Meet the Members of Congress Who Traded Defense Stocks While Making National Security Policy
At least 25 members sat on committees that shape national security policy while simultaneously trading financial assets in companies that could create competing interests with their work, such as defense stock.
The New York Times reported this week that 97 members of Congress “bought or sold stocks, bonds, or other financial assets that intersected with their congressional work or reported similar transactions by their spouse or a dependent child” between 2019 and 2021. With more than 3,700 such trades in those three years alone, the investigation reveals potential conflicts of interest in nearly every area of policymaking.
Defense policy is no different. At least 25 members sat on committees that shape national security policy while simultaneously trading financial assets in companies that could create competing interests with their work, such as defense stock. With a near-even party split, Democrats and Republicans may have found a rare instance of common ground.
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I like it, but how about lead by example and ban Congress from trading stocks as well.
THE SENATE AND CONGRESS TRADE STOCKS ON INSIDE INFORMATION THEY ARE PIRATES.
Translating Piracy: On the origin of the Arabic words qurṣān/qarṣanah
The terms pirate(s) and piracy feature heavily in India Office Records relating to the Persian Gulf during the nineteenth century. Many of these records have now been digitised through the British Library / Qatar Foundation partnership and can be accessed on the Qatar Digital Library accompanied by catalogue descriptions in English and Arabic. In these records, “piracy” was used to justify British naval presence in the Gulf, forming the basis of the early agreements signed with local tribal leaders. However, the Arabic versions of these agreements indicate that the Arab inhabitants of the region did not have an equivalent concept in their lexicon. So where did today’s Standard Arabic word for piracy come from? And why wasn’t it used in these agreements?
Tracing the Etymology
Modern Arabic dictionaries list the terms qurṣān (pirate) and qarṣanah (piracy) under the trilateral root Q-R-Ṣ, giving the impression that this is a true Arabic word derived from this root (which generally means ‘to pinch/sting’). In fact, some Arabic sources devoted to the subject of piracy define qarṣanah as a derivative of that root (see for example, Hamid 2016: 22). However, this is a common misattribution.
The term is actually a relatively recent addition to the Arabic language, and is a cognate of the English term ‘corsair’ from the Latin cursarius.
The earliest Arabic dictionary to include qurṣān to mean ‘sea thief’ is al-Bustānī’s Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ (1870), where it is listed as a plural noun and marked as ‘foreign’ (إفرنجية).
Further clues can be found in Reinhart Dozy’s Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (1877-1881) which includes colloquialisms and foreign borrowings in Arabic. Dozy lists قرصل ( qurṣul), قرصال (qurṣāl) and كرسالي (kursālī) in addition to qurṣān to mean both ‘pirate’ and ‘warship’, and he links them to Spanish (corsario) and Italian (corsale). Also listed are the now common forms qarāṣinah (pirates) and qarṣanah (piracy).
Early Use
All this confirms that the words qurṣān and qarṣanah are of foreign origin, and that their meanings did not stabilise until modern times. One of the earliest attested uses of qurṣān in Arabic comes from a 1767 maritime treaty between the Sultan of Marrakesh, Muḥammad V (1710-1790) and the King of France, Louis XV (1710-1774).
Slaves in Barbary could be black, brown or white, Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish or Muslim.
The Senate and Congress are just the modern day privateers / pirates known back then as “Black Bart” and Captain Kidd.
Bartholomew Roberts
17 May 1682 – 10 February 1722), born John Roberts, was a Welsh pirate (Welsh: Barti Ddu) who raided ships off America and West Africa between 1719 and 1722. He had “Sunday services” on his first vessel and was the most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy. Bartholomew Roberts death is now commemorated by a celebration known as The Blackest Day, marking the day in which the Golden Age of Piracy came to an end. In January 1722 the pirate Bartholomew Roberts (“Black Bart”) sailed into the Ouidah harbour and captured all the eleven ships at anchor there.
A General History of the Pyrates, published a few years after Roberts’ death. The original 1724 title page credits one Captain Charles Johnson as the author. The defeat of Roberts and the subsequent eradication of piracy off the coast of Africa represented a turning point in the slave trade and even in the larger historys of capitalism.
On January 30, 1698, hope appeared on the horizon in the form of the four-hundred-ton Quedah Merchant. Here, finally, was a prize worth taking. The merchant ship, flying an Armenian flag, was heading north filled with silk, calico, sugar, opium, guns, and gold. Kidd gave chase and ultimately seized the ship and its cargo. It’s at this point that the prosecution and defense stories, as presented at Kidd’s trial, diverge. To prosecutors, this was clearly an act of piracy. The Quedah Merchant had an English captain, and it was carrying goods belonging to a leading member of the Indian emperor’s court, who had powerful connections with the East India Company—an English venture. What’s more, Kidd did not take the ship or his goods home to be judged a legal prize, as the contract with his Whig benefactors required. Instead, he dispersed some of the booty among his crew and kept the rest for himself. Kidd’s crew members, taking advantage of the king’s offer of immunity, testified to all this. AND The Quedagh Merchant, also known as the Cara Merchant and Adventure Prize, was an Indian merchant vessel, owned by a man named Coirgi. The ship was captured by Scottish privateer, William “Captain” Kidd on January 30, 1698. After this ship’s capture, Kidd attempted a return to New York to share in the treasure with the Governor of that colony, then on to England to pay off his backers. [OPIUM]
Kidd, for his part, insisted that the Quedah Merchant was not an English ship, its captain and connections notwithstanding. Its captain had shown him a “French pass,” a document that clearly indicated this was a French ship. The French pass, Kidd maintained, would prove his seizure of the ship was entirely legal.
“Captain Kidd, scottish pirate and privateer. … William Kidd was born in Dundee, Scotland, in 1654, the son of John Kidd a seaman … their cannons with china dishes, as the china shards would shred the sails of the ships that he was attacking. … sugar, opium, iron and saltpeter and worth a rumoured 70000 pounds.