Cist- Imprisonment, Shrimp, Slavery, Thailand

This blog entry is an attempt to make awareness of slavery, imprisonment, freedom, liberty, and costs associated with it.

Charles Cist lived in the 1700's. He was imprisonment and likely experienced slave labor while in Siberia, Russia.  The idea of imprisonment slavery is not new. It happened in Biblical Egypt, it happened in the 1700's with Cist. The Underground Railroad during the American slavery movement  is well documented. Slavery is happening in modern day society. The term Underground Railroad is a term used to express freedom and liberty and cost and hope and faith and love. Do organizations experience upgrading, transformation, and new management changes? Yes, it happens all the time, but the organization still remains. So when someone implies that the Underground Railroad is still alive it should not surprise you. Imprisonment and slavery can be about physical slavery, spiritual slavery, financial slavery, sex slavery, drug addiction, mental health imprisonment. My own personal imprisonment issues has been about battling depression. I was unbalance years ago. With visits with a doctor and therapist, and a case manager, I am now an asset to my family and not a liability. I have a more meaningful and inspired life. It has taken me a lifetime of learning more about the Holy Bible and that adds understanding on how to deal with my depression and being balanced, release freedom and liberty. In order to understand more about this, it is recommended to participate in a Bible study group. Explore your own individual imprisonment, slavery experience and hopefully gain more out of these blog entries.

The Guardian, www.theguardian.com, wrote articles about modern day slavery concerning the supply chain with global pawn (shrimp) industry in Thailand and its connections to US and European stores, such as, Walmart, Costco, Carrefour, and Tesco to name a few. In the article Charoen Pokphand Foods, (CP Foods), was named in a class action lawsuit filed by co-lead Derek Howard, Howard Law Firm, in Mill Valley, California. In the lawsuit it gives testimonies of workers who were forced to work 20 hour shifts, starting at 3:00 am., workers were killed in front of other workers to show fear and intimidation, some workers were at sea for years. The Thai Ambassador to the United States, Mr. Vijavat Isarabhakdi, says that his department has made progress in this area.

How does this effect me? How does this effect you? As an American living in the US, it is a blessing that our society has many comforts of modern day living. It makes me more aware of eliminating an attitude of ( I can eat shrimp whenever I want, I can have as much shrimp whenever I want, I  expect shrimp to be cheap). Yes, I will eat shrimp again in the future. Am I more balanced about portion sizes and who is involved with the supply chain,yes. I make an attempt to read food labels. Where does this food come from? Be honest with yourself ;therefore, you can be honest with others. I do not need to tell society that there is spiritual warfare going on. It is all around us. It happens in Bible, it happens during Cist's period, it is happening today. If you fully understand that a person's behavior can have a negative/ positive effect elsewhere in the universe  (both physically/ spiritually) and then multiply that by all of your decisions during the day, how you eat, what you eat, how you spend money, who you give money to, how you  use your time ,who you spend time with, who do you look up to . Include all the other decisions that I have left out and it will probably make your head spin. It is OK to seek therapy.

In conclusion, I am using the life of Charles Cist, an American Revolutionary War printer, as an example and testimony on how a person can survive imprisonment, slavery and reinvent themselves and live a productive life. I look at the life of Charles Cist and his involvement to the causes of freedom and liberty as permission to so. 

Andrew C. Allen

pewabic34@gmail.com

Making Connections Thomas Paine and Charles Cist.

I know that Thomas Paine and Charles Cist worked together in Philadelphia through the printing of Common Sense. I am reading Thomas Paine and the Promise of America, by Harvey J. Kaye. Mr. Kaye's novel describes Paine's early adulthood while living in London, England and the Sussex coast. On pages 26-40 Kaye illustrates the chronicle  movements of Paine arriving to America and how he arrived and when he arrived. Paine petitioned the Excise Commission in London for career opportunities and there he networked with the City's intellectuals and met the writer and scientist and diplomat, Benjamin Franklin. This is a connection because it shows the same time period that Cist made he escape through Europe to America. It also shows the networking by Benjamin Franklin and others traveling back and forth from America to England and France and elsewhere meeting, well- educated, young individuals to come to America.

Additionally, Paine was not the publisher of North Briton, but he did witness the publisher, John Wilkes, go through a public display of "Wilkes and Liberty" in the streets against the control of government and taxes. It illustrated an example of government menacing in rights of freeborn Englishmen. He took this experience with him to the British Colonies when he left England in the late summer of 1774.
Benjamin Franklin gave Paine an introduction letter to show Franklin's son-in-law, Richard Bache, an insurance underwriter in Philadelphia and to Franklin's son, William. William was Royal Governor of New Jersey. The introduction letter read:
The bearer, Mr. Thomas Paine, is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young man...If you can put him in a way of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school, or assistant surveyor ( of all of which I think him very capable) so that he may procure a subsistence at least, til he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country you will do well and much oblige your affectionate father.
Paine had networking opportunities and platforms to springboard his political ambitions.

Could this have happened to Charles Cist? Did Cist receive a letter of introduction from someone in America while in Europe? Was it Benjamin Franklin? Cist landed in Philadelphia during the same time period.  He married Mary Weiss the daughter of Jacob Weiss who was under the command of George Washington. This shows a similar networking of the same social connections.

On page 29, Mr. Kaye mentions that the British Colonies had swelled to over three million people. The wave of immigrants from Scots, Scots-Irish, Welsh, Germans, Dutch, French, Swedes, and enslaved Africans made America even more diverse. The" news" was out all over Europe "Come to America."

Charles Cist spoke many languages and with all of these new immigrants arriving in the British Colonies, he, too, was involved in a network to come to America. Cist could not have done all this traveling from Siberia, Russia to America on his own.
Andrew C. Allen


Paine arrived in Philadelphia a free man, but the ship travel was very difficult, many people died on the journey over. Paine quickly was offered a journalism/ editorship job at The Pennsylvania Magazine  owned by Robert Aitken. Under Paine's editorship subscriptions rose from 600 to 1500 subscribers, but Paine was not happy working for Mr. Aitken and Mr. Witherspoon. He quit in summer of 1775.

Is there a connection between the break up of the printing partnership of Cist and Styner  and Paine leaving the editorship of The Pennsylvania Magazine? Cist continued to print pamphlets. This has been added to the list of questions I have at home.
Andrew C. Allen
1841 West Main Street, #212
Troy, OH  45373
pewabic34 at gmail.com
12/10/2015