The Ism of Destruction: Part Two

This series of essays relates to Capitalism, and how it has been a tool to promote the demise of Democracy. The theory is that Private Capitalism does not work within a system designed to promote the ends of justice, because Private Capitalization as the reader of these essays will discern, promotes injustice and a transition to an ulterior form of governance.

Volume 2 :Capitalism and the Age of Opium

In the early 1800's, China , by its own design, was still largely cut off from trade with the outside world. All trade with Europe was channeled through one port, Canton . Even there, Europeans could only trade through specially designated Chinese agents known as co-hong. Several Chinese products, such as silk and porcelain, were in high demand in Europe, but the most popular trade item in the early 1800's was tea, consumption of which increased by a factor of 30 times between 1720 and 1830. Unfortunately, the tea trade led to a serious drain of silver from Britain. “The British East India Company”, desperate for something to offset this trade imbalance, found such a commodity in opium, which not only upset China's balance of trade, but the stability of its whole society. American merchants were enlisted to provide the opium in trade protected by the British crown. It was from here that the American founding families made their fortune.

William H. Russell (Skull &Bones; co-founder-Yale University, 1832) cousin Samuel Russell formally established Russell & Co. on January 1, 1824 for the purpose of acquiring opium and smuggling it into China . Russell & Co. merged with the number one US trader, the J. & T. H. Perkins "Boston Concern" in 1829. By the mid-1830s the opium trade had become "the largest commerce of its time in any single commodity, anywhere in the world."

Links between the drug trade, European colonial expansion, the creation of the global capitalist system and the creation of the modern state are closely intertwined. It is said that one would not exist without the other. It is possible to suggest a hypothesis, that mass consumption, as it exists in modern society, began with drug addiction. And, beyond that, addiction began with a drug as a commodity. Something was necessary to initiate the cycles of production, consumption and accumulation that we identify with capitalism. In the nineteenth century, Opium was the catalyst of the consumer market, the money economy and even of capitalist production itself.

So Capitalism, as an economic form, evolved from unlawful and debasing activity, and the wealth of capitalists instead of confiscation, became a tool of governance and control and therefore of political corruption.

Opium was the tool of the capitalist, first used against the peasants and the lower and middle classes in transforming them, and in so doing monetizing their lifestyles. Opium was able to generate thus create pools of capital to feed the institutions that accumulated and accommodated it: the banking and financial systems, the insurance systems and the transportation and information infrastructures. Those structures and that economy have, in large part, been inherited by the successor nations of that state of the world, and today it is not only opium, but cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, meth, and ecstasy, each drug has its recourse through the channels of government where it becomes the tool of capital and protected by administrations and their secret communities.

Opium smuggling didn’t just make money. At times, opium was money. Opium built empires and had a hand in financing much of the world’s infrastructure, the railroads, and steam lines, and all major industry and not only in America .

Drug trade tends to destabilized existing societies not merely because they destroy individual human beings, but more importantly, because they have the power to undercut the existing political economy. They create new forms of capital; and they redistribute wealth in an upward mobility.

It is for this reason that their will be a perpetual “War on Drugs” because the government itself is responsible for its importation, and distribution, in actuality drug use is a tax upon the poor and middle class of any nation, and the intelligence communities of each import and distribute it, and the benefits are channeled to that end. It is the same; there is no distinction between the creation of money, as a tax upon the people and the sale of drugs, the distinction relates only to whom the tax is paid. In the former it is the bank that receives the tax, and in the later it is the government agent.

Capitalism is inherently self disruptive of commerce, the reason being, that Capitalists are self serving. Their goal is not to advance society, but to enslave it, and it is all based on a single standard, Greed!

Kent State and Jackson State

Kent State, May 4, 1970: and Jackson State, May 14, 1970: The Dates America Killed Its Children

Remembering:

39 years ago, a time and parallel in application, we were at war with Vietnam, a country that had neither attacked us nor was any threat to our way of life. However Vietnam had something we wanted, “Drugs and Oil”. Viet Nam has proven crude oil reserves of 3.1-3.3 billion barrels, located in 60 mainly offshore oil and gas formations. It also has the drugs the CIA was after in the Golden Triangle.

Iraq has the Oil we want, and Afghanistan has the Drugs.

Do you see any similarity?

In the Spring of 1970, campus communities across this country were characterized by a chorus of protests and demonstrations. The issues were the escalation of the war in Vietnam and the U.S. invasion of Cambodia; the ecology; racism and repression; and the inclusion of the experiences of women and minorities in the educational system. No institution of higher education was left untouched by confrontations and continuous calls for change.

Thirty Nine years ago for many of us was just yesterday and we can still recall that students came out on the Kent State campus and scores of others to protest the bombing of Cambodia-- a decision of President Nixon's that appeared to expand the Vietnam War. Some rocks were thrown, some windows were broken, and an attempt was made to burn the ROTC building. Governor James Rhodes sent in the National Guard. When The Kent State shootings ended, four students were killed and nine others were wounded, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis

On May 14-15, 1970, Jackson State students were protesting these issues as well as the May 4, 1970 tragedy at Kent State University in Ohio. Four Kent State students -- Alison Krause, Sandra Scheuer, Jeffrey Glenn Miller and William K. Schroeder -- were killed by Ohio National Guardsmen who opened fire on unarmed students.

Seventy-five city policemen and Mississippi State Police officers armed with carbines, sub machine guns, shotguns, service revolvers and some personal weapons, responded to the call. Their combined armed presence on the Lynch Street side of Stewart Hall, a men's dormitory, staved off the crowd long enough for the firemen to extinguish the blaze and leave. After the firemen left, the police and state troopers marched along Lynch Street toward Alexander Center, a women's residence, weapons at the ready.

Falling back before the approaching officers, the students congregated in a thick knot in front of the dormitory. At this point, the crowd numbered 75 to 100 people. Several students allegedly shouted "obscene catcalls" while others chanted and tossed bricks at the officers, who had closed to within 100 feet of the group.

The police opened fire at approximately 12:05 a.m., May 15, and continued firing for more than 30 seconds. The students scattered, some running for the trees in front of the library, but most scrambling for the Alexander Hall west end door. When the order to cease fire was given and the gunfire ceased, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs, 21, a junior pre-law major and father of an 18-month-old son, lay dead 50 feet east of the west wing door of Alexander Hall. Two Double-0 buckshot pellets had punched into his head while a third pellet entered just beneath his left eye and a fourth just under his left armpit.

Across the street, behind the line of police and highway patrolmen, James Earl Green, 17, was sprawled dead in front of B. F. Roberts Dining Hall. Green, a senior at Jim Hill High School in Jackson, was walking home from work at a local grocery store when he stopped to watch the action. He was standing in front of B. F. Roberts Hall when a single buckshot blast slammed into the right side of his chest.

Twelve other Jackson State students were struck by gunfire, including at least one who was sitting in the dormitory lobby at the time of the shooting. Several students required treatment for hysteria and injuries from shattered glass.

Can this happen again, unfortunately it can!