Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Irish Enslavement In Colonial America

The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I 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.

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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 its own to end its 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

Friday, June 12, 2020

What Changes Needed for the US

Start with a quote from Matt Stoller (2011)
Change needs to happen—and it will happen, either through good leadership or through collapse.
The US has choices, most other countries dont.

With all the chaos and rioting there are no specific goals to make the US equitable, specially for the lower rungs of society.  My thoughts of specific goals.

What should be done immediately
a) Give aid to direct individuals
   This includes free testing and health care

b) Debt Jubilee, i.e. forgiveness of debt. 
   Rent, Mortgage forgiveness based on income/job.
   NOT a deferral with a huge amount coming due in the future

Electoral Process
The President, Congress and Senators need to be more answerable to the public.  The way the current system works, public votes and President, Congress and elected officials do the bidding of their paymasters, the big money  Multinationals and Military Industrialist.  This change is imperative for a proper functioning democracy.

So
a) No lobbyists, period.  Caught lobbying or accepting lobby, at least a few years in Jail.
    Lobbying is legalized bribery and corruption.
b) Campaign Finance: I would prefer only a govt funding, equal to all contestants. 
    Or only donations by individuals with cap on amount.
c) Two term limit for Senators

Finance Specific*
a) Let Too Big to Fail companies/banks go bust if they are not profitable ,
    instead of propping them up with more and more trillion dollar handouts.
b) Stop derivatives being used for speculation/betting.
    Can be used as hedge against asset on the books. 
    If the asset is sold, the derivative needs to be unwound.
c) Share buybacks be made illegal.

I dont think USD 6 Trillion injection into financial markets will solve the Covid19 pandemic or the chaos in the US. 
To put the 6 Trillion into perspective.  US GDP is USD 19 Trillion.  Public debt is  USD 18 trillion Interest public debt USD 479 billion/0.5 Trillion (10% of Budget)

*Some suggestions by VijayVan

Manufacturing
Its not about cutting costs per se. Think the Henry Ford saying, workers should be able to buy what is produced. For that the US must first throw out Free Trade and embrace protectionist. Start Manufacturing and give Price protection to what is manufactured.   Same for Oil, the US is self sufficient. 
But all of this means ditching the Petro dollar, and the global monetary power that comes with it.  So very unlikely those changes will be by choice.

Society:
A push for polices that re vitalize small towns with self reliant economies.   Not just a suburban enclave dependent on commuters working in a nearby big city.  Coupled with small or medium manufacturing.  i.e. Supply chain is mainly within the US.

Maybe even a partial break up of Big Ag and land distribution (100 acres or so) specifically for Agriculture.  I think subsidies for small scale farmers is fine.  Much better that trillion dollar bail outs for Big Ags.

Wars
The US will have to make some serious decisions about being the global policeman, and conducting wars. (I doubt will happen without change in Campaign Finance/Electoral Process).  The US Might has turned to "might happen". Trillions on war, has not made the US safe.  Never ending Wars and nary a benefit except debt and death.
This does not mean disbanding the military.  Any country needs to defend itself against invasions.  The choice is wars of aggression in distant lands or developing the economy.
US Spending on wars Iraq War: +1 Trillion Afghan War: 1 Trillion  Military: 500 billion/year




Wednesday, June 10, 2020

March 2020 Facebook Comment

Note:  This was written in March long before the George Floyd chaos.

The next 6-9 months will be a test of resiliency of societies. It is going to test the social and economic cohesiveness of societies to depression level economic downturns.
Countries have different gods. In the US and UK now it is "Personal Freedom" and the stockmarket.
In the US they pumping billions into the financial world, including the stock market expecting the progression of the virus to be stopped. The "Personal Freedom" god makes people go to spring breaks at the beach (US) and huge concerts (UK).

Sri Lanka has just come out of 30 year civil war, with two insurgencies one within the majority community (71 and 87-89) and the other between a minority community and majority community (1977-2009). The initial underlying causes were economic disparity with metastasized into class and ethnic insurgencies.

In comparison to Sri Lanka the US is a deeply fractured society. The fractures are readily visible to those willing to travel out of their suburban comfort zone. Baltimore, Flint, Camden, the Mid West. To a great extent protests have been contained by drug addiction (9.4% of the population).

The less than socialist aspects of the US are also of concern. Say for example what happens when people cant pay their mortgage because of job losses. Will the govt programs be deferrals, i.e. it all becomes due in a bang or will it be forgiven thru some grant. In contrast Sri Lanka is a) 80% rural and b) almost impossible to evict from a house with mortgage or even rented.

The US does not nurture their own, specially those on the wrong side of the tracks. The US specializes in importing, those nurtured else where and with proven abilities and/or economic resources. The new immigrants, most successful are resented by the locals. Will these resentments boil over in to social disorder as resources and jobs disappear.

Other cracks are becoming visible. The volume of rhetoric and blame is being turned up against China, even by the US President. Will that turn into violence against East and South East Asians. Similar incidents were seen post 9-11, with even Indians being considered Arabs. However the US was more economically stable with the Clinton boom times not yet being over. When people loose their jobs, their health and future is in jeopardy then they go crazy as one might say.


What should be done immediately
a) Give direct aid to individuals
   This includes free testing and health care

b) Debt Jubilee, i.e. forgiveness of debt. 
   Rent, Mortgage forgiveness based on income/job.
   NOT a deferral with a huge amount coming due in the future

US and Finance specific
Stop derivatives being used for speculation/betting.
Can be used as hedge against asset on the books.
If the asset is sold, the derivative needs to be unwound.

Let companies go bust if they are not profitable , instead of propping them up with more and more loans. Let bad companies go bust. No company is too big to fail

3. Share buybacks be made illegal.

In the long run
More Autarky and less reliance on global supply chains.
This brings manufacturing and jobs locally

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