I've been listening to people talk about reforming the police and they all have good ideas. Some want to simply defund the police – even eliminate them – One twitter friend says [same as me].
"We need REAL police reform:
First, piracy is a term for theft and the thieves who commit those thefts. It is also used in other contexts, such as labeling those who use copyrighted material without permission. People usually restrict the meaning to thieves operating on the seas. Piracy has been a feature of world history since at least the 14th century BC, when pirates were described in Egyptian and Canaan correspondences. The Sea People's who disrupted Minoan and Mycenaean life, were pirates. So were both the Greeks and the Trojans.
When an entire nation engages in piracy, it is considered legal by the State and the term for that is “privateering.” The distinction between privateers and pirates is often a corrupt barely legal one.
Moreover, the term itself "private + teering" implies private warfare, private government, and government sanction and allocation of loot. In the European World and the British one, specifically, Admiralty courts adjudicated loot from the sea, both that acquired through privateering and "salvage." Admiralty courts and similar, through auctions served the role of legitimizing loot, slavery, salvage, and thus laundering proceeds from smuggling, buccaneering, piracy, "filibustering (private warfare), traditionally, for centuries. They have ranged from laundering implicit corruption (we didn't know!) to explicitly corrupt money laundering.
The vehicle for traditional piracy was the "letter of marquee." That was a contractual instrument that granted and individual or bearer, the right to "take prizes" from ships belonging to a country the contractual authority, government, was at war at. The concept of "letter of marquee" was also behind some early corporations such as the East India Company, from around 1601, which is one of the models for the modern corporation. They would grant the company or bearer, the power to wage private warfare, on the seas and often on land as well, to raid, steal, attack and capture enemy ships. Sometimes pirates would have letters of marquee from both sides of a conflict so they could simply attack anyone passing thru a chokepoint.
Thus privateering has traditionally represented legalized robbery under cover of contract. Essentially privateering enabled economic royalty, as the companies granted this power could govern their crews as they pleased. Some privateers behaved like pirate ships and treated their crew well. But many employed the sailor as slave model of governance. Privateers, warships and private shipping in general in general, were infamous for beatings, whippings, poor food, low pay and tyranny, (defined by John Locke as power exercised for Private, separate advantage) over thier crews. Pirate ships were often a model for rough democratic governance. Ironically legal pirate ships, not so much. The purpose of privateering was to acquire property for private ownership. The attitude of privateering is anything for a buck.
Thus the enemy of liberty is in fact privateering because privateering is the conversion of what should be ruled for the common good into private property ruled for the advantage of the few. Privateers were pirates, who, operating under a Letter of Marquee, were authorized to engage in private warfare on behalf of the State. Generalizing that meaning, privateers are those who engage in commerce, warfare, theft, espionage or any other action, under the protection of Government. Privateers are private government. That privateers originally were also pirates, often from the point of view of other countries who had issued no such letters, just illustrates the barbarity of the practice. Privateering is as old as piracy. Vikings were only pirates to the people of the lands they predated.
Even classical pirates, lived lives, internally that were governed by democratic rules. When Thom Paine served as a privateer:
“At sixteen, in 1753, he brought it off. He shipped out on a privateer — a private warship authorized by the English government to attack and loot commercial vessels sailing under the flag of any nation with whom England was legally at war.”
He tells of that experience that he experienced good captains and bad captains. The Good captains treated the crew with respect. The bad captains whipped and beat their crew and looked down on them as little more than vermin. The British Royal Navy whipped and beat sailors. Pirates and the better Privateers, motivated them.
The tradition of both the United States and the British (including Scotland and all of Ireland) is founded on privateering. The major Sea Captain Families even called themselves "Sea Dogs" and they'd later branch out into other businesses. But most of their businesses were or derived from Privateering. Thus Privateering involves the Following Activities, when either barely legal or they don't get caught:
Financial Capitalism as Laundering ill gotten goods. Most money is either some kind of private debt, or in emergencies it might be recycled loot. It always comes from labor in some way. Financial Capitalism arrogates wealth and uses some of it to generate more wealth. Actual capitalism mixes labor with wealth and winds up a public good even when not intended to be.
Thus Privateering is at the root of the modern world, European Adventurism, and European Thievery. Often it was excused as "saving" benighted souls. But more often the souls that were reduced to abject subjection were originally noble souls reduced by the forces of kleptocracy and kakacracy. From the Point of View of European ship captains and many of their crew, taking slaves on the "Guinea coast" of Africa was simply yet another way to make a living. But from the point of view of their victims, such as Frederick Douglas describes in a famous quote:
“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” -Douglass, p84
Privateering has even become an ideology. Modern Pirates don't have peg legs or carry a saber. They wear suits and carry brief cases. They seek to privatize, "enclose the commons;" take what had been an institution, property or service that is intended for the public good, and turn it to private control. This is not "free-market economics" it is free booting economics. The ideology of piracy is expressed by people like Donald Trump who say we did wrong by not seizing Iraqi Oil fields when we invaded Iraq. That is what pirates do.
I've written about this before so I may come back to this post and put in references. I just wanted to make it plain (and relatively succinct) what I'm talking about when I talk about privateering.
In a paper published by Edward J. McCaffery titled "The Death of the Income Tax" he explains how the income tax became a wage tax & was suberted by generations of work by armies of lawyers, lobbyists & paid pseudo-schollars.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook
When the income tax was first proposed, its target was to recoup some of the money created by the use of private money$ (currently Federal Reserve Notes & accounting money$ loaned into existence by banks), Corporate privilege, & Land Ownership.
All of these income was derived from paper (notational) money and the interest on that money. This was unearned income "a.k.a. economic rent, passive income, land values"), from privileges granted by government to a self selected few & mostly earned jointly by the privateers & a crew of commoners from common property; but not shared with the crew, i.e. privateering.
Anyway the income tax made sure financial capitalism generated profit for everyone while moderating the tyrannical impulses of the private separate interests who otherwise would have continued to build massive forces on the backs of labor. It's gradual demise reflects the efforts of those powerful interests & their avatars over a period of more than 70 years.
It was never intended to be a tax on labor. Income from labor is earned, compensation for energy expended & little is net income after food, transport, housing & other taxes (economic rent is a form of private tax). Taxing labor compensation violates basic principles of fairness and is thus unjust oppression, especially when it was never the original purpose of the income tax! But anyway,
Read the article so you'll see for yourself:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3242314#.W5DxjAm3U4g.facebook
I'm publishing now, as this is a small piece of a longer argument.
The founders put the second amendment into the constitution to protect the right of the country and the communities in our country to defend ourselves from threats, and thus to participate in our own government. Indeed they saw the militia as;
“The Palladium of liberty.” [Armed in America]
They saw that maintaining a well regulated militia required:
“habitual exercise” in military training and “manly discipline”
Which they saw as the:
“bulwark of the nation” [ibid page 102]
Only so long as they are correctly:
“Armed and Disciplined”
John Hamilton, for instance, saw the Militia as the ideal alternative to:
“that potion of idleness and corruptor of morals, a standing army”
People in this country are really confused about how Government should function. Many think it should be run like a business. Indeed Government should be run like a well run business. But more importantly a well run business is a well governed business.
The reason people are confused about the relationship between business and government is that businesses are governing entities! When Government is run for the sake of Oligarchs only, it is tyranny and privateering!
The Lockean Definition of Tyranny is government for "private, separate advantage.":
We give the people within them the privilege of governing property, their own affairs and in return a sane society expects them to operate within the parameters of that title or charter. This corporate privilege allows Businesses to be run for the private separate advantage of the owners and senior management, within restrictions set by law. When everyone behaves it works for the greater good. When they don't, you get tyranny and privateering.
Government is a business of all the businesses, all the many factions and associations of the people within its jurisdiction. So it has to be run for the people's business, like a virtuous business, and not like a pirate camp.
Around the world nativism is raising it's ugly head again. Some People in nations all over the world are rising in rejection of immigrants, refugees and minorities among their own people. This phenomena is not new. It is not trivial or benign either. It was a feature of totalitarianism in the 30s and since. It is also a feature of totalitarian groups.
Unfortunately, we just elected a Nativist President in the United States. His premier appointments are the open nativist Bannon and the racist Reince Prebius. The "alt right" is just an updated fascism. They are folks who openly admire Hitler as a hero and want to continue his work. People who proudly wear KKK robes and talk about race war and their own identity. They are openly fascist. And their target are people who are minorities, "mixed races" and the stateless. Nativism is as ugly now as it has ever been. And nativists are set to direct the country from the White House. Trump himself talks openly about his racialist beliefs, but mainly he is demagogueing the subject.
Watching this election made me pull out my copy of "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt.
Here is what she wrote about Trump's followers:
“The mob is primarily a group in which the residue of all classes are represented. This makes it easy to mistake the mob for the people, which also comprises all strata of the people. While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob will always shout for the “strong man,” the “great leader.” For the mob hates society from which it is excluded, as well as Parliament where it is not represented.” [Origins]
Federated principles are concerned with uniting people and getting them to work together in solidarity. Federal Government is general government that spans multiple centers of population and subdivisions and links people who might otherwise be at war with one another. Thus all the principles of Federal Government derive from two basic concepts: "E Pluribus Unum" -- out of many one and the notion that we are stronger when we work together; "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." The notion of "Union" as better than disunion is central to all of them. For a Federation to work it has to recognize the rights and responsibilities of both central authorities and local authorities, subsidiarity and replication of republican forms to the local level.
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The thing you learn when working with bureaucratic organizations is that bureaucracies operate on inertia. Once something is set rolling it moves like a Giant Ship. Even if the captains of the ship see an iceberg ahead, even if every crew-member sees that iceberg, if the charter says "full steam ahead" they'll keep steaming according to their orders. That is why the most effective bureaucracies have a dictator at the top, a bottom up legislature, and some means to tell the Captain he can change course and not hit the Iceberg dead center. Bureaucracy is a feature of human organization. Armies are the oldest example of it. The next oldest is the Imperial Government, but that is an extension of military bureaucracy. What you don't want is concentrated power. Bureaucratic law is often unjust by design unless it is subject to democratic controls like appellate rights, jury trials & representative structures..
When the military, or any other bureaucracy, administers justice, the result is even more rigid than the bureaucracy on the Titanic. And unfair. So it has been with Admiralty Courts and the Investor State Tribunals. Admiralty Law has been "Investor Law" since ancient times. When State agents (factors) steal it is loot, when it is you or I, we hang for our crimes.
I believe that people have a 7th Amendment right to a jury trial in civil proceedings if they wish it and that the case for that is established in the history of Common Law and the creation of the 7th amendment.
I've been reading the book "Washington's Circle" by David S., and Jeanne, Heidler. The very first chapter had some gems of quotes about government that I need to analyze. Our founding fathers were divided mostly on sectional grounds, with the Northern delegates having a clear vision of the country as a developed place and the Southern delegates ironically pre-occupied with both slavery and "liberty." The result was a National Government that took 70 years, and a bitter civil war, to end slavery. That war, completed, we found ourselves ruled by oligarchy and a trust and corporate nightmare. Well the reason for that turns out to be hidden in our constitution. We setup a government that was based more on the Southern Plantation style government then on the Northern Town Charter government.
Our Founders setup a government premised on certain Northern Principles:
"Civic Virtue" [as a] "corporate exercise involving church elders, town aldermen, even congressional delegations, all working in concert to advance the common interest." [From "Washington's Circle" see below]
In that vision the Nation was to be an:
"organic creature, the body entire, and preserving its health was simply another obligation, the appropriate province of Government."
But he notes that Southerners didn't see government the same way.
"Plantation agriculture kept the region rural; town meetings didn't occur because there were precious few towns. Instead, southerners relied on hierarchical relationships with planters at the top of a social structure too vertically linear to be described as even pyramidal. A mass of poor whites was at it's base, and slaves were completely under it."
The genesis of this was in colonialism. The Early Crown colonies tried to replicate the tyrannical forms the Admiralty had found successful in Britain. They weren't able to export all of them to the United States because they needed a mass of free people and at least the illusion of opportunity to populate the country. In the North the Yeomen farmers replicated their own ideas about governance from a tradition of local rebellion against top down rule. But in the South the Brits were more successful in exporting tyranny through:
"County Courts with lifetime judges reflected the will of the upper class, and slavery made white unity and consensus imperative."
Sheriffs and the few elected officials represented this hierarchy, and fear of slaves, phantom outside enemies, or whatever the local leadership could drum up as the enemy of the week kept the south together despite the reality of oppression. Because the poor sometimes owned their own land and were told they were free, they supported the hierarchy. Because they were left alone in their misery as long as they didn't challenge this order the result was the illusion of personal liberty. Slave owners were free to oppress slaves, and the poor were free to do what they needed to do to get by. A sense of civic order, duty and common purpose was absent from this order. The attitude in the south was "leave me alone", and that is not conducive towards democracy because democracy depends on "stepping up" (Hoi Bollomenos) and involvement. That attitude has infected most of the country since then.
But the real coup is that the Founders grafted the Southern legal system into the National Government. We have a supreme court that "reflect[s] the will of the upper class" and increasingly our representatives reflect a southern Libertarian attitude ("leave me alone to practice pedaphilia and beat up my wife") versus a civil and liberal attitude ("I participate in my own government to secure my liberties and exercise my duty to my fellow man"). As a country we do Counties and Southern Style courts well, but civic virtue is under assault along with cities and towns. Ironically as the South has the population to support real civic structures, those are being trampled on from Boston to Detroit, to Washington D.C. We need to strengthen, restore and (in much of the country) recreate civic structures to restore and redirect our corporate structures to a more civic attitude.
And of course the point is, that in parts of the country, we never had those civic values in the first place. That is the real weakness of our Constitution.
In my post "Did Cotton and other GOP politicians take money from Israel? [http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/03/did-cotton-and-other-gop-politicians.html] I dug up material about some major lobbyists for foreign countries and the disproportionate influence they are having on our politics and foreign policy. My anti-Israel friends may think I've gone over to their side, but the evidence I saw was of an mafioso-esoteric layer, not one where one side is saintly and the other nefarious and dirty. The people involved don't really care about either side. They'll sell weapons to both sides. I saw evidence of nefarious, dirty, sneaky types all over the place, but mostly connected with the Reagan Administration and it's program to win millions and defeat "Communism" if the Communists aren't buying. These are people who work together while plotting against each other. Just as scandals connected to the Reagan and Bush Administrations trace to Watergate related events, world events trace to the piracy and freebooting of our Arms Dealers, Secret Agents and "Cold Warriors."
I might never have gotten at the material, completely or factually at all, except that it became a "who done it" of American Politics. If the Dems hadn't been the target of the 1980 "October Surprise" efforts of the wealthy backers and corporations behind the Reagan Counter-revolution the energy to dig into these criminal behaviors or to expose them would have been lacking. Indeed, it turns out Carter was trying to exchange arms for the Hostages, covertly, too, and the Reagan War-monger crowd outbid him. The "October Surprise" that sabotaged Carter's efforts to end the Hostage crisis with the Iranians back in 1980, was because Reagan's wealthy backers were running their own programs. These illegal, "extralegal" and subversive programs continued long after Reagan won election. They funded the dirty wars in Central and South America. And that is what attracted my interest. My wife was traumatized by what the Argentine military did during that period. I'm a little protective.
I'll present the timeline as best I can but the story is bigger and murkier than I can simplify it from. Rather than rehash the details I'm trying to focus on what I believe was the big picture. Starting with the:
For example while looking up the biography of Adnan Khashoggi the Wikipedia article notes "(Arabic: عدنان خاشقجي; born 25 July 1935) is a Saudi Arabian businessman. At a peak net worth of up to $4 billion USD in the early 1980s, he was considered one of the richest men in the world" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]. At the height of his power he owned the Kingdom 5KR, which is now owned by Al-Waleed bin Talal.
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| http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2c/Kingdom_5KR_-_005.JPG/250px-Kingdom_5KR_-_005.JPG |
This ship was used as a setting for some scenes the Bond movie "Never Say Never Again" where Bond chases a character who could have been loosely based on Adnan Khashoggi (or any wealthy arms dealer) "Maximillian Largo" was being chased after stealing and dealing in Nuclear Warheads at the behest of the "Dr. Evil" Ernst Stavro Blofeld. The parallels were there. Khashoggi ran his business from his ship in a way that has been a pattern since before John Pierpont Morgan used to do his more shady dealing from his yacht the "SS Corsair". I read an article about JP Morgan flying a black pirate flag but have never been able to confirm it. He did fly his yacht colors and did claim descent from Henry Morgan. He is also famous for negotiating the "Corsair Compact" aboard one of his yachts [https://www.jpmorgan.com/pages/jpmorgan/about/history/month/jul] in which he got the major railroads to collude on prices.
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| Image from http://www.ssmaritime.com/Corsair-IV-1.jpg |
Adnan Khashoggi:
"Khashoggi headed a company called Triad Holding Company, which among other things built the Triad Center in Salt Lake City, Utah, which later went bankrupt. He was famed as an arms dealer, brokering deals between US firms and the Saudi government, most actively in the 1960s and 1970s. In the documentary series The Mayfair Set, Saudi author Said Aburish states that one of Adnan's first weapons deals was providing David Stirling with weapons for a covert mission in Yemen during the Aden Emergency in 1963. Among his overseas clients were defense contractors Lockheed Corporation (now Lockheed Martin Corporation), Raytheon, Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corporation and Northrop Corporation (which have now merged into Northrop Grumman)." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]
Adnan Khashoggi was never working alone, but at the height of his power and influence he was a major player in international dealings in oil, weapons, major weapons systems (aircraft, bombs, rockets, jets). But his dealings were as much outside "official channels and within them.
"He was implicated in the Iran–Contra affair as a key middleman in the arms-for-hostages exchange along with Iranian arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar and, in a complex series of events, was found to have borrowed money for these arms purchases from the now-bankrupt financial institution the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) with Saudi and US backing. In 1988, Khashoggi was arrested in Switzerland, accused of concealing funds, held for three months and then extradited to the United States where he was released on bail and subsequently acquitted." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]
In the Iran Contra case, Khashoggi was a bit player in a game of international intrigue and high level sedition and sabotage that makes organizations like Spectre seem like amateurs. Renegade elements of the USA government, led by Oliver North after the election and by William Casey before the election made deals with the Iranian Ayatollahs at the very same time period they were painting the Iranians as terrorists and members of the Axis of Evil. But he made billions, and if some of it later disappeared, he's not doing so bad. The official timeline was:
The Shah ran a repressive government that was secular, corrupt and tried to modernize top down. The model for these regimes was Fascist even when they allied with communist countries. Top down rule, liberalization of education, coupled with a violent secret police, prison and execution system to keep people in order. He made many enemies, and the leaders of the expat community mostly moved to France and lived in Paris.
The riots were actually in response to the Shah's repressive, corrupt government and use of Secret Police. The religious response was one of the tools of those revolting, and sadly the religious resistance was the largest faction resisting the Shah. Religious Iranians saw liberating women, friendships with Israel, and being "too secular" as evils along with the corruption that made the Shah and his relations incredibly wealthy while keeping the wealth for themselves. Sharp leaders formed temporary alliances between secular liberals like Bani Sadr and the Ayatollah, who was living in France at the time. The Ayatollah, by keeping quiet on controversial subjects and speaking in abstracts, seemed a progressive hero to many, until he returned to Iran.
These people called themselves "students" but they hadn't been studying in 2 years and it later turned out that they were professional revolutionaries and the core of later religious militia/police/army cadres.
In 1980 Carter had his deputy Secretary of State Cyrus Vance lead "the official diplomatic effort, Hamilton Jordan spent thousands of hours working secret channels." But it appears that the Cons had their own side channels. [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/carter-hostage-crisis/]
The public story of the Carter Administration includes large offers of carrots if the Ayatollahs would free the hostages. But the Ayatollahs wanted Reza Pahlavi's head more than they wanted material goods. And when the USA sent helicopters to try to rescue them they appear to have decided to stick their thumb in the face of the President. They might have done the same even without the advice and offers of the Presidents Industrialists and advisors. The New York Times article says:
"in March 1980, four months after followers of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini had seized the United States Embassy in Teheran and taken the hostages, Casey approached two Iranian-born wheeler-dealers, the brothers Jamshid and Cyrus Hashemi, who had ties to the Khomeini regime. Casey asked them to set up a meeting with representatives of the Iranian Government. Thereafter, the Hashemis purportedly arranged for Casey to attend two meetings in Madrid in the summer of 1980 with Mehdi Karrubi, an Iranian cleric close to the Ayatollah. According to Mr. Sick, Casey subsequently had one last meeting in Paris about two weeks before the election to clinch the deal." [http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/22/books/the-case-for-a-conspiracy.html]
But that is not the only narrative. In other versions of the narrative the Reagan Operatives were
"Richard Allen, subsequently Reagan's first national security adviser, Allen aide Laurence Silberman, and Robert McFarlane, another future national security adviser who in 1980 was on the staff of Senator John Tower (R-TX)." [http://www.wrmea.org/1987-october/did-iran-delay-hostages-release-to-ensure-reagan-s-election.html]
"In any case there are a number of witnesses who say (despite the denials) that the meeting did occur and was a success. Robert Perry writes
"In 1994, I found a classified summary of the FBI bugging. According to that summary, the bugs revealed Cyrus Hashemi deeply enmeshed with Republicans on arms deals to Iran in fall 1980 as well as in financial schemes with Casey's close friend and business associate, John Shaheen." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]
Meanwhile the Carter Administration was working it's own deal without knowing what the Cons were doing:
"Bani Sadr, however, says the secret deal was made, even as the Iranians publicly reached an agreement with the Carter administration to release the hostages in return for the unfreezing of $4 billion. The Iranian who secretly met with the Reaganauts in Washington, Bani Sadr says, was either Parvis Sabati, Manucher Ghorbanifar, or both." [http://www.wrmea.org/1987-october/did-iran-delay-hostages-release-to-ensure-reagan-s-election.html]
To the Republican Operatives around Reagan double and dirty business was old business. Casey had recruited one of the key Iranian players a year before the hostages were taken. Parry Reported:
"the Iranian banker was recorded [by the CIA/NSA] as boasting that he and Casey had been "close friends" for years. That claim was supported by a CIA memo which stated that Casey recruited Cyrus Hashemi into a sensitive business arrangement in 1979." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]
Casey was never at a lot of places during the time from when he was recruited by the OSS to his death. But he definitely was in Paris, despite the denials and bi-partisan cover-up that occurred later. In the book "The Secret Wars of the CIA" Casey comes across as someone for whom the boundaries between personal business, self enrichment and public service are non-existent. This seems to be a pattern among the sociopaths who dominate international business and politics.
Parry notes:
"The secret FBI summary showed Hashemi receiving a $3 million offshore deposit, arranged by a Houston lawyer who said he was a longtime associate of George H.W. Bush. The Houston lawyer, Harrel Tillman, told me in an interview that in 1980, he was doubling as a consultant to Iran's Islamic government." href="https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html">[https://consortiumnews.com/2010/080610.html]
Lloyd Cutler writes:
"Hashemi tried to serve as an intermediary for the Carter White House because, at the request of his lawyer, several of us met with him in New York in the fall of 1980." "Hashemi claimed a family relationship with Hojatolislam Hashemi Rafsanjani, then speaker of the Iranian parliament and now president of Iran." He was already involved in arms deals with Iran by then, and "A few weeks later U.S. Customs and Justice Department officials notified us of evidence that Cyrus Hashemi, along with his brothers Jamshid and Reza, were involved in illegal arms exports to Iran via Kennedy Airport; when confronted, they had said they had our permission." The State Department denied they had any permission to export weapons.
Which is consistent with what an Iranian expat/national would think if he was dealing with people running an extralegal operation. The deal with Hashemi fell through because "." He admits "It is plausible that the Hashemis also were in contact with Republicans, as Jamshid now claims." And if Casey had recruited him in 1979 it could be that Casey is the one who got him in trouble in the first place. He also concedes that "Rafsanjani and his Islamic Republican Party did not consolidate their internal power until the fall of 1980."
If the United States couldn't officially support Iran's military, Israel could! And if, instead of giving Arms to the Iranians they sold them, this could be a profitable effort for all involved. The nice thing (for arms dealers) is that they could do this semi-legally. During the Shah years Israel had developed relationships with top Iranian officials, some of whom avoided being jailed or executed. As Khomeini started to take over in 1979, Israel used the chaos to try to rescue Jews from Iranian persecution. Their first project was known as Shulhan Arukh (שולחן ערוך) or laid table; and rescued 40,000 of Iran's 100,000 Jewish Community. The director of this operation was an operative left behind when most of the Israeli Government withdrew their Embassy. Khomeini had kept SAVAK and military Officers in place, despite the fact that a large amount of the reason for the revolution was SAVAK behavior. These became contacts for Israel, Arms dealers, and their CIA and GOP contacts. For the Israelis the motivation for dealing with iran included Israel's interest in protecting the nearly 200,000 Jews living in Iran. Iran had been a refuge and conduit for Iraqi Jews fleeing Iraqi (and other) persecutions before, during and after the 1947 war, now there had to be some way to withdraw the remaining Jewish population (those willing to leave) in the face of the vicious anti-semitism of the new Ayatollah regimes.
So Israel had a motivation to sell or broker Arms to the Iranians.
According to Lloyd Cutler during the official negotiations with the Carter Administration the:
"Iranians asked us to release undelivered military spare parts bought by the shah's regime. We agreed in principle to do so upon return of the hostages and supplied a list of what was available. But the Iranians surprisingly dropped this request and it never became part of the January 1981 agreements. Was this because of some secret deal with the Reagan team to obtain a larger quantity of American arms from the incoming administration?" [Baltimore Sun Article]
So where would be the evidence that he kept his bargain? The Larouchis published an article by Robert Dreyfuss in 1980 titled "Iran's armed forces receive covert aid from Washington" [http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/1980/eirv07n37-19800923/eirv07n37-19800923_042-irans_armed_forces_receive_cover.pdf] alleging that in September 1980:
"quietly begun a major military airlift to resupply the Iranian armed forces with spare parts, arms, and ammunition, including heavy weapons. American C-130 air transport planes are ferrying this equipment to at least three secret NATO bases, including a location in the Azores, where the cargo is then transferred to Iranian transports for the rest of the journey!" [LaRouche Article]
This may have been from La Rouche, but this was corroborated. But apparently what Carter offered was a drop in the bucket compared to what the Republicans offered. And, apparently Likud Operatives as well. Consortium News reports:
“But the evidence points in that direction, and there are some points that are not in dispute. For instance, there is no doubt that CIA Old Boys and Likudniks had strong motives for seeking President Jimmy Carter’s defeat in 1980.”062410.html
When Casey was appointed CIA director in early 1980 these "old hands" cheered:
“Inside the CIA, Carter and his CIA Director Stansfield Turner were blamed for firing many of the free-wheeling covert operatives from the Vietnam era, for ousting legendary spymaster Ted Shackley, and for failing to protect longtime U.S. allies (and friends of the CIA), such as Iran’s Shah and Nicaragua’s dictator Anastasio Somoza.”062410.html
Carter had tried to stop (or at least moderate) ongoing dirty wars in Central and South America and the operations of Secret police like SAVAK and the agents not only of the above list but also including the dictators in Chile, Peru, Argentina and Bolivia. To these CIA officers dirty wars and the utter defeat of Communism, socialism, and uppity or rebellious people world wide was the mission. Protecting "Democracy" was code for how to win people over, kill enemies and make fortunes. It looks like we now know these Cold Warriors were in covert rebellion against the President.
At least the current rebellion is open.
“As for Israel, Likud Prime Minister Menachem Begin was furious over Carter’s high-handed actions at Camp David in 1978 forcing Israel to trade the occupied Sinai to Egypt for a peace deal. Begin feared that Carter would use his second term to bully Israel into accepting a Palestinian state on West Bank lands that Likud considered part of Israel’s divinely granted territory.”062410.html
Likud's goal was to gradually ethnically cleanse the West Bank as a threshold for regaining "Judea and Samaria" which were the Biblical Israel homeland.
“Former Mossad and Foreign Ministry official David Kimche described Begin’s attitude in his 1991 book, The Last Option, saying that Israeli officials had gotten wind of “collusion” between Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat “to force Israel to abandon her refusal to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967, including Jerusalem, and to agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state.”062410.html
Which of course was anathema to the Likud, even if the stated position of Israel was to trade land for peace.
Kimche claimed: “This plan – prepared behind Israel’s back and without her knowledge – must rank as a unique attempt in United States’s diplomatic history of short-changing a friend and ally by deceit and manipulation.”062410.html
I remember the goals of Jimmy Carter were all being stated out in the open. He wasn't doing any secret side deals. But believing that is typical paranoid behavior of people who have their own secret agenda. I followed the Camp David accords. But both were willing to agree to some general outlines. Carter was negotiating out of love for the people over love for governments. To this day I don't believe that Israel was going to negotiate seriously without someone pushing them. So while from the POV of Begin that might have seemed a betrayal, Begin's reaction was a betrayal of his promises at Camp David. And how did Israel come to know of Carter's discussions with Sadat?
“However, Begin recognized that the scheme required Carter winning a second term in 1980 when, Kimche wrote, “he would be free to compel Israel to accept a settlement of the Palestinian problem on his and Egyptian terms, without having to fear the backlash of the American Jewish lobby.”062410.html
So in the name of stopping a final peace plan, Begin helped the Republicans sabotage the peace process by sabotaging Carter's re-election.
“In his 1992 memoir, Profits of War, Ari Ben-Menashe, an Israeli military intelligence officer who worked with Likud, agreed that Begin and other Likud leaders held Carter in contempt.” [062410.html]
Which is something they had in common with the GOP Cons.
“Begin loathed Carter for the peace agreement forced upon him at Camp David,” Ben-Menashe wrote. “As Begin saw it, the agreement took away Sinai from Israel, did not create a comprehensive peace, and left the Palestinian issue hanging on Israel’s back.”062410.html
Begin was the one betraying Carter, and the attitude of the Likud was the usual projection of bad intentions that people with bad intentions regularly do.
We can thank Carter for nearly 35 years of relative peace between Israel and her neighbors. If Carter didn't succeed in getting peace between Israel and the Palestinians the blame for that falls on the Likud and the GOP. Neither Reagan nor the two Bushes did anything to advance peace and the result has been 35 years of apartheid, low level violence, terrorism and ethnic cleansings. This has contributed to undermining the peace of those countries that Israel made peace with and is now unravelling Israel's relationships with it's neighbors. If Begin hated and despised Carter, his hatred was like taking poison and hoping your enemy will die. Israel was a heroic place before 1968. Since 1980 it has been involved in atrocities and dirty dealings. It took the election of Clinton to get talks started again, and by then the situation with the West Bank was even more intractible.
“So, in order to buy time for Israel to “change the facts on the ground” by moving Jewish settlers into the West Bank, Begin felt Carter’s reelection had to be prevented. A different president also presumably would give Israel a freer hand to deal with problems on its northern border with Lebanon.”062410.html
Begin's invasion of Lebanon resulted in the attrocities of the Sabra and the Shatila, destabilized Lebanon, and turned Israel's northern border into one even less secure than before. It may have undermined the PLO but it set loose Hezbollah to take their place.
Sound familiar? And the Inner Circle of CIA Agents and their friends outside the Government but still operating in Arms companies, Wall Street, and who knows where else felt:
"As for the CIA Old Boys, legendary CIA officer Miles Copeland told me that “the CIA within the CIA” – the inner-most circle of powerful intelligence figures who felt they understood best the strategic needs of the United States – believed Carter and his naïve faith in American democratic ideals represented a grave threat to the nation." [https://consortiumnews.com/2010/062410.html]
The cynical CIA operatives figured that "national security" = Wall Street, Main Street and personal profits, not naive democratic ideals.
The Iranians may well have decided to negotiate with both sides and "take advantage" of GOP and Israeli willingness to sell arms. This certainly would have taken the pressure off of them to deal with the Carter administration until their own power was consolidated, which was around the same time as the Reagan/Carter Election.
Once the war broke out between Iran and Iraq Arms Dealers of all stripes found they had leverage with the Iranians again. The Iranians balanced that leverage by taking hostages. With the USA that was through Kidnappings. With Israel they had a two thousand + year old population of Iranian Jews. The USA "arms for hostages" of USA secret dealings were paralleled by an Israeli "arms for emigration" effort by Israeli leadership. Both dealings were secret. If aircraft carrying Jews, or hostages, were seen as flying for purely humanitarian reasons, then everyone would see it as pure patriotism and nobody would suspect any ulterior motive. The Iranians would be seen as generous humanitarians, and would get much needed arms for their war with Iraq. This also provided a get around because the Ayatollahs had restricted emigration to those rich enough to give up everything they had in order to leave. Selling Arms to a desperate Iranian military was one avenue to get around this. It would be a mix of bribery and extortion on both sides. For Israel rescuing oppressed Jews was part of their mission, and selling arms could more than finance that rescue. It would enrich everyone involved if they wanted to take the money.
As Ronen Bergman wrote in “The Secret War with Iran: The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power,” pub. 2007, Israel made a fortune selling arms to Iran throughout that war. Bergman writes:
"First, Israel could not come to terms with the military, intelligence, and diplomatic losses that it had sustained with the disruption of relations with Iran after the revolution. Arms exports would at least give it a foothold in Tehran. In Israel’s defense establishment, the lesson had been learned from many cases over the years that swiftly supplying weaponry and military know-how to a totalitarian state will bring the supplier as close as possible to the rulers, because the weapons are their means of holding on to power."
“Second, it was hoped that the infusion of weaponry would intensify the Iran-Iraq war and lead to the mutual destruction or, at least weakening, of two enemies
"Third, Israeli officials feared a victorious Saddam" . . .
Fourth: “More than anything else, the weapons industry wanted to make money. As one Israeli Defense Ministry official, a key figure in Operation Seashell, recalls: “I do not remember even one discussion about the ethics of the matter. All that interested us was to sell, sell, sell more and more Israeli weapons, and let them kill each other with them.” p. 43
And there was a fifth reason. They used arms as a trading lever to help Iranian Jews leave Iran.
According to Ronen Bergman,
"Israel sold Iran US$75 million worth of arms from stocks of Israel Military Industries, Israel Aircraft Industries and Israel Defense Forces stockpiles, in their Operation Seashell in 1981.[1] Materiel included 150 M-40 antitank guns with 24,000 shells for each gun, spare parts for tank and aircraft engines, 106 mm, 130 mm, 203 mm and 175 mm shells and TOW missiles. This material was transported first by air by Argentine airline Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense and then (after the 1981 Armenia mid-air collision) by ship."
According to Trita Parsi, Israeli support for Iran consisted of several elements:
"Arms sales to Iran that totaled an estimated $500 million from 1981 to 1983 according to the Jafe Institute for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. Most of it was paid for by Iranian oil delivered to Israel.[2]:107 "According to Ahmad Haidari, "an Iranian arms dealer working for the Khomeini regime, roughly 80% of the weaponry bought by Tehran" immediately after the onset of the war originated in Israel." [Trita Parsi]
"Arms shipments from the U.S. to Iran in the Iran-Contra Affair facilitated by Israel." [Trita Parsi]
"Israel's June 7, 1981 attack on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor which set back Iraq's nuclear program. In fact, Iran bombed them first, back in 1980, but they only damaged secondary buildings." [Trita Parsi]
"Israel is also reported to have supplied instructors and non-armaments help to Iran for the war effort. According to Mark Phythian, the fact "that the Iranian air force could function at all" after Iraq's initial attack and "was able to undertake a number of sorties over Baghdad and strike at strategic installations" was "at least partly due to the decision of the Reagan administration to allow Israel to channel arms of US origin to Iran to prevent an easy and early Iraqi victory." [Trita Parsi]
"Israeli arms dealer Yaacov Nimrodi apparently signed a deal with Iran's Ministry of National Defense to sell $135,842,000 worth of arms, including Lance missiles, Copperhead shells and Hawk missiles. In March 1982, The New York Times cited documents indicating that Israel had supplied half or more of all arms reaching Tehran in the previous 18 months, amounting to at least $100 million in sales. The Milan weekly Panorama reported that Israel had sold the Khomeini regime 45,000 Uzi submachine guns, anti-tank missile launchers, missiles, howitzers and aircraft replacement parts. "A large part of the booty from the PLO during the 1982 Lebanon campaign wound up in Tehran," the magazine claimed." [Trita Parsi]
In his book Crimes of a President, By Joel Bainerman:
"Although it never got into the mainstream press, the alternative press; The Nation, The Village Voice, The Progressive and In these times has given extensive coverage to operation Demevand. Named for a Mountain Range in Iran, this was a White House operation to sell massive amounts of arms to Iran Covertly and Illegally." [The Crimes of A President]
"Barbara Honneger, in her book October Surprise, gave one of the earliest reports on massive arms sales from the U.S. to Iran (pp. 179-183). Although many of the sources remained anonymous, she has to be given a lot of credit for investigating a secret agenda that up until then had gone virtually undetected. Her sources told her that arms shipments began in 1981, and by 1986 more than $15 billion worth of arms had been redirected to Iran. She quotes Richard Muller, a former colonel in the Marine reserves, as claiming that secret NATO military supplies stored in reforger stores throughout Europe." [Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA]
And this was all before the formal "Iran Contra" sales began.
"The proceeds went to the Pentagon's "black budget" for covert activities. " [Inside the Covert Operations of the CIA]
During Thom Hartman's interview with Honneger:
"...the Iran arms sales that surfaced in the Iran side of the Iran-Contra scandal were indeed the tip of the iceberg of just a few hundreds of million dollars of illegal arms shipments to Iran. That was just the tip of the iceberg of literally billions that started flowing right after Reagan took the oath of office."
Operation Staunch was a public cover. It had the benefit of bidding up the price for black market and covert sales. According to "Crimes of the Presidnet" Markups of weapons during the period when it was enforced were more than "ten times more than ordinary sales prices." "During the time of the embargo the numbers of countries selling weapons to Iran boomed from 40 countries to 53 countries." An embargo raises the profits for illegal arms sales.
Perhaps that is why the same folks who backed arms sales to Iran in the 80's want to sabotage peace talks now. Maybe they want the covert channels to reopen.
The Middleman of the deal, Roy M. Furmark, between Khashoggi and Ghorbanifar would later testify:
"Furmark said he was the one who first brought together the two key middlemen in the arms deal by introducing Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi to Manucher Ghorbanifar, an Iranian businessman, at a Persian rug auction in Hamburg, Germany, in June, 1985. The two men have acknowledged arranging four arms sales to Iran." [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]
During that meeting:
"In my last meeting, (with Casey) I told him that Ghorbanifar thinks some of the money may have gone to the contras," Furmark said. He said he told Casey: "It looks like $15 million is missing." [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]
And note, all this is going on at the very moment that:
Arms dealers like Khashoggi served as go-betweens and made millions:
"Furmark said he told Casey that Khashoggi had arranged the financing of two arms shipments from Israel to Iran in August and September of 1985 for $1 million and $4 million. He said Khashoggi had then arranged a third shipment in February, 1986, for $10 million."
And like all Criminals the deals get financed:
"He said it was a fourth transaction, involving $15 million in May, 1986, that led to problems. Furmark said two Canadian investors, Walter E. Miller and Donald Fraser, had provided $10 million in "bridge financing" to Khashoggi for the deal. The Canadians have had extensive business dealings with Khashoggi in Vancouver, Salt Lake City and the Cayman Islands."
And This financing introduces risk:
"Furmark said unidentified 'European and Middle East sources' had provided the money for the $4-million transaction, the $10-million transaction and $5 million of the $15-million transaction.
Iran Contra may have only involved a small cabal of GOP operatives running a renegade operation in the Federal Government, but it involved some big players in the arms industry:
"Mr. Khashoggi knows the true source of the money used here, and I think only he knows," Furmark said, and "that two "partial shipments" of arms were delivered in July and August, 1986, but the Iranians paid only $8 million of the $15-million deal. Adding $3 million for handling and shipping, that left Khashoggi, the Canadians and the other investors $10 million in debt" [http://articles.latimes.com/1986-12-17/news/mn-3247_1_arms-sales]
Khashoggi claims he got stiffed. Which might account for the beginnings of his financial troubles after Iran Contra. Or maybe the money was coming from other sources like the USA and Arabian Governments. Or maybe the "stiffed" tale is a cover story.
"In 1990, a United States federal jury in Manhattan acquitted Khashoggi and Imelda Marcos, widow of the exiled Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, of racketeering and fraud" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Khashoggi]
That case fell through, but prosecutors have been after Adnan Khashoggi non stop since then, and he he's kept a low profile (selling his boat among other things).
"Mr Khashoggi’s fortunes declined in the late 1980s, thanks to overspending on festivities, ill-advised investments and his entwinement in scandals including the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the fall of Ferdinand Marcos and the Iran-Contra affair—though he was never convicted of criminal wrongdoing. He now claims to be broke. That hasn’t stopped a tenacious creditor and its lawyers hounding him for an 11-year-old debt of $21m to a securities-clearing firm. In a move that would break new legal ground if successful, they are trying to get the American judgment against Mr Khashoggi enforced in his native Saudi Arabia." [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578447-intriguing-twists-and-discoveries-case-against-former-arms]
"It also emerged that someone with the same name as an official in the Saudi embassy in Washington, Hassan Yousef Mohammed Yassin, had paid at least one of Mr Khashoggi’s legal bills. When the diplomat was subpoenaed for information, he invoked immunity through the embassy’s Washington-based lawyers, who threatened to seek unspecified “sanctions” under the Vienna Convention unless the request was dropped. This fuelled suspicions that the Saudi state was throwing a protective arm round Mr Khashoggi for some reason, though there is no clear evidence of this, nor that the diplomat was the same Mr Yassin who paid the bill. Mr Khashoggi’s sister subsequently said that they had a cousin with that name." [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578447-intriguing-twists-and-discoveries-case-against-former-arms]
Khashoggi's belt tightening:
The man who bought Khashoggi's boat:
"Al-Waleed is the founder, the chief executive officer and 95 percent-owner[6] of the Kingdom Holding Company, a Forbes Global 2000 company with investments in companies within various sectors such as banking and financial services, hotels and hotel management companies, mass media, entertainment, retail, agriculture, petrochemicals, aviation, technology, and real estate" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Waleed_bin_Talal]
I doubt Saudi princes get directly involved in sordid details anymore. And even the front men have front men. So the days of a Khashoggi or a Hashemi getting caught with actual goods are probably over. They merely need to own shares in the companies doing the business.
"In 1999, The Economist expressed doubts about the source of income of Al-Waleed and whether he is a front man for other Saudi investors. "You could barely clothe a Saudi prince for such sums, let alone furnish him with a multi-billion-dollar empire. Nevertheless, by 1991 Prince Alwaleed had felt able to risk an investment of $797m in Citicorp", wrote the magazine." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Waleed_bin_Talal]
I could write more, but I wanted to focus on parallels between then and now. Then regressive and greedy forces who despised notions like "peace", "democracy" and human rights deliberately sabotaged a US President to prevent peace and undermine his foreign program. The spirit of piracy is alive and well. It may be dressed up with charters and legitimate trappings, but modern privateering isn't much different from it's 16th and 17th century predecessors. Anyway to make a buck, smuggling, slavery, piracy, freebooting, war; as long as there is profit in it you can find an investor, and if you can find an investor you can find canon fodder to deliver the product.
Raymond Alcide Joseph (born August 31, 1931) is a Haitian diplomat, political activist and journalist. He was the Haitian ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2010, when he resigned to present himself as a candidate in the 2010 Presidential Election in Haiti. He is the uncle of singer and rapper Wyclef Jean.
My wife, got to work with him and meet him when she was trying to organize student activities for her students at Howard University and showcase Ethiopian and Haitian multiculturalism. Matilde Raquel Holte was a teacher first, but in her own way she was also an activist. As a "Adjunct Professor", "visiting scholar", "Researcher" and Scholar she was able to go places other activists couldn't go and bridge political gaps that otherwise would never get bridged. We met Ambassador Joseph at an event held by the Ethiopian Embassy. I believe it was before the Earthquake. We also saw him again when the Ethiopians sponsored an event to try to help Haiti after it's big earthquake in 2010. My wife was interested in civil rights, multiculturalism, religious diaspora, Jews in the diaspora, and other diaspora's such as the one of African peoples. As such we got invited and I was there as "husband of", sometimes with my Camera, sometimes just trying to absorb all the information. I think I snapped this picture using our electronic Camera. But I'm not sure, I can't find it in my archives, so this may have been snapped by someone at the embassy because the only copy I can find is a grainy print on ordinary paper. I found it while looking up something else. Haiti and Ethiopia happened to be on my mind. This reminded me how I think he's one of the heros of his country. Ambassador Joseph was therefore already on my mind, so I immediately scanned by copy. His Facebook Home page is here:
In 2010 Haiti had a disaster, remember? Probably not. I do. It was horrendous. People died, not only from the Quake, but from neglect. Haiti was already a disaster before the Earthquake, and so the people were very fragile. A lot of folks died from that quake. And the country has been neglected since the beginning.
Modern History is grounded in Ancient History. And both Haiti and Ethiopia have a proud history as independent nations. And were independent, and to the consternation of White Folks, were "black" countries, where white skin was the anomaly. My wife, with her interest in multiculturalism and syncretism found both countries remarkable. I do too. I was privileged to visit the Embassy as "husband of" something I could never do as a Federal Contractor employee supporting IT operations and new development. I got to take the pictures. Including I think this one. We heard testimony from one Ethiopian Jew who was surprised when he left Ethiopia to find out there was such a thing as white Jews. Thanks to her I also met a member of the Lemba tribe who had had the same experience from his community near the border between South Africa and Mozambique.
At the conference on Ethiopian Jews, we heard testimony from "Beta Israel" (House Israel) Jews who, on leaving Ethiopia, were shocked that any Jews could ever be white. When they got to Israel they ran into discrimination from Ashkenazi Jews who were surprised Jews could be anything but what they were used to. And Ethiopians have paid a price for their independence in other ways.
*Note, reading these histories is fascinating because they all parse the story differently. I have my own memories of actual physical books I've read and so the online accounts, in the way they contradict each other or support one another, helped me recall the histories I already knew from talking to a variety of people and reading a variety of physical books. But most are abysmally bad and gloss over details.
This is a piece of a larger article I'm still working on.
It turns out that Ethiopia has two communities that claim a tie with Jewish people. I knew about the explicitly Ethiopian Jews. They once had had their own country which endured for centuries in the Ethiopian Highlands. It was their experience my wife wrote about and encouraged some of her students to do papers on, and so was involved in these embassy events to highlight. It also turns out that Ethiopian Christians also claim a relationship with Israel. Their ruling dynasty, the Kings of Aksum, claimed descent through the Queen of Sheba. Many Ethiopians claim that Ethiopians were Jewish even before they converted to Christianity. Due to lifestyle and proximity to "Beta Israel" communities over millennia this relationship goes back to when Israel and Judah were independent Kingdoms and lasted through the centuries. Ethiopia represents a syncretism between Egyptian, Arabian/Middle Eastern and African cultures. It's language is an ancient language that has evolved over centuries under influences from that syncretism. It's people's center of culture was once on the Red Sea and they once dominated trade in the region.
The Ethiopians who controlled trade along the red sea were related to the Nubians and to tribes across the Red Sea in Arabia. And their Kings seem to have ruled multi-Ethnic kingdoms as Feudal "Kings of Kings" more on the Babylonian/Persian ancient model than a centralizing hegemonic empire in the Greek or Roman Style. And as such the Christian Kingdom sheltered the followers of Mohammed when he first began preaching, which protected them, for a time, from the depredations of fanatical freebooting Arabs. Eventually that relationship failed and tribes along the coast were either converted or forced to flee into the Mountains. And that is how the Modern Kingdom of Ethiopia gradually moved it's center of power to where it is now. It's also how the historical Center of Ethiopia, Eritrea, came to be a Muslim country. There was no "reconquista" because after centuries of depredations by the Arabs and Persians (now Muslim) the Christians came back from Europe, but this time they came a privateers and colonial powers, not as friends. The Christians wanted those coastal cities as stations for their fleets. Later they wanted them as coaling stations for their fleets. Fleets of "tall" merchant and war ships with heavy cannon loaded on multiple decks could blow away most smaller lighter merchants. And European Countries preyed on each other but ganged up on Muslim sailors. Ethiopia was cutoff from the Ocean and survived in isolation in the mountains too until it broke out of its isolation in the 20th century.
The first thing I noticed was that successful pirates joined the gentry. Unsuccessful ones were hung. This is illustrated by the tale of Captain Kidd who was elevated to Captain "pirate style" and not due to his family relations like most officers during the 9 years war "War of the Grand Alliance" [1688-1697]:
"By 1689 he was a member of a French-English pirate crew that sailed in the Caribbean. Kidd and other members of the crew mutinied, ousted the captain off the ship, and sailed to the British colony of Nevis. There they renamed the ship Blessed William. Kidd became captain, either the result of an election of the ship's crew or because of appointment by Christopher Codrington, governor of the island of Nevis. Captain Kidd and Blessed William became part of a small fleet assembled by Codrington to defend Nevis from the French, with whom the English were at war."
They were granted "Letters of marquee by the Governor, because that is the way that the English paid for Naval Warfare:
"Kidd and his men attacked the French island of Mariegalante, destroyed the only town, and looted the area, gathering for themselves something around 2,000 pounds Sterling." [Wikipedia article makes a great first stop: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kidd]
Continuing the fight:
"Kidd captured an enemy privateer off the New England coast."
But of course the borders between piracy and privateering were thin:
"One year later [1690], Captain Robert Culliford, a notorious pirate, stole Kidd's ship while he was ashore at Antigua in the West Indies." [Wikipedia article makes a great first stop: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kidd]
When you read about Robert Culliford. Culliford partisans claim Kidd was a pirate and that Culliford started as Kidd's Shipmate and "repeatedly check[ed] the designs" through his career. According to them Culliford led a mutiny against Kid in 1790 and appointed William Mason as Captain. All the stories of these pirates are full of these sort of inconsistencies, including some of the official records. Having his prize taken from him didn't stop Kidd from migrating to New York and:
"On 16 May 1691, Kidd married Sarah Bradley Cox Oort, an English woman in her early twenties, who had already been twice widowed and was one of the wealthiest women in New York, largely because of her inheritance from her first husband."
Privateering and piracy were means to wealth and respectability. From 1692-1697 the Governor of New York was Benjamin Fletcher, who traded in both privateering and pirate loot. Kidd contributed to Trinity Church, New York which was funded by privateering and pirate activity. Apparently New York City and Philadelphia were rivals in the Pirate trade during that time too. In 1697 Fletcher was deposed from the Governorship by Edward Randolph who is also famous for revoking the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and who the Boston revolt in 1689 was jailed. It appears that one mans "privateer" and hero could easily be tried as another's pirate -- unless he was part of an important family like the Randolphs. Edward Randolph tried to revoke the charters of all the colonies in 1700 and was defeated. [Britannica: Edward Randolph
Culliford was caught after robbing the Great Mohammed in the Red Sea in September 1698 but pardoned and "disappeared" from history (probably settled down and changed his name or into anonymity). William Mason retired a rich man. Web Sites like The Pirate King may_william.htm depict them as pirates, but the reality is that they straddled the line between respectability and piracy as did, apparently, most of the ships and crews of those privateering times, and probably many of the ships of the Royal Navy. If they'd taken the "Great Mohammed" one year earlier the prize probably would have been legal. In 1698 the war was over.
So it's not surprising that pinning down these characters, or even their names, was hard. They went to sea to make money. And whether that money came from looting ships, smuggling, delivering slaves to plantations, or catching fish or whales didn't matter so much as the prizes of wealth and respectability. Many of them became adrenaline junkies (like Blackbeard is said to have done) and perished. But many more retired in the end to quiet lives and wealthy family legacies. Next time I go into Trinity Church I'll think of Captain Kidd.
The British weren't going to punish their privateering warriors in time of warfare. But if they didn't stop when the war was ended they were in trouble diplomatically. William Kidd probably didn't know the war was over when he overstepped his bounds:
"in January 1698, Kidd's luck seemingly changed when he caught sight of the Quedagh Merchant rounding the tip of India.
The war was over. English privateers were not supposed to be preying on ships on the open ocean.
"The Quedagh Merchant was no ordinary vessel. A 500-ton Armenian ship, it carried goods—a treasure trove of gold, silk, spices, and other riches—that were owned in part by a minister at the court of the Indian Grand Moghul. The minister had powerful connections, and when news about Kidd's attack reached him he complained to the East India Company, the large and influential English trading firm. Coupled with many governments' shifting perceptions of piracy, Kidd was quickly cast as a wanted criminal."
Kidds mistake was to try to clear his name. What he should have done was what his rivals; Mason and Culliford did; quietly go to ground. If he had his name would probably be on the list of famous and wealthy families in the United States history books. And his descendants captains of industry and finance. But by trying to clear his name he got himself put on the Gimlet. On the other hand, folks wonder where his treasure went. I would suggest they ask descendents of Sarah Bradley Cox Oort who I'm sure he took care of before trying to clear his name. Buried treasure? Yeah, sure.
My Friend William Boyle shared on Facebook this comment and associated article on Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: אחד העם, lit. one of the people, Genesis 26:10):
Ahad Ha'am (Hebrew: אחד העם, lit. one of the people, Genesis 26:10)
(18 August 1856 – 2 January 1927)
"An act of folly that turns out well is still an act of folly."
--Ancient Yiddish proverb.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahad_Ha%27am
Wikipedia notes that:
Ahad "was a Hebrew essayist, and one of the foremost pre-state Zionist thinkers. He is known as the founder of cultural Zionism. With his secular vision of a Jewish "spiritual center" in Israel, he confronted Theodor Herzl. Unlike Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, Ha'am strived for "a Jewish state and not merely a state of Jews" [Wikipedia article]
Jews wanted a state after what happened in France to Dreyfuss and to Jews living in France as the RW there used the Franco Prussian War to justify a coup. The French Military Officers were pro-German and had imbibed racist ideas from the Brits that "Germans" were a superior race. And agents of the Prussians not only betrayed the French from within but put the blame on an obscure Jewish Officer named Dreyfus. They then used the trial to stoke up anti-semitism. It was that that led to the Zionist movement and Jews might have picked some place in the USA but most already had ties with Palestine and wanted to go back there to their ancestral home. The various leaders of the new Zionist organizations had different ideas of what Zionism was about. Some wanted Jews to form mini-states in countries like Argentina or USA, but others like Ahad focused on Israel from the beginning.
"Ginsberg was born in Skvyra near Kiev in Imperial Russia, to pious well-to-do Hasidic parents. As early as eight years old, he began to secretly teach himself to read Russian. His father, Isaiah, sent him to heder until the age of 12. When Isaiah became the administrator of a large estate in a village in the Kiev district, he moved the family there and took private tutors for his son, who excelled at his studies. Ginsberg was critical of the dogmatic nature of Orthodox Judaism but remained loyal to his cultural heritage, and especially the ethical ideals of Judaism"
The issue was that Europeans, Arabs and other ethnicities had visions of Nationalism that weren't going to accept Israel as a "State of Jews". If that had been possible than big settlements like Moiseville in Argentina (Jewish Gauchos of the Pampas -- Gerchenov) or in the USA would have been more feasible, or even possible in Russia where there were millions of Jews living on either side of the borders between Russia and what had been Poland. Ha'am was a "Russian Jew, born on the Russian side of that border (like my late Wife's father):
Even so he was a Zionist before the Dreyfus Affair:
"After unsuccessfully attempting to study in Vienna and Germany, he returned in his early thirties to Odessa where he was influenced by Leon Pinsker, a leader of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) movement. Hovevei Zion began as independent study circles in the late 19th century, and formed a philanthropic confederation called Hibbat Zion (love for Zion). Their practical aim was settlement of Jews in Palestine, and they produced the settlements of the first Aliyah (immigration wave). The Zionist settlement program was beset by practical difficulties, and many settlements failed or were failing." [Wikipedia article]
I've met folks who had been in Israel since before the first Aliyah. Jews, especially orthodox, hasidic or Esoteric (Donmei or followers of Shabbetai Tsvi) had been emigrating to "The land of Israel" (Eretz Israel) as Palestine was known in Hebrew/Aramaic, for centuries. Many went to Safed in what is now the West Bank. Others would go to Jerusalem. The Turks restricted numbers so many Jews would wind up in ghettos or towns in cities scattered around what is now Israel, Palestine and Jordan. They often struggled in their new homes. And some would return to "Galut" (exile) in frustration, or wind up in other places. Most of these people were not interested in politics. And
"Unlike Pinsker, Ginsberg did not believe in political Zionism, which he fought, 'with a vehemence and austerity which embittered that whole period'. Instead, from his very first article, he hailed the spiritual value of the Hebrew renaissance within the Zionist movement. To counter the debilitating fragmention for the Jewish folk-soul of life throughout the diaspora, the idea of assuring unity through an ingathering of Jews into Palestine was not an answer. That is, kibbutz galuyoth was a messianic ideal rather than a feasible contemporary project. The real answer lay in achieving a spiritual centre, or 'central domicile', within Palestine, that of Eretz Israel, which would form an exemplary model for the dispersed world of Jewry in exile to imitate, a spiritual focus for the circumferential world of the Jewish diaspora. He split from the Zionist movement after the First Zionist Congress, because he felt that Theodor Herzl's program was impractical." [Wikipedia article]
For the religious Jew the purpose of return to Zion is partly to eventually return the "Shekhina" or spirit of God back to Israel where it would heal both Israel and itself. In Kaballist literature "Galut" is a spiritual state as well as a literal state. God and the Jew are both in exile. And as long as God is in exile, the entire of humanity is also in spiritual exile. Thus returning the spirit of God "Shekhina" to Israel is a spiritual journey. And as he noted one, it would be an arduous one unless Jews were willing to work harder and would reform a kind of "inward zionism" "Hibat Zion":
"He wrote that the Land of Israel will not be capable of absorbing all of the Jewish Diaspora, not even a majority of them. Ahad Ha'am also argued that establishing a "national home" in Zion will not solve the "Jewish problem"; furthermore, the physical conditions in Eretz Yisrael will discourage Aliyah, and thus Hibat Zion must educate and strengthen the Zionist values among the Jewish people enough that they will want to settle the land despite the great difficulties. The ideas in this article became the platform for Bnai Moshe (sons of Moses), a group he founded that year. B'nai Moshe, active until 1897, worked to improve Hebrew education, build up a wider audience for Hebrew literature, and assist the Jewish settlements."
But of course, Jews in Europe didn't really have the time and space to learn how to dig stoney fields to plant or learn to endure the harsh conditions of this land alongside the great deserts of North Africa and Arabia. When Hannah Arendt centered her "Origins of Totalitarianism" on a study of the Dreyfus affair and it's impact on the escalation of anti-semitism in Europe. Prior to the Dreyfus affair most Jewish folks had hope that they could assimilate into French and other European Countries and remain Jewish, the way we've hoped to do in the United States.
But the Dreyfus affair showed that in the European mind there was a tug of war between nationalism as "Volk"/Folk/tribe and nationalism as citizenship in a particular location and that for many Europeans citizenship was a pipe dream. Seeing the same kinds of nationalism and tribalism/chauvinism rise in other countries convinced about a third of Jews that Zionism as a country of their own was the only viable option for survival. This has proved true at least for European Jews. Though they have been allowed to live in the Americas, their citizenship has always had a provisional character even for FDR and until Truman both recognized Israel and relaxed Wilsonian/FDR anti-semitic restrictions on Jewish immigration. Prior to 1947 emigrating to Israel, legally or illegally was the only survival option for many Jews and that was closed BY FORCE by the British even as they fought off Rommel and Hitler.
So Hibat Zion proved to be a journey by fire for those who survived the ministrations of Hitler.
Europe is too mixed, has too many ethnicities to sanely be both nationalistic on a tribal basis and embrace the concept of civitas (the roots of our separation of Church and State, birth citizenship etc....) They should have embraced the power of civitas and civilizations and Europeans, including Jews, focus on spiritual renaissance and not start killing each other. A'Had Haam died in Tel Aviv with part of his vision in operation, but before the horrors of WWII and the Nazis.
