Tag Archives: history

New York speculators are forcing an Argentina default, 1780s-style

  By

US-flag-13-stars-Betsy_Ross

Uwe Bott, Chief Economist at The Globalist Research Center, raised some interesting points in a new article on the latest Argentinian debt crisis, explaining how Wall Street hedge funders are abusing the Rule of Law to profiteer from Argentina’s chronic fiscal problems:

On Wednesday, Argentina is likely to default again on its sovereign debt. After its mega-default on some $100 billion in December 2001, it is now likely to default on those bonds that were restructured in 2005 and 2010.

Why is it that Argentina, once again, cannot pay? Well, that’s actually not the issue. Argentina can pay and has paid its semi-annual payment to the trustee of the restructured bonds, the Bank of New York Mellon.

Without getting fully into all the legal tangles – and they are mind-numbingly complex – there is a broader point to be considered in the battle of New York vs. Argentina. It concerns the role that New York-based hedge funds play in the global financial game.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing

In essence, they try to present themselves as sheep, while they really are wolves. Let me explain: Unlike most of Argentina’s bondholders, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management bought Argentine bonds in 2002 and 2003, after Argentina had already defaulted. For that reason, they were able to buy these bonds for pennies of their face value.

Why on earth would they do that, you ask? Because from the get go, they intended to use – or rather abuse — the legal rights of holders of bonds issued under New York law for one purpose only, to make Argentina pay the full amount at a later point in time.

Argentina managed to obtain restructuring agreements from its bondholders in 2005 and 2010 that paid them 30 cents for each dollar owed and over a much longer maturity.

The hedge funds rejected these restructurings. They knew that New York law was on their side.
[…]
But the issue left unaddressed is this: Is this really a question of the letter of the law — or is it a question of the intent of the law? Specifically, is this not a stellar example for “two wrongs don’t make a right”?

True, Argentina should have complied with its debt obligations and surely could have afforded to pay more than the 30% of face value to all investors. But the hedge funds’ exploiting the letter of U.S. law after buying defaulted bonds for pennies and then asking for full repayment flies in the face of what justice is all about.

 
This behavior is a longstanding and apparently proud American — or perhaps more accurately, New York City — tradition, dating to the earliest days of the republic.
Read more

Tomb of the Prophet Jonah blown up outside Mosul

  By

In the continuing battle over the religious future of the city of Mosul, the modern heir to the Biblical city of Nineveh, the Tomb of Jonah (also known as the Mosque of the Prophet Yunus, after his Arabic name) was blown up today. Video showed the structure being completely leveled by explosives.

The Mosque, previously a Church and originally part of an Assyrian palace complex, was supposed to be the burial ground of the 8th Century BCE prophet most famous for being swallowed by a fish when he tried to avoid going to Nineveh to preach. Today the area is a suburb of Mosul, which lies across the river from where Nineveh stood.

Government officials blamed ISIS for the attack, which seems to be the case. It was not immediately obvious exactly why the extremist Sunni Islamist would target a Sunni Mosque of significance to the core of Islam. Jonah/Yunus is one of the crossover figures from the Hebrew Bible, Christian Old Testament, and Quran.

However, ISIS has reportedly destroyed a number of other Sunni Mosques in Mosul already since capturing it in June, perhaps to remove competition against their hardline views.

Less than a week ago, ISIS expelled all the Christians from the city for the first time in 18 centuries.

Video still seconds after detonation of the minaret and building complex. Watch

Video still, seconds after detonation of the minaret and building complex. Watch

Mosul empty of Christians for first time in over 18 centuries

  By

Al-Arabiya and AFP are reporting that the city of Mosul’s Christian community, dating to the 2nd Century CE, has evacuated en masse to Iraqi Kurdistan in the past 48 hours, following a specific threat of extermination from ISIS. Although it’s possible some members are still hiding in the city, the leaders of the close-knit and small community believe everyone is gone. Some who had pre-emptively fled when the city fell to ISIS in early June had tentatively returned, hoping for the best, but today the evacuations appeared definitive and total.

Christians have fled Iraq’s northern city of Mosul en masse before a Saturday deadline issued by the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) for them to either convert to Islam, pay tax, leave or be killed.
[…]
Patriarch Louis Sako told AFP on Friday: “Christian families are on their way to Dohuk and Arbil,” in the neighboring autonomous region of Kurdistan. “For the first time in the history of Iraq, Mosul is now empty of Christians,” he said.

Witnesses said messages telling Christians to leave the city by Saturday were blared through loudspeakers from the city’s mosques Friday.
[…]
“We were shocked by the distribution of a statement by the Islamic State calling on Christians to convert to Islam, or to pay unspecified tribute, or to leave their city and their homes taking only their clothes and no luggage, and that their homes would then belong to the Islamic State,” Sako said.

 
It remains to be seen if any of the community will return if ISIS is ever dislodged from Mosul in the near future, but they may not have homes to return to. In past waves of emigration of ethnic and religious minorities from the city, especially under the intentional policies of Saddam Hussein, abandoned homes have quickly been taken over by Sunni Arabs.

For the past 18-19 centuries, Mosul was the continuous center of Iraq’s Assyrian Christian ethno-religious community, despite basically every war in regional history coming through. The community was a diverse set of old school (2nd century CE) Middle Eastern Christian sects within the Assyrian/Syriac/Chaldean ethnicity, whose members still speak and read Aramaic, one of the most important language families in Middle Eastern ancient and classical history, as well as across multiple religions.

St. Elijah's Monastery, near Mosul, a site dating to 595 CE, seen here in 2005. (Credit: Doug - Wikimedia)

St. Elijah’s Monastery, near Mosul, a site dating to 595 CE, seen here in 2005. (Credit: Doug – Wikimedia)

Unfortunately, most of Iraq’s Assyrians had been fleeing the city and country since the 2003 invasion, even before the latest — and perhaps final — crisis, with ISIS.

The city has long been a holdout against sectarian pressures until now. Mosul became the regional capital of what is now Iraq under the 7th century Umayyad Caliphate (an early Muslim dynasty), even as it remained a major — even rising — Christian city. It also maintained a significant Jewish population well into and past the era of the Crusades.
Read more

My favorite Mark Twain book

  By

My favorite Mark Twain book is a somewhat lesser known one: “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” For one thing, it’s very foundational for a lot of time-bending/tech-bending sub-genres of today’s fiction. But I think something else drew me to it.

Twain intended it as a satire of Sir Walter Scott’s romanticized medieval fantasies but I hope and like to think it’s really (indirectly) a metaphor for Reconstruction.

Here’s a quick summary of the plot that illustrates the comparison: A technologically advanced Yankee suddenly arrives in a backwards aristocratic, slave-owning society and tries to impose modernity by schools and by force but — fairly obvious spoiler from a 125-year-old novel — is ultimately thwarted by the forces of regressive, establishment conservatism.

Now, Mark Twain may not have intended the parallel, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to surmise that it was in the back of his mind as he wrote it, a decade after the sudden termination of Reconstruction policies. Plus, he also previously had tried to blame Sir Walter Scott (the clearly intended target of the book) for all of the Deep South planter class’s behavior and attitudes. Twain insisted that Sir Walter’s ahistorical notions of nobility had inspired the southern planters to initiate a pointless war for “honor,” but I think it’s pretty clear they were already several hundred years into their obsession with creating a genteel/monstrously cruel feudal slave state, without any help from novels.

In either case, much of the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War involved New England Yankee officials, troops, schoolteachers, and ministers deploying officially and unofficially into the occupied Deep South to try to establish a slavery-free post-agrarian economy, communitarian values, industry, etc. They faced massive resistance — often violent — from local white residents, as well as sometimes from national leaders who were supposed to have their backs. Ultimately, the Yankees were thwarted in their “civilizing” mission and fled northward as military protection was withdrawn, leaving free blacks to face white mob violence, authoritarian rule, and slavery by another name on their own.

Twain’s novel doesn’t exactly have a happy ending either. The forces of the threatened establishment inevitably raise angry mobs and armies to attack the modernizing protagonist for liberating peasants from the economic system and from their fearmongering religious leaders. And in contrast with other literature of the day, it’s not really a celebration of white savior notions or “the white man’s burden.” The hero finds himself in a place not so entirely different from his own, and he is fully confident that the people aren’t substantially different. He just wants to help them unlock the knowledge and resources they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

It’s a sort of tribute to the futility of trying to enact policies for the greater good to raise standards of living for as many people as possible, even when some of the people being helped the most are also resisting it the most. Twain believed that Sir Walter Scott was pushing something insidious with his chivalrous tales of nobility, in which honorable aristocrats are heroes. The title character of “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” (note the deliberate identifying characteristic in the title) is an ordinary New England man who suddenly finds himself in a position of power and superior knowledge in Arthurian England — and his first instinct is to help all the ordinary people on as wide a scale as possible, even if they’re afraid of him and resist his efforts. And whether or not he succeeds, trying to reach that goal is true nobility. Which is a very New England attitude to take toward the rest of the United States.

The secret Nazi weather station in Canada

  By

This week’s obscure history — Did you know: The Nazis built an automated weather station in Canada* in 1943 and no one noticed until the 1970s. At that point, retiring ex-Nazis began admitting new, minor ultra-classified and secret projects from the war. The site, which was the only land-based Nazi operation in North America during the war, was located after 1980. Seems like scavengers had perhaps gotten to it earlier, without realizing what it was.

Also aiding the “long lost” nature of the site: The station suffered a critical malfunction almost immediately and ceased transmission and they weren’t about to attempt a second landing party right away. Only one crew member from the first mission survived the war. A second crew was sunk on the way to set up a new station in 1944. Other ill-fated U-boats, of course, had similarly poor luck off the North American coasts.

*Technically, the area at the time was not yet part of Canada and was being administered from Britain.

“…the several States and with the Indian Tribes…”

  By

The title above is a quotation from one the few passages of the U.S. Constitution of 1787 making any references whatsoever to the multitude of indigenous nations on the North American continent at the time. That sort of vague afterthought attitude probably encapsulates well the attitude of most of the Founding Fathers and Constitutional Framers, despite the hundreds of distinct native communities in just the northeast woodlands and southeast woodlands regions alone (i.e. the original U.S.).

The early national leaders and writers of those key documents were generally coastal elites without much direct contact with the American Indian nations that had already been cleared by war, disease, and expulsion from those areas. The backcountry mountain settlers, who had helped precipitate much of the events that spiraled into Revolution by repeatedly trying to cross the Appalachian Mountain “line in the sand” drawn by the British Crown, were neither represented in the circles that established the country nor under their authority most of the time. They generally just wandered off to attack indigenous communities when they felt like it — and then waited either for retroactive approval by the coast or substantial military reinforcements from the coast, if things got out of control. Even the rare treaties made in good faith by colonial and U.S. coastal governments were generally violated by factions who had not been involved in the negotiation process or did not consider themselves subject to those powers anyway. But the U.S. government rarely ever gave more than a slap on the wrist to the offenders.

In general, the country and its predecessor colonies had a very inconsistent and not systematically planned relationship with the American Indian nations — apart from the consistency of overall negativity and genocidal behaviors, and in particular of pushing them westward and into generally ever-smaller areas. That last pattern is tracked in the Lower 48, from the 1783 Treaty of Paris to 1892 and then 2010, in the eHistory video below:

This of course does not really get into the situations in Alaska or in Hawaii. It’s also really important to remember that the semi-systematic thoughtlessness toward and theft from Indian Country by the U.S. government is not some 18th century relic, but continues to present, as we discussed in a recent episode of the radio show.

A more rapid animated gif version of the video is below:
Read more

How do you avoid war for 2000 years in the ancient world?

  By

That question the persistent mystery [read first] surrounding the (Pakistani) Indus Valley’s Harappan civilization and its big cities like Mohenjo-daro. It’s odd because their art, artifacts, and records seem to have no indication of military presence, even for defensive purposes. When you realize the society was a major contemporary of (and trading partner with) war-torn Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt, it suddenly seems almost impossible. And that’s without thinking about just how many wars there have been in the past 2,000 years.

I did some googling and quickly stopped because it turns out there’s a very elaborate “History” Channel-style or Discovery Channel-style conspiracy theory involving the topic, but I decided to offer some slightly more logical speculations, from the standpoint of trying to figure out the political and economic structure necessary to sustain such a long period of peace in the ancient world.

Although it would be harder to sustain peace over a long period in later times when populations were large enough to bump up against each other constantly — this would theoretically be possible/explainable under two easily imagined though not necessarily easily maintained conditions:

Condition 1. A very collective-thinking/communal culture over a large area could merge peacefully into a larger entity/civilization on the belief that more could be gained by merging than remaining independent (rather than merging by conquest as most classical and ancient empires did). One senses that with Harappan penchant for urban grids and brick standardization (while peer cities in other civilizations were virtually unplanned), they either had to be highly collective or highly authoritarian in character. And the latter basically requires troops that they didn’t have. (A third option would be somehow convincing everyone the leaders are gods on earth who must not be questioned or challenged, but that’s a hard facade to keep up for even a year.)

Condition 2. By following, as a foreign policy, the immortal principle “Don’t start none, won’t be none.” If you never attack your neighbor, it’s going to go a long way toward reducing the likelihood of a war with your neighbor because you’ve taken one of the potential triggers for an endless feud out of the picture.

That said, both of those conditions would seem to require a hell of a lot of restraint/forbearance and hoping — prisoner’s dilemma style — that your neighbor doesn’t suddenly flip on you without provocation. And given the history of early human species (not homo sapiens), it seems hard to believe you could get by for 2,000 years without your luck running out way earlier.

Although I suppose if you managed to find a little semi-isolated breadbasket (oh hey, maybe the river valley between the Khyber Pass and Thar Desert?) and develop enough surplus to both feed your excess regional labor and buy off your potential external attackers, you could really keep a good thing going for quite a while.

That policy, of course, really relies on not trying to hoard all the surplus at the top of the government/ruling class.

Harappan civilization map. (Credit: MM - Wikimedia)

Harappan civilization map. (Credit: MM – Wikimedia)