pbs |"Why should we not form a secret society with but one
object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the
whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States,
for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet
it is probable, it is possible." Cecil Rhodes wrote this in his
"Confession of Faith" when he was 23. It provides an insight into his
insurmountable belief that with willpower and application anything was
possible. Circumstances prevented Rhodes from taking a global stage, so
he made southern Africa his stamping ground, planting it with Union
Jacks and settlers of British stock.
Rhodes plans for the advancement of British interests in southern Africa
were made possible by his vast wealth. He had come by his fortune
through his precocious activities as a diamond miner and entrepreneur.
Rhodes had taken over his brother Herbert's three claims in the de Beers
mine in Kimberley when he was 17. He proved an outstanding businessman
and in 1872 when the other miners felt they had hit rock bottom and
there were no further diamonds to mine, Rhodes purchased as many claims
from despairing miners as he could in the Kimberley mines. Such bold
decisions were to become his hallmark. He was not frightened to buck
the trend and he believed that there were more diamonds as they were
forced up from below. His gamble paid off.
Rhodes' mines went from strength to strength and in 1888, through a
combination of persuasion, bullying and sharp business practice he
convinced the owners of the other Kimberley mining companies to
amalgamate and form Rhodes De Beers Consolidated Mines. It was the
leading diamond company in the world, owning all the South African mines
and thus 90% of global diamond production. This added to the major
share Rhodes had acquired in the gold industry after the Witwatersrand
gold strike in Transvaal in 1886.
Such wealth was the means to a glorious end for
Rhodes. In 1881 he became a member of the Cape Parliament. Rhodes had
stated, "Africa is still lying ready for us. It is our duty to take
it." By 1890 he was Prime Minister of Cape Colony and his ambitions for
the Anglo Saxon rule of southern Africa had moved towards Zambesia.
Rhodes' British South Africa Company obtained mining ad farming rights
in Mashonaland, having successfully duped the Matabele King, Lobengula.
By 1896 Rhodes' company forces had put down all resistance to his
advances and a new addition to the British Empire was aptly named
Rhodesia after its founder.
The only stumbling block to Rhodes' dream of British supremacy in South
Africa was the protectionist Boer Republic of Transvaal. Following the
discovery of a vast gold reef on the Witwatersrand Transvaal was
becoming increasingly wealthy and powerful. Rhodes answer to this
problem was a coup de main in which Rhodesian and Bechuanaland
gendarmerie would enter Transvaal in support of an uitlander uprising in
Johannesburg. What became known as the Jameson Raid was botched from
the start and the raiders were easily intercepted and captured by the
Boers. Rhodes' shady part in the fiasco led to his retirement from
public life. The ramifications of the raid were far reaching as it was
seen as the first round of a contest between Britain and Transvaal,
which ultimately culminated in the Boer War between 1899 and 1902.
Rhodes death led to prolonged mourning. He was ruthless, amoral and
instinctively acquisitive yet he had single-mindedly followed his plan
"to make the world English." He had added Northern and Southern
Rhodesia to the Empire and he was a truly useful instrument for the
preservation and extension of Britain's influence in southern Africa at a
time when it was in jeopardy. "So little done. So much to do," were
the words falsely attributed as Rhodes last. However, the sentiments
were entirely appropriate to this most resourceful and visionary icon of
Empire.
The Money Power Controlled by International Investment Bankers Dominates Business and Government
In the various actions which increase or decrease the supply of money, governments, bankers, and industrialists have not always seen eye to eye. On the whole, in the period up to 1931, bankers, especially the Money Power controlled by the international investment bankers, were able to dominate both business and government. They could dominate business, especially in activities and in areas where industry could not finance its own needs for capital, because investment bankers had the ability to supply or refuse to supply such capital. Thus, Rothschild interests came to dominate many of the railroads of Europe, while Morgan dominated at least 26,000 miles of American railroads. Such bankers went further than this. In return for flotations of securities of industry, they took seats on the boards of directors of industrial firms, as they had already done on commercial banks, savings banks, insurance firms, and finance companies. From these lesser institutions they funneled capital to enterprises which yielded control and away from those who resisted. These firms were controlled through interlocking directorships, holding companies, and lesser banks. They engineered amalgamations and generally reduced competition, until by the early twentieth century many activities were so monopolized that they could raise their noncompetitive prices above costs to obtain sufficient profits to become self-financing and were thus able to eliminate the control of bankers. But before that stage was reached a relatively small number of bankers were in positions of immense influence in European and American economic life. As early as 1909, Walter Rathenau, who was in a position to know (since he had inherited from his father control of the German General Electric Company and held scores of directorships himself), said, "Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves."
The Power of Investment Bankers Over Governments
The power of investment bankers over governments rests on a number of factors, of which the most significant, perhaps, is the need of governments to issue short-term treasury bills as well as long-term government bonds. Just as businessmen go to commercial banks for current capital advances to smooth over the discrepancies between their irregular and intermittent incomes and their periodic and persistent outgoes (such as monthly rents, annual mortgage payments, and weekly wages), so a government has to go to merchant bankers (or institutions controlled by them) to tide over the shallow places caused by irregular tax receipts. As experts in government bonds, the international bankers not only handled the necessary advances but provided advice to government officials and, on many occasions, placed their own members in official posts for varied periods to deal with special problems. This is so widely accepted even today that in 1961 a Republican investment banker became Secretary of the Treasury in a Democratic Administration in Washington without significant comment from any direction.
The Money Power Reigns Supreme and Unquestioned
Naturally, the influence of bankers over governments during the age of financial capitalism (roughly 1850-1931) was not something about which anyone talked freely, but it has been admitted frequently enough by those on the inside, especially in England. In 1852 Gladstone, chancellor of the Exchequer, declared, "The hinge of the whole situation was this: the government itself was not to be a substantive power in matters of Finance, but was to leave the Money Power supreme and unquestioned." On September 26, 1921, The Financial Times wrote, "Half a dozen men at the top of the Big Five Banks could upset the whole fabric of government finance by refraining from renewing Treasury Bills." In 1924 Sir Drummond Fraser, vice-president of the Institute of Bankers, stated, "The Governor of the Bank of England must be the autocrat who dictates the terms upon which alone the Government can obtain borrowed money."
Secrecy Is One of the Elements of the English Business and Financial Life
This element of secrecy is one of the outstanding features of English business and financial life. The weakest "right" an Englishman has is the "right to know," which is about as narrow as it is in American nuclear operations. Most duties, powers, and actions in business are controlled by customary procedures and conventions, not by explicit rules and regulations, and are often carried out by casual remarks between old friends. No record perpetuates such remarks, and they are generally regarded as private affairs which are no concern of others, even when they involve millions of pounds of the public's money. Although this situation is changing slowly, the inner circle of English financial life remains a matter of "whom one knows," rather than "what one knows." Jobs are still obtained by family, marriage, or school connections; character is considered far more important than knowledge or skill; and important positions, on this basis, are given to men who have no training, experience, or knowledge to qualify them.
The Core of English Financial Society Consists of 17 Private International Banking Firms
As part of this system and at the core of English financial life have been seventeen private firms of "merchant bankers" who find money for established and wealthy enterprises on either a long-term (investment) or a short-term ("acceptances") basis. These merchant bankers, with a total of less than a hundred active partners, include the firms of Baring Brothers, N. M. Rothschild, J. Henry Schroder, Morgan Grenfell, Hambros, and Lazard Brothers. These merchant bankers in the period of financial capitalism had a dominant position with the Bank of England and, strangely enough, still have retained some of this, despite the nationalization of the Bank by the Labour government in 1946. As late as 1961 a Baring (Lord Cromer) was named governor of the bank, and his board of directors, called the "Court" of the bank, included representatives of Lazard, of Hambros, and of Morgan Grenfell, as well as of an industrial firm (English Electric) controlled by these.
Money Power Exercises Its Influence through Interlocking Directorates and Direct Financial Controls
From this date onward, financial capitalism grew rapidly in Britain, without ever achieving the heights it did in the United States or Germany. Domestic concerns remained small, owner-managed, and relatively unprogressive (especially in the older lines like textiles, iron, coal, shipbuilding). One chief field of exploitation for British financial capitalism continued to be in foreign countries until the crash of 1931. Only after 1920 did it spread tentatively into newer fields like machinery, electrical goods, and chemicals, and in these it was superseded almost at once by monopoly capitalism.... In addition, its rule was relatively honest (in contrast to the United States but similar to Germany). It made little use of holding companies, exercising its influence by interlocking directorates and direct financial controls. It died relatively easily, yielding control of the economic system to the new organizations of monopoly capitalism constructed by men like William H. Lever, Viscount Leverhulme (1851-1925) or Alfred M. Mond, Lord Melchett (1868-1930). The former created a great international monopoly in vegetable oils centering upon Unilever, while the latter created the British chemical monopoly known as Imperial Chemical Industries.
Banking Control of Government throughout the World
Financial capitalism in Britain, as elsewhere, was marked not only by a growing financial control of industry but also by an increasing concentration of this control and by an increasing banking control of government. As we have seen, this influence of the Bank of England over the government was an almost unmitigated disaster for Britain. The power of the bank in business circles was never as complete as it was in government, because British businesses remained self-financing to a greater extent than those of other countries. This self-financing power of business in Britain depended on the advantage which it held because of the early arrival of industrialism in England. As other countries became industrialized, reducing Britain's advantage and her extraordinary profits, British business was forced to seek outside financial aid or reduce its creation of capital plant. Both methods were used, with the result that financial capitalism grew at the same time as considerable sections of Britain's capital plant became obsolete.
The Money Trust Became Increasingly Concentrated and Powerful in the Twentieth Century
The control of the Bank of England over business was exercised indirectly through the joint-stock banks. These banks became increasingly concentrated and increasingly powerful in the twentieth century. The number of such banks decreased through amalgamation from 109 in 1866 to 35 in 1919 and to 33 in 1933. This growth of a "money trust" in Britain led to an investigation by a Treasury Committee on Bank Amalgamations. In its report (Colwyn Report, 1919) this committee admitted the danger and called for government action. A bill was drawn up to prevent further concentration but was withdrawn when the bankers made a "gentlemen's agreement" to ask Treasury permission for future amalgamations. The net result was to protect the influence of the Bank of England, since this might have been reduced by complete monopolization of joint-stock banking, and the bank was always in a position to influence the Treasury's attitude on all questions. Of the 33 joint-stock banks existing in 1933, 9 were in Ireland and 8 in Scotland, leaving only 16 for England and Wales. The 33 together had over £2,500 million in deposits in April 1933, of which £1,773 million were in the so-called "Big Five" (Midland, Lloyds, Barclays, Westminster, and National Provincial). The Big Five controlled at least 7 of the other 28 (in one case by ownership of 98 percent of the stock).
Although competition among the Big Five was usually keen, all were subject to the powerful influence of the Bank of England, as exercised through the discount rate, interlocking directorships, and above all through the intangible influences of tradition, ambition, and prestige.
The Techniques of Finance Capitalism Reach Levels of Corruption into America Higher Than Any Country in the World
By the 1880's the techniques of financial capitalism were well developed in New York and northern New Jersey, and reached levels of corruption which were never approached in any European country. This corruption sought to cheat the ordinary investor by flotations and manipulations of securities for the benefit of "insiders." Success in this was its own justification, and the practitioners of these dishonesties were as socially acceptable as their wealth entitled them to be, without any animadversions on how that wealth had been obtained. Corrupt techniques, associated with the names of Daniel Drew or Jay Gould in the wildest days of railroad financial juggling, were also practiced by Morgan and others who became respectable from longer sustained success which allowed them to build up established firms.
Close Alliance of Wall Street with Two Major Parties
Any reform of Wall Street practices came from pressure from the hinterlands, especially from the farming West, and was long delayed by the close alliance of Wall Street with the two major political parties, which grew up in 1880-1900. In this alliance, by 1900, the influence of Morgan in the Republican Party was dominant, his chief rivalry coming from the influence of a monopoly capitalist, Rockefeller of Ohio. By 1900 Wall Street had largely abandoned the Democratic Party, a shift indicated by the passage of the Whitney family from the Democrats to the Republican inner circles, shortly after they established a family alliance with Morgan. In the same period, the Rockefeller family reversed the ordinary direction of development by shifting from the monopoly fields of petroleum to New York banking circles by way of the Chase National Bank. Soon family as well as financial alliances grew up among the Morgans, Whitneys, and Rockefellers, chiefly through Payne and Aldrich family connections.
Finance Capitalism in New York Resembles a Feudal Structure
For almost fifty years, from 1880 to 1930, financial capitalism approximated a feudal structure in which two great powers, centered in New York, dominated a number of lesser powers, both in New York and in provincial cities. No description of this structure as it existed in the 1920's can be given in a brief compass, since it infiltrated all aspects of American life and especially all branches of economic life. At the center were a group of less than a dozen investment banks, which were, at the height of their powers, still unincorporated private partnerships. These included J. P. Morgan; the Rockefeller family; Kuhn, Loeb and Company; Dillon, Read and Company; Brown Brothers and Harriman; and others. Each of these was linked in organizational or personal relationships with various banks, insurance companies, railroads, utilities, and industrial firms. The result was to form a number of webs of economic power of which the more important centered in New York, while other provincial groups allied with these were to be found in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, and Boston.
J. P. Morgan Dominates Corporate America (Now known as JP Morgan Chase - Morgan-Rockefeller alliance)
J. P. Morgan worked in close relationship to a group of banks and insurance companies, including the First National Bank of New York, the Guaranty Trust Company, the Bankers Trust, the New York Trust Company, and the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. The whole nexus dominated a network of business firms which included at least one-sixth of the two hundred largest nonfinancial corporations in American business. Among these were twelve utility companies, five or more railroad systems, thirteen industrial firms, and at least five of the fifty largest banks in the country. The combined assets of these firms were more than $30 billion. They included American Telephone and Telegraph Company, International Telephone and Telegraph, Consolidated Gas of New York, the groups of electrical utilities known as Electric Bond and Share and as the United Corporation Group (which included Commonwealth and Southern, Public Service of New Jersey, and Columbia Gas and Electric), the New York Central railway system, the Van Sweringen railway system (Allegheny) of nine lines (including Chesapeake and Ohio; Erie; Missouri Pacific; the Nickel Plate; and Pere Marquette); the Santa Fe; the Northern system of five great lines (Great Northern; Northern Pacific; Burlington; and others); the Southern Railway; General Electric Company; United States Steel; Phelps Dodge; Montgomery Ward; National Biscuit; Kennecott Copper; American Radiator and Standard Sanitary; Continental Oil; Reading Coal and Iron; Baldwin Locomotive; and others.
The Economic Power of the Money Trust in America Is Almost Beyond Imagination
The economic power represented by these figures is almost beyond imagination to grasp, and was increased by the active role which these financial titans took in politics. Morgan and Rockefeller together frequently dominated the national Republican Party, while Morgan occasionally had extensive influence in the national Democratic Party (three of the Morgan partners were usually Democrats). These two were also powerful on the state level, especially Morgan in New York and Rockefeller in Ohio. Mellon was a power in Pennsylvania and du Pont was obviously a political power in Delaware.
The Morgan Hierarchy
In the 1920's this system of economic and political power formed a hierarchy headed by the Morgan interests and played a principal role both in political and business life. Morgan, operating on the international level in cooperation with his allies abroad, especially in England, influenced the events of history to a degree which cannot be specified in detail but which certainly was tremendous....
There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups, and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies (notably to its belief that England was an Atlantic rather than a European Power and must be allied, or even federated, with the United States and must remain isolated from Europe), but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known. [Pg. 950.]
The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can "throw the rascals out" at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. [Pg. 1247-1248.]
"As a teenager I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And as a student at Georgetown, I heard the call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley, who said America was the greatest country in the history of the world because our people have always believed in two great ideas: first, that tomorrow can be better than today, and second, that each of us has a personal moral responsibility to make it so."
When Bill Clinton spoke these stirring words to millions of Americans during his 1992 acceptance address before the Democratic National Convention upon receiving his party's nomination for President of the United States, the vast multitude of his television audience paused for a micro-second to reflect: Who is Carroll Quigley and why did he have such a dramatic effect on this young man before us who may become our country's leader?
Carroll Quigley was a legendary professor of history at the Foreign Service School of Georgetown University, and a former instructor at Princeton and Harvard.
He was a lecturer at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Brookings Institution, the U. S. Naval Weapons Laboratory, the Foreign Service Institute of the State Department, and the Naval College.
Quigley was a closely connected elite "insider" to the American Establishment, with impeccable credentials and trappings of respectability.
But Carroll Quigley's most notable achievement was the authorship of one of the most important books of the 20th Century: Tragedy and Hope – A History of the World in Our Time.
No one can truly be cognizant of the intricate evolution of networks of power and influence which have played a crucial role in determining who and what we are as a civilization without being familiar with the contents of this 1,348-page tome.
It is the "Ur-text" of Establishment Studies, earning Quigley the epithet of "the professor who knew too much" in a Washington Post article published shortly after his 1977 death.
In Tragedy and Hope, as well as the posthumous The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, Quigley traces this network, in both its overt and covert manifestations, back to British racial imperialist and financial magnate Cecil Rhodes and his secret wills, outlining the clandestine master plan through seven decades of intrigue, spanning two world wars, to the assassination of John Kennedy.
Through an elaborate structure of banks, foundations, trusts, public-policy research groups, and publishing concerns (in addition to the prestigious scholarship program at Oxford), the initiates of what are described as the Round Table groups (and its offshoots such as the Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Council on Foreign Relations) came to dominate the political and financial affairs of the world.
For the ambitious young man from Hope, Arkansas, his mentor's visionary observations would provide the blueprint of how the world really worked as he made his ascendancy via Oxford through the elite corridors of power to the Oval Office. YouTube Potpourri: The Legacy of Carroll Quigley at LewRockwell.com
disinfo |South Africa’s unemployment rate stands at 27%.
Yes, I said 27%, not 2.7%. Worst yet, almost half the population of 55
million earns less than the country’s minimum wage. In America, that
translates to abject poverty. The situation has only gotten worse over
time, including crime, which continues to climb. South Africa is the rape capital of the world
with almost 150 sexual assaults happening every day. The rolling
blackouts of the past years have eased, but that is only because demand
is down from an economy in freefall. Physical brawls in parliament
and confused attempts at peacefully redistributing white minority owned
farmland to the black majority have created an almost intolerable rage
within the majority population. Riots are becoming the norm in the cities as well as the universities.Additionally,
the rules of the turnover of white property and businesses to the black
majority switch almost seasonally. This is from a deep corruption and
disorder within the ANC. This makes the party look as if it’s suffering
from multiple personality disorder.
With this worsening economic situation it
comes natural for politicians to look for an escape hatch to explain
their apparent lack of competence.
Race is everything in South Africa and ever since President Jacob Zuma infamously called for the killing of the Boer,
a dangerous narrative has formed. It’s a familiar one. Here’s how the
plot goes. An incompetent government gets into trouble. Rather than
fixing its own problems, those in charge find it best to blame all its
ills on a small minority. Once the ire of the voters’ attention gets
turned to the minority, the politicians then buy themselves some time to
figure things out. If the minority gets slaughtered in the process,
well, you know, that’s just politics. Here’s the unfortunate plot twist
for Zuma and his ruling party the ANC. From all of this chaos came a new
political party that has quickly cut into the ANC’s monopolistic grip
on the political structure. The Economic Freedom Fighters or EFF has a
more radical, Marxist vision for the country. That includes a less
harmonious divestment of white owned land and businesses. But there
really is nothing new about the EFF. It’s promised the usual rainbow
panacea that a far left Marxist group might offer a vulnerable public.
The BBC has politely said
its leader, Julius Malema, has offended various groups including
whites. I would attribute his rhetoric and stances to that of Robert
Mugabe and his violent handling of white owned farms back at the turn of this century.
yahoo | “California
is in so many ways a trendsetter, whether it is in pop culture or in
politics,” Holder told Yahoo News. “That’s why it was such an attractive
possibility for me to go to California and work with the legislators
there in crafting their response to the Trump administration — because I
think what California does gives courage to other states and other
public officials in other parts of the country who might be thinking
about principled opposition. It shows how that opposition can take
shape.”
So
far, the legal resistance has been largely improvised, with young
liberal lawyers spontaneously descending upon airports in the wake of
Trump’s Muslim travel ban and state attorneys general individually
butting heads with Jeff Sessions, their federal counterpart.
Holder wants to change that.
“You
look at this as kind of a continuum, where you oppose the policy as it
is proposed, you hope that it doesn’t become law, but then, to the
extent that it does, you use the courts to try to overturn it,” he
explained. “As the different states and different public officials start
to stand for the same things and take the same positions — as they
start to use the same tactics — the opposition becomes that much more
effective.”
“We’re
here with a very clear purpose: to underscore the undeniable truth that
preserving and enhancing trust, real and genuine trust between law
enforcement and the diverse communities they serve, is essential for the
safety and well-being of all residents of this great state — indeed,
this great nation,” Holder said at Monday’s event, alluding to the
argument that undocumented immigrants will stop reporting crimes to the
local cops if those same officers are also tasked with deporting them.
“California
is leading,” Holder concluded. “California is doing the right thing.
This is something that needs to be done nationwide.”
If Holder gets his way, he will spend the months and years ahead ensuring that’s exactly what happens.
NationalReview | Democrats may not have gotten everything they wanted out of a
series of recent televised Senate Intelligence Committee hearings that
ostensibly concerning Russian interference in the 2016 election. But as
the party of the ‘resistance’ shifted its focus from alleged collusion
between Moscow and Republicans to President Trump’s alleged obstruction
of justice, the hearings also produced a new heroine for the anti-Trump
Left.
Senator Kamala Harris emerged from confrontations with the three
national intelligence chiefs and Attorney General Jeff Sessions with her
reputation enhanced. Her manner of attack was praised and she was
acclaimed as a victim of sexism on the part of her colleagues. Harris
may lack the talent to fulfill her not-so-secret desire to emulate
Barack Obama by parlaying a single unfinished term in the Senate into a
successful presidential bid. But there’s no question that on the
strength of these hearings, she can lay claim to a style that is the
future of American politics: Her combination of incivility, bullying,
and victimhood makes her the perfect reflection of our current moment.
Harris’s new celebrity stems from two incidents in which Republicans
criticized her manner of questioning witnesses during an Intelligence
Committee hearing. Her rapid-fire interrogation of Sessions and Deputy
Attorney General Rod Rosenstein prompted Senator John McCain and then
committee chair Richard Burr to reproofs in which she was cautioned to
allow the witnesses to answer her questions. Harris clearly tried to
bully both Sessions and Rosenstein, cutting them off as they spoke and
not giving them a chance to speak before she moved on to a new
insinuation. But you wouldn’t know it from reading the mainstream media
or the liberal Twittersphere. As the New York Times headline on the
incidents put it: “Kamala Harris Is (Again) Interrupted While Pressing a
Senate Witness.”
The essence of the surge in support for Harris was not so much that she
had scored points at the expense of either Rosenstein or Sessions as
that she had been a victim of sexism if not racism. The headline of
another, later Times article proclaimed that what had happened
illustrated, “The Universal Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women.” The
intervention of Senators McCain and Burr was said to betray male
contempt for women. Others, noting Harris’ multi-racial heritage,
characterized the senators’ pushback as a defense of white privilege
against the heroic efforts of minorities to be heard.
WND | Key evidence on whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump
team may be kept under lock and key for five years, at former President
Obama’s presidential library.
Perhaps just as surprising, the announcement came from President Trump’s own National Security Council, or NSC.
There are still a publicly unknown number of Obama holdovers on the NSC, but there’s no word yet on how the decision was made.
The government-watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Monday the NSC
had denied its Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request for
documents related to President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan
Rice’s alleged unmasking of the “identities of any U.S. citizens
associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team.”
In a potentially bombshell development, the NSC said those documents
have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library, while
pointedly adding, “you should be aware that under the Presidential
Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five
years after an administration has left office.”
It’s not yet known if that would block congressional investigators,
the FBI, or Special Counsel Robert Mueller from obtaining the documents.
theatlantic | In 1999, a group of scientists scoured the genomes of around 150 pairs of siblings in an attempt to find genes that are involved in autism.
They came up empty. They reasoned that this was because the risk of
autism is not governed by a small number of powerful genes, which their
study would have uncovered. Instead, it’s likely affected by a large
number of genes that each have a small effect. Perhaps, they wrote,
there might be 15 such genes or more.
Two decades later, that
figure seems absurdly and naively low. If you told a modern geneticist
that a complex trait—whether a physical characteristic like height or
weight, or the risk of a disease like cancer or schizophrenia—was the
work of just 15 genes, they’d probably laugh. It’s now thought that such
traits are the work of thousands of genetic variants, working in
concert. The vast majority of them have only tiny effects, but together,
they can dramatically shape our bodies and our health. They’re weak
individually, but powerful en masse.
They note that researchers often assume that those thousands of weakly-acting genetic variants will all cluster together in relevant genes.
For example, you might expect that height-associated variants will
affect genes that control the growth of bones. Similarly,
schizophrenia-associated variants might affect genes that are involved
in the nervous system. “There’s been this notion that for every gene
that’s involved in a trait, there’d be a story connecting that gene to
the trait,” says Pritchard. And he thinks that’s only partly true.
Yes,
he says, there will be “core genes” that follow this pattern. They will
affect traits in ways that make biological sense. But genes don’t work
in isolation. They influence each other in large networks, so that “if a
variant changes any one gene, it could change an entire gene network,”
says Boyle. He believes that these networks are so thoroughly interconnected that every gene is just a few degrees of separation away from every other. Which means that changes in basically any gene will ripple inwards to affect the core genes for a particular trait.
The Stanford trio call this the “omnigenic model.” In the simplest terms, they’re saying that most genes matter for most things.
qz |Senior House,
a dorm beloved by many underrepresented minority groups at MIT, has
been described many ways: free-wheeling, experimental, diverse,
inclusive—and, in the words of one former student, in constant violation of “campus policy on smoking, pets, drugs, alcohol, public sex, (insert flavor-of-the-month form of rebellion here).”
The dorm is about to be dismantled. MIT has decided to kick everyone
out, allowing its current members to reapply for residence in the space
for the fall, but insisting it will repopulate it. “You will see that
we are seeking individuals who are committed to contributing to a
residential environment that supports residents’ academic and personal
development,” chancellor Cynthia Barnhart wrote in a letter to current
and former student members, obtained by Quartz and confirmed by the
university.
MIT, which prides itself on exalting data, says data drove the decision: 59.7% of students who start off
(pdf) living in Senior House graduate in four years. That compares to a
university-wide average of 83.7%. More than a fifth of students had not
graduated after their sixth year, nearly double the rate of the next
worst-performing dorm, called Random.
MIT initially proposed overhauling the house, based on the graduation
data and concerns over illegal drug use. It halted 2016-2017 freshman
from moving in, appointed a turnaround committee, and added more mental
health resources to the house. But the administration ultimately
concluded that revamping it wasn’t worth the bother. Senior House was
filled with “serious and unsafe behaviors” which undermine the
university’s goals for the health, safety and academic success of the
students, the letter stated. The university declined to elaborate on the
nature of the serious and unsafe behaviors.
NYTimes | In
the matter of immigration, mark this conservative columnist down as
strongly pro-deportation. The United States has too many people who
don’t work hard, don’t believe in God, don’t contribute much to society
and don’t appreciate the greatness of the American system.
They need to return whence they came.
I
speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few
generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic
points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which
our national prospects risk drowning.
On point after point, America’s nonimmigrants are failing our country. Crime? A study
by the Cato Institute notes that nonimmigrants are incarcerated at
nearly twice the rate of illegal immigrants, and at more than three
times the rate of legal ones.
Educational achievement? Just 17 percent of the finalists
in the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search — often called the “Junior
Nobel Prize” — were the children of United States-born parents. At the
Rochester Institute of Technology, just 9.5 percent of graduate students
in electrical engineering were nonimmigrants.
Religious piety — especially of the Christian variety? More illegal immigrants identify as Christian (83 percent) than do
Americans (70.6 percent), a fact right-wing immigration restrictionists
might ponder as they bemoan declines in church attendance.
Business creation? Nonimmigrants start businesses
at half the rate of immigrants, and accounted for fewer than half the
companies started in Silicon Valley between 1995 and 2005. Overall, the
share of nonimmigrant entrepreneurs fell by more than 10 percentage
points between 1995 and 2008, according to a Harvard Business Review study.
Nor does the case against nonimmigrants end there. The rate of out-of-wedlock births for United States-born mothers exceeds
the rate for foreign-born moms, 42 percent to 33 percent. The rate of
delinquency and criminality among nonimmigrant teens considerably
exceeds that of their immigrant peers. A recent report
by the Sentencing Project also finds evidence that the fewer immigrants
there are in a neighborhood, the likelier it is to be unsafe.
NYPost |Since the 1960s, black leaders have placed a heavy emphasis on
gaining political power, and Barack Obama’s presidency represented the
apex of those efforts. The assumption — rarely challenged — is that
black political clout must come before black social and economic
advancement. But as JASON L. RILEY argues in this excerpt from his new
book, “False Black Power”
(Templeton Press), political success has not been a major factor in the
rise of racial and ethnic groups from poverty to prosperity.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was followed by large increases in
black elected officials. In the Deep South, black officeholders grew
from 100 in 1964 to 4,300 in 1978. By the early 1980s, major US cities
with large black populations, such as Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago,
Washington and Philadelphia, had elected black mayors. Between 1970 and
2010, the number of black elected officials nationwide increased from
fewer than 1,500 to more than 10,000.
Yet the socioeconomic progress that was supposed to follow in the
wake of these political gains never materialized. During an era of
growing black political influence, blacks as a group progressed at a
slower rate than whites, and the black poor actually lost ground.
In a 1991 book, social scientist Gary Orfield and his co-author,
journalist Carole Ashkinaze, assessed the progress of blacks in the
1970s and ’80s following the sharp increase in black officeholders. The
thinking, then and now, was that the problems of the cities “were
basically the result of the racism of white officials and that many
could be solved by black mayors, school superintendents, policemen and
teachers who were displacing white ones.” The expectation, they added,
“was that black political and education leaders would be able to make
large moves toward racial equity simply by devising policies and
practices reflecting their understanding of the background and needs of
black people.”
But the integration of these institutions proved to be insufficient.
“Many blacks have reached positions of local power, such as mayor,
county commission chairman or superintendent of schools, positions
undreamed of 30 years ago,” they wrote. Their findings, however, showed
that “these achievements do not necessarily produce success for blacks
as a whole.” The empirical evidence, they said, “indicates that there
may be little relationship between the success of local black leaders
and the opportunities of typical black families.” Fist tap Big Don.
downwithtyranny | Until elites stand down and stop the brutal squeeze,
expect more after painful more of this. It's what happens when
societies come apart. Unless elites (of both parties) stop the push for
"profit before people," policies that dominate the whole of the Neoliberal Era,
there are only two outcomes for a nation on this track, each worse than
the other. There are only two directions for an increasingly chaotic
state to go, chaotic collapse or sufficiently militarized "order" to
entirely suppress it.
As with the climate, I'm concerned about the short term for sure — the
storm that kills this year, the hurricane that kills the next — but I'm
also concerned about the longer term as well. If the beatings
from "our betters" won't stop until our acceptance of their "serve the
rich" policies improves, the beatings will never stop, and both sides
will take up the cudgel.
Then where will we be?
America's Most Abundant Manufactured Product May Be Pain
I look out the window and see more and more homeless people, noticeably
more than last year and the year before. And they're noticeably
scruffier, less "kemp," if that makes sense to you (it does if you
live, as I do, in a community that includes a number of them as
neighbors).
The squeeze hasn't let up, and those getting squeezed out of society
have nowhere to drain to but down — physically, economically,
emotionally. The Case-Deaton study speaks volumes to this point. The less fortunate economically are already dying of drugs and despair. If people are killing themselves in increasing numbers, isn't it just remotely maybe possible they'll also aim their anger out as well?
politico | “Illinois is a real outlier in the most striking way. The sheer size
of the state’s unfunded pension liabilities … just looking at the
state’s finances, its habit of deferring payments from one year to the
next, has created a vicious circle,” said Ted Hampton, vice president
with Moody’s Investment Services. “Illinois has had a very large
negative balance both in absolute terms and relative to its budget for
many years.”
What does the crisis all boil down to? It began with an ego-laden
brawl between two powerful men: Rauner and Democratic House Speaker Mike
Madigan. Rauner was elected in 2014 as the first Republican governor in
Illinois in more than a decade, vowing to “shake up Springfield” in a
campaign that demonized Madigan — the longest serving House speaker in
state history — and targeted “corrupt union bosses.”
Upon taking office, Rauner, a multimillionaire businessman, laid out a
list of policy demands that initially included right to work elements
as a condition of signing a budget into law. Rauner wanted changes to
laws affecting workers' compensation, collective bargaining and state
property taxes, among others. Democrats considered the agenda an attack
on unions, which the governor had vilified, saying they had too much
power in Illinois politics. Rauner called the measures pro-business and
necessary to address decades of financial mismanagement.
But Madigan, who has served as speaker under governors from both
political parties, was loath to condition the passage of a budget on the
governor’s political agenda. Each side dug in, with unions rushing
behind Madigan and Republicans — tired of being shut out for years by
Madigan and thrilled to have a generous donor to their campaigns in the
governor’s office — lined up behind Rauner.
Today, Madigan’s Democratic-majority House and the Republican
governor remain entrenched in the war to end all political wars. The
exception is the Democratic-controlled Senate, which ultimately voted on
a tax increase before May 31 adjournment.
Both Rauner and Madigan counted on the other to cave. Neither has.
Meantime, the state is drowning in debt, deficit spending and multiple
bond-rating downgrades.
It’s increasingly possible that Rauner — who promised that he carried
negotiation credibility and the know-how to fix the state’s finances —
could complete his four-year term in office without ever having passed a
budget. At that point, economic forecasts indicate the state’s unpaid
bill pile would soar beyond $20 billion. The bill backlog was at about
$6 billion when Rauner first took office.
To put it into perspective, the Republican-dominated Kansas
Legislature just overrode a veto by its governor from the same party
that reversed the governor’s tax cuts and created $1.9 billion in
revenue. Lawmakers there panicked after the state found itself $900
million in the hole — a drop in the bucket compared to Illinois.
wikipedia | Farmer reports a dialogue between Wilkins and King:[18]
Wilkins: One of these days, Martin, some bright reporter is
going to take a good hard look at Montgomery and discover that despite
all the hoopla, your boycott didn't desegregate a single city bus. It
was the quiet NAACP-type legal action that did it.
King: We're fully aware of that, Roy. And we in the SCLC
believe that it's going to have to be a partnership between nonviolent
direct action and legal action if we're going to get the job done.
Wilkins: In fact, Martin, if you have desegregated anything by your efforts, kindly enlighten me.
King: Well, I guess about the only thing I've desegregated so far is a few human hearts.
Wilkins(nodding): Yes, I'm sure you have done that, and that's important. So keep on doing it; I'm sure it will help the cause in the long run.
Malcolm X claimed in his November 1963 "Message to the Grass Roots"
speech that the White power structure created the Council for United
Civil Rights Leadership specifically for the purpose of infiltrating and
coopting a revolutionary march on Washington.[26]
His account parallels those assembled later by historians, beginning
with discord among moderate civil rights leaders: "As these Negroes of
national stature began to attack each other, they began to lose their
control of the Negro masses."[27]
Negroes was out there in the streets. They was talking about we was
going to march on Washington. By the way, right at that time Birmingham
had exploded, and the Negroes in Birmingham—remember, they also
exploded. They began to stab the crackers in the back and bust them up
'side their head—yes, they did. That's when Kennedy sent in the troops,
down in Birmingham. [...] the Negroes started talking—about what? We're
going to march on Washington, march on the Senate, march on the White
House, march on the Congress, and tie it up, bring it to a halt; don't
let the government proceed. They even said they was [sic] going
out to the airport and lay down on the runway and don't let no airplanes
land. I'm telling you what they said. That was revolution. That was
revolution. That was the black revolution. It was the grass roots out
there in the street. Scared the white man to death, scared the White
power structure in Washington, D. C. to death; I was there.
He goes on to describe the meeting in the Carlyle Hotel:[26]
A philanthropic society headed by a white man named Stephen Currier
called all the top civil-rights leaders together at the Carlyle Hotel.
And he told them that, "By you all fighting each other, you are
destroying the civil-rights movement. And since you're fighting over
money from white liberals, let us set up what is known as the Council
for United Civil Rights Leadership. Let's form this council, and all the
civil-rights organizations will belong to it, and we'll use it for
fund-raising purposes." Let me show you how tricky the white man is. And
as soon as they got it formed, they elected Whitney Young as the
chairman, and who [do] you think became the co-chairman? Stephen
Currier, the white man, a millionaire.
Once these leaders agreed to the CUCRL bargain, they gained access to the resources of the white power structure:[26]
Soon as they got the setup organized, the white man made available to
them top public relations experts; opened the news media across the
country at their disposal; and then they begin to project these Big Six
as the leaders of the march. Originally, they weren't even in the march.
As a result, the March did not threaten systemic racism:[26]
They controlled it so tight—they told those Negroes what time to hit
town, how to come, where to stop, what signs to carry, what song to
sing, what speech they could make, and what speech they couldn't make;
and then told them to get out town by sundown. And everyone of those
Toms was out of town by sundown.
Audio rights
King announced in October 1963 that he was assigning all rights to the recording of his "I Have a Dream" speech to the Council.[28]
The Council subsequently released an official recording of speeches
at the March, titled "We Shall Overcome". It includes speeches from
King, Wilkins, Young, Rustin, Lewis, Randolph, Walter Reuther, and Joachim Prinz, as well as music from Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Odetta, Marian Anderson, and Peter, Paul & Mary. This record sold for $3.00 by mail or $3.98 retail.[29][30]
Legal action was taken to halt sales of other recordings.[28]Clarence Jones
argued that Mr. Maestro Inc and Twentieth Century Fox had infringed on
the group's copyright. The defendants argued that King was a public
figure and his words were in the public domain.[31]
CounterPunch | Much has been said and written over the years about early elite
philanthropic interventions into the civil rights movement, but the
first book to treat this topic seriously was Robert Allen’s Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History (Doubleday, 1969). As Allen noted in the introduction to his timeless treaty on power and resistance:
“In the United States today a program of domestic
neo-colonialism is rapidly advancing. It was designed to counter the
potentially revolutionary thrust of the recent black rebellions in major
cities across the country. This program was formulated by America’s
corporate elite – the major owners, managers, and directors of the giant
corporations, banks, and foundations which increasingly dominate the
economy and society as a whole – because they believe that the urban
revolts pose a serious threat to economic and social stability. Led by
organizations as the Ford Foundation, the Urban Coalition, and the
National Alliance of Businessmen, the corporatists are attempting with
considerable success to co-opt the black power movement. Their strategy
is to equate black power with black capitalism.” (pp.17-8)
Allen defined his use of the word co-opt in this way: “to assimilate
militant leaders and militant rhetoric while subtly transforming the
militants’ program for social change into a program which in essence
buttresses the status quo.” (p.17) This co-optive function of
philanthropic largesse applied across the board to all manner of
progressive movements, as illustrated by Professor Joan Roelofs in her
important book Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (2003).
We should recall that in February 1965 Malcolm X had been gunned-down in a “factional dispute” which the FBI took credit for having “developed” within the Nation of Islam — a conspiracy elaborated upon within the book The Assassination of Malcolm X.
Moreover it turned out that at the time of his murder one of Malcolm’s
personal bodyguards, Eugene Roberts, had actually been working for the
New York Police Department’s “subversives” unit which itself worked
closely with COINTELPRO operatives; while in later years Roberts went on
to serve as a infiltrating “charter member” of the New York Chapter of
the Black Panther Party.
As an insightful and charismatic leader, Malcolm X was killed precisely because of his rising influence among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Speaking in November 1963,
shortly before his break with the National of Islam, he accused white
liberals of dressing up the anointed leaders of the civil rights
movement to use them as house Negroes. He drew particular attention to
the manner why which millionaire elites like Stephen Currier – who
before his own early death helped set up the Urban Coalition — has acted
to take control of the March on Washington which had taken place in the
summer. After outlining these co-optive actions Malcolm famously
surmised:
“It’s just
like when you’ve got some coffee that’s too black, which means it’s too
strong. What you do? You integrate it with cream; you make it weak. If
you pour too much cream in, you won’t even know you ever had coffee. It
used to be hot, it becomes cool. It used to be strong, it becomes weak.
It used to wake you up, now it’ll put you to sleep. This is what they
did with the march on Washington. They joined it. They didn’t integrate
it; they infiltrated it. They joined it, became a part of it, took it
over. And as they took it over, it lost its militancy. They ceased to be
angry. They ceased to be hot. They ceased to be uncompromising. Why, it
even ceased to be a march. It became a picnic, a circus. Nothing but a
circus, with clowns and all.”
After splitting from the Nation of Islam, Malcolm spent the last year
of his life planning and strategizing about how to end injustice in
ways that departed from his earlier commitment to Black Nationalism.
WaPo | Attorney General Jeff Sessions is asking congressional leaders to
undo federal medical-marijuana protections that have been in place since
2014, according to a May letter that became public Monday.
The protections, known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, prohibit the Justice Department
from using federal funds to prevent certain states "from implementing
their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or
cultivation of medical marijuana."
In his letter, first obtained by Tom Angell of Massroots.com and
verified independently by The Washington Post, Sessions argued that the
amendment would "inhibit [the Justice Department's] authority to
enforce the Controlled Substances Act." He continues:
I believe it would be unwise for
Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund particular
prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic
and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime. The Department must
be in a position to use all laws available to combat the transnational
drug organizations and dangerous drug traffickers who threaten American
lives.
Sessions's citing of a "historic drug
epidemic" to justify a crackdown on medical marijuana is at odds with
what researchers know about current drug use and abuse in the United
States. The epidemic Sessions refers to involves deadly opiate drugs,
not marijuana. A growing body of research (acknowledged by the National Institute on Drug Abuse) has shown that opiate deaths and overdoses actually decrease in states with medical marijuana laws on the books.
Tass |
According
to Putin, Comey is more like a rights activist than a secret service
chief. "If he continues to be persecuted in this connection, we will be
ready to provide political asylum to him, he should know about that,"
the Russian president said.
Putin pointed out that Comey had admitted to have recorded his
conversation with Trump, handing it over to the media through a friend.
"This sounds strange when a secret service chief records his
conversation with the commander-in-chief to hand the record to the
media," Putin added.
CounterPunch | The July 4 meeting at which The Voice appeared came in the
wake of the vicious white supremacist attacks (Harrison called it a
“pogrom”) on the African American community of East St. Louis, Illinois
(which is twelve miles from Ferguson, Missouri). Harrison again advised
“Negroes” who faced mob violence in the South and elsewhere to “supply
themselves with rifles and fight if necessary, to defend their lives and
property.” According to the New York Times he received great
applause when he declared that “the time had come for the Negroes [to]
do what white men who were threatened did, look out for themselves, and
kill rather than submit to be killed.” He was quoted as saying: “We
intend to fight if we must . . . for the things dearest to us, for our
hearths and homes.” In his talk he encouraged “Negroes” everywhere who
did not enjoy the protection of the law to arm in self-defense, to hide
their arms, and to learn how to use their weapons. He also reportedly
called for a collection of money to buy rifles for those who could not
obtain them themselves, emphasizing that “Negroes in New York cannot
afford to lie down in the face of this” because “East St. Louis touches
us too nearly.” According to the Times, Harrison said it was
imperative to “demand justice” and to “make our voices heard.” This call
for armed self-defense and the desire to have the political voice of
the militant New Negro heard were important components of Harrison’s
militant “New Negro” activism.
The Voice featured Harrison’s outstanding writing and
editing and it included important book review and “Poetry for the
People” sections. It contributed significantly to the climate leading up
to Alain LeRoy Locke’s 1925 publication The New Negro.
Beginning in August 1919 Harrison edited The New Negro:A Monthly Magazine of a Different Sort, which
described itself as “A Magazine for the New Negro,” published “in the
interest of the New Negro Manhood Movement,” and “intended as an organ
of the international consciousness of the darker races — especially of
the Negro race.”
In early 1920 Harrison assumed “the joint editorship” of the Negro World and
served as principal editor of that globe-sweeping newspaper of Marcus
Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (which was a major
component of the “New Negro Movement”).
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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