From: "Chip Berlet" <cberlet at igc.org>
[snip]
> These are clerical fascist movements that are not playing by the
same rules as
> liberation struggles. They do not want to stop the hand of the US in
global
> politics...they want to stop the hands of time--hands which point
inexorably
> toward the progress they see as scribing Satan's path.
>
> -Chip
Replying to:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Wojtek Sokolowski" <sokol at jhu.edu>
> > As I said before, what bin Ladin and company say is a mere excuse
and not a
> > reason. What they are against is not specific US policies but
modernism
> > and its "perils" - equality, secularism, rationality, democracy..
The US is
> > merely a symbol, and its policies - mere excuses. In the same
vein, Nazi
> > propagandists were denouncing Jewish "greed" and "disloyalty" to
justify
> > nazi-led attacks on Jewish population.
================ The last thing I want to do is be redundant or engage in a narrow economism as regards the overdetermination of the multiple why's of 9-11, but what is still missing from these two posts and the others is the fact that it wasn't Disneyland or Universal studios that were hit in the attack but finance capital and the "headquarters" of the US war machine.
With respect to both of your statements I wonder what we are to make of comparing the statements below? The first is from Martin Luther [quoted in Capital Vol. I p 740] and the second is from the economics department of the University of Southern California.
A] Therefore is there, on this earth, no greater enemy of man (after the devil) than a gripe-money, and usurer, for he wants to be God over all men.Turks, soldiers, and tyrants are also bad men, yet must they let the people live, and Confess that they are bad, and enemies, and do, nay, must, now and then show pity to some. But a usurer and money-glutton, such a one would have the whole world perish of hunger and thirst, misery and want, so far as in him lies, so that he may have all to himself, and every one may receive from him as from a God, and be his serf for ever.
B] Gharar (Uncertainty, Risk or Speculation) is also prohibited. Under this prohibition any transaction entered into should be free from uncertainty, risk and speculation. Contracting parties should have perfect knowledge of the counter values intended to be exchanged as a result of their transactions. Also, parties cannot predetermine a guaranteed profit. This is based on the principle of 'uncertain gains' which, on a strict interpretation, does not even allow an undertaking from the customer to repay the borrowed principal plus an amount to take into account inflation. The rationale behind the prohibition is the wish to protect the weak from exploitation. Therefore, options and futures are considered as un-Islamic and so are forward foreign exchange transactions because rates are determined by interest differentials. < http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/economics/nbank1.html >
I think we have a *far bigger* problem as regards the future of dealing with "clerical fascism" when it comes to greater economic integration of the world market if something as fundamental as capitalist finance is seen by clerics and their followers as patently unethical. It also behooves us to remember just how much social strife went on in the west with the secularization of finance and the acceptance of fractional reserve banking and the creation of credit/debt as a form of social power. The move towards solidarity with the poor in "the global south" who have been saddled with the debts of business enterprises and financiers who engaged in dubious accounting and lending practices is now at a major crossroads and the arguments have not only an economic but an ethical component to them. Is this an opportune time to revisit the ethics or lack thereof, of usury given the enormous power it gives to the few over the rest of us? For if we were to find evidence that at least one of the reasons for the attack on the WTC was the contempt for usury, what then?
Would usury have a place in any conceivable post-capitalist society[ies]?
Ian