Word: tangier
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Paris office of the London Daily Mail to tell his story. He not only claimed Red Hand credit for all the German cases but others as well, including a dart murder and a knifing in Geneva, a bombing in Rome that injured two children, and ship sinkings in Tangier. Ostend. Antwerp and other harbors. He hinted broadly that the Red Hand was also involved in the still unsolved murders of Tunisian Labor Leader Farhat Hached in 1952 and Algerian Lawyer Ould Aoudia this year...
Falling Pillars. In all its flamboyant history, Tangier (pop. 180,000) had never been "just one more city," no matter what the nationality of its masters. It was here that Atlas stood, and Hercules formed his great pillars. Trade flourished under Phoenician, Carthaginian, Roman, Visigoth and Byzantine alike. The city was "the brightest jewel" in the crown of England's Charles II. It was coveted by the Portuguese, ruled by the Moors, shelled by the French, invaded by the Spanish-and fought over by just about everyone. When it was finally internationalized in 1923, it was the Mediterranean haven...
...Moroccans at first left the uninhibited economy essentially alone. Tax evaders from all over the world continued to pour their furtive millions into Tangier's banks. More dummy "Tangier corporations" sprang up to shield actual corporations from paying taxes back home. Legitimate banks, as well as companies that called themselves banks, and a host of money-changers could still offer currency bargains unsurpassed anywhere...
With an ever ready supply of hard cash, Tangier's wily Indian merchants could buy in the world's cheapest markets, reexport to the most expensive. Sometimes the transactions were legal, often they were not. In recent years the smugglers alone have been netting about $100 million in sales. Biggest customer: Franco's Spain, whose fumbling economy is supplied with vital products by Tangier's smugglers...
...behind such misfortune? Some Tangerines blamed the King's act on jealous Casablanca merchants. Others insisted it was a British plot to divert trade to Gibraltar, or a French plot to force Tangier into the franc zone. The explanation accepted by most Tangerines was simpler. To the passionate, doctrinaire leftist politicos of Morocco, Tangier is a monument to foreigners, a corrupt, unclean, anti-Moroccan place that must be cleaned up and cleaned out. Let moviemakers find sinister backdrops elsewhere...