling a prey to factions arising, it is said, from a war with her neighbours the barbarians, she became much enfeebled, and lost a considerable amount of her power. The last act before the war was the expulsion of the nobles by the people. The exiled party joined the barbarians, and proceeded to plunder those in the city by sea and land; and the Epidamnians, finding themselves hard pressed, sent ambassadors to Corcyra beseeching their mother country not to allow them to perish, but to make up matters between them and the exiles, and to rid them of the war with the barbarians. The ambassadors seated themselves in the temple of Hera as suppliants, and made the above requests to the Corcyraeans. But the Corcyraeans refused to accept their supplication, and they were dismissed without having effected anything.

When the Epidamnians found that no help could be expected from Corcyra, they were in a strait what to do next. So they sent to Delphi and inquired of the God whether they should deliver their city to the Corinthians and endeavour to obtain some assistance from their founders. The answer he gave them was to deliver the city and place themselves under Corinthian protection. So the Epidamnians went to Corinth and delivered over the colony in obedience to the commands of the oracle. They showed that their founder came from Corinth, and revealed the answer of the god; and they begged them not to allow them to perish, but to assist them. This the Corinthians consented to do. Believing the colony to belong as much to themselves as to the Corcyraeans, they felt it to be a kind of duty to undertake their protection. Besides, they hated the Corcyraeans for their contempt of the mother country. Instead of meeting with the usual honours accorded to the parent city by every other colony at public assemblies, such as precedence at sacrifices, Corinth found herself treated with contempt by a power which in point of wealth could stand comparison with any even of the richest communities in Hellas, which possessed great military strength, and which sometimes could not repress a pride in the high naval position of an island whose nautical renown dated from the days of its old inhabitants, the Phaeacians. This was one reason of the care that they lavished on their fleet, which became very efficient; indeed they began the war with a force of a hundred and twenty galleys.

All these grievances made Corinth eager to send the promised aid to Epidamnus. Advertisement was made for volunteer settlers, and a force of Ambraciots, Leucadians, and Corinthians was dispatched. They marched by land to Apollonia, a Corinthian colony, the route by sea being avoided from fear of Corcyraean interruption. When the Corcyraeans heard of the arrival of the settlers and troops in Epidamnus, and the surrender of the colony to Corinth, they took fire. Instantly putting to sea with five-and-twenty ships, which were quickly followed by others, they insolently commanded the Epidamnians to receive back the banished nobles—(it must be premised that the Epidamnian exiles had come to Corcyra and, pointing to the sepulchres of their ancestors, had appealed to their kindred to restore them)—and to dismiss the Corinthian garrison and settlers. But to all this the Epidamnians turned a deaf ear. Upon this the Corcyraeans commenced operations against them with a fleet of forty sail. They took with them the exiles, with a view to their restoration, and also secured the services of the Illyrians. Sitting down before the city, they issued a proclamation to the effect that any of the natives that chose, and the foreigners, might depart unharmed, with the alternative of being treated as enemies. On their refusal the Corcyraeans proceeded to besiege the city, which stands on an isthmus; and the Corinthians, receiving intelligence of the investment of Epidamnus, got together an armament and proclaimed a colony to Epidamnus, perfect political equality being guaranteed to all who chose to go. Any who were not prepared to sail at once might, by paying down the sum of fifty Corinthian drachmae, have a share in the colony without leaving Corinth. Great numbers took advantage of this proclamation, some being ready to start directly, others paying the requisite forfeit. In case of their passage being disputed by the Corcyraeans, several cities were asked to lend them a convoy. Megara prepared to accompany them with eight ships, Pale in Cephallonia with four; Epidaurus furnished five, Hermione one, Troezen two, Leucas ten, and Ambracia eight. The Thebans and Phliasians were asked for money, the Eleans for hulls as well; while Corinth herself furnished thirty ships and three thousand heavy infantry.

When the Corcyraeans heard of their preparations they came to Corinth with envoys from Lacedaemon and Sicyon, whom they persuaded to accompany them, and bade her recall the garrison and settlers, as she had nothing to do with Epidamnus. If, however, she had any claims to make, they were willing to submit the matter to the arbitration of such of the cities in Peloponnese as should be chosen by mutual agreement, and that the colony should remain with the city to whom the arbitrators might assign it. They were also willing to refer the matter to the oracle at Delphi. If, in defiance of their protestations, war was appealed to, they should be themselves compelled by this violence to seek friends in quarters where they had no desire to seek them, and to make even old ties give way to the necessity of assistance. The answer they got from Corinth was that, if they would withdraw their fleet and the barbarians from Epidamnus, negotiation might be possible; but, while the town was still being besieged, going before arbitrators was out of the question. The Corcyraeans retorted that if Corinth would withdraw her troops from Epidamnus they would withdraw theirs, or they were ready to let both parties remain in statu quo, an armistice being concluded till judgment could be given.

Turning a deaf ear to all these proposals, when their ships were manned and their allies had come in, the Corinthians sent a herald before them to declare war and, getting under way with seventy-five ships and two thousand heavy infantry, sailed for Epidamnus to give battle to the Corcyraeans. The fleet was under the command of Aristeus, son of Pellichas, Callicrates, son of Callias, and Timanor, son of Timanthes; the troops under that of Archetimus, son of Eurytimus, and Isarchidas, son of Isarchus. When they had reached Actium in the territory of Anactorium, at the mouth of the mouth of the Gulf of Ambracia, where the temple of Apollo stands, the Corcyraeans sent on a herald in a light boat to warn them not to sail against them. Meanwhile they proceeded to man their ships, all of which had been equipped for action, the old vessels being undergirded to make them seaworthy. On the return of the herald without any peaceful answer from the Corinthians, their ships being now manned, they put out to sea to meet the enemy with a fleet of eighty sail (forty were engaged in the siege of Epidamnus), formed line, and went into action, and gained a decisive victory, and destroyed fifteen of the Corinthian vessels. The same day had seen Epidamnus compelled by its besiegers to capitulate; the conditions being that the foreigners should be sold, and the Corinthians kept as prisoners of war, till their fate should be otherwise decided.

After the engagement the Corcyraeans set up a trophy on Leukimme, a headland of Corcyra, and slew all their captives except the Corinthians, whom they kept as prisoners of war. Defeated at sea, the Corinthians and their allies repaired home, and left the Corcyraeans masters of all the sea about those parts. Sailing to Leucas, a Corinthian colony, they ravaged their territory, and burnt Cyllene, the harbour of the Eleans, because they had furnished ships and money to Corinth. For almost the whole of the period that followed the battle they remained masters of the sea, and the allies of Corinth were harassed by Corcyraean cruisers. At last Corinth, roused by the sufferings of her allies, sent out ships and troops in the fall of the summer, who formed an encampment at Actium and about Chimerium, in Thesprotis, for the protection of Leucas and the rest of the friendly cities. The Corcyraeans on their part formed a similar station on Leukimme. Neither party made any movement, but they remained confronting each other till the end of the summer, and winter was at hand before either of them returned home.

Corinth, exasperated by the war with the Corcyraeans, spent the whole of the year after the engagement and that succeeding it in building ships, and in straining every nerve to form an efficient fleet; rowers being drawn from Peloponnese and the rest of Hellas by the inducement of large bounties. The Corcyraeans, alarmed at the news of their preparations, being without a single ally in Hellas (for they had not enrolled themselves either in the Athenian or in the Lacedaemonian confederacy), decided to repair to Athens in order to enter into alliance and to endeavour to procure support from her. Corinth also, hearing of their intentions, sent an embassy to Athens to prevent the Corcyraean navy being joined by the Athenian, and her prospect of ordering the war according to her wishes being thus impeded.

And no, this is not an April Fool’s joke. This is something that has been in the making for more than 18 months. If you have any questions, please pose them on SG at the following link.

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