Nick DiChario’s modern Italian folk tales

GIOVANNI’S TREE: New Italian Folktales by Nicholas A. DiChario (2023)

I’ve been looking forward to reading this book, and I read it with great enjoyment.  Nick is a wonderful storyteller, and there’s something about his prose style – his word choices, his metaphors, his ironic wit, his compassionate sense of the weaknesses of human nature – that makes his stories a pleasure to re-read.

All nine stories are set in the fictional Sicilian il Villaggio delle Ombre (Villlage of Shadows).  They span history from pre-Roman times to the present day.  

The village is sheltered by a magic tree, which was fertilized by fine wine and offers protection from the ravages of time.  It is inhabited by an immortal witch named Brunilda.  She will give you anything you ask, for a price, but her clients find that what they asked for was not what they wanted, and the price was harder to pay than they figured on.

Other inhabitants include a devil, a wood sprite, a zombie, a sentient sweater, a World War One soldier in suspended animation in a block of ice, a baron’s beautiful daughter who is immune to the law of gravitation, and a giant well-groomed female rat who is manager of the local branch of an Internet company.

Nick is known as a science fiction writer, and his stories are published in science fiction magazines and other science fiction venues, but his stories are different from the fantasy fiction you’d typically find in the science fiction section of chain bookstores.

When science fiction writers venture into fantasy, they usually treat the supernatural as something with predictable laws, analogous to chemistry and physics, as in the Harold Shea stories of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt.

Nick DiChario

Nick DiChario’s stories are nothing like that.  They are like the traditional folk tales, in which the supernatural is awe-inspiring, mysterious and highly dangerous to anyone except the pure of heart.

The stories are full of humor and wit, but I put them down with a bittersweet feeling.  As one of the blurb writers said, Nick’s writings depict life’s blessings—good food and wine, family, friendship and love—and also reflect a knowledge of how easily they can be destroyed by heedlessness, overreaching and the wheels of fate.

This is true “magic realism”—human nature presented with stark realism in all its complexity, but the reality heightened by the magical context.

Nick is a native and resident of Rochester, N.Y.   He has a blog.  I’ve been acquainted with him for a long time.  I’ve followed his career with great appreciation for his unique and quirky imagination and his dedication to his art.

I own and recommend his two novels, A Small and Wonderful Life (2006) and Valley of Day-Glo (2008).  I can’t understand why they’re not cult classics.  Maybe they are, and I don’t know it.  However this may be, he has surpassed himself with Giovanni’s Tree. 

Update(s) on post-Prigozhin Russia and its war

I am told there was a report that 30 top Russian officials have been arrested in the wake of the Prigozhin march on Moscow. The item didn’t specify whether the officials were military or civilian or both.

A different item announced the arrest of the commander of Moscow’s air defense system—understandable in the light of the failed air attacks on the Wagner Groups columns of vehicles and the oil refinery where they were refueling.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

All the Russian commentary about how Prigozhin’s real concern was about his troops’ pay or certain generals’ leadership or the Wagner Group not betting enough praise or ammunition—all of that is intended to emphasize the basic stability of the Russian state and divert attention from the averted danger.

You have to read today’s Russian news media in the same way people did during Soviet times.  Pick up a little scrap of information here, a little scrap there and, like Sherlock Holmes, put them together to form a hypothesis about what’s going on behind the scenes.

In other words, a conspiracy theory.

I am not impressed by the words “conspiracy theory.”  It is obvious that powerful people sometimes meet in secret to plan things they don’t want the public to know. There is nothing wrong with trying to form a hypothesis, based on necessarily incomplete evidence, of what they’re up to.  In fact, it is a civic duty.

I read the Associated Press reports of world affairs and major U.S. political conflicts in the same spirit as my friend reads the Russian media.

In my case, I am helped by the fact that, in the USA, there are whistle-blowers who reveal truths that are inconvenient to the power elite, and enough freedom of the press that it is possible to discover what they revealed.

I got worked up by the persecution and torment of Julian Assange, but I’m told Russians are surprised that he even will get a trial.

It’s true that not all leaks are truths, and not all explanations are correct. You need a certain amount of critical thinking and research skills, and even then you can go astray.

Maybe I have gone astray. I welcome correction from those whose knowledge is deeper and understanding is wider.

I share these insights because I think they are important, if true.   It means Putin’s Russia is likely to become more repressive, less patient and more determined to show its unity and might.

∞∞∞

If I have any new information or thoughts on this particular topic, I will add them as updates to this post.

Russia says there’s no legal Ukrainian state

The Russian Foreign Ministry recently stated that Russia does not recognize the legal existence of the Ukrainian state.  That’s an extreme statement.  

During World War Two, the USA and UK recognized the German, Italian and Japanese governments and accepted terms of surrender from them.

But maybe I exaggerate the statement’s significance.  Russia already had announced it is no longer open to negotiation with Ukraine, as it was at the outset of the war.  It does not ask Ukraine to accept terms of surrender, but rather intends to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine by force.  

Here’s what independent journalist John Helmer had to say.

In brief statements issued late last week in Moscow – their significance missed in the western press — President Vladimir Putin ordered a reality check of Russia’s war strategy. He then  answered himself by declaring the war will be over when no Ukrainian army will be left on the battlefield, nor NATO weapons.  

The Foreign Ministry answered by pointing out that Russia does not recognize there is a legal Ukrainian state because the reality is that the mutual recognition treaty between Russia and the Ukraine was cancelled by Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky in 2018 and 2019.  

“We can conclude,” Putin said at the Security Council meeting on Thursday morning, “that they can certainly send in additional equipment, but the mobilisation reserve is not unlimited. And Ukraine’s Western allies really seem determined to fight with Russia to the last Ukrainian. At the same time, we must proceed from the fact that the enemy’s offensive potential has not been exhausted; they may have strategic reserves yet unused, and I ask you to keep this in mind when making fighting strategies.  You need to proceed from reality.”

Putin was following by a few hours the statement by the Foreign Ministry that Russia does not recognize the legal sovereignty of the regime in Kiev, and that following the cancellation of the treaty between the Ukraine and Russia in 2019, there will be no Ukrainian state left to sign an end-of-war agreement.

At her weekly briefing of reporters, the ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, was asked “when will Russia initiate a legal procedure to terminate the bilateral treaty with Ukraine on its sovereignty?”  Zakharova answered:  “The procedure for terminating the bilateral treaty with Ukraine on its sovereignty is hampered by the absence of such a treaty.  In Article 1 of the Treaty on the Principles of Relations between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR of November 19, 1990, the two republics recognised each other as ‘sovereign states.’ The 1990 treaty was then replaced by the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine of May 31, 1997 (Article 39),  which was denounced by Ukraine and terminated on April 1, 2019.” 

No army, no state.  But the war will continue because it is the one between the US and the NATO powers and Russia. That too will have an ending, but longer.

The unsolved mysteries of Prigozhin’s revolt

All through the events leading up to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s march on Moscow, last Saturday, there were two questions that nobody seemed able to answer.

Why did Prigozhin think he could get away with insubordination escalating to the point of open revolt?  Why did Vladimir Putin let him get away with it until the last possible moment?

The Wagner Private Military Company mustered only 25,000 troops, compared to 600,000 in the regular Russian army, and only a few thousand of the Wagner mercenaries accompanied Prigozhin in his made adventure.

The most common explanations were that Prigozhin had suffered a mental breakdown, and that Putin hesitated to act against his old friend.

But there is a more plausible explanation.  Prigozhin did not act alone, but with the encouragement of conspirators who hoped to strike when the Russian government and armed forces were distracted by Russian-on-Russian violence.

Putin held back from acting until he was sure he had unmasked all the conspirators.  Prigozhin gave up when Alexander Lukashenko informed him the plot had failed.

The Wagner insurrection has no military significance, nor do Ukrainian actions against Russia proper.   The balance of military power still favors Russia, and Putin’s strategy of attrition is still grinding Ukraine down.

But these actions are a big setback for Russia in terms of morale and in terms of its standing in the world.

Ordinary Russians no doubt wonder whether Putin is in control of things.  Leaders of nonaligned nations such as India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia no doubt wonder the same thing, while the leaders of the Western alliance find reasons to think the war is not yet lost.

Putin can be expected to respond by doubling down on repression at home and by stepping up the tempo of the war.   I don’t think it is a coincidence that he recently withdrew diplomatic recognition from Ukraine.  He no longer accepts the legitimacy of the Ukrainian nation.

This video is a speech given by Vladimir Putin to the Russian people while the Wagner group with still on the road.  

Vladimir Putin is known for projecting calmness, self-control and intellectual mastery of the situation.

“We are fighting for life and security of our people  What we’re seeing is a stab in the back,” according to the English translation of Putin’s remarks.

“All those who prepared the rebellion will suffer inevitable punishment.  The armed forces and other government agencies have received the necessary orders,” he said.

“Those who plotted and organised an armed rebellion, who raised arms against his comrades-in-arms, betrayed Russia.  And they will answer for it.”

 

Russia already has cracked down hard on dissent.  Criticizing the war in public can get you a prison term of many years.

 

It is very likely that the repression to grow worse.  The Russian government will no longer be content with silence about the war.  It will demand positive proofs of war support.  Neighbors will denounce neighbors for hidden disloyalty.

 

Why does Biden keep insulting Xi Jinping?

The Chinese, like the Russians, are not on speaking terms with the United States.  There are a lot of reasons for this, but the breaking point was the silly balloon incident.

A Chinese balloon went out of control and floated over the United States.  The Chinese said it was a weather balloon, but the Biden administration said it was a spy balloon.

This doesn’t make any sense.  If it was a lighter-than-air equivalent of a U-2 spy plane, the U.S. government wouldn’t have allowed it to float over the entire USA before shooting it down.  And the U.S. government would have shown the supposed spy equipment to the world, but it didn’t.

But the Biden administration used this bogus incident as an excuse to cancel a scheduled visit to China by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China.

The U.S. government has got into the habit of making foreign policy an extension of domestic politics.  President Biden likes to posture as a tough guy.  He did this by insulting Xi Jinping.   President Xi and the Chinese leaders were understandably furious about this.

The difficulty is, as Alexander Mercouris pointed out in the video above, that Xi Jinping, like Vladimir Putin, no longer sees any point in negotiating with the United States.  They do not trust the U.S. government to keep its promises, and they now think they so powerful that they don’t have to negotiate with the United States.

So the Chinese stopped answering the telephone when the Americans called.  The U.S. government asked to resume Blinken’s visit, and the Chinese didn’t respond.

Finally, after a good deal of begging, the Biden administration were able to persuade the Chinese to allow a Blinken visit.  The visit consisted mostly of Blinken being browbeaten for American misbehavior by Chinese leaders.  It was humiliating, both for Blinken and the USA.

Blinken made an important concession.  He said the U.S. accepts the fact that Taiwan is part of China which, so far as I recall, no Secretary of State or President has ever explicitly said.  In return, the Chinese agreed to set up a working group to plan for another summit meeting between Biden and Xi.

But President Biden immediately torpedoed his Secretary of State.  He called Xi a dictator.  He ridiculed him for not being able to control his “spy” balloon.  

The comment was not just another Biden slip of the tongue.  It was put on the White House web page. 

Nobody likes insults.  The Chinese culture is one in which keeping and losing “face” are especially important.  So why did Biden go out of his way to insult Xi?  Did he do it deliberately or unthinkingly?  What was his motive?

There was a time when U.S. American presidents and secretaries of state could get away with this kind of behavior.  The USA was so powerful – militarily, industrially and financially – that other nations had to put up with it.

But American leaders have allowed our power to be eroded.  We as a nation can no longer disregard the interests of other nations or insult their leaders, and not suffer consequences.  Actually, this was always true, but it is becoming more obvious now.

As a nation, we Americans should be strong but reasonable.  Instead we are weak and belligerent.  This cannot go on.

Does Assange still have a chance?

Royal Courts of Justice in London

Joe Lauria, editor-in-chief of Consortium News, has been following the Julian Assange case closely. He is one of the few who has been following the extradition trial on a day-to-day basis. He thinks that Assange still has a chance of freedom, although a slim one.

Here is the gist of a recent article on what he thinks:

There are five possible scenarios: 

• Assange may have his appeal against extradition heard by the High Court; 
• He may have his appeal rejected and be put on a plane to the United States; 
• That plane may be stopped by an injunction from the European Court of Human Rights; 
• A last-minute plea deal may be worked out guaranteeing Assange’s eventual freedom or, least likely
• the U.S. may abruptly drop its charges against him.  

Following the decision by High Court Judge Sir Jonathan Swift this month to reject Assange’s application to appeal his ordered extradition to the United States to stand trial on espionage charges, Assange’s legal team filed a new application to the High Court last week.  The decision on this application could come any day.  

If it is refused, Assange will have run out of legal options in Britain, and could only be saved by the intervention of the European court. There is also still a chance of a plea deal in which President Joe Biden would need to exact punishment of Assange to cover his political posterior.  

Given new revelations in the UC Global case in Spain about C.I.A. spying on Assange there’s even an outside chance the Biden administration may drop the case to avoid exposure in the media circus that would ensue in Alexandria, VA if Assange is extradited to stand trial there.

[snip]

Caroline Kennedy, the U.S. ambassador to Australia and daughter of slain President John F. Kennedy, agreed to meet a group of six, pro-Assange, Australian MPs, from three different parties, plus an independent, [on May 9]. 

It is highly unlikely that Kennedy would have invited them to the U.S. embassy for lunch to discuss Assange’s case without approval from at least the State Department, if not the White House.

A few days after that, [Australian Prime Minister Anthony] Albanese said Assange would have to play his part in any deal to be freed.  That was widely interpreted to mean that Assange would have to agree to some sort of plea deal, in which he agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge, perhaps serve a short sentence in Australia and then walk free.

[snip]

It is hard to imagine Assange admitting to having done anything wrong, when the case against him, as argued in his extradition hearing, appears to prove no wrongdoing at all.

The ordeal of Julian Assange

THE TRIAL OF JULIAN ASSANGE: A Story of Persecution by Nils Melzer with Oliver Kobold (2021, 2022)

I do not intend to leave to our children a world where governments can disregard the rule of law with impunity and and where telling the truth has become a crime.  ==Nils Melzer

Julian Assange, the founder and public face of Wikileaks, will soon be extradited to the United States to face charges of violating the Espionage Act of 1917.  His alleged crime was to publish classified information, which revealed war crimes and other crimes by the U.S. government.

If the fate of previous truth-tellers is any guide, he is certain to be convicted and to spend the rest of his life under conditions similar to or worse than the convicted Russian truth-teller, Alexei Navalny, now endures.

I had long been aware that the charges against him were unjust, that earlier charges by the Swedish government were a frame-up and that the conditions under which he was being held amounted to torture.

But I did not understand the extent of the injustice, the frame-ups and the torture until I read Nils Melzer’s The Trial of Julian Assange.  

Melzer is a recognized expert on international human rights law and a long-time investigator of human rights abuses for the International Committee of the Red Cross and other groups.

He was the United Nations rapporteur on torture from 2016 to 2022, which meant that he had a mandate from the UN Human Rights Council to investigate and report on any and all allegations of torture and mistreatment worldwide, based on his own judgment.

“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution, I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonize and abuse a single individual for such a long time,” he wrote.

The case falls into my mandate in three different ways:  First, Assange published proof of systematic torture.  But instead of those responsible for the torture, it is Assange who is being persecuted.  Second, he himself has been ill-treated to the point that he is now exhibiting symptoms of psychological torture.  And third, he is to be extradited to a country that holds people like him in prison conditions that Amnesty International has described as torture.  In summary: Julian Assange uncovered torture, has been tortured himself and could be tortured to death in the United States.

The UN definition of torture is the intentional infliction of severe physical or mental pain and suffering in order to achieve a specific purpose.  It considers psychological torture to be real torture.  

Psychological torture has four elements: intimation, isolation, arbitrariness and humiliation.  It can result in mental breakdown or worse.

Observers say Assange shows the effects of psychological torture, caused by isolation and harassment from 2017 on in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he had sought political asylum, and by solitary confinement and worse harassment at Belmarsh prison, where he has been held during hearings for his unsuccessful appeal of an order of extradition to the United States.  

U.S. special administrative measures for accused enemies of the state means Assange can expect more of the same, even while awaiting trial.

He is accused of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 (which incorporates the Defense Secrets Act of 1911).  This legislation makes it a crime to disclose military information to those unauthorized to receive it or to obtain military-related information that could be used to the detriment of the United States.

Julian Assange obtained information he was unauthorized to receive and the disclosure of atrocities committed and covered up by U.S. forces most certainly damaged the reputation of the U.S. government.

The most noteworthy is the Collateral Murder video of 2010, based on the information leaked by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning.

This was footage from a helicopter gunship whose crew killed a group of innocent civilians, including two Reuters journalists.  It also showed the killing of a passer-by who tried to render aid, and the wounding of his children.  The official story had been that they were armed insurgents.

There also were the Afghanistan war logs, the Iraq war logs, the Cablegate files and the Guantanamo Bay files. 

His only possible defense, as I see it, is to challenge the constitutionality of the Espionage Act.   In the United States, unlike in the U.K. and Sweden, such a defense is legally possible, but I don’t think the odds are in his favor.

Under Presidents G.W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. government claimed the authority to launch undeclared wars, to assassinate perceived enemies, and to imprison and torture perceived enemies without trial.  Any U.S. president, now and in the future, potentially has the power of a totalitarian dictator.

The only barrier is the force of public opinion, expressed in free elections.  But if it is a crime to inform the public as to what is being done in its hame, there can be no informed public opinion.

That is why Nils Melzer’s detailed account of the persecution of Julian Assange is so important.

A response to my post on “wokeness”

A blogger called Kenneth who posts as The Other Liberal wrote a reply to my post about “Woke.”   I reprint it here because I think is worth considering, because I appreciate his desire to engage with me in a reasonable way, and because it gives me a chance to clarify what I meant.

Phil Ebersole …… lays out several ideas associated with woke advocates including oppressed and oppressor are based on identity, justice for the collective is more important than individual rights, and race and race prejudice are baked into American culture.  

At this point one has to question the idea of wokeness as a way to understand certain various struggles for social change. The term wokeness came out the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Revolution in the 1960s.  It meant staying aware and conscious of the need for struggle.  Change didn’t come from token measures or symbolism. It was important not give up or be distracted. This was the meaning of woke.

At some point contemporary Anti Racists activists and supporters of Black Lives Matter sought to revive the term in relation to current protests.  However, the notion of wokeness came to be identified with struggles for gender equality, LGBTQ Rights, and even climate change too. The political right seized onto the term and made it into something negative to discredit various activist efforts, Liberals, and the Left in general.

The problem with using woke as an umbrella term or concept is that it lumps disparate groups and activist struggles together that often have nothing to do with each other.  There are black activists concerned about racism who have nothing to do with gender equality, LGBTQ issues, or climate change.  There are Feminists fighting for abortion rights and associated with the Me Too Movement that have nothing to do with climate change activism or race.  There are single issue climate activists and those concerned only with LGBTQ rights. Furthermore, within in all these struggles there are differences about political goals, methods, ideology, and thought.

Ultimately, Phil Ebersole disagrees with wokeness.  He says, ” they are a break from the old time twentieth century Liberalism and Progressivism which is based on equal rights for all and special privileges for none.” 

Three Chinese scientists were first to get Covid

The first persons known to have been infected with Covid-19 were three scientists in the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, who were engaged in gain of function research on coronaviruses, a new report says.

Gain of function research means artificially enhancing some characteristic of an organism to make it easier to study.  In the case of the coronavirus research, this meant making the virus more contagious.

President Obama in 2014 shut down federal funding for gain of function research because he considered it too dangerous.  However, the article says that the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Francis Collins and Anthony Fauci, and a major U.S. government grantee, EcoHealth Alliance, deemed their work on SARS-like viruses as not falling under the gain-of-function research of concern definitions and funded this project in China and Southeast Asia.  

Unsafe research resulted in release of a disease that has killed millions of people and still is not under control.  Michael Shellenberger and his collaborators in this article do not accuse anyone of malign intent – only of recklessness and a coverup.

LINKS

First People Sickened by COVID-19 Were Chinese Scientists at Wuhan Institute of Virology by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag for Public.

On Today’s Explosive Coronavirus Story by Matt Taibbi for Racket News. 

Why Scientists Tweak Lab Viruses to Make Them More Contagious by Emily Willingham for Scientific American (2021).

How (some) Russians view the war

Below are three documentaries on how ordinary Russians view the war in Ukraine.

The producers are opinionated (as am I), none tell the whole truth (this is impossible), but they are honest and tell the truth as they see it (as do I).

The first two are from a Russian news site called Real Reporter  and are from a pro-war perspective.  The third is by an anonymous Russian documentary filmmaker and is from an anti-war perspective.

I present them because they gave me a view of ordinary Russians and a glimpse of ordinary Russian life that I hadn’t had before.

.

.

Here are my takeaways from the videos.

1. A majority of Russians support the war out of patriotism.
2. A sizable minority oppose the war, but are afraid (with good reason) to speak up.  A large number, not necessarily war opponents, have left Russia to avoid military service.
3. Russians have nothing against Ukrainians, whom they regard as brother Slavs.  Pro-war Russians think the enemy is the United States and the Western alliance.
4. Russian troops are under-equipped and have to buy their own gear in military stores.  Strangely (or maybe not), privately-owned stores are well-supplied with military gear while the army itself falls short.
5. Russian troops are well-paid, compared to the average Russian.
6. Neither side’s propaganda about how the war is going is to be believed.
7. War is Hell.  But I knew that already.

Are cats solid, liquid or something else?

Time for something a little lighter.

Nikola Jokic – basketball’s greatest passer?

Reader, you might not have got the reference by my friend, Steve in Texas, in his comment on my previous post, to Nikola Jokic, the great basketball passer.

I didn’t know who he was either, until Steve’s and my mutual friend, Bill Harvey, sent us this video a few days ago.

Even if you’re not especially a basketball fan (I’m not), I think you’ll be amazed at the skills displayed in this video (I was).

I only wish I were a tenth as good a writer as Nikola Jokic is a basketball player.

How the jubilee idea inspired the oppressed

Peter Linebaugh

George Rosso, a reader of this blog, sent me a link to an article called Jubilating–Or, How the Atlantic Working Class Used the Biblical Jubilee Against Capitalism, with Some Success  by a radical writer named Peter Linebaugh.  It was published in Radical History Review 50 (1991).  

This article is a much fuller account of the Jubilee concept – the periodic cancelling of debts, freeing of slaves and returning of land to its original owners – than does Michael Hudson’s book, which was mainly about the Jubilee as practiced in ancient Near Eastern history.  

It tells how the Jubilee idea in the Christian Old Testament inspired slaves, the dispossessed and other oppressed people in modern history.  It continues to inspire the Latin American liberation theologians and Palestinians (many of.whom are Christians) trying to reclaim their land.

Linebaugh went into the Jubilee idea and its connection with liberation movements more deeply than Hudson did and of course more deeply than I am doing here.  If you care about this topic, you should read it in full and not be content with my summary.  But I’ll try to hit a few highlights.  

I’ll start with the Jubilee song of Thomas Spence, who wrote it in 1782 (sung to the tune of “America” or “God Save the King”).

I

Hark! how the Trumpet’s sound,

Proclaims the Land around

The Jubilee!

Tells all the Poor oppress’d,

No more shall they be cess’d;

Nor Landlords more molest

Their Property.

II

Rents t’ourselves now we pay,

Dreading no Quarter-day,

Fraught with Distress

Welcome that day draws near,

For then our rents we share,

Earth’s rightful Lords we are,

Ordain’d for this.

And all the World releas’d 

from Misery.

The Fir-trees all rejoice,

And Cedars lift their voice,

Ceas’d now the Feller’s noise

Long rais’d by thee!

IV

The Sceptre now is broke,

Which with continual Stroke

The Nations smote!.

Hell from beneath doth rise,

To meet thus Lofty Eyes,

From the most pompous size,

How brought to nought!

And all the World releas’d

from Misery.

The Fir-trees all rejoice,

And Cedars lift their voice,

Ceas’d now the Feller’s noise

Long rais’d by thee!

V

Since then this Jubilee

Sets all at Liberty

Let us be glad,

Behold each one return

To their Right, and their own,,

No more like Doves to mourn,

By Landlords sad!

Do we need a 21st century debt jubilee?

“AND FORGIVE THEM THEIR DEBTS”: Lending, Foreclosure and Redemption From Bronze Age Finance to the Jubilee Year by Michael Hudson (2018)

Michael Hudson is an economist who says that the chief economic problem in the world today is that individuals and nations owe more debt than they ever can repay.  And “debt that can’t be repaid, won’t be repaid.”

He has written in many books and articles that, unless there is a writedown of debt, lenders will grow richer and richer and the indebted public will grow poorer and poorer until there is an economic collapse.

In this 2018 book, he argues that debt write-downs actually were economic policy in the ancient Near East, and are supported by the Hebrew Bible and the teachings of Jesus.

The saying on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land,” is a quote from Leviticus 25: 10.   According to Hudson, this refers forgiveness of debts and freeing of slaves (who are enslaved because they can’t pay their bills) in the periodic Jubilee year.

Such language is now interpreted as an aspirational goal, but Hudson maintains it was intended as policy.

There is reason why, in the Ten Commandments, there are separate commandments for “thou shalt not commit adultery” and “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

It meant it was a sin to try to acquire one’s neighbor’s wife as a bondservant in return for payment of debt, along with his ox, his ass, his manservant or maidservant or anything else that is one’s neighbor’s.

When the Lord’s Prayer said, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” Hudson says, it meant literal debt forgiveness as well as forgiveness of sins.   The word for “debt” in many European and Near Eastern languages is the same as the word for “sin.”

This goes against the grain of present-day thinking, in which debt repayment is regarded as an absolute moral obligation.   True, bankrupts normally don’t have to fear debtors’ prison, as was the law in early 19th century England, let alone be sold into slavery, as was the case in ancient Greece and Rome.

But student debt is not dischargeable in bankruptcy and debtors’ prisons are coming back in the form of sentences for contempt of court.  Debt slavery still exists for individuals in some parts of the world, and the international banking system does not show mercy for indebted poor nations.

If an obligation is absolute and unlimited, it is equivalent to a religion.  Debt repayment is regarded as an absolute obligation, and compound interest makes it a potentially unlimited one.  It really is a kind of religion, the service of Mammon.   And the Bible teaches that one cannot serve God and Mammon.

The looming shadow of debt

Debt that can’t be paid, won’t be paid.  ==Michael Hudson

Do we Americans owe more than we can repay?  I don’t know enough to say “yes” with certainty, but the information in the charts and articles below make me wonder.

The first chart tracks American household debt and its composition.

Average American Household Debt in 2023: Facts and Figures by Jack Caporal for The Motley Fool Ascent.

The economy has roared back from the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing with it supply chain issues and inflation that have stressed Americans’ wallets.

Throughout 2022, inflation reached levels not seen since the late 1970s, adding to the cost of goods already pushed higher by global supply chains snarled by shortages and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The result: Average debt is up in nearly every category compared to 2020.  This includes total household debt, credit card debt, mortgage debt, and auto loan debt.

The percentage of personal loans and auto loans in hardship are also above 2020 levels.

Despite turning the corner on the COVID-19 pandemic, stress continues to impact the finances of American households.

Total household debt, Q1 2023	$17 trillion
Average household debt, 2022	$101,915
Total credit card debt, Q1 2023	$986 billion
Average revolving credit card balance, 2022	$5,910
Total mortgage debt, Q1 2023	$12.04 trillion
Average mortgage debt, 2022	$236,443
Average mortgage payment, 2019	$1,487
Total home equity revolving debt, Q1 2023	$339 billion
Average HELOC value, 2022	$41,045
Total auto loan debt, Q1 2023	$1.56 trillion
Average auto loan debt, 2022	$22,612
Average monthly new car payment, Q4 2022	$716
Average monthly used car payment, Q4 2022	$526
Average personal loan debt, 2022	$18,255

Shrinking savings and rising debt leave consumers on shaky financial footing by Shannon Pettypeice for NBC News.

… the amount of debt Americans are carrying has soared.  Credit card balances increased by $61 billion to a record high of $986 billion in the last quarter of 2022 — a rapid reversal from two years ago when Americans were paying down debt with stimulus checks, according to data from New York Federal Reserve.  Auto loan balances rose by $94 billion. 

There are signs that a growing number of consumers have been having a harder time paying down that debt. 

The percentage of credit card holders carrying debt from month to month has increased to 46%, up from 39% a year ago, according to Bankrate.  Auto loan delinquencies have been steadily rising from their pandemic lows with the share of auto loans at least 60 days overdue at its highest level since 2006, according to a report last month from Cox Automotive.