THE BABYLONIAN WOE Chapters IX-XI
by David Astle
CHAPTER
IX. Potsherds and other Fragments
X. Pergamum and Pitane
XI: Voiceó froí thå dust
CHAPTER IX: PORSHERDS AND OTHER FRAGMENTS
Page 127
The glimpse at these cataclysmic events of relatively modern
times, as in the previous chapters, will assist towards understanding
the implications of similar events in ancient times of which but the
most fragmentary information exists. As was written three thousand
years ago:
"Is there anything whereof it may be said "See this is new? it
hath been already of old time which was before us." Eccl 1:10
So returning to that smaller world of ancient days, the theme of
this book, it may safely be said that similar conspiracy and secret
maneuver led up to all that fast changing sequence of social events
that clearly followed a definite design, in Attica; particularly from
the collapse of hereditary kingship in 683 B.C.; which date marks, it
most reasonably be assumed, the commencement of rule by Money Creative
Power either international or home-grown. A king created annually by
vote has even less chance of ruling effectively than the so-called
presidents of today, elective kings as they really are, though sorry
enough spectacles some of them may be, and who have as much as five
years to serve the purposes of whoever they front for.
Some writers dismiss the idea of a capitalism in antiquity, but
accepting definition of capitalism as the condition of the
unrestricted promotion of human activity through the instrument of the
driving force of that power of creation of the unit of exchange or of
promises of the unit of exchange as denoted by Ledger Credit Page
Entry, and loan against collateral, and at interest, and which
function as the something in exchanges between persons dealing with
the same banker or interlocked system of banks, very little analysis
of the circumstances that gave rise to the tyrants will show that a
form of "capitalism" did exist, even if more local in character, and
restricted to the individual city, or state, as a rule. The tyrant was
front man towards the total monetization of the state, the land and
its labor and towards the transfer of labor to a condition of
dependence on a wage of money.
Page 128
Today we but repeat the mistakes of the past; however today it is
not merely disaster to a small city but the money swindle as conducted
in ancient times by trapezitae at their bench in the marketplace, made
possible by mass paper manufacture and the printing press, it almost
certainly will prove to be total disaster to all mankind.
Those lines of Solon say enough:
"But of themselves in their folly the men of the city are willing
Our great city to wreck, being won over by wealth,
False are the hears of the people's leaders.
A further couple indicates the meaning of "our great city to
wreck".
"Great men ruin a city: for lack of understanding
Under a despot's yoke lieth the people enslaved.
These lines written after the seizure of Peisistratus of the
Tyranny at Athens would indicate that he had the assistance in his
rise to power of those former great land-owning families of Attica who
had been drawn into the schemes of the foreign money masters to their
undoing. Lacking understanding of the true nature of money, by
Šconniving with the bankers to drive their own people off the land into
the cities, they forgot that as rulers, the whole land was theirs in
trust.
Page 129
These plausible aliens who set up the money economy via their so-
called "Banks," owned nothing but unmitigated gall, a vast contempt
for mankind and such as they could double-talk the naive peasant
rulers into giving them.
The folly of these rulers in equating possession with the master
moneyers' trifling pieces of gold and silver dated back to those grim
Kings of the Homeric Sagas or before, who, being lain in their graves
at Mycenae with all their riches, thus set off on their eternal
journey with that small store of gold that the crafty Babylonian
money-men trained them to regard as wealth, as opposed to the real
wealth of an organized state whose money was the benevolent law of the
ruler in relation to surpluses, and directed towards the good and
continuing life of the people and no more.
"Those who had power and made men marvel at their riches." (Ure:
Origins of Tyranny, P. 8, 1922)
This line indicates that Solon knew that money was an evil
without understanding what it was about money that made it so. Not the
having of the precious metal pieces of the banker recording the number
of units represented, for such metal money lying inert beneath the
floor has no meaning so far as the quickening or slowing of the pulse
of life is concerned. It has no more meaning than have abstract units
of exchange media that have not yet been recorded in the ledger on
account of no suitable (to the banker) demand for them, and of course,
they are without limit.
The evil is in the forgetfulness of the ruler that money is no
more than a recording of his law of exchange, its magnitude being
governed by the number of units indicated. It can never be treasure.
The evil about money derives from lack of understanding of its true
nature and from confusing of money and treasure. It is the persistent
failure of mankind to realize that money is but the result of
agreement being arrived at amongst a sovereign people through their
ruler, to provide them with a system of numbers by which their
exchanges might be facilitated, and so help them to live a better
life. Treasure being but a commodity by which the unit of value can
best be stored.
Page 130
The evil lies in the forgetfulness of the ruler to respect his
duty to provide an adequate money supply for his people regulated by
himself and free of obligation to external forces, in such manner as
had existed in the Ancient Oriental civilizations in earlier times. It
lay in the permitting to private and hence irresponsible persons the
power to intervene in that which was the most sacred responsibility of
the ruler through the priesthood, the creation and regulation of the
medium of exchange, his people's money.
Therefore, the hidden force behind the setting up of a tyranny
was the far reaching power of a conspiratorial secret society,
international in scope, controlling money emission in all countries
which it penetrated through its continuing control of the sources of
supply of that silver treasure by weight such as constituted the base
of the exchange systems long ago established by itself.
The tyrant was clearly the front man for the local banker more
than actually being the banker himself. He it was who gave legality to
the banker and his activities of that coterie of merchants, traders,
and captains who flourished on the banker's financial organization
and, though this they did not understand, his connection with those
international bullion brokers of the day.
Š These worthy businessmen depended for tiding themselves over
difficult periods on that which the banker loaned them as money; maybe
an entry in a ledger transferable to the account of a fellow merchant,
visiting captain, or trader in slaves or other merchandise; they also
depended on the banker to be safe custodian for such treasure as came
their way.
The tyrant was therefore, either naive or corrupt, the instrument
set up by the banker, firstly towards the legalization of his status,
and secondly towards the removal of that class who might yet challenge
his peculiar and secret power, the natural aristocracy of Hellas.
This natural aristocracy, in a growing system that clearly sought
the subversion of its free dependents with the purpose of leading them
into paid day labor or into slavery final and absolute, was
uncertainly situated in states which now owed their existence to the
bankers and their coterie of entrepreneurs and merchants, as clearly
did so many of the Greek states of the Greek industrial revolution.
Page 131
The banker, lurking in the shade apart from men, knew that these
proud noblemen, formerly lords of this lovely land, had forgotten the
meaning of their own existence and he despised them for permitting him
to undermine the true order of life and cause these simple folk, their
peasantry, to be driven off the land one way or another to the wage
slavery.
In the same way, the Lords of the Manors of England and Scotland
had driven the peasantry off the common lands some 2400 years later,
land now representing that magic of money of which previously they had
seen little.
In the lines of Theognis whose political aim was to prevent a
recurrence of the Tyranny in Megara which was a centre for the
manufacture of textiles:
"Tradesmen reign supreme: the bad lord it over their betters.
This is the lesson that all must thoroughly master:
How that in the world wealth has the might and the power.
Many a bad man is rich and many a good man is needy.
Not without cause, Oh Wealth,do men honor thee above all things.
Must men reckon the only virtue the making of money?
Everyone honors those that are rich and despises the needy.
(The Origins of Tyranny, P.8, P.N. Ure, New York 1922)
Page 132
The banker, trained from the money shops of Babylonia, knew that
for him the only desirable political situation was where the lowly and
vulgar held the appearance of power and wealth and "money," for such
would not question too intently the source from whence they derived
that "money," nor the nature of that "money" such as had paved their
way to so-called power, for fear its so necessary supply might be cut
off.
(Hence the situation at Athens so similar to the situation in the
Anglo-Saxon world today. Athens at that stage of the Peloponnesian War
was completely under the control of the banks. It was not long after
the battle in which Lysander of Sparta destroyed the whole Athenian
fleet that the war ended with the usual results of Athens completely
dependent on privately created money for its finances, that is, on the
International Bankers and with such types of persons suitable to them
occupying key positions. The victor, Sparta, was equally dependent on
their good will in order to obtain money with which could be purchased
the ships necessary to defeat Athens and without which the war could
not have been brought to a definite conclusion.)
Page 133
Where, as in a city such as Megara, one banking house might
Šcontrol all credit or money creation, to question and seek to know how
this was done would also mean search for knowledge of the banker's
secrets and this, your tyrant instinctively knew, was dangerous for
his continued success.
What are the gains that lead up to a tyranny? Is it not more
probable that they are some form of payment received by the commons
(those that are bad) from the would-be tyrant?
Not at all.. Merely the word was passed by that banking
institution to which the majority of tradesmen or manufacturers in
that particular city were indebted, that the banker, giver of all (and
taker of all) favored this move. It may be safely considered that the
first legislation passed by our new tyrant would legalize the position
of his backers, which previously, as likely not, had been illegal.
The tyrant at this stage of history was a necessity to Money
Power and while possibly having the appearance of being wealthy, he
depended for his real finances on that backer whose interests he
promoted. Those two officers of Alexander for example, who accepted
the tyranny of Asiatic cities could in no way have understood the
reality of finance, international or otherwise, except perhaps if they
had been clerks in a paymaster corps, of officer status. If they had
so understood such finance, it is doubtful that they would have been
promoted as they were..
The tyrant was the one who the banker could rely on to put
through his "Leveling" program, or in double talk of today, could be
relied on to "press ahead with Democratization" and to work against
the class from which he was supposed to have come. He was one who
could be relied on to put through programs of public works, maintain
military expenditures, etc.; for all such activities strengthened the
banker's position as creator and regulator of the exchange unit and
therefore designer of the life of the city. The banker could not
maintain his hold over the city except his product, ledger credit page
entry money, however created, was in constant demand,and the local
government deeply embroiled in his schemes.
Page 134
The tyrant had to be one completely in accord with that so-called
"democratic" political attitude, which the banker always seemed to
espouse.. His ostensible purpose had to be to "Level;" such leveling
meaning of course tearing down everything above himself (and above the
banker too...)
Those fragments of verse reputed to be by Solon leave little
doubt of the sincerity of Solon. The fact remains that as a merchant,
he must have been marked with some of the outlook of that famous
class. His famous laws, amongst which was that law releasing the
peasantry from the debt slavery into which their natural rulers had
permitted them to be drawn, and was eating into the very vitals of
Attica, in view of the fact that he offered citizenship to any family
moving to Athens with the intention of taking up some manual trade,
might very well have been promoted by his backers. The city was
clearly very short of suitable free labor. It very well might be that
his backers were those money lenders and bankers that controlled the
growing manufacturies of Athens, and who saw that there was more
profit and work for that which they loaned as money, in bringing the
peasantry to Athens as free men (if a wage slave is really any more
free than a slave owned outright!) and in having thus a plentiful
supply of labor, than in tying such peasantry to the soil by debt
slavery, and in the case of distraint, their sale on a surfeited
market abroad.....
(The following letter circularized amongst American Bankers by
European Banking interests during the American civil war gives a most
revealing light on this subject. There is no reason to suppose that
the motives of the trapezitae were in any way more altruistic:
Š"Slavery is likely to be abolished by the war power and chattel
slavery destroyed. This, I and my European friends are in favor of,
for slavery is but the owning of labor and carries with it the care of
the laborers, while the European plan, led by England, is that capital
shall control labor by controlling wages.." This letter known as the
Hazard Circular is to be found on pages 44-45 of The Money
Manipulators by June Grem.)
While there was a healthy population of small holders as well as
the great landlords,, there was always possibility of recovery by the
enslaved state, and themselves, the enslavers, as happened at Sparta
in the time of Lycurgus, driven out of the land for hundreds of years.
Page 135
All those liberalizing laws promulgated by Solon steadily
deprived the ancient families of Attica of their former power and
prerogative. The shadow of power would have been put into the hands of
ignoble persons and other "Democratic" officials who would have been
no more than blind creatures lifted up from the mob to the service of
money power. By the devices existing as part of what is known as
"democracy" such as Ostraikism through rumor put into circulation by
the secret societies of the city, controlled, as in today, by the
bankers without a doubt, "Leaders" no longer "suitable" could be
removed.
"The tyrants are found making it part of their policy to keep
their subjects employed on big industrial concerns. In more than one
case, we see their power collapsing just when this policy becomes
financially impossible." (Origins of Tyranny)
In other words, if that tyrant proved unsatisfactory to his
masters, money, that source of strength in political life, was cut off
just at the time when it would be most needed, such as when he had
become involved in heavy spending. Herein is further proof of the
tyrant being not money power itself, but front man for money power.
It is pointed out by Prof. Ure that it can scarcely be an
accident that the Tyranny of Athens ended almost immediately after the
removal of one of its two roots: the mines of the country of the
Thracians. Which is to say that if the source of bullion on which the
money power of a so-called banker was founded petered out or was lost
to enemy action, the tyrant he had promoted could be discarded as
having no further purpose.
Such activities being ordered by a class of persons who had
achieved despotic power in the same period of history which saw
extensive development of mining in all of Europe can only have been
the result of a policy deep lain and far reaching in consequence. This
policy can only have been created in some central point from which
flowed the springs of world power such as would have designed,
wittingly or unwittingly, so much of the ancient world.
From this area, merchant houses would have continued to have
spread their operations around the world in the same way as, it is
recorded, had been done from Ur as much as fifteen hundred years
before; or for that matter, during the period of seeming glory and
empire that so often follows the accession to power of private money
creative force in any organized and potentially vigorous state. A most
outstanding instance of the latter in modern times exists in the
period of empire that came to Britain following the establishment of
the Bank of England in 1694 AD.
The silver which the international bankers drew from Greece at a
ratio of 10:1 or more, would have been used in settlement of trade
balances with India, Bactria or China at a ratio of 6:1 or less, as to
gold. According to Alexander Del Mar, this movement of silver to the
Orient from Athens was arranged by the Athenian Government but except
this early Athenian Government was fronting for the bankers, this
could not have been so. International trade balances have always been
Šsettled from the world's banking capital or headquarters of the
international bankers or bullion brokers, such as was London during
the last three centuries until very recently. In the days of which we
write, this world banking capital was still located in Babylon city,
it may reasonably assumed.
Page 137
As far back as 2470 B.C., King Manishtusu of Akkhad invaded
Southern Persia with no purpose other than gaining control of its
silver mines. Those groups controlling International finance from
Babylonia decided no doubt to seek further worlds to conquer.
The thing was to find a use for their surfeit of bullion which
they were now in a position to arrange extensive supplies to any
banker who would be able to use such advantageously towards the
promotion of their general worldwide plans. The growing commercial and
industrial vigor of the Greeks showed them an answer to this problem.
Thus the significance of the advent of the tyrants as promoters of
heavy public spending of moneys based originally on the silver
standards of Babylonia cannot be dismissed.
Page 138
The policy of the bankers, for whom the tyrants fronted, would be
to spread the main practice, at least their most profitable one, of
private money creation, one way or the other. Using silver as
base, they knew full well the tremendous possibilities that existed
towards the creation of an abstract money whose equally efficient
units cost them no more than entry by the slave scribe on the clay
tablet that sufficed in his ledger. Such policy spread the need for
that which the international bankers of that day, faceless as in this
day, loaned against collateral as money. This money was based on the
silver bullion they let it be known they were possessed of or held on
deposit for their customers, by they individual, corporate body or
state.
It is reasonable to assume that there was little difference as
between that first tangible money of private issuance in England as
denoted by the goldsmiths receipts of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and the money issued by the banks of the Greek cities. It's
efficacy derived from the total secrecy maintained by those involved
in its issue. Little clear information exists on this subject today as
in ancient times and much of which, even if all the millions of
tablets unearthed in Mesopotamia are ever translated, must remain as
but faint outline...
Servius Tullius ordered the establishment of the census at Rome
that gave the basis for both taxation and military service, both
essential organizations as to a state being taken over by
international money power.
Page 139
The establishment of a silver standard as a base for monetary
issuance might very well have been their reward for their assistance
towards raising Servius to the throne. The census would give money
power a complete picture of the people it was their intention to
exploit.
Page 140
In the same manner, the Doomsday books of the Middle Age, while
recording for the reference of the king, also made a valuable record
for the money creative power which had kings, nobles, ecclesiastics,
and the common people, groaning under a burden of debt quite
impossible to meet (one of the main causes that gave rise to the Magna
Carta and those events which followed until 1290 A.D. when the tax-
collecting and money-lending classes, such as had followed the
ŠConqueror across the English Channel, were finally evicted.)
In a similar manner, William III of England, owing his throne to
the intrigues of the international bullion brokers at Amsterdam,
granted them as reward that which they wanted more than anything else
on earth, which was the establishment of the legality of an
indeterminable amount of abstract money, ledger credit page entry, or
paper notes, to be based on their gold loans to the state, and the
creation of a "Bank" at London from which they might issue this money
known as "Credit" as loan against real collateral throughout the whole
kingdom. This bank was to be given the appearance of a state
department by permitting it to be named "The Bank of England."
Considering the above known instance of reward to international
money powers for their services, far reaching in its consequences,
conjecture in respect to the establishment of a silver standard at
Rome by Servius may not be too far afield. That Romans later rejected
this standard as a base for their money, and the calamity and loss of
sovereignty it brought them also is clear, for there is no further
reference to silver money until that period when Rome was drifting
towards the all out struggle with Carthage: the year of the
establishment of the board of Moneyers for the striking of bronze,
silver and gold money (289 B.C.), thereby no doubt yielding to the
importunities of the International Bullion brokers, with the ensuing
outbreak of war thus being made a certainty.
Page 141
One of the main purposes of those extensive public works would be
establishment of some kind of National Debt in which is, and was in
that day too, most control and profit to those manipulating
international finance. That there is no evidence of the existence of
such state indebtedness in those days does not necessarily mean that
such did not exist. Excavation 2500 years from now would not reveal
this indebtedness for instance in the case of England, so far as its
relation to the Bank of England was concerned, for, unbelievable
though it may seem, there is "remarkable absence of official records"
for the first hundred years of the bank's existence. In the time of
the tyrants, failure to keep books or records would be even more of a
certainty.
(In the words of H.S. Foxwell who wrote the preface to The
History of the Bank of England in giving the reasons why no adequate
history appears to have been written: "There is the remarkable absence
of official records in connection with the Bank, especially for the
first century of its activity. It has often been observed that the
English are peculiarly fortunate in this matter of records: The Bank
of England stands out as a striking exception to the rule. It never
seems to have published any reports or even to have preserved its own
minutes and accounts.)
Valuable by-products of their extensive public works programs
would be:
1. The peasants would leave the land enticed by the money wages
offered for work on projects. Once the construction boom was over,
they formed a leaderless, hungry, and easily embittered "Proletariat."
2. The same "Proletariat" could be manipulated by the agents of Money
Power as a mob towards such political purposes as Money Power would
desire including, besides the removal of the natural nobility, removal
of the so-called tyrant when his purpose was served.
3. Prof. Ure in Origins of Tyranny ventures as close to the truth as
any. Although attributing the rise of the tyrants to Money Power he
does not define what this Money Power may be. whether money creative
power or just those of considerable possession and treasure. In this
omission he cannot be blamed. Prof. Ure traces the source of the power
of Peisistratus, Tyrant of Athens 561-527 B.C., according to
Herodotus,as being partly from those silver mines in Thrace and partly
Šfrom the Laurion mines in Attica.
Page 142
However, it must be pointed out that a man who apparently was a
mining man would be unlikely to understand the finer shades of
monetary emission. The class of persons whose business was money were
scarcely likely to instruct their instrument therein. It may be
concluded the tyrant rose because he was the one who had found favor
with the all-pervading money power of the day. He was not money power
itself.
In that most of the great public works of the Greek cities had
been carried forward by the tyrants is the evidence; for as the
secretive money power of today, world-wide in scope, thrives primarily
upon government loans directed to purposes of war to strengthen their
outrageous claims against nations, in ancient days similar heavy
spending had to be devised. A great Acropolis or some other such
magnificent public work sufficed equally well with war.
So, with the tyrant, we see the force by which Greece was molded
to an instrument more suitable to those bankers: private money
creative power who burned with rancor at the natural rulers who but
treated them as stewards, although the essence of power for all
that, lay in their hands for more than such rulers understood.
Thus were the simple and industrious and brave Greeks now raised
up to be the new vehicle through which the final and destructive
purposes of those controlling international bullion and slave trades
would be achieved, as they shepherd the peoples of the world further
down that road of no hope for themselves or the rest of mankind.
CHAPTER X: PERGAMUM AND PITANE
Page 143
Aristotle, author of some lucid thinking on the subject of money,
if not ruthlessly penetrative, was himself married to the niece of a
banker installed as co-tyrant (or Front Man) with another such Tyrant-
Banker. (Hermias the Tyrant of Assos) was a eunuch slave of a certain
banker: he went to Athens and attended the lectures of Plato and
Aristotle and returning, he shared the tyranny of his master who had
previously secured the places around Atarneus and Assos. Subsequently,
he succeeded him and sent for Aristotle and married his niece to him.
In this slave, banker, philosopher and despot, Leaf sees a tyrant
who owed his position to his wealth. He lent money to the city on the
security of the Acropolis and when the city defaulted, wanted to
become tyrant.
While bankers in the present dream of entrapping the whole world
via their "United Nations," in the past, they contented themselves
with the entrapping of a city. Just as in the present, they create an
entirely false picture of the nature of their operations and carefully
promote the legend they are lending the public's money, so they did in
antiquity, we may rest assured. No doubt they spread exactly the same
story in the time of the tyrants and people in that day, understanding
no more about money than they do today, believed it.
Page 144
Phelitairos proceeded to use the treasure to which he had so
masterfully established almost total right with a skill which could
only suggest training in the money shops of Babylonia. The conception
of the 9000 talents of treasure in itself being the sole maintaining
force behind the extended power of Pergamum would be quaint to say at
least; as quaint indeed as the story of the 6000 talents of silver
held in reserve in the Acropolis at Athens as the sole finances with
which the Peloponnesian war was fought; or in a later day of the gold
supposedly existing in the vaults of the Bank of England or its
Špredecessor and its parent bank, the Bank of Amsterdam (the vaults of
the latter on inspection by Napoleon after occupation of Holland
proving absolutely bare). 9000 talents drawn on for military and
civilian expenditures would not go very far.
Page 145
Prof. Andreades in his Finances de Guerre d'Alexandre Le Grand
says the annual expenditures during his campaigning were 5000-7000
talents in hard cash. In the later years, 15,000 talents.
It might safely be said that the money power which enabled
Pergamum to secure controlling interest over the cities of Pitane and
Cyzicus was not drawn from what might be left of that store of 9000
talents. It would have been part of a credit inflation which would
have used the 9000 talents as its base and more than likely those
interests holding the debt of the City of Pitane were themselves
indebted by another ledger entry transaction to Pergamum. Thus that
Credit Money whereby Pitane was loaned money would be no more than an
entry in the books of Pergamum as a credit to Pitane, automatically
being thence debited and transferred to the credit column of the
holder of the loan as previously existing against Pitane and thus
returning him to solvency.
Page 146
Pergamum, at the cost of pen, ink, vellum, and slave scribe or
perhaps cost of clay table and stylus book entry, was now in a
position to dictate the political affairs of Pitane.
The extent of the semi-military operations of the Attalid Money
Power of Pergamum was shown above all by their purchase of the island
of Aegina for 30 talents and set up most likely as a centre for entre-
pot trade and a financial outpost, i.e. Branch Bank: which had to be
in opposition to the decaying Athenian Money Power which at that time
did not have the silver resources of its earlier days on which to base
its Money Power and the legend of its great wealth.
As Pergamum marks the beginning of that period when Delos and
Rhodes were leading money and slave markets of the world, it would
seem that some kind of agreement must have existed between those who
controlled trade and finance at all these points. Considering the
essential secrecy that necessarily attends the corrupt operations of
so-called bankers, it may be quite reasonable to suppose that in
Pergamum itself, in Aegina, Delos, Rhodes and a dozen trade centres
for that matter, there was a class of persons who very well understood
each other's interests, who very likely were related by racial and
religious custom and whose supra-nationalism transcended all city
boundaries and borders of states.
Page 147
Money was their trade, and they married only amongst their own
group as the best protection towards maintaining inviolable the secret
of that financial hegemony they had established internationally and
which had put them above kingship, no doubt in the fevered imagination
of some of them, one with the gods. Through the illusion of the
establishment of silver as the standard of value internationally or
nationally and whose supply they totally controlled, it is true, they
actually did wield that power which formerly had been the sole
prerogative of the gods in the cities.
The activities of this group towards the instigation of wars and
disturbances never ceased. Out of the needs of peoples in despair came
their advantage and strengthened control. Such wars as were necessary,
as much as today, towards the maintenance of their great arms industry
and their continued control through the sale of the best and newest
weapons to that new conqueror who promised most of all to serve their
purposes in the renewal of their stocks of treasure, so necessary to
Šmaintain "confidence" and their stocks of mine slaves. War also
revived that feverish and competitive demand for that treasure; and in
the hurly-burly it created, merchants gladly accepted as money
anything offered from seemingly reputable sources including that
abstract money denoted by ledger credit page entry; the loan of which
but cost the lender the entry by slave scribe on the clay tablet,
though immense real wealth might be offered as "collateral" as against
failure to repay such alleged loan by the date stipulated.
Page 148
The far-flung activities of Apollonius, economic manager to
Ptolemy Philadelphus, give but a glimpse of this interlocking control
by an Aramaic-speaking middle class, within which the Hebrew may also
have been an interwoven thread.
For indeed, there is no evidence that he was all, and that such
magnates that controlled the economy of the ancient world were many of
them Jews. Nevertheless, the claim by the Universal Jewish
Encyclopedia that the Hebrews, as a people who absorbed foreign
cultures yet rigidly maintained their national identity, caused them
to be most appreciated by the brilliant and ambitious Alexander,
should not be lightly dismissed. Alexander was trainee of Aristotle
who, as husband of banker's niece Hermias, certainly should have come
to learn something of the true meaning of Money Power. Alexander
presumably had substantial understanding of the meaning of money
relative to Kingship.
The Hebrew, as equally skilled in money and trade as the Aramean
and equally fluent in Aramaic, since he was established in most of the
important cities, could very well have been a major part of that
vehicle constructed by Alexander. His special concessions to Jaddua,
High Priest of Jerusalem in 333 B.C. in respect to those Jews of both
Judea and Babylon, certainly suggests deference to a power far beyond
that power visibly represented by that relatively small group of
people who dwelt at Jerusalem. According to the Universal Jewish
Encyclopedia, Jaddua, not wishing to offend Persia, had refused
Alexander the troops and provisions he sought.
Page 149
After the fall of Tyre, Alexander advanced on Jerusalem. The
Priests went out to greet him and Alexander, as was his usual custom
with submissive cities, sacrificed to their God. The fact that he gave
the Jews of Palestine such special concessions as a year's remission
of taxes would suggest that the visible help refused him by Jaddua had
been more than made up for by assistance of a less visible nature.
(The Jewish Encyclopedia reads: Alexander was quick to grasp the
indispensable value of the Jews in the sphere of his world Empire.
His aim was the synthesis of Occidental and Oriental cultures into the
mold of Hellenism; undoubtedly he appreciated the capacity of the Jews
to absorb foreign culture while rigidly maintaining their national
identity thus making them an ideal vehicle for his civilizing
enterprise. As Jews were already an International commercial power,
numbers of them being found in most countries of his domain, he
granted them many political privileges when he founded Alexandria.)
Page 150
If Aramaic was the language of officialdom under the rulers of
the Persian Empire and remained so under Alexander, it may reasonably
supposed that the official and merchant classes that used Aramaic as
their everyday language had gone far beyond the borders of the Persian
Empire.
No sooner had short-sighted rulers instituted the use of precious
metal money than the agents of such power, to whom by now the ruler
was beholden for supplies of bullion, were setting up "modern" banking
Šhouses. In short order the various practices of dubious legality that
are the foundations of such money power would be instituted, firstly
that of the creation, relatively without limit, of abstract units of
exchange as through the institution of ledger credit page entry money,
under whatever cover to create legality, and which the banker claimed
was backed by his "credit" (as if he could have more "credit" than any
sovereign people and their ruler) and which was usually backed by
little or nothing other than the sanction of a foolish prince.
Secondly, from the point of view of maintenance of confidence, was the
issue of intrinsically valueless facsimiles of existing precious metal
coinage, for every one of which a customer who accepted them in his
exchanges thought that there was a precious metal original lodged in
the local temple or acropolis.
To our Lord Jesus Christ, Aramaic was the everyday language that
would have enabled Him to travel and converse freely with scholar,
poet, priest, and merchant, certainly as far East as Peshawar. Aramaic
is used in the Syrian Christian Church, in the Jewish liturgy, and
still lives in the villages of the anti-Lebanon, in South East
Anatolia, and on the Eastern shores of Lake Urmia in Armenia.
Page 151
Thus the opinion of Emil Kraeling that the Aramean was the
vehicle by which the so-called eternal values of Hellas and Israel
were communicated throughout the Orient, in a way concurs with the
opinion of the Jewish Encyclopedia referred to above. That those
values denoted by Hellas withered and almost disappeared while those
as denoted by Israel through Christianity flourished until relatively
recently, is merely further proof that money power must destroy the
body on which it feeds, and is nourished.
Nevertheless,out of Babylonian money power itself, oblivious it
seems to its own real self interest, carrying Christianity as far as
those limits unto which its total hegemony prevailed, Christianity
itself rose as an island of love and goodness in an ocean of
hatred, confusion, greed and depravity that had come to exist as the
ultimate result of at least three thousand years of the depredations
of such private money creative power. With one convulsive shrug it
threw off the snake-like coils, re-establishing thereafter the natural
order of life, of god, priest-king and priesthood and the people, all
living as was ordained, with faith. piety, and sure belief.
Thereafter, for a thousand years, International Money Power can only
be faintly discerned as a smoldering ember; a fire not entirely
extinguished; evidence thereof being an occasional wisp of smoke as it
waited for a day when a certain evil wind might blow, and flames come
forth again to deal man total woe.
CHAPTER XI: VOICES FROM THE DUST
Page 152
Before ever the lust seized the Greeks for the precious metal
pieces on which were recorded their laws in respect to the unit of
exchange; that is, before Greece became completely thrall to the
international bullion and slave interests, money had existed among
them in various forms for a long time previously. Little knowledge
remains of such systems of exchange prior to the assumption of bullion
and slave interests of total hegemony but exist such systems did, and
the significance of its monetary units issued against state expenses,
and as opposed to issue by private persons as against collateral
security, was understood, as the evidence of the Sparta or Lycurgus
indicates.
Pheidon was not inventor of money but the same as Servius
Tullius, a reformer. He introduced into the Peloponnese a definite
system of weights and measures, he adapted the weight of the new money
Šand he officially abolished the old and cumbersome iron money.
Numismatists airily dismiss the suggestions of the symbols of
money as being indicated in ancient times on leather, wood, or baked
clay which are found in both Cedrenus, Suidas and Seneca but study of
so-called primitive currencies of today, such as the shell moneys of
Oceania, leave little doubt that our forefathers, fully understanding
of the true philosophy of money, may very well have used such
intrinsically valueless materials to record the values of their
tangible money, prior to the commencement of precious metal coinage;
in the same way as the Melanesians and Micronesians have used shells
for such purpose from time immemorial.
Page 153
However, that such numismatists dismiss the significance of such
money and question it as having ever existed, is not surprising
considering that they merely record the money towards the creation of
which the controllers of bullion supplied the material; thus in a way
controlling its issue and such order of society as it gave rise to,
and therefore the numismatists themselves. Consequently the dismissal
by the numismatists of other materials for money and its symbols, not
internationally desirable or controllable by their masters might be
expected.
According to Professor Fritz Heichelheim in his Ancient Economic
History, Suidas ascribes the monetary use of leather and "ostrakina"
(pieces of shell and pottery) to the Romans previous to Numa
Pompilius. Such currency only had value as it carried with it the will
of the ruler.
Page 154
Troy fell to the Greeks under Agamemnon in 1250 B.C. The
destruction of Bog-Haz Koi, the Hittite capital in 1225 B.C, could
only have taken place as a result of investment by experienced,
disciplined and well organized forces with an excellent engineering
corps.
Page 155
According to Dawson, the production of leather in the Hittite
world was a state monopoly. Such monopoly of leather production would
suggest the possibility, if not the likelihood, of leather as the
material on which the symbols of their money were recorded.
For any state to be as strong for a long period of time and,
moreover, stable, it had to control not merely the issue of the unit
of exchange but also the material of which its visible symbols were
made; which had to be a total monopoly. The Hittite state appears
constructed to the same order as those early cities, that is, of God,
Priest-King and priesthood, makes this deduction the more likely.
The similarity of language suggests the forefathers of the
patricians of Rome derived from within the Hittite sphere of
influence. If so, would it not be natural for them to reinstitute the
same monetary system amongst themselves as they had known in their
homelands?
The numismatists and historians date the "Aes Grave," considered
by them to be the first true metallic currency of Rome, from 338 B.C.
accepting the opinion of Prof. Haeberlin. What then did Rome use for
money prior to that date considering the relatively exact property
valuations and taxes of Servius? That they used rough lumps of copper
(Aes Rude) as everyday money, cannot be accepted. There is no vestige
of doubt that a refined system existed by no means unrelated to the
exchange systems of Greece and in which a form of "Credit," too often
a privately created abstract money, was made use of. This system may
have been no more related to silver bullion than it may have been to
any other commodity, and international silver bullion interests would
exercise no definite control therein.
Page 156
There would be no reason to discredit Suidas's remarks in respect
to leather and clay money previous to Numa Pompilius. The clay
"scarabs" still being unearthed in Etruria may well represent evidence
of the clay units. Leather money of course would long since have
perished. Nor is there reason to think that the fiduciary money of
clay undoubtedly issued by bankers of Athens in the 5th Century H.C.
was in any way a new idea.
According to Livy relative to the financing of the cavalry of
Rome, "each century had a grant levied on rich widows of 2000 a
year." Are we to understand that the rich widows came to the treasury
with bags of pieces of rough copper?
Where taxes withdraw units of exchange from circulation, there
must be a force which injects such units of exchange into the
circulation. What therefore was the source of such units? Clearly
there is no reason to doubt this record of Livy.
In the Panadects of Justinian, Tenth Book, occurs this remarkable
passage from Julius Paulus, jurisconsul of the third century of our
era:
"The origin of buying and selling began with exchange. It common
happens that one is in need of what another has in excess but it
seldom coincided in time that what one possessed, the other wanted. A
device was chosen whose legal and permanent value remedied the
difficulties of barter by its homogeneity.
Page 157
This device being officially promulgated, circulated, and
maintained its purchasing power, not so much from its substance as
from its quantity. Whether those devices were clay or leather or wood
does not really matter. As such, they were true money being
intrinsically valueless and only of value because of that law which
ordered their acceptance in the exchanges. What above all would matter
would be the ease with which they could be counterfeited, no doubt the
source of their ultimate failure, and whether they were loaned into
circulation by private persons against so-called collateral, or paid
into circulation as against government expenses, as were the Aes Grave
at a later date.
Almost all philosopher-scholars of antiquity wrote of numerical
or fiduciary systems of money as being the only natural systems. None
of them entered into discussion as to whether issuance should be
against state indebtedness. It was so obviously a necessity for good
order and well-being in life, that such discussion never seems to
have occurred to them. The success of private monetary emission in
this day and its boldness now that its former criminal activities are
recognized and accepted as inevitable, such men could not even
imagine, not even Aristotle, who by reason of his family connections,
must have known something of the undercurrents of the financial world
as it existed at that time.
Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Zeno, all seemed to have been clear
on the subject. Plato was most clear and no doubt studied the
numerical system at Sparta. Living between 429 B.C. and 347 B.C., he
must have been at Athens when such system certainly must still have
existed at Sparta even if, as a result of the war, it had been
replaced by the Athenian system of private money issue based on the
fiction of precious metals or valuables in reserve.
(The Carthaginians make use of the following kind of money: in a
small piece of leather a substance is wrapped of the size of a piece
of 4 drachmae; but what this substance is no one knows except the
maker. After, this is sealed and issued for circulation; and he who
possesses the most of this is regarded as having the most money.)
Page 158
On the subject, Plato wrote:
"Further the Law of the ideal Republic enjoins that no private
individual shall possess or hoard gold and silver bullion but have
money only for domestic use, such as is necessary for dealing with
artisans and servants, sojourners and slaves. Wherefore our citizens
should have a money current amongst themselves but not acceptable to
the rest of mankind. When an individual needs to go abroad, on his
return, if he has any such money remaining let him deposit it in the
treasury and receive an equivalent sum in local money. If he is
discovered to have concealed it, let it be confiscated and let him who
knows and does not inform, be subject to anathema and dishonor equally
with him who brought the money and also to a fine not less in amount
than that of the universal money which had been brought back."
Page 159
Aristotle made the comment:
Numisma (Money) by itself is a mere device which has value only
by law (Nomos) and not by nature; so that a change of convention
between those who use it, is sufficient to deprive it of all value and
its power to satisfy our wants."
In the Ethics, Aristotle states further:
"By virtue of voluntary convention, Nomisma has become the media
of exchange. We call it Nomisma because its efficacy is due not to
nature but to Nomois (Law) and because it is always in our power to
control it."
Thus despite at least four hundred years of control of trade by
the masters of precious metal bullion, the scholars still clearly
understood the actuality of money and that it was an evincement of
the law. They still understood it was but so many numbers injected
into a circulation amongst the people relating value to value, and not
influenced by the material on which these numbers as laws were
recorded.
To say that money as such began with the striking of precious
metal coinage is therefore incorrect. The statement that an
international control over money came about as a result of a certain
group of private persons located in all major states of the world
creating a monopoly of those precious metals of which its symbols were
coming to be made, or better put, on which they were imprinted,would
be more to the point.
The evidence that in the earliest coinages in Greece had
essentially a local circulation in no way alters the picture
previously outlined of silver money as being part of an international
conspiracy. All Greek states apart from Athens and Samos, Siphnos and
Corcyra had to obtain silver bullion for their coinage from abroad,
which necessarily obliged them to deal with those traders who
specialized in dealing in bullion. Such trade in bullion had to be in
the hands of a small and highly secretive group and it would be only
such a group that could also control those supplies of slave labor and
their purchase from triumphant peoples whose warlike activities, as
likely as not, they had instigated themselves; slave labor so
necessary to the success of their mining operations.
Page 160
For example, the fact that the Carthaninian mines of Spain show
no signs of even the use of the ordinary propping and shoring
associated with mining cannot but indicate that the miners were most
likely captives of war from distant parts purchased for a song from a
victorious general and driven under threat of the lash.
At that period it would appear, such labor was so plentiful
that the cost of purchase of new slaves would have been less than the
cost of ordinary safety precautions. The silver mines of Spain as
worked by the Romans show interestingly enough an entirely different
story. All safety methods including the use of concrete, were used;
which also agrees with the fact that Rome, even when silver money was
in use so far as internal exchanges were concerned, had a relatively
ample supply of money for the details of day to day organization in
the overvalued bronze fiduciaries, the most grandiose "aes" and its
parts or multiples.
History has proven over and over again that a precious metal
coinage will move one way or another to where it might realize the
most profit either as coin or bullion. The so-called law of the
economists known as Gresham's Law states just that: "Bad money drives
out the good," which means that the silver in circulation would be
replaced by that less intrinsically valuable money, if such also
circulated, and which the economists described as "the bad," (the
questions of course being bad for whom?); such silver being hoarded
and exported to whatever market offered the best price or advantage.
Page 161
A few outstanding examples of this are:
a. The disappearance of silver from Athens and its replacement by
baked clay facsimiles during the 5th century B.C. and by yellowish
copper at the end of the same century.
b. The drain of silver from Rome during the early Empire to the Orient
where the ratio varied around 6:1 as compared to 12:1 established by
Caesar and its replacement by bronze or copper fiduciaries.
c. The drain of English silver coinage to India after 1666, such
silver being replaced by the "bad" money of the goldsmith's receipts
and the Bank of England notes and ledger credit page entries.
d. The disappearance of silver roubles in Russia during the 18th
century, their place being taken by the "bad" money of the copper
roubles and later, paper roubles (Assignats).
e. The almost complete disappearance from circulation between the
years 1967-1973 of silver coins of our country of Canada, such silver
coins being replaced by coins fabricated from base metal alloys.
Returning to ancient Greece, Prof. Heichelheim states:
"Such hoards as found previous to 560 B.C. are found in the areas
in which they were minted and never in other countries. Which fact
indicates that prior to 560 B.C. it is probable that laws governing
the export of coin were strictly enforced in Greece. Any silver that
left a state would do so covertly as bullion. The following Athenian
edict is evidence that such laws existed:
"Let no Athenian or sojourner lend money to be exported unless
(to pay) for corn or some such commodity allowed by law."
Page 162
By the time of Plato some two hundred years later, the real
weaknesses of precious metal systems of coinage were beginning to
show, hence the increasing discussion of the matter of money in
schools of philosophy. The establishment of the "Aes Grave" bronze
system at Rome certainly bears close resemblance to that internal
coinage as recommended by Plato for the ideal republic. By the date
generally accepted as the commencement of the Aes Grave system, 338
B.C., Roman scholars would have been fully aware of the teachings of
Plato. In the Aes Grave system, the national money was paid into
circulation by the state.
The weaknesses inherent in precious metal coinage systems as
becoming apparent in the time of Plato were:
a. The coins wore out or were hoarded out of circulation.
b. Hard rock mining was never profitable without slave labor.
c. Mine slaves died and sometimes, there being no wars, they could not
be replaced so easily.
d. The mines themselves became exhausted.
e. In a time of national calamity, when coinage was most of all
needed, it disappeared into hoards, largely held by foreigners,
members of that secret class of persons to whom wars were but
opportunity to drive harder bargains yet again, with mankind and his
states and peoples.
f. Even in time of peace, captains and merchants, if permitted, were
ever seeking a cargo for their return trip. If such cargo was not
available, they would take away their balances in precious metals or
slaves.
Page 163
A country like Greece with a large population would usually have
an unfavorable balance of trade which further drained away its
precious metal coinage or bullion. At the time of Plato, this
condition must have been really showing and its significance.
The Laureion mines were petering out despite the agitation by
Xenophon for the government of Athens to purchase ten thousand slaves
to lease to mine owners, (presumably obtained from his financial
sponsors) and where silver had become scarce.
The numerous clay facsimiles of Eastern Mediterranean coinages
still being found at Athens show that foreign bankers were quietly
filling the void with issues of a fiduciary character such as our
paper money, exemplified by the baked clay facsimiles mentioned by
Lenormant which the bankers clearly were injecting into circulation to
their own private account and that of their most useful Greek agents.
This would be effected by pointing out to a customer to whom the
banker was prepared to make a loan how much safer the actual silver
would be if left with the bankers in reserve in the Acropolis where
it would be guarded by the gods themselves and how these clay
facsimiles which all the customers were accepting could always be
redeemed in silver if really necessary(!).
(In London 2000 years later, when the goldsmiths operated exactly
the same "racket," the confidence of the public was gained through the
connivance, witting or unwitting, of the Royal House, and the storage
of the goldsmiths' reserves in the Tower of London. The fact of their
being in the Tower offered the same sanctity to the goldsmiths'
practice of issuing receipts as against non-existing reserves, i.e.,
fraudulent receipts. To encourage the circulation of his receipts, he
could plead the difficulties and the dangers of the formalities
attached to withdrawal of the metal itself for the purpose of
settlement of an account.
Page 164
Seltsman in "Greek Coins" says that following the complete
collapse of the Athenian Empire, Athens resumed its previous financial
activities through the growth of powerful "banks," such as that of
Pasion which operated in all major Greek cities providing a money
market for all of the Greek world. However, Seltsman makes no mention
of abstract expansions of the monetary unit, nor of the clay
facsimiles which were the tangible evincement of such expansion.
What Seltsman really points out to us in stressing that Athens
resumed its previous financial activities with powerful banks such as
that of Pasion operating in all major Greek cities, is the correctness
of our previous conjecture that the real underlying purposes of the
"Great" Peloponnesian war was to establish private common money market
across the Greek world totally controlled by the trapezitae or
bankers. Banks, too, couldn't thrive and realize full potential except
that government was become their instrument and that government, the
creator of the laws of the land, was in their debt. The foundation of
this god-power was government borrowing of the banker's fictitious
"Credit" money. The frantic efforts of the Athenian government to
stimulate increase of government spending while at the same time
devising methods to withdraw money by Sales Tax reveal that Athenian
government was now more firmly than ever in the hands of the
International Money Power, if Sparta was but now re-arrived there
after absence of three hundred years or so.
Page 165
Both Athens and Sparta were in no better a position than they
were before the war. Neither had won and neither had lost. Both lay
exhausted and over their prostrate bodies, the servants of the same
sardonic Money Power drew the chains of their slavery.
According to Rostovtsev, at Athens during the fourth century
B.C., both population and unemployment increased, prices rose, and
there was so-called "class struggle" and discontent.
Increase in prices is usually indicative of increase by the
number of monetary units in circulation. So while markets had shrunk,
money was still being created and put into circulation as against
"Free Bread and Circuses" consequently causing inflation and the rise
of prices of record. It is clear that what Athens exported was
privately created capital. Thus in what we know of as Antiquity, the
full meaning of the unit of exchange as a purely abstract conception,
regardless of what material it was recorded on, was clearly
understood, and without a doubt, this knowledge was inheritance from
ancient days, long before the advent of exchanges based on silver by
weight.
Page 166
The tremendous possibilities inherent in the use of precious
metal money towards the manipulation of prices and the consequent
monopolization of wealth which always derived therefrom, through the
process of loan against collateral security inflating the money
supply and giving rise to the seeming prosperity of great activity,
followed by the "calling" of such loans under one excuse or another,
was well understood by the bankers. Also known was how to create
periods of "lack of confidence" during which prices fell and
disheartened manufacturers were glad to sell out to anyone to whom the
banker directed them for whatever they could get. That is, if they
were lucky. If they were not quite so lucky, then their stock and
factory would be seized as against the supposed debt and sold at
auction. No doubt such auctions were rigged in ancient times just as
much as they often are today.
Page 167
After Alexander, there do not seem many states left in which
precious metal money did not constitute the circulating medium and who
could not be influenced by that secret and international group of
people who made Gresham's Law very much of a reality to the undoing of
rulers and their peoples.
In the first place, bankers and their agents worked together to
cause this money created by slave scribe on clay tablet to be
seemingly plentiful. As a result, business flourished, wages increased
and prices rose until foreign merchandise sold competitively on the
home market. In consequence, some home manufacturers went into
bankruptcy. The panic thus created amongst manufacturers beholden to
the banks prepared them for the inevitability of the likelihood of
demand by their bank for repayment of loans outstanding. By now, the
bankers were telling everyone that "times were bad. There was a freeze
in credit" and "No money about." So when such loans were called, the
manufacturers dutifully hunted up all the silver they could find and
paid off the banker if they could. When this collapse of industry
reached a certain point, it became no longer profitable for foreign
merchandise to sell on their home market, the bankers, satisfied that
the "Depression" had yielded sufficient rewards, and with a new crop
of industrialists now directly under their thumbs or under control of
their trusted agents, industry would be resumed. Loans again were
forthcoming from the banker's overflowing strong rooms, or simply the
same place as that from which originated previous loans, his ledger.
Page 168
Herein, in this everlasting "Boom and Bust" of the so-called
"Empires" and "Civilizations" of the last few thousand years is the
root cause of the desperate situation in which the Indo-European
peoples now find themselves and in which, seemingly having everything,
in reality they have nothing except total exhaustion and the specter
of total anarchy and destruction looming over more clearly before
them, for they no longer have the WILL TO BE.
With planned miscegenation through promotion of abortion, the
Indo-European peoples who writhe in torment as a result of these
incredible plans of the money masters and their agents soon may be
entirely obliterated. International Money Power, whatever it really
is, or whoever they really are, could not care less.
But one thing the designers of all this forget, in the magnitude
of the total disaster that looms so threateningly in these last days
over the path of life, is also final disaster to the planners of this
evil; whether they had expected or otherwise; their own complete
obliteration for sure along with the rest.
For if God's Kingdom on earth is to arise, it is to arise in a
world where little of the sicknesses that trouble us today will be
left and the binding threads of incompetent thinking and of evil
itself will be totally unwound.
Page169
Returning to Athens and its money, the emission by the bankers of
Athens of the baked clay facsimiles of the silver coinage they were
reputed to have in storage in the vaults of Acropolis would have
exactly the same effect on prices as the emission of silver coin; it
would cause them to rise. Conversely, contraction of that clay coinage
by calling loans would similarly cause prices to fall; and thus, as in
today, "when the depression is over," that is when prices are at rock
bottom without totally wrecking the state, the "Banker" merely enters
a few figures in his ledger to the credit of one of his agents, so it
was in Athens in that day.
Did the customer require ready money over and above the among
required for settlement of balances owing, such could be met by debit,
and transfer, and recredit, i.e. by cheque, then the so-called bankers
at Athens or the Piraeus,merely set slaves to work to cast and back
clay coins as fast as they could go. Admittedly, the banking of clay
coins was a little more expensive than the pen and ink required for
ledger entry money, or rather the high speed printing press necessary
for the paper facsimiles of today.
Hence the enormous potential for the accumulation of wealth by a
banker in a city state engaged in manufacture and whose merchants and
captains depended on him alone for their finances, especially when
their business was largely with foreign parts.
According to Prof. Ure, the tyrants of the city states derived
their power from the new form of capital known as money. It must be
asked: Why new form of capital? Metal money as capital, or what? It
may be assumed that those references to baked clay, leather and wooden
money in ancient Rome previous to Numa Pompilius, the first by Suidas,
the second by Seneca, and the third by Cedrenus, also applied to
ancient Greece; especially if the conjecture in respect to the leather
monopoly of the Hittite state is correct. Suidas makes reference to
leather money at Lacedaemon. There is no reason why other Greek city
states should not have availed themselves of such readily obtainable
material in those days before the augmentation of bullion supplies
internationally.
Page 170
The early use of precious metal coinage in Greece had to have
been similar to its use in Babylonia a thousand years before or as
gold in Britain two thousand years later, a standard on which to base
prices and establish confidence in the "Great Banker" as being a
wealthy man; a base on which a pyramid of ledger credit page money
might be erected, represented in the circulation by leather notes,
clay tokens, etc.
As Stanley Jevons remarked in 1914: "Gold already acts in England
only as small change for notes." In a similar manner with money based
on a silver standard, yet relatively little silver in circulation,
such silver would have acted as small change in those ancient times.
For evidence of greater wealth, leather notes, or clay tokens, or
documents denoting cattle, which indeed may have been currency in
large scale transactions, seem more likely to have served, at least
among Indo-Europeans.
Although some authorities say that the silver coinage was of
state issuance, whether it was or was not would make little
difference. In so-called democracies, money power cannot but be the
force behind the scenes. For that matter, anyone finding the paper
notes of the British Empire three thousand years from now, because of
the myth of the Queen's Head and the Coat of Arms, would assume it too
was state issue. They would of course be entirely wrong. Every since
the establishment of that ever changing mirage of the precious metal
money system, states and rules that became corrupted and undermined by
the extraordinary deceptions to which such system loaned itself,
wittingly or unwittingly, have fronted for those persons designated
bankers who under their very noses have operated the most unbelievable
swindles.
Page 171
It is hard to believe that states and rulers have been aware of
the magnitude of the folly they commit in permitting private persons
to exercise that power which is theirs as being representative of
their peoples before God. Assuming ruler and temple lend their
sanction, it is not long before the so-called banker, now able to
finance an opposition to any power it is in his interest to destroy,
or indeed to withdraw financing from such power whose destruction he
seeks, can literally laugh at those people, foolish, corrupt, or
naive, who, in lack of understanding of the meaning and source of that
which was their strength and power, raised him up in the first place.
Once the power of monetary emission is yielded by a ruler or
state to private or external interests, it is rare that it can be
recovered except as the result of all consuming cataclysm. Immense
monopolies and vastly unequal money fortunes are neither gained nor
saved by lawful labor or trade. Of necessity, they are the natural
outcome of the exercise of the power to discriminate, the power to
reject or prefer that follows as inevitable consequence, when, in any
state, private persons are permitted to create and issue the unit of
exchange, whether tangible or abstract; and by whatever device of law
such as may be needed to create appearance of legality.
So far as the future of mankind, out of the deceit it practices
on the simple, kind, and trusting, this instrument will be responsible
for the complete enslavement and ultimate destruction of most, if not
all, of this world. The hands that guide it are declared by themselves
to be malevolent and wittingly function and exert themselves in
defiance of the natural order as being some special breed when they
are merely but unfaithful servants. Contempt for those who front for
them in their secret conspiracy or are destroyed by it shows equally
in the arrogance of their manner..
In the words of Leon Skousen reviewing the great and compendious
work of Dr. Carroll Quigley "Tragedy and Hope," according to Dr.
Skousen the most authentic and detailed account of the modern day
conspiracy:
"As I see it, the great contributions which Dr. Carroll Quigley
unintentionally made by writing Tragedy and Hope was to help the
ordinary American realize the utter contempt which the network leaders
have for ordinary people. Human beings are treated en masse as
helpless puppets on an international chessboard where giants of
economic and political power subject them to wars, revolution, civil
strife, confiscation, subversion, indoctrination, manipulation and
outright deception as it suits their fancy and their concocted schemes
for world domination.
Page 172
For the original Rothschild (Amschel) who uttered that now famous
line: "Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who
writes its laws," one cannot but have some grudging admiration, rogue
though he was and should have been dealt with as such; but for those
place-seeking persons, cynical or merely naive, who nowadays prostrate
themselves before the doors of the international bankers, as members
of the societies dedicated to One World Government, such as the
Council on Foreign Relations, The Canadian Institute of International
Affairs, The Royal Institute of International Affairs, etc., one can
have little respect.
James P. Warburg is one of the most ardent propagandists and
financiers of the World Government Movement in the US today. This same
James Warburg had the audacity and arrogance to proclaim before the US
Senate (2-17-50): "We shall have world government whether or not we
like it. The only question is whether world government will be
achieved by Conquest or Consent."
Page 173
Armed conquest cannot be effected without the connivance of
conspiratorial money power although such conspiratorial money power in
its virtually insane search for paths towards its own establishment
towards World Rule forever and ever, has now become an institution,
which in the horror of the weapons of total destruction and
obliteration leading to final subjugation that it has called into
being, and, in its blindness, has also given to our enemies, can only
be described as a juggernaut completely out of control, an all-
engulfing Terror, as much for its creators, as he, who, in its
original conception, such Terror was supposed to engulf.
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