Imperial Hubris by Michael Scheuer, 2004, Excerpts

America has moved from being the much admired champion of liberty and self government to the hated and feared advocate of a new imperial order, one that has much the same characteristics as nineteenth-century European imperialism: military garrisons; economic penetration and control; support for leaders, no matter how brutal and undemocratic, as long as they obey the imperial power; and the exploitation and depletion of natural resources. Muslims have seen this before.

While U.S. leaders will not say America is at War with Islam, some of Islam is waging war on the United States, and more is edging closer to that status. The war is being waged against us for specific, quantifiable reasons and not as our leaders claim because a few Muslim fanatics hate democracy and freedom. This claim belittles the Muslims opposing us and thereby weakens America’s ability to resist by underestimating the brains, patience, and religion-based fortitude of our foes.

Reality for America is that there is a large and growing number of Muslims who hate our policies and actions toward the Islamic world, many of whom have or will take up arms against us as a result. Muslims believe what Muslims believe, and today tens of millions of Muslims believe their faith is being attacked by the U.S.-led Western Crusaders and that Islam will be changed beyond recognition, if not eradicated, if each Muslim does not step forth to defend with his life.

We cannot talk or negotiate our way out of this mess; the enemy has listened for thirty years and believes U.S. promises of fairness for Muslims have been lies. Simply put, the enemy wants war and is not listening; he has no reason to listen, he is winning. We have no choice but to fight; it is the decision about current policy that will determine the fight’s length and cost.

The military is now America’s only tool and will remain so while current policies are in place. No public diplomacy, presidential praise for Islam, or politically correct debate masking the reality that many of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims hate us for actions not values, will get America out of this war. This war has the potential to last beyond our children’s lifetimes and to be fought mostly on U.S. soil.

In October 2002, bin Laden said the war must go on because U.S. leaders and people show no understanding of “the lesson of the New York and Washington raids” and were not changing U.S. policies. “Whether America escalates or de-escalates the conflict, we will reply in kind. The youth of Islam are preparing things that will fill your hearts with fear. They will target key sectors of your economy until you stop your injustice and aggression or until the more short-live of us die.”

Reasons and Policies

Bin Laden Islamic Hero

Economic Objectives

Description of Al Qaeda

American Elites Blinded

The acceptance of alternate forms of money is the path of least resistance, an alternative to conflict. One may speculate on alternate forms of money. Recall, any commodity can be money. As an example, let’s consider electricity as an alternate form of money.

Electricity is a primary societal need. To not have electricity would severely disrupt society. Everybody is wired to electricity. The intrinsic value of an electrical unit, measured in kilowatts, is uniform and could be fairly obvious. One root of all comparative valuation would be a kilowatt.

Since the storage capacity of electricity is negligible, the extraction rate of electricity equals its consumption rate. For the most part, what’s produced is consumed immediately. Though the extraction rate and the consumption rate may increase, they increase proportionately. As long as the storage capacity of electricity is negligible, the result is a zero growth rate of money. A zero growth rate does not facilitate the application of interest. Society will restructure itself to accommodate a zero growth form of money.

The process of extraction is the replenishment of electricity since the storage capacity of electricity is negligible. The extraction and replenishment rate of electricity are correlative to the extraction and replenishment rates of its energy sources. Oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, and hydro are the predominate sources of energy used in the production of electricity. Solar, wind, and bio are ancillary energy sources. Oil, natural gas, and coal are finite resources with extremely low replenishment rates.

The relationship of a kilowatt with its energy source would become primary societal knowledge. To ‘save money’ would be to save electricity, perhaps enough to eliminate the need for nuclear and foreign fossil fuels immediately.

The immediate source of money would be the utility serving the local power grid. In California, PG&E would be the utility for Northern California and Socal Edison would be the utility for Southern California. The production of electricity comes from many sources contracted with the utility; however, the distribution of electricity is centralized and controlled by the utility. The management of money would go from global to regional while still maintaining a global form of money. Eventually and perhaps quickly, more independent ways to produce electricity would be creatively found.

From there, the logistical details of how an actual transaction occurs using electricity as a form of money becomes academic. It takes a lot of people to run the utility and they have needs like everyone else i.e., the basis of trade with others. The rest is accounting.

The same analysis can be applied to other alternate forms of money.

Usury (Random House Dictionary)

1. the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest. 2. The exorbitant amount or rate of interest, esp. in excess of the legal rate.

Usury (Dictionary of Cultural Literacy)

The practice of charging more than the legal interest rate.

Law separates interest and usury by defining what is exorbitant. From a mathematical perspective, the determination is arbitrary. Interest and usury are conceptually synonymous. The difference between interest and usury is an arbitrary legal determination with no basis in mathematics.

Deuteronomy XXIII:19 (Old Testament)

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to the brother; usury on money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury:

Deuteronomy XXIII:20 (Old Testament)

Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon a stranger; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury...

Deuteronomy was a base of morality for Hebrew tribesman. Usury could be applied to a stranger, but not to a brother. For some, usury was viewed as a weapon to be used against an enemy who could not be defeated in direct confrontation.

De Tobia by St. Ambrose (340-397)

From him, it says there, demand usury, whom you rightly desire to harm, against whom weapons are lawfully carried. Upon him usury is legally imposed. On him whom you cannot easily conquer in war, you can quickly take vengeance with the hundredth. From him exact usury whom it would not be a crime to kill. He fights without a weapon who demands usury: he who revenges himself upon an enemy, who is an interest collector from his foe, fights without a sword. Therefore, where there is the right of war, there also is the right of usury.

As the argument goes, the New Testament proclamation of universal brotherhood negated the use of usury in any circumstance.

The Idea of Usury by Benjamin N. Nelson, Princeton University Press, 1949

St. Jerome (340-420) contended that the prohibition of usury among brother in Deuteronomy had been universalized by the Prophets and the New Testament. There was, in short, no scriptural warrant for taking usury from anyone.

Though usury was a banned practice, it still crept into society and propagated itself.

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism by R. H. Tawney, Oxford, 1922

The Papacy was, in a sense, the greatest financial institution of the Middle Ages, and, as its fiscal system was elaborated, things became, not better, but worse. The abuses which were a trickle in the thirteenth century were a torrent in the fifteenth. The papacy might denounce usurers, but, as the center of the most highly organized administrative system of the age, receiving remittances all over Europe, and receiving them in money at a time when the revenues of other Governments still included personal services and payments in kind, it could not dispense with them.

The Idea of Usury by Benjamin N. Nelson, Princeton University Press, 1949

In fifteenth-century Italy, economic expediencies completely overshadowed moral philosophy as a force in the propagation of Christian Universalism. By 1509, eighty-seven banks had been set up in Italy with papal approval despite insistent pleas of traditionalist theologians, chiefly Augustinians and Dominicans, that the interest charges taken by the monti were contrary to all tradition, natural and Divine law, and subversive of Christian brotherhood.

Religious scholars began to question the Roman papacy as the sole path to spiritual enlightenment.

The History of the Modern World by Palmer and Colton, 1995

Germany in the fourteenth century produced a series of mystics. The essence of mysticism lay in the belief, or experience, that the individual soul could in perfect solitude commune directly with God. The mystic had no need of reason, nor of words, nor of joining with other people in open worship, nor even sacraments administered by the priests - or even of the church. The mystics did not rebel against the church; they accepted its pattern of salvation; but at bottom they offered, to those would follow, a deeper religion in which the church as a social institution had no place. All social institutions, in fact, were transcended in mysticism by the individual soul; and on this doctrine, both profound and socially disruptive, Martin Luther was later to draw.

Considering Germany’s economic condition, Luther’s opinion upon usury, a fundamental mechanism of money having a biblical reference, was relevant. During this period, Luther stood forth as the spokesman of the German nation against "usurious" extortions of the Roman Church. All Germany, he charged, was being exhausted by usury. In 1524, the peasants of Germany revolted. Luther’s convictions were shaken by the peasants’ violent methods of retaliations.

The History of the Modern World by Palmer and Colton

Luther repudiated all connection with the peasants, called them filthy swine, and urged the princes to suppress them by sword. The peasants were unmercifully put down, but popular unrest continued to stir the country, expressing itself, in a religious age, in various forms of extreme religious frenzy.

Neither interest nor usury were eradicated.

Another Religious Perspective

The Koran, the Holy Text of Islam delivered by the seventh century prophet Muhammad, also mentions usury.

The Glorious Qur’an, Translation by Marmaduke Pickthall

Surah II - 275

Those who swallow usury cannot rise up save as he ariseth whom the devil hath prostrated by (his) touch. That is because they say: Trade is just like usury; whereas Allah permitteth trading and forbiddeth usury. He unto whom an admonition from his Lord cometh, and (he) refraineth (in obedience thereto), he shall keep (the profits of) that which is past, and his affair (henceforth) is with Allah. As for him who returneth (to Usury) - such are rightful owners of Fire. They will abide therein.

Surah II - 276

Allah hath blighted usury and made almsgiving fruitful. Allah loveth not the impious and guilty.

Surah II - 278

O ye who believe! Observe your duty to Allah, and give up what remaineth (due to you) for usury, if ye are (in truth) believers.

Surah III - 130

O we who believe! Devour not usury, doubling and quadrupling (the sum lent). Observe your duty to Allah, that ye may be successful.

Surah XXX - 39

That which ye give in usury in order that it may increase on (other) people’s property hath no increase with Allah; but that which ye give in charity, seeking Allah’s countenance, hath increase manifold.

It is interesting to note that the New Age translation of Surah III - 130 [above] incorporates the modern concept of usury as separate from interest.

The Essential Koran, Translation by Thomas Cleary

Faithful believers, do not take usurious interest, multiplied and compounded, and be wary of God, that you may prosper.

Today, the use of usury remains a source of contention within the Islamic world and amongst religions.

Osama bin Laden: You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury.

A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer, Rutgers University Press, 1963

Credit is sometimes considered a modern device or even a modern vice. It is true that a few new credit forms have been developed in our century and statistics reflecting the growth of the volume of credit during recent decades are impressive. But a glance through the pages of financial history will dispel the notion of novelty. Credit was in general use in ancient and medieval times. Credit long antedated industry, banking and even coinage; it probably antedated primitive forms of money.

For example, about 1800 B.C., Hammurabi, a king of the first dynasty of ancient Babylonia, gave his people their earliest formal code of laws. A number of chief provisions of this code regulated the relation of debtor to creditor. The maximum rate of interest was set at 33 1/3% per annum for loans of grain repayable in kind, and at 20% per annum for loans of silver by weight.

Twelve hundred years later, around 600 B.C., the legal history of classical Greece began with the laws of Solon. Drastic reforms were then called for by an economic crisis in Athens stemming in part from excessive debt and widespread personal slavery for debt.

The Romans also began their legal history with a body of laws regulating credit. This, too, was forced by a crisis characterized by excessive debt.

These three examples from the earliest days of historic Babylon, Greece and Rome are enough to support the conclusion that credit at interest was widespread enough to create major political problems before the emergence of written history.

Usury, or interest, was fundamental to the economics of these great civilizations, driving its unsustainable growth and eventual epochal collapse. 

Form of Money Series