Elizabeth Smart Incident

Mormon Series

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, 2003, Excerpts

On Thanksgiving Day 2000, Mitchell announced to Barzee, his wife, an upstanding Saint who for a period had played organ at the Mormon Tabernacle, and anyone else who would listen that he had received a revelation in which the Lord commanded him to take seven additional wives. Subsequent divine commandments revealed that Mitchell’s name was actually Immanuel David Isaiah, and that he had been placed on earth to serve as a mouthpiece for the Lord during the Last Days. Mitchell stopped shaving and cutting his hair, dressed in billowing robes fashioned after the garb of Old Testament prophets, and gained a reputation throughout Salt Lake Valley as an eccentric but harmless street preacher.

Around two in the morning on June 5, 2002, Mitchell placed a chair beneath a small window that had been left ajar on the first floor, sliced through a flimsy screen, and squeezed through the opening into the Smarts’ kitchen. Making his way through the vast, 6,000-square-foot house, he located the upstairs bedroom Elizabeth shared with her nine-year-old sister, Mary Katherine, and woke Elizabeth. Mitchell hustled her past the bedroom where the Smart parents were sleeping soundly, and exited the house.

Mitchell marched Elizabeth at knifepoint four miles into the foothills west of her home. Upon reaching a secluded campsite in Dry Creek Canyon, he and Wanda Barzee conducted a weird, self-styled wedding ritual to “seal” the girl to Mitchell in “the new and everlasting covenant” – a Mormon euphemism for polygamous marriage. Barzee then demanded that Elizabeth remove her red pajamas. When the girl balked, Barzee explained that if she refused to cooperate, Mitchell would forcibly disrobe her. Faced with this prospect, Elizabeth complied, where upon Mitchell consummated the marriage by raping his fourteen-year-old bride.

Using his gift for fundamentalist rhetoric and adroitly manipulating the religious indoctrination Elizabeth had received since she was old enough to talk, Mitchell cowed the girl into becoming an utterly submissive polygamous concubine – buttressing his powers of theological persuasion with threats to kill her and her family.

The woman who helped kidnap Elizabeth Smart will be released from prison

https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/11/us/wanda-barzee-elizabeth-smart-kidnapping/index.html
12 Sep 2018 

Elizabeth Smart said Tuesday that the Utah parole board's decision to release one of the people who abducted her was surprising and "incomprehensible." Wanda Eileen Barzee wasn't expected to be released for at least another five years. As such, Barzee, now 72, will leave prison September 19. Barzee and her husband, Brian David Mitchell, were convicted of abducting Smart, then 14, at knifepoint from her Salt Lake City bedroom in June 2002. Smart, in a statement, said "It is incomprehensible how someone who has not cooperated with her mental health evaluations or risk assessments and someone who did not show up to her own parole hearing can be released into our community.

Elizabeth Smart kidnapping: Mitchell gets life in jail

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13553579

25 May 2011

A homeless street preacher who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl in the US state of Utah in 2002 has been ordered to spend life in prison. Elizabeth Smart, who was held captive for nine months by Brian David Mitchell, looked on as he was sentenced in a federal court in Salt Lake City. "I know that you know what you did is wrong," Ms. Smart told Mitchell. Prosecutors said in December that Mitchell forced Ms. Smart into a self-styled polygamous marriage and raped her almost daily, gave her alcohol and drugs to lower her resistance and threatened to kill her, her family and anyone who tried to rescue her.

Kidnapped US teenager found

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2845719.stm

13 Mar 2003

A teenager who was kidnapped at gunpoint from her bedroom last June has been found alive and well in a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah. Elizabeth Smart was discovered not far from her home, reportedly wearing long robes and a veil, when police stopped a car following a tip-off. A homeless man who had done work on the family home, Brian Mitchell, and a woman have been arrested.

Elizabeth kidnap baffles Utah

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2029727.stm

07 Jun 2002

Police in Utah say they are no closer to success in their search for a man who kidnapped a 14-year-old girl at gunpoint from her bedroom in an affluent suburb of Salt Lake City. The local community has been in shock since an intruder slipped through the window of Elizabeth Smart's room in the middle of the night and took her away. The suspect is described as a white male of medium height. According to Elizabeth's little sister, he was soft-spoken, wearing a tan coat and a baseball hat and carrying a small black gun. He came in through the bedroom window at 0230 on Wednesday and let Elizabeth put on a pair of shoes before leaving with her. So scared was the younger girl, that she waited two hours before raising the alert.

Civilizations and Usury

The Form of Money

A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer, Rutgers University Press, 1963

Credit is sometimes considered a modern device or even a modern vice. A glance through the pages of financial history will dispel the notion of novelty. Credit was in general use in ancient and medieval times. Credit long antedated industry, banking and even coinage; it probably antedated primitive forms of money.

For example, about 1800 B.C., Hammurabi, a king of the first dynasty of ancient Babylonia, gave his people their earliest formal code of laws. A number of chief provisions of this code regulated the relation of debtor to creditor. The maximum rate of interest was set at 33 1/3% per annum for loans of grain.

Twelve hundred years later, around 600 B.C., the legal history of classical Greece began with the laws of Solon. Drastic reforms were then called for by an economic crisis in Athens stemming in part from excessive debt and widespread personal slavery for debt.

The Romans also began their legal history with a body of laws regulating credit. This, too, was forced by a crisis characterized by excessive debt.

These three examples from the earliest days of historic Babylon, Greece and Rome are enough to support the conclusion that credit at interest was widespread enough to create major political problems.

Usury, or interest, was fundamental to the economics of these great civilizations, driving its unsustainable growth and eventual collapse. Modern civilization has the same trappings of past fates.

The Dance of Death by Chris Hedges

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/03/13/dance-death

13 Mar 2017 

The graveyard of world empires—Sumerian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Mayan, Khmer, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian—followed the same trajectory of moral and physical collapse. Civilizations in decline, despite the palpable signs of decay around them, remain fixated on restoring their “greatness.” Their illusions condemn them. They cannot see that the forces that gave rise to civilization are the same forces that are extinguishing it. Their leaders are trained only to serve the system. And when the last moments of a civilization arrive, the degenerate edifices of power appear to crumble overnight.

Those who rule at the end of empire are psychopaths, imbeciles, narcissists and deviants, the equivalents of the depraved Roman emperors Caligula, Nero, Tiberius and Commodus. The ecosystem that sustains the empire is degraded and exhausted. Economic growth, concentrated in the hands of elites, is dependent on a crippling debt peonage imposed on the population. The bloated ruling class of oligarchs, priests, courtiers, mandarins, eunuchs, professional warriors, financial speculators and corporate managers sucks the marrow out of society. Capitalism ruthlessly commodifies human beings and the natural world to extract profit until exhaustion or collapse. Culture is degraded to patriotic kitsch. Education is designed only to instill technical proficiency to serve the engine of capitalism. Historical amnesia shuts us off from the past, the present and the future. Those branded as unproductive or redundant are discarded and left to struggle in poverty or locked away in cages. State repression is indiscriminant and brutal.

The elites’ myopic response to the looming collapse of the natural world and the civilization is to make subservient populations work harder for less, squander capital in grandiose projects such as pyramids, palaces, border walls and fracking, and wage war. Increasing military spending and taking the needed funds out of domestic programs typifies the behavior of terminally ill civilizations. When the Roman Empire fell, it was trying to sustain an army of half a million soldiers that had become a parasitic drain on state resources.

Religions and Usury

The Form of Money

Usury

1. the lending or practice of lending money at an exorbitant interest. 2. The exorbitant amount or rate of interest, esp. in excess of the legal rate.

Deuteronomy [Old Testament]

XXIII:19 Thou shalt not lend upon usury to a brother.

XXIII:20 Unto a stranger thou may lend upon usury.

Usury could be applied to a stranger, but not to a brother. The New Testament proclamation of universal brotherhood negated the use of usury in any circumstance, separating Judaism and Christianity by economic philosophy.

The Idea of Usury by Benjamin N. Nelson, Princeton University Press, 1949

St. Jerome (340-420) contended that the prohibition of usury among brother in Deuteronomy had been universalized by the Prophets and the New Testament. There was, in short, no scriptural warrant for taking usury from anyone. 

Jesus Casting out the Money-Changers

Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1834 – 1890

The 16th century Protestant Reformation made a distinction between interest and usury, thus not violating the scriptures against usury while still allowing interest. That distinction remains with us today and is embedded in Law. 

Law separates interest and usury by defining what is exorbitant. From a mathematical perspective, the determination is arbitrary. Interest, at any rate, is still an exponential growth algebraic concept applied to money.

Islamic Perspective

The historical importance of usury is evidenced by its prominent mention in the Bible, Koran, and other religious texts. The Koran, the Holy Text of Islam, mentions usury:

The Glorious Qur’an, Translation by Marmaduke Pickthall

Surah II – 275: Those who swallow usury cannot rise up save as he ariseth whom the devil hath prostrated by (his) touch. As for him who returneth (to Usury) - such are rightful owners of Fire. They will abide therein.

Surah II – 276: Allah hath blighted usury and made almsgiving fruitful.

Surah II – 278: O ye who believe! Observe your duty to Allah, and give up what remaineth (due to you) for usury, if ye are (in truth) believers.

Surah III – 130: Devour not usury, doubling and quadrupling (the sum lent).

Surah XXX - 39: That which ye give in usury in order that it may increase on (other) people’s property hath no increase with Allah; but that which ye give in charity, seeking Allah’s countenance, hath increase manifold.

The use of usury remains a source of contention within the Islamic world.

Deuteronomy 15:1-6

At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts.

A Jubilee Year

Shaking Off of Burdens

The Form of Money

The innovation of Legal Tender in seventh century BC was adopted by the greater part of the Greek world. Towards the end of the seventh century BC, wealth and debt went extreme with complications.

Money and Man by Elgin Groseclose, 1961

The introduction of coined money [Legal Tender] produced what might be called in today’s parlance "boom times" in the Mediterranean. It was an era of expansion, of the development of frontiers, of the exploitation of natural resources. Cities flourished, trade was active, debtors and creditors appeared, banks were organized, and in the end there grew up a host of attendant evils resulting from an unbalanced economy based too largely on money.

Toward the end of the seventh century B.C., the Greek civilization, which had been riding the crest of a sudden prosperity, was being carried, irretrievably, it seemed, toward the dark headlands of distaste. The inexorable culmination to the era grew out of the growth of debt. In Attica, as in modern America, the incubus of debt had thrust its tentacles into the very vitals of society. The greater part of the peasants’ holdings had come under mortgage, the evidences of which were stone pillars erected on the land, inscribed with the name of the lender, the amount, the rate, and the maturity of the loan. A still more insidious form of debt was the chattel mortgage in which the farmer could pledge his own person or that of his wife or his children, for the repayment of a loan. These chattels, under Athenian law, could be sold off into slavery, and such was the extent of the existing credit structure that the greater part of the agricultural population was in danger of being converted into bondage.

A state of affairs developed in Greece toward the end of the seventh century B.C. similar to that in the Middle West in the nineteen twenties. Revolution was being talked, with mutterings about "redistribution of the land," and armed insurrection was imminent.

A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer, Rutgers University Press, 1963

In Attica, at the beginning of the sixth century B.C. the tenant farmers were under severe economic pressure and threatened rebellion. They were sometimes able to keep only the sixth part of their produce. Personal slavery of whole families for debt was permitted and became common. Freeman had to compete with slaves. In spite of the relief provided by extensive colonization, discontent grew. Pawn credit was widespread. Debt had become an insupportable burden. At this crucial point (594 B.C.) the poet and wiseman Solon was called upon by Athens to assume supreme legislative power for a limited period and revise her laws.

Money and Man by Elgin Groseclose, 1961

The moneyed classes, the aristocracy, and the merchants, sensed the growing dissatisfaction among the masses, and in the hope of staving off rebellion, put up Solon for archonship in 594 B.C. The oligarchy had tried their best to enforce this law of debtor and creditor, with its disastrous series of contracts, and the only reason why they consented to invoke the aid of Solon was because they had lost the power of enforcing it any longer, in consequence of the newly awakened courage and combination of people.

Inaugurated as archon, Solon moved with amazing speed, and before the country knew what was happening, it was going through a social, economic and political revolution that completely revamped the character of the Athenian state and still amazes historians.

Solon assumed extra-legal powers, and with a facility for "catch" expressions that took hold of popular fancy, issued immediately a revolutionary decree under the appealing name "Shaking Off of Burdens". This decree, going at once to the heart of the money problem, tore down all the mortgage pillars of Athens and abrogated at once all agricultural and personal loans. It liberated all those debtors who were actually in slavery under previous legal adjudication, and it forbade any Athenian to pledge his own person or that of any member of his family as security for a loan.

A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer, Rutgers University Press, 1963

Solon’s reforms were radical and for the most part they endured. He canceled many debts secured by land and scaled down others. All those enslaved for debt were freed; those sold abroad for debt were redeemed at state expense. Political power was reapportioned according to property. The drachma was devalued by about one quarter. Weights and measures were increased in size. Citizenship was granted to immigrants who were skilled artisans. Judging from these reforms and their acceptance, the economic crisis of 594 B.C. was severe indeed.

Money and Man by Elgin Groseclose, 1961

Of course it shattered the credit structure of Athenian economy. Deprived of the security behind their assets, and with obligations of their own to meet, the landlords and the money lenders were thrown into practical bankruptcy. In solution to this problem, the crumbling financial edifice, Solon provided a partial moratorium by means of a debasement of the currency. The money question solved temporarily - it was to come up again and again in Greek history - Solon was now able to lay the foundation for the enduring structure of reform which brought into being that cynosure of history - the Athenian democracy.

To prevent complete authoritative meltdown, the Greek State responded to the economic crisis and looming revolution with the concept of democracy.

Democracy

Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them.

However, the system was not a pure democracy, but a democracy more representative of propertied individuals, individuals with the greatest ownership, individuals who derive the greatest interest income.

An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard, 1913

It is difficult to conceive of the Constitution as an economic document. It places no property qualifications on voters or offices; it gives no outward recognition of any economic groups in society; it mentions no special privileges to be conferred upon any class. The concept of the Constitution as a piece of abstract legislation reflecting no group interests and recognizing no economic antagonisms is entirely false. It was an economic document drawn with superb skill by men whose property interests were immediately at stake.

To this day, the image of Solon graces the frieze of the United States Supreme Court building, captioned with "Equal Justice Under Law", impressively supported by pillars of Greek columns, an architectural style that continues to adorn buildings of Law and Money.

Solon

a wise lawgiver.

  



Confucius, Moses, and Solon

Minting Money

The Form of Money

Any form of money can be minted, or manufactured, into Monetary Units: packaged units of money of specific quantity and quality, like a coin. The Monetary Unit is a reliable and convenient store of value, simplifying the valuation and logistical process of barter. The Minter guarantees the content of each Monetary Unit, such as a stamp, and keeps a portion of the minted material, called seigniorage, to cover the expense of minting.

The Monetary Unit is equivalent to a standard weight and measure. A meter is a fixed length, and a liter is a fixed volume. Once defined, the standard should never change. A changing standard is societally disruptive. As an example, if the meter or yard were to be redefined, the impact upon science, engineering, and the trades would be severely disruptive. In the same manner and same magnitude, redefining the Monetary Unit disrupts comparative valuations, negatively impacting the Market and Society.

The minting of money is very ancient in origin.

Moses, Prince of Egypt by Howard Fast

Yet a sort of money there had to be, and among the Phoenicians pearls and precious stones became the units of trade and measure. The Sea Rovers of the Achaean islands used balls of tin and gold and silver, and the people of Hatti used the most precious metal man had ever found, iron, in cubit-long bars. Among the Egyptians, yardage of linen and sacks of wheat had become too cumbersome for the ever growing commerce of the City of the Ramses, and finger-rings and bracelets of copper, tin and gold were becoming set units of value. Nowhere on all the known earth was there a place where the Egyptian ring had not found its way.

The legacy of the ancient metals as forms of money lingers today in modern coins. Such pieces of metal have been excavated in Troy, Asia Minor, Babylonia, Assyria, Syria, Egypt, and Iran. The first public building constructed by the new government of the United States, well before the Capitol or White House, was the Mint.

The Market

The Form of Money

A meeting of people for selling and buying.

Trading allows one specialty to be exchanged for another specialty. Each specialty has its own nuances and learning curves to overcome. Nobody can cover all the required specialties of life, hence the need for trade. Specialties develop economic efficiencies, which saves work, time, and resources. Money facilitates the trade of specialties.

The intrinsic value of each form of money is comparative to the intrinsic values of all other forms of money. All factors affecting the valuation of each and all forms of money are inclusive in the Market. The Market checks and balances the valuation of each form of money in relation to everything that is valued. The valuation process is comparative, variable, corrective, and ongoing in the Market.

The relational complexity of the Market is analogous to the complexity of the weather system. Modern weather forecasting is still limited in accuracy to less than a week. In fact, weather and climate can significantly alter Market valuations by drought, hurricanes, rising seas, etc. and is therefore a significant component of the Market. The complexity of the Market is all inclusive.

Barter is the process by which valuations are mutually achieved. Whether one takes the price as is or haggles over it, it is still part of the barter process, with or without money. Money facilitates the barter process.

Categorical transactions may use different forms of money, with overlapping of all categories, which allows the Market to make comparative valuations among the various forms of money. All forms of money cannot be perfectly proportioned throughout a society, which creates societal distinctions based on the proportional use of each form of money.

Historically, metals had been established forms of money long before written history. Large transactions used gold, small transactions used copper, and transactions in between used silver, all overlapping in use. The metals are still represented in today’s coinage, though not in substance.

Money Defined

The Form of Money

Money - World Book Encyclopedia

Money is anything that is generally accepted by people in exchange for the things they sell or the work they do. Any object or substance that serves as a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of wealth is money. To be convenient, however, money should have several qualities. It should come in pieces of standard value so that it does not have to be weighed or measured every time it is used. It should be easy to carry so that people can carry enough money to buy what they need. Finally, it should divide into units so that people can make small purchases and receive change.

A unit of money is the lowest common denominator for exchange among many persons. Money allows unrelated exchanges of goods and services to be comparatively valued. Something of value is exchanged for an amount of money, and that money is later exchanged for something else of equivalent value with someone else completely unrelated to the first exchange.

Many people using the same form of money allows exchanges with complete strangers, creating a commonality, a culture, a commerce, a society.

A History of Interest Rates by Sidney Homer, Rutgers, 1963

A study of primitive money catalogues some 173 objects and materials which in ancient and modern times have had monetary attributes in one or more places and at one or more times. Those most frequently mentioned include beads, cattle, cloth, copper, gold, grain, iron, rice, salt, shells, silver, skins, slaves and tobacco. 

Commodities, some more than others, have an intrinsic value that is uniform, storable, divisible, and transportable. Cattle sufficed as money for large transactions, but obviously not smaller transactions since cattle are not divisible. However, cattle sufficed so well for larger transactions that the term pecuniary, which means 'related to money,' is derived from the Latin pecuniarius, meaning 'wealth in cattle.' What does and does not qualify to be called ‘money’ is not set in stone.

For discussion purposes, all persons who use the same form of money comprise a ‘society’. The valuation process increases in complexity as the number of different forms of money in coexistence increases, to such a degree that no more than a handful would most likely coexist at the same time within the same society. Which commodity transforms into or out of the category of ‘money’ is a Darwinian selection process determined by the Market.

The mere logistics of gathering, manufacturing and handling each form of money significantly shapes the culture of a society, impacting the way and manner a society interacts. All those who use the same form(s) of money have something in common with each other. Any change in the form of money will impact societal interaction as a whole and individually. When a society changes or alters its form of money, societal changes occur in proportion to the magnitude of the change or alteration.



The Form of Money -- A Treatise

Money is the lowest common denominator of valuation among a society, the blood of trade, primary to societal interaction, and should be perfect in concept and form. If the form of money is not perfect in concept and form, societal stress will eventually ensue with potentially horrific consequences if ignored. Money is not the root of all evil; however, flawed money is the root of significant evils.

Money has had many forms over the millenniums, extending long before written history. Some remnants of those ancient forms of money remain with us today: the penny looks copper, the quarter and dime look silver, and nickel is supposed to be nickel, and the dollar coin looks gold, testimony to the endurance of the ancient forms of money. The transition from these ancient forms to the now dominant form, Legal Tender, birthed 2,600 years ago by King Croesus, has been a prolonged epic of consolidating monetary control by nation/states and has been the prime driver of Western Civilization growth.

Legal Tender is a legal contrivance, and when issued in the form of debt is nothing more than a pyramid/ponzi scheme. The quantification of debt wrongfully applies the algebraic concept of exponential growth - compounding interest - upon money. The distinction between usury and interest is an arbitrary legal determination with no basis in mathematics. Nothing can grow forever at an ever-increasing rate. As time moves on, the emphasis of ever-increasing growth becomes omnipresent, is quantified and institutionalized in the societal structure, encouraging over consumption, over development, and excessive expectations, pushing economic stress to its upper limit of expansion, eventually inciting conflict and spawning War to insure growth.

Economic systems of capitalism, communism, socialism, imperialism, colonialism, totalitarianism, fascism, nazism, monarchism, corporatism, and all other centralist monetary-isms maintain the monopolized control of money, and hence the control of society itself, through their own brand of Legal Tender that excludes other forms of money from the Market.

Today, Legal Tender is a near global reality, an epochal consolidation of Markets, heading exponentially towards a global conclusion. Legal Tender is a severely flawed form of money, debt money, and has skewed the concepts of ownership, institutionalized into Law and Enforcement.

The eventual conclusion of this monetary epoch, the triggering event, and the ensuing transition to the next, offers extreme potential of good and bad, impacting everyone and rippling for generations to come. Beyond Legal Tender is a truly Free Market where money is adaptable and flexible, in balance with individual needs, societal needs, environmental needs, and the needs of the greater reality.

Money Defined

The Market    

Minting Money

Money and Interest

Origination of Legal Tender

Shaking Off of Burdens

Religions and Usury

Civilizations and Usury

Social Groups and Money

An Alternate Form of Money


Other Money Perspectives

Capital Structure Flaw of Corporations