December 4, 2014

America and the Barbary Pirates: An
International Battle Against an Unconventional Foe

by Gerard W. Gawalt

Gerard W. Gawalt is the manuscript specialist for early American history in the Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
Ruthless, unconventional foes are not new to the United States of America. More than two hundred years ago the newly established United States made its first attempt to fight an overseas battle to protect its private citizens by building an international coalition against an unconventional enemy. Then the enemies were pirates and piracy. The focus of the United States and a proposed international coalition was the Barbary Pirates of North Africa.
Pirate ships and crews from the North African states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers (the Barbary Coast) were the scourge of the Mediterranean. Capturing merchant ships and holding their crews for ransom provided the rulers of these nations with wealth and naval power. In fact, the Roman Catholic Religious Order of Mathurins had operated from France for centuries with the special mission of collecting and disbursing funds for the relief and ransom of prisoners of Mediterranean pirates.
Before the United States obtained its independence in the American Revolution, 1775-83, American merchant ships and sailors had been protected from the ravages of the North African pirates by the naval and diplomatic power of Great Britain. British naval power and the tribute or subsidies Britain paid to the piratical states protected American vessels and crews. During the Revolution, the ships of the United States were protected by the 1778 alliance with France, which required the French nation to protect "American vessels and effects against all violence, insults, attacks, or depredations, on the part of the said Princes and States of Barbary or their subjects."
After the United States won its independence in the treaty of 1783, it had to protect its own commerce against dangers such as the Barbary pirates. As early as 1784 Congress followed the tradition of the European shipping powers and appropriated $80,000 as tribute to the Barbary states, directing its ministers in Europe, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, to begin negotiations with them. Trouble began the next year, in July 1785, when Algerians captured two American ships and the dey of Algiers held their crews of twenty-one people for a ransom of nearly $60,000.
Thomas Jefferson, United States minister to France, opposed the payment of tribute, as he later testified in words that have a particular resonance today. In his autobiography Jefferson wrote that in 1785 and 1786 he unsuccessfully "endeavored to form an association of the powers subject to habitual depredation from them. I accordingly prepared, and proposed to their ministers at Paris, for consultation with their governments, articles of a special confederation." Jefferson argued that "The object of the convention shall be to compel the piratical States to perpetual peace." Jefferson prepared a detailed plan for the interested states. "Portugal, Naples, the two Sicilies, Venice, Malta, Denmark and Sweden were favorably disposed to such an association," Jefferson remembered, but there were "apprehensions" that England and France would follow their own paths, "and so it fell through."
Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both." "From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."
Jefferson's plan for an international coalition foundered on the shoals of indifference and a belief that it was cheaper to pay the tribute than fight a war. The United States's relations with the Barbary states continued to revolve around negotiations for ransom of American ships and sailors and the payment of annual tributes or gifts. Even though Secretary of State Jefferson declared to Thomas Barclay, American consul to Morocco, in a May 13, 1791, letter of instructions for a new treaty with Morocco that it is "lastly our determination to prefer war in all cases to tribute under any form, and to any people whatever," the United States continued to negotiate for cash settlements. In 1795 alone the United States was forced to pay nearly a million dollars in cash, naval stores, and a frigate to ransom 115 sailors from the dey of Algiers. Annual gifts were settled by treaty on Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, and Tripoli.
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war. The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean. However, it was not until 1805, when an American fleet under Commodore John Rogers and a land force raised by an American naval agent to the Barbary powers, Captain William Eaton, threatened to capture Tripoli and install the brother of Tripoli's pasha on the throne, that a treaty brought an end to the hostilities. Negotiated by Tobias Lear, former secretary to President Washington and now consul general in Algiers, the treaty of 1805 still required the United States to pay a ransom of $60,000 for each of the sailors held by the dey of Algiers, and so it went without Senatorial consent until April 1806. Nevertheless, Jefferson was able to report in his sixth annual message to Congress in December 1806 that in addition to the successful completion of the Lewis and Clark expedition, "The states on the coast of Barbary seem generally disposed at present to respect our peace and friendship."
In fact, it was not until the second war with Algiers, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
For anyone interested in the further pursuit of information about America's first unconventional, international war in the primary sources, the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress holds manuscript collections of many of the American participants, including Thomas Jefferson, George Washington (see the George Washington Papers), William Short, Edward Preble, Thomas Barclay, James Madison, James Simpson, James Leander Cathcart, William Bainbridge, James Barron, John Rodgers, Ralph Izard, and Albert Gallatin.

December 2, 2014

  We've all been taught the horror's of the African slave trade. It's in all the school books and in plenty of Hollywood movies.
   But for some reason the largest group of slaves in the British Colonies in the 17th Century doesn't get mentioned at all: the Irish.
attribution: None Specified
 Most people have heard of the Great Famine, which reduced the population of Ireland by around 25%.
   That pales in comparison to the disaster that England inflicted upon Ireland between 1641 and 1652, when the population of Ireland fell from 1,466,000 to 616,000.
  Then things got worse.
What to do with the Irish?
  From the Tudor reconquest of Ireland until Irish Independence in 1921, the English puzzled over the problem of what to do with all those Irish people.
   They were the wrong religion. They spoke the wrong language. But the big problem was that there were just too many of them.
  The English had been practicing a slow genocide against the Irish since Queen Elizabeth, but the Irish bred too fast and were tough to kill. On the other side of the Atlantic, there was a chronic labor shortage (because the local natives tended to die out too quickly in slavery conditions).
  Putting two and two together, King James I started sending Irish slaves to the new world.
  The first recorded sale of Irish slaves was to a settlement in the Amazon in 1612, seven years before the first African slaves arrived in Jamestown.
  The Proclamation of 1625 by James II made it official policy that all Irish political prisoners be transported to the West Indies and sold to English planters. Soon Irish slaves were the majority of slaves in the English colonies.
  In 1629 a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guiana, and by 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies. By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves, which records show was a cause of concern to the English planters. But there were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so every petty infraction carried a sentence of transporting, and slaver gangs combed the country sides to kidnap enough people to fill out their quotas.
 The slavers were so full of zest that they sometimes grabbed non-Irishmen. On March 25, 1659, a petition was received in London claiming that 72 Englishmen were wrongly sold as slaves in Barbados, along with 200 Frenchmen and 7-8,000 Scots.
  So many Irish slaves were sent to Barbados, between 12,000 and 60,000, that the term"barbadosed" began to be used.
attribution: None Specified
 By the 1630's, Ireland was the primary source of the English slave trade.
   And then disaster struck.
Cromwell
   After Oliver Cromwell defeated the royalists in the English Civil War, he turned to Ireland, who had allied themselves with the defeated royalists. What happened next could be consideredgenocide.
   The famine (caused by the English intentionally destroying foodstocks) and plague that followed Cromwell's massacres reduced the population of Ireland to around 40%.
  And then Cromwell got really nasty.
Anyone implicated in the rebellion had their land confiscated and was sold into slavery in the West Indies. Even catholic landowners who hadn't taken part of the rebellion had their land confiscated.
  Catholicism was outlawed and catholic priests were executed when found.
To top it off, he ordered the ethnic cleansing of Ireland east of Shannon in 1652. Soldiers were encouraged to kill any Irish who refused to relocate.
   Instead of trying to describe the horror, consider the words from the English State Papers in 1742.
 "In clearing the ground for the adventurers and soldiers (the English capitalists of that day)... To be transported to Barbados and the English plantations in America. It was a measure beneficial to Ireland, which was
thus relieved of a population that might trouble the planters; it was a benefit to the people removed, which might thus be made English and Christians ... a great benefit to the West India sugar planters, who desired men and boys for their bondsmen, and
the women and Irish girls... To solace them."
 I can't help but notice that the exact same language and logic used to justify enslavement of the blacks was used to justify enslavement of the Irish.
   It is something for those who think slavery was simply a matter of skin color to consider.
  As for the Irish slaves, Cromwell specifically targeted Irish children.
 “During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, [Oliver] Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.”
 For some reason, history likes to call these Irish slaves as 'indentured servants'. As if they were somehow considered better than African slaves. This can be considered an attempt at whitewashing the history of the Irish slave trade.
   There does exist indentured servitude where two parties sign a contract for a limited amount of time. This is not what happened to the Irish from 1625 onward. They were sold as slaves, pure and simple.
  In reality, they were considered by some to be even lower than the blacks.
“...the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period,” writes Martin. “It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.”
     African slaves were still relatively new, and were expensive to transport such a long distance (50 sterling in the late 1600's). Irish slaves on the other hand, were relatively cheap in comparison (5 sterling).
  If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African. The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce.
 Because Irish slaves were so much cheaper, the loss of investment from torturing and killing them was not considered an effective deterrent. In an ironic twist, this caused some torecommend importing African slaves instead for humanitarian reasons.
 Colonel William Brayne wrote to English authorities in 1656 urging the importation of Negro slaves on the grounds that, "as the planters would have to pay much more for them, they would have an interest in preserving their lives, which was wanting in the case of (Irish)...." many of whom, he charged, were killed by overwork and cruel treatment. African Negroes cost generally about 20 to 50 pounds Sterling, compared to 900 pounds of cotton (about 5 pounds Sterling) for an Irish. They were also more durable in the hot climate, and caused fewer problems. The biggest bonus with the Africans though, was they were NOT Catholic, and any heathen pagan was better than an Irish Papist.
"Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another."
  - Richard Ligon, 1657
  It's impossible to estimate the exact number of Irish sold into slavery during this period. More Irish slaves were sold in the American colonies between 1651 and 1660 than the entire free population of those colonies. In fact, more Irish were sold as slaves in the America's during the 17th Century than Africans.
   The typical death rate on the slave ships was around 37%.
  The Irish did often have one advantage over African slaves - most of the time their time in slavery was limited. They were often sold into slavery from 7 to 20 years, while the only way Africans could get out of slavery was to buy their freedom.
   While the number of Irish being sent into slavery dropped off considerably in the 1660's, it did not just end.
   After the Battle of the Boyne in 1691 there was another load of Irish slaves sent to the new world. Following the failure of the 1798 Irish Rebellion there were tens of thousands more Irish slaves.
  Interesting historical note: the last person killed at the Salem Witch Trials was Ann Glover. She and her husband had been shipped to Barbados as a slave in the 1650's. Her husband was killed there for refusing to renounce catholicism.
   In the 1680's she was working as a housekeeper in Salem. After some of the children she was caring for got sick she was accused of being a witch.
  At the trial they demanded she say the Lord's Prayer. She did so, but in Gaelic, because she didn't know English. She was then hung.

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO GJOHNSIT ON FRI DEC 27, 2013 AT 08:52 AM PST.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY SHAMROCK AMERICAN KOSSACKS.

Using the Web, Celebrity, and even Churches to Raise Money, Then What?

The web offers opportunities to help those in need like nothing before it. In fact, without the internet, most people would probably have already forgotten that more than a quarter million Haitians lost their lives just a little over fifteen months ago.

The internet can be used to save lives in time of natural disaster or civil uprising. It can also be used, especially in this era of the social media revolution, to bring awareness and raise money for different causes that people the world over are passionate about.

Coupling it with the magnetic power of celebrities, such as Eva Longoria or Shaquille O’Neal, it could do things that no one thought was ever possible. In fact, this is exactly what Shaun King, a pastor at Most Courageous church in Georgia, did last September when he started the Twitchange phenomenon on twitter.

The goal was clear and simple, to bring celebrities and fans together in a loud, fun way on Twitter to bring awareness and financial support to charitable causes that change the world. The idea started because of the earthquake in Haiti; hence, the first twitchange campaign was to benefit a school for children with special needs there: The Miriam Center in Northwest Haiti.

Before twitchange started, Pastor Shaun King founded Ahomeinhaiti, which was a movement that provided shelter, more specifically tents, to people who lost their homes after the earthquake in Haiti. Many people and organizations joined this movement to make it a success, although the idea of sending tents to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake was always controversial to many who know and understand Haiti.

Now, to why this article is even being written. On twitter, many Haitians and foreigners who supported Twitchange and pastor Shaun King, often sent me direct messages (DM) asking what have I heard about the Miriam Center since the end of the twitchange campaign? Many were curious because a lot of money was raised and wanted to know how it was being used, while others simply wanted to check on the progress of the project.

Back in January, I sent my first email to Pastor Shaun King after briefly asking him on twitter, if we could do a short interview so that I could get an update on the project. He replied, saying that I could send him the questions by email, but at that time I was traveling to Haiti, so I never had a chance to do a follow up. As I visited the Twitchange website on April 16th, I then sent Mr. King an email asking for some basic information: Could you please provide us with an update about your project in Haiti, and also for a main contact from the organization which you donated all the money raised? It would be good to get an update from all involved.

This question was sent to him after he wrote on twitter that he donated all the money raised, more than $540,000 according to some reports, such as this Forbes.com article and the Twitchange website (see picture below), to Northwest Haiti Christian Mission (NWHCM). Up to this point, I was just hoping to get a straight answer from either Mr.King or if he provided me with the contact info for NWHCM that the project is on-track and here’s where I can get more information if interested. But all to my surprise, we had a few email exchanges, which can be read below.


Mr.King: Sure! Are you in Haiti?  It would be best to go and see the work for yourself. Amazing stuff!

So again, I asked the same question: Do you have someone I can reach in Haiti? I would like to go visit and talk to someone there next week.

Mr King’s: You live in Port Au Prince now? Will you drive from PAP to St. Louis or fly? I will check with the team there on Monday to see who could connect with you.

I answered: I will drive. Can you give me a name and phone number that I can
contact this week-end?

Mr.King: I will get a Haitian # for you by Monday. If you drive to St. Louis Du Nord - everybody there knows all about Northwest Haiti Christian Mission.

I sent emails, both on Monday and Tuesday, reminding Mr.King to send me the info. I received no reply. On Wednesday April 20th, I sent another email to him, asking for a Haiti contact again, so that we could set up a visit and an interview with the staff there. When I received no reply to the emails, again, I contacted him through his twitter account. Shortly thereafter, Mr. King sent me this reply: I am out of the state in Los Angeles. Please contact Northwest Haiti Christian Mission directly for whatever info you need. Here's the thing - the organization you are researching has nothing to hide. I have already encouraged you to go there and given you the links to all of the staff members for you to reach them directly. I encourage you to do so.

In the above reply, Pastor King made it seemed as if I was researching NWHCM, which from our first conversation, I had no idea who they were. Pastor King was the one who raised all the money through twitchange, and from the beginning the money was to build the Miriam center which was going to look like this upon completion.

( architectural rendition of the Miriam Center)
Since Pastor King never gave a direct contact for NWHCM in Haiti, so I followed the link for NWHCM that he sent me and contacted Courtney Pierce, the Miriam Center director in Haiti. I got a replied from the director’s organization email stating that she was on sabbatical, and that I should send my email regarding the center to another email address (Miriam.center at nwhcm.org), which I did.

From that email address, I received a reply from Courtney Pierce, detailing the history and need for the Miriam center. I replied to her stating, I was simply looking for basic info about the twitchange funds, and if possible to get a receipt of the transaction between Ahomeinhaiti and NWHCM. She then forwarded my email to a few people within NWHCM, which Sam Guilliams, the executive Vice-President, replied to by asking me to provide more information about who I was.

Once the conversation caught the attention of some more people on twitter, Janeil Oneil, the executive director of NWHCM joined the chat on twitter to bring some clarifications. He noted that his organization only received exactly $200,000 from Ahomeinhaiti.

The conversation continued on twitter with some people who were curious and knew about the twitchange campaign from the beginning. The following day, I received a phone call from Cameron Mayhill, as he returned my calls from the previous days. We chatted about NWHCM work in Haiti, and he was also very forthcoming by answering some of my questions about the Miriam center and the money raised through twitchange.

Mr. Mayhill clarified that NWHCM received $200,000 from Shaun King’s Ahomeinhaiti back in December 2010, and that the money was wired via Paypal, but he could not confirm if that was all the money raised through twitchange. He also mentioned that the Miriam Center’s construction is currently on hold due to drainage issue on the land, but that they plan to move forward with it in the near future. He could not comment on an exact date at this moment, but he is confident that the center will be built.

Mr. Mayhill also added that Pastor King was hired for a paid position by NWHCM after the twitchange campaign, and up to now he is still employed with them. Mr. Mayhill further added that there is a change in the architectural plan, and a new firm is being contacted for adjustment in the design of the new center to make it more in line with Haiti’s reality.


In a newsletter report from NWHCM, dated Fall 2010, they mentioned that twitchange was able to raise more than $540,000 for a new and extended Miriam Center in Bonneau, Haiti. In a later newsletter issue, a correction was made about funds collected from the twitchange which put it at $200,000, although it still stated that more $540,000 was raised. The key here is that there is a distinction to be made between money raised and funds collected.

One explanation that I got about this discrepancy is the fact that some celebrities did not want to support certain businesses that bid for them during the Twitchange campaign, so those businesses did not pay on their pledge. I perused the entire Twitchange website, the Twitchange twitter account, Ahomeforhaiti.org, Shaun King’s twitter account and NWHCM website and nowhere did I ever see a mention of celebrities not wanting to support a business that participated in the Twitchange campaign or anything referring to $200,000 as the final count. The amount raised was never corrected on any of those websites, and there was no formal press release about the money transfer between Ahomeinhaiti and NWHCM.

It might be true that only $200,000 were collected from the twitchange auction to build a new and expanded Miriam center, but since both Ahomeforhaiti, which used Courageous Church as a fiscal agent and NWHCM are 501(c) 3, and in the case of the latter a registered Non-Governmental Organization in Haiti, shouldn’t we the public have access to their financial records, so that everyone knows exactly how much money was raised and how it is being spent.

(A screenshot of Twitchange.com, showing more than $500,000 was received)

There is no financial statement on NWHCM’s website, which has been operating in Haiti for more than 30 years. Pastor King, who is currently employed by them, got this job after the twitchange campaign, how much he is being compensated has not been made public. By publishing their latest tax form, it would put all the donors of Twitchange at ease because they would know how their donated money is being used, and it would help eliminate any doubt that anyone might have about how much money was really raised by Pastor Shaun King through Twitchange.

(This screenshot, actually showed how much was raised to the penny)

Pastor King likes to mention on his twitter account that the land for the Miriam Center is already purchased, and the foundation work has started, but it is worth to note that the land was purchased before the Twitchange campaign. According to Mr.Mayhill, the $200,000 received from Pastor King is still in the Mission's bank account.

As Haiti gets ready to build back better, many of us appreciate all the great initiatives that friends of Haiti and people like Pastor Shaun King have taken to contribute and make a difference. However, due to lessons from the past, it is known that the best way to finally get Haiti moving in the right direction is for Haitian people to keep their eyes open and a little honesty from all involved about their work in Haiti. People who have nothing to hide will be forthcoming and able to show how every dime is being spent. The Haitian people have been taking advantage of far too long, there comes a time when enough is enough.

It is one thing to raise money through innovative ways by using the web, celebrities, churches, and regular individual, but it is as important to follow through with a promise, and use all the money for the intended purposes. If things change or a challenge arises, be as creative as possible to communicate with all involved, especially the donors. This is not only the right thing to do; it is also showing respect to the donors, and the people who should benefit from such projects.

It is our hope that the money raised through Twitchange will be used to help build this new center in Haiti and that sooner rather than later, financial reports and constant updates will be provided to all of us on the websites of all those in charge of this project.

Additional links regarding Twitchange:


Views: 1026

November 26, 2014

The grand jury investigating the police shooting of Michael Brown heard from more than 60 witnesses — including some who saw the confrontation from their cars, homes or the street. The documents show the jurors who ultimately decided not to indict Officer Darren Wilson had to sift through accounts that often conflicted with each other. Here are some excerpts from the police interviews and testimony:
A person watching from their apartment balcony:
“I see a guy on the side, on the driver’s side of a police vehicle. I just see something going on through the window, like a tussling going on through the window…
“The moment they take off running, I see the officer immediately gets out of his vehicle, pull out his gun definitely in his shooting position, and let me see. Mike must have probably made it about right here in front of this driveway, as I said before, he didn’t make to there, he just when he gets out of the car he just immediately starts shoot…
“He’s taking like large steps so I didn’t see him like run or anything, so he is just taking large steps, you know, towards him, you know, while his back is turned toward him.
“[After grabbing my phone] …I see Mr. Brown kind of bent down a little bit with his arms tucked in like on his stomach so now I’m thinking that he’s now shot. He was going down, definitely so, and the officer just let out a few more rounds to him and he hit the ground and that’s when I see blood...
“I didn’t see the hands go up. I didn’t see no hands go up.”
A person watching from the street:
“It appeared as they were wrestling through the window and one gunshot had let off. And Mr. Brown took off running and my first thought was like ‘oh my gosh’ did I just witness a police officer being murdered because it took a while for the police officer to get out of the car and pursue the suspect.
“And I wanna say maybe six seconds, but it seemed like it was forever after the first gunshot. So, the police officer exited the vehicle with his weapon drawn pursuing Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown was quite a distance and he stopped and when he stopped he didn’t get down on the ground or anything. He turned around and he did some type of movement and he started charging towards the police officer.
“The police officer then returned fire, well not returned fire, open fire on Mr. Brown. Um, If I had to guess the shots and the distance between him and Mr. Brown, it would have to be five to ten yards and the shots that were fired was four, five to shots fired and Mr. Brown was still standing up.
“Um, and my thoughts was while he’s missing this guy this close, is he hitting him or because Mr. Brown there was no reaction from him to show that he was been hit. Um, after that, Mr. Brown then paused. He stopped running and when he stopped running the police officer stopped firing.
“And, then Mr. Brown continued, started again to charge towards him and after that the police officer returned fire and um well not returned fire and um well not returned. I’m using the wrong … started to fire once more at him. Um, if I had to guess the rounds that were fired then it would be four to five more shots and after that Mr. Brown collapsed and fell to the ground.”
Person in a third-floor apartment
“I couldn’t really tell what was going on. It was just a lot of movement going on by the window of the car...
"So I’m looking at the officer chase Michael down the street.”
“And at this time, I heard another shot fired while they were running. After that, [Brown] then turn[s], had his hands in the air, by the time that I saw him have his hands in the air he got shot. I heard two shots like specifically in my head, I saw those two shots. And he dropped down like kinda drop hands first, then knee, then face and everything else.”
Person pulling up near the scene in his car:
“I seen a young man standing near the cruiser, you head two shots fired And then a police officer hopped out of his cruiser and started chasing him, the dude turned back around and started charging towards the police officer, the police officer told him to stop at least three times…
“He was still down the street, he was running back…he put his hands up for a few seconds and then put his arms down and kind of put them close to his chest and he started running.
“And the boy wouldn’t stop, he fired three rounds, the dude kept running, fired four more rounds, and the finished off the rounds I guess, and he fell on the ground dead.”
Person walking on the street:
“I saw the officer back his van up and hit the two boys. Um, immediately his friend took off and…Mike he started like fighting with the officer through his window. I don’t know why they were fighting through the window but then you heard the first shot and all the cars on the street stopped. They started backing up.
“Then he, uh, started running. He stopped halfway and turned around and that’s when you heard the rest of the shows. And I don’t have really good eyes so I couldn’t see like exactly where he got hit or anything like that. But it was about seven, eight shots that I heard…And like he did have his hands up. People wasn’t just saying that. He did turn around and put his hands up.”
NBC

November 24, 2014

Twitter has suspended my account again. I have been told by people on Twitter that the Anonymous group is attacking accounts that are tweeting against FERGUSON & Shaun King.

 I have asked Twitter what specifically the problem is with my account but will have to wait for days to get an answer.

 If you could tweet to @support nicely asking for them to review my account to get it active again, I would really appreciate it.

 Please let others know what is going on too.

 Thank You,

Chris
chris1791.twitter at gmail.com


November 12, 2014

RASTAS

THE IRISH SLAVE TRADE – THE FORGOTTEN “WHITE” SLAVES

  289 COMMENTS
The Slaves That Time Forgot
By John Martin
They came as slaves; vast human cargo transported on tall British ships bound for the Americas. They were shipped by the hundreds of thousands and included men, women, and even the youngest of children.
Whenever they rebelled or even disobeyed an order, they were punished in the harshest ways. Slave owners would hang their human property by their hands and set their hands or feet on fire as one form of punishment. They were burned alive and had their heads placed on pikes in the marketplace as a warning to other captives.
We don’t really need to go through all of the gory details, do we? After all, we know all too well the atrocities of the African slave trade. But, are we talking about African slavery?
King James II and Charles I led a continued effort to enslave the Irish. Britain’s famed Oliver Cromwell furthered this practice of dehumanizing one’s next door neighbor.
The Irish slave trade began when James II sold 30,000 Irish prisoners as slaves to the New World. His Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle.
As an example, the African slave trade was just beginning during this same period. It is well recorded that African slaves, not tainted with the stain of the hated Catholic theology and more expensive to purchase, were often treated far better than their Irish counterparts.
African slaves were very expensive during the late 1600s (50 Sterling). Irish slaves came cheap (no more than 5 Sterling). If a planter whipped or branded or beat an Irish slave to death, it was never a crime. A death was a monetary setback, but far cheaper than killing a more expensive African.
The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude.
In time, the English thought of a better way to use these women (in many cases, girls as young as 12) to increase their market share: The settlers began to breed Irish women and girls with African men to produce slaves with a distinct complexion. These new “mulatto” slaves brought a higher price than Irish livestock and, likewise, enabled the settlers to save money rather than purchase new African slaves.
This practice of interbreeding Irish females with African men went on for several decades and was so widespread that, in 1681, legislation was passed “forbidding the practice of mating Irish slave women to African slave men for the purpose of producing slaves for sale.” In short, it was stopped only because it interfered with the profits of a large slave transport company.
England continued to ship tens of thousands of Irish slaves for more than a century. Records state that, after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, thousands of Irish slaves were sold to both America and Australia.
There were horrible abuses of both African and Irish captives. One British ship even dumped 1,302 slaves into the Atlantic Ocean so that the crew would have plenty of food to eat.
There is little question that the Irish experienced the horrors of slavery as much (if not more in the 17th Century) as the Africans did. There is, also, very little question that those brown, tanned faces you witness in your travels to the West Indies are very likely a combination of African and Irish ancestry.
In 1839, Britain finally decided on it’s own to end it’s participation in Satan’s highway to hell and stopped transporting slaves. While their decision did not stop pirates from doing what they desired, the new law slowly concluded THIS chapter of nightmarish Irish misery.
But, if anyone, black or white, believes that slavery was only an African experience, then they’ve got it completely wrong.
Irish slavery is a subject worth remembering, not erasing from our memories. But, where are our public (and PRIVATE) schools???? Where are the history books? Why is it so seldom discussed?
Do the memories of hundreds of thousands of Irish victims merit more than a mention from an unknown writer? Or is their story to be one that their English pirates intended: To (unlike the African book) have the Irish story utterly and completely disappear as if it never happened.
None of the Irish victims ever made it back to their homeland to describe their ordeal. These are the lost slaves; the ones that time and biased history books conveniently forgot.
http://afgen.com/forgotten_slaves.html

October 26, 2014

PLEASE NOTE THE NUMBERS - THERE WERE NOT 100 MILLION SLAVES TAKEN TO THE US - 12.5 Million total but most went to South America and the Islands. A total of 450,000 were brought to the US.


Cargo of the living dead: The unspeakable horror of life on a slave ship

By CHRISTOPHER HUDSON
Last updated at 09:07 13 December 2007
Raped at will, tortured with white-hot forks, they were thrown to the sharks if death ended their agony. A new book reveals the true horror of life on a slave ship...

Louis Asa-Asa was 13 when his happiness ended. One day, warriors converged on his home far from the sea. They set fire to the huts, killing and capturing villagers.
He escaped into the forest, the only child to survive.

A few days later the warriors found Louis.

They manacled him into a slave train which slowly made its way to the coast.

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"I was sold six times over, sometimes for money, sometimes for cloth, sometimes for a gun," he recalled.

"We were taken from place to place and sold at every place we stopped at."
It took Louis six months to reach the "white people" and their "very large ship".
Ukawsaw, about the same age, lived in northern Nigeria, up near Lake Chad.

The grandson of the local king, he was mesmerised by the magical tales told by a visiting merchant.

Vividly, the man described white people who lived in houses on the water which had wings upon them.

His family let Ukawsaw go with the merchant, who told no more tales but dragged the boy to the Gold Coast where Ukawsaw was enslaved.
A Dutch captain sold him in Barbados for 50 dollars.

Olaudah, also Nigerian, was only 11 when slave traders carried him aboard a slave ship.
He was grabbed by members of the crew, "white men with horrible looks, red faces and long hair", who tossed him about to see if his limbs were sound.

He thought they were bad spirits, not human beings.

As he recorded 35 years later, when they put him down on the deck the first thing he saw was a huge copper boiling pot, and nearby a crowd of black people, "chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow".

Struck by the thought that he had fallen into the hands of cannibals, Olaudah fainted.
These are just three slaves among the 12.4 million Africans who were captured by raiders and kidnappers and transported across the Atlantic in slave ships between the late 15th and the late 19th centuries.

As Marcus Rediker recalls in a new book on the slave trade, 1.8 million slaves died during that journey known as the Middle Passage, their bodies thrown to the sharks.

Most of the ten million who survived the journey were condemned to a plantation system so brutal, many more perished.

Two-thirds of the total were transported between 1700 and 1808, a period which includes the Age of Enlightenment and manuscripts by Jane Austen.

Olaudah was born in 1745.

He came from a pastoral background in which villagers worked collectively to build homes and cultivate the fields, raising foodstuffs, mostly yams and fruit, but also tobacco, and cotton which they wove into clothes.

Blacksmiths made weapons; other craftsmen made jewellery.

His Igbo people believed that the spirits of the dead would wander aimlessly unless given proper burial.

As in last century's death camps, perhaps only the very young, like him, could survive the journey without lifelong mental damage.

The humiliation of the slave train - men, women and children strapped in a neck yolk as they stumbled towards the coast - was usually followed by imprisonment for as much as eight months until a slave ship arrived and collected a full cargo - whereupon they were marched out, stripped, examined, haggled over and finally given a number by which they would be known throughout the voyage.

When Olaudah came round on the ship after fainting and was offered food, he refused it.
He was tied to the windlass and flogged.

In his despair, Olaudah went to throw himself over the side, even though he couldn't swim.
Then he saw that the slave-ship was equipped with netting on the sides to prevent its valuable commodities from committing suicide.

He was told that he was being carried to white people's country to work for them.
Many of the slaves believed until the end of the voyage that they were being shipped away to be eaten.

Olaudah was taken down into the darkness of the lower deck, where the slaves were manacled and shackled.

He was made to lie wedged in such close quarters that he "had scarcely room to turn himself".

His living space was about three square feet, hardly more than that of a corpse in its coffin.
The air was noxious; the constant rubbing of his chains raised sores on his wrists and ankles.

As the ship set sail, the full enormity of what was happening to him struck home, as it must have done to millions of other Africans.

Because of bad weather, the slaves stayed locked below in their chains for days at a time.
The heat was suffocating, the stench unbearable.

Covered in sweat, vomit, and blood, the packed slaves created a miasma which rose through the gratings of the upper deck in a loathsome mist.

The "necessary tubs" full of excrement "almost suffocated us", recalled Olaudah.
The shrieks of terrified slaves, conscious of the troubled spirits of the dead, mingled with the groans of the dying.

It was rare for a slave transport across the Atlantic not to give plenty of sustenance to the sharks swimming nearby.

Olaudah became sick and "hoped to put an end to my miseries".
He envied the dead who were thrown overboard, believing that their spirits lived on, liberated from their shackles.

His own spirits improved with the weather.

The slaves were usually allowed on deck twice a day, in chains.

Olaudah, being a child, went unfettered, and because he was sickly he spent more time on deck, where women slaves washed him and looked after him.

He saw three slaves elude the netting and jump overboard.

A boat was lowered, and to the anger of the captain, two of them succeeded in drowning.
The third was brought back on deck and flogged viciously.

When at last they sighted landfall the crew were overjoyed.
The captives were sullen and silent.

Like Ukawsaw, they had docked in Barbados which, as they would shortly find out, was one of the most brutal slave societies to be found anywhere in the world.

Olaudah was luckier than some.

His forcible separation from his beloved sister had occurred on the quay before he was taken to the slave ship.

But many families were now separated in the Barbados dockyard, and the air was filled with their shrieks and bitter lamentations.

They were lined up in rows, and at the sound of a drum-roll, buyers scrambled to pick out the slaves they wanted to purchase, throwing cords around them which tightened as they were pulled away.
Husbands were separated from wives, brothers from sisters, parents from children.
Olaudah, too young and small for the slave-masters, was transferred to another ship.
"I now totally lost the small remains of comfort I had enjoyed in conversing with my countrymen," he wrote (or dictated) many years later.

"The women who used to wash and take care of me were all gone different ways, and I never saw one of them again."

Nothing more would have been heard of Olaudah, had not the ship's crew, attracted by the boy's bright curiosity, taught him a lot about sailors' work.

He was eventually bought by a ship's captain as a gift for someone in England.
During the 13-week voyage he learned enough English to become a sailor himself and, by the age of 24, had earned enough money to purchase his freedom.

Slave ships could be of almost any size, from great galleons such as the 566-ton Parr, built in 1797, which carried 100 crew and could stow 700 slaves, to the Hesketh, a 10-ton vessel which sailed to Sierra Leone and took 30 slaves on to St Kitts in 1761, thus demonstrating that anybody with a bit of money could become a slave trader.

A typical medium-sized slaver would carry about 140 slaves, 70 male and 70 female, shackled two-by-two at the wrists and ankles.

The beams above the lower deck left only about four-and-a-half feet, so most slaves would spend 16 hours a day without being able to stand.

Many traders lowered the height still further by building out 6ft platforms in the lower deck from the edge of the ship to pack more bodies in.

A grating provided ventilation.

Male slaves were stowed forward and women aft - the women generally not in irons, giving them more freedom of movement.

So packed were the vessels that some captains slept in a hammock over a huddle of little African girls, while the first mate and surgeon slept over the boys.

In the middle of the main deck a "barricado" or barricade, ten feet high and extending two feet over the water either side, separated the men from the women.

If there was a slave revolt on board - and the crews accepted that these desperate men might try to kill them at the cost of their own lives - the barricado served as a defensive wall, allowing the crew to retreat to the women's side.

When the male slaves were on deck, the crew had them covered with blunderbusses and cannons loaded with small shot.

The slave ship towed a lifeboat behind it in which sick slaves were isolated.

According to Louis Asa-Asa, many sick slaves on his ship got no medical attention.
Even on a comparatively healthy voyage the mortality rate would be five to seven per cent, and each death enraged and terrified the slaves, especially the ones who woke in the morning to find themselves shackled to a corpse.

Seamen took away the dead, along with tubs of excrement and urine.

They also scrubbed the deck and the beams, using sand and other scourers to remove dried filth, vomit and mucus.

Once or twice a fortnight, the crew would fumigate the lower deck with vinegar and tobacco smoke.

During the afternoon, bread and perhaps a pipe of tobacco and a dram of brandy would be offered to the slaves.

Around 4pm the slaves would be fed the afternoon meal: horse beans and peas with salt meat or fish, before being taken down for the long night.

Dysentery, known as the bloody flux, was the biggest killer, followed by malignant fevers, including malaria, and dehydration, especially in the tropics.

The slave ship crews were almost as liable to disease, and many of them were not treated much better than the slaves themselves.

Although slave trade merchants always insisted that  "good order" aboard their ships meant no abuse of the female slaves by the crew, it all depended on the attitude of the captain, who had the power to protect the women if he chose to do so.

Alexander Falconbridge, a doctor who campaigned against the slave trade, wrote that "on board some ships, the common sailors are allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure".

The officers on the other hand, "are permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, and sometimes are guilty of such brutal excesses as disgrace human nature".
The crew were always more dispensable than the slaves: officers knocked to the deck any sailor who was disrespectful to them.

The smallest error saw the crewman bound to the rigging and flogged.

Literally adding salt to the wounds, the officers applied a briny solution called pickle to the deep red and purple furrows made by the cat o'nine tails, its knotted tails - sometimes interwoven with wire - serving to maximise the pain.

The cat ruled.

It was used to make people move on or to obey orders more quickly, even to make the slaves dance and sing, since exercise was good for them.

Mostly, the cat was used to make slaves eat the food they often refused.
If that did not work, a long, thin mechanical contraption called a speculum oris was used to force open their mouths and throats.

Slaves who rebelled were tortured, often by turning thumbscrews or by applying a white-hot cook's fork to their flesh.

Both caused excruciating pain.

However, most captains knew that his mission was to deliver slaves in good condition.
About ten days before the end of the journey and estimated landfall, the fetters were taken off the male slaves so that marks of chafing disappeared.

Their beards and sometimes their hair were shaved, and a silver nitrate caustic applied to hide sores.

Grey hairs were picked out or dyed black.

Finally sailors would rub down the naked Africans with palm oil to make their skin smooth and gleaming.

We know all this because the slave trade, at least in Britain, accumulated logs and diaries as assiduously as any Nazi book-keeper in the early 1940s.

This precision would be of great help when it came to educating the British public on what was being done in their name.

Men like Thomas Clarkson and William Wilberforce spoke with blazing moral conviction, and their single most powerful propaganda weapon was the reproduction of an image of a slave ship.

First published in 1788 and redrawn and republished many times throughout the Western world, it illustrated a coffin-shaped cross-section of a 297-tonner with 294 tiny, meticulously drawn Africans wearing loincloths and chained at the ankles, packed like herrings in a barrel.

Beneath the image were eight paragraphs of explanatory text, together with a picture of a supplicant slave in chains, hands raised and asking, "Am I Not a Man and a Brother?"
Olaudah was a brother.

Louis and Ukawsaw were brothers.

They were bound together by a common experience of Hell.
• The Slave Ship: A Human History by Marcus Rediker, £30, John Murray Publishing.


Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-501577/Cargo-living-dead-The-unspeakable-horror-life-slave-ship.html#ixzz3HG1cRxAy
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