Trans-Saharan Slave Trade.

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

Trade Across the Sahara.

Medieval Trade Routes Across the Sahara.


The sands of the Sahara Desert could've been a major obstacle to trade between Africa, Europe, and the East, but it was more like a sandy sea with ports of trade on either side. In the south were cities such as Timbuktu and Gao; in the north, cities such as Ghadames (in present-day Libya). From there goods traveled onto Europe, Arabia, India, and China.

Muslim traders from North Africa shipped goods across the Sahara using large camel caravans -- on average around a thousand camels, although there's a record which mentions caravans travelling between Egypt and Sudan that had 12,000 camels.

They brought in mainly luxury goods such as textiles, silks, beads, ceramics, ornamental weapons, and utensils. These were traded for gold, ivory, woods such as ebony, and agricultural products such as kola nuts (which act as a stimulant as they contain caffeine). They also brought their religion, Islam, which spread along the trade routes.

Nomads living in the Sahara traded salt, meat, and their knowledge as guides for cloth, gold, cereal, and slaves.

Until the discovery of the the Americas, Mali was the principal producer of gold. African ivory was also sought after because it's softer than that from Indian elephants and therefore easier to carve. Slaves were wanted by the courts of Arab and Berber princes as servants, concubines, soldiers, and agricultural laborers.

When Sonni Ali, the ruler of the Songhai Empire, which was situated to the east along the curve of the Niger River, conquered Mali in 1462, he set about developing both his own capital, Gao, and the main centers of Mali, Timbuktu and Jenne, into major cities which controlled a great deal of trade in the region.

Arab Trans-Saharan Slave Trade.


West African encounter with the Arabs.
The conditions of trans-Saharan trade changed remarkably after Northern Africa became a part of the Islamic world in the late 7th century AD. The vast Umayyid caliphate, reaching from the slopes of Pyrenees to the banks of Indus, formed a solid market area the monetary system of which was based on gold. In practice, it meant that this precious metal had a great demand throughout the Islamic world. In the eastern parts of the caliphate, gold could obtained sufficiently from local mines or by recycling the ancient hoards. In the western parts, the situation was more difficult, for there are no gold mines in Northern Africa. However, the Muslim rulers in the west struck their own golden dinars. Since there is no evidence that they had imported gold from Egypt or the Middle East, they must have obtained it from other sources. Plausible alternatives are the mines of Sicily and southern Spain, which were known already in ancient times, and the existing Roman and Byzantine treasures. Yet part of the metal was inevitably brought from Western Africa.

In fact, it seems that regular and intensive trade across the desert was organized quite soon after the Arabs had consolided their power in Northern Africa: both the major northern terminals of the trans-Saharan routes, Sijilmasa and Tahert, were founded in mid-8th century AD. However, the trade could succeed only because it managed to join up with the internal West African commercial network. By the arrival of first North African traders, perhaps in the early 8th century, the peoples of the savanna had already established large states, like Ghana and Gao, and cities, like Jenne which had some twenty thousand inhabitants. But new cities were also born at the desert edge, like Awdaghust, Kumbi Saleh and Tadamakka, and their destiny was tied closely with the continuity of the long distance trade: when the caravan routes later changed and the volume of trade declined, these towns, too, were soon abandoned. There were three basic routes across the Sahara: the "western", leading from Sijilmasa to Awdaghust; the "central", and the most important, leading from Ifriqiya to the Niger bend; and the "Egyptian", leading from Egypt to the Niger bend via Siwa and Kufra, which was, however, abandoned in the 10th century as it was too dangerous.

Very little is known about the volume of the trans-Saharan trade during the first Islamic centuries. According to the contemporary Arabic sources, the caravans brought to the north annually huge amounts of gold, but modern estimates range from 2,000 to 3,000 kg per year. Nevertheless, a real boom in the trade began in the 10th century, with the establishment of the Fatimid caliphate in Northern Africa in 910. The reason was that the Fatimids, who were in rivalry both with the Umayyads of Spain and the Abbasids of Baghdad, needed constantly lots of gold to finance their continuous wars and extensive religious propaganda. The rise of Fatimids also meant that the western route became the most important, since their access to the central route was blocked by the Ibadites who still held Wargla. Yet the transfer of the Fatimid capital from Ifriqiya to Egypt in 971 caused a brief period of stagnation in the trade. Residing in Cairo, the Fatimid caliphs were no more interested in North African affairs, since they could obtain gold more easily from Nubian mines.

A second boom took place in the late 11th century, as the Almoravids united western Sahara, Morocco and Islamic Spain into a single empire. Like the Fatimids, the Almoravids needed also lot of gold to finance their wars against the Christians in Spain and the rebelling Almohads in Maghrib. During the Almoravid period, gold seems to have flowed to the north with great amounts, for the Almoravid golden dinars became the most common and esteemed currency in the Mediterranean area, including the Christian world. A brief period of stagnation was followed after the downfall of Almoravids in 1147, but the trade continued steadily again from the mid-13th century until the Moroccan invasion in Timbuktu in 1591.
The encounter of Islamic and West African cultures was peaceful, and it can be termed "controlled relationship". This concept is usually applied to the European encounter with China, where foreign traders were forced to obey the rules set by the Chinese government which decided unilaterally on the location of trade, the number of traders, as well as type and character of the goods. If the Europeans were not willing to accept these rules, they were not permitted to continue their trade. Before the outbreak of First Opium War in 1839, the Chinese empire was powerful enough to reject all military threats from the part of European naval powers.

In Western Africa, the contact zone was limited to the desert edge cities, where North African traders were isolated for their own quarters, lying usually outside the local dwelling. Yet there was no racial discrimination. In fact, many of the traders took local concubines, as no women of their own society were available. This behaviour is understandable, for the traders had often to spend several years in the south, and there lived also permanent agents of North African trading companies. Afterwards twin cities, with separate quarters for the Muslim and non-Muslim population, became a common structure for urban settlements throughout Western Africa.

On the other hand, the isolation of North African traders was partly voluntary for two reasons. First, the West African interior was as unhealthy for Arabs as the coastal area was for Europeans, and thus the traders were not willing to leave the desert edge cities where the conditions were healthier. Secondly, by isolating themselves, the traders were able to maintain their own culture and practice their own religion. Otherwise the traders had to follow local laws and customs, regardless whether they were against the Quranic law. But the cultural difference was recognized, and the traders were not intentionally forced to do such things which they felt offending. In China, the Europeans were obliged to perform the kowtow in front of the high mandarins, which they regarded extremely humiliating; in Western Africa, the Arab traders were exempted from performing the common gesture of submission in front of the kings, which was to sprinkle dust over one's head.
The principal reason why the North African traders were willing to accommodate in the local conditions in Western Africa, was the same as in the case of Europeans in China: it was the only way to continue the profitable trade. Before the European discovery of America, West African mines were the most important single source of gold both for Northern Africa and Europe; it is estimated that two-thirds of all the gold circulating in the Mediterranean area in the Middle Ages was imported across the Sahara. This made the uninterrupted continuity of trade more important for North African rulers than their West African counterparts. The demand for salt, for which the Arabs bartered the gold in Western Africa, is usually overemphasized in the historiography. Contrariwise, the Saharan rock salt was an expensive luxury product and available to the wealthy people only. Furthermore, it could be quite easily substituted by locally produced salt from plants and soil, whereas the North African rulers could not obtain gold for their coins elsewhere.

However, the position of the powerful states of the West African savanna was not based on the possession of the gold reserves, but on the control over the principal trade routes leading from the desert edge terminals to the gold fields in the south. In this way, the rulers of northern savanna could monopolize the trade, and they strictly prevented the Arabs to establish any direct contacts with the actual producers of gold. Inside Western Africa, the trade was carried on by local brokers, or the Dyula.
The other reason was that the Arab traders were without the protection provided by their own civilization, while staying in sub-Saharan Africa. Before the wider introduction of firearms in the 16th century, the Arab rulers of Northern Africa had no real possibilities to threaten their West African counterparts with war, as there were no such differences between the military technology which guaranteed them any absolute superiority. Furthermore, the West African armies were very large, although the claims in Arabic sources, such as the ruler of Ghana having an army of 200,000 warriors, are certainly exaggerating. Yet, in any case, we can speak of tens of thousands. To send an army of an equal size across the Sahara was extremely hazardous, and the success of the Moroccan invasion in Timbuktu in 1591 is rather an exception which reinforces the general rule: the ruler of Songhay empire considered it unnecessary to poison the wells in the desert or to organize any effective counter-attack, because he was convinced that the Moroccans would perish in the desert anyway. In fact, Judar Pasha did lose a great deal of his men during the deathly march across the western Sahara. Besides the desert, another natural advantage which protected the West Africans, was the unhealthy environment. Most parts of the savanna are infected by trypanosomiasis, which is lethal especially for quadrupeds, thus preventing the large scale use of cavalry forces in this area.

An illustrative example of the military encounter between North and West African states is the dispute on the possession of the important salt mines of Taghaza in central Sahara. At first Taghaza had been controlled by the Saharan nomads, but in the early 14th century the rulers of Mali managed to maintain some control over the routes leading these mines from the south. By the end of the following century, the askias of Songhay, which had superceded superceded Mali as the dominant power in Western Africa, extended their rule even further in the desert and appointed a governor in Taghaza. However, in 1544, Sultan Muhammad al-Mahdi, the founder of Sa'did power in Morocco, demanded the ruler of Songhay, askia Ishaq I, to give him the mines. Askia Ishaq naturally refused to do it, and a war broke out. The Moroccans sent an army to occupy Taghaza, but the army was destroyed in the desert. As response to this, a Songhay army consisting of Tuaregs, attacked northwards and sacked the southern parts of Morocco, forcing Sultan Muhammad to flee from Marrakesh. Similarly, the rulers of Bornu, lying around Lake Chad, were able to expand their political dominance deep into Fezzan, occupying the oases until the 16th century.

With the increased volume of trans-Saharan trade in the Islamic period, new cultural influences began to spread in Western Africa. The most important of them was a new religion, Islam, which was adopted in the states belonging to the sphere of the caravan trade by the end of the eleventh century. The conversion was peaceful and it had been preceded by a long period of coexistence in the cities of the trade route terminues. Motives for the conversion were many: we should not underestimate the charm of novelty and human curiosity, nor the advantages the new religion could offer for individuals, like healing and social prestige. In Western Africa, Muslims are visibly distinguished from other people with their dressing and eating habits, and they do not hesitate to perform their religious ceremonies in public. For the rulers, the conversion offered several political advantages. First, they became, at least in theory but often in reality too, equals to North African rulers, which made the maintenance of diplomatic relations easier. Yet the conversion did not include any recognition of the political supremacy of North African rulers. Secondly, Islam provided them effective means to increase their power. Literacy enabled the goverment of large empires, and Islam could be used as unifying cult within the multiethnic and multireligious states.
In Western Africa, Islam remained for a long time as a cult of the courts and commercial centres: Mali, Songhay and Bornu were no Muslim states, although medieval Arabic writers depicted them as such. Actually, the rulers were not anxious to spread the new religion among their subjects, since it had endangered their position. Contrariwise, the West African rulers had to play all the time a double role: in relation to Arab traders and rulers they acted as pious Muslims, but in relation to their own subjects they carefully fulfilled their duties as divine kings. In this way, Islam caused an internal tension in West Africa societies which occasionally broke out as civil wars, if the ruler could not maintain the balancy between the Muslim and traditionalist cliques. However, the adoption of Islam had not only political consequences but it also linked Western Africa culturally to the Islamic world and gave West Africans a concrete reason to cross the Sahara for the first time in their history.

Timbuktu: The El Dorado of Africa

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").


Timbuktu: The El Dorado of Africa.

Timbuktu is widely used to describe a place extremely far away and regarded by many as a myth. In reality it's a city in Mali, West Africa, of such great historical importance that in 1988 it was designated a World Heritage Site.
Situated on the southernmost edge of the Sahara Desert, Timbuktu is about eight miles from the Niger River -- closer during the rainy season. It was founded in the twelfth century by Tuareg nomads. By the fourteenth century it had became a major center for the trans-Sahara gold and salt trade as well Islamic scholarship and culture, the Oxford University of the Sahara, despite the rise and fall of powerful dynasties around it.
When the emperor Mansa Musa undertook an extravagant pilgrimage with an entourage of thousands from Timbuktu to Mecca via Cairo in 1324, he transformed European and Arabian perceptions about West Africa. Stopping in Cairo to visit the sultan, Musa gave away so much gold that the Egyptian money market crashed.
Musa built the Great Mosque (Djinguereber) and commissioned the Granada architect Abu Ishaq asSahil to design the Sankore mosque. The Sankore University was established around the mosque. The Great Mosque has been rebuilt many times, but the Sankore mosque still stands, probably because it was built around a wooden framework which aids the repairs necessary after the annual rains.



By the 1450s, the population reached some 100,000, a quarter of these were scholars, many of whom had studied in Egypt or Mecca. The city reached its peak during the Askia period (1403-1591). Merchants from North Africa came to trade salt, cloth and horses for gold and slaves. Leo Africanus, a Muslim from Granada, left a account of his visit in 1526, which renewed European interest in the "city of gold".
In 1591 Morocco captured Timbuktu. In 1593 its scholars were arrested on suspicion of disloyalty, some were killed and others exiled to Morocco. Even more devastating was the inability of the Moroccan troops in control of the city to protect it from repeated attacks by the Bambara, Fulani, and Tuareg. Timbuktu was in decline.
European explorers were still attempting to reach Africa's 'city of gold' but none had survived. In 1788 a group of Englishmen formed the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, primarily to discover the source of the Niger and reach Timbuktu. The race was on.
Most famous of the failures was Mungo Park. Robbed, tortured by warlords, and finally drowned when his raft was attacked, he did at least get to the Niger, "glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster."
In 1824 the Geographical Society of Paris offered a considerable reward for the first European to visit Timbuktu and return to tell their tale. The Scottish explorer Gordon Laing is acknowledged as the first European to reach Timbuktu, in 1826. He'd survived a savage attack by Tuareg nomads on his journey from Tripoli to Timbuktu, but was murdered two days after leaving the city.

It was only in 1828 that the first European who lived to tell the tale reached Timbuktu. The French explorer, René-Auguste Caillié disguised himself as an Arab -- he had studied Islam and could speak Arabic. His journey from the coast of West Africa to Timbuktu took him a year (he was ill for five months) but he was so unimpressed he spent only two weeks in the city. His three volumes of his adventures were published in 1830 and received the Geographical Society of Paris' prize.

Other explorers, such as the German geographer Heinrich Barth who visited the city during his five-year trek across Africa, also found the city an anticlimax. A city of mud-walled buildings in the middle of a harsh desert, not a city of gold. (View some illustration from his book Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa.)

Timbuktu was captured by the French in 1894 who partly restored the city; in 1960 it became part of the independent Republic of Mali. Today Timbuktu is still on the "must-do" list of adventurous travellers, but few have any idea why such a desolate city should be. With the restoration efforts started in the late 1990s to reclaim some of Timbuktu's heritage from the sands of the Sahara, there is hope that this can change.

Why do Black Americans embrace Islam? Part 2

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").


Why do Black Americans embrace Islam?


It was after all,the Muslim Islamic tribes of Africa that sold Black Africans into slavery to begin with.And Muslims still look down upon the black race as inferior.

The Role of Islam in African Slavery.



Part 2 – Using slaves on the African continent.
By Alistair Boddy-Evans.

The most favored of all Islamic slaves seems to have been the military slave -- although performers were the most privileged. By the ninth century slave armies were in use across the whole of the Islamic Empire. The early slave armies tended to be white, taken from Russia and eastern Europe. However, the first independent Muslim ruler of Egypt relied on black slaves and at his death is said to have left 24,000 (white) Mamaluks and 45,000 Nubian military slaves. In north Africa the source of black slaves from Nubia and Sudan were too convenient to ignore. At the time of the Fatimid defeat, in the twelfth century, black troops formed the majority of the army. By the fifteenth century black military slaves were being favored with the use in battle of firearms (the Mamaluks refused to use such dishonorable weapons). Slave troops in Tunisia in the seventeenth century even included cavalry, and the Sultan of Morocco is recorded as having an army of 250,000 black slaves.

Even as late as the mid-nineteenth century, Egyptian rulers actively recruited black slaves into their army -- for example, they were included in the Egyptian expeditionary force sent by Sa'id Pasha to Mexico in support of the French in 1863.
The transatlantic slave trade sent Arab slavers into overdrive, here was a new market which could be exploited. When the Europeans abolished slavery in the 1800's, the taking of slaves in Africa continued. The eradication of such practices was cited as a major justification by the Europeans for the colonization of Africa. Certainly Britain had a significant fleet of ships patrolling the coasts against such slave traders.

Encyclopaedia Britannia's Historical Survey of Slavery1 points out that "The European colonization movement of the second half of the 19th century put an end to slavery in many parts of Africa..." and that "the British turned their attention back to Africa. They moved onto the continent, took control of those governments that were thriving on slavery, and attempted to abolish the institution." Further "in the 1870's British missionaries moved into Malawi, the place of origin of the Indian Ocean Islamic slave trade, in an attempt to interdict it at its source... In Dahomey the French abolition of slavery resulted in the cessation of ceremonial human sacrifice."

Unfortunately this was not enough for "some parts of Africa and much of the Islamic world retained slavery at the end of World War I. For this reason the League of Nations and later the United Nations took the final extinction of slavery to be one of their obligations. The League had considerable success in Africa, with the assistance of the colonial powers and by the late 1930's slavery was abolished in Liberia and Ethiopia". The problem was such that "After World War II the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights ... proclaimed the immorality and the illegality of slavery. Slavery was abolished in most Islamic countries, although it persisted in Saudi Arabia into the 1960's. It finally was made illegal in the Arabian Peninsula in 1962."

Why do Black Americans embrace Islam? Part 1

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").


Why do Black Americans embrace Islam?


It was after all,the Muslim Islamic tribes of Africa that sold Black Africans into slavery to begin with.And Muslims still look down upon the black race as inferior.

The Role of Islam in African Slavery.



Part 1 – Obtaining slaves on the African continent
By Alistair Boddy-Evans,

Slavery has been rife throughout all of ancient history. Most, if not all, ancient civilizations practiced this institution and it is described (and defended) in early writings of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. It was also practiced by early societies in central America and Africa. (See Bernard Lewis's work Race and Slavery in the Middle East1 for a detailed chapter of the origins and practices of slavery.)
The Qur'an prescribes a humanitarian approach to slavery -- free men could not be enslaved, and those faithful to foreign religions could live as protected persons, dhimmis, under Muslim rule (as long as they maintained payment of taxes called Kharaj and Jizya). However, the spread of the Islamic Empire resulted in a much harsher interpretation of the law. For example, if a dhimmis was unable to pay the taxes they could be enslaved, and people from outside the borders of the Islamic Empire were considered an acceptable source of slaves.

Although the law required owners to treat slaves well and provide medical treatment, a slave had no right to be heard in court (testimony was forbidden by slaves), had no right to property, could marry only with permission of their owner, and was considered to be a chattel, that is the (moveable) property, of the slave owner. Conversion to Islam did not automatically give a slave freedom nor did it confer freedom to their children. Whilst highly educated slaves and those in the military did win their freedom, those used for basic duties rarely achieved freedom. In addition, the recorded mortality rate was high -- this was still significant even as late as the nineteenth century and was remarked upon by western travelers in North Africa and Egypt.

Slaves were obtained through conquest, tribute from vassal states (in the first such treaty, Nubia was required to provide hundreds of male and female slaves), offspring (children of slaves were also slaves, but since many slaves were castrated this was not as common as it had been in the Roman empire), and purchase. The latter method provided the majority of slaves, and at the borders of the Islamic Empire vast number of new slaves were castrated ready for sale (Islamic law did not allow mutilation of slaves, so it was done before they crossed the border). The majority of these slaves came from Europe and Africa -- there were always enterprising locals ready to kidnap or capture their fellow countrymen.
Black Africans were transported to the Islamic empire across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia from West Africa, from Chad to Libya, along the Nile from East Africa, and up the coast of East Africa to the Persian Gulf. This trade had been well entrenched for over 600 years before Europeans arrived, and had driven the rapid expansion of Islam across North Africa.

By the time of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of slaves were obtained by raiding in Africa. Russian expansion had put an end to the source of "exceptionally beautiful" female and "brave" male slaves from the Caucasians -- the women were highly prised in the harem, the men in the military. The great trade networks across north Africa were as much to do with the safe transportation of slaves as other goods. An analysis of prices at various slave markets shows that eunuchs fetched higher prices than other males, encouraging the castration of slaves before export.
Documentation suggests that slaves throughout Islamic world were mainly used for menial domestic and commercial purposes. Eunuchs were especially prised for bodyguards and confidential servants; women as concubines and menials. A Muslim slave owner was entitled by law to use slaves for sexual pleasure.
As primary source material becomes available to Western scholars, the bias towards urban slaves is being questioned. Records also show that thousands of slaves were used in gangs for agriculture and mining. Large landowners and rulers used thousands of such slaves, usually in dire conditions: "of the Saharan salt mines it is said that no slave lived there for more than five years.

Lies My Teacher Told Me:

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.


Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
by James W. Loewen. Simon & Schuster.
Note: The following are notes from the above book. I found the book seminal, eye-opening, life-changing. I recommend that you buy and read the entire book. Only by reading the entire book will you get the whole picture. The following quotes, I hope, will whet your appetite. --Colby Glass

"..the teaching of history, more than any other discipline, is dominated by textbooks... the books are boring... [they] exclude conflict or real suspense. They leave out anything that might reflect badly upon our national character" (13).


Helen Keller
"Keller.. never wavered in her belief that our society needed radical change.. she helped found the American Civil Liberties Union to fight for the free speech of others. She sent $100 to the NAACP with a letter of support... She supported Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist candidate, in each of his campaigns for the presidency..
"One may not agree with Helen Keller's positions. her praise of the USSR now seems naive, embarrasing, to some even treasonous. But she was a radical--a fact few Americans know.." (22).


Woodrow Wilson
".. two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military interventions in foreign countries" (23).
"Under Wilson, the United States intervened in Latin America more often than at any other time in our history.. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson.. started sending secret monetary aid to the "White" side of the Russian civil war... This aggression fueled the suspicions that motivated the Soviets during the Cold War..." (23-4).
"..Wilson's interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas.." (24).
"He was an outspoken white supremacist--his wife was even worse--and told "darky" stories in cabinet meetings" (27).
"Spurred by Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia reestablished the Ku Klux Klan. The racism seeping down from the White House encouraged this klan.." (28).
"Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called "hyphenated Americans"" (29).
"To oppose America's participation in World War I, or even to be pessimistic about it, was dangerous. The Creel Committee... After World War I, the Wilson administration's attacks on civil liberties increased, now with anticommunism as the excuse. Neither before nor since these campaigns has the United States come closer to being a police state" (30).
"Because heroification prevents textbooks from showing Wilson's shortcomings, textbooks are hard pressed to explain the results of the 1920 election. James Cox, the Democratic candidate who was Wilson's would-be successor, was crushed by the nonentity Warren G. Harding, who never even campaigned. [It was] the biggest landslide in the history of American presidential politics" (31).


"Could it be that we don't want to think badly
of Woodrow Wilson... We don't want complicated icons.
"People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must
reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out.
"Conclusions are not always pleasant"" (35).
Christopher Columbus
Columbus discovered America and proved that the earth was not flat... Right?
We tend to "underplay previous explorers" (39). There were probably 15 or more individuals and groups that "discovered" and settled America before Columbus.
"Even if Columbus had never sailed, other Europeans would have soon reached the Americas... Columbus's voyage.. was epoch-making because of the way in which Europe responded" (39).
"The changes in Europe not only prompted Columbus's voyage.. they also paved the way for Europe's domination of the world for the next five hundred years. Except for the invention of agriculture, this was probably the most consequential development in human history" (41-2).
"..new and more deadly forms of smallpox and bubonic plague had arisen in Europe.. Passed on to those the Europeans met, these diseases helped Europe conquer the Americas and, later, the islands of the Pacific" (44).
"Columbus claimed everything he saw right off the boat. When textbooks celebrate this process, they imply that taking the land and dominating the indians was inevitable if not natural" (44).
"Most important, [Columbus's] prupose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale. If textbooks included these facts, they might induce students to think intelligently about why the West dominates the world today" (45).
Washington Irving created the lie that people thought the earth was flat until Columbus proved that it was round (57).
What is the real significance of Columbus's reaching the Americas? What made his trip different than the fifteen discoverers who preceded him?
"Christopher Columbus introduced two phenomena that revolutionized race relations and transformed the modern world: the taking of land, wealth, and labor from indigenous peoples, leading to their near extermination, and the transatlantic slave trade, which created a racial underclass" (60).
"When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton--whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose" (61).
"..attempts at resistance gave Columbus an excuse to make war... For this he chose 200 foot soldiers and 20 cavalry, with many crossbows and small cannon, lances, and swords, and a still more terrible weapon against the Indians, in addition to the horses: this was 20 hunting dogs, who were turned loose and immediately tore the Indians apart" (61).
"Columbus.. initiated a great slave raid. They rounded up 1,500 Arawaks, then selected the 500 best specimines (of whom 200 would die en route to Spain. Another 500 were chosen as slaves for the Spaniards staying on the island" (62).
"Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food. Columbus, upset because he could not locate the gold he was certain was on the island, set up a tribute system... The Indians all promised to pay tribute.. every three months... With a fresh token, an Indian was safe for three months, much of which time would be devoted to collecting more gold... the Spanish punished those whose tokens had expired: they cut off their hands" (62).
"Columbus installed the encomienda system, in which he granted or "commended" entire Indian villages to individual colonists or groups of colonists... On Haiti the colonists made the Indians mine gold for them, raise Spanish food, and even carry them everywhere they went" (63). An Spanish observer wrote that "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured [under this virtual slavery], the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth... Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery"" (63).
"Estimates of Haiti's pre-Columbian population range as high as 8,000,000 people... a census of Indian adults in 1496.. came up with 1,100,000... "By 1516," according to Benjamin Keen, "thanks to the sinister Indian slave trade and labor policies initiated by Columbus, only some 12,000 remained." Las Casas tells us that fewer than 200 Indians were alive in 1542. By 1555, they were all gone" (63).
".. one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history" (64).
"Columbus not only sent the first slaves across the Atlantic, he probably sent more slaves--about five thousand--than any other individual... other nations rushed to emulate Columbus" (64).
"As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, "... it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand"" (65).
"Columbus is not a hero in Mexico... Why not? Because Mexico is also much more Indian than the United States, and Mexicans perceive Columbus as white and European. "No sensible Indian person," wrote George P. Horse Capture, "can celebrate the arrival of Columbus." Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history" (70).
"The worshipful biographical vignettes of Columbus in our textbooks serve to indoctrinate students into a mindless endorsement of colonialism... the Columbus myth allows us to accept the contemporary division of the world into developed and underdeveloped spheres as natural and given, rather than a historical product issuing from a process that began with Columbus's first voyage" (70).

Thanksgiving
The Thanksgiving myth is that the Pilgrims settled the United States in 1620. They had to fight off indians repeatedly.
"Few Americans know that one-third of the United States, from San Francisco to Arkansas to Natchez to Florida, has been Spanish longer than it has been "American," and that Hispanic Americans lived here before the first ancestor of the Daughters of the American Revolution ever left England" (77). British and French fisherman, landing in Massachusetts for fresh water and supplies in 1617, brought the plague to the American indians. "Within three years the plague wiped out between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants of coastal New England... Unable to cope with so many corpses, the survivors abandoned their villages" (81).
What the Pilgrims found were settled farms, with the crops already planted and growing, deserted by Indians fleeing the plague. The Pilgrims "found it easy to infer that God was on their side. John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, called the plague "Miraculous"" (81).
"These epidemcs probably constituted the most important geopolitical event of the early seventeenth century. Their net result was that the British, for their first fifty years in New England, would face no real Indian challenge" (81).
The plagues "continued west, racing in advance of the line of culture contact... Disease played the same crucial role in Mexico and Peru as it did in Massachusetts... When the Spanish marched into Tenochtitlan [now Mexico City], there were so many bodies [dead from the plague] that they had to walk on them" (82-3).
"..the population of the Americas [was] one hundred million in 1492.. Europe had only about seventy million people when Columbus set forth. The Europeans' advantages in military and social technology might have enabled them to dominate the Americas.. but not to "settle" the hemisphere. For that, the plague was required" (83).
".. the land was, in reality, not a virgin wilderness, but recently widowed" (84).
We also tend, in favor of the Pilgrims, to ignore Jamestown which was settled first. "Historians could hardly tout Virginia... The Virginians' relations with the Indians were particularly unsavory...the early Virginians engaged in bickering, sloth, even cannibalism. They spent their early days digging random holes in the ground, haplessly looking for gold instead of planting crops. Soon they were starving and digging up putrid Indian corpses to eat or renting themselves out to Indian families as servants" (89-90).
"..the Pilgrims hardly "started from scratch" in a "wilderness." Throughout southern New England, Native Americans had repeatedly burned the underbrush, creating a parklike environment... They chose Plymouth because of its beautiful cleared fields, recently planted in corn, and its useful harbor and "brook of fresh water." It was a lovely site for a town. Indeed, until the plaque, it had been a town.." (90). One of the first things the Pilgrims did was go through the town, looting the possessions of the Indians. "..the Pilgrims continued to rob graves for years" (91).
"More than any other celebration.. Thanksgiving celebrates our ethnocentrism... God on our side, civilization wrested from wilderness, order from disorder, through hard work and good Pilgrim character traits" (93).

Native Americans
"Historically, American Indians have been the most lied-about subset of our population" (99).
Did Europeans "civilize" the Americas? Actually, anthropologists tell us that "hunters and gatherers were relatively peaceful, compared to agriculturalists, and that modern societies were more warlike still. Thus violence increases with civilization" (101-2).
"..textbooks cannot resist contrasting "primitive" Americans with modern Europeans" (102).
"In what ways do we prefer the civilized Third Reich to the more primitive Arawak nation that Columbus encountered? If we refuse to label the Third Reich civilized, are we not using the term to imply a certain comity? If so, we must consider the Arawaks civilized, and we must also consider Columbus and his Spaniards primitive is not savage" (102).
"Europeans persuaded Natives to specialize in the fur and slave trades. Native Americans were better hunters and trappers than Europeans, and with the guns the Europeans sold them, they became better still. Other Native skills began to atrophy" (103).
"..because whites "demanded institutions reflective of their own with which to relate," many Native groups strengthened their tribal governments... New confederations and nations developed.. The tribes also became more male- dominated, in imitation of Europeans.. [there was] an escalation of Indian warfare... [the slave trade helped] to deagriculturize Native Americans. To avoid being targets for capture, Indians abandoned their cornfields and their villages" (105-6).
"Europeans did not "civilize" or "settle" roaming Indians, but had the opposite impact" (107).
"..from the start in Virginia.. settlers fled to Indian villages rather than endure the rigors of life among the autocratic English. Indeed, many white and black newcomers chose to live an Indian lifestyle... some Natives chose to live among whites.. The migration was mostly the other way, however.. Europeans were always trying to stop the outflow. Hernando De Soto had to post guards to keep his men and women from defecting to Native societies... right up to the end of independent Indian nationahood in 1890, whites continued to defect, and whites who lived an Indian lifestyle, such as Daniel Boone, became cultural heroes in white society" (109).
"Not one American history textbook mentions the attraction of Native societies to European Americans and African Americans" (109).
"According to Benjamin Franklin, "All their government is by Counsel of the Sages. There is no Force; there are no Prisons, no officers to compel Obedience, or inflict Punishment." Probably foremost, the lack of hierarchy in the Native socieites in the eastern United States attracted the admiration of European observers. Frontiersmen were taken with the extent to which Native Americans enjoyed freedom as individuals. Women were also accorded more status and power.. than in white societies of the time" (109-110).
Lt. Gov. Cadwallader Colden of New York in 1727 said, "Here we see the natural Origin of all Power and Authority among a free People" (110).


"After Col. Henry Bouquet defeated the Ohio Indians at Bushy Run in 1763, he demanded the release of all white captives. Most of them, especially the children, had to be "bound hand and foot" and forcibly returned to white society" (110).
"Indeed, Native American ideas may be partly responsible for our democratic institutions. We have seen how Native ideas of liberty, fraternity, and equality found their way to Europe to influence social philosophers such as Thomas More, Locke, Montaigne, Montesquieu, and Rousseau... Through 150 years of colonial contact, the Iroquois League stood before the colonies as an object lesson in how to govern a large domain democratically" (111).
"Both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention referred openly to Iroquois ideas and imagery... As a symbol of the new United States, Americans chose the eagle clutching a bundle of arrows. They knew that both the eagle and the arrows were symbols of the Iroquois League... John Mohawk has argued that American Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting tradition, free speech, democracy, and "all those things which got attached to the Bill of Rights." Without the Native example, "do you really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among a people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of intolerance of questions of religion?"" (111-112).
"For a hundred years after our Revolution, Americans credited Native Americans as a source of their democratic institutions... When colonists took action to oppose unjust authority, as in the Boston Tea Party.. they chose to dress as Indians, not to blame Indians for the demonstrations but to appropriate a symbol identified with liberty" (112).
"Indian warfare absorbed 80 percent of the entire federal budget during George Washington's administration and dogged his successors for a century as a major issue and expense... [in many cases] the settlers were Native American, the scalpers white" (116).
"All the textbooks tell how Jefferson "doubled the size of the United States by buying Louisiana from France." Not one points out that it was not France's land to sell--it was Indian land... Indeed, France did not really sell Louisiana for $15,000,000. France merely sold its claim to the territory... Equally Eurocentric are the maps textbooks use to show the Lewis and Clark expedition. They make Native American invisible, implying that the United States bought vacant land from the French... [Textbooks imply that the Indians were naive about land ownership, but] the problem lay in whites' not abiding by accepted concepts of land ownership" (123).
"The most important cause of the War of 1812.. was land-- Indian land... The United States fought five of the seven major land battles of the War of 1812 primarily against Native Americans... [a] result of the War of 1812 was the loss of part of our history. A century of learning [from Native Americans] was coming to a close... until 1815 the word Americans had generally been used to refer to Native Americans; after 1815 it meant European Americans... Carleton Beals has written that "our acquiescence in Indian dispossession has molded the American character." ... destroyed our national idealism. From 1815 on, instead of spreading democracy, we exported the ideology of white supremacy. Gradually we sought American hegemony over Mexico, the Philippines, much of the Caribbean basin, and, indirectly, over other nations... We also have to admit that Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for Indians in the west "and often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination--by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies" (123-126).
Yet we "still stereotype Native Americans as roaming primitive hunting folk, unfortunate victims of progress" (132).
For more on this topic, read Helen Hunt Jackson's famous indictment of Native American policies, A Century of Dishonor.
Also, see her fictional account of the racism Mexicans and Indians both endured at the hands of White and Mexican settlers, Ramona.

Invisibility of Racism
"Americans seem perpetually startled at slavery. Children are shocked to learn that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves... Very few adults today realize that our society has been slave much longer than it has been free.. The first colony to legalize slavery was not Virginia but Massachusetts.. Wall Street was the marketplace where owners could hire out their slaves by the day or week" (142).
"Textbooks canonize Patrick Henry for his "Give me liberty or give me death" speech. Not one tells us that eight months after delivering the speech he ordered "diligent patrols" to keep Virginia slaves from accepting the British offer of freedom to those who would join their side" (146).
"..slavery and its concomitant ideas, which legitimated hierarchy and dominance, saped our Revolutionary idealism. Most textbooks never hint at this clash of ideas, let alone at its impact on our foreign policy" (149).
"For our first seventy years as a nation.. slavery made our foreign policy more sympathetic with imperialism than with self-determination" (152).
"Slavery was also perhaps the key factor in the Texas War (1835-36). The freedom for which Davy Crockett, James Bowie, and the rest fought for at the Alamo was the freedom to own slaves!" (151).
Racism became dominant in the United States between 1890 and 1920 "when African Americans were again put back into second-class citizenship... In the 1880s and 1890s minstrel shows featuring bumbling, mislocuting whites in blackface grew wildly popular from New England to California. By presenting heavily caricatured images of African Americans who were happy on the plantation and lost and incompetent off it, these shows demeaned black ability" (160-164).
"In politics, the white electorate had become so racist by 1892 that the Democratic candidate, Grover Cleveland, won the White House partly by tarring Republicans with their attempts to guarantee civil rights to African Americans" (164).
"Aided by Birth of a Nation, which opened in 1915, the Ku Klux Klan rose to its zenith, boasting over a million members. The KKK openly dominated the state government of Indiana for a time, and it proudly inducted Pres. Warren G. Harding as a member in a White House ceremony... the 1921 riot in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which whites dropped dynamite from an airplane onto a black ghetto, killing more than 75 people and destroying more than 1,100 homes.. Some small communities in the Midwest and West became "sundown" towns, informally threatening African Americans with death if they remained overnight" (165). [I got an email from Rachel Chinnock, who wished to clarify the facts about the Tulsa riots. Here is what she said: "I lived in Tulsa and did a bit of research on this tragic event and wish to make only one correction to your current text. The area upon which white supremacists and KKK members dropped dynamite was not a “black ghetto” but rather one of the most sophisticated black areas at that time (and, arguably, the most sophisticated community in the state of Oklahoma at that time) known as “Black Wall Street” or now the “Greenwood District.” Here, they were well-dressed, highly-educated, wealthy, and mannerly. Business flourished, with black-owned stores, cinemas, pharmacies, airport, banks, libraries, schools, etc."]
"..race relations in the United States systematically worsened for almost half a century." Most textbooks state that "Jackie Robinson was "the first black baseball player ever allowed in the major leagues."" But he wasn't. Students are given "the unmistakable [impression] of generally uninterrupted progress to the present" (167).
"The notion of progress suffuses textbook treatments of black-white relations, implying that race relations have somehow steadily improved on their own. This cheery optimism only compounds the problem, because whites can infer that racism is over" (169).

Do You Have A “Slave” Mentality? 8 Reasons Why You Might.

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").



Do You Have A “Slave” Mentality? 8 Reasons Why You Might.

If this doesn’t not apply to you then don’t get your boy shorts, thongs, boxers or briefs in a tiffy. This is just an analysis that I have come to from various courses , and life experience in general. This does not apply to all Black people but it definitely explains some behaviors of ours in my opinion. Feel free to add on.
1. Competitive Nature
Competitive among one another, also known as crabs in a barrel complex. Often when people of color see another person of color doing well, instead of us congratulating him we hate, or become envious. We become insulted that they may have or appear to be surpassing us and want to knock them off their hustle. This is a direct result of us being paired against each other during slavery.
2. The whole light skin vs. dark skin crap
This one should be the most obvious. It has been well documented that fairer skin Blacks were favored over those with darker complexions. This same ideology is sometimes exercised in today’s society. Those with lighter complexions are often saw as being safer, less threatening, more attractive, more intelligent. Simply because their complexion is closer to that of a Caucasian.

3. Non- attachment to kids
During slavery kids were taken away not long after birth. This meant that Black women were unable to build a bond with their child. They had to learn to be cold to their children in some regard because there always was that chance that the child would be taken away or killed. Either way the chances that a Mother would never see her child again were high. I see that this has affected some Black women to this day because on some level, they can demonstrate a coldness to their children. Almost as if the child is a burden or a bother that they themselves should not be required to handle. Slavery, to me, created this distance that some Black mothers have with their children.
4. Complexities in Black love
Black men and women were not allowed to marry. In fact we often had to hide the fact that we were dating one another and if we dared marry someone we had to do the jump the broom ceremony which was not legally binding. So in essence our marriage was not seen as legal as well. In doing this they ripped black men from the home and never allowed them to see themselves as MEN. They were constantly referred to as “boy” and other derogatory terms. After hearing this for centuries, one starts to identify themselves with those negative terms. So some are forever trapped in this boy like stage and never want to grow. Some are unable to handle responsibilities of an adult nature and feel that they should never have to no matter their age. This separation also caused more tension between Black men and women. How are we suppose to know how to truly love one another if for years it was punishable by death if we acknowledged the other sex unless it was for breeding purposes?
5. Black men spreading their seeds
Because Black men were seen as breeders, they were the instructed to have sex with other slave women who they may not have necessarily had or wanted a relationship with them in order to produce more children which would be mean more slaves. The slave owners wanted the Black men to be whores. They taught them how to be whores. This idea of spreading yourself with various women and making babies with various women is still present today. Sure we do not have someone forcing us to do it but the urge is still there. This is why the capacity for a man to go from woman to woman and make babies with each of them is not a foreign idea. In fact it is much more accepted because it Is what Black men were trained to do.
When Friends Grow Apart
6. Eating that fat s**t
I myself love sweet potatoes and greens, and can even get with chitterlings from time to time. I love soul food. But let’s face it. There are certain soul food menu items that are unhealthy and not meant to be ate as often as we do. Eating these foods daily during slavery were out of necessity for survival as we were only given the scraps and less desirable portions of meats and foods. However, constant consumption of these foods also led to our high blood pressure, diabetes also known as ‘the sugars”, heart issues, and a tendency to be overweight. I am not suggesting that we should not eat the foods at all, but the constant consumption of these foods is what leads to many of our health issues. Some soul food items are fatty, too salty, and loaded with other undesirables that were not meant to be consumed daily.

7. White women on a pedestal
“Mirror mirror on the wall.. Who is the fairest of them all? Why…You are White woman.” During slavery White women were seen as goddesses and obviously highly favored over Black women in every way. They were the fairest of them all and not to be attained by a lowly Black man. What is withheld from a person for so long often becomes the object of their obsession. I’m not saying that all Black men are obsessed with White women or anything dramatic of that nature. I am saying that there is a direct correlation as to why SOME not all Black men feel that they have struck gold once they have a White woman on their arms. Some use this as a tool to stroke their egos and offer themselves self worth. Finally they can have something that for years they were not allowed to even stare at for too long nonetheless have sex with and make babies.
8. No we don’t want to work
Since slavery many Blacks have been forced to work for Whites for survival reasons or out of necessity. Some are able to adjust while others have an inherent desire to do whatever it takes to scheme, plot and manipulate the system for however long in order to receive free money and never truly have to work a job. There is a deep resentment towards having to work for “Whitey” by Blacks because we feel as though we have been doing that since the beginning of time by force.

11 COMPANIES THAT SURPRISINGLY COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").



11 COMPANIES THAT SURPRISINGLY COLLABORATED WITH THE NAZIS.



I saw this article today; it's about a controversy over the German insurance company Allianz buying the naming rights to the new New York Giants and Jets football stadium.

That's controversial because Allianz has very famous Nazi ties -- they insured Auschwitz, their CEO was one of Hitler's advisers, and, during the Holocaust, instead of paying life insurance benefits to Jews, they sent that money straight to the Nazis.

Jewish groups don't want Allianz getting the naming rights to the new Meadowlands. Abe Foxman, the head of the Anti-Defanation League, says, quote, "It would be an insult. It's putting their name in lights for generations to come."

Since World War Two ended, Allianz has officially apologized for its role in the Holocaust and has paid several million dollars in restitution. Which brings me to a larger point here: At what point should we say to Nazi collaborating companies, "OK. You've apologized, you've paid, none of your current employees worked with the Nazis, it's time to move on"?

Because there are a TON of companies that worked with the Nazis. Way more than the Allianz and the other 11 I'm about to talk about here. They've all apologized. A lot have paid restitution. Two generations have passed.

I won't comment on whether I think people should forgive them... boycott them... continue to patronize them, but begrudgingly... or continue to patronize them with statements like, "Wow, Allianz, your insurance is SO good, we're SO impressed with what you're doing. And if it wasn't for the 800 other, better insurance companies out there, we'd TOTALLY sign up with you."

That's up to you. I'm just puttin' the information out there. Here are 11 companies that you may not realize collaborated with the Nazis.



1. The 12 Nazi collaborating companies featured in this article.
Kodak. During World War Two, Kodak's German branch used slave laborers from concentration camps. Several of their other European branches did heavy business with the Nazi government.

And Wilhelm Keppler, one of Hitler's top economic advisers, had deep ties in Kodak. When Nazism began, Keppler advised Kodak and several other U.S. companies that they'd benefit by firing all of their Jewish employees. (Source: The Nation)

2. Hugo Boss. In the 1930s, Hugo Boss started making Nazi uniforms. The reason: Hugo Boss himself had joined the Nazi party, and got a contract to make the Hitler Youth, storm trooper and SS uniforms.

That was a huge boon for Hugo Boss... he got the contract just eight years after founding his company... and that infusion of business helped take the company to another level.

The Nazi uniform manufacturing went so well that Hugo Boss ended up needing to bring in slave laborers in Poland and France to help out at the factory.

In 1997, Hugo's son, Siegfried Boss, told an Austrian news magazine, "Of course my father belonged to the Nazi party. But who didn't belong back then?" (Source: New York Times)

3. Volkswagen. Ferdinand Porsche, the man behind Volkswagen and Porsche, met with Hitler in 1934, to discuss the creation of a "people's car." (That's the English translation of Volkswagen.)

Hitler told Porsche to make the car with a streamlined shape, "like a beetle." And that's the genesis of the Volkswagen Beetle... it wasn't just designed for the Nazis, Hitler NAMED it.

During World War Two, it's believed that as many as four out of every five workers at Volkswagen's plants were slave laborers. Ferdinand Porsche even had a direct connection to Heinrich Himmler, one of the leaders of the SS, to directly request slaves from Auschwitz. (Source: The Straight Dope)

4. Bayer. During the Holocaust, a German company called IG Farben manufactured the Zyklon B gas used in the Nazi gas chambers. They also funded and helped with Josef Mengele's "experiments" on concentration camp prisoners.

IG Farben is the company that turned the single largest profit from work with the Nazis. After the War, the company was broken up. Bayer was one of its divisions, and went on to become its own company.

Oh... and aspirin was founded by a Bayer employee, Arthur Eichengrun. But Eichengrun was Jewish, and Bayer didn't want to admit that a Jewish guy created the one product that keeps their company in business. So, to this day, Bayer officially gives credit to Felix Hoffman, a nice Aryan man, for inventing aspirin. (Source: Alliance for Human Research Protection, Pharmaceutical Achievers)

5. Siemens. Siemens took slave laborers during the Holocaust and had them help construct the gas chambers that would kill them and their families. Good people over there.

Siemens also has the single biggest post-Holocaust moment of insensitivity of any of the companies on this list. In 2001, they tried to trademark the word "Zyklon" (which means "cyclone" in German) to become the name a new line of products... including a line of gas ovens.

Zyklon, of course, being the name of the poison gas used in their gas chambers during the Holocaust.

A week later, after several watchdog groups appropriately freaked out, Siemens withdrew the application. They said they never drew the connection between the Zyklon B gas used during the Holocaust and their proposed Zyklon line of products. (Source: BBC)

6. Coca-Cola, specifically Fanta. Coke played both sides during World War Two... they supported the American troops but also kept making soda for the Nazis. Then, in 1941, the German branch of Coke ran out of syrup, and couldn't get any from America because of wartime restrictions.

So they invented a new drink, specifically for the Nazis: A fruit-flavored soda called Fanta.

That's right: Long before Fanta was associated with a bunch of exotic women singing a god-awful jingle, it was the unofficial drink of Nazi Germany. (Source: New Statesman)

7. Ford. Henry Ford is a pretty legendary anti-Semite, so this makes sense. He was Hitler's most famous foreign backer. On his 75th birthday, in 1938, Ford received a Nazi medal, designed for "distinguished foreigners."

He profiteered off both sides of the War -- he was producing vehicles for the Nazis AND for the Allies.

I'm wondering if, in a completely misguided piece of logic, Allianz points to the Detroit Lions giving Ford the naming rights to their stadium as a reason why they should get the rights to the Meadowlands. (Source: Reformed Theology)

8. Standard Oil. The Luftwaffe needed tetraethyl lead gas in order to get their planes off the ground. Standard Oil was one of only three companies that could manufacture that type of fuel. So they did.

Without them, the German air force never could've even gotten their planes off the ground.

When Standard Oil was dissolved as a monopoly, it led to ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, all of which are still around today. (But fortunately, their parent company's past decision to make incredible profits off of war have not carried on.) (Source: MIT's Thistle)

9. Chase bank. A lot of banks sided with the Nazis during World War Two. Chase is the most prominent.

They froze European Jewish customers' accounts and were extremely cooperative in providing banking service to Germany. (Source: New York Times)

10. IBM. IBM custom-build machines for the Nazis that they could use to track everything... from oil supplies to train schedules into death camps to Jewish bank accounts to individual Holocaust victims themselves.

In September of 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, the "New York Times" reported that three million Jews were going to be "immediately removed" from Poland and were likely going to be "exterminat[ed]."

IBM's reaction? An internal memo saying that, due to that "situation", they really needed to step up production on high-speed alphabetizing equipment. (Source: CNet)

11. Random House publishing. Random House's parent company, Bertelsmann A.G., worked for the Nazis... they published Hitler propaganda, and a book called "Sterilization and Euthanasia: A Contribution to Applied Christian Ethics".

Bertelsmann still owns and operates several companies. I picked Random House because they drew controversy in 1997 when they decided to expand the definition of Nazi in Webster's Dictionary.

Eleven years ago, they added the colloquial, softened definition of "a person who is fanatically dedicated to or seeks to control a specified activity, practice, etc." (Think "Soup Nazi".)

The Anti-Defamation League called that expanded definition offensive... especially when added by a company with Nazi ties... they said it, quote, "trivializes and denies the murderous intent and actions of the Nazi regime... it also cheapens the language by allowing people to reach for a quick word fix... [and] lends a helping hand to those whose aim is to prove that the Nazis were really not such terrible people." (Source: New York Observer, ADL)

六六三十六，数中有术，术中有数。

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

"Is god willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?" Epicurus


The Thirty-Six Strategies

六六三十六，数中有术，术中有数。
阴阳燮理，机在其中。机不可设，设则不中。
"The Thirty-Six Strategies" is a a Chinese collection of 36 proverbs commented as militaristic tactics. Often attributed to Sun Tzu, this is generally rejected by scholars since Sun Tzu lived during the Spring and Autumn Period of China, while most of the 36 proverbs postdate that. It is believed by many to have been written by Zhuge Liang of the Three Kingdoms period.

Chapter 1 winning Strategies
Strategy 1 "瞒天过海" - Deceive the sky to cross the ocean.
Moving about in the darkness and shadows, occupying isolated places, or hiding behind screens will only attract suspicious attention. To lower an enemy's guard you must act in the open hiding your true intentions under the guise of common every day activities.



Strategy 2 "围魏救赵" - Surround Wei to rescue Zhao.
When the enemy is too strong to attack directly, then attack something he holds dear. Know that in all things he cannot be superior. Somewhere there is a gap in the armour, a weakness that can be attacked instead.
In other words, you may try to attack the relatives or dear ones of the enemy to weaken him psychologically.



Strategy 3 "借刀杀人" - Borrow one's hand to kill. (Kill with a borrowed knife.)
Attack using the strength of another (because of lack of strength or do not want to use own strength). Trick an ally into attacking him, bribe an official to turn traitor, or use the enemy's own strength against him.



Strategy 4 "以逸待劳" - Make your enemy tire himself out while conserving energy.
It is an advantage to choose the time and place for battle. In this way you know when and where the battle will take place, while your enemy does not. Encourage your enemy to expend his energy in futile quests while you conserve your strength. When he is exhausted and confused, you attack with energy and purpose.



Strategy 5 "趁火打劫" - Use the opportunity of fire to rob others. (Loot a burning house.)
When a country is beset by internal conflicts, when disease and famine ravage the population, when corruption and crime are rampant, then it will be unable to deal with an outside threat. This is the time to attack.



Strategy 6 "声东击西" - Feign an attack in the east and attack in the west.
In any battle the element of surprise can provide an overwhelming advantage. Even when face to face with an enemy, surprise can still be employed by attacking where he least expects it. To do this you must create an expectation in the enemy's mind through the use of a feint.
Chapter 2 <>
Strategy 7 "无中生有" - Create something from nothing.
You use the same feint twice. Having reacted to the first and often the second feint as well, the enemy will be hesitant to react to a third feint. Therefore the third feint is the actual attack catching your enemy with his guard down.



Strategy 8 "暗渡陈仓" - Secretly utilize the Chen Chang passage. (Repair the highway to take the crude path.)
Attack the enemy with two convergent forces. The first is the direct attack, one that is obvious and for which the enemy prepares his defense. The second is the indirect, the attack sinister, that the enemy does not expect and which causes him to divide his forces at the last minute leading to confusion and disaster.



Strategy 9 "隔岸观火" - Watch the fires burning across the river.
Delay entering the field of battle until all the other players have become exhausted fighting amongst themselves. Then go in full strength and pick up the pieces.



Strategy 10 "笑里藏刀" - Knife sheathed in a smile.
Charm and ingratiate yourself to your enemy. When you have gained his trust, you move against him in secret.



Strategy 11 "李代桃僵" - Plum tree sacrifices for the peach tree. (Sacrifice the silver to keep the gold.)
There are circumstances in which you must sacrifice short-term objectives in order to gain the long-term goal. This is the scapegoat strategy whereby someone else suffers the consequences so that the rest do not.



Strategy 12 "顺手牵羊" - Stealing a goat along the way (Take the opportunity to pilfer a goat.)
While carrying out your plans be flexible enough to take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself, however small, and avail yourself of any profit, however slight.
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Strategy 13 "打草惊蛇" - Startle the snake by hitting the grass around it.
When you cannot detect the opponent's plans launch a direct, but brief, attack and observe your opponent reactions. His behavior will reveal his strategy.



Strategy 14 "借尸还魂" - Borrow another's corpse to resurrect the soul. (Raise a corpse from the dead.)
Take an institution, a technology, or a method that has been forgotten or discarded and appropriate it for your own purpose. Revive something from the past by giving it a new purpose or to reinterpret and bring to life old ideas, customs, and traditions.



Strategy 15 "调虎离山" - Entice the tiger to leave its mountain lair.
Never directly attack an opponent whose advantage is derived from its position. Instead lure him away from his position thus separating him from his source of strength.



Strategy 16 "欲擒姑纵" - In order to capture, one must let loose.
Cornered prey will often mount a final desperate attack. To prevent this you let the enemy believe he still has a chance for freedom. His will to fight is thus dampened by his desire to escape. When in the end the freedom is proven a falsehood the enemy's morale will be defeated and he will surrender without a fight.



Strategy 17 "抛砖引玉" - Tossing out a brick to get a jade
Prepare a trap then lure your enemy into the trap by using bait. In war the bait is the illusion of an opportunity for gain. In life the bait is the illusion of wealth, power, and sex.



Strategy 18 "擒贼擒王" - Defeat the enemy by capturing their chief.
If the enemy's army is strong but is allied to the commander only by money or threats then, take aim at the leader. If the commander falls the rest of the army will disperse or come over to your side. If, however, they are allied to the leader through loyalty then beware, the army can continue to fight on after his death out of vengeance.
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Strategy 19 "釜底抽薪" - Remove the firewood under the cooking pot. (Remove the stick from the axe.)
When faced with an enemy too powerful to engage directly you must first weaken him by undermining his foundation and attacking his source of power.



Strategy 20 "混水摸鱼" - Fish in disturbed waters.
Before engaging your enemy's forces create confusion to weaken his perception and judgment. Do something unusual, strange, and unexpected as this will arouse the enemy's suspicion and disrupt his thinking. A distracted enemy is thus more vulnerable.



Strategy 21 "金蝉脱壳" - Slough off the cicada's shell. (False appearances mislead the enemy.)
When you are in danger of being defeated, and your only chance is to escape and regroup, then create an illusion. While the enemy's attention is focused on this artifice, secretly remove your men leaving behind only the facade of your presence.



Strategy 22 "关门捉贼" - Shut the door to catch the thief.
If you have the chance to completely capture the enemy then you should do so thereby bringing the battle or war to a quick and lasting conclusion. To allow your enemy to escape plants the seeds for future conflict. But if they succeed in escaping, be wary of giving chase.



Strategy 23 "远交近攻" - Befriend a distant state while attacking a neighbor.
It is known that nations that border each other become enemies while nations separated by distance and obstacles make better allies. When you are the strongest in one field, your greatest threat is from the second strongest in your field, not the strongest from another field.



Strategy 24 "假道伐虢" - Obtain safe passage to conquer the Kingdom of Guo.
Borrow the resources of an ally to attack a common enemy. Once the enemy is defeated, use those resources to turn on the ally that lent you them in the first place.



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Strategy 25 "偷梁换柱" - Replace the beams with rotten timbers.
Disrupt the enemy's formations, interfere with their methods of operations, change the rules in which they are used to following, go contrary to their standard training. In this way you remove the supporting pillar, the common link that makes a group of men an effective fighting force.



Strategy 26 "指桑骂槐" - Point at the mulberry and curse the locust.
To discipline, control, or warn others whose status or position excludes them from direct confrontation; use analogy and innuendo. Without directly naming names, those accused cannot retaliate without revealing their complicity.

Strategy 27 "假痴不癫" - Pretend to be a pig in order to eat the tiger. (Play dumb.)
Hide behind the mask of a fool, a drunk, or a madman to create confusion about your intentions and motivations. Lure your opponent into underestimating your ability until, overconfident, he drops his guard. Then you may attack.

Strategy 28 "上屋抽梯" - Remove the ladder when the enemy has ascended to the roof (Cross the river and destroy the bridge.)
With baits and deceptions lure your enemy into treacherous terrain. Then cut off his lines of communication and avenue of escape. To save himself he must fight both your own forces and the elements of nature.

Strategy 29 "树上开花" - Deck the tree with false blossoms.
Tying silk blossoms on a dead tree gives the illusion that the tree is healthy. Through the use of artifice and disguise make something of no value appear valuable; of no threat appear dangerous; of no use appear useful.

Strategy 30 "反客为主" - Make the host and the guest exchange places.
Defeat the enemy from within by infiltrating the enemy's camp under the guise of cooperation, surrender, or peace treaties. In this way you can discover his weakness and then, when the enemy's guard is relaxed, strike directly at the source of his strength.
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Strategy 31 "美人计" - The beauty trap. (The tender trap, use a woman to ensnare a man.)
Send your enemy beautiful women to cause discord within his camp. This strategy can work on three levels. First, the ruler becomes so enamored with the beauty that he neglects his duties and allows his vigilance to wane. Second, other males at court will begin to display aggressive behavior that inflames minor differences hindering co-operation and destroying morale. Third, other females at court, motivated by jealousy and envy, begin to plot intrigues further exacberating the situation.

Strategy 32 "空城计" - Empty fort. (Mental trap, empty a fort to make enemy think it is filled with traps.)
When the enemy is superior in numbers and your situation is such that you expect to be overrun at any moment, then drop all pretence of military preparedness and act casually. Unless the enemy has an accurate description of your situation this unusual behavior will arouse suspicions. With luck he will be dissuaded from attacking.

Strategy 33 "反间计" - Let the enemy's spy sow discord in the enemy camp. (Use enemy's own spy to spread false information.)
Undermine your enemy's ability to fight by allowing enemy's spy to remain within your ranks,while you feed false information causing enemy discord with his friends, allies, advisors, family, commanders, soldiers, and population. Preoccupied settling internal disputes, your enemy's ability to attack or defend is compromised and your control of him is increased.

Strategy 34 "苦肉计" - Inflict injury on one's self to win the enemy's trust. (Fall into a trap; become baited.)
Pretending to be injured has two possible applications. In the first, the enemy is lulled into relaxing his guard since he no longer considers you to be an immediate threat. The second is a way of ingratiating yourself to your enemy by pretending the injury was caused by a mutual enemy.

Strategy 35 "连环计" - Chain together the enemy's ships. (Never rely on but a single strategy.)
In important matters one should use several strategies applied simultaneously. Keep different plans operating in an overall scheme; in this manner if any one strategy fails you would still have several others to fall back on.
The 36th strategy "走为上" - Run away to fight another day.
If it becomes obvious that your current course of action will lead to defeat then retreat and regroup. When your side is losing there are only three choices remaining: surrender, compromise, or escape. Surrender is complete defeat, compromise is half defeat, but escape is not defeat. As long as you are not defeated, you still have a chance.

The 33 Strategies Of War

Shem Hotep ("I go in peace").

"I am a deeply religious nonbeliever -- this is a somewhat new kind of religion." Albert Einstein


The 33 Strategies Of War

1: Declare war on your enemies: Polarity

You cannot fight effectively unless you can identify them. Learn to smoke them out, then inwardly declare war. Your enemies can fill you with purpose and direction.

2: Do not fight the last war: Guerilla-war-of-the-mind

Wage war on the past and ruthlessly force yourself to react to the present. Make everything fluid and mobile.

3: Amidst the turmoil of events, do not lose your presence of mind: Counterbalance

Keep your presence of mind whatever the circumstances. Make your mind tougher by exposing it to adversity. Learn to detach youself from the chaos of the battlefied.

4: Create a sense of urgency and desperation: Death-ground

Place yourself where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.


5: Avoid the snares of groupthink: Command-and-control

Create a chain of command where people do not feel constrained by your influence yet follow your lead. Create a sense of participation, but do not fall into groupthink.

6: Segment your forces: Controlled-chaos

The critical elements in war are speed and adaptability–the ability to move and make decisions faster than the enemy. Break your forces into independent groups that can operate on their own. Give them the spirit of the campaign, a mission to accomplish, and room to run.

7: Transform your war into a crusade: Morale

Get them to think less about themselves and more about the group. Involve them in a cause, a crusade against a hated enemy. Make them see their survival is tied to the success of the army as a whole.


8: Pick your battles carefully: Perfect-economy

Consider the hidden costs of war: time, political goodwill, an embittered enemy bent on revenge. Sometimes it is better to undermine your enemies covertly.

9: Turn the tables: Counterattack

Let the other side move first. If aggressive, bait them into a rash attack that leaves them in a weak position.

10: Create a threatening presence: Deterrence

Build a reputation for being a little crazy. Fighting you is not worth it. Uncertainty can be better than an explicit threat. If your opponents aren’t sure what attacking you will cost, they will not want to find out.

11: Trade space for time: Nonengagement

Retreat is a sign of strength. Resisting the temptation to respond buys valuable time. Sometimes you accomplish most by doing nothing.


12: Lose battles, but win the war: Grand strategy

Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.

13: Know your enemy: Intelligence

The target of your strategies is not the army you face, but the mind who runs it. Learn to read people.

14: Overwhelm resistance with speed and suddenness: Blitzkrieg

Speed is power. Striking first, before enemies have time to think or prepare will make them emotional, unbalanced, and prone to error.

15: Control the dynamic: Forcing

Instead of trying to dominate the other side’s every move, work to define the nature of the relationship itself. Control your opponent’s mind, pushing emotional buttons and compelling them to make mistakes.

16: Hit them where it hurts: Center-of-gravity

Find the source of your enemy’s power. Find out what he cherishes and protects and strike.

17: Defeat them in detail: Divide and conquer

Separate the parts and sow dissension and division. Turn a large problem into small, eminently defeatable parts.

18: Expose and attack your opponent’s soft flank: Turning

Frontal assaults stiffen resistance. Instead, distract your enemy’s attention to the front, then attack from the side when they expose their weakness.

19: Envelop the enemy: Annihilation

Create relentless pressure from all sides and close off their access to the outside world. When you sense weakening resolve, tighten the noose and crush their willpower.

20: Maneuver them into weakness: Ripening for the sickle

Before the battle begins, put your opponent in a position of such weakness that victory is easy and quick. Create dilemmas where all potential choices are bad.

21: Negotiate while advancing: Diplomatic war

Before and during negotiations, keep advancing, creating relentless pressure and compelling the other side to settle on your terms. The more you take, the more you can give back in meaningless concessions. Create a reputation for being tough and uncompromising so that people are giving ground even before they meet you.

22: Know how to end things: Exit strategy

You are judged by how well things conclude. Know when to stop. Avoid all conflicts and entanglements from which there are no realistic exits.


23: Weave a seamless blend of fact and fiction: Misperception

Make it hard for your enemies to know what is going on around them. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. Control people’s perceptions of reality and you control them.

24: Take the line of least expectation: Ordinary-Extraordinary

Upset expectations. First do something ordinary and conventional, then hit them with the extraordinary. Sometimes the ordinary is extraordinary because it is unexpected.

25: Occupy the moral high ground: Righteousness

The cause you are fighting for must seem more just than the enemy’s. Questioning their motives and making enemies appear evil can narrow their base of support and room to maneuver. When you come under moral attack from a clever enemy, don’t whine or get angry–fight fire with fire.

26: Deny them targets: The Void

The feeling of emptiness is intolerable for most people. Give enemies no target to attach. Be dangerous and elusive, and let them chase you into the void. Deliver irritating but damaging side attacks and pinpricks.

27: Seem to work for the interests of others while furthering your own: Alliance

Get others to compensate for your deficiencies, do your dirty work, fight your wars. Sow dissension in the alliances of others, weakening opponents by isolating them.

28: Give your rivals enough rope to hang themselves: One-upmanship

Instill doubts and insecurities in rivals, getting them to think too much and act defensive. Make them hang themselves through their own self-destructive tendencies, leaving you blameless and clean.

29: Take small bites: Fait Accompli

Take small bites to play on people’s short attention span. Before they notice, you may acquire an empire.

30: Penetrate their minds: Communication

Infiltrate your ideas behind enemy lines, sending messages through little details. Lure people into coming to the conclusions you desire and into thinking they’ve gotten there by themselves.

31: Destroy from within: The Inner Front

To take something you want, don’t fight those who have it, but join them. Then either slowly make it your own or wait for the right moment to stage a coup.

32: Dominate while seeming to submit: Passive-Aggression

Seem to go along, offering no resistance, but actually dominate the situation. Disguise your aggression so you can deny that it exists.

33: Sow uncertainty and panic through acts of terror: Chain Reaction

Terror can paralyze a people’s will to resist and destroy their ability to plan a strategic response. The goal is to cause maximum chaos and provoke a desperate overreaction. To counter terror, stay balanced and rational.