Shearing Us Sheep

Why, it is reasonable to ask, would the government allow to continue what the much pilloried Jim Cramer rightly calls "naked and illegal short-selling" when the world economy is facing a meltdown? One has to look beneath the "reported" stories and delve into the global netherworld where power, politics and state-sponsored crime have operated since 1562. That was the year the first English slave trader, John Hawkins, left home with 100 men in 3 ships, captured 300 slaves in Sierra Leone along with hides, ginger and sugar and found a delighted business partner in Queen Elizabeth I.

To appease her subjects appalled by the accounts of slavery coming from Spain's New World colonies, the noble queen declared that "if any of the Africans were carried away without their own consent, it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers." So detestable, in fact, that England proceeded to dominate the trade for the next 250 years. Much like the fight against godless Communism, it justified the practice on the pretense of saving those poor African heathens from savage ignorance and showing them the redeeming love of Jesus Christ.

When the burden of the lie became too great the Church of England would ease their monarch's conscience by declaring that Africans had no souls. In fact the English church found African slavery to be of great benefit-- for instance The Church's missionary arm, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts, owned the Codrington plantation in Barbados and slaves had the word "Society" branded on their chests with red-hot irons.

If a Muslim fundamentalist understands anything about the glorious West it is the value placed on honor and the depths of Christian charity... to the extent of their bankers' profit.

As a consequence of the Triangle slave trade each plantation economy became part of the new global economy. American financial and shipping industries were dependent on slave-produced cotton, as was the British textile industry. As the cotton plantation economy expanded, the banks and financial houses in New York supplied the loan capital and/or investment capital to purchase land and slaves. Enslaved Africans became a legally traded commodity, frequently used as collateral in kind for goods and services.

Had Eliot Spitzer paid closer attention to that history he might have spared himself a great deal of trouble and allowed us New Yorkers to retain an ethical governor. Instead he violated the sacred rail of politics by exposing corruption that flourishes in "service of the state".

the Online Journal explains:

Greenberg and AIG had a long association with the CIA. Cornelius V. Starr (yes, uncle of that Ken Starr,) started AIG as “American Asiatic Underwriters” in 1919 in Shanghai. He moved AIG from Shanghai to New York after the Communists came to power in 1949. Ironically, AIG is back in China through its ownership of People’s Insurance Company of China. AIG also owns AIG Korea Insurance.

AIG has, on behalf of U.S. intelligence, kept tabs on rising players on the Asia political scene, particularly in China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other countries. The quid pro quo for AIG is that it has weathered the storms generated by Spitzer and the global financial meltdown.

While the U.S. taxpayer is being fleeced for trillions of dollars, Gretchen Morgensen writes in the NYTimes "at A.I.G, good luck finding the money."

(it seems even A.I.G.'s own independent directors haven't been told which of the counterparties were paid. Huge claims have been paid off in full, even though widespread defaults have not actually occurred. Yet the government continues to pretend it's all hunky-dory.)

For those who suspect that the subjugation of the "coddled" American middle class is the goal of our ruling capitalists I submit a poem penned in defense of 19th century slavery.

He who to thwart GOD'S system tries,
Bids mountains sink, and vallies rise;
Slavery, subjection, what you will,
Has ever been, and will be still: