-Caveat Lector- extracted from: 650 Years Ago: How Venice Rigged the First, and Worst, Global Financial Crash ------------------------------------------- by Paul Gallagher Printed in the American Almanac, September 4, 1995. http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/pbgbardi.htm More revealing is the latest work of the historian of Venice, Frederick C. Lane, Money and Banking in Medieval and Renaissance Venice. This work shows that it was Venetian finance which, by dominating and controlling a huge international "bubble" of currency speculation from 1275 through 1350, rigged the great collapse of the 1340s. Rather than sharing the peace of mutual greed and free enterprise with their "allies" -- the bankers of Florence -- the merchants of Venice bankrupted them, and the economies of Europe and the Mediterranean along with them. Florence was the fourteenth century "New York," the apparent center of banking with the world's biggest banks. But Venice was "London," manipulating Florentine bankers, kings, and emperors alike, by tight knit financial conspiracy and complete dominance of the markets by which money was minted and credit created. [...] This triumph of "free trade" over the potential for national government, rigged the fourteenth century's global human catastrophes, the worst onslaught of death and depopulation in history. It was not until the Renaissance created the French nation state under Louis XI, 100 years later, and then England under Henry VII, and the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabel, that the human population could recover. [...] Over the century from that 1183 Peace of Constance to the 1290s, Venice established the extraordinary, near-total dominance of trading in gold and silver coin and bullion throughout Europe and Asia, which is documented in Frederick Lane's book. Venice broke and replaced the European silver coinage of the Holy Roman Emperors, the Byzantine Empire's silver coinage, and eventually broke the famous Florentine "gold florin" in the decades immediately leading into the 1340s financial blowout -- which blew out all the financiers except the Venetians. /////// extracted from: THE VENETIAN CONSPIRACY ------------------------ by Webster G. Tarpley, U.S. president of the Schiller Institute, Address delivered to ICLC Conference near Wiesbaden, Germany, Easter Sunday, 1981; appeared in Campaigner, September, 1981 http://www.tarpley.net/venconsp.htm The primary basis for Venetian opulence was slavery. This slavery was practiced as a matter of course against Saracens, Mongols, Turks, and other non-Christians. In addition, it is conclusively documented that it was a matter of standard Venetian practice to sell Christians into slavery. This included Italians and Greeks, who were most highly valued as galley slaves. It included Germans and Russians, the latter being shipped in from Tana, the Venetian outpost at the mouth of the Don, in the farthest corner of the Sea of Azov. At a later time, black Africans were added to the list and rapidly became a fad among the nobility of the republic. THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SLAVERY During the years of the Venetian overseas empire, islands like Crete, Cyprus, Corfu, Naxos, and smaller holdings in the Aegean were routinely worked by slave labor, either directly under the Venetian regime, or under the private administration of a Venetian oligarchical clan like the Corner, who owed their riches to such slavery. In later centuries, the harems of the entire Ottoman Empire, from the Balkans to Morocco, were stocked by Venetian slaves. The shock troops of the Ottoman Turkish armies, the Janissaries, were also largely provided by Venetian merchants. A section of the Venetian waterfront is still called Riva Degli Schiavoni -- slaves' dock. Around 1500, the Venetian oligarch Cristofor da Canal, the leading admiral of the Serenissima Repubblica at that time, composed what he described as a Platonic dialogue concerning the relative merits of galley slaves: the Italians the worst, Dalmatians better, the Greeks the best and toughest of all, although personally filthy and repulsive. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Venice had treaty relations with other states, like Bavaria, by which convicts were delivered to the Serenissima to work as life-long galley slaves. Indistinguishable from slave-gathering operations were piracy and buccaneering, the other staples of the Venetian economy. Wars with Genoa or with other powers were eagerly sought-after opportunities to loot the enemy's shipping with clouds of corsairs, and victory or defeat usually depended more on the success of the privateering than on the direct combat of the galleys, cogs, and soldiers of the battle fleets. [...] The Venetians also goaded forces out of the East to attack Christendom. Venice was the manipulator of Saracens, Monogols, and Turks, and got along with the slave-trading factions in each of these groups about as well as a power like Venice could get along with anybody. In particular, the Venetians were more willing to see territory -- excepting Venetian territory -- be occupied by the Turks than any other power. Venice was thus the past master of the more exotic permutations of the stolid old British DIVIDI ET IMPERA, "divide and conquer." /////// extracted from: Venice: The Methodology of Evil - Part I ----------------------------------------- by Donald Phau Printed in The American Almanac, May 16, 1994. http://members.tripod.com/~american_almanac/venphau1.htm The Serenissima Republica A myth started over 500 years ago by the Venetians themselves, was that Venice was the "model republic." At a time when most of the world was ruled by monarchs or despots, Venice was ruled by a Grand Council, usually comprised of 1,000 to 2,000 members. Venice's Doge was a ceremonial figurehead. But Venice's "republic" was hardly one open to an educated citizenry, participating in free elections. The Grand Council was open to only 180 noble families and their descendants. To graduate from the Grand Council to the smaller Senate, was a rigorous process starting at age 20. At that age every boy of the noble class had to claim admission to the larger Great Council. Clement writes of the young noblemen: "He could follow no personal tastes in studies or pursuits... At the age of twenty five, the beginning of manhood, he must enter the Great Council, serve on laborious committees, go thence to the Senate." After the League of Cambrai, the Grand Council's powers were assumed by the Council of Ten. From among the Ten came the "Inquisitors" -- the Council of Three. Two of the "Three" dressed in black; the Doge, their chief and the seat of state power, dressed in scarlet. Operating out of a small chamber in the Doge's palace, next to the torture chamber and above the city's dungeons, the Three were a terrible sight to behold. The saying was "The Ten send you to the torture chamber, the Three to your grave." Sometimes the Three's justice was too swift to permit a burial. A victim would be found floating in the Grand Canal, his throat slit open by one of Venice's paid assassins. Sometimes the enemy of the state was made into a public example: His body could be found in the public square of St. Mark's, hanging between the cathedral's famous "columns." The Three ruled with the help of an elaborate network of agents and informers. The city was divided up, with a set number of informers for each ward and parish. One historian writes of the Three's all-pervasive spy network: "Venetians and visitors were to amuse themselves and cease to bother their heads about serious matters; and to make sure that they did so, the agents of the Three were increased in number until they became an invisible enemy. It would be difficult to overestimate their number or their omniscience. It can confidently be stated that in every great noble's palace there was at least one informer, and no man in his senses would have talked politics in front of a waiter or servant. Pretended priests, your trusted retainer, your own familiar friend: they could all be paid spies." The "Serene Republic" pioneered racist laws, predating the Nazis by at least 500 years. Jews were forbidden to own property and enter the professions, and were forced to live in special sections of the city; one of these was called "The Ghetto," (the origin of that now-familiar term). All Jews had to wear special badges on their clothes and no Jewish home could close its doors at any time. Synagogues were forbidden, and for a period of time Jews could not bury their dead. Even the nobility were not protected from the prying eyes of the Three. After Gasparo Contarini, the famous Venetian who was to become a cardinal and play a future pivtoal role in the Reformation, was appointed to the Council of Three in 1530, it was ordered that no more than eight nobles assemble together privately. The historian Rawdon Brown wrote of the Council of Ten: "More terrible than any personal despot, because of impalpable, imperious to the dagger of the assassin, it was no concrete despotism, but the very essence of tyranny. To seek its overthrow was in vain. Those who strove to wrestle with it clasped empty air; they struck at it, but the blow was wasted on space. Evasive and pervasive, this dark unscrutable body ruled Venice with a rod of iron." --------------------------------------------------------- References + Clement, Clara Erkstine, Venice, Queen of the Adriatic. Boston: C.H. Simonds & Co., 1893. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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