Jacobin | The most dramatic effort to modernize policing at home occurred with
President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Crime. The 1968 Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act created the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA), which provided funding, developed guidelines, and
helped with coordination among federal, state, and municipal
law-enforcement agencies, while also offering research grants to test
experimental tactics and technologies. A decade before the beginning of
the incarceration boom, a federally backed revamping of law enforcement set the stage.
The original idea for new federal anticrime infrastructure had
emerged a few years earlier, in early autumn 1964. Summer unrest had
shown police forces to be underprepared and insufficiently trained to
handle urban riots or apparently increasing crime levels. As a result,
Johnson administration officials launched a program to assist domestic
law enforcement modeled on an ongoing program to assist foreign police.
Counterinsurgent foreign police assistance was not new in the 1960s,
but it gained a robust, centralized leadership and a budgetary line of
its own in 1962. The program consisted of three areas: technical
assistance, such as help setting up crime laboratories, surveillance
units, or prisons; material aid, what some skeptics derided as “running
guns to cops”; and training. Advisers aimed to help indigenous forces
fight ordinary crime, control unrest, and keep tabs on radicals. No
great distinctions were drawn between these tasks, and the means for
their accomplishment overlapped.
In December 1963, the Office of Public Safety (OPS), housed within
the Agency for International Development, opened its International
Police Academy in Washington, DC. High- and mid-ranking police officials
from over seventy-five countries attended classes there for a decade.
They learned state-of-the-art police techniques, including logistics,
riot control, marksmanship, and record-keeping.
The academy’s raison d’etre was one of “training trainers,” so lessons
imparted there were sure to be replicated in other countries.
One OPS executive argued,
Regardless of what color policemen are, the suits they
wear, what they call themselves, they are all the same. They are the
same for the simple reason that a policeman exists in society as a
behavior control mechanism. The basic principles of what is done, how it
is done, and why it is done are the same.
If this projection was not yet true, OPS’s mission was to make it a reality.
Culled from agencies around the country, OPS’s advisers represented
the best and most versatile experts US law enforcement had to offer. In
addition to prior police work at home, most also had experience in
counterinsurgency and special-warfare operations overseas.
Although Congress eventually shuttered OPS amid accusations that it
taught and condoned torture and bomb-making, most of its work was
utterly pedestrian — and that underpins today’s problem. OPS’s version
of counterinsurgency did not try to institute highly militarized police
forces so much as attempt to create standards of discipline, specialized
units, benchmarks for training, facility with up-to-date technologies,
and autonomy from external influences. Its lessons were based on the
idea that adept police forces are essential for capitalist democracy.
Even today, we live with the legacies of OPS. Its program of total
surveillance of South Vietnamese citizens using tamper-proof national ID
cards might make today’s electronic spies jealous, but the means of
checking those IDs — stop-and-frisk — would be recognizable to any beat
cop in New York or Chicago. In 1964, an OPS training manual advised,
“These methods — checks, searches, passes — are tolerated only in
situations of national emergency in which they are necessary to combat
the enemy. Viet Nam today is in the midst of such an emergency.” But
today, on US streets with continually declining crime rates, these
“reformed” actions of the police constitute the emergency.
Source | This article examines British policymakers' attempts to address the political and practical problems of crowd control in British Africa. After the Accra riots, reforming the policing of crowds became an imperial priority. These efforts pushed in several policy directions, yet none could solve the deeper political issues causing the unrest, nor stop state violence against civilians. During the 1950s, the distance between the liberal rhetoric in Britain about the rule of law and the brutal realities of colonial policing continued to grow. This gap was finally exposed during the Nyasaland Emergency, which had dramatic consequences for the future of British Africa.
Magistrate-Sir, you must disperse the rioters.
Officer-Yes, sir. Soldiers, prime and load.
Magistrate-Stop, sir. You must not fire! What are you about?
Officer-Shall I charge with the bayonet then, sir?
Magistrate-Oh no! You must disperse the rioters.
Officer-But how am I to disperse them if I neither fire nor charge?
Magistrate-Oh, that is your business not mine. Do it as you like, only you must not fire or use your bayonets.
General Sir Charles James Napier relaying an exchange from the Burdett's Riots of 1816-1817-1
[R]ecourse should be had to the use of firearms only as a last result. In view of the serious consequences which result from firing upon civilians, it is I feel important that alternative methods for the dispersal of crowds should be continuously studied.
Secretary of State for the Colonies, Arthur Creech Jones, in a circular to colonial governors in the aftermath of the Accra riots, 1948-2
Though they were a century-and-a-half apart and working in drastically different contexts, Arthur Creech Jones and the nineteenth century magistrate quoted above shared the same basic dilemma: how can order in the streets be restored without resorting to lethal force? Both excerpts also articulate a difference in perspective, if not necessarily always a physical distance, between these men and the so-called "men on the spot" who were immediately tasked with controlling these crowds. These different perspectives as they relate to the use of force were primarily due to the men being subject to different pressures, guided by different understandings of their responsibilities, and locked into different interpretations of the nature of the civilian crowds they faced.
When offered the option of soldiers firing into the crowd, the magistrate reproached the officer in charge, asking: "What are you about?" At times, London similarly castigated colonial officers for what was deemed to be excessive violence in the handling of colonial crowds.3 But neither the nineteenth century magistrate nor twentieth century colonial policymakers offered other viable alternatives to lethal force when facing down angry crowds: that simply was not their "business." In the aftermath of the Accra, Gold Coast Riots of 1948, colonial policymakers under Creech Jones would resolve to make it their business to reform colonial crowd control. Yet as they would discover, the violence that often accompanied imperial crowd control was not a simple administrative problem that could be easily overcome by technical or procedural reforms emanating from London. Instead, imperial crowd control was a subject inextricably linked to the nature of state coercion and control in Britain's post-war Empire.
In the decade following the riots in Accra in 1948, Britain was confronted with violent unrest in various forms across much of its Empire.4 The scale of this imperial crisis was reflected in the number of Emergencies declared all over the globe during the 1950s, from Kenya to Malaya to Cyprus to British Guiana. This left the security forces of the Empire dangerously stretched, and made colonial administrators increasingly anxious about losing control. The speed with which this anti-colonial unrest spread throughout Africa and the pace of subsequent constitutional changes, first in the Gold Coast then eventually across the whole of British Africa, was something no imperial policymakers in London had predicted.5
On the force of African nationalism, Creech Jones wrote: "The emotional fervor attached to nationalism infects and spreads. Unless a serious effort is made to channel it, it may become disruptive and destructive. Our task is to channel this emotion and concept towards constructive courses."6 This channeling meant staying ahead of what was deemed to be legitimate nationalism and controlling and thwarting so-called "irresponsible elements." The suppression of mass politics was thus seen as a vital prerequisite to Whitehall's broader strategy of an orderly and slow constitutional evolution of its African possessions.7 After 1948, the Colonial Office was reconfigured to reflect a greater focus on security, intelligence gathering, and propaganda, which together formed the three main pillars of its mission to shape and control colonial politics.8
He said: "There's no real awareness of the atrocities, of the fact
that Britain financed its Industrial Revolution and its prosperity from
the depredations of empire, the fact that Britain came to one of the
richest countries in the world in the 18th century and reduced it, after
two centuries of plunder, to one of the poorest."
A previous YouGov poll found the British public are generally proud of the British Empire and its colonial past.
YouGov found 44 per cent were proud of Britain's history of colonialism, while 21 per cent regretted it happened.
The same poll also found 43 per cent believed the British Empire was a
good thing, while 19 per cent said it was bad and 25 per cent said it
was neither good nor bad.
At its height in 1922, the British empire governed a fifth of the
world's population and a quarter of the world's total land area.
Although proponents of Empire say it brought various economic
developments to parts of the world it controlled, critics point to
massacres, famines and the use of concentration camps by the British
Empire.
Here, The Independent looks at five of the worst atrocities carried out by the British Empire. Fist tap Bro.Makheru.
frontpagemag | Intersectionality frowns on expecting civil behavior from
“oppressed” protesters. Asking that shrieking campus crybully not to
scream threats in your face is “tone policing”. An African-American
millionaire’s child at Yale is fighting for her “existence”, unlike the
Pennsylvania coal miner, the Baltimore police officer and the Christian
florist whose existences really are threatened.
Tone policing
is how the anger of privileged leftists is protected while the
frustration of their victims is suppressed. The existence of tone
policing as a specific term to protect displays of left-wing anger shows
the collapse of civility into anger privilege. Civility has been
replaced by a political entitlement to anger.
The left prides itself on an unearned moral superiority (“When they
go low, we go high”) reinforced by its own echo chamber even as it has
become incapable of controlling its angry outbursts. The national
tantrum after Trump’s victory has all but shut down the government,
turned every media outlet into a non-stop feed of conspiracy theories
and set off protests that quickly escalated into street violence.
But Trump Derangement Syndrome is a symptom of a problem with the left
that existed before he was born. The left is an angry movement. It is
animated by an outraged self-righteousness whose moral superiority
doubles as dehumanization. And its machinery of culture glamorizes its
anger. The media dresses up the seething rage so that the left never has
to look at its inner Hodgkinson in the mirror.
The left is as
angry as ever. Campus riots and assassinations of Republican
politicians are nothing new. What is changing is that its opponents are
beginning to match its anger. The left still clings to the same anger
it had when it was a theoretical movement with plans, but little impact
on the country. The outrage at the left is no longer ideological. There
are millions of people whose health care was destroyed by ObamaCare,
whose First Amendment rights were taken away, whose land was seized,
whose children were turned against them and whose livelihoods were
destroyed.
The angry left has gained a great deal of power. It
has used that power to wreck lives. It is feverishly plotting to
deprive nearly 63 million Americans of their vote by using its
entrenched power in the government, the media and the non-profit sector.
And it is too blinded by its own anger over the results of the election
to realize the anger over its wholesale abuses of power and privileged
tantrums.
But monopolies on anger only work in totalitarian
states. In a free society, both sides are expected to control their
anger and find terms on which to debate and settle issues. The left
rejects civility and refuses to control its anger. The only settlement
it will accept is absolute power. If an election doesn’t go its way, it
will overturn the results. If someone offends it, he must be punished.
Or there will be anger.
The angry left demands that everyone
recognize the absolute righteousness of its anger as the basis for its
power. This anger privilege, like tone policing, is often cast in terms
of oppressed groups. But its anger isn’t in defiance of oppression, but
in pursuit of oppression.
Anger privilege is used to silence
opposition, to enforce illegal policies and to seize power. But the
left’s monopolies on anger are cultural, not political. The
entertainment industry and the media can enforce anger privilege norms
through public shaming, but their smears can’t stop the consequences of
the collapse of civility in public life. There are no monopolies on
emotion.
When anger becomes the basis for political power,
then it won’t stop with Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders. That’s what the
left found out in the last election. Its phony pearl clutching was a
reaction to the consequences of its destruction of civility. Its
reaction to that show of anger by conservatives and independents was to
escalate the conflict. Instead of being the opposition, the left became
the “resistance”. Trump was simultaneously Hitler and a traitor.
Republicans were evil beasts.
BostonGlobe | Probably the most humiliating thing about the Georgia loss is that
tactically there wasn’t much else they could have done. Yes, it would
have been nice if their candidate, Jon Ossoff, wasn’t a baby-faced
30-year-old who didn’t technically live in the district. Yes, it would
have been helpful if he had a positive message of his own, and not just
an anti-Trump one.
But Ossoff raised more money than any other candidate running for
Congress in the history of the United States. He ran endless numbers of
television ads. He had thousands of volunteers that came in to campaign
for him from across the country. Even more of them were making phone
calls for him from wherever they lived. On the campaign trail he didn’t
make any real damaging verbal mistakes.
And yet in contest that
Democrats called a referendum on Trump, Handel’s 4-point win over Ossoff
was 1.5 percentage points higher than Trump’s victory there last
November.
They fought the wrong race
Adding to Democratic frustrations Tuesday night was the logic that
they may have focused too heavily on the wrong race. The real surprise
of the night was just how competitive another special election held
Tuesday — that one in South Carolina — had become. The South Carolina
race, in a district to replace Trump’s budget chief, could have used
more attention.
Yes, in South Carolina the Republican ultimately
won, but he did so by just 3 percentage points. This contest wasn’t even
supposed to be close, and yet the loss there was less extreme than the
one in Georgia.
There are many Democrats saying that spending in
Georgia had reached its saturation point weeks if not months ago. Had
the party instead sent more of its dollars to South Carolina, it just
might have snuck in an upset.
The wounds of the 2016 primary are back
When there’s a win, everyone takes the credit. When there’s a loss, everyone starts pointing fingers.
So
it was with Tuesday night that the blame game started immediately after
it was clear they had lost both seats, particularly the one in Georgia.
The Democratic Party still hasn’t found a way to come together after
the divisions created in the 2016 presidential primary between Clinton
and Bernie Sanders. These new loses only re-opened these wounds.
Liberal
groups like Vermont-based Democracy for America repeated lines so
familiar, they could have come after Clinton’s loss in the general
election.
“The same, tired centrist Democratic playbook that has
come up short cycle after cycle will not suffice,” DFA chairman Jim Dean
said in a statement.
Meanwhile those from the Clinton wing only
reaffirmed their commitment that these elections are hard to win. Now is
not the time, they said, to move even further left in picking
Democratic nominees from the so-called Sanders wing of the party.
It
is not a matter of who is correct. The real point is that after Tuesday
night, Democrats are right back to where they were in November.
seattletimes | “I’ve got three words for you: scared white people,” Parker says.
“Every period of racial progress in this country is followed by a period
of retrenchment. That’s what the 2016 election was about, and it was
plain as it was happening.”
To be clear: Neither Parker, nor the latest research, is saying that
Trump voters are all racists. Most voting is simply party-line no matter
who is running. What they’re saying is that worries about the economy,
free trade and the rest were no more important in 2016 than in previous
elections, but racial resentment spiked.
It makes sense, considering the candidate himself was maligning Mexicans and openly calling for banning Muslims.
What’s doubly interesting is that Parker suspects the reason his
research gets overlooked is because he is black. He senses it’s assumed
that as a black man he must be biased about race, or is too quick to
invoke it.
“I get a whole lot more respect over in Europe,” Parker told me.
“There, it’s all about the ideas and whether my social science is sound.
It’s not about who I am, like it so often is here.”
Meanwhile, white writers such as J.D. Vance, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,”
are seen as guru guides to Trump country. Even though the mostly
colorblind story of economic dead-end-ism Vance tells apparently isn’t
what really turned the election.
Parker and Barreto now are working on their own book, out next year,
called “The Great White Hope: Donald Trump, Race and the Crisis of
Democracy.” Will that get ignored, too?
“I get it, nobody wants to be told what they don’t want to hear,”
Parker says. “People want there to be a more innocent explanation, about
jobs or trade or something. But sorry, everyone — it just isn’t there.
My plea to people is we ought to start focusing on what’s real.”
carrollquigley | On his death in 1977, Carroll Quigley, professor at Georgetown University, left
a long, but incomplete, manuscript, which his colleagues have now put into print
(by photocopy of the typescript) together with appreciative comments and a list
of his publications. The author's objective is to enlighten Americans on "the
history of weapons systems and tactics, with special reference to the influence
that these have had on political life and the stability of political
arrangements" (p. 35).
Early in the work we are given an analysis of several dichotomies in military
development: (1) amateur versus specialized weapons, the former of which could
encourage the rise of democracy; (2) missile versus shock weapons, the former of
which were preferred by Asiatic peoples 2000 a.c. to A.D. 1400, while
Indo-European stocks tended to use shock weapons in that period; (3) the
relative advantage of offensive or defensive tactics, a field in which
oscillations have repeatedly taken place.
These variations are then discussed in the long sweep of human development from
prehistory down to about A.D. 1500. The bulk of the text is devoted to Greek and
Roman history for the period after what Quigley calls the "great divide" in
Western Civilization that occurred about 600 b.c., but there is ample space for
Chinese and nomadic history. The book is far more widely based than the brief
bibliography suggests and is often provocatively independent in its judgments.
Quigley does hop back and forth between Greece and Rome and mixes events of
several centuries in one paragraph; the reader needs to be already well at home
in ancient and also medieval history.
One would wish to speak well of a work with such earnest intent, on which the
author spent the last twelve years of his life, but the study must be faulted on
many levels. Straightforward errors may be excused as trivial. More serious on
the factual side are Quigley's view that Indo-European peoples everywhere shared
a fundamentally common ideology -- the search for immortality through public
renown -- and his overemphasis on naval power; he also has the strange
misconception that ancient historians nowadays do not often consider slavery as
vital in Greek development.
The major structural flaw, however, is on a higher level, that of the
organization of the whole work: for Quigley does not really carry out his
intention. His surveys of changes in weapons systems are thoughtful and
valuable. but for the reader they become muddled and ineffective amid the
detailed narrative and descriptive treatments of political history over many
centuries. Nor does the author provide clear judgments about the relations of
the two factors in his tale. One looks, for instance, for a sharp analysis of
the rise of Rome in light of its significant changes in weapons systems;
instead, there is a lengthy discussion of the Roman constitution and other
aspects that swell the bulk but do not bear on the topic.
In the end, moreover, is H. J. Hogan correct in his foreword to the book when he
asserts that "society's decisions regarding its weapons systems have been
decisive in shaping human social, economic, and political decisions," or is the
reverse as likely to be correct? Quigley thought that the Greeks could become
democratic because they used amateur weapons; but if Athens did have a
democratic constitution for two centuries, it was for very different reasons,
and almost all Greek states remained conservatively oligarchic in structure.
Elsewhere Quigley is more careful not to explain the complexities of history
simply by adducing one factor; among many examples, one may cite his treatment
of the Middle Ages (p. 813), in which the role of weapons systems is noted but
far more weight is assigned to the concept of providential deity (or, in the
case of the Latin West, the failure of this ideology to gain command).
Recently Douglas C. North has observed in an interesting study, Structure and
Change in European History, "While there is an immense literature on
military technology itself, it has seldom seen explored in terms of its
implications for political structure" (p. 25). Quigley tried. but lost his way
in details. Specialists may find profit in some of his comments; for the average
American citizen the task still remains an open one. Full text of Weapon Systems and Political Stability
carrollquigley | I am going to give you an
historical view of the American democratic tradition with analytical
overtones showing how democracy has changed over the course of our history.
The United States is a democracy. I think there is no doubt of that — but
the American democratic tradition is largely a myth.
First, a few definitions. I define democracy as majority rule and
minority rights. Of these the second is more important than the
first. There are many despotisms which have majority rule. Hitler held
plebiscites in which he obtained over 92 percent of the vote, and most of
the people who were qualified to vote did vote. I think that in China today
a majority of the people support the government, but China is certainly not
a democracy.
The essential half of this definition
then, is the second half, minority rights. What that means is that a
minority has those rights which enable it to work within the system and to
build itself up to be a majority and replace the governing majority.
Moderate deviations from majority rule do not usually undermine democracy.
In fact, absolute democracy does not really exist at the nation-state level.
For example, a modest poll tax as a qualification for voting would be an
infringement on the principle of majority rule but restrictions on the
suffrage would have to go pretty far before they really abrogated democracy.
On the other hand relatively slight restrictions on minority rights — the
freedoms of speech, assembly, and other rights — would rapidly erode
democracy.
Another basic point. Democracy is not the
highest political value. Speeches about democracy and the democratic
tradition might lead you to think this is the most perfect political system
ever devised. That just isn't true. There are other political values which
are more important and urgent—security, for example. And I would suggest
that political stability and political responsibility are also more
important.
In fact, I would define a good government as
a responsible government. In every society there is a structure of power. A
government is responsible when its political processes reflect that power
structure, thus ensuring that the power structure will never be able to
overthrow the government. If a society in fact could be ruled by a minority
because that elite had power to rule and the political system reflected that
situation by giving governing power to that elite, then, it seems to me, we
would have a responsible government even though it was not democratic.
Some of you are looking puzzled. Why do we have democracy
in this country? I'll give you a blunt and simple answer, which means, of
course, that it's not the whole truth. We have democracy because around 1880
the distribution of weapons in this society was such that no minority could
make a majority obey. If you have a society in which weapons are cheap, so
that almost anyone can obtain them, and are easy to use — what I call
amateur weapons — then you have democracy. But if the opposite is true,
weapons extremely expensive and very difficult to use — the medieval knight,
for example, with his castle, the supreme weapons of the year 1100 — in such
a system, with expensive and difficult-to-use weapons, you could not
possibly have majority rule. But in 1880 for $100 you could get the two best
weapons in the world, a Winchester rifle and a Colt revolver; so almost
anyone could buy them. With weapons like these in the hands of ordinary
people, no minority could make the majority obey a despotic government.
Now there are some features of democracy that many people
really do not understand. It is said, for example, that our officials are
elected by the voters, and the one that gets the most votes is elected. I
suggest that this is misleading. The outcome of an election is not
determined by those who vote, but by those who don't vote. Since 1945 or so,
we have had pretty close elections, with not much more than half of the
people voting. In the 1968 election about 80 million voted, and about 50
million qualified to vote did not. The outcome was determined by the 50
million who didn't vote. If you could have got 2 percent of the nonvoters to
the polls to vote for your candidate, you could have elected him. And that
has been true of most of our recent elections. It's the ones who don't vote
who determine the outcome.
Something else we tend to
overlook is that the nomination process is much more important than the
election process. I startle a lot of my colleagues who think they know
England pretty well by asking them how candidates for election are nominated
in England. They don't have conventions or primary elections. So the
important thing is who names the candidates. In any democratic country, if
you could name the candidates of all parties, you wouldn't care who voted or
how, because your man would be elected. So the nominations are more
important than the elections.
A third point is one I
often make in talking with students who are discouraged about their
inability to influence the political process. I say this is nonsense. There
never was a time when it was easier for ordinary people to influence
political affairs than today. One reason, of course, is that big mass of
nonvoters. If you can simply get 2 or 3 percent of them to the polls — and
that shouldn't be too difficult — then you can elect your candidate, whoever
he is.
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.
Rejuvenation Pills
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
