THE BABYLONIAN WOE Chapters IV-VIII
by David Astle
CHAPTER
IV. The Left Hand of Dawn
V. Blood, Sorrow, and Silver
VI. Babylon, Banking, and Bullion
VII. Phrygia, Finance, and Front Man
VIII. Tyrant and Trapezitae
CHAPTER IV: THE LEFT HAND OF DAWN
Page 63
According to Francois Lenormant and the Cambridge Ancient
History, cheques were in use in Babylonia from the earliest times.
Such use of cheques has also been verified as existing at Ur during
the 3rd and 4th Millenniums B.C. by Sir Charles Wooley.
As the only clear meaning that can be given to the Law No. 7 of
Hammurabai indicates that the principles of private money creation
through the creation of receipts against valuables on deposit with
persons of "repute," the existence of all the abuses deriving from the
exercise of the principles of inflation and deflation of the total
number of receipts indicating given numbers of the unit of exchange,
may be deemed to have existed. These inflations and deflations of the
volume of abstract money, which indeed such false receipts may be
called, associated with the custom of making payments by cheque drawn
on "deposits" created by such receipts as issued by such persons "of
repute" and which could be manipulated as suited themselves and their
friends, were directed towards creation of a total monopoly of wealth
and industry.
As according to Paul Einzig, "a credit system developed in Greece
long before the adoption of coinage," it may be supposed that
Babylonian money power had already established branch agencies on the
coast of Greece from which they loaned their clay "promises to pay"
expressed in terms of silver no doubt, as against collateral; although
the original loan had been but an entry in the ledger of an agent, the
repayment demanded would be silver or slaves.
Page 64
These trading stations would have functioned very much as did the
European trading stations on the West Coast of Africa during the 18th
century from which agents of international money power could instigate
internal warfare amongst the tribes, so that they would always have
ready market for the products of their arms and other industries, the
most desirable payment being precious metals and slaves, as much in
ancient times as in modern times.
Page 65
If the latest estimate of the date of the battle of Perire in
1234 B.C. is correct, that the destruction of Egypt itself was planned
over the period of 16 years or so following the sack of Troy (1250) is
reasonable supposition. The organizing, arming and training of such
widely diverse peoples as formed the army of King Meryey of Lybia
Šwould have taken many years of careful planning.
Considering that the plunder of at least 10,000 swords and the
other 120,000 pieces of military equipment represented years of work,
Merneptah did not on this occasion melt them into bullion or sell
them. He may have made the obvious move of using this plunder to arm
the tribes of Epirus, the natural enemies of the Achaeans. These
tribes were just as likely to have been slaves revolting from the
mining industries established by the Babylonian money power.
(According to Prof. Albright in The Amarna Letters from
Palestine: "We cannot but be impressed with the smallness of the
garrisons which were considered adequate by the local princes when
clamoring for aid. A hundred men. Fifty. It is clear that the limiting
factor to military force was the availability of arms, not with the
availability of men.")
Page 66
Cadmus was one of the principal Babylonian agents to the
Mycenaean world who lived during the reign of Burnaburiash who wrote
to King Tutankamen of Egypt (1358-1353) pleading in no uncertain terms
for gold.
Page 67
Alexander Del Mar, as a mining engineer, wrote respecting the
mines from which the Babylonian financial hegemony drew their steady
flow of gold and silver.
The gold mines of the Thasians yielded an average annual product
worth 80 talents (3 tons) although earlier they had an annual yield
between two and three hundred talents. Philip of Macedon about 358
B.C. caused them to be reopened with the result that he obtained from
the more than a thousand talents annually.
Page 68
Theophrastus, about 240 B.C. wrote concerning them: "Those who
work in these mines cannot stand upright but are obliged to lie down
either on their sides or their backs."
page 69
Valdivia declared that every castellano of gold from Peru cost a
measure of human blood and tears. What was the cost to the Romans or
Greeks, it would be hard to say but a human life for every ounce would
probably be well within the mark.
Page 70
The Cambridge Economic History could be consulted, though no
special significance, such as obviously exists, will be pointed out
therein relating this search for silver and gold to the private money
creative system already well-established in Babylonia at that time.
Page 71
The Dorians known to be the destroyers of Pylos were well
organized. The tremendous walls of both Mycenae and Tyryns could not
have been taken but by well organized armies with a strong and
experience engineering corps.
Page 72
Money power, now with the plunder of half a dozen civilizations
in its strong rooms, and a steady inflow of the precious metals
deriving from the rapid expansion of the mining industry due to
improved mining methods with tools of hardened iron, together with the
availability of ample slave supplies as derived from all these wars,
began to look around for new fields in which its power to create
"Capital" could be used to its best advantage. Thus once again, they
Šturned their eyes towards Greece.
Encyclopediaa Brittanica (1898) says: "The Ionians derived the
first impulses of their progress from a foreign source. The
Phoenicians seem to have been little more than carriers from East to
West of Egyptian, Assyrian or Babylonian ideas."
Page 74
By 993 B.C., agencies for Babylonian imperialism were once again
well established in Greece.
Page 78
The petty but vigorous city states of Greece would form a good
ground for experiment with money systems. The money changers scheming
in their shaded courtyards of Babylonia hoped the way might be shown
by which they and theirs might become Lords of the Earth; and indeed,
whereby out of their midst might be set up that God-King who would
preside over the governance of the Universe; its total and absolute
ruler.
And much of these strange yearnings came to be realized. The
possibilities inherent in circulating pieces of precious metal with
the seal of the state stamped thereon, as money, after the first major
experiment therein in Lydia of Croesus, were fully exploited in
Greece.
Page 79
Thus the power of rejection or appointment fell out of the
withering hand of a decadent, if not dying priesthood, into that hand
that moved over the disks of precious metal in the shadows of the
counting house; and rather than noble and selfless men in positions of
power came low and venal men wielding but the appearance of power.
Such men being raised up from the blind mob exercised no more control
or rule than that which the forces behind money creation and issuance
permitted them to them.
Greece was to the known world in the same way as was England
during the 16th and 17th centuries when, due to the stealthy
stimulation of a "credit" or abstract money economy, money greed
injected into the nobility caused them to forget their trust. The
major manifestation was their seizure of the common lands for the
purposes of sheep pasture thus depriving the villagers of their
rightful livelihood on the land and leaving them with no option but
emigration into the cities to serve as labor in mine and factory.
So far as Greece was concerned, onto an idyllic scene came men
from that Aramaic speaking money power out of Syria and Aram who wept
and moaned to the pitying Greek the slaughter of their people by the
Assyrian.
Page 80
These men brought with them the knowledge of precious metal
commodity exchange and amongst other deceptions, their knowledge of
the possibilities of creation of money through the rackets of storage
of valuables for safe custody; or the creation of credit as it is now
euphemistically known; and its power towards the creation of monopoly
ownership and control of industry.
What must have been a cottage industry soon became industry
organized on the basis of money wages in the case of freemen and
therefore, only with labor, slave or free, trained to the concept of
money, and the making of money, as the be-all-and-end-all in life.
CHAPTER V: BLOOD, SORROW, AND SILVER
Page 83
The growth of the 1st Millennium mining industry released a heavy
Šflow of silver on to the bullion markets with the consequence that
silver, further than being a standard for money accounting because an
actual means of payment. This practice spread westward.
This new silver together with the pyramid of ledger credit page
entry money raised thereon had almost completely effaced even the
memory of that law in relation to exchanges. These kings may have been
aware that the source of all their power was the power inherent in the
creation and emission of the units of exchange; which was the power to
discriminate, the power to reject or prefer from amongst their
subjects, and of course, they may not have been so aware.
Of the evidence revealing the steps by which this god-power was
undermined, the first and most important was the establishment of
internal values in the exchanges within any state to the same standard
as the value of silver in the international exchanges, which did not
happen overnight.
It is not until the Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian eras
that evidence can be traced of the total degeneration of kingly power
and of kings and so-called emperors as quite often being little more
than gloriously be-medalled front men for private money creative power
striving to create world-wide hegemony.
As far back as 2500 B.C., Sargon of Akkhad proceeded to Anatolia
probably to enforce the payment of interest on loans or repayment of
principal. One of the reasons of the success of Cyrus, though but a
petty Persian prince, is clear from his victory over Croesus of Lydia
in 546 B.C.
Croesus had offended international money power by seizure of
their treasure held by their agent Sadyattes and by the total
assumption of monetary issue by the state. Example had to be made of
him to deter other princes from similar action and the ambitious Cyrus
was obviously the one chosen for this purpose. According to the
article on Babylonia in Encyclopaedia Britannica by Professor Sayce,
Croesus had rashly joined battle with Cyrus without waiting for the
arrival of his Babylonian allies under Nabu-Nahud, the father of
Belshazzar of the Book of Daniel. It is more than likely that
international money power, patron of the rise of Cyrus both through
organization of his supplies of mercenary soldiers and the best of
weapons, had been the principal influence in these events.
Cyrus won the day and Croesus was totally humbled. Having proven
his readiness to promote the policies of his financial backers, the
relatively easy conquest of Babylon was arranged for Cyrus 14 years
later. Cyrus was from then on designated "The Great."
Kings and "conquerors" were also needed towards the maintenance
of the steady flow of slaves, sufficient to take care of the fearful
death rate in the mines, and no doubt, to permit of the opening of new
mines due to the rapid expansion of the mining industry on account of
the growth of the use of hardened iron tools. Therefore, not only was
an increasing and continuous flow of slaves needed for the mines, but
also for the industry to which the products of mines gave rise.
Page 86
There were two ways alone by which new supplies of precious
metals became available, one was through mining using slave labor as
mining with free labor was rarely profitable, and the other was
through sack and plunder. For the first method, "Conquerors" were
needed for free men did not willingly become mine slaves; for the
second method "Conquerors" were obviously needed again for to cause a
people to reveal and surrender their hidden hoards of precious metals
would only be possible as result of the nights of terror immediately
following on the "Conquest" and the abuse and rapine inflicted by
lust-crazed soldiery. According to the Iliad, promise of gold and
bronze plunder of Troy was the principal lure used by Agamemnon to
bring Achilles back into the fight.
Š
Page 87
The states of Arvad, Symyra and Ushana, in the fact that they
paid no tribute to Nineveh, while being much closer than the Aramean
states, revealed themselves as ally; the absence of ay savege thrust
by Assyria at that time agaisnt Israel or Tyre or Sideon would suggest
such states, if not actually ally, as harboring forces in one form or
another which would be controlled by agents of that highly secret
international bullion broking fraternity, which indubitably existed,
and which was connected to the camp followers and slave traders that
must have been another host behind the Assyrian host, and therefore,
profitably, enemy of the Aramean.
Money power, international in scope, was deeply lodged in the
heart of Assyria. Assyria for the time was their sword arm.
Considering that Phoenician mining operations extended as far North as
Britain where was mined tin so necessary in bronze manufacture, it may
be assumed it dealt in Assyrian war captives.
Page 88
There is no missing the connection between the floods of slaves
as released on to the world by the Assyrian conquests and the rapid
expansion of silver and gold mining that was taking place all-over the
known world at the time.
The renewed stream of precious metal money that must have
followed the sack of all those cities of Aram would have been
accompanied by vast expansions of that which is known as "Credit."
Bills of Exchange, Letters of Credit, the ubiquitous receipts for
valuables reputedly on deposit: clay "Promises to Pay" all forming
expansion in one form or another of the working money supply. Powerful
banking houses combining the operations of banker, goldsmith,
silversmith, etc, with branches in all major cities, were certainly
able to manipulate the destinies of so-called empires, just as they
have so done in this day. That Babylon itself should have been able to
rise again and lead a frightened world against Assyria is proof,
however, that international money power at the time was not monopoly
of the Hebrew who now, whatever his origins, as ally of the Israelite
who had come out of Egypt, appears clearly in history, a distinct
entity.
Page 89
It seems the fall of the Assyrian in 605 B.C. was also the fall
of the Hebrew. No sooner had Nabopolassar destroyed Assyrian military
power than, at Carchemish, his son Nebuchadrezzar destroyed that of a
resurgent Egypt under Pharaoh Necho, recently victor over Josiah of
Judah on that ominous place of battle, Meggiddo, better known as
Armageddon.
(It is curious to note that a Jewish prince should go out of
his way to seek battle with Necho who according to Biblical record
(II Chronicles 36,21) "sent ambassadors to him saying, what have I to
do with thee, thou king of Judah? I come not against thee this day but
against the house wherewith I have war; for God commanded me: forbear
thee from meddling with God, who is with me, that he destroy thee
not.")
In this battle of Carchemish in 586 B.C., Israel itself was
totally destroyed. Its leaders were carried off to servitude in
Babylon where they were allowed to maintain themselves as a racial and
religious group as shown by the very fact that an intensely
nationalistic prophet such as Ezekiel could exist at Chebar, preaching
without restriction.
In 536 B.C., the Persian forces under Cyrus entered the city and
according to the Book of Daniel, Belshazzar, King of Babylon, was
slain that night.
Š
Page 90
Shortly after that entry into the city, the "Children of Israel"
were permitted to return to that which they considered their homeland
and every assistance was given them. In the very first year of his
reign, Cyrus issued a decree permitting the rebuilding of the temple
at Jerusalem and the gold and silver vessels carried away by
Nebuchadrezzar were returned to Sheshbazaar, the Prince of Judah. The
42,000 who went with him were but a small part of the Hebrew
population of the dominions of Cyrus. The special concessions by Cyrus
would suggest that he had received their substantial assistance.
The Babylonian money power was completely international in
outlook, whatever its outward profession. If in earlier Assyrian times
such money power was certainly not the Hebrew, the fact of the
existence of a powerful Hebrew influence in international finance in
the Neo-Babylonian times seems a reasonable supposition.
The Hebrew may have come to learn at that time those secret
practices of the money changers' craft, which he was certainly
forbidden in his native land, according to the laws of Moses.
Page 91
That ungodly and cruel order of Ezra compelling the Israelites to
divorce their foreign wives after their return might very well have
been related to the needs of total religious, racial and commercial
security, whose leaders were deeply involved in the growth and control
of modern banking which had lead and still leads mankind along a road
that offers little peace or rest, and finally, exhaustion and
calamity; a road of non-return.
One thing becomes clear out of this turmoil of rising and falling
"Empires" of the 1st Millennium, particularly that calamitous
succession of Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Persian "Empires" and that
is: in a world where treasure had become totally equated in the minds
of people with "Wealth," as expressing large sums of the monetary
unit, no sooner had one power gathered all such treasure in a given
area into its storehouses, by conquest, plunder and sack, than such
treasure, temporarily creating boom, moved on again to form the base
of those "credits" granted by international money power towards the
purchase of arms and the best of mercenary soldiers by that next power
destined to arise and the new "conqueror."
Dealing in money and bullion which was the foundation of the
money system had become a highly specialized and closed trade now able
to operate quite apart from the temples, even if in many cases the
temples still continued to permit themselves to be used as front, and
so had offered sanctity to those most sinister and destructive
operations of the money, bullion and slave brokers, in themselves and
their attitude towards mankind, the antithesis of God, the Anti-God.
page 92
The money masters had only one purpose besides maintenance of
secrecy: which was growth. Those through whom they worked were too
often the criminal castes; criminal because the nature of so much of
their activities such as fencing, counterfeiting, clipping sweating of
coins, was criminal. Towards this purpose,they sought the total
destruction of that natural order of life of god, king, priesthood and
temple. For man living with hope, guided by his trained shepherds had
to be substituted an order of the exploitation of mankind.
The unfortunate masses of the Ancient Orient had no idea that the
ruler they saw, far from being the Son of God on Earth, was in reality
a puppet manipulated by that conspiratorial forced exerted by those
controllers of precious metal bullion in the Arakaix speaking middle
classes. These powerful classes could have had no more than a secret
contempt for the gods, kings, priesthood of the peoples amongst whom
Šthey lived, able as they were to bring about the decay or growth of
power of those whose undoing they planned.
They themselves had come to sit in the place of the gods. From
this time on it seems, there was not even that periodic interference
of the king against the moneylender.
Page 93
Cruel private monopolization of wealth and capital grew and where
the people had been sheep in the flock, and the king their loving and
devoted guide, the people became lost, driven as they were by the
crazed would masquerading in the place of the shepherd's diligent
sheep dog.
In this time, as today, the people were almost entirely at the
mercy of the private persons controlling their money. The policies of
these controllers as internationalists were necessarily directed
towards the stimulation of war against the well-being of mankind.
Frequently, wars were above all towards the destruction of the natural
system of rule, secondly towards the reinjection into the system of
hoarded coin and bullion and consequent reinflation of the money
supply, thirdly but not least important, the gathering of a new crop
of slaves so necessary to the foundation of their money power and the
maintenance of their international hegemony in consequence.
(The nobility have always been the first to disappear in major
warfare. As leaders of their men, their young men are the first to
die. During the recent first "Great" war, it may be safely said that
the best part of the young men of the natural aristocracy of Europe
had perished by 1917.)
CHAPTER VI: BABYLON, BANKING AND BULLION
Page 94
The ramifications of Babylonian banking as operated from Nineveh
during the 8th and 7th centuries extended in more or less degree
over that total area from Tartessus to India.
Acolytes of the bankers who sought their own fields abroad, or
prominent but unsuspecting natives chosen for penetration as
"suitable;" suitability, as in today, being advanced training in
money worship, basic lack of integrity, and preferably some black mark
in their secret past making them amenable to pressure and willing to
grind down their own kind or sell them to the slave trader without the
gate and without mercy and without compunction.
Page 95
Those refugees skilled in money, being dispossessed and with
therefore bitterness in their hearts, would have served best. They
would have considered that alignment with enemy and destroyer of that
which had destroyed them. Such silver money of the same weight and
fineness as the Babylonian shekel, 85 grains to the drachma, thus the
financial organization was outright extension of the Babylonian
imperialism. In the so-called Solonian monetary reforms, the Mina
consisted of 73 drachmas.
Page 96
Athenians now had a currency based on the old bronze Age "Euboic"
talent and mina and his standard going was the same weight as the
Corinthians, Samkians and Cyrenaeans but with the Pheidonian system of
dividing his stater into two drachmas and his drachma into six obols.
Under Solon, she adjusted her money to the Euboic talent.
The very fact of the stress on weight shows that such reforms
were designed for, and perhaps only really understood by, a group that
was only concerned with silver by weight. None other than our old
friends the international bankers or bullion brokers. By the laws of
ŠLycurgus at Sparta, they and their agents had virtually been ejected.
Solon was more likely the front man they put up to put into
effect a program of loans to industrial workers on the security of
their wages. No longer would the banks or moneylenders lend to the
peasantry being that now they were forbidden to bind their persons as
collateral security and sell them into slavery across the seas in the
event of non-payment.
Page 98
The weights of drachma and of shekel, just as the Roman denarius
issued to practically the same way, clearly created extension of the
Common Money Market. Profit that the international bullion traders had
guaranteed themselves by prevailing on rulers to maintain the ratio of
silver as to gold at 13:1 as opposed to 6.5:1 as in India. The real
significance of the monetary reforms of Solon was the separation of
Athens from the financial hegemony of Babylonia which may have been
rendered ineffective by the Laws of Lycurgus
Page 99
It was forbidden to settle unfavorable trade balances with
slaves. Henceforth there would be much more money circulating in
Athens and therefore a healthier industry; which history records as
being exactly what transpired.
According to Grote, the banking system after Solon had a more
beneficial character. The old noxious contracts, "mere snare for the
liberty of a poor free man and his children," disappeared and loans of
money "took their place founded on property and prospective earnings
of the debtor."
Thus to such an extent did Athens abjure the international
bankers through the seiachtheia ("shaking-off-of-burdens"), she in
reality severed from Babylonian Imperialism and its financial hegemony
world wide and established herself as minor competitive force, as was
shown by the Persian efforts at encirclement; towards which their
seizure of control of the Thracian mines in 512 B.C. constituted the
first clear step. Even if the reforms of Solon were not so absolute
as those of Lycurgus of Sparta and still left silver as the material
of the basic monetary unit, and therefore still left Athens at the
mercy of those forces whose secret activities contributed towards the
functioning of what is known as Gresham's Law, "Bad money drives out
the good," the Persian move of 512 B.C. by no means shook the strength
of Athens and her allies.
While securing ship timbers for the fleets they were planning and
also further silver supplies, Persia, wherein nested international
money power at that time, thought that she would be cutting off from
Athens these commodities so essential to the promotion of war
industry. Somehow Athens still continued to maintain itself free of
this Babylonian Imperialism which, now sheltered behind Persia, was
able to defeat the "Great King."
Page 100
Whether the "Great King" remained great or Athens took his place
was not of much importance. Out of war could only come good to the
bankers and theirs. They would see that none who might be a real
threat to them would achieve similar power to theirs, that is, from an
international standpoint.
To sum up, so far as pre-Solonian Athens was concerned, a simple
unlettered people offered all the luxuries of another world as against
the new money whose function is so little understood by lettered
people even in this day, without going back 2500 years, had become
swamped in debt. The law in respect to this debt had been upheld by a
corrupted nobility in favor of the bankers.
Where credit institutions had long since existed, in a land of
Šrelatively simple folk where the ways of money were no more understood
than they are today, by loans of ledger credit page entry money
against collateral, demanding repayment in silver coinage, Money Power
obviously had made a very good thing of it in Greece. By the bankers
of a given area using the same standard weight of its coinage, calling
loans in unison, the money supply could be shrunk to almost nothing;
on which, their agents abroad could send ships and buy crops and men
and women and children for a song.
Page 101
The Laws of the Archon Solon, by making no provision for
employment for the freed debt slaves, nor providing redistribution of
the land, gave the Athenian manufacturer that labor which he needed.
The monetary reforms of Solon reducing the export of coin or bullion
gave manufacturers the money they also needed, for they remained the
only market for the funds of the bankers who had no option but to
find new lands to "conquer" after their virtual ejection by the laws
of Lycurgus of Sparta.
The laws of Solon were the rejection, compulsory or otherwise, by
all classes of the Babylonian Money Power including that growing class
who might now be called National Money Power.
(The first act of Solon was abrogation of the privilege of silver
mining and the privilege of money issuance by the nobility but as
through being farmed out by them to the Arameo-Phoenician traders,
i.e., the Babylonian Money Power.
CHAPTER VII: PHRYGIA, FINANCE, AND FRONT MAN
Page 102
The privately issued electrum staters of Lydia were something
Assyria badly needed. Military organizations would need financial
organization and the purchase of the best arms. Assyria needed
Phrygian arms and had to accept such financial terms as the suppliers
decreed and it may be assumed such terms stipulated payment in gold
and silver. The extraordinary treasure cannot be explained any other
way. It had to be derived from plunder.
Page 104
Lydia, peasant kingdom, could very well have functioned in a
similar manner to Switzerland in the nature of a bullion broker's or
international banker's refuge and account for the ferocity of the
destruction by Cyrus of the hapless Croesus who was flayed alive as an
example, no doubt, to remind other kings that while their power was
national, there was another power which was international; above and
beyond the power of petty kings.
The other metals no longer deemed precious, copper, bronze and
iron, left on the battlefield, would fall into their hands and offered
considerable profits as counterfeits in many northern states which
used copper or iron fiduciary currencies.
Thus the Greek was foundation of Greek industry but the Aramean
or Phoenician brought ways of money and banking from the great banking
houses of Babylonia.
Page 105
From the reign of Nabopolassar, father of Nebuchadrezar, to the
reign of Darius, about 100 years, evidence remains in the clay cheques
and deeds found. Much more evidence of the existence of powerful
banking and merchant institutions has come to light. The Egibi Sons,
and the Murassu, who according to Prof. Humphrey Michell in "The
Economics of Ancient Greece, p 334, carried on very large and
complicated business, even by modern standards. Just as Babylonian
banking houses maintained extensive branches in the Sumerian cities,
Šthey maintained branches within any state within the limits of the
communications of the day.
It would not be long before the skill of the Aramean at letters,
money, counterfeit or otherwise, and in organization of industry,
stirred the peasant kingdom of Greece. By the systematic spreading of
money madness amongst the landed aristocracy, their peoples and their
labors had now become but cyphers; desirable wealth assessed as
according to the figures in the banker's book.
Page 106
The people who drifted into the cities as slave or freeman and
found employment in manufacturies of these strangers who by now were
calling themselves Greeks and bearing Greek names, not unnaturally
gave their allegiance to the new hand that fed them. They drank at the
fountain of hatred of their former masters who had betrayed both their
people and themselves.
Among the first steps towards the total monetization of the
wealth and labor to a precious metal standard controllable by the
great banking houses of Babylonia, was the permitting of the striking
of a silver coinage on the island of Aegina by Pheidon, "progressive"
King of Argos in 680 B.C. "Progressive" meant a king ready to listen
to the blandishments of money power, luring him into that trap which
was the use of precious metal currency over which he could have
relatively little control; since silver as its base was obtained only
at great expense by slave labor at localities too often far distant.
Use of silver placed the economy, through the practices of banking, in
the hands of the international bullion controllers.
That the bankers, known as trapezitae, conducted almost the same
business as bankers today, is clearly indicated in Seffert's Classical
Dictionary even if, as the word trapezitae indicates, they but sat at
a bench in the market place instead of sitting in gilded halls
surmounted by sixty story buildings as indeed they do today. Within
the limits of clay tablet and stylus, the same confidence game was
operated though probably there were few who understood it as being
such.
Page 107
Yesterday it was a conspiracy against the men of a city or small
state, today a conspiracy against the whole world. Those that have
their hands on the throttle of this all embracing evil do not bear the
faintest resemblance to demons in hell or gods. They are but pudgy and
sly little men as much overwhelmed by the monster they have raised as
are the foolish nations that permitted them to do so
Seffert says: "Bankers were called trapezitae by the Greeks
because they sat at tables in the marketplaces, the center of all
business transactions. They acted as money changers exchanging for a
commission heavy money or gold into smaller coin and the moneys of
different systems with each other. They also acted as moneylenders.
they received money on deposit for for safe custody. If a citizen had
a large sum of money, he probably preferred to put it in a bank. The
bankers kept strict account of all monies in their charge. If a person
were making a payment to another who was a depositor at the same bank,
the banker would simply transfer the requisite sum from one account to
another. Business of this kind was generally in the hands of resident
aliens."
Page 108
Within the limits of clay tablets and stylus, every fraudulent
practice known to banking would have been practiced. The commonly
accepted idea that instruments used in foreign trade such as Letters
of Credit, Bills of Exchange, etc. were a discovery of the 12th
century A.D. is clearly proved erroneous by the sentence "Strangers
Štoo found that the banks offered them such facilities that they were
glad to make considerable use of them."
Therefore, behind the monetary reforms of King Pheidon of Argos,
we must see not the wonder of what so many so-called scholars call the
"Invention" of coinage in Greece but the comings and goings of strange
aliens with letters from mysterious "Important" men who dwelt in Tyre,
or Sidon or Babylonia itself.
Behind the Aramaic-speaking banker came the slave trader and it
was not long before the poor people found that king's law was no
longer for them and was but a measure behind which these glib and
double-talking bankers operated. "We must protect the people's
savings!" no doubt was their cry, yesterday, as in today.
Such silver coinage would have been no more than a few seen
symbols, the apex of an inverted pyramid of unseen or abstract symbols
of which only the master really understood the meaning and purpose,
and only he knew how to manipulate.
Page 109
Through manipulation of these "Credits" that people now thought
was their money, King Pheidon himself could have been tricked into
believing himself a slave because he could not repay his so-called
"debt." However, the banker needed the king for a while yet.
In the meantime, peasantry and lesser nobility were drawn into
this trap of irredeemable debt, and as the king's law had to be
upheld, they and their families would be sold into that cruel slave
system that was growing up all over the Mediterranean world and
through which, money economy, now grown into a veritable monster,
could find docile labor and against which the reforms of Solon were
directed.
History should not be mislead by the Greek names. Oskar Seffert
states quite clearly that the bankers or trapezitae were resident
aliens. It would have been no more difficult than it is in these days
to secure the services of a front man to promote their interests. Just
as aliens who seek power amongst whatever people they may be so often
change their names to suit the circumstances while retaining
allegiance to that group into which they were born, so it was in that
day where worship of money had replaced worship of the gods.
Out of weakening of kingly rule at Athens and growth of
"Aristocratic" democracy, doubtless deriving from concession to
international money power for its assistance against the Dorian and
before whom Athens never fell, came replacement of the title Wanax
indicating god-king for that of Archon-Basileus of lesser degree.
Page 110
The soul destruction sown amongst them as a consequence of their
betrayal into slavery derived those conditions out of which the so-
called tyrant rose to power. Out of "money-making" rose those men who
fronted for the conspiratorial money power of the age. Such men
steered the restless aspirations of the wage slaves, those
dispossessed masses who had no more understanding than themselves of
that force by which they were both being manipulated.
CHAPTER VIII: TYRANT AND TRAPEZITAE
Page 111
Of the tyrants of Greece, Professor Heichelheim wrote:
"These tyrants were for the most part members of the nobility
themselves who had made the grade using the new political and economic
possibilities of their time to overthrow their own equals and subdue
their whole home state temporarily. The tyrants were often compelled
to introduce the coin economy pattern in the area over which they
ruled or at least promote its development officially in order to get
Šthe upper hand over their enemies. To stabilize the position of the
peasantry on the land and to expand and rebuild state economy, a
central distribution of money and goods is characteristic of tyrant
economy."
The above remarks indicate there were "new political and economic
possibilities" between 650 and 500 B.C. when the tyrannies flourished
most of all. What were these new "new political and economic
possibilities?" The answer is arrived at readily: they derived from
the activities of the agents of the international silver bullion
brokers. The opportunities clearly were for those who assisted in the
monetization of the city and all its activities and possessions, and
its population, man, woman and child, and their possessions too, and
thereby assisted in the firm establishment of the rule of the bankers.
Page 112
The peasants were oppressed by the rich and encouraged to get
into debt and then were reduced to slavery and exile; slaves began to
compete with free labor. Ambitious individuals capitalized in this
discontent to overthrow the constituted government and established
themselves as tyrants in all the Greek cities with the notable
exception of Sparta.
The kings and aristocracies, as a derivative of their folly in
permitting the unrestricted activities of the new bankers who were now
well established in all the major cities of Greece outside of Sparta,
saw a class of entrepreneurs come into being, largely foreigners and
men of lowly origin.
In the same manner during the 16th and 17th centuries A.D., the
worthy tradesmen of London, while still deferring to the natural
nobility of the land, more and more realized that they too were lords
of the land through their control of labor by the wage rates and
needed little encouragement from the true source of their power, the
bullion brokers, towards hatred of a government which gave them little
say. Until at least Charles I, this government still continued to
consider one of its main duties was to prevent the oppression of the
poor and the trusting, regardless of the needs of trade.
The similar class arose in Greece some two thousand years earlier
realized that they were now in actuality the lords of the land through
labor, which they now owned outright as slaves or controlled as
through daily wages. If the land itself they did not own or control,
it mattered not; for there were voices that told them that land too
was but a trade and tool in the new order and the lord himself, in the
money creator's kingdom on earth, was as assessable in coin as was
potter, weaver or armorer.
Page 113
And so the stage was set for the arrival of the tyrant financed
into existence by the bankers towards the total destruction of the old
way of life, such as, in the case of Sparta, had been outstandingly
proven by the renewal of the ancient life system through the financial
and social reforms of Lycurgus.
"In order to level the class of large landowners and nobles
economically, Theagenees of Megara simply allowed their herds of
cattle to be slaughtered without remuneration. A frequent political
device of tyrants was to murder or banish nobles, confiscate their
possessions and redistribute their wealth among the poor."
The poor, needless to say, soon returned to being poor again. The
word "poor" having existed long before the crafty banker arranged that
the measure of poverty and riches was in that number of privately
issued units of exchange in which a man could be assessed according to
success or failure in the conflict of life, as he the banker had
established it.
Page 114
The tyrant was that force by which international money power
destroyed all resistance to its total ownership of life and labor and
human hope. The status of all, slave or free, depended on their
relations with the trapezitae who presided at their tables in the
agora. The tyrant, in his capacity as ruler, would above all be guided
instrument; but that the tyrant no more understood the true
significance of his existence than do these so-called revolutionary
"leaders" of today, is a certainty. The revolutions of today are
clearly similar in their origin to those of the time of the tyrants.
More than ample evidence exists of those persons designated
international bankers in "Modern Times" as also the instigative factor
in the principal so-called revolutions of the last 300 years.
According to Commander Guy Carr (Pawns in the Game), the so-called
English revolution was totally the work of international bullion
brokers lodged in Amsterdam although the loan of silver bullion to
Queen Elizabeth came from Antwerp.
Page 115
Also appearing to have been a factor in such revolution as
witting or unwitting agents of the Amsterdam bullion brokers who took
the initiative in the financing of Cromwell which allowed him to
obtain the best arms.
The regrowth of the commercial power of these "New Dutch" derived
from the bullion trade which they seemed to continue to control
internationally due to connections in Spain who directed toward them a
great part of the flood of precious metals which was being wrung out
of the wretched natives of South America, not to speak of that which
came from Japan, China and India. No sooner did these precious metals
arrive in Spain or Portugal than almost immediately they moved on to
other parts in settlement of trade debit balances created largely by
the Spanish wars in Europe, particularly in Italy.
(According to the letters of Quang Chang Ling, History of
Precious Metals, "From the opening of trade to 1640, the British first
acquired territory in Hindustan, three of your European nations alone
took a thousand million dollars in gold and silver from Asia.)
Page 116
The superfluity of the precious metals was one of the instigative
factors in the growth of "Banking" which had spread from Venice and
Genoa to Amsterdam and from thence to London where, evinced by the
activities of the goldsmiths, it had set itself up against kings, as
the whole story of the downfall of Charles I would indicate.
The changing political character of Northern Europe derived from
the rise in prices which came about both as a result of the tremendous
influx of new precious metals and private abstract money creation,
which affected prices equally with that precious metal that could be
seen as it circulated as money. Kings, often in the hands of venal
advisors, were no longer able to make both ends meet and not
understanding the true nature of the activities of the bankers or
goldsmiths, they neither knew how to put a stop to such activities
nor, if they permitted them, how to tax them.
The sullen resistance experienced by Charles I from the
puritanical and self-righteous burghers of the City of London, most of
whom were by then deeply beholden to the goldsmiths for their
finances, who, in their turn, were beholden to the Amsterdam bullion
brokers for the gold they sometimes needed in a hurry when rumor went
round that their receipts which circulated as money, were largely
false and had nothing behind them except lies, may be traced to these
same bullion brokers of Amsterdam.
Their policy above all required the weakening of kingship in
England for the "Banking" monopoly they saw they might come to
institute in England could not flourish with a king on the throne such
as Charles who truly regarded himself as the Lord's anointed. A king
who was aware of the source of his power, even if not widely
instructed therein, that is to say who was aware of the true meaning
of monetary creation and emission relative to his kingship, was not to
their liking. The reinstitution of the office of a Royal Exchanger,
abolished by Henry VIII in 1529 on the advice of Sir Thomas Gresham,
was also not much to their liking, nor the seizure by Charles of the
#130,000 deposited in the Tower, supposedly by the London merchants.
Page 117
The reinstitution of the office of the Royal Exchanger meant that
one of the major sources of revenue of the goldsmiths, and therefore
their masters, the bullion brokers, was cut off: they were denied the
opportunity to clip, or sweat, or retain for export those full-weight
coins that came their way.
"The unsafe condition of a Bank under a Monarchy."
These words of Pepys indicate the trend of thought of certain
circles at the time. Although Charles I could not be considered the
most effective opposition to banking and its proponents, nevertheless,
he was in the way; even if the cure to him - Cromwell - proved perhaps
to be even more in the way! Cromwell's "Bills of Public Faith," of
which little record remains, a true currency being intrinsically
valueless, state issued, and inconvertible, must have been cause for
grave misgivings on the part of the goldsmiths, and all concerned, as
to whether they had done right in supporting the enemies of the king.
It was not long after the return to the throne of England of the
Stuart Line in the person of the amenable Charles II, in 1660, that
these "Bills of Public Faith," the real key to sovereignty, were
repudiated; showing that the son had even less understanding of the
realities of money than had the father.
(Charles II was totally in the hands of the bankers and
goldsmiths as is revealed by the following extract from D.
MacPherson's "Annals of Commerce P. 428: "Charles being in want of
money, the bankers took 10% of him barefacedly, and by private
contracts on many bills, orders, tallies and debts of that King, they
got 20%, sometimes 30% to the great dishonor of the Government. This
great gain induced the Goldsmiths to become more and more lenders to
the King, to anticipate all the revenues, to take every grant of
Parliament into pawn as soon as it was given; also to out-vie each
other in buying and taking to pawn bills, orders and tallies, so that
in effect, all the revenue passed through their hands.)
To return to Cromwell and the principal factors that lead up to
his success, and his assumption of the powers of tyranny: when it
became clear that Cromwell was as "suitable" a man as could be found
to fit the needs of the occasion, he was supplied with the gifted
Fernandez Carvajal, for the reorganization of his army, which became
know as the "Model Army."
Page 118
Trained revolutionaries then poured into the country, presiding
over whom was the Portuguese Ambassador, a De Souza, who loaned them
the diplomatic immunity of his house for their meetings. One such
revolutionary was known today as Calvin, whose father had been fiscal
agent to a prominent French Bishop.
These revolutionary leaders exploited the use of truculent mobs
for the gaining of political ends. According to Guy Carr, "The
evidence which absolutely convicts Oliver Cromwell of participating in
the revolutionary plot was obtained in a Lord Alfred Douglas article
who explained that he had come into possession of letters written to
and answered by Cromwell. They are written in German. On entry dated
June 16, 1647 reads: From O.C. (Oliver Cromwell) to Ebenezer Pratt.
"In return for financial support will advocate admission... to
England; this however impossible while Charles living. Charles cannot
be executed without trial, adequate grounds for which do not at
present exist. Therefore, advise that Charles be assassinated, but
will have nothing to do with the procuring of an assassin, though
willing to help in his escape."
In reply to this dispatch, E. Pratt wrote a letter dated July 12
1647 to Oliver Cromwell:
"Will grant financial aid as soon as Charles removed and...
admitted. Assassination too dangerous. Charles should be given an
opportunity to escape. His recapture will then make trial and
execution possible. The support will be liberal but useless to discuss
terms until trial commences."
Page 119
On Nov. 12th, Charles was given the opportunity to escape. He
was, of course, recaptured. Hollis and Ludlow, authorities on this
chapter of history, are both on record as considering the flight as a
stratagem of Cromwell. Cromwell had the British Parliament purged of
most of the members he knew were loyal to the King. Notwithstanding,
the majority agreed "That the concessions offered by the King were
satisfactory to a settlement."
Any such settlement would have disqualified Cromwell from
receiving the blood money so he struck again. He order Colonel Hyde to
purge Parliament of those members who had voted in favor of a
settlement with the King. What then happened is referred to as
"Pryde's purge." When the purge was finished, fifty members remained.
They are recorded as the "Rump Parliament." They usurped absolute
power. On Jan. 9, 1649, Charles was publicly beheaded. Cromwell
received his blood money just as Judas had done.
The following statements of Benjamin Franklin in reference to the
causes of the American Revolution are equally illuminated.
"About this time, 1763, Franklin made a visit to England. While
there he was asked how he accounted for the prosperous condition of
the colonies. His reply was: "That is simple. It is only because in
the colonies we issue our own money. It is called "Colonial Scrip" and
we issue it in the proper proportion to the demands of trade and
industry." (Senate Document No. 23, page 98, by Robert L. Owen,
Chairman, Committee on Banking and Currency, United States Senate.)
Page 120
Robert Owen continues: It was not very long until this
information was brought to the Rothschild Bank, and they saw that here
was a nation ready to be exploited; here was a nation setting up an
example that they could issue their own money instead of the money
coming through the Banks. The Rothschild's Bank caused a bill to be
introduced in the English Parliament, therefore, which provided that
no colony of England could issue its own money. They had to use
English money. Consequently, the colonies were compelled to discard
their "Scrip" and mortgage themselves to the Bank of England (the
Amsterdam Bullion brokers to get money. For the first time in the
history of the United States, our money began to be based on debt.
"Benjamin Franklin stated that in one year from that date, the
streets of the colonies were filled with the unemployed, because when
England exchanged with them, she gave them only half as many units in
payment in borrowed money from Rothschild as they had in Scrip. Their
circulating medium of exchange was reduced 50% and everyone became
unemployed according to Franklin's own statement."
Continuing the quote from Senate Document No. 23: "Mr. Franklin
went further than that. He said that this was the original cause of
the revolutionary war. In his own language: "The colonies would gladly
have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been
that England took away from the colonies their money which created
unemployment and dissatisfaction."
Page 121
The French Revolution, so-called, left much less evidence of its
origins than the so-called Russian Revolution 120 years later, though
the instigating factor is clear enough. "The French Revolution" by
Nesta Webster, "The Life of Napoleon" by Sir Walter Scott, "God and
the Goldsmiths" by McNair Wilson give light on this matter. A study of
Louis XV and his relations to the Paris Brothers, the state tax
farmers, yields impressions. The writings of Necker, front man for the
international bankers of the time, and who Mirabeau described as "the
Hero who arrived by famine" and also the writings of Turgot, finance
Minister to Louis XVI, who fought against Necker and the evil
fraternity behind him, and who nicely summed up the situation in his
first memorandum to Louis XVI as follows:
"So long as finance shall be continually subject to the old
expedients in order to provide for state services, your Majesty will
always be dependent on financiers, and they ever will be the masters,
and by maneuvers belonging to their trade they will frustrate the most
important operations. Thus the government can never feel itself at
ease, it can never be acknowledged as able to sustain itself, because
the discontents and impatience of the people are always the means made
use of by intriguing and ill-disposed men in order to excite
disturbance."
Clearly Minister Turgot was a man of integrity and the fact that
it was only after prolonged scheming on the part of the international
bankers, who mostly lived outside France, that he was dismissed, would
suggest that his master also sought to do that which he was born to
do, that is to love, guide and protect the people. But neither master
nor man understood the strength of the undercurrents which flowed,
nor, the true meaning of "L'etat, c'est moi!" which means "I am the
fount of life. I am that point through which the Almighty God injects
your money amongst you that binds you together as one. I, and no
other; not my steward, nor servant, faithful or unfaithful."
Page 122
The men of intrigue he referred to, were such stewards, the
international bankers. These men, standing behind thrones, intercepted
that God-power which was the force behind "l'etat c'est moi," and
controlling the value of money, and therefore price levels, with
responsibility only to them and theirs, confused the nations with
their sly schemes of fatuous purpose.
The instigating factor of the Russian Revolution relating to its
financing is in the book "Czarism and Revolution" by Arsene De
Goulevitch, a former officer of the Czar's army and founder of the
Union for the Defence of Oppressed Peoples.
One of the principal sources of finances for the International
Revolutionary Movement prior to 1917 was Jacob Schiff of the
International banking firm Kuhn, Loeb based in New York city. It was
recorded that twelve million dollars had been donated to the
revolutionaries by Schiff preceding the war of 1914-1918. The
extensive funds so necessary towards the effective disruption of a
major state appear to have come from certain British and American
circles. In his book, "My Life," Trotsky speaks of a large loan
granted in 1907 by a "financier" belong to the Liberal Party in
Britain.
Page 123
The conduct of Jacob Schiff was that of an unyielding anti-csar
enemy. His grandson John estimated that "the old man sunk about $20
million for the triumph of bolshevism in Russia."
(Jacob Schiff openly boasted of having been instrumental in
overthrowing the Czarist regime.")
According to Goulevitch, various other persons well known in the
world of international banking, whatever the expression "International
Banking" might mean, supported revolutionary activities.
(According to Dr. Carroll Quigley, outstanding characteristics of
the international bankers were:
1) they were cosmopolitan and international;
2) they were close to governments and were particularly concerned with
questions of government debts, including foreign government debts,
even in areas which seemed, at first glance, poor risks, like Egypt,
Persia, Ottoman Turkey, Imperial China and Latin America;
3) their interests were almost exclusively in bonds and very rarely in
goods since they admired "liquidity";
4) they were fanatical devotees of deflation (which they called
"sound" money from its close association with high interest rates and
a high value of money) and of the gold standard;
5) they were almost equally devoted to secrecy and the secret use of
financial influence in political life. These bankers came to be called
"international bankers" and were known as "merchant bankers" in
England, "private bankers" in France and "investment bankers" in the
United States. Everywhere, they were sharply distinguishable from
other, more obvious, kinds of banks, such as savings banks or
commercial banks.)
The ruin to the states of the world set on foot by these immensely
rich but otherwise trifling persons, whose solidarity, however, had
enabled them to so profit from the unbelievable expansion of the use
of Ledger Credit Page Entry Money in the Anglo-Saxon banking systems,
could not better demonstrate the absurdity of allowing private, and
therefore irresponsible, persons to exercise that power which should
belong to the gods alone, the power inherent in the creation and
issuance of the Unit of Exchange amongst the peoples.
Page 124
In a speech six weeks before the fall of the Kerensky government,
Lenin made one of his most significant recommendations and perhaps the
one most suggestive of the possibility of his sincerity, even if in
the rest he seems to have been misguided. It was the one
recommendation most indicative of his awareness of the deep-seated
causes of the conditions that had given rise to himself and what he
stood for. He recommended the total nationalization of banking. In his
own words, he says "all banks to be merged into one and the state
control its operations, that is the nationalization of the banks. To
talk about the regularization of banks means either to betray complete
ignorance or to fool the simple folk with high-sounding words. To
control the delivery of bread, or in general, the production and
distribution of goods, without controlling banking practices, is an
absurdity." (Works of Lenin, XIV: Pt. 2; 182-183)
(Of equal interest and strikingly similar in language used is the
comment of Lionel Rothschild on the subject of banking as quoted by
Lord Beaconsfield (Benjamin D'Israeli) in 1844: "Can anything be more
absurd than that a nation should apply to an individual to maintain
its credit, and with its credit, its existence as a state and its
comfort as a people?")
When Lenin had seized power, it was a small matter to set up
printing presses in the major cities of Russia that commenced to pour
off paper roubles by the billion. Some fourteen or fifteen thousand
workers were busily engaged in the government printing shops of
Moscow, Leningrad, Penza,Perm, and Rostov-on-Don, turning out tons
upon tons of paper money.
At the same time, safety deposit boxes were seized, all accounts
were frozen and the banks were closed so that there was no addition to
the circulation existing outside; and no new money came on the scene
other than the paper roubles of the Bolshevik printing presses which
immediately took the place of that Ledger Credit Page Money by
manipulation of which the banks had previously controlled a great deal
of trade.
Page 125
For a year or two, the Monarchist roubles were printed as if
there were intention to keep the people half expecting that the Czar
would be coming back. Then for a short while, "Kerenski" rouble was
printed, presumably the issue of the short-lived Kerensky government,
and then finally, the Bolshevik rouble which let the people know that
all was indeed lost. This continuing the money of a destroyed king
seems to have been no new policy of international money power,
especially in the case of those kings, its particular enemies. An
illustration of which from ancient times was the continued minting at
the Sardis mint of the "sigloi" of Croesus long after he had been
destroyed. The printing press money of the Russian Revolution entered
the circulation against government expenditures and against gold coin
which it became illegal to possess.
These vigorous moves may have been cause for some misgivings
amongst the bankers who continued to finance the "Revolution." But so
closely surrounded was Lenin by their agents, they would have been
justified in reasoning that they would come out on top again without
too much trouble, and they did.
In the archives of the State Publishers of Moscow is recorded the
following eulogy to the printing press as being as great a force in
the so-called revolution as armies:
"Paper money of the Soviet Republic gave support to the young
regime at the most critical period of its existence when there was no
possibility of raising direct taxes to meet the outlays of the civil
war. Hail to our printing presses! It is true that its days are
numbered but it has already completed three quarters of its work. In
the archives of the proletarian revolution along with the cannon,
rifles, machine guns or our epoch that vanquished the enemies of the
proletariat, the place of honor will be given to the printing press,
the machine gun of the commissariat of finance that poured fire into
the rear of the bourgeois system and that made use of the laws of
currency and circulation of that regime for the purpose of destroying
it, and financing the revolution.
Page 126
Typical enough the "Tyrant" himself, Vladimir Lenin, saw little
or no profit out of all this, for himself, the Russian people, or that
ideal of world revolution in which it appears he sincerely believed.
If truly he was the author of the above statements regarding banking,
then, when he died not so long after all these events, it was as a
weary and disillusioned man. For that gold, still very much the base
for total control of world finance, which was wrung from the Russian
people during the period of terror between 1917 and 1922, seems to
have almost all found its way to the "Benefactors" of the original
revolutionaries, Messrs. Kuhn, Loeb and Company in New York and it
must have been clear to Lenin by the time he died that he was but an
agent of a force that regarded him as merely another tool to be used
towards the making of that which they designed.
"Mr. Bakhmetiev, the late Russian Imperial Ambassador to the US,
tells us that the Bolsheviks, after victory, transferred 600 million
roubles in gold between the years 1918 and 1922 to Kuhn Loeb which
makes a pretty good return for the mere 20 million dollars granted by
the philanthropic Mr. Schiff and which would have been used as credits
against purchases at that!
At that time, such an amount of gold could have been used to form
the apex of an inverted pyramid of abstract money equal in amount to
beyond thirty times the number of units such gold represented in US
currency according to its official price.
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