tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-113615072024-03-17T00:48:22.334-07:00nobsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-25619402090633739162015-03-15T19:38:00.005-07:002015-03-15T19:44:43.919-07:00From the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate to the rise of the Islamic State<h4 style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: none; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(170, 170, 170); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; font-size: 1.6em; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 0.1em; overflow: hidden; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: auto;">
<span dir="auto"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Global_jihad">Global jihad</a></span></span></h4>
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<a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Worldview_of_ISIS_jihadis" style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Worldview of ISIS jihadis</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:From_the_fall_of_the_Ottoman_Caliphate_to_the_rise_of_the_Islamic_State">From the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate to the rise of the Islamic State</a></span></h2>
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<a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Islamic_State"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Daesh</span></a></h2>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1119040027102012282005-06-17T13:25:00.000-07:002005-06-17T13:30:43.166-07:00agent Jurist<strong>Harry Dexter White</strong> was positively identified as<strong> agent Jurist</strong> in an <a title="FBI" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI">FBI</a> memorandum dated 16 October 1950.<br /><br />White became involved with Soviet intelligence espionage in May of 1941. One of the most valuable assets to Soviet intelligence was his ability to infiltrate the United States <a title="Department of the Treasury" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_the_Treasury">Department of the Treasury</a> with persons the <a title="Greg Silvermaster" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Silvermaster">Silvermaster spy ring</a> wanted to have assinged there. Among the other American citizens and government employees acting as Soviet agents were <a title="Lud Ullman" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lud_Ullman">Lud Ullman</a>, <a title="William Henry Taylor" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Henry_Taylor">William Henry Taylor</a>, and <a title="Sonia Steinman Gold" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonia_Steinman_Gold">Sonia Gold</a>.<br /><br />On December 4, 1945, the FBI transmitted to the White House a report entitled "Soviet Espionage in the United States." The report summarized White's espionage activities. Copies of the report were sent to Attorney General <a title="Tom C. Clark" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_C._Clark">Tom Clark</a> also. The evidence indicated a substantial spy ring operating within the Government and involving White. Given the secrecy of the <a title="Venona project" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venona_project">Venona project</a> materials, the president went ahead six weeks later and nominated White for appointment to head the newly created <a title="International Monetary Fund" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund">International Monetary Fund</a>.<br /><br />White was summoned before the <a title="House Un-American Activities Committee" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee">House Un-American Activities Committee</a> in August of 1948. <a title="Elizabeth Bentley" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Bentley">Elizabeth Bentley</a> told the FBI White that had been involved in espionage activities on behalf of the <a title="Soviet Union" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union">Soviet Union</a> during <a title="World War II" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II">World War II</a>. <a title="Whittaker Chambers" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whittaker_Chambers">Whittaker Chambers</a> earlier had testified of his association with White in the <a title="Communist" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist">Communist</a> underground secret apparatus up to 1938. White, recovering from a series of heart attacks, proclaimed his lifelong commitment to the principles of democracy and the ideals of President Roosevelt's New Deal. He died of a heart attack three days later and HUAC. The positive identification of Harry Dexter White as agent Jurist came two years after his death.<br /><br />Below is the text of that memorandum from the FBI's Venona project file released under the <a title="Freedom of Information Act" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_Information_Act">Freedom of Information Act</a>.<br /><br /><a id="Jurist" name="Jurist"></a><br /><br /><strong><em>Office Memorandum</em></strong> <strong>° UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT</strong><br /><br />DATE: October 16, 1950<br /><br />TO: The Director<br />FROM: Mr. Ladd<br />SUBJECT: ESPIONAGE - R<br /><br />PURPOSE: To advise you of the positive identification of agent Jurist (the cover name of a Soviet agent operating in 1944 and named by Venona project) as <a title="Harry Dexter White" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White">Harry Dexter White</a>, deceased. White was formerly the Administrative Assistant to former Secretary of the Treasury Morgenthau.<br /><br />DETAILS: You have previously been advised of information obtained from [Venona project] regarding Jurist who was active during 1944. According to the previous information received from [Venona project regarding Jurist, during April, 1944, he had reported on conversations between the then Secretary of State Hull and Vice President Wallace. He also reported on Wallace's proposed trip to China. On August 5, 1944, he reported to the Soviets that he was confident of President Roosevelt's victory in the coming elections unless there was a huge military failure. He also reported that Truman's nomination as Vice President was calculated to secure the vote of the conservative wing of the Democratic Party. It was also reported that Jurist was willing for any self-sacrifice in behalf of the <a title="MGB" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGB">MGB</a> but was afraid that his activities, if exposed, might lead to a political scandal and have an effect on the elections. It was also mentioned that he would be returning to Washington, D. C., on August 17, 1944. The new information from [Venona project] indicates that Jurist and Morgenthau were to make a trip to London and Normandy and leaving the United States on August 5, 1944.<br />On the basis of the foregoing, the tentative identification of Harry Dexter White as Jurist appears to be conclusively established inasmuch as Morgenthau and White left the United States on a confidential trip to the Normandy beachhead on August 5, 1944, and they returned to the United States on August 17, 1944.<br /><br />You may recall that Harry Dexter White was named by Whittaker Chambers in his statements as having been a source of information for Chambers in his work in Soviet espionage until Chambers broke with the Soviets in 1938. Chambers produced a handwritten memorandum that White had given him and our Laboratory established this memorandum as being in White's handwriting. The Treasury Department advised that parts of the material were highly confidential, coming to the Treasury Department from the Department of State.<br />In addition to the foregoing, Elizabeth T. Bentley in November, 1945, advised that she had learned through <a title="Greg Silvermaster" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Silvermaster">Nathan Gregory Silvermaster</a> that White was supplying Silvermaster with information which was obtained by White in the course of his duties as Assistant to the Secretary of the of the Treasury.<br /><br />RECOMMENDATION:<br /><br />There is attached hereto a blind memorandum which has been prepared for the information and assistance of [redacted] setting forth this identification. There is also attached a memorandum to the Field giving them the new information from [Venona project] which establishes conclusively the identity of White as Jurist.<br /><br />Attachment<br /><a id="Source" name="Source"></a><br />Source<br /><a class="external" title="http://foia.fbi.gov/venona/venona.pdf" href="http://foia.fbi.gov/venona/venona.pdf">FBI Venona file pgs. 17-18</a> <br />Retrieved from "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White_(agent_Jurist)">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Dexter_White_(agent_Jurist)</a>"Unknownnoreply@blogger.com161tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1117777730507474242005-06-02T22:47:00.000-07:002005-06-02T22:53:07.766-07:00Westphalia's New International Order: On the Origins of Grand Strategy in Western DiplomacyJames Nathan<br /><br />International Studies Association<br /><br />March 18-21, 1998<br /><br />Introduction<br /><br />The emergent post-Cold War international order is unique: for the first time since the invention of the diplomatic method, an international architecture is materializing without any post-war diplomatic charter. Moreover, order is now conditioned not on a Germany divided and distracted; on the contrary, if it is to be sustained, order requires Germany to be geopolitically coherent and competent: the reverse of the Cold War reality that the fragmentation of German power was an essential element of stability. Still, this radically new international structure, if it is to sustain itself and prosper, will have to reconcile those contradictory supports of order that were first adumbrated at Westphalia: collective security on the one hand, and the balance of power on the other. Like those well-fed mid-seventeenth century congregants who met in a bereft corner of Prussia, we have come to the crossroads of choice.<br /><br />Let us recall first the origins of Westphalian order. By the mid-seventeenth century, the flames of the Thirty Years' War scorched the steppes of Transylvania, darkened Ireland, passed the Americas, touched the Cape of Good Hope, and licked at the Straits of Malacca. By 1648, Germans found their numbers reduced by a third. Much of the German countryside had been turned into a howling wilderness, and travelers reported vast stretches populated only by wolves.<br /><br />The animus that characterized international politics prior to the mid-seventeenth century contradicted civility and denied diplomacy. In an age when religion defined politics, the purpose of war could only be the extirpation of wickedness. In that moral environment, peace treaties were not just impracticable, they were impermissible. The princes and potentates of seventeenth century, fired with chiliastic certainty, held compromise to be not merely wrong-headed, but godless and malign. This world view admitted no middle position: if one side fought with God, it followed that the other had sided with evil. For the hundred years that preceded the treaties of Westphalia, only truces were permissible. It was allowable to truck with heresy only to regroup and fight anew. The very essence of diplomacy -- the peaceful adjustment of conflicting interests by dint of reason and tact -- was perforce banished to the shores of a rising ocean of blood that would, it was believed, wash away misbelief or quite simply end the world in a final sanguinary flood.<br /><br />Sometime in its third decade, it became clear that the Thirty Years war had become a struggle between contending visions of international order: one based on sovereign, independent dominions; the other on religious faith and universal authority. In the general defeat of the Hapsburgs, the latter theory was demolished. The formal settlement of the Thirty Years War at the Congress of Westphalia heralded the onset of what we now call the "classic" period of international diplomacy. Indeed, from the Westphalia meeting on, European diplomatic history can be seen as the mid-seven narrative of the consequences of diplomatic congresses.<br /><br />The Congress of Westphalia was the first such meeting of its kind: great numbers of "accredited" diplomatic representatives, plenipotentiaries, and clerics, from over ninety-six entities, assembled in two cities, thirty miles apart -- Osnabrück and Münster. The whole area of Westphalia was a kind of demilitarized zone, surrounded by a hunger so pervasive that criminals feared their famished warders more than any jail. The envoys met continuously from 1642 to 1648. Years were consumed by squabbles over abstruse claims which served to befog their hope that on-going battles, raging on fronts as near as three days' hard ride and as distant as the coast of Ceylon, would compel terms which the negotiators would not otherwise concede.<br /><br />Time was required to fashion what would be, in their words, a "once and for all" settlement. Diplomats seeking protocol stumbled over conflicting claims of precedent; this formality of the future validation of power was a threatening matter in an age where even "reputation" was valued as life itself.<br /><br />The congregants at Westphalia knew they were preparing for a new kind of politics predicated on the evident geopolitical reality of a Germany first enervated by war and then divided by design. Most of the delegates' time and energy at the Westphalia Congress was consumed in devising what we would now call "collective security" arrangements for the 300-odd polities: principalities, bishoprics, leagues, duchies, and city-states of Germany. However, the more lasting mechanism for sustaining international order advanced at Westphalia was a rudimentary pan-European balance of power "system." Indeed, its broad outlines remaining at the core of "international society" until the summer of 1914, the Westphalia settlement was truly a stunning success.<br /><br />There were two pillars to the Westphalia settlement: procedural and geographic. The first prerequisite of the post-Westphalian order was the legitimation of the diplomatic enterprise. But the more palpable element to the Westphalia settlement was the fragmentation of German power.<br /><br />The Westphalia methodology seemed so successful that within 80 years, Europeans believed they had once again become bound-up in a wholly new, and now palpably secular, "international society." After 1648, Europeans started to become accustomed to dealing with large issues at major gatherings. Congresses composed of ambassadors would meet after wars to frame a peace based on an assumption of the legal "sovereign" equality of victors and vanquished alike. Indeed, the whole of the diplomatic history of Europe, as Sir George Clark once said, can be seen as the stride from one congress to the next. At each new conclave, diplomats assembled to beat out new permutations in the classic Westphalia formula. So common had this process become that, by Rousseau's time, Westphalia seemed to him to have become "the constitution of Europe."<br /><br />The Spanish Recessional<br /><br />Much of the Thirty Years' War parallels the Cold War. Both had their geo-strategic loci centered, ultimately, on the issue of the disposition of German power. Both were waged at a time when diplomacy was depreciated or nearly absent. Both were heated ideological contests. Both were waged by powers worried that concessions, although not significant unto themselves, might lead to a further unraveling of position; so it was better not to concede the paltry lest the critical be put into play. And both contests were fought with such bitterness that domestic well-being had to be placed behind the necessity of what many felt was becoming virtually a perpetual struggle.<br /><br />By 1609, at the time of the signing of the Truce of Antwerp, Spain had spent five times the revenues of France, England, and the United Provinces put together in trying to put down the fifty year Dutch rebellion. To the pretenses of a substantially theocratic Hapsburg imperium that claimed much of Christendom and beyond as its own, the legitimation of the diplomatic Protestant Dutch republic was itself a challenge. 1 In the Truce of Antwerp, Spain "recognized" the Dutch Republic as if it were a sovereign power, and conceded the closure of the once great city of Antwerp; but the Truce hardly touched any of Spain's continuing irritants: the Dutch combined a ruthless commercial talent with a penchant for provoking their one-time overlords.<br /><br />The Dutch seemed to feel they were free to smuggle whatever they wanted into Spain, including enormous quantities of counterfeit coins, minted to a higher standard than the Spanish seemed capable of themselves. The practice made the Dutch the arbiters of Spain's money supply while reversing Gresham's Law -- driving the Crown's bad money out of the market with the "good," but counterfeit, coin of the cheeky Protestant rebels. 2<br /><br />The Dutch also claimed that they had discovered a legal loophole that allowed them to continue to prey on Spanish trade out of European waters. As a result, ten years into the Truce, Spain had nearly lost its entire trade in spices -- a commerce so valuable that one successful delivery could retire a whole ship's company for life. 3 A more vexing activity, which even the most ingenious Dutch lawyering could not explain away, was the Dutch raids on Spanish ships within European waters. Virtually the whole supply of Baltic war stores, amounting to a third of Dutch wealth, was captured by armed merchantmen.<br /><br />"The Truce," concluded Count Olivares, the Principal adviser to Philip IV, had become "an abomination." It was the view of Carlos Colima, the Governor of the Flemish city of Cambrai, that, "[i]f the truce is continued, we shall condemn ourselves to suffer all the evils of peace and all the dangers of war." 4<br /><br />When the rebellion of 1618 in Bohemia came to be known to Madrid, the King's advisers viewed the revolt as inseparable from Spain's position in the Low Countries. Philip IV was told that if he did not aid his Hapsburg brethren in Bohemia, Spain would lose its position in the Low Countries; and then, soon, Spain itself would be lost to heresy and rapacious foreigners. A dramatic erosion in the impression of Spain's influence -- even if it occurred at the remote corners of an Empire controlled by an impoverished relative -- was posited as inextricably linked to Spain's overall position. Those who were for war knew that it would expand; and that the Dutch were likely to aid their Protestant coreligionists; and that war could not be confined since the Dutch would probably be abetted by the French and perhaps England as well. A far-flung war was, then, quite deliberately chosen by Spain not because the balance of power favored Spain -- the new King commanded, by his own reckoning, only seven battle worthy ships -- but because Spain had been losing the peace and hoped to recoup by a great roll of the iron dice. 5<br /><br />The Defenestration of Prague<br /><br />Even before the time of the Bohemian rebellion, the Holy Roman Empire was something of an anachronism. Imperial claims on the spiritual and temporal life of the whole of Christendom had been unreal since the death of Charlemagne. Outside Germany, the universal claims of the Holy Roman Empire were contradicted by the fact of Protestant states. Within Germany, the Empire was even more bedeviled by the reality of Protestant electorates, Protestant princes, and a rising class of Protestant worshippers.<br /><br />By the end of the 16th century, most Bohemian nobility had turned Protestant. Catholic Emperors were largely content that their Protestant Bohemian subjects served up enormous revenues to the Emperor, who, by custom, had been a Hapsburg since the Thirteenth Century. But Imperial elections were genuine and by no means was any one candidate a shoo-in. Yet, in 1617, the Bohemian nobles, more or less reflexively, deferred to tradition and accepted Ferdinand, the Catholic Hapsburg, as their King of Bohemia. For Ferdinand, it was to be a time of apprenticeship, since he was also slated as the next Emperor.<br /><br />Ferdinand, a profound bigot, felt no obligation to those who had given him a lock on the Emperor's throne. For unknown to the Bohemian nobles, Ferdinand had vowed that he would rather "be cut to pieces, or beg my bread outside the gates of my palace, than suffer their heresy." It was a conviction borne not of malice, for this strange fanatic was said to be of a kindly disposition. "[I]t is because I love heretics," the new Bohemian King explained with unfeigned, but peculiar, sweetness, "that I wish to convert them from the path of evil..." 6<br /><br />Hardly a year past Ferdinand's accession to the Bohemian throne, Protestant churches in Bohemia were boarded up. Permits for new churches were denied; and the Protestant leadership of Bohemia began to have second thoughts about their new King. On the 21st of May, 1618, Bohemian nobles and gentry pushed their way into the Hapsburgs castle of Hardschin. Upon finding two senior officers and an inoffensive secretary, the Protestant leaders conducted a kangaroo court. "Were these Hapsburg officials guilty of treason against Bohemia?" The crowd shouted its affirmation, whereupon the three unfortunates were hurled from a window. Catholics maintained that the trio was born safely to ground -- some 75 feet -- upon the wings of angels. Skeptics and Protestants pointed to the moldering dung heap in which all three came to rest.<br /><br />From death's door in Vienna, Mathias, the depleted and half-crazed Emperor, sent offers of amnesty; but the Bohemian rebels showed no interest in further Hapsburg rule. Within days, the senior Spanish representative to Vienna mustered an army for the Emperor's use in repressing rebellion. 7<br /><br />Frederick and the Peace of Europe<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Bohemian nobles met to strip Ferdinand of his recent crown and offer it to a fellow Protestant: Frederick of Palatine. Frederick appeared to be a logical candidate. The Protestant son-in-law of King James of England, Frederick was also related to William of Orange, the House of Denmark, and Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus. Young Frederick was one of the best- connected princes in Protestant Europe. 8 If he were King of Bohemia as well as Elector of the Palatinate, Frederick would then dominate the upper waters of the Elbe, the Oder, and the middle of the Rhine. Moreover, if Frederick accepted the invitation of the Bohemians, he would have two votes out of seven in the Imperial Diet.<br /><br />Frederick found little support among his new fraternity of kings. England's James I was too troubled by rebellion and plots himself to be pleased by his son-in-law's exploitation of a Bohemian rebellion. James even forbade public prayer to be said on Frederick's behalf. In fact, no crowned government in Europe encouraged Frederick's accession to the Crown of St. Stephan. If Frederick accepted the Bohemian offer, he could reason that he would become one of the great princes of Europe. But when he contemplated the opposition, the twenty-one year old Frederick mused with uncharacteristic perspicacity: "This is risky business." 9 If Frederick was given to some hesitation, Frederick's wife was not. As the daughter of England's King, Elizabeth figured she and her husband were meant for grander things: "I would rather eat sauerkraut with a King than roast meat with an elector." 10 Emboldened by his wife's ambitions, buoyed by his astrologer, and steeled with a substantial Dutch pledge, Frederick rode defiantly from Heidelberg. Frederick's party left for Prague, taking with them 153 baggage carriages, a thousand soldiers, and the peace of Europe. 11<br /><br />A year and a half later, on the outskirts of Prague, Frederick's army found itself trapped by Hapsburg forces. Just at the gates of the city, readying himself to visit his forces at what was to be the scene of the "Battle of White Mountain," Frederick and an English ambassador found themselves nearly bowled over by the first wave of fugitive Protestant forces. The panicked Bohemians shouted at the young King to flee for his life as they were most certainly fleeing for theirs. Frederick V and his queen heeded the advice of the mob.<br /><br />Making their way to Holland, the exiles were sustained only by the jewels the queen was able to carry on her person. In one broadside after another, Frederick's departure was mocked. In Berlin, one wall poster read: "... His men and horses were quickly Struck down on the White Hill. ... He was very much frightened He applied this magical spell to his feet, And with his wife he hastily took to his heels." 12<br /><br />A Hapsburg Indian Summer and Widening War<br /><br />The Emperor offered Frederick the status quo ante bellum. If he had accepted, the matter would have ended. But the Dutch would not forgo the issue, nor, by then, could Frederick's father in law. Though one of England's least bellicose Kings, James I was forced by militant Puritan pressure to offer a modest stipend for the restitution of his son-in-law's Palatine estates. Meanwhile, among the advisors to both Hapsburg branches, but especially in Madrid, there was the hope that the moment had arrived to finally extirpate heresy: Fortune's top was set in motion. The Spanish army, only awaiting the end of the 1212 Years' Truce, occupied the whole of Frederick's lands; the Palatinate suffered frightfully; and Frankenthal was besieged for more than a year. The fortress capital of Heidelberg finally fell in the spring of 1623: much of the old city, including universities and libraries, was set to flames. 13 Seven years later, upon returning to his hereditary lands escorted by Swedish troops, Frederick found them "in ruins." Separated from his guards by battle, weary from wandering, Frederick picked his way up the road to the Hague where his exiled queen awaited him. Taking uninvited refuge from a storm, in the cellar of a merchant, Frederick died as unwelcome as the pest that felled him. 14<br /><br />Meanwhile, Ferdinand himself returned to Bohemia to oversee a long night of Inquisitional terror. In the rooting out of heresy, a man named Debis was nailed by the tongue to the gibbet. Count Schlick, 80, a leader of the rebellion, had his right hand cut off, and was then beheaded. Protestant school masters were ordered to leave Bohemia in 8 days and to make the point, the Chancellor of the University had his tongue torn out before he was executed. University life ceased. One half of the property of Bohemia changed title so that Protestant landowning virtually disappeared. The mint was contracted to a foundry that produced coins so light and manifestly worthless that disgusted Imperial soldiers flipped their pay back at their officers. Protestants were denied wills, testaments, and marriages. When the citizens of Bohemia were given 18 months to accept Catholicism or leave, 180,000 people fled. In little more than two years, one of the brightest cultures of Europe had been eclipsed. 15<br /><br />By 1624, the Bohemian rebellion had been resolved to the immediate satisfaction of both Hapsburg Houses. It could have ended then: Spanish troops had been confirmed again as the most formidable force in Europe; "The Spanish Roads," the passages from Italy to Flanders, were more secure than they had been in a hundred years; and France, the greatest potential continental adversary of Spain, was surrounded north and west by Spanish redoubts.<br /><br />For Spain, however, the most serious irritation was not the Bohemian provocation, but the Dutch Republic: the Dutch would not turn away from the issue of the future of the Palatinate. When the Emperor Ferdinand decided to transfer Frederick's lands to Catholic-led Bavaria, it became certain that Holland and whatever allies the merchant republic might muster, would stand in opposition to Spain. England's Odd Man Out<br /><br />King James I's general desire had been for peace. The King knew that Parliament's continuing demands to help Frederick were in contradiction to any dispassionate understanding of English interests. Any Machiavellian could have understood that England could only benefit if the Spanish and the Dutch exhausted themselves in war. After all, the Spanish were England's rivals in the Americas. In the Indies, English merchant ships involved in the pepper trade were subject to Dutch plunder. In more than a few oceans, armed Dutch merchantmen captured English crews, and even sold some of them into slavery. Finally, the King agreed to let the redoubtable Mansfield, Frederick's generally luckless commander, empty London's poor houses of a few thousand reluctant warriors, some of whom, anticipating the rigors of service, committed suicide.<br /><br />So disreputable had Mansfield become, the Dutch did not even want his English forces to transit their soil. As a result, the English army was confined to their ships. Without water or provision, seventy-five per cent of the English troops, some 8,000 men, were lost at anchor in Dutch harbors. Mansfield's failure drifted back to London as James fell mortally ill, leaving the final determination for peace or war to his son, Charles 1. 16<br /><br />Parliament had wanted war with Spain, but had not wanted to provide for it. Charles decided to provide the war, hoping that a great victory would make Parliament more compliant in confirming the King's revenues. A victory at sea, Charles was persuaded, would establish his position with the Commons -- although it was not clear what this would do for his long-suffering sister, Elizabeth, the wife of Frederick. 17<br /><br />Since the days of Drake, raiding Spanish ports had a certain cachet. Charles sent the Navy to Cadiz where 15,000 English sailors managed only to secure the Spanish wine store. Blamed for the Cadiz disaster, the organizer of the Cadiz raid, Charles' handsome "favorite," Buckingham, was impeached in the Commons. But Charles sided with his companion and dismissed the House. Two years later, the Duke of Buckingham failed again in a naval expedition. Less than a third of the expeditionary forces returned to English ports. "That slime" Buckingham, became a common epithet:<br /><br /> "And now, Just God! I humble pray<br /> That thou wilt take that slime away<br /> That keeps my sovereign's eyes from viewing<br /> The things that will be our undoing." 18 <br /><br />Charles was now without any more disposition for war: he paid off the army from his own purse, and had his forces stand down. As Thomas Crew wrote in 1630 of England's temper,<br /><br /> "...What thought the German drum<br /> Bellow for freedom and revenge, the noise<br /> Concerns not us, nor should divert our joys;<br /> Nor ought the thunder or carbines<br /> Drown the sweet air of our tun'd violins." 19 <br /><br />But Parliament's long recess made Charles susceptible to Spanish silver. In 1639, Charles enabled Spain, for a fee, to ship Spanish troops to Flanders by way of Dover, sometimes even transporting Spanish terceros in English ships. When, in 1640, the Irish revolt broke out (abetted, it was rumored, by Spanish priests and Spanish soldiers), the just reconvened Parliament would insist that any English forces raised to quell rebellious Catholics ought to be controlled by the Commons. Charles was forced into a compromise that soon broke down. Following a lengthy and destructive civil war -- beyond our scope in this essay -- Charles was captured by Parliamentary forces. A "Rump" Parliament brought the unfortunate King to a drum-head trial where it was resolved that Charles was a "tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy." 20 Three days later, Charles' head was detached from his body in a stroke. News of Charles' death reached the Hague as the just-ratified Peace of Westphalia restored the long-suffering Palatinate to the descendants of Charles' sister, Elizabeth.<br /><br />The French Phase: Spain Brought Low<br /><br />France prepared for war against its old Hapsburg rivals for years, and in the last days of 1634, French forces moved across the Rhine to take the much abused fortress city of Heidelberg. Not much later, Richelieu sent his heralds to Brussels to deliver the Spanish viceroys a copy of his after-the-fact declaration of war. 21 Catholic France had to align itself with its Protestant neighbors, Richelieu concluded, since Spanish power had "for its goal to augment its dominions and extend its frontiers" at French expense. 22 Richelieu would justify Protestant alliances to his King advancing "necessity of state," while employing an army of lawyers who argued that the Pope would have approved of his policies if he had been aware of the true facts.<br /><br />In contrast to the national egoism suggested by Richelieu, Spain's Philip IV and his advisors saw themselves as Paladins of Catholic rectitude. The Spanish King had helped his brother-in-law, Louis XIII against the Huguenot challenge; indeed, Spain had extended herself beyond all proportion. Richelieu, Philip despaired, had repaid the Spanish badly. Soon the French and Dutch were working in close cooperation: the Spanish lost huge numbers of men and ships in engagements with the Dutch that extended from Brazil to Sicily. By land, French troops occupied key points astride the old Spanish Road. By the end of the 1630s, Spain, in its (almost Roman) attempt to eliminate the Carthage of the Zuider Zee, had come apart: in 1640, Catalonia and Portugal rebelled and went over to the French.<br /><br />From Flanders, the Spanish, in a last desperate effort to reverse their fortunes, tried to move south on Paris with all their available strength, some 32,000 battle hardened veterans. But because horses had become too expensive, the Spanish marched without adequate cavalry. At the frontier fortress of Rocroi, in a single morning in February 1643, French cavalry and cannon tore into the Spanish positions. At the end of the day, Spain's military treasury had been captured and half the Spanish army lay dead or had been made prisoner. A French officer asked one tired Spanish officer, "How many of there are you?" "Count the dead and the prisoners, that is all," came the weary reply. 23 The great battle marked all but the formal end of Spain's position and its displacement by France. As Philip IV's new minister, Don Louis De Haro, put it later: Rocroi was "a defeat that gives rise in all parts to the consequences we feared." 24 Peace<br /><br />Olivares, Philip IV's old war hawk, finding neither army fit to serve nor generals fit to lead, relented: "I propose peace, and more peace, ...we must certainly beg God to give us general peace, which even if it is not good, or even average, would be better than the most advantageous war." 25 In fact, Spain and Holland were able to agree on a peace on January 30, 1648, as Spain and France could not. But the Dutch refused to lift the siege of Antwerp and Spain was forced to concede much of its critical trade in the Indies. As Queen Elizabeth had forecast 100 years earlier, "you touch" the King of Spain, "in the Indies, you touche him in the apple of his eye, for you take away the treasure ... his ... bands of soldiers will soon dissolve, his purposes defeated, his power and strength diminished, his pride abated and his tyranny utterly suppressed." 26<br /><br />Within France itself, with interest rates exceeding 24% and crown revenues pledged years in advance, there were hints of civil war. The French Advocate General wrote his young King: "We are told that it is not easy to conclude peace, that it is to the state's advantage not to neglect the King's victories....Whether or not it is true ... there are whole provinces where they live on nothing.... Taxes and duties are put on every imaginable thing. The only thing your subjects have left, Sire, is their souls, and if they had any market value they would have been put up for sale long ago." 27<br /><br />With a shudder of horror at the door opened in England by the arrest of Charles I, Mazarin sped to make "peace at the earliest opportunity," if not with all the Spanish Hapsburgs, then at least with its Austrian branch. France was coming undone. The Austrian Emperor's honest loyalty to Spain could only seem lopsided when he learned of Spain's eagerness to make a separate peace with the Dutch. Abandoned by his Spanish cousins, his armies broken, the cannon of his enemies within earshot, the son of Ferdinand had no choice but to yield to the logic of peace.<br /><br />For the rest of Europe, there was the hope of repose, signaled on Saturday, October 24, 1648, by sounds of cannons and bells, and endless Te Deums sung from the Russian Steppes to the Americas. As the Treaty of Münster put it: "the mishaps, destruction and disorders which the heavy plague of war has made men suffer for so long and so heavily" had ended. 28<br /><br />The Meaning of the Westphalia Settlement<br /><br />The geographic division of the conferences between Münster and Osnabrück was the empirical affirmation that international order was to be newly undergirded by an assumption that Germany, from then on, was not whole. Instead, Germany was defined, as a congeries of sovereign, autonomous states. A new organizing principle was offered to replace Hapsburg religious and political hegemony in Germany: each signatory to the Westphalia settlement would have the right to determine the faith of the realm. The Prince of a region, "the sovereign," was to make the rules. Once the Emperor acknowledged this formula, he recognized the Protestant states of Germany as morally valid objects of diplomacy and not secular subjects of a vast Christian realm.<br /><br />Political relations from the periphery to the center are different from those politics that proceed along a horizontal plane of moral equality. Although both types of interactions may be called "diplomacy," one implies the politics of submission; and the other, the politics of compromise. One requires deference, and works best with orthodoxy, while the other specifies non-interference, and allows for pluralism and autonomy. In conferring a moral equality on hundreds of entities, the Westphalia settlement detailed the undoing of the Hapsburg-maintained Medieval hierarchy, and put in its place a new organizing principle based on the sovereign equality of states.<br /><br />At a time of civil disorder that ranged from the Irish Sea to Turkey (and according to one diplomat at the conference, Savius, even to China), the Westphalia settlement was a self conscious effort to buttress domestic authority. By granting the right of each state to give the law and maintain order in its own realm without interference, the conference of Westphalia aimed to solve the problem of internal legitimacy and order while mitigating the animus that characterized the relations of warring states. The troublesome problem of domestic authority was eased by making religion an exclusively internal matter at the determination of the realm's ruling house.<br /><br />Antinomies of Order: the Balance of Power vs. Collective Security<br /><br />Although the Westphalia Treaties allowed the signatories to be "... free perpetually ... to make alliances with strangers for their preservation and safety," an alternative was presented in the form of a rudimentary "collective security" system. Article XVII of the Treaty of Osnabrück declared: "All and each of the contracting parties of this treaty shall be held to defend and maintain all and each of the dispositions of this peace, against whomsoever it may be, without distinction of religion."<br /><br />Like the League of Nations and the Charter of the United Nations, the Münster treaty "outlawed" a recourse to arms: "It shall not be permitted to any State of the Empire to pursue his Right by Force and Arms; but if any difference ... happens for the future ... the Contravener shall be regarded as an Infringer of the Peace." 29<br /><br />Within Germany, the Westphalia treaties sketched out the antinomies of a system based on armed self-help on the one hand, and a system based on mutual interests and diplomacy, on the other. States could either go their own way, secured by their own means and those of their allies; or, states could arrange for their collective defense, perhaps as Grotius had suggested (and the Westphalia treaty called for) in the context of great conferences. Outside the Holy Roman Empire, the Westphalia treaty pointed down a similar divide. The first led to a society of states that might compose their difficulties by negotiations and tribunals. The other way led to a self-centered system undergirded by the now undisputed right of each state to make alliances with foreigners and manage their own defense.<br /><br />But collective security would prove the weaker thread with which to weave a fabric of stability. For any collective security would require the habit of subordination of conflicting interests to the common good. The problem with the notion of a common good is that it usually proves either quite elastic or ethereal -- or both. Even if the common good were knowable and fixed, it might require self-sacrifice. Nations without any higher authority to compel them to do otherwise would not prove themselves ready candidates for martyrdom. The Westphalia settlement thus resulted in a system predicated on a sovereign self-help. It limited war by dispersing power among a great number of states so that no single state, nor any combination of states, might gain more than limited objectives against adversaries.<br /><br />Almost every study of the balance of power argues that it emerged as self conscious European strategy of order in the crucible of the Thirty Years' War. Indeed, as Cornelis Peiterszoom Hooft wrote at the time of Westphalia "Everything, indeed, has been due to the jealousy of Spain, France and England." 30 But the balance of power system was not just a matter of power unconstrained except by the counterweight of equivalent power, a kind of physics reified to the level of statecraft; for the post-Westphalia system embraced, on the one hand, the emergence of a new community of interests, and on the other, a new restraint borne from universal revulsion at the inhumane excesses -- and cost -- of war.<br /><br />A Repelling Wall of Disgust<br /><br />By 1635, hordes of plague-infested refugees were trampling crops. Depleted pastures were called on to support ever larger armies (Wallenstein and Gustavus fought with over 100,000 at their command; the French mustered over 180,000.) 31 While armies circulated faster to find their daily requirements, plague increased as a function of the velocity of armies on the move. Discipline broke: by 1640, war had achieved a general barbarity. Peasants were sawed, pierced, burned, and boiled. "He who had money," a contemporary saying went, "was the enemy. He who had none was tortured because he had it not." 32 A sport was made from wagering how many peasants or prisoners could be felled by a single bullet. Soldiers sprinkled gunpowder on the clothes of prisoners and set their garments alight. Children were kidnapped and held for ransom. Priests and burghers were tied under wagons and made to crawl until they dropped. Hunger was everywhere and there were reports that criminals were cut down from the gallows to be devoured, and graves opened so that the newly buried could nourish the still living. 33<br /><br />Formerly verdant, Germany itself was in ruins. When Robert Monroe, a Scottish mercenary made way to the Rhine Valley with Gustavus Adolphus, he had written: "No country in Europe is comparable unto Germany, for fertility, riches, corn, and wine, traffic by land, pleasant sites, fair buildings, rare orchards, woods and planting, civility as well in the country as in the cities." Four years later, a secretary to an English ambassador traveling from Cologne up the Rhine came by "many villages pillaged and shot down." In Bacharach, "the poor people are found dead with grass in their mouths." In Metz, the party had to stay aboard ship and hurry away from the starving, who swam out to beseech the travelers for a scrap. From Cologne to Frankfort, "All the towns, villages and castles be battered, pillaged or burned." At Neustadt, "a fair city ... now burned miserably. One village in the Upper Palatinate had "been pillaged eight and twenty times in two years and twice in one day." 34<br /><br />The Thirty Years' War itself had created a repelling wall of disgust. The percentage of people lost in Germany -- some seven million out of a population of twenty one million -- was far greater than the numbers lost even in World War II; and the material devastation was probably worse. On nearly every measure: duration, number of participants, severity of damage to the population, and battlefield deaths as a percentage of the population, the Thirty Years' War was the most destructive in history. During the period of continuous warfare between 1621 and 1639, out of a population of a million in Sweden and Finland, 100,000 were in the army, and of these, nearly half were killed or wounded. Between 1618 and 1659, about 300,000 men were lost from Castille out of a population of 6 million. 35<br /><br />For ordinary people, peace had become a mirage, long promised, but seemingly extinguished by each near approach. So bad were conditions for the ordinary people of Germany that many thought the Thirty Years' War was but apiece with the imminent coming of the end of the world; and when, at long last, the news of the peace came, it was hard to believe. A Nuremberg poet, Johann Vogel wrote: "Something you never believed Has come to pass. What? Will the camel pass through the Needle's Eye Now that peace has returned to Germany?" 36<br /><br />Novel Premises: Nationalism, Raison d' Etat, the Regularization of Diplomacy, and the Management of Force<br /><br />The Thirty Years' War gave a great fillip to national consciousness, provoking Englishmen to hate Spaniards and Swedish antipathy to Russians. Brandenberg's chief religious authority, John Bergius, thundered: "Is there anyone with German blood in his veins whose heart does not ache when he sees and hears how our fatherland is plundered and ravaged by foreign invaders worse than the Turks and the Tartars?" Religion had become the bridge on which nationalism passed and prospered. In England, "Protestant" and "English" gradually became coterminous. The feelings in England expressed for James' exiled daughter, Elizabeth "the Winter Queen," could best be described as a patriotic sense of outrage. A kind of Jingoism even infiltrated the law courts where those who made light of Frederick's precipitous exit from Prague found themselves, notwithstanding their age or position, branded, fined, imprisoned, or worse. Some of Elizabeth's detractors were nailed by their ears, and others were recorded to have been nearly torn to pieces by angry mobs. 37<br /><br />Much later, nationalism would become a constant in the life of states and even be married to state power. But for 150 years, patriotic feeling remained tamed and subservient to reason of state. In the absence of debilitating religious or national passions, a genuine diplomacy could develop that ascertained "the balance of interests" as well as the balance of forces available to support them. Those agreements that proceeded from this process went on to create their own constituencies, and the elaborate process of negotiation and treaty-making would endow some Europeans with more than the pious hope that international "society" might become a permanent feature of international relations. ****<br /><br />Now that "reason of state" has prevailed, one wag observed after the Westphalia Congress, it seems to be ".. a wonderful beast for it chases away all other reasons." 38 The Westphalia settlement advanced reason of state, devising the notion from its religious garb. As Richelieu's confidant, Rohan wrote (somewhat optimistically), "princes rule the people and interests rule the prince." But if interests are to be rationally pursued they must be detached from zeal. As Rohan put it: "In matters of state one must not let oneself by guided by disorderly appetites, which make us often undertake tasks beyond our strength; nor by violent passions which agitate us in various ways as soon as they possess us; ... but by our own interests guided by reason alone, which must be the rule of our action." 39<br /><br />"State interests" suggests proximate goals of a definable group that neither extend to the whole of humanity, nor are confined to a puny section of a community. Interests admit compromise whereas passionate truths obviate middle measures. Interests can be approximated. One does not have to achieve them at one fell swoop or risk damnation. A statecraft infused by interests necessarily places a premium on the tangible rather than the theological. An emphasis on interests hoists calculable advantage over transcendent purposes. Interests imply predictability, prudence, reason, and mutual gain. In itself, the notion of interests is a moderating idea. Passions are inconsistent, or as Hobbes put it, they are "insatiable." But in the mid-17th Century, the concept of interests became the means to exorcise caprice and instability in human affairs. Therein lay the burden of the mid-17th Century maxim "interests do not lie." 40<br /><br />In the hundred years before Westphalia, the gulf between Catholics and Protestants contradicted civility, obstructed diplomacy, and defined the purpose of war as the extirpation of wickedness. If one fights with God, it follows that one's opponents are fighting iniquitously. The argument admitted no middle positions. Fired with chiliastic certainty, contestants denied compromises and adjustments short of war as being not merely wrong-headed, or injurious, but evil. In this kind of moral environment, the very essence of diplomacy -- adjudication of conflicting interests by dint of reason, persuasion, and tact -- was, perforce, banished.<br /><br />The Westphalia settlement marked the start of a novel premises in international affairs: armed struggle was no longer defined as a contest between varieties of confessional truths, but rather, a dispute among secular "sovereigns." The final settlement of armed disputes, after Westphalia, was no longer the province of military contractors and theologians. Instead, the termination of war fell within the purview of an identifiable coterie of a new class: professional diplomats and warriors sworn to the service of a state.<br /><br />Before the Westphalia settlement, there was no recognizable diplomatic profession. Spies, irregular envoys, and heralds citing scripture or handing out ringing declamations were the usual route that princes chose to alert one another to each other's demands and to sound the start of war. After Westphalia, the diplomatic craft was practiced by a kind of well-born guild, with members who were adept at melding reason, precedent, and law with quiet allusion to the implication of armed compunction.<br /><br />Before Westphalia, soldiers were led by contractors, private entrepreneurs who garnered pay from their won estates or from the lands they plundered. After Westphalia, soldiers were led by military bureaucrats who raised armies year-round and paid for their keep through levies and taxes. After Westphalia, diplomats and warriors began to share a kind of regulatory synergy. Both diplomat and warrior sought less "victory," and more, the achievement of a favorable peace. War, after Westphalia, as the great observer Clausewitz put it, came to be a "stronger form of diplomacy," and the battlefield an extension of the conference chamber. 41<br /><br />War itself was, to a degree, more tame as a result of the great mêlée. Gustavus Adolphus, the principal champion of Protestants during the Thirty Years' War, took to carrying a copy of Grotius' massive work on the rules of war and peace with him to battle. 42 To Gustavus, the model of the enlightened prince, moderating the savagery of battle, was part self-interest and Calvinist piety. But after the Thirty Years' War, armies throughout Europe started to review and publicize codes of conduct. The notion spread that there was a lawful way to conduct war and that it was a palpable interest of states to heed legal restriction. 43<br /><br />The Thirty Years War had lasting effect. In Germany, neither religion nor Hapsburg imperialism ever produced another war. 44 In the hundred years after Westphalia, war had achieved a certain "regulatory function" in delimiting change and state ambition. But as the volume of violence available to combatants expanded, war's "legitimacy" as an instrument of statecraft began to erode. When, in the Twentieth Century, war began to approach its terrible and absolute form, the only compelling rationale for its employment came to be the defeat of the causes of war itself. As Raymond Aron put it, "as operations mounted...it was essential to inflate the purposes of victory..[P]eace would be durable only if dictated unconditionally after crushing the enemy. The demand for total victory was so not so much the expression of politics as a reflex reaction to total war." 45<br /><br />In the present century, at the same time the expansion of violence tended to take "absolute" and "absurd" form (in Clausewitz' words), diplomacy abutted another zealous nemesis: the recrudescence of fervent, apocalyptic belief. Illustrative was Harry Truman's famous address to Congress in March 1947, when he argued that the West's struggle with the Soviets was over "two ways of life:" "One ... based upon the will of the majority, and ... distinguished by free institutions ... free speech ... and freedom from oppression ...The second ... based upon the will for a minority ... rel[ying] upon terror and oppression." 46<br /><br />To the extent that Truman's analysis obtained, negotiation would be little valued. To be sure, conferences would still be staged; diplomats would meet; and communiqués could be issued. But meetings, in this kind of highly charged ideological atmosphere, would necessarily be little more than venues for mean spirited propaganda, or complex traps to lure Western innocents. In 1954, for instance, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles asked an aide if he would be satisfied if the Soviets accepted free elections and the reunification of Germany. "Why, yes," his aide acknowledged brightly. "Well, that's where you and I part company," Dulles retorted. "I wouldn't. There'd be a catch in it." 47<br /><br />Associated with appeasement and grisly calamities for most of the Twentieth Century, ancient practices of European diplomacy fell into a swamp of disgrace. Diplomacy, especially in the Cold War, came to be known not so much as a method of ameliorating the clash of interests, but at best, as a self-defeating vestige of an ancient and irrelevant civility. Now, however, with the passing of Cold War passions, prospects for a renaissance of the Westphalian diplomatic patrimony brighten anew. The settlement of the Thirty Years' War at Westphalia marks the start of the new professionalization of diplomacy. And if, in fact, diplomacy has now been given a reprieve, it behooves us, therefore, to recall its painful beginnings, its achievements, and to explore its relevance to our collective future.<br /><br />Note 1: By the early 17th century, there was a widespread sense that Spain was in a state of precipitous decline. "Never," in nearly 800 years of continuous war, "has Spain been as poor as is now.'' Louis Valle de la Cerda. Cited by JH Elliot "Self Perception and Decline" in Spain, Past and Present, number 74 page 53. Back.<br /><br />Note 2: Charles Howard Carter, The Secret Diplomacy of the Hapsburgs:1598-1625, (N.Y. Columbia, 1964) page 31. Back.<br /><br />Note 3: John Lynch, Spain Under the Hapsburgs, (Oxford, Basil Blackwell) Volume Two, 1598-1700, (second edition, 1981), page 65.; and Charles Howard Carter The Secret Diplomacy of the Hapsburgs: 1598-1625, (N.Y. Columbia, 1964) page 30 Back.<br /><br />Note 4: In a letter written in 1629, cited by John Elliot, The Count Duke Olivares, the Statesman of an Age of Decline,(New Haven, Yale University Press,1986), page 66. fn57; also see Peter Brightwell various articles: 'The Spanish origins of the Thirty Years War, European Studies Review,(9) 1979; and "Spain and Bohemia, 1619-1621," European Studies Review (12)1982;"The Spanish System and the twelve years Truce," English Historical Review (12) 1982 pp.270-292. Back.<br /><br />Note 5: Hugh Trevor Roper "The Outbreak of the Thirty Years War" in Hugh Trevor Roper, Renaissance Essays, University of Chicago Press, 1985, page 293; and Peter Brightwell,"The Spanish origins of the Thirty Years' War', European Studies Review, October 1979, Vol. 9, Number 4, pages 409-431. and HR Trevor-Roper "Spain-and Europe: 1598-1621 in J.P Cooper (ed) The New Cambridge Modern History,:The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War:1609-84/9, (Cambridge, 1970) page 281. Back.<br /><br />Note 6: Cited by Lt Col J Mitchell, The Life of Wallenstein: Duke of Friedland, (New York: Greenwood Press), 1968 page 21. The defenestration of 1618 was, in fact, a well planned imitation of a famous defenestration two hundred years earlier that had started the Hussite revolution. Back.<br /><br />Note 7: David Maland, Europe at War: 1600-1650, (Totowa, NJ: Rowan and Littlefield, 1980) page 64. Back.<br /><br />Note 8: Geoffrey Parker and Simon Adams. The Indecisive War, 1618-1629, Chapter 2 page 52 and genealogical table on p.53 in Parker, The Thirty Years' War, Op cit. Back.<br /><br />Note 9: Elmer A Beller, "The Thirty Years War," in JP Cooper, The New Cambridge Modern History, Volume IV, The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War:1609-1659 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 1970 page 311. Back.<br /><br />Note 10: C.V Wedgewood, The Thirty Years War (New Haven: Yale University Press;1939, page 100; also Mary Anne Everett Green, Elizabeth: Electress of Palatine and Queen of Bohemia, (London, Methuen & Co.), rev. ed., 1909; p.129-130 for Frederick's hesitations. Back.<br /><br />Note 11: C.V Wedgewood, The Thirty Years War, op cit page 85C.V Wedgewood, The Thirty Years War, op cit page 85ff Back.<br /><br />Note 12: Elmer Beller, Propaganda in Germany during the Thirty Years War, (Princeton, Princeton University Press,) 1940, page 24 Back.<br /><br />Note 13: Traveling south to the Rhine, disguised as a merchant, Frederick caught up with his com manding General, Mansfield who, at the moment of his encounter with Frederick, was actually engaged in talks about switching sides with a Spanish diplomat. Frederick would have been advised to release his mercenary to Spain; for Mansfield's record in the field was one of almost perfect failure. As for the army," Frederick wrote his queen as he fled from the battlefield, "... I think there are men in it who are possessed of the devil, and who take a pleasure in setting fire to everything." [Everett Green, Elizabeth: Electress of Palatine and Queen of Bohemia, Op Cit, p 93] and Elmer A Beller, "The Thirty Years War", in JP Cooper, The New Cambridge Modern History, Volume IV, The Decline of Spain and the Thirty Years War:1609-1659 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press), 1970 317. Back.<br /><br />Note 14: On November 19 1632. Green, Ibid, page 299; Wedgewood, The Thirty Years' War, op cit, page 332. Back.<br /><br />Note 15: Lt Col J Mitchell, The Life of Wallenstein: Duke of Friedland, page 74; and Wedgewood, The Thirty Years' War, page 143-169. Back.<br /><br />Note 16: See Leopold Von Ranke, A History of England, principally in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 1, (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 1875, page 562ff Back.<br /><br />Note 17: Leopold Von Ranke, Frederick, The Age of the Baroque, op cit, page p.129-130 fo21-213ff; and Cicely Veronica Wedgewood. Richelieu and the French Monarchy, (New York, Collier Books) 1962 pp. 50- 2 Back.<br /><br />Note 18: Charles Carlton, Charles I: The Personal Monarch, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul), 1983. page 96 Back.<br /><br />Note 19: CV Wedgewood, History and Hope:: the Collected Essays of CV Wedgewood, (London, Collins, 1987) p.72. Back.<br /><br />Note 20: CV Wedgewood, History and Hope, ibid, pp. 87 Back.<br /><br />Note 21: Even his declaration was novel for a medievally trained man of the Canon. Indeed, Richelieu's policy would be recognized by any of the American "realist" architects of "containment." Back.<br /><br />Note 22: Cicely Veronica Wedgewood. Richelieu and the French Monarchy, p63 and JH Elliot, Richelieu and Olivares, (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), page 67. But the calculations and techniques of Richelieu were only partly modern. On the one hand, Richelieu's view that France was divinely sanctioned to find lasting peace for Christendom was decidedly medieval. But Richelieu's view of political authority was distinctly modern. Papal authority was moral only; the Pope had no temporal rights in Richelieu's cosmos: "[T]he King," wrote Richelieu, "is the recognized sovereign in his state, not holding his crown but from God alone, there exists no power on earth whatever it might be ... which has any right over his kingdom ..." J. A. W. Gunn, "Interests Will Not Lie: A Seventeenth Century Political Maxim" Journal of the History of Ideas, (October-Dec 1968) pp.551-564 and JAW Gunn, Politics and the Public Interests in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), 1969, page 36ff. Richelieu's argument for fidelity to treaties was also modern. As he told his King, even though "many political thinkers teach the contrary," treaties should be "religiously" observed. But to the cardinal, the rationale for solemnly honoring contracts with other princes was less the cause of international order and more the Baroque age issue of his Sovereign's "reputation." "A great prince," the cardinal wrote, "should risk even his person and the interests of state rather than break his word...CR Freidericks, "The War and Politics, " in Parker, et. al, The Thirty Years War, p219. In the end, Richelieu's insistence on talks with adversaries, no matter how remote the chance of settlement or hostile the confessional claims of one's adversaries, became the basis of modern diplomacy. Back.<br /><br />Note 23: Archer Jones, The Art of War in the Western World, University of Illinois Press (Urbana and Chicago, 1987) page 293ff. Back.<br /><br />Note 24: Robert Stadling, "Catastrophe and Recovery: The Defeat of Spain, 1639-1643" History Vol 64, no.211 June 1979, pp217ff. Back.<br /><br />Note 25: Cited by Elliot, Olivares, page 601. Back.<br /><br />Note 26: Geoffrey Parker, "The Dutch Revolt" In Geoffrey Parker and Leslie M Smith(ed) The General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul), 1978, page 69. Back.<br /><br />Note 27: Georges Pages (trans by David Maland and John Hooper), The Thirty Years' War (New York, Harper and Row, 1939) page 226. Back.<br /><br />Note 28: Geoffrey Parker, Spain and the Netherlands, the Military Revolution, 1560-1660, (Enslow Publishers, Short Hills, 1979) page 203. The list of contemporary disorders is impressive: England, Ireland and Scotland, Sicily, Naples, Paris, Catalonia, and Portugal. There were peasant uprisings in Sweden and rumors of revolt in Poland. See Herbert Langer, The Thirty Years' War, (Poole: Blandford Press) 1978, page 260. One well-informed diplomat, Savius, wrote that people everywhere had risen up, even in Turkey and China. Back.<br /><br />Note 29: A complete text is available in C Perry (ed), The Consolidated Treaty Series, (Dobbs Ferry, New York, 1969). See RB Mowat, The European States System: A Study of International Relations, (London: Oxford University Press, 1923) page 16. As a function of the sheer cost of power, there was a drastic reduction in the number of states in the first rank. A standing army exacted an enormous price, and only well-organized and prosperous states could for long afford the expense of big battalions. The first sign of this winnowing process was the Westphalia settlement itself which reduced the number of sovereign entities within the German Empire from 900 to 234. Back.<br /><br />Note 30: Geoffrey Parker, "The Dutch Revolt," in Parker and Lesley M Smith, ed The General Crisis, of the Seventeenth Century (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985) 72 and pp68-9. Back.<br /><br />Note 31: It is hard to find parallels with the armies of this period. The Mongol army that stormed Samarkand in 1219 may have exceeded 200,000, but did not have the extensive support system of Wallenstein's armies. See James Chambers, The Devils Horsemen: The Mongol Invasion of Europe, (NY Athenaeum, 1985) page 9. Rome's regular legions are usually put at 160,000 to 175,000 although they may have had as many as 360,00 men under arms throughout the Empire; see Edward Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976) page 16; Robert L O'Connell, Of Arms and Men: A History of War, Weapons, and Aggression, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1989) page 75; and Philippe Contamine (trans by Michael Jones) War in the Middle Ages, (London, Basil Blackwell, 1984) page 306. Back.<br /><br />Note 32: Charles Petrie, Earlier Diplomatic History, 1492-1713, (London, Hollis and Charter, 1949) page 147. Back.<br /><br />Note 33: Wedgewood, The Thirty Years' War pages 257, 410-11, 419, and David Ogg Europe in the Seventieth Century, (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1961), (8th ed. rev.), page 168. Back.<br /><br />Note 34: William Crowne, A true relation of all the remarkable places and passages observed in travels of the right honorable Thomas Lord Howard, Earl of Arundel and Surrey, 1636 (London, 1637) pp.5-17 cited by Elmer A Beller, The Thirty Years War, in the New Cambridge Modern History, Volume 1V, pp.345-346 Back.<br /><br />Note 35: Evan Luard, War in International Society: A Study of International Sociology, (London, I. B. Taurus &Co., Ltd) and Hugh Trevor Roper, Spain and Europe, 1598-1621, The New Cambridge Modern History, vol iv, pp 357. Back.<br /><br />Note 36: Cited by Parker, The Thirty Years' War, page 189. Back.<br /><br />Note 37: Joycelyne G Russell, Peacemaking in the Renaissance, (London Duckworth, 1986) pages 228-229; Bodo Nischan, "Calvinism, the Thirty Years' War, and the Beginning of Absolutism in Brandenburg: The Political Thought of John Bergius," Central European History, Volume 15, Number 3, September 1982, page 216. Back.<br /><br />Note 38: CR Freidericks, "The War and Politics, " in Parker, et. al, The Thirty Years War p.219. Back.<br /><br />Note 39: "On the Interests of Princes and States of Christendom," cited by Albert I Hirschman, The Passions of the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph, (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1977) page 34. Back.<br /><br />Note 40: See also J. A. W. Gunn, "Interests Will Not Lie: A Seventeenth Century Political Maxim" Journal of the History of Ideas, (October-Dec 1968) pp.551-564 and JAW Gunn, Politics and the Public Interests in the Seventeenth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969) page 36ff. Back.<br /><br />Note 41: Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, (ed and trans. by Michael Howard and Peter Paret, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), Book one Chapter two, and pages 488, 501. Back.<br /><br />Note 42: G Teitler (trans CN Ter Heide-Lopy), The Genesis of the Professional Officers Corps, (Beverly Hills, Sage, 1977) pp.181-188. Back.<br /><br />Note 43: Sir George Clark, War and Society in the Seventeenth Century, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) page 84. Back.<br /><br />Note 44: The Westphalia settlement also helped to limit war by dispersing power among a great number of states so that no single state, nor any combination of states, might gain more than limited objectives against adversaries. The drastic reduction in the number of states to the first rank occurred as a function of the sheer cost of power. A standing army exacted an enormous and perpetual toll on any society, and only well organized and prosperous states could for long afford the expense of big battalions. The first sign of this winnowing process was the Westphalia settlement itself which reduced the number of sovereign entities within the German Empire from 900 to about 234. (The figure varies from 355 to 234. Geoffrey Barraclough's figures are at the low end but probably more accurate: The Origins of Modern Germany, (New York, Capricorn, 1963) page 385). Back.<br /><br />Note 45: Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), page 28. Back.<br /><br />Note 46: Harry S Truman, "The Truman Doctrine: Special Message to the Congress on Greece and Turkey", March 12, 1947, 180th Congress, 1st Sess., March 24, 1947. Back.<br /><br />Note 47: Richard Gould Adams, John Foster Dulles: A Reappraisal (New York, 1962), page 293. Back.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1114392338144135312005-04-22T18:08:00.000-07:002005-04-24T18:30:32.053-07:00Senior Democratic Figure Criticizes Bill Richardson<em>from <strong>Press Reports</strong></em><br /><br />Former Democratic Party Chairman for Rio Arriba County Emilio Naranjo criticized Governor Bill Richardson's appointment of <a href="http://www.riograndesun.com/jump/front-jump-1.asp"target="_blank">Thomas Rodella </a>as County Magistrate.<br /><br />Rodella has been under suspicion for election related complaints since his wife, State Representative Debbie Rodella's, 1992 bid for office, and other charges.<br /><br />Naranjo says Richardson was "wrong as hell" in appointing him to the job. "This was a terrible appointment that Richardson made, and it's going to cost him thousands of votes", said Naranjo. "He gave a slap in the face to the citizens of Rio Aribba."<br /><br />Naranjo's said Richardson, who has onlyu lived here a few years of his adult life, understands New Mexico politics very well, and is responsible for John Kerry's failure to carry the state in 2004. <br /><br />Naranjo also criticied Richardson;s leadership saying he promotes himself too much and acts like a dictator.<br /><br />Richardson denied knowing about the reports when he appointed Rodella to the vacant judgeship on March 31st.<br /><br />Naranjo is a four decade fixture in New Mexico state politics, serving as Rio Aribba County Sheriff, County Manager and a State Senator for 19 years.<br /><br />Richardson has said he stands by the decision and that Rodella is a man of character and substance.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110664691080793072005-03-09T14:46:00.000-07:002005-03-19T15:01:57.933-07:00All Referances to Halliburton Sanitized from DNC site<blockquote><em>All referances after October 7, 2004 to 'Halliburton' have been sanitized from democrats.org website, most likely due to <a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/2004/11/bin-ladin-election-speech.html"target="_blank">bin Laden's Election Eve Speech</a> which was interpreted as an open endorsement for John Kerry and <br />the American Democratic Party's policies.<br /><p>The phenomenea of what Thomas Sowell calls <br /><a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1995/09/vision-of-anointed.html#clintonism"target="_blank">"The Struggle to Control Memory"</a> and rewrite history is evidently underway. The following text has been preserved from democrats.org and captures the flavor <br />of DNC rhetoric on the election eve.</em></blockquote><br /><p><h2>The Hazards of Halliburton</h2><br /><br /><p>Texas-based Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's former company, won a no-bid contract worth more than $7 billion to help rebuild Iraq-even as Cheney continues to profit from the company. For that favoritism, Halliburton has shown little regard for American taxpayers and-worse yet-American soldiers serving in Iraq and workers laboring at home. Reports show that Halliburton drastically overcharged Americans for gas being imported into Iraq and skimped on basic services to troops like providing clean working conditions and safe food. Halliburton could even benefit from President Bush's push to explore Mars.</p><br /><br /><h3>Halliburton Has Been Very, Very Good to Dick Cheney</h3><br /><br /><p><b> Cheney Made Millions As Halliburton CEO, Continues To Receive Income From The Company.</b>Vice President Dick Cheney was CEO of Texas-based Halliburton from 1995-2000. In addition to providing a massive salary and bonus for only eight months of work in 2000, Halliburton's board of directors voted to give Dick Cheney a $20 million retirement package when he resigned. Cheney received the severance package even though he had only been with the company for five years and his contract stated that he would have to forfeit some of his retirement package if he retired before turning 62-Cheney retired at age 59. Cheney's compensation for the eight months of 2000 he served as CEO of Halliburton, according to the Associated Press, was "$4.3 million in deferred compensation and bonuses, and $806,332 in salary. The summer when he began his campaign with Bush for the White House, Cheney sold stock options worth just over $40 million." Halliburton approved the package on July 20, 2000, just five days before Cheney was announced as George W. Bush's running mate. [<em>New York Times,</em> 8/12/00; <em>Los Angeles Times,</em> 7/24/00; Associated Press, 7/18/02]</p><br /><br /><p><b> As Vice President, Cheney Continued Receiving Compensation From Halliburton.</b> In his retirement package from Halliburton, Cheney was granted deferred compensation, which paid out his bonus his salary from 1999 over a five-year period and his bonus from that year in 2001. In 2001, while serving as Vice President, Cheney received $1,656,696 in deferred compensation from Halliburton, which included a bonus worth $1,451,398 and $205,298 in deferred salary. In 2002, Cheney received $162,392 in deferred salary compensation. ["Income: Type and amount," Schedule A, Standard Form 278, Richard B. Cheney Personal Financial Disclosure, May 15, 2002; May 15, 2003]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Cheney Retained Possession of 433,333 Options of Halliburton; Committed Them to Charities.</b> Following his departure from Halliburton, Cheney retained possession of 433,333 options of Halliburton stock that were set to expire at three different times. In a press release, the Cheneys announced they were committing the options to three charities. [Richard Cheney Public Financial Disclosure, 9/6/00; 5/15/01; White House Press Release, "Vice President and Mrs. Cheney Release 2000 Income Tax Return," 4/13/01]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Congressional Research Service Said Cheney's Deferred Compensation Still Counts As Financial Interest.</b> Cheney told NBC's Tim Russert that, "since I left Halliburton to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interests. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had now for over three years." But, just days later, the Congressional Research Service released a report saying that federal ethics laws consider both Cheney's deferred compensation and his unexercised stock options as a lingering financial interest in the company. [<em>Meet the Press,</em> 9/14/03; <em>Washington Post,</em> 9/26/03]</p><br /><br /><h3>Halliburton Did Business with Saddam</h3><br /><br /><p><b> After First Gulf War, Halliburton Did Business With Iraq While Cheney Was CEO.</b> While Cheney served as chairman and chief executive of Halliburton, the company acquired two subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., which had signed contracts to sell oil production equipment to Iraq under the oil-for-food program for more than $73 million. The subsidiaries were formed and co-owned in 1993 between Dresser Industries, which Halliburton acquired in a merger under Cheney, and Ingersoll-Rand in order to enter a joint venture. Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser "sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show." Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War." [<em>Washington Post, </em> 6/23/01; <em>Petroleum Economist, </em> 6/93]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Cheney Claimed Halliburton Did Not Do Business With Iraq.</b> Cheney claimed on ABC's "This Week" that Halliburton did not do business in Iraq while he was with the company. After he was asked specifically about Iraq, Cheney said, "No. No, I had a firm policy that we wouldn't do anything in Iraq, even - even arrangements that were supposedly legal. ... Iraq's different, but we've not done any business in Iraq since the sanctions are [sic] imposed, and I had a standing policy that I wouldn't do that." [ABC, <em>"This Week,"</em> 7/30/00]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Questioned About Role In Iran.</b> The Office of New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson asked Halliburton to provide more details about the work of its subsidiaries in Iran. In March 2003, Halliburton promised it would release information about its work in that country-which President Bush called a member of an "axis of evil." In October 2003, Halliburton gave the comptroller a "confidential" report, which Thompson posted on his website. The report shows that "Halliburton Products & Services Ltd.," is "a Cayman Islands firm headquartered in the United Arab Emirates," and forecasts more than $39 million worth of services for 2003. [<em> Houston Chronicle,</em> 12/15/03; Bush State of the Union, 1/29/2002; Office of New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson]</p><br /><br /><h3>Halliburton Hurting US Troops in Iraq</h3><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Reaps Profits While Forcing Troops To Eat In Filthy Conditions.</b> Halliburton's subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root [KBR] serves 110,000 soldiers in Iraq their meals. For that service, American taxpayers pay Halliburton "$28 per soldier per day." But, according to NBC News, "Pentagon inspections of mess halls run by KBR are finding a mess in some of them...In the main Baghdad dining facility where President Bush surprised the troops on Thanksgiving, inspectors found filthy kitchen conditions in each of the three previous months. Complaints filed in August, September and again in October report problems. Blood all over the floor of refrigerators, dirty pans, dirty grills, dirty salad bars, rotting meats and vegetables. In October, the inspector writes that Halliburton's previous promises to fix the problems have not been followed through and warns the company serious repercussions may result, due to improper handling and serving of food." [NBC News, 12/12/03]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Overcharged On Troops' Food.</b> The Wall Street Journal reported that Halliburton "allegedly overcharged more than $16 million for meals at a single U.S. military base in Kuwait during the first seven months of last year, according to Pentagon investigators auditing the company's work... Because of the new meal-billing discrepancies, the Pentagon has extended its audit of KBR food services to include more than 50 other dining facilities in Kuwait and Iraq, according to an e-mail 'alert' sent [January 30, 2004] to more than a dozen U.S. Army contracting officials ...This dispute focuses on meals served at Camp Arifjan, the huge U.S. military base south of Kuwait City. The e-mail memo...said that in July [2003] alone, a Saudi subcontractor hired by KBR billed for 42,042 meals a day on average but served only 14,053 meals a day. After reports of the investigation surfaced, Halliburton agreed to reimburse the government $27.4 million to cover any potential overcharges. In March 2003, the Pentagon announced it would withhold nearly $300 million in payments to Halliburton due to the company's overcharging on food contracts. "Halliburton spokeswoman Wendy Hall said the company disagreed with the decision and hoped to persuade the Pentagon to drop its plans." [<em>Wall Street Journal,</em> 2/2/04; Reuters, 2/3/04; Associated Press, 3/17/04]</p><br /><br /><p><b>Halliburton Stiffs Subcontractor: Troops May Face Cold Meals; American Workers Laid Off.</b> NBC News reported that Event Source, the company subcontracted by Halliburton to provide 100,000 meals per day to US troops in Iraq, has been stiffed for over $87 million it's owed by Halliburton. As a result, Event Source threatened to stop serving hot meals until it is paid by Halliburton, and the company has had to lay off workers back in the United States. "When you get stuck out there for $87 million," explained Event Source CEO Phil Morrell, "it's a question of economics." [NBC News, 3/8/04]</p><br /><br /><p><b> U.S. Military Chief: Halliburton Is Stumbling Block to US Forces.</b> During the second week in March 2004, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top US military officer in Iraq, circulated a letter calling Halliburton a major stumbling block to US efforts there. Gen. Sanchez' letter "addresses efforts by Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) subsidiary to help the Army consolidate to fewer, but larger, bases around Iraq without interrupting military operations. In Baghdad, Iraq, for example, U.S. troops are moving from 26 bases to as few as six. But in the letter, Gen. Sanchez says KBR hasn't said precisely when it will have these consolidated bases ready for new troops. Army officials say KBR's shortcomings on the base construction have complicated the largest troop rotation since World War II. The letter also criticizes KBR for late payments to food subcontractors, said Army officials, who gave details of the letter but declined to provide a copy. At least one subcontractor has threatened to withhold food service to about 2, 000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq, leading the Pentagon's inspector general to investigate KBR food-subcontractor complaints that KBR isn't paying its bills on time." [CNN, 3/15/04]</p><br /><br /><h3>Despite Fraud, Halliburton Continues to Receive Billions in Taxpayer Money</h3><br /><br /><p><b> As The Second War In Iraq Began, Halliburton Was Awarded No-Bid Rebuilding Contracts Worth Billions.</b> In March 2003, the Pentagon awarded Kellogg Brown and Root, the construction wing of Halliburton, a no-bid contract to help rebuild Iraqi oil fields and conduct "operation of facilities and distribution of products." The initial deal was thought to be worth as much as $7 billion. Today, Halliburton is the largest private contractor in postwar Iraq, with potential deals totaling over $11 billion [<em> Los Angeles Times,</em> 5/7/03; <em> Washington Post,</em> 2/10/04]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Gouged Gas Prices In Postwar Iraq At Expense Of American Taxpayers.</b> The military investigated Halliburton and found that it overcharged for gas it imported into Iraq from Kuwait by as much as $61 million. US taxpayers and the United Nations oil-for-food program are paying Halliburton an average price of $2.64 per gallon, which is more than twice what others pay for Kuwait fuel. The appropriations bill that President Bush signed in November 2003 mandates that taxpayers subsidize all gas important costs beginning in 2004. Pentagon auditors have asked the Department of Defense to investigate Halliburton's activity in Kuwait, and in December the military ended its contract to with Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root to import oil. On February 23, 2004 the Pentagon opened a criminal probe into Halliburton's price-gouging. [Associated Press, 2/9/04; Reuters, 12/11/03; <em>New York Times,</em> 12/10/03; Associated Press, 11/5/03; <em> Washington Post,</em> 1/16/04, 12/31/04; Reuters, 2/23/04]</p><br /><br /><ul><br /><br /><li class="spaced"><b> Bush Demanded Halliburton Repayment.</b> Asked by reporters about Halliburton's price gouging, President Bush claimed "if there is an overcharge like we think there is, we expect that money to be repaid." [Bush Media Availability, 12/12/03]</li><br /><br /><li class="spaced"><b> Halliburton Has History of Defrauding Government In Military Contracts.</b> In February 2002, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root Services agreed to pay the government $2 million to settle charges that it had inflated contract prices for maintenance and repairs at Fort Ord in Monterey, CA. According to the Associated Press, "The suit, filed in Sacramento, alleged the company submitted false claims and made false statements in connection with 224 delivery orders between April 1994 and September 1998. Under the terms of its contract, the company did not bid against other contractors for maintenance and repair projects, instead presenting the military with fixed costs it said were necessary to perform specific projects." [Associated Press, 2/9/02; Deseret News (Salt Lake City, UT), 8/5/02]</li><br /><br /></ul><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Employees Took Kickbacks To Help Gouge US Taxpayers.</b> Halliburton admitted it overcharged the Pentagon $6.3 million for an Army supply contract in Iraq and repaid the money. Part of that overcharge may have taken the form of kickbacks paid by a Kuwaiti subcontractor to at least two of its employees. Halliburton has already admitted the kickbacks took place, and has fired the individuals involved. The kickbacks are, however, under Pentagon investigation. [Associated Press, 1/24/04; <em> Los Angeles Times,</em>1/24/04]</p><br /><br /><p><b> US Knew Of Halliburton Kickbacks Before New Contract Awarded.</b> The Financial Times reported that "The Bush administration knew that Halliburton had overcharged the US government on an Iraq reconstruction contract before it awarded the company a separate lucrative contract last week to repair Iraqi oilfields. Halliburton...informed the Pentagon inspector-general on January 15 that its Kellogg Brown & Root subsidiary had overcharged the US government by $6 million on a contract to supply US troops. But the following day, the Army Corps of Engineers gave the company another contract worth up to $1.2 billion to rebuild southern Iraq's oil industry." [<em> Financial Times,</em>1/24/04]</p><br /><br /><p><b> White House Ignored Environmental Concerns Caused By Halliburton.</b> Halliburton is the leading provider of an oil and gas procedure called hydraulic fracturing, which can sometimes cause underground sources of drinking water to be contaminated by carcinogenic and toxic chemicals. The White House deleted from its "White House National Energy Policy" any mention of the environmental concerns associated with hydraulic fracturing, even though the Department of Energy had included the information in a draft of its own energy policy briefing, and the EPA had told Congress such concerns exist. The energy bill passed by the US House in November 2003 contains exemptions for hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act regulations. [House Committee On Government Reform, Minority Staff, 11/13/03; Knight-Ridder, 11/18/03]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Benefits From Massive Corporate Tax Loopholes.</b> While Vice President Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, the company set up offshore affiliates to avoid paying US taxes. According the Security and Exchange Commission, while Cheney was in charge, Halliburton set up over 20 affiliates in the Cayman Islands. [<em> Washington Post,</em> 8/1/02]</p><br /><br /><p><b> Halliburton Could Benefit From Mars Exploration.</b> In January 2004, President Bush proposed to spend billion of dollars on a push to put man on Mars by 2015. According to an article published in Oil & Gas Journal in 2000 by a scientific advisor to Halliburton, Mars exploration would benefit the company. The advisor, Steve Streich, was among several authors to suggest exploration of Mars represented "an unprecedented opportunity for both investigating the possibility of life on Mars and for improving our abilities to support oil and gas demands on Earth." [Associated Press, 1/15/03; <em> Washington Post,</em>1/16/04]Unknownnoreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110590565406857732004-12-09T18:13:00.000-07:002005-03-11T19:36:45.776-07:00Origins of Political Correctness<p>The first use of the term in commercial publishing was in 1912 in Chapter 1 of <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/gc/lhbum/07510/0045.tif"target="_blank"> Senator Robert LaFollette's Autobiography </a>. Speaking of his education at the University of Wisconsin, he says "In those days we did not so much get correct political and economic views, for there was then little teaching of sociology or political economy worthy the name".<br /><br />Sen. La Follette of Wisconsin later ran for President in 1924 on the Progressive Party platform. The <a href="http://www.probe.org/docs/pc-educ.html"target="_blank">University of Wisconsin </a>Madison campus has often been cited as the birthplace of political correctness. <a href="http://www.aegis.com/news/lt/1993/LT930705.html"target="blank">Donna Shalala</a>, former Clinton Secretary of Health & Human Services and University of Wisconsin Chancellor has been called the founder of political correctness.<br /><br />Here is an <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/lhbum:@field(DOCID+@lit(lhbum07510div6))#075100045"target="_blank">extended excerpt</a> of the passage:<blockquote><em>It is difficult, indeed, to overestimate the part which the university has played in the Wisconsin revolution. For myself, I owe what I am and what I have done largely to the inspiration I received while there. It was not so much the actual courses of study which I pursued; it was rather the spirit of the institution--a high spirit of earnest endeavor, a spirit of fresh interest in new things, and beyond all else a sense that somehow the state and the university were intimately related, and that they should be of mutual service.<br /><br />The guiding spirit of my time, and the man to whom Wisconsin owes a debt greater than it can ever pay, was its President, <a href="http://nobsblog.blogspot.com/2004/12/john-bascom-problems-in-philosophy.html"target="_blank">John Bascom</a>.<br /><br />I never saw Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I should say that John Bascom was a man of much his type, both in appearance and in character. He was the embodiment of moral force and moral enthusiasm; and he was in advance of his time in feeling the new social forces and in emphasizing the new social responsibilities. His addresses to the students on Sunday afternoons, together with his work in the classroom, were among the most important influences in my early life. It was his teaching, iterated and reiterated, of the obligation of both the university and the students to the mother state that may be said to have originated the <a href="http://www.legis.state.wi.us/lrb/pubs/feature/wisidea.pdf"target="blank">Wisconsin idea</a> in education. He was forever telling us what the state was doing for us and urging our return obligation not to use our education wholly for our own selfish benefit, but to return some service to the state. That teaching animated and inspired hundreds of students who sat under John Bascom. The present President of the university, Charles R. Van Hise, a classmate of mine, was one of the men who has nobly handed down the tradition and continued the teaching of John Bascom.<br /><br />In those days <strong>we did not </strong>so much <strong>get correct political </strong>and economic<strong> views</strong>, for there was then little teaching of sociology or political economy worthy the name, but <strong>what we </strong>somehow <strong>did get</strong>, and largely from Bascom, <strong>was a proper attitude </strong>toward public affairs. And when all is said, <strong>this attitude is more important than any </strong>definite <strong>views a man may hold</strong>. </em></blockquote><br /><p><br />Political Correctness has become institutionalized at the <A HREF="http://www.blogger.com/r?http%3A%2F%2Fwww.legis.state.wi.us%2Flrb%2Fpubs%2Ffeature%2Fwisidea.pdf">'the Wisconsin Idea'</A>, using stated funded educational institutions to serve State government. <br />Here's a quote from the introduction to the aforementioned link (appropriately published by the Wisconsin State Legislature,<blockquote><em>"One can divide more careful attempts to define the Idea into two categories. One consists of definitions that emphasize the Idea’s political dimension, even its partisan political dimension (progressive or liberal politics)."</em></blockquote><br />Anecdotally, the story is told about a professional boxer who was denied a boxing license in virtually every state because doctors told him one more blow to the head could lead to a detached retina and permanent blindness. The Wisconsin Boxing Commission ruled they could not deny him a license based on his disability. See below<br /><br /><A HREF="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1990/05/blind-boxer-cant-be-discriminated.html">Aaron Pryor</a>, former junior welterweight champion from Cincinnati, was granted a license to box in Madison in 1990, despite being legally blind in one eye. The State Boxing Commission maintained it could not violate Pryor's constitutional rights by denying him a licence to fight based on disability.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com31tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110662515264085822004-11-10T14:17:00.000-07:002005-03-12T15:00:45.476-07:00bin Ladin Election Speech<a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/79C6AF22-98FB-4A1C-B21F-2BC36E87F61F.htm"target="_blank"><em>from Aljazeera.net</em></a><br /><a href="http://www.memritv.org/Search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=312#"target="_blank">View Clip</a><br /><p>Praise be to Allah who created the creation for his worship and commanded them to be just and permitted the wronged one to retaliate against the oppressor in kind. To proceed: <br /><br />Peace be upon he who follows the guidance: People of America this talk of mine is for you and concerns the ideal way to prevent another Manhattan, and deals with the war and its causes and results. <br /><br />Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. <br /><br />If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike for example - Sweden? And we know that freedom-haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19 - may Allah have mercy on them. <br /><br />No, we fight because we are free men who don't sleep under oppression. We want to restore freedom to our nation, just as you lay waste to our nation. So shall we lay waste to yours. <br /><br />No one except a dumb thief plays with the security of others and then makes himself believe he will be secure. Whereas thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again. <br /><br />But I am amazed at you. Even though we are in the fourth year after the events of September 11th, Bush is still engaged in distortion, deception and hiding from you the real causes. And thus, the reasons are still there for a repeat of what occurred. <br /><br />So I shall talk to you about the story behind those events and shall tell you truthfully about the moments in which the decision was taken, for you to consider. <br /><br />I say to you, Allah knows that it had never occurred to us to strike the towers. But after it became unbearable and we witnessed the oppression and tyranny of the American/Israeli coalition against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, it came to my mind. <br /><br />The events that affected my soul in a direct way started in 1982 when America permitted the Israelis to invade Lebanon and the American Sixth Fleet helped them in that. This bombardment began and many were killed and injured and others were terrorised and displaced. <br /><br />I couldn't forget those moving scenes, blood and severed limbs, women and children sprawled everywhere. Houses destroyed along with their occupants and high rises demolished over their residents, rockets raining down on our home without mercy. <br /><br />The situation was like a crocodile meeting a helpless child, powerless except for his screams. Does the crocodile understand a conversation that doesn't include a weapon? And the whole world saw and heard but it didn't respond. <br /><br />In those difficult moments many hard-to-describe ideas bubbled in my soul, but in the end they produced an intense feeling of rejection of tyranny, and gave birth to a strong resolve to punish the oppressors. <br /><br />And as I looked at those demolished towers in Lebanon, it entered my mind that we should punish the oppressor in kind and that we should destroy towers in America in order that they taste some of what we tasted and so that they be deterred from killing our women and children. <br /><br />And that day, it was confirmed to me that oppression and the intentional killing of innocent women and children is a deliberate American policy. Destruction is freedom and democracy, while resistance is terrorism and intolerance. <br /><br />This means the oppressing and embargoing to death of millions as Bush Sr did in Iraq in the greatest mass slaughter of children mankind has ever known, and it means the throwing of millions of pounds of bombs and explosives at millions of children - also in Iraq - as Bush Jr did, in order to remove an old agent and replace him with a new puppet to assist in the pilfering of Iraq's oil and other outrages. <br /><br />So with these images and their like as their background, the events of September 11th came as a reply to those great wrongs, should a man be blamed for defending his sanctuary? <br /><br />Is defending oneself and punishing the aggressor in kind, objectionable terrorism? If it is such, then it is unavoidable for us. <br /><br />This is the message which I sought to communicate to you in word and deed, repeatedly, for years before September 11th. <br /><br />And you can read this, if you wish, in my interview with Scott in Time Magazine in 1996, or with <a href="http://www.ishipress.com/osamaint.htm"target="_blank">Peter Arnett</a> on CNN in 1997, or my meeting with John Weiner in 1998. <br /><br />You can observe it practically, if you wish, in Kenya and Tanzania and in Aden. And you can read it in my interview with Abdul Bari Atwan, as well as my interviews with <a href="http://nobsblog.blogspot.com/1996/12/bin-laden-interview-with-robert-fisk.html"target="_blank">Robert Fisk</a>.<br /><br />The latter is one of your compatriots and co-religionists and I consider him to be neutral. So are the pretenders of freedom at the White House and the channels controlled by them able to run an interview with him? So that he may relay to the American people what he has understood from us to be the reasons for our fight against you? <br /><br />If you were to avoid these reasons, you will have taken the correct path that will lead America to the security that it was in before September 11th. This concerned the causes of the war. <br /><br />As for it's results, they have been, by the grace of Allah, positive and enormous, and have, by all standards, exceeded all expectations. This is due to many factors, chief among them, that we have found it difficult to deal with the Bush administration in light of the resemblance it bears to the regimes in our countries, half of which are ruled by the military and the other half which are ruled by the sons of kings and presidents. <br /><br />Our experience with them is lengthy, and both types are replete with those who are characterised by pride, arrogance, greed and misappropriation of wealth. This resemblance began after the visits of Bush Sr to the region. <br /><br />At a time when some of our compatriots were dazzled by America and hoping that these visits would have an effect on our countries, all of a sudden he was affected by those monarchies and military regimes, and became envious of their remaining decades in their positions, to embezzle the public wealth of the nation without supervision or accounting. <br /><br />So he took dictatorship and suppression of freedoms to his son and they named it the Patriot Act, under the pretence of fighting terrorism. In addition, Bush sanctioned the installing of sons as state governors, and didn't forget to import expertise in election fraud from the region's presidents to Florida to be made use of in moments of difficulty. <br /><br />All that we have mentioned has made it easy for us to provoke and bait this administration. All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies. <br /><br />This is in addition to our having experience in using guerrilla warfare and the war of attrition to fight tyrannical superpowers, as we, alongside the mujahidin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat. <br /><br />All Praise is due to Allah. <br /><br />So we are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy. Allah willing, and nothing is too great for Allah. <br /><br />That being said, those who say that al-Qaida has won against the administration in the White House or that the administration has lost in this war have not been precise, because when one scrutinises the results, one cannot say that al-Qaida is the sole factor in achieving those spectacular gains. <br /><br />Rather, the policy of the White House that demands the opening of war fronts to keep busy their various corporations - whether they be working in the field of arms or oil or reconstruction - has helped al-Qaida to achieve these enormous results. <br /><br />And so it has appeared to some analysts and diplomats that the White House and us are playing as one team towards the economic goals of the United States, even if the intentions differ. <br /><br />And it was to these sorts of notions and their like that the British diplomat and others were referring in their lectures at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. [When they pointed out that] for example, al-Qaida spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost - according to the lowest estimate - more than $500 billion. <br /><br />Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs. <br /><br />As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers estimated to total more than a trillion dollars. <br /><br />And even more dangerous and bitter for America is that the mujahidin recently forced Bush to resort to emergency funds to continue the fight in Afghanistan and Iraq, which is evidence of the success of the bleed-until-bankruptcy plan - with Allah's permission. <br /><br />It is true that this shows that al-Qaida has gained, but on the other hand, it shows that the Bush administration has also gained, something of which anyone who looks at the size of the contracts acquired by the shady Bush administration-linked mega-corporations, like <!--11/03/2005:this original document has been removed from the DNC site, as has been all documents referring to 'Halliburton' after October 7, 2004;<a href="http://www.democrats.org/news/200410220001.html"--><a href="http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/halliburton/index.html"target="_blank">Halliburton</a> and its kind, will be convinced. And it all shows that the real loser is ... you. <br /><br />It is the American people and their economy. And for the record, we had agreed with the Commander-General Muhammad Ataa, Allah have mercy on him, that all the operations should be carried out within 20 minutes, before Bush and his administration notice. <br /><br />It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would abandon 50,000 of his citizens in the twin towers to face those great horrors alone, the time when they most needed him. <br /><br />But because it seemed to him that occupying himself by talking to the little girl about the goat and its butting was more important than occupying himself with the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers, we were given three times the period required to execute the operations - all praise is due to Allah. <br /><br />And it's no secret to you that the thinkers and perceptive ones from among the Americans warned Bush before the war and told him: "All that you want for securing America and removing the weapons of mass destruction - assuming they exist - is available to you, and the nations of the world are with you in the inspections, and it is in the interest of America that it not be thrust into an unjustified war with an unknown outcome." <br /><br />But the darkness of the black gold blurred his vision and insight, and he gave priority to private interests over the public interests of America. <br /><br />So the war went ahead, the death toll rose, the American economy bled, and Bush became embroiled in the swamps of Iraq that threaten his future. He fits the saying "like the naughty she-goat who used her hoof to dig up a knife from under the earth". <br /><br />So I say to you, over 15,000 of our people have been killed and tens of thousands injured, while more than a thousand of you have been killed and more than 10,000 injured. And Bush's hands are stained with the blood of all those killed from both sides, all for the sake of oil and keeping their private companies in business. <br /><br />Be aware that it is the nation who punishes the weak man when he causes the killing of one of its citizens for money, while letting the powerful one get off, when he causes the killing of more than 1000 of its sons, also for money. <br /><br />And the same goes for your allies in Palestine. They terrorise the women and children, and kill and capture the men as they lie sleeping with their families on the mattresses, that you may recall that for every action, there is a reaction. <br /><br />Finally, it behoves you to reflect on the last wills and testaments of the thousands who left you on the 11th as they gestured in despair. They are important testaments, which should be studied and researched. <br /><br />Among the most important of what I read in them was some prose in their gestures before the collapse, where they say: "How mistaken we were to have allowed the White House to implement its aggressive foreign policies against the weak without supervision." <br /><br />It is as if they were telling you, the people of America: "Hold to account those who have caused us to be killed, and happy is he who learns from others' mistakes." <br /><br />And among that which I read in their gestures is a verse of poetry. "Injustice chases its people, and how unhealthy the bed of tyranny." <br /><br />As has been said: "An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure." <br /><br />And know that: "It is better to return to the truth than persist in error." And that the wise man doesn't squander his security, wealth and children for the sake of the liar in the White House. <br /><br />In conclusion, I tell you in truth, that your security is not in the hands of Kerry, nor Bush, nor al-Qaida. No. <br /><br />Your security is in your own hands. And <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/document/carmon200410311937.asp"target="_blank">every state that doesn't play with our security has automatically guaranteed its own security</a>. <br /><br />And Allah is our Guardian and Helper, while you have no Guardian or Helper. All peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. <br /><br /><br />Aljazeera <br /><br /><br />© 2003 - 2004 Aljazeera.Net Copyright and Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Disclaimer<p/ >Unknownnoreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110561166223899642004-08-25T09:11:00.000-07:002005-03-11T20:37:01.216-07:00Arundhati Roy Transcript<em>from Democracy Now</em><br /><p>Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child.<br /><a name="abu-ghraib"><a href="http://www.theoaklandpress.com/stories/052404/opi_052454.shtml" target="_blank">Each prisoner tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade</a></a>.<br />Each of their screams was ours.<br />When they were humiliated, we were humiliated.<br /><p>The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighborhoods - are victims just as much as the Iraqis of the same horrendous process,<br />which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.<br /><p>And this criticism regarding the two presidential candidates:<br />It's not a real choice. It's an apparent choice. Like choosing<br />a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide,<br />they're both owned by Proctor & Gamble.<br /><p><br /><p><em>Delivered at the American Sociological Association Meeting in Berkeley</em>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110571134004660552003-11-24T12:58:00.000-07:002005-04-06T14:17:15.993-07:00Islam and Slavery: The Truth Revealedby Srdja Trifkovic<br />Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans<br /><p>The ongoing campaign for so-called Reparations rests upon the allegation that that the European civilization in general—and its trans-Atlantic heirs, the founding fathers of the United States in particular—should be taken to task for the fact that they practiced slavery. That is somewhat ironic since the Western civilization is in fact the only civilization in history to have created from within itself a successful movement to condemn and abolish slavery.<br /><p>It is a matter of historical record that other civilizations, and most notably Islamic civilization, have not achieved this. The world of Islam has never striven to do so without external prompting. <a name="slavery">To this day the only places in the world where one can buy a slave for ready cash are Moslem countries.</a> The slaves in question are almost invariably black, and the countries in question are primarily Mauritania and Sudan.<br /><p>While both the Old and New Testaments recognized slavery, the Gospels do not treat the institution as divinely ordained. The slaves are human, and all men are equal in the eyes of God regardless of their status in this life: “there is neither Jew nor Greek,” says St. Paul, “there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” Slavery was to early Christians a fact of life, and a thing of men.<br /><p>The <a name="koran">Kuran</a>, by contrast, not only assumes the existence of slavery as a permanent fact of life, but regulates its practice in considerable detail and therefore endows it with divine sanction. Muhammad and his companions owned slaves, or acquired them in war. Muhammad’s scripture recognizes the basic inequality between master and slave, and the rights of the former over the latter (Kuran, 16:71; 30:28). The Kuran assures the Muslim the right to own slaves (to “possess their necks”) either by purchasing them or as bounty of war (58:3). Its author, <a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1993/11/growths-of-civilizations.html#muhammad"target="_blank">Muhammad</a>, had dozens of them, both male and female, and he regularly sold, purchased, hired, rented, and exchanged slaves once he became independently wealthy in Medina after the confiscation of Jewish property. The bounties are lawful to the Muslim, theologian <a name="taimiyya">ibn Taimiyya</a> wrote, and slavery is justified: “It is lawful to kill the infidel or to enslave him, and it also makes it lawful to take his offspring into captivity” (<i>Ibn Taimiyya Says</i>,Vol. 32, p. 89). In line with the racist views of Muhammad about his own people, the Arabs, as “the nobles of all races,” they were exempt from enslavement (<i>Ibn Taimiyya States</i>,Vol. 31, p. 380).<br /><p>The four caliphs who came after Muhammad discouraged the enslavement of free Muslims, and it was eventually prohibited. The assumption of freedom as the normal condition of men did not extend to non-Muslims, however. Disobedient or rebellious <a name="dhimmi"><i>dhimmis</I></a> were reduced to slavery—that is, if their lives were spared—and prisoners captured in jihad were also enslaved if they could not be exchanged or ransomed. In A.D. 781 7000 Greek prisoners of war were enslaved after a battle at Ephesus. At the capture of Thessalonica in A.D. 903, 22,000 Christians were sold into Muslim slavery. The same happened in A.D. 1064 in Georgia and Armenia. In Africa Arab rulers regularly raided sub-Saharan black tribes and captured slaves, claiming their raids to be jihad; many Hindus were enslaved on the same pretext.<br /><p>Divine sanction of slavery means that disobedience to one’s master carries everlasting punishment, while obeying the master is the slave’s only path to paradise: “There are three (persons) whose prayer will not be accepted, nor their virtues be taken above: The runaway slave until he returns back to his master, the woman with whom her husband is dissatisfied, and the drunk until he becomes sober” (<em>Mishkat al-Masabih</em>, Book I, Hadith No. ii, 74). While maltreatment was deplored, there was no fixed <a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1997/07/mohammedism-historical-survey.html#sharia"target="_blank"><i>sharia</i></a> penalty. The slave had no legal powers or rights whatsoever. A Muslim slave-owner was entitled by law to the sexual enjoyment of his slave women. The Koran mandated that a freeman should be killed only for another freeman, a slave for a slave, and a female for a female (2:178). The Tradition says that “a Muslim should not be killed for a non-Muslim, nor a freeman for a slave” (<i>The Commentary of al-Baydawi,</i> p. 36).<br /><p>The slave trade inside the Islamic empire and along its edges was vast. It began to flourish at the time of the Muslim expansion into Africa, in the middle of the seventh century, and it still survives today in Mauritania and Sudan. The Spanish and Portuguese originally purchased Black African slaves for their American colonies from Arab dealers. Every year, for about 600 years, the Nubian kingdom was forced to send a tribute of slaves to the Muslim rulers in Cairo. Nubians and Ethiopians, with their slender features and thin noses, were preferred to the equatorial Bantus, for whom hard toil and lowly menial tasks were generally reserved.<br /><p>Black slaves were brought into the Islamic world by a number of routes—from West Africa across the Sahara to Morocco and Tunisia, from Chad across the desert to Libya, from East Africa down the Nile to Egypt, and across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to Arabia and the Persian Gulf. There are notable differences between the slave trade in the Islamic world and the trans-Atlantic variety. The former has been going on for 13 centuries and it is an integral feature of the Islamic civilization, while the influx of slaves into the New World lasted less than three hundred years and effectively ended by the middle of the 19th century.<br /><p>It is estimated that ten to twelve million Africans were taken to the Americas during that period. The number of captives taken to the heartlands of Islam—while impossible to establish with precision—is many times greater. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that there are tens of millions of descendants of slaves in the Americas, and practically none in the Muslim world outside Africa. For all its horrors, the Atlantic slave trade regarded its victims as valuable assets whose lives and progeny should be preserved, admittedly not for altruistic but primarily for economic reasons. In the Muslim world, by contrast, slaves were considerably cheaper, far more widely available, and regarded as a dispensable commodity. They were not allowed to have families, and most men were brutally castrated even before reaching the market.<br /><p>In the early Caliphate, in Mesopotamia, considerable numbers of black slaves were used as labor on large estates, but the practice effectively ceased after a mass rebellion in the ninth century that at one moment even threatened Baghdad. Since that time the Muslim heartland has been apprehensive of using large contingents of male African slaves working in one location. They were used primarily as domestic servants, or, in the case of women, as sex objects: some harems had hundreds of concubines. In North Africa black slaves were also used as soldiers blindly obedient to their masters.<br />Many African slaves were eunuchs, and the method of their mutilation, before they could fetch the best price in the Islamic world, defies imagination:<br /><blockquote>Castration was admittedly against the Islamic law, but its letter—the “spirit” being non-existent—often offered a pragmatic way out for the imaginative believer. Regarding African captives, a handy contrivance was to buy already castrated slaves whose mutilation occurred prior to the wretch’s importation into the lands of the Faithful. The dealers thus had a clear incentive to perform the operation themselves along the route. For African captives nothing short of “castration level with the abdomen” would do; no mere removal of the cojones, like with the Slavic and Greek captives, by the mere removal of testicles. Only such radically castrated eunuchs were deemed fit to be guardians of the harem: that way there was no risk of their damaging any of the property in the harem. The mortality rates were enormous [<a href="http://dir.salon.com/books/int/2001/04/05/segal/index.html"target="_blank"><i>Islam’s Black Slaves</i>—an Interview with Ronald Segal by Suzy Hansen</a>].</blockquote>In the period of its decline the Ottoman harems and landed estates were filled by Christian slaves captured in the Caucasus, until the Russian liberation of the area in the early 19th century. The Tatars raided surrounding Christian lands from their stronghold in the Crimea and sold tens of thousands of captured Eastern Europeans in the slave markets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities until the Russian annexation of the peninsula in 1783. Another important source of European slaves was piracy, with its autonomous power-base in the Barbary Coast of Algiers. The captives of the Barbary corsairs could be freed by ransom or conversion. The rest were sold at auctions, and many died from fever, starvation, or the lash. Women were taken into harems as concubines of their captors.<br /><p>The abolitionist sentiment in Europe and America was inseparable from Christian faith and world outlook. <a name="wilberforce">William Wilberforce</a> and the Clapham Sect, inspired by the Wesleyan Revival, lobbied for abolition and finally succeeded in having the legislation adopted at Westminster that abolished slavery in the British Empire and turned Britain into a determined foe of slave traders everywhere. The evangelical revival movement provided momentum to the abolitionist movement in the United States.<br /><p>Islam provides no analogous abolitionist imperative. Hoping to curtail the trade, in 1842 the British Consul General in Morocco made representations to the Sultan asking him what measures, if any, he had taken to abolish slave trade. The sultan replied, in a letter expressing bewilderment, that “the traffic in slaves is a matter on which all sects and nations have agreed from the time of the sons of Adam”:<br /><blockquote>The sultan continued that he was “not aware of its being prohibited by the laws of any sect, and no one need ask this question, the same being manifest to both high and low and requires no more demonstration than the light of day.” The sultan was only slightly out of date concerning the enactment of laws to abolish or limit the slave trade, and he was right in his general historic perspective. The institution of slavery had indeed been practiced from time immemorial [Bernard Lewis, <a href=" http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/med/lewis1.html"target="_blank"><i>Race and Slavery in the Middle East</i></a>, Oxford University Press 1994].</blockquote>Just as Britain and France were finally working to shut down the Atlantic slave trade in the early 19th century, it was picking up in East Africa and most of the slaves were being sold to kingdoms in Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The <a name="arabian penninsula">Arabian Peninsula</a> in 1962 became the world’s penultimate region to officially abolish slavery (Mauritania formally followed suit in 1982), yet years later Saudi Arabia alone was estimated to contain a quarter of a million de facto slaves.<br /><p>A network of trade routes and markets extending all over the Islamic world and far beyond its frontiers lasted until well into the 20th century. To find truly endemic, raw anti-Black racism and slavery today one needs to go to the two Islamic Republics in Africa, Mauritania and Sudan. In both countries those phenomena have their origin in the early period of Islamic expansion. As Negro kings and princes embraced Islam, they cooperated with the Arabians in the exportation of human cargo. Interestingly for a faith supposedly free from racial prejudice, Islamic judges declared that “[t]he master does not have the right to force the female slave to wed to an ugly black slave if she is beautiful and agile, unless in case of utmost necessity” (Ibn Hazm, Vol. 6, Part 9, p. 469).<br /><p>Black people had been enslaved on such a scale that in Arabic the term black became synonymous with slave. The mixed-race, predominantly Negroid but self-avowedly “Arabic” denizens of the transitional sub-Saharan zone were indoctrinated into treating their completely black southern neighbors with racist disdain. (To this day it can be dangerous to one’s life to ask a dark-looking but Arabic-speaking Sudanese or Mauritanian Muslim if he was “black.”) The collaborators eventually surpassed their Arabic mentors in raiding tropical regions to capture slaves, mutilating the males by radical castration, raping females, and depopulating entire regions in the process.<br /><p>For the black populations in Sudan and Mauritania independence marked the end of a slavery-free respite under colonial rule. In both countries the forceful imposition of the wearing of the traditional Muslim dress, the <i>jalabia</i>, was followed by the compulsory circumcision and the giving of Arabic names to children as a precondition for entry into state schools. Slavery was “abolished” several times in Mauritania since independence, last on July 5, 1980. Yet the <a name="anti-slavery society">Anti-Slavery Society</a>’s findings (1982) and those of <a name="africa watch">Africa Watch</a> (1990) point to the existence of at least 100,000 “full-time” slaves and additional 300,000 half-slaves, all of them black, still being held by Arab-Mauritanians. Even the head of state from 1960 to 1978, Mokhtar Ould Daddah, kept slaves behind the presidential palace (John Mercer, <i>Anti-Slavery Society Report of 1982</i>). The Mauritanian government has not tried to eradicate slavery and failed; it has not tried at all Even the old Arab practice of forming slave armies was revived in Mauritania, where thousands of Haratines were forcibly recruited, armed, and sent to take over black African villages in the south and massacre the inhabitants:<br /><blockquote>”The Haratines who have been settled on the lands of expelled blacks have been armed by the authorities and asked to organise their own defence. AI has been informed that some authorities are profiting from the subordination ties between masters and Haratines to enroll the latter in this militia. In general this militia does not simply defend itself when attacked, but undertakes punitive expeditions against unarmed civilians living in the villages. In some cases, Haratines who object to this gratuitous violence are threatened with reprisals by the security forces who escort them on these expeditions [<i>Amnesty International Report on Mauritania</i>, October 1990].”</blockquote>In 1983, the Arab-controlled government of Sudan instituted strict Islamic law in the entire country and subjected black Christians and other non-Muslims of the south in its decree. Then in 1992 a religious decree (<a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1997/07/mohammedism-historical-survey.html#fatwa"target="_blank"><i>fatwa</i></a>) was ordered that gave justification to the military onslaught against non-Muslims. Since that time the United Nations and human rights groups have documented countless cases of slavery. People are taken as war booty to perform unpaid household labor and other tasks, or to be used for sexual gratification. The State Department had sent an assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, <a name="susan rice">Dr. Susan Rice</a>, to investigate the problem. Her report was a horrific account of rampant slavery, with interviews with former slaves. It was quietly <a href=" http://www.state.gov/www/regions/africa/rice_980729.html"target="_blank">shelved by the Clinton Administration</a>, however, and denied media attention that it richly deserved by the standards of prevalent victimology.<br /><p>Sudan shows that genocide need not be perpetrated by huge massacres. There are more insidious but equally effective ways of killing large numbers of people. The government in Khartoum is doing so by attrition: it is slowly and methodically grinding down the society and economy of the Nuba and starving the entire population. Meanwhile, in the garrison towns and Orwellian-sounding ‘peace camps’ the government is remolding the political and social identity of the Nuba by force: the aim is to transform them into a deracinated underclass, the loyal servants of an extremist Islamic state. In each army attack, soldiers first arbitrarily gun down anyone they find. The government does not pay them salaries: their pay is the booty from the raids on Southern villages. The elderly and sick are usually killed on the spot and their food granaries set ablaze. The main objective of ‘combing’ is to capture live, fit civilians:<br /><blockquote>Thousands of men, women and children are captured when their villages are surrounded, or are snatched while tending their crops, herding their animals, or collecting water. Many people run to hide in caves to escape government attacks, but they are driven even from these refuges by hunger and thirst, or by attacks using tear gas. Captives are taken to garrisons, forced to carry their own looted possessions, or drive their own stolen animals in front of them. These captives—or ‘returnees,’ as the government calls them—usually never see their families or villages again. Many are tortured. Women are raped and forced to work, often in special labour camps. All but the youngest children are separated for ‘schooling’—i.e. conversion to Islam [<a href=" http://web.peacelink.it/rappnuba.html"target="_blank"> <i>Facing Genocide: The Nuba of Sudan</i></a>, published by African Rights on 21 July 1995].</blockquote>The government also uses food as a means for luring Southern Sudanese Christians into its "peace camps" located in the desert. Food distribution in them is carried out exclusively by Islamic organizations, which use the promise of food as a means of converting Christians and animists to Islam. The technique is very simple: if one does not bear an Islamic name one is denied food. Without any means of alternative support the choice is, as ever, Islam or death (<a href="http://www.iabolish.com/today/features/sudan/overview1.htm"target="_blank">Sabit A. Alley’s paper</a> delivered at the 19th Annual Holocaust and Genocide Program, Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, March 17, 2001).<br /><p>That it cannot be otherwise is explained by contemporary Islamic scholars who are frank in admitting that Islam does not prohibit slavery but makes it lawful in two instances: for prisoners of war, and for “the sexual propagation of slaves which would generate more slaves for their owner” (Dr. ‘Abdul-Latif Mushtahari <i>You Ask and Islam Answers</i>, pp. 51, 52. The author is general supervisor at the Azhar University in Cairo). In Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, girls as young as five are auctioned off to highest bidders (“Sale of Children Thrives in Pakistan” by Andrew Bushel, the <i>Washington Times</i>, January 21, 2002).<br /><blockquote>Afghan girls between the ages of 5 and 17 sell for $80 to $100. The price depends on the colors of their eyes and skin; if they are virgins, the price is higher. Mr. Arbab, an older man with a white shovel beard and a green turban, absently fingers his prayer beads as he calls out prices for the children. The girls are generally sold into prostitution or, if they are lucky, they may join harems in the Middle East [<i>ibid</i>].</blockquote>It is richly ironic that the founders of the Nation of Islam have urged African Americans to renounce Christianity as a tool of the oppressors and that Elijah Muhammad’s son upon dissolving the American Muslim Mission, urged its members to become orthodox Muslims and thus “come home,” spiritually at least, to their African roots. The shackles of ignorance are more enduring than those of iron. The violent and inherently discriminatory message of the Koran is a huge problem for all Muslims. We cannot solve it for them, and we should not be asked to deem the problem solved by pretending that the Koran is a pacifist tract. Humans can reinterpret scriptures when necessary, but until Muslims themselves renounce the ideals of jihad, terror, slavery and subjugation we must have the guts to call a religion of war by its right name.<br /><p>”As a man thinketh, so is he.” The real problem of the Muslim world is not that of natural resourses or political systems. Ernest Renan, who started his study of Islam by praising its ability to manifest “what was divine in human nature,” ended it—a quarter o a century and three long tours of the Muslim world later—by concluding that “Muslims are the first victims of Islam” and that, therefore, “to liberate the Muslim from his religion is the best service that one can render him.” The West is yet to learn, fully, the lesson that my Balkan ancestors were forced to learn six centuries ago: that Islam is a collective psychosis seeking to become global, and any attempt to compromise with madness is to become part of the madness oneself. The quarrel is not of our choosing, and those who submit to that faith must solve the problem they set themselves.</p><br /><p><br /><p>See also <a href="http://www.answering-islam.org/BehindVeil/btv5.html"target="_blank">Answering Islam</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110566940795892032003-10-22T10:44:00.000-07:002005-03-21T19:03:53.093-07:00The Case For Intervention In Iraq<a href="http://www.army.mod.uk/img/doctrine/scsi47.pdf" target="">Britain’ War With Saddam Had The Law On Its Side </a><br />Professor Christopher Greenwood QC<br /><i>The Times</i><br /><p>Today’s House of Commons debate on Iraq will raise the question of whether Britain broke international law. It is an important question because in a democracy people expect their government to act within the law. Contrary to what critics claim, however, the military action was not illegal, nor was the Government’ legal case made up on the hoof. Lord Alexander of Weedon, QC, was right to emphasise in The Times the importance of the legal issue but he was wrong to liken Iraq to Suez and to characterise it as military adventurism. Britain’ actions over Suez had no semblance of legality and the Prime Minister of the day was openly dismissive of international law. In sharp contrast, the present Government has gone to great lengths to ensure that it acted within the law and to explain the legal basis for its actions. In doing so it consistently relied on a legal justification that successive governments have advanced for more than ten years. The action in Iraq was a lawful measure to remove a serious threat to international peace that had festered since Iraq’ invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Not only was that invasion a manifestly unlawful act, but the Security Council concluded that Iraq, which had twice invaded a neighbour and used poison gas to devastating effect against its own people, posed a threat to peace that went beyond the situation in Kuwait. That was why the council (in Resolution 678) authorised a coalition of states to use force against Iraq. That mandate was not only the legal basis for the military action that freed Kuwait in 1991, it remained central to the legal position thereafter, because <a href="http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0678.htm"targetr="_blank">Resolution 678 was not limited to the liberation of Kuwait but it authorised the coalition states to use force for the broader goal of restoring “ international peace and security in the area” </a>. To achieve that broader goal, the council decided that Iraq must rid itself not only of all weapons of mass destruction but of all raw materials and programmes for the development of such weapons and do so under close international supervision. These steps were made conditions of the ceasefire, laid down in Resolution 687, after the liberation of Kuwait. They were legally binding on Iraq and were accepted by Saddam Hussein’s Government, although it never honoured them. Importantly, <a name="Resolution 678"><a href="http://nobsblog.blogspot.com/2004/11/preemption-and-regime-change.html" target="_blank">the council did not repeal Resolution 678. The authorisation of military action could therefore be revived if Iraq violated the ceasefire terms.</a></a><br />That was the legal justification relied on by the Conservative Government, as well as by the American and French governments, when they took military action against Iraq in 1993. Their view was endorsed by<br />Boutros Boutros Ghali, then UN Secretary-General. The same justification for action was relied on by the Government in December 1998 when UN weapons inspectors were forced out of Iraq.<br />More recently,<a href="http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/1441.pdf" target="_blank">Resolution 1441, unanimously adopted last November, made clear that the council considered that the earlier resolution was still in force.</a> It also held that Iraq was in material breach of ceasefire obligations. The legal basis for military action thus existed without the need for a further resolution. The council nevertheless gave Iraq “ final opportunity” to comply, saying that serious consequences would follow if it failed to do so. That Iraq did not take that opportunity was demonstrated by the successive reports of the UN weapons inspectors. When those reports were debated, in March 2003, not one of the 15 council members questioned the proposition that Iraq was still in breach of resolution 687. The council was not, however, able to agree on what to do next. The consequences of the council’s well-publicised failure to agree have been widely misunderstood. <strong>The council did not decide to reject military action. It was unable, because of divisions that existed among members, to take any decision at all. But no new decision was required</strong> as a matter of law. Resolution 1441 made clear that continuing violations by Iraq had to be reported back to the council for consideration, but, crucially, proposals that would have required a further decision by the council were not included when the text of <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/CIB/2002-03/03Cib16.htm" target="_blank">Resolution 1441</a> was adopted. The lack of a fresh decision in March this year did not alter what the council had already decided. It had already confirmed its earlier authority to use force for the restoration of peace and security; it had already decided that Iraq had still not done what the council had considered for 12 years was essential for the restoration of peace and security. In those circumstances, for Britain and America to rely on the existing authorisation was entirely lawful. Nor does the fact that no “ smoking gun” has yet been discovered in Iraq affect the legal basis for the action. The Security Council resolutions make clear that the critical question was not whether Iraq might possess a prohibited weapon capable of immediate use. Rather, what the council consistently required was that the inspectors it appointed be able to certify that all such weapons had gone and that there were no programmes in place by which new ones could be created. Iraq was required to take positive steps, of disclosure and co-operation, as part of this process. In the event, Iraq had still not complied after 12 years. The legal case for action against Iraq rested on its persistent failure to take the steps that the council had decided were necessary to secure peace in the area, a goal for which the council had given authority to use force and which it later reaffirmed. There is nothing of Suez or military adventurism about the action that was taken by the British Government.<br /><br /><em>Professor Greenwood is Professor of International Law at the London School of Economics. He assisted the government on the Iraq conflict. He has taught previously at the University of Cambridge and his publications include: contributing articles in British Year Book of International Law, International and Comparative Law Quarterly and SCSI No 4 - Command and The Laws of Armed Conflict.</em><br /><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110815442063009402003-08-24T07:42:00.000-07:002005-03-19T15:26:56.316-07:00America Built on Foundation of Massacre - Arundhati Roy<em><a href="http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20030824.htm"target="_blank">The Loneliness of Noam Chomsky</a> (excerpted)<br />by Arundhati Roy</em><br /><br /><p> The U.S. empire rests on a grisly foundation: the massacre of millions of indigenous people, the stealing of their lands, and following this, the kidnapping and enslavement of millions of black people from Africa to work that land. Thousands died on the seas while they were being shipped like caged cattle between continents. "Stolen from Africa, brought to America" — Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" contains a whole universe of unspeakable sadness. It tells of the loss of dignity, the loss of wilderness, the loss of freedom, the shattered pride of a people. Genocide and slavery provide the social and economic underpinning of the nation whose fundamental values reject hate, murderers, and evil.<br /> <br /> Here is Chomsky, writing in the essay "<em>The Manufacture of Consent</em>," on the founding of the United States of America:<br /> <br /> During the Thanksgiving holiday a few weeks ago, I took a walk with some friends and family in a national park. We came across a gravestone, which had on it the following inscription: "Here lies an Indian woman, a Wampanoag, whose family and tribe gave of themselves and their land that this great nation might be born and grow."<br /> <br /> Of course, it is not quite accurate to say that the indigenous population gave of themselves and their land for that noble purpose. Rather, they were slaughtered, decimated, and dispersed in the course of one of the greatest exercises in genocide in human history... which we celebrate each October when we honour Columbus — a notable mass murderer himself — on Columbus Day.<br /> <br /> Hundreds of American citizens, well-meaning and decent people, troop by that gravestone regularly and read it, apparently without reaction; except, perhaps, a feeling of satisfaction that at last we are giving some due recognition to the sacrifices of the native peoples.... They might react differently if they were to visit Auschwitz or Dachau and find a gravestone reading: "Here lies a woman, a Jew, whose family and people gave of themselves and their possessions that this great nation might grow and prosper."<br /> <br /> How has the United States survived its terrible past and emerged smelling so sweet? Not by owning up to it, not by making reparations, not by apologising to black Americans or native Americans, and certainly not by changing its ways (it exports its cruelties now). Like most other countries, the United States has rewritten its history. But what sets the United States apart from other countries, and puts it way ahead in the race, is that it has enlisted the services of the most powerful, most successful publicity firm in the world: <a href="http://nobsnews.blogspot.com/1994/02/can-america-rule-world.html#hollywood"target="_blank">Hollywood</a>.<br /> <br /> In the best-selling version of popular myth as history, U.S. "goodness" peaked during World War II (aka America's War Against Fascism). Lost in the din of trumpet sound and angel song is the fact that when fascism was in full stride in Europe, the U.S. government actually looked away. When Hitler was carrying out his genocidal pogrom against Jews, U.S. officials refused entry to Jewish refugees fleeing Germany. The United States entered the war only after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. Drowned out by the noisy hosannas is its most barbaric act, in fact the single most savage act the world has ever witnessed: the <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/who/interview.html#video"target="_blank">dropping of the atomic bomb on civilian populations in Hiroshima and Nagasaki</a>. The war was nearly over. The hundreds of thousands of Japanese people who were killed, the countless others who were crippled by cancers for generations to come, were not a threat to world peace. They were civilians. Just as the victims of the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings were civilians. Just as the hundreds of thousands of people who died in Iraq because of the U.S.-led sanctions were civilians. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a cold, calculated experiment carried out to demonstrate America's power. At the time, President Truman described it as "the greatest thing in history".Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112213908201176462003-03-05T13:16:00.001-07:002005-03-30T15:33:54.106-07:00Bill Richardson Emulates Reagan's Tax Cuts<strong><em>from the Albuquerque Journal</em></strong><br /><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />JUST AS Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bill Richardson is establishing his legacy as the best Republican governor of New Mexico <!--MDASH--> — <!--ENDMDASH--> ever.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Look at his first baby steps as chief executive officer of the state, with a willing Democratic Legislature firmly in his back pocket. Within a week, Richardson was on his way to Silicon Valley to send a signal that New Mexico is open for business.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />GOP leaders have responded. Larry Willard, CEO of Wells Fargo Bank New Mexico and staunch GOP supporter, approvingly speaks of the personal commitments that Richardson has made to him. Perhaps one of those commitments was to make a regressive tax cut the first priority of his administration.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />In a salute to the <a name="reaganomics">Reaganomics of yore, Richardson has blasted through a tax cut</a> package heavily skewed to relieving the public burden on the rich. New Mexico taxes are high. They should be lowered, but not for the rich or the corporations.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />On a national level, we've seen how Reaganomics trickle-down theory really works <!--MDASH--> — <!--ENDMDASH--> the rich get enormously richer, the poor get poorer, the middle class stagnates. This is not what New Mexico needs.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />I'll take my tax cut. My wife and I can take our $89 and invest in some Kmart stock. I'd rather have the $5,000 plus that couples who make over $100,000 will get. I'd settle for the same percentage cut that the wealthy couples get <!--MDASH--> — <!--ENDMDASH--> 5.46 percent or over $2,000.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />This is only the first phase in liberal Richardson's regressive tax slash. His goal is to relieve the tax burden on the wealthy even more. ...<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />We cut taxes for the wealthy and throw kids off Medicaid. This certainly doesn't sound like the legacy of FDR. Welcome to Reagan's New Mexico.<br><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind-->Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112213754031622782003-02-19T13:12:00.000-07:002005-03-30T15:34:55.170-07:00Bill Richardson on Tax Cuts for the Rich<strong>"Make no mistake," Richardson said. "The point of cutting the personal income tax and the capital gains cut is to send an unmistakable message to <a href="http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030219-071745-7704r"target="_blank">business</a></strong> (02/19/03)<br /><p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112214640594163882003-02-11T13:29:00.000-07:002005-03-30T15:24:17.303-07:00The Heartlessness of Bill Richardson's Tax Cut<b>Revenue Estimate Points to Budget Squeeze <br />if Tax Cut Doesn't Work</b><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br /><b>By Barry Massey</b><br /><font face="garamond,georgia,times" size=3><br /><i>The Associated Press</i><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br /><!--es-->ANALYSIS <!-- EMDASH--> — <!-- EMDASH--> — SANTA FE <!-- EMDASH--> — Tucked away in a new revenue forecast is evidence suggesting a potential budget squeeze in the future if Gov. Bill Richardson's tax-cut package is enacted and it fails to jump start the economy.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Based on five-year estimates of revenues flowing into the state's general budget account, the state should collect just under $4.3 billion in 2007. However, that doesn't reflect the revenue loss from the governor's proposed tax cuts: $325 million in 2007.<br /><br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />After accounting for the tax cut, the state's projected revenues in 2007 would fall $80 million short of the $4.05 billion that the governor has proposed to spend in his budget recommendations for the 2004 fiscal year.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Think about that.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Projected revenue growth by 2007 wouldn't cover next year's spending on general government and public education if taxes are cut as requested by Richardson. Factor in possible budget increases in 2005, 2006 and 2007 <!-- EMDASH--> — for schools or Medicaid, for example <!-- EMDASH--> — and the revenue-expenditure mismatch could be hundreds of millions of dollars.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Of course, that analysis doesn't factor in any boost to the economy and jobs from Richardson's tax cut. The governor is banking on that happening and generating extra revenue. He contends that lowering taxes will help New Mexico recruit businesses with high-wage jobs.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />"The reason we have this tax cut is to be competitive with our surrounding states. It's not any trickle-down theory. It's to grow our economy," Richardson said at a recent news conference.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />The latest revenue forecast was developed by economists in the Richardson administration and the Legislature. It showed better than anticipated revenues for this year and next year. However, administration officials acknowledged there are "significant risks" in the projections for revenues related to oil and natural gas because prices used in the forecast are higher than the historical average.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />The long-term revenue outlook helps explain why a few members of the Legislature are starting to openly question the governor's proposal to lower personal income taxes over four years.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />It also underscores why the House insists on adding a circuit-breaker to the tax cut legislation to postpone some of the proposed tax reductions if state finances deteriorate.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Rep. Max Coll, D-Santa Fe, chairman of the House committee that handles the budget, was one of the few Democrats who voiced doubts about the fiscal wisdom of a four-year tax cut when the House debated the governor's proposal last week.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />Coll said he preferred approving tax cuts one year at a time rather than locking in multiyear reductions that could force the Legislature to slash budgets or raise taxes in the future if the economy slumps and revenue collections plunge unexpectedly.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />The new five-year revenue projections have added to Coll's concern. He points out that the Richardson administration didn't present to lawmakers a five-year projection of state spending along with the projection of revenues through 2007.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />"It was just cowardice that kept them from bringing it out, showing it to us," said Coll, acknowledging that the $325 million cost of the tax cut could squeeze the state's budget in the future.<br /><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />"They're playing two long shots trying to do a two horse parlay," Coll says of the Richardson administration. "One is that the price of oil and gas will stay high. The second one is that this tax cut will bring a stampede of new taxpayers into the state. I think both of those are very long shots."<br /><br /><br /><hr><!--indent--> <!--endind--><br />EDITOR'S NOTE: Barry Massey has covered state government and politics for The Associated Press since 1993.<br /><br /></font>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110598964983649482003-02-08T20:40:00.000-07:002005-03-11T20:42:44.993-07:00North Korea Cheated on Clinton Nuke Deal<strong><a href="http://www.aim.org/publications/weekly_column/2002/10/21.html"target="_blank">North Korea's Dangerous Deception</a></strong><br />by Notra Trulock<br />October 21, 2002<br /><br /><p>North Korea has finally admitted that it has been pursuing the development of nuclear weapons despite promises to the contrary. In 1994, in a deal engineered in part by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jimmy Carter, the Clinton administration tried to bribe North Korea into abandoning its nuclear intentions. In return for a pile of cash, an annual supply of fuel oil, and new supposedly proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors, North Korea agreed to freeze plutonium production at its nuclear facilities north of Pyongyang. The deal became known as the Agreed Framework; but North Korea also promised to remain in the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and live up to its obligations under the International Atomic Energy Agreement nuclear safeguards program. <br /><p>In short, the Clinton administration thought it had bought off North Korea. What started as a limited accomplishment would soon be touted as a "major diplomatic success" for an administration short on such successes. Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and others also scored it as a major achievement in their campaign to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Over the years, the intelligence community raised "concerns" about covert activities in North Korea, but the White House and State Department usually dismissed these as worst-case scenarios based on sketchy evidence. <br /><p>Now the State Department reports that North Korea considers the Agreed Framework <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20E1EFE3E590C748DDDA90994DA404482&incamp=archive:search"target="_blank">"nullified."</a> If true, this suggests some very ominous "worst-case" scenarios largely forgotten or ignored by the media. First, as part of the Agreed Framework, the North Koreans insisted that the U.S. refurbish and preserve a storage pool full of spent fuel rods, recently dumped from its production reactor. Many in the U.S. Energy Department, which eventually cleaned and canned the rods, thought this a bad idea and said so at that time. The White House and State Department, however, were intent on closing the deal and ignored those warnings. <br /><p>Should they now opt to reprocess this fuel, Pyongyang would have enough plutonium for about five nuclear warheads, thanks to the Clinton administration and American taxpayers. That would be in addition to the plutonium the U.S. judged the North Koreans had produced by 1994, believed to be enough for two, possibly three nuclear warheads. An intelligence-community estimate last December strongly implied that North Korea had already fabricated these weapons. <br /><p>At the time of the agreement, there was much concern inside the intelligence community that North Korea would cheat on the deal by pursuing other routes to the development of nuclear warheads. The alternative to plutonium is highly enriched uranium (HEU), which is most commonly produced using gas centrifuges. In 1999, the Washington Times reported that the North Koreans had tried to buy electrical components for gas centrifuges from Japan, but the sale was blocked. Now they have admitted what that suggested—that they had started secretly to produce weapons using highly enriched uranium. The facilities it requires are more easily hidden than the reactors that produce plutonium. <br /><p>The State Department says that it has acquired evidence of North Korea’s HEU production only recently. It is easy to understand why the Clinton administration would try to conceal the fact that the agreement with North Korea was an extremely costly blunder. We have poured $100 million a year in fuel and food into North Korea to keep Kim Jong Il from developing nuclear warheads, all in vain. The continuation of this largesse in the first two years of the Bush administration raises the question of why it took so long to find that North Korea was cheating. In addition, U.S. diplomats in Pyongyang have been told that North Korea has "more powerful things as well," apparently a reference to their extensive chemical and biological weapons programs.<br /><p>Many suspect North Korea acquired gas centrifuges from Pakistan as payment for North Korean long-range missiles supplied in the late 1990s. North Korea actively markets several long-range missile systems to Iran, Egypt, Syria and others to generate revenue for its weapons-of-mass-destruction programs.<br /><p>All this could throw a monkey wrench in the administration’s plans for Iraq. North Korea, for example, could use this as a pretext to return to testing of a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to targets in the United States. Some of President Bush’s critics have asked why he included North Korea in his "axis of evil." Last week’s disclosures have answered that question. Like Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il is a cruel tyrant who starves his subjects to maintain a huge army and produce weapons of mass destruction. He has shown that his word is worthless.<br /><br /><p><i>Notra Trulock is an Associate Editor at Accuracy in Media.</i><br /><!--Accuracy In Media - Weekly Column - NORTH KOREA’S DANGEROUS DECEPTION--><br /><br /><!-- ARTICLE TEXT ABOVE --><br /><p/ >Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110598055194562442003-02-08T20:24:00.000-07:002005-03-11T20:28:54.056-07:00Clinton Gave Interview To Racist Paper<em>Ex-president chastised for giving exclusive to 'anti-Semitic' daily</em><br /><em>from</em><a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-friendly.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30872"target="_blank"><em>WorldNetDaily.com </em></a><br /><br />Former President Bill Clinton chose a newspaper with a clear anti-Semitic and anti-American profile to publish a recent column in Sweden, according to a WorldNetDaily reader in the Scandinavian nation. Clinton's message, that the U.S. should "lead, not dominate" the world as the 21st century emerges was submitted for publication in at least 20 countries, but his choice of Sweden's <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/debatt/story/0,2789,245596,00.html">Aftonbladet</a> as that country's exclusive publisher of the column must have been "a mistake because of the carelessness of your advisers," Dmitri Vasserman wrote to the former president. The Swedish tabloid – Scandinavia's largest newspaper – published the column Jan. 1, under the title, "I'm disappointed in you, Bush." In his letter to Clinton, Vasserman said he could not imagine Clinton would have anything to do with Aftonbladett if he knew something about them in advance. Vasserman said, the "publication of your article has done a great damage; it showed that Aftonbladet is still an appropriate paper for democratic non-racist politicians." He added, "I hope you will find an appropriate way to correct this mistake." WND spoke with an intern at Clinton's New York office on Monday who said he would try to get a response, but no one from the former president's staff called back. <br /><br /><strong>'The Crucified Arafat' </strong><br />In a Jan. 20 Aftonbladett column titled <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/ledare/story/0,2789,253355,00.html">"Stop buying Israeli goods!" </a>writer Lena Askling said, "Apartheid against Palestinians is escalating, and the Israeli violence increases in unimaginable proportions." An Easter 2002 opinion piece titled "The Crucified Arafat," was written by Aftonbladet’s political editor-in-chief, Lutheran theologian Helle Klein, said Vasserman, who noted the tradition of characterizing Jews as Christ killers. Columnist Gunnar Fredriksson said in an <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/nyheter/story/0,2789,153888,00.html">April 8</a> piece that Russian Jews "are considered often as racists. They hated dark-skinned Chechens and other people from Caucasus; now they hate Palestinians and the Muslims." Fredriksson said the few Russians who do have contact with Palestinians belong to criminal gangs. Politically, he said, the Russian Jews in Israel cooperate with the ultra-orthodox groups and immigrants from Morocco, Tunisia and Ethiopia. "These groups have almost nothing in common but the hatred of Palestinians," he wrote. Columnist <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/0104/16/guillou.html">Jan Guillou said April 16 that the "difference between Israel and the apartheid state of South Africa is that Israel executes more people and is keeping more people in jails and militant ghetto zones."</a> Gillou criticized another newspaper for asserting that Palestinian youth and children are being brainwashed by their leaders to hate the Jews and the Jewish state. The Aftonbladett columnist complained that while South Africans' resistance against apartheid was understood as a rational response, Palestinians are accused of being anti-Semites for their resistance against Israel. Olle Svenning noted in his <a href="http://www.aftonbladet.se/vss/ledare/story/0,2789,258553,00.html">column on Sunday </a>that "a couple of new biographies on George Bush have recently been published." "One relates how the president found salvation: He'd had a hard night with the bottle and woke up the following morning feeling far worse for wear," he wrote. "He looked at his reflection in the mirror and discovered that his face was speckled with vomit. That's when he fell to his knees and found God." "Which is all well and good," Svenning commented, "if only he'd made a bit of progress beyond the Old Testament, with its constant focus on revenge, war and violence." Last year, the Aftonbladet was found guilty by a Swedish court of "agitating against an ethnic group" for operating an online forum in which readers posted death threats against Jews. The paper argued that the comments were not deleted from the moderated site at the time because of technical problems, but nevertheless was held responsible by the court.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110660240289908962002-12-31T13:42:00.000-07:002005-03-12T13:59:17.363-07:00Patton Boggs FARA ListingSaudi Arabia engaged the lobbying firm of <a href="http://www.pattonboggs.com/practiceareas/a-z/104.html"target="_blank">Patton Boggs</a>, headed by <a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/fara/Fara2nd02/COUNTRY/SAUDIARA.HTM#2165"target="_blank">Thomas Boggs</a> (brother of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Saudi_Arabia#See_also"target="_blank">Cokie Roberts</a> of ABC News and National Public Radio), as registered foreign agents in the wake of the public relations disaster when knowledge of the identities of hijackers became known.<br /><BR><strong>SAUDI ARABIA</strong><br /><BR><br /><BR><HR ALIGN=center SIZE=2><br /><BR><A HREF="#3492">Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P., #3492</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#2591">Dutton & Dutton, P.C., #2591</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5467">Gallagher Group, L.L.C., #5467</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#3301">Hill & Knowlton, Inc., #3301</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5432">Loeffler, Jonas & Tuggey, LLP, #5432</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#2165">Patton Boggs, L.L.P., #2165</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5483">Qorvis Communications, LLC, #5483</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5511">Sandler-Innocenzi, Inc., #5511</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5321">Saudi Petroleum International, Inc., #5321</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#4184">Saudi Refining, Inc., #4184</A><br /><BR><A HREF="#5509">Scott, Thomas J., #5509</A><br /><BR><br /><BR><HR ALIGN=center SIZE=2><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="3492">Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, L.L.P., #3492</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. <br /><BR> Suite 400 <br /><BR> Washington, DC 20036 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Kingdom of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />Activities: None Reported<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="2591">Dutton & Dutton, P.C., #2591</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 5017 Tilden Street, N.W. <br /><BR> Washington, DC 20016 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Embassy of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant monitored the executive branch, members of Congress, and the public concerning petroleum developments, the peace process, and U.S. political activities of concern to Saudia Arabia and the Middle East, especially those concerning events ensuing from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack. The registrant also responded to occasional media inquiries regarding Saudi Arabia.<br /></P><br /><P><br />$250,000.00 for the six month period ending December 12,2002<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5467">Gallagher Group, L.L.C., #5467</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 1800 North Kent Street <br /><BR> Suite 907 <br /><BR> Arlington, VA 22209 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia - (through Qorvis Communications, LLC) </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant scheduled meetings and accompanied representatives of the foreign principal to meetings with members of Congress and congressional staffers to discuss U.S.-Saudi bilateral relations and U.S.-Saudi cooperation in the war on terrorism. Other topics discussed were oil and energy issues, economic development, government reform, education, role of women, human rights, the Saudi peace initiative, Saudi charities and a meeting between the President of the United States and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.<br /></P><br /><P><br />$30,000.00 for the six month period ending July 31,2002<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="3301">Hill & Knowlton, Inc., #3301</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 600 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. <br /><BR> Suite 601 <br /><BR> Washington, DC 20037 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> SABIC Core Communications </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant provided corporate communications counseling and media support.<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="3301">Hill & Knowlton, Inc., #3301</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 600 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. <br /><BR> Suite 601 <br /><BR> Washington, DC 20037 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Saudi Aramco </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant provided advice and assistance regarding communications strategy including preparation of a communications plan.<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5432">Loeffler, Jonas & Tuggey, LLP, #5432</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 755 East Mulberry <br /><BR> Suite 200 <br /><BR> San Antonio, TX 78212 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />Registrant agreed to assist the foreign principal in its relationship with the U.S. Congress and Administration relating to trade issues.<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="2165">Patton Boggs, L.L.P., #2165</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 2550 M Street, N.W. <br /><BR> Washington, DC 20037-1350 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant scheduled meetings with members of Congress and congressional staffers, accompanied the representatives of the foreign principal to these meetings and provided advice regarding content of congressional communications. The registrant also advised the foreign principal on the status of legislation and legislative inquiries of interest to the Royal Kingdom, strategies for dealing with Congress and U.S. Government officials, and strategies for improving the U.S.-Saudi bilateral relationship.<br /></P><br /><P><br />$288,000.00 for the six month period ending December 31,2002<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5483">Qorvis Communications, LLC, #5483</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 8484 Westpark Drive <br /><BR> Suite 800 <br /><BR> McLean, VA 22102 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant disseminated informational materials to promote public awareness of the foreign principal's commitment in the war against terrorism and to peace in the Middle East. The registrant also contacted the media, congressional staffers, and Administration officials to discuss Middle East issues and child abduction as well as communications strategy for the Crown Prince's visit with President Bush.<br /></P><br /><P><br />$14,687,782.00 for the six month period ending September 30,2002<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5511">Sandler-Innocenzi, Inc., #5511</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 705 Prince Street <br /><BR> Alexandria, VA 22314 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Embassy of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant analyzes radio, television, magazine and newspaper data and availabilities, and makes recommendations on which media time and ads to purchase.<br /></P><br /><P><br />$4,730,122.60 received, through Qorvis Communications, prior to registration on July 24, 2002<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5321">Saudi Petroleum International, Inc., #5321</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 527 Madison Avenue <br /><BR> New York, NY 10022 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />Activities: None Reported<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5321">Saudi Petroleum International, Inc., #5321</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 527 Madison Avenue <br /><BR> New York, NY 10022 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Saudi Arabian Oil Company (Saudi Aramco) </FONT><br /><P><br />Activities: None Reported<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="4184">Saudi Refining, Inc., #4184</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 9009 West Loop, South <br /><BR> Suite 10158 <br /><BR> Houston, TX 77096 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Government of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia </FONT><br /><P><br />Activities: None Reported<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="4184">Saudi Refining, Inc., #4184</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> 9009 West Loop, South <br /><BR> Suite 10158 <br /><BR> Houston, TX 77096 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Saudi Arabian Oil Company </FONT><br /><P><br />Activities: None Reported<br /></P><br /><P><br />Finances: None Reported<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><br /><BR><FONT COLOR=#FF0000><A NAME="5509">Scott, Thomas J., #5509</A></FONT><br /><UL><br /><LH><br /><BR> Vela International Marine Limited <br /><BR> Tower Building Room T-1031 <br /><BR> Dhahran, SA 31311 <br /><BR><br /><BR><FONT COLOR="GREEN"> Vela International Marine Limited </FONT><br /><P><br />The registrant agreed to attend meetings to discuss securing support for the approval by the Coast Guard of certain matters regarding salvage and marine firefighting requirements, vessel response plans and vessel operations.<br /></P><br /><P><br />Registrant received his normal salary as an employee on loan to Vela International Marine Limited<br /></P><br /></LH><br /></UL><p/ >Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1111263792578102732002-05-30T12:21:00.000-07:002005-03-19T13:31:05.403-07:00Dan Rather Duped on Sudanese SlaveryBy Lawrence Morahan<br />CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer<br /><br />A coalition of civil rights groups calling for an end to slavery in Sudan attacked a recent CBS News report that questioned the effectiveness and authenticity of slave redemptions in the Muslim-governed country.<p>The May 15 report on "60 Minutes II," which was hosted by news anchor Dan Rather, was incomplete at best, they said.<p>"It was disappointing that whoever wrote the story never even cared to indicate whether CBS acknowledges the very existence of slavery," said Abdon Agaw Nhial, vice president of the Sudanese Human Rights Organization, in a letter to the show's producer.<p>"By this report, CBS has created the unmistakable impression that the resurgence of the scourge of slavery does not bother them at all," Nhial wrote CBS producer Jeff Fager.<p>The report highlighted a transaction by John Eibner, an official with Christian Solidarity International (CSI), who reportedly paid about $50 each for approximately 400 Sudanese men, women and children to secure their freedom from slave traders.<p>Rather, reporting from the studio, interviewed Jim Jacobson, a former slave redeemer, who called the scene "a circus," and "a staged event."<p>Jacobson said commanders of the rebel Sudanese People's Liberation Army had previously duped him by rounding up village children and trying to pass them as slaves who could be redeemed for money.<p>Carol Bellamy, a United Nations official, told Rather that paying for slaves tended to exacerbate the problem of fake slaves being offered.<p>The CBS report was one of several to appear recently in establishment media outlets, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, alleging that fake slaves were being used by slave traders to collect redemption money.<p>A CBS spokeswoman said the Rather report "was both fair and accurate."<p>But civil rights workers, while admitting there is evidence of abuse in slave redemption programs, strongly challenged assertions that the practice is widespread. They also criticized the news coverage.<p>Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Freedom House, said the media were practicing a "herd instinct" when it came to reporting on Sudan.<p>"Once The New York Times takes a position, everybody stampedes as a herd in the elite media, and Dan Rather's part of the herd now. There's no independent journalism here. He did not do his own investigation. He just repeated what others had done," Shea said.<p>Nhial said, "It was astonishing that a highly regarded TV journalist like Dan Rather could allow himself to render an armchair report on an issue which he had studiously avoided despite specific invitations by CSI to witness one such redemption process."<p>"Slavery in Sudan is not a scam," Rev. Henry Chuir Riak, a bishop with the Episcopal Church of Sudan, wrote Fager. Not only are Sudanese families being reunited as a result of John Eibner's work, "but the freed slaves are a true testimony to what the government of Sudan is doing to us in southern Sudan," he said.<p>In an op-ed piece for The Washington Times, commentator Nat Hentoff also criticized Rather for not going to Sudan to interview former slaves, village chiefs or black clergy for his report.<p>"The American Anti-Slavery Group and Solidarity International, who rescue slaves, have not been duped," Hentoff said. "Dan Rather was duped."<p>The media's focus on fake slave redemptions undermines the real problem of slavery in Sudan, civil rights groups allege. They say slavery is not only condoned and tolerated by the fundamentalist Muslim government in Khartoum, but is organized by that entity against the mostly Christian population in the south.<p>This has been documented by numerous international agencies, including the U.S. State Department, the civil rights activists said.<p>"Government militias, armed by the government," capture Christians for slavery, according to Shea. "This is a counter-revolutionary strategy carried out by the government." And redemptions are "the only means of rescuing slaves offered by the international community that works. Some may be frauds but many, many are real slaves who are being freed," she added.<p>Charles Jacobs, president of American Anti-Slavery Group, said white people who make up the human rights communities, act quickly when they see evil being done by other white people, as in the case of South Africa during apartheid and in Bosnia.<p>"But when decent white people see evil done by non-whites, they choke. They're paralyzed in part because they feel they could be accused of being hypocrites," said Jacobs, who says he witnessed the redemption of more than 2,900 slaves in Sudan in March 2001.<p>This factor undermines the principle of a universal standard of human rights and abandons people who have the unfortunate fate of having non-white oppressors, said Jacobs.<p>"If you want to determine where the human rights world acts, you don't ask who the victim is, you ask who the oppressor is," Jacobs said.<p>If the oppressor is Arab or is associated with Islam, people are wary because they don't wish to be called anti-Arab or anti-Islamic bigots, Jacobs added. Moreover, he said, the Arab League has declared it is an insult to Islam to say there is slavery in Sudan.<p>"The slavery issue is the one thing that keeps this Sudan thing from being handled in the normal diplomatic way," according to Jacobs.<p>More than two million people have died in the past 20 years from the civil war and resulting famine in Sudan. Former U.S. Sen. John Danforth, who acted as special envoy to Sudan, earlier this year held talks with Khartoum and the main opposition group, the Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLA).<p>Those talks ended with President Omar Bashir refusing to permit international observers to determine whether the aerial bombing of civilian areas in the south had stopped. The Sudanese leader did offer to suspend the attacks temporarily.<p>Between 100,000 and 200,000 people from the south have been enslaved by forces of the regime in the north and sold into slavery in other countries, such as Libya, human rights groups report. Since he began his work in 1995, Eibner said he has freed about 60,000 slaves.<p><b><a href="mailto:lmorahan@cnsnews.com">E-mail a news tip to Lawrence Morahan.</a></b><p><a href="mailto:shogenson@cnsnews.com">Send a Letter to the Editor about this article.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1110659870318240282002-05-19T12:35:00.000-07:002005-03-12T13:40:10.810-07:00Who's the KLA?<a href="http://www.pogledi.co.yu/english/68b.php"target="_blank">GERMAN DOCUMENT REVEALS SECRET CIA ROLE</a><br />By Gary Wilson<br /><p>The forces generating and sustaining the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army have remained mostly hidden. What's really behind the <a href="http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/binladen__kla.htm"target="_blank">KLA</a> has become more important now that President Bill Clinton has started a war against Yugoslavia.<br /><br />Many reports in the past have mentioned the covert forces involved with the KLA. For example, on July 15, 1998, PBS Newshour reported that U.S. Vietnam War veterans were training KLA mercenaries in Albania.<br /><br />Funding for the KLA has been shadowy, much of it funneled through drug sales.<br /><br />Almost every European newspaper has reported on the known ties between the KLA and the sales of illegal drugs in Europe. Only the U.S. media have ignored this story.<br /><br />The European media, however, don't mention the history of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's use of illegal drug sales to funnel money to various covert operations. This record--from secret operations in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War to financing the contra war against Nicaragua-- has been documented.<br /><br />Recent media reports tie several imperialist military and spy agencies to the KLA. This is significant since both U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and the top U.S. general, Henry Shelton, have said in the last week that the goal of the U.S. military operation against Yugoslavia is a victory for the KLA.<br /><br />On April 19, Canadian Member of Parliament David Price told reporters that 50 Canadian soldiers are working with the KLA in Kosovo to help report "where the bombs are falling" so they can better target "where the next bomb should go," UPI reported. Opposition to Canada's participation in the U.S. war on Yugoslavia is growing rapidly in that country.<br /><br />Jane's Defense Weekly reported April 20: "Special forces involvement confirmed." The report said that that special units from Britain, the United States, France "and other NATO groups'' were working undercover in Kosovo.<br /><br />The April 18 London Sunday Telegraph reported that SAS, a unit of the British special forces, is running two KLA training camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital. According to the Telegraph, the KLA units trained by SAS are infiltrating Kosovo, using satellite and cellular telephones to help guide NATO bombing missions.<br /><br />The same report said that the KLA also has contact with the Virginia-based MPRI, which is apparently expanding its role. MPRI is a shadowy operation--the Telegraph called it a professional mercenary organization--which was set up by top U.S. military officers.<br /><br />MPRI was contracted by the Pentagon to organize and train the Croatian Army, which is acknowledged to have carried out the most vicious campaign in the Balkans since the Nazi invasion in the 1940s--the August 1995 offensive against Serbian farmers in the Krajina region.<br /><br />A report in the July 28,1997, Nation magazine detailed the role played by MPRI and the Pentagon in this criminal campaign, which left hundreds of thousands of Serbs homeless. Finally, this March 21, the New York Times carried a front-page story about a report by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague that characterized this attack as probably the most brutal event in the Balkans in the last decade. The report was then quickly buried.<br /><br />The Croatian government recently confirmed that several of its generals have "taken leave" to go work with the KLA.<br /><br />A more revealing report was released April 8 by Jurgen Reents, press spokes person for the Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany. The PDS received almost as many votes as the Green Party, which is part of Germany's ruling coalition. The PDS has actively opposed the NATO war on Yugoslavia.<br /><br />Reents said the report came from someone who holds a "strictly confidential and high position in the offices of the German government." The report came through a Catholic priest who has kept the individual's identity secret but has verified the person's authenticity.<br /><br />The report asserts that top NATO, U.S., British and German officials are "utterly lying in public concerning almost all the facts in regard to the Balkan War." It says there are no pictures of any mass killings or of troops force-marching the people of Kosovo out of their homes. There are no such pictures because this is not happening.<br /><br />NATO has desperately attempted to create such pictures but has been unable to, the report asserts.<br /><br />The report says that NATO has let it be known in the refugee camps in Albania and Macedonia that anyone who can produce a videotape or still photographs of any kind-- including staged photos--showing these things will be paid $200,000 in U.S. currency. Still, no pictures have appeared.<br /><br />The report says that the German government knows NATO consciously created the refugee crisis. For example, the report says, NATO has targeted and destroyed nearly every fresh-water facility in Kosovo. It also asserts that there are KLA units in Kosovo--one is entirely U.S. mercenaries, the other German mercenaries--who report to the military commands of those countries.<br /><br />Perhaps most revealing is the report's description of a CIA covert operation cynically named "Operation Roots." It is aimed at sowing ethnic divisions in Yugoslavia to encourage its breakup.<br /><br />The report says that this operation has been going on "since the beginning of Clinton's presidency." It is a joint operation with the German secret service, which has also sought to destabilize Yugoslavia.<br /><br />The final objective of "Roots," according to this report, "is the separation of Kosovo, with the aim of it becoming part of Albania; the separation of Montenegro, as the last means of access to the Mediterranean; and the separation of the Vojvodina, which produces most of the food for Yugoslavia. This would lead to the total collapse of Yugoslavia as a viable independent state."<br /><br />The report asserts that the KLA was founded by the CIA. And the funding was funneled through drug-smuggling operations in Europe.<br /><br />When it appeared that an agreement for Kosovo autonomy was about to be reached between Slobodan Milosevic and Ibrahim Rugova in 1998, the CIA stepped up KLA attacks on Yugoslav police units. The Yugoslav police attempts to curtail the KLA were used as the pretext for NATO's attacks.<br /><br />The authenticity of this report cannot be independently verified at this time. But much of it is consistent with what is already known. It helps to expose the real forces behind the war on Yugoslavia and shows who are the true aggressors.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112124493167784572002-03-30T12:24:00.000-07:002005-03-29T12:28:13.186-07:00Roi Medvedev Interview<b><font color="#002652">WorldNow: U.S. <a href="http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/6163-5.cfm"target="_blank">overconfidence poses danger</a>: Medvedev</font></b></p><br /><p>MOSCOW, March 30 (Kyodo) - By: Shigeyuki Yoshida The Russian historian, Roi<br />Medvedev, is known for being an alternative Marxist. In the 1960s, he fought for<br />democratization of the Soviet Union, exposed the Stalin personality cult and was<br />thrown out of the Soviet Union Communist Party. As a member of the<br />intelligentsia with leftist tendencies, he kept a close eye on the<br />disintegration of the Soviet Union and the changes going on in Russia. Kyodo<br />News' interview with Medvedev was conducted in his modest house on the snowy<br />outskirts of Moscow. In answer to the question as to what is most important in<br />the uncertain and unpredictable 21st century, he replied, ''Patience and<br />attention to people's needs.''</p><br /><p>The following are excerpts of Kyodo News' interview with Medvedev.</p><br /><p>How did the Sept. 11 attack in the United States affect society?</p><br /><p>The world community realized that the threat of Islamic terrorism had become<br />threat No. 1. As leader among the Western countries, this was the first time<br />that the U.S. had directly encountered Islamic radicalism. Russia had come up<br />against this threat earlier in the form of the Chechnyan war, but this was<br />nothing compared to what happened in the U.S.</p><br /><p>But Islamic radicalism was around before this.</p><br /><p>True. It was born in the Near Middle East, in countries like Algeria and<br />Egypt and then moved across to Russia, mainly to Chechnya. However, the<br />terrorist attack in the U.S. showed, for the first time, that Islamic terrorism<br />had become a force to be reckoned with on a global scale. We need to be worried<br />about the fact that the terrorists don't choose their weapons of war. In terms<br />of war, Islamic radicalism is a weak political force. The U.S. is much more<br />powerful as far as weapons go and no one can stand up to this country right now.<br />So, there was no alternative for the radicals but to use barbaric methods in<br />their struggle with the U.S. There was no other way.</p><br /><p>Can you justify Islamic radicalism in choosing terrorism as its one means of<br />attack?</p><br /><p>Of course not. But the bombing of Palestine by the Israelis is just the same<br />sort of barbaric act as those carried out by the Palestinian kamikaze attackers.<br />The victims come from the population at large.</p><br /><p>You said terrorist acts cannot be justified, yet the Soviet Union's Communist<br />regime was responsible for terror on a large scale.</p><br /><p>The Bolsheviks maintained that terror was unavoidable during war. Yet, even<br />after gaining power, they still used terror on a massive scale. This cannot be<br />justified. As a historian, terrorism repulses me.</p><br /><p>Will the 21st century become marked by conflict between the United States and<br />Islamic radicalism?</p><br /><p>Although Islamic radicalism counts the U.S. as enemy No. 1, this is a threat<br />to the whole of the civilized world. It is a serious matter that Islamic<br />radicalism puts forward requests that cannot be fulfilled. For example, that the<br />U.S. pulls out of Saudi Arabia and that the Jewish people leave Israel. In<br />Russia, Islamic radicals made plans to obtain control of the whole of the<br />northern Caucasus, Chechnya and other regions. So, the war, more likely than<br />not, will continue. However, it's not clear if this conflict will continue for<br />the whole of the 21st century. Is it possible for Islamic radicalism to have the<br />same global effect as fascism? This depends on the actions of the whole of the<br />civilized world. In the whole of Islam, made up of more than a billion people,<br />Islamic radicalism is only a comparatively small part of the Muslim population.</p><br /><p>The main thing in the struggle with Islamic radicalism is not to overstep the<br />boundaries of the struggle. The fight with Islamic radicalism and war with<br />countries such as Iraq or Iran are completely different things. A war with Iraq<br />would involve the entire Islamic world. I fear that the U.S. may provoke an<br />escalation in the struggle with Islamic radicalism.</p><br /><p>Can it be said the fight against Islamic radicalism involves all of<br />civilization?</p><br /><p>Not yet. But there is a danger that this could happen if the conflict with<br />Islamic radicalism deepens. All available means must be used to avoid this.<br />Islamic radicalism is an unknown threat for us. The U.S. and the Soviet Union<br />studied each other in great detail during the Cold War. However, I cannot say<br />Russia has ever fully studied Islam as a religion. So, it is very important to<br />look at Islamic radicalism as an ideology.</p><br /><p>How should the world community react to this conflict?</p><br /><p>It must be overcome. There were a few outbreaks like this Islamic one in the<br />20th century. There was fascism and, most frighteningly, Bolshevism. Appearing<br />in the 19th century, the communist movement, aiming for world domination,<br />proclaimed a world revolution in the 20th century. Thus, it became a threat to<br />the capitalist world. This became the major reason for the start of the Cold<br />War.</p><br /><p>Has there ever been anything like the terrorist attack of Sept. 11 in the<br />20th century?</p><br /><p>Probably the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This was also an act<br />of terrorism. Something that was meant to frighten Japan caused the death of<br />several hundreds of thousands of innocent people.</p><br /><p>This could be called an act of war, but also war terrorism.</p><br /><p>You mean terrorism and an act of war are the same thing?</p><br /><p>No, not the same thing. War between governments and the fight with Islamic<br />terrorism are different. However, there is no clear distinction between an act<br />of war and terrorism. The United Nations and other International organizations<br />should give clear definitions.</p><br /><p>In your book about President Vladimir Putin, published this year, you support<br />the war in Chechnya.</p><br /><p>The Chechen problem is complex. It involves religion, though it is mainly<br />concerned with independence and separatism. The war was unavoidable in<br />preventing Chechnya from becoming independent.</p><br /><p>If you say Bolshevism is a radical ideology, how then should Russia develop?</p><br /><p>Russia should build a democracy of its own, not based on Western ideology. I<br />don't think that choosing socialism was a mistake. Now, Russia has chosen<br />capitalism. And, as a result, a large percentage of the population is in a<br />desperate position. I hope that Russia returns to socialism in the future. I<br />mean to a social-democratic path. But Russia is not poor right now. And in order<br />to change over to a social-democratic lifestyle, a certain social development is<br />necessary.</p><br /><p>What lessons can be learned from the fight against terrorism in the 20th<br />century?</p><br /><p>The 20th century was a century of revolutions. At the same time, the world<br />was much changed by technical advances. We must be patient with each other,<br />attentive to each other's needs. We shouldn't put on airs and act high handedly.<br />President (George W.) Bush's doctrine agrees with what (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov)<br />Lenin said. It is wrong to say, ''He who is not with us is against us.'' That is<br />a dangerous Bolshevik thesis. I would say, ''He who is not with us is not<br />against us.'' Since someone not in league with our enemy may become our future<br />partner.</p><br /><p>Has U.S. domination of the world grown in the aftermath of the terrorist<br />attacks?</p><br /><p>I don't think so. Why should we automatically side with the U.S.? President<br />Bush's watchword is its own type of radicalism. It looks as if radicalism can be<br />found among rich nations as well as poor. At the roots of this radicalism is the<br />idea that only that which Americans hold dear should be what the whole of<br />civilization holds dear. I don't like that sort of self-centered confidence.</p><br /><p>Medvedev continues by explaining what kind of leftist ideology should be<br />adopted after the end of the Cold War in Russia, where the entire basis of the<br />socialist revolution has been completely overturned. He also compares the U.S.<br />effort to have things and ideas which the U.S. holds dear to be generally<br />accepted to the persecution of alternative thinkers in the old Soviet Union.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112148367316068892002-03-28T19:04:00.000-07:002005-03-29T19:06:53.476-07:00Beirut Declaration<p align="right"><font size="2" face="Book Antiqua"><i>Royal Embassy of Saudi <br /> Arabia Information Office, Washington DC</i></font></p><br /><p><font face="Book Antiqua" size="2"><i>March 28, 2002 </i></font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2"><b><font color="#990000">THE BEIRUT DECLARATION<br><br /> The Council of the League of Arab States at the Summit Level, at its 14th Ordinary <br /> Session</font></b><br><br /> <img src="red-div.jpg" width="584" height="5"> <br /> </font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2"><a href="http://www.saudiembassy.net/press_release/statements/02-ST-0328-Beirut.htm" target="_blank"><b>http://www.saudiembassy.net/press_release/statements/02-ST-0328-Beirut.htm</b></a></font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2">The Council of the League of Arab States at the <br /> Summit Level, at its 14th Ordinary Session: </font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2">Reaffirming the resolution taken in June 1996 at <br /> the Cairo extraordinary Arab Summit that a just and comprehensive peace in the <br /> Middle East is the strategic option of the Arab countries, to be achieved in <br /> accordance with international legality, and which would require a comparable <br /> commitment on the part of the Israeli Government; </font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2">Having listened to the statement made by His Royal <br /> Highness Prince Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Saudi <br /> Arabia, in which His Highness presented his initiative, calling for full Israeli <br /> withdrawal from all the Arab territories occupied since June 1967, in implementation <br /> of Security Council Resolutions <a href="http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1967/s67r242e.pdf">242</a> <br /> and <a href="http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1973/s73r338e.pdf">338</a>, <br /> reaffirmed by the Madrid Conference of 1991 and the land for peace principle; <br /> and for Israel's acceptance of an independent Palestinian State, with East Jerusalem <br /> as its capital, in return for the establishment of normal relations in the context <br /> of a comprehensive peace with Israel; </font></p><br /><p><font face="Arial" size="2">Emanating from the conviction of the Arab countries <br /> that a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security <br /> for the parties, the Council: </font></p><br /><blockquote><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">1. Requests Israel to reconsider its policies <br /> and declare that a just peace is its strategic option as well.</font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">2. Further calls upon Israel to affirm: </font></p><br /> <blockquote><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">a. Full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories <br /> occupied since 1967, including the Syrian Golan Heights to the lines of <br /> June 4, 1967, as well as the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in <br /> the south of Lebanon. </font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">b. Achievement of a just solution to the Palestinian <br /> Refugee problem to be agreed upon in accordance with <a href="http://www.saudiembassy.net/press_release/UN/194(III)-Dec48.htm" target="_blank">UN <br /> General Assembly Resolution 194</a>. </font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">c. The acceptance of the establishment of a <br /> Sovereign Independent Palestinian State on the Palestinian territories occupied <br /> since the 4th of June 1967 in the West Bank and Gaza strip, with East Jerusalem <br /> as its capital. </font></p><br /> </blockquote><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">3. Consequently, the Arab Countries affirm the <br /> following:</font></p><br /> <blockquote><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">a. Consider the Arab-Israeli conflict ended, <br /> and enter into a peace agreement with Israel, and provide security for all <br /> the states of the region. </font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">b. Establish normal relations with Israel in <br /> the context of this comprehensive peace.</font></p><br /> </blockquote><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">4. Assures the rejection of all forms of Palestinian <br /> patriation which conflict with the special circumstances of the Arab host <br /> countries. </font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">5. Calls upon the Government of Israel and all <br /> Israelis to accept this initiative in order to safeguard the prospects for <br /> peace and stop the further shedding of blood, enabling the Arab countries <br /> and Israel to live in peace and good neighborliness and provide future generations <br /> with security, stability, and prosperity.</font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">6. Invites the international community and all <br /> countries and organizations to support this initiative. </font></p><br /> <p><font face="Arial" size="2">7. Requests the Chairman of the Summit to form <br /> a special committee composed of some of its concerned member states and the <br /> Secretary General of the League of Arab States to pursue the necessary contacts <br /> to gain support for this initiative at all levels, particularly from the United <br /> Nations, the Security Council, the United States of America, the Russian Federation, <br /> the Muslim States and the European Union.</font></p><br /></blockquote><br /><hr noshade><br /><p align="right"><font size="1" face="Arial">This page was last modified on <b>April <br /> 10th, 2002</b> by <a href="mailto:info@prrn.org">Rex Brynen</a> and <a href="mailto:marcl@sprint.ca">Marc <br /> Lanteigne</a>.<br><br /> ©2002 <a href="http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/prfront.html">Palestinian <br /> Development ResearchNet</a>, <a href="http://www.mcgill.ca" target="_blank">McGill <br /> University</a>, Montreal, Canada.</font></p><br /><p align="left"><font face="Book Antiqua" size="3"><b><i><a href="http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/MEPP/PRRN/prdocs.html"><font size="2"><Return</font></a></i></b></font></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1111602481194912322002-01-08T11:20:00.000-07:002005-03-23T14:35:34.926-07:00Humanitarian Law Applicable to Armed Conflict at Sea<blockquote><em>A reaction to German ZDF broadcast</em></blockquote><br /><strong>Sinking of the Bismarck</strong><br /><p>In the context of the television series "The Century War" about the last voyage of the Bismarck broadcast 8.1.2002 on German Channel 2 about the spring 1941. Of particular interest was the last scenes, in which was showed, how a British cruiser accepted about 120 sailor survivors of the German battleship. Still hundreds more sailors swam in direct proximity of the cruiser, when the rescue action was broken off, allegedly "because of a U-boat alarm". These 100-200 German sailors were left to their fate to drown in the North Atlantic in the face of a possible rescue.<br />This last picture of that TV serial was clear.<br /><p>Consider the following:<br /><p>a. <a href="http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmarine/articles/feature1.html"target="_blank">No submarine was in the proximity </a>of the last Atlantic battle of the Bismarck according to documents of the German Naval Warfare line. <br /><p>b. If a German submarine had been there, then it would have tried to intervene, in the fights before the sinking of the Bismarck by an attacking the English capital ships. <br /><p>c. THE SINKING OF THE BISMARCK would not have escaped a submarine due to large submarine noise - even if it had not received the artillery duel and radio traffic during the hunt for Bismarck. <br /><p>d. No German submarine commander would have fired torpedo on an English cruiser while taking on board Bismarck survivors.<br /><p>e. And further: Even if a German submarine had been in the proximity, then it would have tried nevertheless naturally after running off the English cruiser to accept still as many comrades as possible from the sea. <a href="http://www.history.navy.mil/library/online/sinking_bismarck.html"target="_blank">In addition, of it nothing is well-known. </a><br /><p>f. Also because of the alleged submarine danger which caused the turning off of the cruisers, rescue rafts or lifeboats could have been thrown to the survivors. German submarine crews did this frequently for survivors of torpedoed merchant vessels. This did not happen.<br /><p>Conclusion: It follows that someone in the <a href="http://www.hmshood.org.uk/reference/official/adm234/adm234-509tovey.html"target"_blank">English Admiralty </a>or or someone on board the cruiser did not want further survivors of the Bismarck to be rescued.<br /><br />The fact that the rescue of hundreds more of survivors was broken off because of a "U-boat alarm" is nothing but a coverup and further propaganda.<br /><br />The controversy remains on the British abandonment of German seamen, left to their fate in defiance of International Law, the Law of the High Seas, and common humanity.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1111380843965387762001-05-17T20:43:00.000-07:002005-03-20T21:59:12.353-07:00Clinton Rwanda Recordexcerpted from Congressional Hearing before the <br />Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights<br /><br /><br /><strong>CLINTON ADMINISTREATION COVERT SUPPORT FOR THE COMBATANTS</strong> <br><br><br /><br />As U.S. troops and intelligence agents were pouring into Africa to help the RPF and AFDL-CZ forces in their 1996 campaign against Mobutu, Vincent Kern, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs, told the House International Operations and Human Rights Subcommittee on December 4, 1996 that U.S. military training for the RPF was being conducted under a program called Enhanced International Military Education and Training (E-IMET). Kathi Austin, a Human Rights Watch specialist on arms transfers in Africa, told the Subcommittee on May 5, 1998 that one senior U.S. embassy official in Kigali described the U.S. Special Forces training program for the RPF as ¡°<strong><em>killers . . . training killers</em></strong>.¡±[9] <br /><br><br><br />In November 1996, U.S. spy satellites and a U.S. Navy P-3 Orion were attempting to ascertain how many Rwandan Hutu refugees were in eastern Zaire. The P-3 was one of four stationed at old Entebbe Airport on the shores of Lake Victoria. Oddly, while other planes flying over eastern Zaire attracted anti-aircraft fire from Kabila¡¯s forces, the P-3s, which patrolled the skies above Goma and Sake, were left alone.[10] <br /><br><br><br />Relying on the overhead intelligence, U.S. military and aid officials confidently announced that 600,000 Hutu refugees returned home to Rwanda from Zaire. But that left an estimated 300,000 unaccounted for. Many Hutus seemed to be disappearing from camps around Bukavu. <br /><br><br><br />By December 1996, U.S. military forces were also operating in Bukavu amid throngs of Hutus, less numerous Twa refugees, Mai Mai guerrillas, advancing Rwandan troops, and AFDL-CZ rebels. A French military intelligence officer said he detected some 100 armed U.S. troops in the eastern Zaire conflict zone.[11]Moreover, the DGSE reported the Americans had knowledge of the extermination of Hutu refugees by Tutsis in both Rwanda and eastern Zaire and were doing nothing about it. More ominously, there was reason to believe that some U.S. forces, either Special Forces or mercenaries, may have actually participated in the extermination of Hutu refugees. The killings reportedly took place at a camp on the banks of the Oso River near Goma.[12] Roman Catholic reports claim that the executed included a number of Hutu Catholic priests. At least for those who were executed, death was far quicker than it was for those who escaped deep into the jungle. There, many died from tropical diseases or were attacked and eaten by wild animals.[13] <br /><br><br><br />Jacques Isnard, the Paris based defense correspondent for Le Monde supported the contention of U.S. military knowledge of the Oso River massacre but went further. He quoted French intelligence sources that believed that between thirty and sixty American mercenary ¡°advisers¡± participated with the RPF in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees around Goma. Although his number of Hutu dead was more conservative than the French estimates, the U.N.¡¯s Chilean investigator, Roberto Garreton, reported the Kagame and Kabila forces had committed ¡°crimes against humanity¡± in killing thousands [emphasis added] of Hutu refugees.[14] <br /><br><br><br />It was known that the planes the U.S. military deployed in eastern Zaire included heavily armed and armored helicopter gunships typically used by the Special Forces. These were fitted with 105 mm cannons, rockets, machine guns, land mine ejectors, and, more importantly, infra red sensors used in night operations. U.S. military commanders unabashedly stated the purpose of these gunships was to locate refugees to determine the best means of providing them with humanitarian assistance.[15] <br /><br><br><br />According to the French magazine Valeurs Actuelles, a French DC-8 Sarigue electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft circled over eastern Zaire at the time of the Oso River massacre. The Sarigue¡¯s mission was to intercept and fix the radio transmissions of Rwandan military units engaged in the military operations. This aircraft, in addition to French special ground units, witnessed U.S. military ethnic cleansing in Zaire¡¯s Kivu Province[16]. <br /><br><br><br />In September 1997, the prestigious Jane¡¯s Foreign Report reported that German intelligence sources were aware that the DIA trained young men and teens from Rwanda, Uganda, and eastern Zaire for periods of up to two years and longer for the RPF/AFDL-CZ campaign against Mobutu. The recruits were offered pay of between $450 and $1000 upon their successful capture of Kinshasa.[17] <br /><br><br><br />Toward the end of 1996, U.S. spy satellites were attempting to ascertain how many refugees escaped into the jungle by locating fires at night and canvas tarpaulins during the day. Strangely, every time an encampment was discovered by the space-based imagery, Rwandan and Zaire rebel forces attacked the sites. This was the case in late February 1997, when 160,000, mainly Hutu refugees, were spotted and then attacked in a swampy area known as Tingi Tingi.[18] There was never an adequate accounting by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies of the scope of intelligence provided to the RPF/AFDL-CZ. <br /><br><br><br />An ominous report on the fate of refugees was made by Nicholas Stockton, the Emergencies Director of Oxfam U.K. & Ireland. He said that on November 20, 1996, he was shown U.S. aerial intelligence photographs which ¡°confirmed, in considerable detail, the existence of 500,000 people distributed in three major and numerous minor agglomerations.¡± He said that three days later the U.S. military claimed it could only locate one significant mass of people, which they claimed were identified as former members of the Rwandan armed forces and the Interhamwe militia. Since they were the number one targets for the RPF forces, their identification and location by the Americans was undoubtedly passed to the Rwandan forces. They would have surely been executed.[19] Moreover, some U.S. military and diplomatic personnel in central Africa said that any deaths among the Hutu refugees merely constituted ¡°collateral damage.¡± <br /><br><br><br />When the AFDL-CZ and their Rwandan allies reached Kinshasa in 1996, it was largely due to the help of the United States. One reason why Kabila¡¯s men advanced into the city so quickly was the technical assistance provided by the DIA and other intelligence agencies. According to informed sources in Paris, U.S. Special Forces actually accompanied ADFL-CZ forces into Kinshasa. The Americans also reportedly provided Kabila¡¯s rebels and Rwandan troops with high definition spy satellite photographs that permitted them to order their troops to plot courses into Kinshasa that avoided encounters with Mobutu¡¯s forces.[20] During the rebel advance toward Kinshasa, Bechtel provided Kabila, at no cost, high technology intelligence, including National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) satellite data.[21] <br /><br><br><br><br /><br /><b><br />CLINTON ADMINISTRATION SUPPORT FOR THE SECOND INVASION OF CONGO </b><br><br><br /><br />By 1998, the Kabila regime had become an irritant to the United States, North American mining interests, and Kabila¡¯s Ugandan and Rwandan patrons. As a result, Rwanda and Uganda launched a second invasion of the DRC to get rid of Kabila and replace him with someone more servile. The Pentagon was forced to admit on August 6, 1998 that a twenty man U.S. Army Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team (RIAT) was in the Rwanda at the time of the second RPF invasion of Congo. The camouflaged unit was deployed from the U.S. European Command in Germany.[22] It was later revealed that the team in question was a JCET unit that was sent to Rwanda to help the Rwandans ¡°defeat ex FAR (Rwandan Armed Forces) and Interhamwe¡± units. U.S. Special Forces JCET team began training Rwandan units on July 15, 1998. It was the second such training exercise held that year. The RIAT team was sent to Rwanda in the weeks just leading up to the outbreak of hostilities in Congo.[23] The RIAT, specializing in counter insurgency operations, traveled to Gisenyi on the Congolese border just prior to the Rwandan invasion.[24] One of the assessments of the team recommended that the United States establish a new and broader military relationship with Rwanda. National Security Council spokesman P. J. Crowley, said of the RIAT¡¯s presence in Rwanda: ¡°I think it¡¯s a coincidence that they were there at the same time the fighting began.¡±[25] <br /><br><br><br />Soon, however, as other African nations came to the assistance of Laurent Kabila, the United States found itself in the position of providing military aid under both the E-IMET and the Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) programs. U.S. Special Operations personnel were involved in training troops on both sides of the war in the DRC ? Rwandans, Ugandans, and Burundians (supporting the RCD factions) and Zimbabweans and Namibians (supporting the central government in Kinshasa). <br /><br><br><br />As with the first invasion, there were also a number of reports that the RPF and their RCD allies carried out a number of massacres throughout the DRC. The Vatican reported a sizable killing of civilians in August 1998 in Kasika, a small village in South Kivu that hosted a Catholic mission station. Over eight hundred people, including priests and nuns, were killed by Rwandan troops. The RCD response was to charge the Vatican with aiding Kabila. The Rwandans, choosing to put into practice what the DIA¡¯s PSYOPS personnel had taught them about mounting perception management campaigns, shepherded the foreign press to carefully selected killing fields. The dead civilians were identified as exiled Burundian Hutu militiamen. Unfortunately, many in the international community, still suffering a type of collective guilt over the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, gave the Rwandan assertions more credence than was warranted. <br /><br><br><br />The increasing reliance by the Department of Defense on so-called Private Military Contractors (PMCs) is of special concern. Many of these PMCs -- once labeled as ¡°mercenaries¡± by previous administrations when they were used as foreign policy instruments by the colonial powers of France, Belgium, Portugal, and South Africa -- have close links with some of the largest mining and oil companies involved in Africa today. PMCs, because of their proprietary status, have a great deal of leeway to engage in covert activities far from the reach of congressional investigators. They can simply claim that their business in various nations is a protected trade secret and the law now seems to be on their side. <br /><br><br><br><br /><br /><b><br />PROFITING FROM THE DESTABILIZATION OF CENTRAL AFRICA </b><br><br><br /><br />America¡¯s policy toward Africa during the past decade, rather than seeking to stabilize situations where civil war and ethnic turmoil reign supreme, has seemingly promoted destabilization. Former Secretary of State <a name="madeleine albright">Madeleine Albright</a> was fond of calling pro-U.S. military leaders in Africa who assumed power by force and then cloaked themselves in civilian attire, ¡°beacons of hope.¡± <br /><br><br><br />In reality, these leaders, who include the current presidents of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Angola, Eritrea, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo preside over countries where ethnic and civil turmoil permit unscrupulous international mining companies to take advantage of the strife to fill their own coffers with conflict diamonds, gold, copper, platinum, and other precious minerals ? including one ? columbite-tantalite or ¡°coltan¡± -- which is a primary component of computer microchips and printed circuit boards. <br /><br><br><br />Some of the companies involved in this new ¡°scramble for Africa¡± have close links with PMCs and America¡¯s top political leadership. For example, America Minerals Fields, Inc., a company that was heavily involved in promoting the 1996 accession to power of Kabila, was, at the time of its involvement in the Congo¡¯s civil war, headquartered in Hope, Arkansas. Its major stockholders included long-time associates of former President Clinton going back to his days as Governor of Arkansas. America Mineral Fields also reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Lazare Kaplan International, Inc., a major international diamond brokerage whose president remains a close confidant of past and current administrations on Africa matters.[26] <br /><br><br><br />The United States has a long history of supporting all sides in the DRC¡¯s civil wars in order to gain access to the country¡¯s natural resources. The Ba-N¡¯Daw Report presents a cogent example of how one U.S. firm was involved in the DRC¡¯s grand thievery before the 1998 break between Laurent Kabila and his Rwandan and Ugandan backers. It links the Banque de commerce, du developpement et d'industrie (BCDI) of Kigali, Citibank in New York, the diamond business and armed rebellion. The report states: ¡°In a letter signed by J.P. Moritz, general manager of Societe miniere de Bakwanga (MIBA), a Congolese diamond company, and Ngandu Kamenda, the general manager of MIBA ordered a payment of US$3.5 million to la Generale de commerce d'import/export du Congo (COMIEX), a company owned by late President Kabila and some of his close allies, such as Minister Victor Mpoyo, from an account in BCDI through a Citibank account. This amount of money was paid as a contribution from MIBA to the AFDL war effort.¡± <br /><br><br><br />Also troubling are the ties that some mining companies in Africa have with military privateers. UN Special Rapporteur Enrique Ballesteros of Peru concluded in a his March 2001 report for the UN Commission on Human Rights, that mercenaries were inexorably linked to the illegal diamond and arms trade in Africa. He stated, ¡°Mercenaries participate in both types of traffic, acting as pilots of aircraft and helicopters, training makeshift troops in the use of weapons and transferring freight from place to place. Ballesteros added, ¡°Military security companies and air cargo companies registered in Nevada (the United States), in the Channel Islands and especially in South Africa and in Zimbabwe, are engaged in the transport of troops, arms, munitions, and diamonds.¡± <br /><br><br><br />In 1998, America Minerals Fields purchased diamond concessions in the Cuango Valley along the Angolan-Congolese border from International Defense and Security (IDAS Belgium SA), a mercenary firm based in Curacao and headquartered in Belgium. According to an American Mineral Fields press release, ¡°In May 1996, America Mineral Fields entered into an agreement with IDAS Resources N.V. (¡°IDAS¡±) and IDAS shareholders, under which the Company may acquire 75.5% of the common shares of IDAS. In turn, IDAS has entered into a 50-50 joint venture agreement with Endiama, the Angola state mining company. The joint venture asset is a 3,700 km mining lease in the Cuango Valley, Luremo and a 36,000 km2 prospecting lease called the Cuango International, which borders the mining lease to the north. The total area is approximately the size of Switzerland.¡± [27] <br /><br><br><br />America Mineral Fields directly benefited from America¡¯s initial covert military and intelligence support for Kabila. It is my observation that America¡¯s early support for Kabila, which was aided and abetted by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, had less to do with getting rid of the Mobutu regime than it had to do with opening up Congo¡¯s vast mineral riches to North American-based and influenced mining companies. Presently, some of America Mineral Fields¡¯ principals now benefit from the destabilization of Sierra Leone and the availability of its cut-rate ¡°blood diamonds¡± on the international market. Also, according to the findings of a commission headed up by Canadian United Nations Ambassador, Robert Fowler, Rwanda has violated the international embargo against Angola¡¯s UNITA rebels in allowing the ¡°to operate more or less freely¡± in selling conflict zone diamonds and making deals with weapons dealers in Kigali.[28] <br /><br><br><br />One of the major goals of the Rwandan-backed RCD-Goma faction, a group fighting the Kabila government in Congo, is restoration of mining concessions for Barrick Gold, Inc. of Canada. In fact, the rebel RCD government¡¯s ¡°mining minister¡± signed a separate mining deal with Barrick in early 1999.[29] Among the members of Barrick¡¯s International Advisory Board are former President Bush and former President Clinton¡¯s close confidant Vernon Jordan. <br /><br><br><br />Currently, Barrick and tens of other mining companies are helping to stoke the flames of the civil war in the DRC. Each benefits by the de facto partition of the country into some four separate zones of political control. First the mineral exploiters from Rwanda and Uganda concentrated on pillaging gold and diamonds from the eastern Congo. Now, they have increasingly turned their attention to col-tan. <br /><br><br><br />It is my hope that the Bush administration will take pro-active measures to stem the conflict in the DRC by applying increased pressure on Uganda and Rwanda to withdraw their troops from the country. However, the fact that President Bush has selected Walter Kansteiner to be Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, portends, in my opinion, more trouble for the Great Lakes region. A brief look at Mr. Kansteiner¡¯s curriculum vitae and statements calls into question his commitment to seeking a durable peace in the region. <br /><br><br><br />In an October 15, 1996 paper written by Mr. Kansteiner for the Forum for International Policy on the then-eastern Zaire, he called for the division of territory in the Great Lakes region ¡°between the primary ethnic groups, creating homogenous ethnic lands that would probably necessitate redrawing international boundaries and would require massive ¡®voluntary¡¯ relocation efforts.¡± Kansteiner foresaw creating separate Tutsi and Hutu states after such a drastic population shift. It should be recalled that the creation of a Tutsi state in eastern Congo was exactly what Rwanda, Uganda and their American military advisers had in mind when Rwanda invaded then-Zaire in 1996, the same year Kansteiner penned his plans for the region. Four years later, Kansteiner was still convinced that the future of the DRC was ¡°balkanization¡± into separate states. In an August 23, 2000 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article, Kansteiner stated that the ¡°breakup of the Congo is more likely now than it has been in 20 or 30 years.¡± Of course, the de facto break up of Congo into various fiefdoms has been a boon for U.S. and other western mineral companies. And I believe Kansteiner¡¯s previous work at the Department of Defense where he served on a Task Force on Strategic Minerals ? and one must certainly consider col-tan as falling into that category -- may influence his past and current thinking on the territorial integrity of the DRC. After all, 80 per cent of the world¡¯s known reserves of col-tan are found in the eastern DRC. It is potentially as important to the U.S. military as the Persian Gulf region. <br /><br><br><br />However, the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, which have supported Uganda and Rwanda in their cross-border adventures in the DRC, have resisted peace initiatives and have failed to produce evidence of war crimes by the Ugandans and Rwandans and their allies in Congo. The CIA, NSA, and DIA should turn over to international and congressional investigators intelligence-generated evidence in their possession, as well as overhead thermal imagery indicating the presence of mass graves and when they were dug. In particular, the NSA maintained a communications intercept station in Fort Portal, Uganda, which intercepted military and government communications in Zaire during the first Rwandan invasion. These intercepts may contain details of Rwandan and AFDL-CZ massacres of innocent Hutu refugees and other Congolese civilians during the 1996 invasion. There must be a full accounting before the Congress by the staff of the U.S. Defense Attache¡¯s Office in Kigali and certain U.S. Embassy staff members in Kinshasa who served from early 1994 to the present time. <br /><br><br><br />As for the number of war casualties in the DRC since the first invasion from Rwanda in 1996, I would estimate, from my own research, the total to be around 1.7 to 2 million ? a horrendous number by any calculation. And I also believe that although disease and famine were contributing factors, the majority of these deaths were the result of actual war crimes committed by Rwandan, Ugandan, Burundian, AFDL-CZ, RCD, and military and paramilitary forces of other countries. <br /><br><br><br><br /><br /><b><br />SUMMARY </b><br><br><br /><br />It is beyond time for the Congress to seriously examine the role of the United States in the genocide and civil wars of central Africa, as well as the role that PMCs currently play in other African trouble spots like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Cabinda. Other nations, some with less than stellar records in Africa ? France and Belgium, for example ? have had no problem examining their own roles in Africa¡¯s last decade of turmoil. The British Foreign Office is in the process of publishing a green paper on regulation of mercenary activity. At the very least, the United States, as the world¡¯s leading democracy, owes Africa at least the example of a critical self-inspection. <br /><br><br><br />I appreciate the concern shown by the Chair and members of this committee in holding these hearings. <br /><br><br><br />Thank you. <br><br />Wayne Madsen<br><br><br><br><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />[9] Dana Priest, ¡°Pentagon Slow to Cooperate With Information Requests,¡± <br><br />. . THE WASHINGTON POST, 31 December 1998, A34. <br><br />[10] Christian Jennings, ¡°U.S. plane seeks ¡°missing¡± refugees in east Zaire,¡± <br><br />. . Reuters North American Wire, 26 November 1996. <br><br />[11] Lynch, op. cit. <br><br />[12] Hubert Condurier, ¡°Ce que les services secrets francais savaient¡± <br><br />. . ("What the French Secret Services Knew¡±), VALEURS ACTUELLES, 30 August 1997, 26 27. <br><br />[13] Priests Speak of Massacres, Destitution,¡± <br><br />. . All Africa Press Service, AFRICA NEWS, 24 March 1997. <br><br />[14] Lara Marlowe, "Rwandans got combat training from U.S. army, paper claims,¡± <br><br />. . THE IRISH TIMES, 28 August 1997, 11. <br><br />[15] Condurier, 27. <br><br />[16] Ibid. <br><br />[17] ¡°Helping Africa to help America,¡± JANE'S FOREIGN REPORT, 4 September 1997. <br><br />[18] Donald G. McNeil, Jr., ¡°In Congo, Forbidding Terrain Hides a Calamity,¡± <br><br />. . THE NEW YORK TIMES, 1 June 1997, 4. <br><br />[19] Edward Mortimer, ¡°The moral maze: The dilemmas of African conflict <br><br />. . cannot be avoided by identifying one side as victims and the other <br><br />. . as aggressors,¡± FINANCIAL TIMES, 12 February 1997, 24. <br><br />[20] ¡°Oil Wars in the Congo,¡± ASIA TIMES, op. cit; Frederic Francois, <br><br />. . "A la recontre du Kivu libere: carnet de route (janvier-fevrier 97)¡± <br><br />. . (¡°Recounting the liberation of Kivu: the roadmap (January February 1997),¡± <br><br />. . Marc Schmitz and Sophie Nolet, op. cit., 57. <br><br />[21] Robert Block, ¡°U.S. Firms Seek Deals in Central Africa,¡± <br><br />. . THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, 14 October 1997. <br><br />[22]Milan Vesely, ¡°Carving up the Congo,¡± AFRICAN BUSINESS, October 1998, 12;<br><br />. . http://www.marekinc.com/NCNSpecialDRCWar080198.html <br><br />[23] Lynne Duke, ¡°Africans Use Training in Unexpected Ways,¡± THE WASHINGTON POST,<br><br />. . 14 July 1998, A10 <br><br />[24] ¡°Washington urges peace as U.S. team goes to Rwanda,¡± Agence France Presse, <br><br />. . 5 Aug 1998. <br><br />[25] Colum Lynch, ¡°Congo, Rwanda appear headed to full scale war,¡± <br><br />. . THE BOSTON GLOBE, 6 August 1998, A1. <br><br />[26] Richard Morais, ¡°Friends in High Places,¡± FORBES, August 10, 1998, 50. <br><br />[27] http://www.am-min.com/amf/96/news/jan14-98.html <br><br />[28] ¡°RWANDA: Government denies busting UNITA sanctions,¡± <br><br />. . UN Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN), March 13, 2000. <br><br />[29] ¡°Former Okimo Boss Named Rebels¡¯ ¡®Minister¡¯,¡± <br />. . AFRICA ENERGY & MINING, No. 245, February 3, 1999. <br>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1114464227486730002001-03-17T15:20:00.000-07:002005-04-25T14:23:47.603-07:00Anglo-American EstablishmentFrom Rhodes to Cliveden<br /><a name="quigley">Carroll Quigley</a> (1910-1977) was a highly respected professor at the School of Foreign Service at <a name="Georgetown">Georgetown University</a>. He was an instructor at Princeton and Harvard; a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the House Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration; and the U.S. Navy. His other major works include Evolution of Civilization and Tragedy and Hope - a History of The World in Our Time.<br /> <br />{p. ix} <strong>Preface</strong><br /> <br /><a name="Rhodes Scholarship">THE RHODES SCHOLARSHIPS</a>, established by the terms of <br /><a name="cecil_rhodes">Cecil Rhodes's</a> seventh will, are known to everyone. What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society, which was to devote itself to the preservation and expansion of the British Empire. And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society was created by Rhodes and his principal trustee, <a name="milner">Lord Milner</a>, and continues to exist to this day. To be sure, this secret society is not a childish thing like the Ku Klux Klan, and it does not have any secret robes, secret handclasps, or secret passwords. It does not need any of these, since its members know each other intimately. It probably has no oaths of secrecy nor any formal procedure of initiation. It does, however, exist and holds secret meetings, over which the senior member present presides. At various times since 1891, these meetings have been presided over by Rhodes, Lord Milner, Lord Selborne, Sir Patrick Duncan, Field Marshal Jan Smuts, Lord Lothian, and Lord Brand. They have been held in all the British Dominions, starting in South Africa about 1903; in various places in London, chiefly Piccadilly; at various colleges at Oxford, chiefly All Souls; and at many English country houses such as Tring Park, Blickling Hall, Cliveden, and others. <br /><p>This society has been known at various times as Milner's Kindergarten, as the Round Table Group, as the Rhodes crowd, as The Times crowd, as the All Souls group, and as the Cliveden set. All of these terms are unsatisfactory, for one reason or another, and I have chosen to call it the Milner Group. Those persons who have used the other terms, or heard them used, have not generally been aware that all these various terms referred to the same Group. <br /><p>It is not easy for an outsider to write the history of a secret group of this kind, but, since no insider is going to do it, an outsider must attempt it. It should be done, for this Group is, as I shall show, one of the most important historical facts of the twentieth century. <br /><p>{p. 3} ONE WINTRY AFTERNOON in February 1891, three men were engaged in earnest conversation in London. From that conversation were to flow consequences of the greatest importance to the British Empire and to the world as a whole. For these men were organizing a secret society that was, for more than fifty years, to be one of the most important forces in the formulation and execution of British imperial and foreign policy. <br /><p>The three men who were thus engaged were already well known in England. The leader was Cecil Rhodes, fabulously wealthy empirebuilder and the most important person in South Africa. The second was William T. Stead, the most famous, and probably also the most sensational, journalist of the day. The third was Reginald Baliol Brett, later known as Lord Esher, friend and confidant of Queen Victoria, and later to be the most influential adviser of King Edward VII and King George V. <br /><p>The details of this important conversation will be examined later. At present we need only point out that the three drew up a plan of organization for their secret society and a list of original members. The plan of organization provided for an inner circle, to be known as "The Society of the Elect," and an outer circle, to be known as "The Association of Helpers." Within The Society of the Elect, the real power was to be exercised by the leader, and a "Junta of Three." The leader was to be Rhodes, and the Junta was to be Stead, Brett, and Alfred Milner. In accordance with this decision, Milner was added to the society by Stead shortly after the meeting we have described. <br /><p>The creation of this secret society was not a matter of a moment. As we shall see, Rhodes had been planning for this event for more than seventeen years. Stead had been introduced to the plan on 4 April 1889, and Brett had been told of it on 3 February 1890. Nor was the society thus founded an ephemeral thing, for, in modified form, it exists to this day. From 1891 to 1902, it was known to only a score of per- <br />{p. 4} sons. During this period, Rhodes was leader, and Stead was the most influential member. From 1902 to 1925, Milner was leader, while Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian) and <a name="Lionel Curtis">Lionel Curtis</a> were probably the most important members. From 1925 to 1940, Kerr was leader, and since his death in 1940 this role has probably been played by Robert Henry Brand (now Lord Brand). <br /><p>During this period of almost sixty years, this society has been called by various names. During the first decade or so it was called "the secret society of Cecil Rhodes" or "the dream of Cecil Rhodes." In the second and third decades of its existence it was known as "Milner's Kindergarten" (1901-1910) and as "the Round Table Group" (1910-1920). Since 1920 it has been called by various names, depending on which phase of its activities was being examined. It has been called " The Times crowd," "the Rhodes crowd, " the "Chatham House crowd," the "All Souls group," and the "Cliveden set." All of these terms were more or less inadequate, because they focused attention on only part of the society or on only one of its activities. The Milner Kindergarten and the Round Table Group, for example, were two different names for The Association of Helpers and were thus only part of the society, since the real center of the organization, The Society of the Elect, continued to exist and recruited new members from the outer circle as seemed necessary. ... we shall generally call the organization the "Rhodes secret society" before 1901 and "the Milner Group" after this date, but it must be understood that both terms refer to the same organization. <br /><p>This organization has been able to conceal its existence quite successfully and many of its most influential members, satisfied to possess the reality rather than the appearance of power, are unknown even to <br />{p. 5} close students of British history. This is the more surprising when we learn that one of the chief methods by which this Group works has been through propaganda. It plotted the Jameson Raid of 1895: it caused the Boer War of 1899-1902; it set up and controls the Rhodes Trust; it created the Union of South Africa in 1906-1910; it established the South African periodical The State in 1908; it founded the British Empire periodical The Round Table in 1910, and this remains the mouthpiece of the Group; it has been the most powerful single influence in All Souls, Balliol, and New Colleges at Oxford for more than a generation; it has controlled The Times for more than fifty years, with the exception of the three years 1919-1922, it publicized the idea of and the name "British Commonwealth of Nations" in the period 1908-1918; it was the chief influence in Lloyd George's war administration in 1917-1919 and dominated the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919; it had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations and of the system of mandates; it founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in 1919 and still controls it; it was one of the chief influences on British policy toward Ireland, Palestine, and India in the period 1917-1945; it was a very important influence on the policy of appeasement of Germany during the years 1920-1940; and it controlled and still controls, to a very considerable extent, the sources and the writing of the history of British Imperial and foreign policy since the Boer War. <br /> <p>It would be expected that a Group which could number among its achievements such accomplishments as these would be a familiar subject for discussion among students of history and public affairs. In this case, the expectation is not realized, partly because of the deliberate policy of secrecy which this Group has adopted, partly because the Group itself is not closely integrated but rather appears as a series of overlapping circles or rings partly concealed by being hidden behind formally organized groups of no obvious political significance. <br /><p>This Group, held together, as it is, by the tenuous links of friendship, personal association, and common ideals is so indefinite in its outlines (especially in recent years) that it is not always possible to say who is a member and who is not. Indeed, there is no sharp line of demarkation between those who are members and those who are not, since "membership'' is possessed in varying degrees, and the degree changes at different times. <br /><p>{p. 6} Although the Group did not actually come into existence until 1891, its history covers a much longer period, since its origins go back to about 1873. ... It was badly split on the policy of appeasement after 16 March 1939, and received a rude jolt from the General Election of 1945. Until 1939, however, the expansion in power of the Group was fairly consistent. This growth was based on the possession by its members of ability, social connections, and wealth. ... <br /><p>Milner was able to dominate this Group because he became the focus or rather the intersection point of three influences. These we shall call "the Toynbee group," "the Cecil Bloc," and the "Rhodes secret society." The Toynbee group was a group of political intellectuals formed at Balliol about 1873 and dominated by Arnold Toynbee and Milner himself. It was really the group of Milner's personal friends. The Cecil Bloc was a nexus of political and social power formed by <a name="Lord Salisbury">Lord Salisbury</a> and extending from the great sphere of politics into the fields of education and publicity. In the field of education, its influence was chiefly visible at Eton and Harrow and at All Souls College, Oxford. In the field of publicity, its influence was chiefly visible in The Quarterly Review and The Times. The "Rhodes secret society'' was a group of imperial federalists, formed in the period after 1889 and using the economic resources of South Africa to extend and perpetuate the British Empire. <br /><p>It is doubtful if Milner could have formed his Group without assistance from all three of these sources. The Toynbee group gave him the ideological and the personal loyalties which he needed; the Cecil Bloc gave him the political influence without which his ideas could easily have died in the seed; and the Rhodes secret society gave him the economic resources which made it possible for him to create his own group independent of the Cecil Bloc. By 1902, when the leadership of the Cecil Bloc had fallen from the masterful grasp of Lord Salisbury into the rather indifferent hands of Arthur Balfour, and Rhodes had died, leaving Milner as the chief controller of his vast estate, the Milner Group was already established and had a most hopeful future. The long period of Liberal government which began in 1906 cast a temporary cloud over that future, but by 1916 the Milner Group had made its entrance into the citadel of political power and for the next twentythree years steadily extended its influence until, by 1938, it was the most potent political force in Britain. <br /><p>The original members of the Milner Group came from well-to-do, upper-class, frequently titled families. At Oxford they demonstrated intellectual ability and laid the basis for the Group. In later years they added to their titles and financial resources, obtaining these partly by inheritance and partly by ability to tap new sources of titles and money. At first their family fortunes may have been adequate to their ambitions, but in time these were supplemented by access to the funds in the foundation of All Souls, the Rhodes Trust and the Beit Trust, the fortune of Sir Abe Bailey, the Astor fortune, certain powerful British banks (of which the chief was Lazard Brothers and Company), and, in recent years, the Nuffield money. <br /><p>Although the outlines of the Milner Group existed long before 1891, the Group did not take full form until after that date. Earlier, Milner and Stead had become part of a group of neo-imperialists w ho justified the British Empire's existence on moral rather than on economic or political grounds and who sought to make this justification a reality by advocating self-government and federation within the Empire. This group formed at Oxford in the early 1870s and was extended in the early 1880s. At Bailliol it included Milner, Arnold Toynbee ... Toynbee was Milner's closest friend. After his early death in 1883, Milner was instrumental in establishing Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in London. ... In 1894 Milner delivered a eulogy of his dear friend dear friend at Toynbee Hall, and published it the next year as Arnold Toynbee: A Reminiscence. He also wrote the sketch of Toynbee in the Dictionary of National Biography. The connection is important because it undoubtedly gave Toynbee's nephew, Arnold J. Toynbee, his entree into the Royal Institute of International Affairs after the war.<br /><p>{p. 10} In spite of his early death in 1883, Toynbee's ideas and outlook continue to influence the Milner Group to the present day. As Milner said in 1894, "There are many men now active in public life, and some whose best work is probably yet to come, who are simply working out ideas inspired by him." As to Toynbee's influence on Milner himself, the latter, speaking of his first meeting with Toynbee in 1873, said twenty-one years later, "I feel at once under his spell and have always remained under it." No one who is ignorant of the existence of the Milner Group can possibly see the truth of these quotations, and, as a result, the thousands of persons who have read these statements in the introduction to Toynbee's famous Lectures on the Industrial Revolution have been vaguely puzzled by Milner's insistence on the importance of a man who died at such an early age and so long ago. Most readers have merely dismissed the statements as sentimentality inspired by personal attachment, although it should be clear that Alfred Milner was about the last person in the world to display sentimentality or even sentiment. <br /><p>Among the ideas of Toynbee which influenced the Milner Group we should mention three: (a) a conviction that the history of the British Empire represents the unfolding of a great moral idea - the idea of freedom - and that the unity of the Empire could best be preserved by the cement of this idea; (b) a conviction that the first call on the attention of any man should be a sense of duty and obligation to serve the state; and (c) a feeling of the necessity to do social service work (especially educational work) among the working classes of English society. These ideas were accepted by most of the men whose names we have already mentioned and became dominant principles of the Milner Group later. Toynbee can also be regarded as the founder of the method used by the Group later, especially in the Round Table Groups and in the Royal Institute of International Affairs. As described by Benjamin Jowett, Master of Balliol, in his preface to the 1884 edition of Toynbee's Lectures on the Industrial Revolution, this method was as follows: "He would gather his friends around him; they would form an organization, they would work on quietly for a time, some at Oxford, some in London; they would prepare themselves in different parts of the subject until they were ready to strike in public."<br /><p>{p. 11} The group lectured to working-class audiences in Whitechapel, Milner giving a course of speeches on "The State and the Duties of Rulers" in 1880 and another on "Socialism" in 1882. The latter series was published in the National Review in 1931 by Lady Milner. <br /><p>In this group of Toynbee's was Albert Grey (later Earl Grey 1851-1917), who became an ardent advocate of imperial federation. Later a loyal supporter of Milner's, as we shall see, he remained a member of the Milner Group until his death. ...<br /><p>It was probably as a result of Goschen's influence that Milner entered journalism, beginning to write for the Pall Mall Gazette in 1881 ... Stead was assistant editor in 1880-1883, and editor in 1883-1890. ... He introduced Albert Grey to Rhodes and, as a result, Grey became one of the original directors of the British South Africa Company when it was established by royal charter in 1889. Grey became administrator of Rhodesia when Dr. Jameson was forced to resign from that post in 1896 as an aftermath of his famous raid into the Transvaal. He was Governor-General of Canada in 1904-1911 and unveiled the Rhodes Memorial in South Africa in 1912. A Liberal member of the House of Commons from 1880 to 1886, he was defeated as a Unionist in the latter year. In 1894 he entered the House of Lords as the fourth Earl Grey, having inherited the title and 17,600 acres from an uncle. Throughout this period he was close to Milner and later was very useful in providing practical experience for various members of the Milner Group. His son, the future fifth Earl Grey, married the daughter of the second Earl of Selborne, a member of the Milner Group. <br /><p>{p. 15} THE MILNER GROUP could never have been built up by Milner's own efforts. He had no political power or even influence. All that he had was ability and ideas. The same thing is true about many of the other members of the Milner Group, at least at the time that they joined the Group. The power that was utilized by Milner and his Group was really the power of the Cecil family and its allied families such as the Lyttelton (Viscounts Cobham), Wyndham (Barons Leconfield), Grosvenor (Dukes of Westminster), Balfour, Wemyss, Palmer (Earls of Selborne and Viscounts Wolmer), Cavendish (Dukes of Devonshire and Marquesses of Hartington), and Gathorne-Hardy (Earls of Cranbrook). The Milner Group was originally a major fief within the great nexus of power, influence, and privilege controlled by the Cecil family. It is not possible to describe here the ramifications of the Cecil influence. It has been all-pervasive in British life since 1886. This Cecil Bloc was built up by Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil, Viscount Cranborne and third Marquess of Salisbury (1830-1903). The methods used by this man were merely copied by the Milner Group. These methods can be summed up under three headings: (a) a triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism; (b) the recruitment of men of ability (chiefly from All Souls) and the linking of these men to the Cecil Bloc by matrimonal alliances and by gratitude for titles and positions of power; and (c) the influencing of public policy by placing members of the Cecil Bloc in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention. <br /><p>The triple-front penetration can be seen in Lord Salisbury's own life. He was not only Prime Minister for a longer period than anyone else in recent history (fourteen years between 1885 and 1902) but also a Fellow of All Souls (from 1853) and Chancellor of Oxford University (1869-1903), and had a paramount influence on The Quarterly Review for many years. He practiced a shameless nepotism, concealed to some extent by the shifting of names because of acquisition of titles and female marital connections, and redeemed by the fact that ability as well as family connection was required from appointees. <br /><p>{p. 20} In recruiting his proteges from All Souls, Salisbury created a precedent that was followed later by the Milner Group, although the latter went much further than the former in the degree of its influence on All Souls. <br />All Souls is the most peculiar of Oxford Colleges. It has no undergraduates, and its postgraduate members are not generally in pursuit of a higher degree. ... at present twenty-one fellowships worth £300 a year for seven years are filled from candidates who have passed a qualifying examination. This group usually join within a year or two of receiving the bachelor's degree. In addition, there are eleven fellowships without emolument, to be held by the incumbents of various professorial chairs at Oxford. These include the Chichele Chairs of International Law, of Modern History, of Economic History, of Social and Political Theory, and of the History of War; the Drummond Chair of Political Economy; the Gladstone Chair of Government; the Regius Chair of Civil Law; the Vinerian Chair of English Law; the Marshal Foch Professorship of French Literature, and the Chair of Social Anthropology. There are ten Distinguished Persons fellowships without emolument, to be held for seven years by persons who have attained fame in law, humanities, science, or public affairs. These are usually held by past Fellows. There are a varying number of research fellowships and teaching fellowships, good for five to seven years, with annual emoluments of £300 to £600. There are also twelve seven-year fellowships with annual emoluments of £50 for past Fellows. And lastly, there are six fellowships to be held by incumbents of certain college or university offices. <br /><p>The total number of Fellows at any one time is generally no more than fifty and frequently considerably fewer. ... Most of these persons were elected to fellowships in All Souls at the age of twenty-two or twenty-three years, at a time when their great exploits were set in the future. There is some question whether this ability of the Fellows of All Souls to elect as their younger colleagues men with brilliant futures is to be explained by their ability to discern greatness at an early age or by the fact that election to the fellowship opens the door to achievement in public affairs. There is some reason to believe that the second of these two alternatives is of greater w eight. As the biographer of Viscount Halifax has put it, "It is safe to assert that the Fellow of All Souls is a man marked out for a position of authority in public life, and there is no surprise if he reaches the summit of power, but only disappointment if he falls short of the opportunities that are set out before him." <br /><p>{p. 31} One of the enduring creations of the Cecil Bloc is the Society for Psychical Research, which holds a position in the history of the Cecil Bloc similar to that held by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in the Milner Group. The Society was founded in 1882 by the Balfour family and their in-laws, Lord Rayleigh and Professor Sidgwick. <br /><p>{p. 33} WHEN MILNER went to South Africa in 1897, Rhodes and he were already old acquaintances of many years' standing. We have already indicated that they were contemporaries at Oxford, but, more than that, they were members of a secret society which had been founded in 1891. Moreover, Milner was, if not in 1897, at least by 1901, Rhodes's chosen successor in the leadership of that society. The secret society of Cecil Rhodes is mentioned in the first five of his seven wills. In the fifth it was supplemented by the idea of an educational institution with scholarships, whose alumni would be bound together by common ideals - Rhodes's ideals. In the sixth and seventh wills the secret society was not mentioned, and the scholarships monopolized the estate. But Rhodes still had the same ideals and still believed that they could be carried out best by a secret society of men devoted to a common cause. The scholarships were merely a facade to conceal the secret society, or, more accurately, they were to be one of the instruments by which the members of the secret society could carry out his purpose. This purpose, as expressed in the first will (1877), was: <br /><p><blockquote><em> The extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom and of colonization by British subjects of all lands wherein the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour, and enterprise, ... the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of a British Empire, the consolidation of the whole Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial Representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire, and finally the foundation of so great a power as to hereafter render wars impossible and promote the best interests of humanity. </em></blockquote> <br />To achieve this purpose, Rhodes, in this first will, written while he was still an undergraduate of Oxford at the age of twenty-four, left all his wealth to the Secretary of State for the Colonies (Lord Carnarvon) and to the Attorney General of Griqualand West (Sidney Shippard), to be used to create a secret society patterned on the Jesuits. The reference to the Jesuits as the model for his secret society is found in a "Confession of Faith" which Rhodes had written two years earlier (1875) and which he enclosed in his will. Thirteen years later, in a letter to the trustee of his third will, Rhodes told how to form the secret society, saying, "In considering questions suggested take Constitution of the Jesuits if obtainable and insert 'English Empire' for 'Roman Catholic Religion.'" <br /><p>In his "Confession of Faith" Rhodes outlined the types of persons who might be useful members of this secret society. As listed by the American Secretary to the Rhodes Trust, this list exactly describes the group formed by Milner in South Africa: <br /><p><blockquote><em> Men of ability and enthusiasm who find no suitable way to serve their country under the current political system; able youth recruited from the schools and universities; men of wealth with no aim in life; younger sons with high thoughts and great aspirations but without opportunity; rich men whose careers are blighted by some great disappointment. All must be men of ability and character.... Rhodes envisages a group of the ablest and the best, bound together by common unselfish ideals of service to what seems to him the greatest cause in the world. There is no mention of material rewards. This is to be a kind of religious brotherhood like the Jesuits, "a church for the extension of the British Empire." </em></blockquote><br />In each of his seven wills, Rhodes entrusted his bequest to a group of men to carry out his purpose. In the first will, as we have seen, the trustees were Lord Carnarvon and Sidney Shippard. In the second will (1882), the sole trustee was his friend N. E. Pickering. In the third will (1888), Pickering having died, the sole trustee was Lord Rothschild. In the fourth will (1891), W. T. Stead was added, while in the fifth (1892), Rhodes's solicitor, B. F. Hawksley, was added to the previous two. In the sixth (1893) and seventh (1899) wills, the personnel of the trustees shifted considerably, ending up, at Rhodes's death in 1902, with a board of seven trustees: Lord Milner, Lord Rosebery {son-in-law of Lord Rothschild: see p. 45}, Lord {Sir Edward} Grey, Alfred Beit, L. L. Michell, B. F. Hawksley, and Dr. Starr Jameson. This is the board to which the world looked to set up the Rhodes Scholarships. <br /><p>Dr. Frank Aydelotte, the best-known American authority on Rhodes's wills, claims that Rhodes made no reference to the secret society in his last two wills hecause he had abandoned the idea. The first chapter of his recent book, The American Rhodes Scholarshlps, states and reiterates that between 1891 and 1893 Rhodes underwent a great change in his point of view and matured in his judgment to the point that in his sixth will "he abandons forever his youthful idea of a secret society." This is completely untrue, and there is no evidence to support such a statement. On the contrary, all the evidence, both direct and circumstantial, indicates that Rhodes wanted the secret society from 1875 to his death in 1902. By Dr. Aydelotte's own admission, Rhodes wanted the society from 1877 to 1893, a period of sixteen years. Accepted practice in the use of historical evidence requires us to believe that Rhodes persisted in this idea for the remaining nine years of his life, unless there exists evidence to the contrary. There is no such evidence. On the other hand, there is direct evidence that he did not change his ideas. Two examples of this evidence can be mentioned here. On 5 February 1896, three years after his sixth will, Rhodes ended a long conversation with R. B. Brett (later Lord Esher) by saying, "Wish we could get our secret society." And in April 1900, a year after he wrote his seventh and last will, Rhodes was reprimanding Stead for his opposition to the Boer War, on the grounds that in this case he should have been willing to accept the judgment of the men on the spot who had made the war. Rhodes said to Stead, "That is the curse which will be fatal to our ideas - insubordination. Do not you think it is very disobedient of you? How can our Society be worked if each one sets himself up as the sole judge of what ought to be done? Just look at the position here. We three are in South Africa, all of us your boys ... I myself, Milner, and Garrett, all of whom learned their politics from you. We are on the spot, and we are unanimous in declaring this war to be necessary. You have never been in South Africa, and yet, instead of deferring to the judgment of your own boys, you fling yourself into a violent opposition to the war." <br /><p>Dr. Aydelotte's assumption that the scholarships were an alternative to the secret society is quite untenable, for all the evidence indicates that the scholarships were but one of several instruments through which the society would work. In 1894 Stead discussed with Rhodes how the secret society would work and wrote about it after Rhodes's death as follows: "We also discussed together various projects for propaganda, the formation of libraries, the creation of lectureships, the dispatch of emissaries on missions of propaganda throughout the Empire, and the steps to be taken to pave the way for the foundation and the acquisition of a newspaper which was to be devoted to the service of the cause." This is an exact description of the way in which the Society, that is the Milner Group, has functioned. Moreover, when Rhodes talked with Stead, in January 1895, about the scholarships at Oxford, he did not abandon the society but continued to speak of it as the real power behind the scholarships. It is perfectly clear that Rhodes omitted mentioning the secret society in his last two wills because he knew that by that time he was so famous that the one way to keep a society from being secret would be to mention it in his will. Obviously, if Rhodes wanted the secret society after 1893, he would have made no mention of it in his will but would have left his money in trust for a legitimate public purpose and arranged for the creation of the secret society by a private understanding with his trustees. This is clearly what happened, because the secret society was established, and Milner used Rhodes's money to finance it, just as Rhodes had intended. <br /><p>The creation of the secret society was the essential core of Rhodes's plans at all times. Stead, even after Rhodes's death, did not doubt that the attempt would be made to continue the society. In his book on Rhodes's wills he wrote in one place: "Mr. Rhodes was more than the founder of a dynasty. He aspired to be the creator of one of those vast semi-religious, quasi-political associations which, like the Society of Jesus, have played so large a part in the history of the world. To be more strictly accurate, he wished to found an Order as the instrument of the will of the Dynasty, and while he lived he dreamed of being both its Caesar and its Loyola. It was this far-reaching, world-wide aspiration of the man which rendered, to those who knew him, so absurdly inane the speculations of his critics as to his real motives." Sixty pages later Stead wrote: "The question that now arises is whether in the English-speaking world there are to be found men of faith adequate to furnish forth materials for the Society of which Mr. Rhodes dreamed." <br /><p>This idea of a society throughout the world working for federal union fascinated Milner as it had fascinated Rhodes. We have already mentioned the agreement which he signed with George Parkin in 1893, to propagandize for this purpose. Eight years later, in a letter to Parkin from South Africa, Milner wrote at length on the subject of imperial union and ended: "Good-bye for today. Keep up the touch. I wish we had some like-minded persons in New Zealand and Australia, who were personal friends. More power to your elbow." Moreover, there were several occasions after 1902 when Milner referred to his desire to see "a powerful body of men" working "outside the existing political parties" for imperial unity. He referred to this desire in his letter to Congdon in 1904 and referred to it again in his "farewell speech" to the Kindergarten in 1905. There is also a piece of negative evidence which seems to me to be of considerable significance. In 1912 Parkin wrote a book called The Rhodes Scholarships, in which he devoted several pages to Rhodes's wills. Although he said something about each will and gave the date of each will, he said nothing about the secret society. Now this secret society, which is found in five out of the seven wills, is so astonishing that Parkin's failure to mention it must be deliberate. He would have no reason to pass it by in silence unless the society had been formed. If the existing Rhodes Trust were a more mature alternative for the secret society rather than a screen for it, there would be no reason to pass it by, but, on the contrary, an urgent need to mention it as a matter of great intrinsic interest and as an example of how Rhodes's ideas matured. <br /><p>{p. 37} As a matter of fact, Rhodes's ideas did not mature. The one fact which appears absolutely clearly in every biography of Rhodes is the fact that from 1875 to 1902 his ideas neither developed nor matured. Parkin, who clearly knew of the secret society, even if he did not mention it, says in regard to Rhodes's last will: "It is essential to remember that this final will is consistent with those which had preceded it, that it was no late atonement for errors, as some have supposed, but was the realization of life-long dreams persistently pursued." <br /><p>Leaving aside all hypothesis, the facts are clear: Rhodes wanted to create a worldwide secret group devoted to English ideals and to the Empire as the embodiment of these ideals, and such a group was created. It was created in the period after 1890 by Rhodes, Stead, and, above all, by Milner. <br /><p>The idea of a secret international group of propagandists for federal imperialism was by no means new to Milner when he became Rhodes Trustee in 1901, since he had been brought into Rhodes's secret society as the sixth member in 1891. This was done by his old superior, W. T. Stead. Stead, as we have indicated, was the chief Rhodes confidant in England and very close to Milner. Although Stead did not meet Rhodes until 1889, Rhodes regarded himself as a disciple of Stead's much earlier and eagerly embraced the idea of imperial federation based on Home Rule. It was in pursuit of this idea that Rhodes contributed £10,000 to Parnell in 1888. Although Rhodes accepted Stead's ideas, he did not decide that Stead was the man he wanted to be his lieutenant in the secret society until Stead was sent to prison in 1885 for his articles on organized vice in the Pall Mall Gazette. This courageous episode convinced Rhodes to such a degree that he tried to see Stead in prison but was turned away. After Stead was released, Rhodes did not find the opportunity to meet him until 4 April 1889. The excitement of that day for Stead can best be shown by quoting portions of the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Stead immediately after the conference. It said: <br /><p><blockquote><em> Mr. Rhodes is my man! I have just had three hours talk with him! He is full of a far more gorgeous idea in connection with the paper than even I have had. I cannot tell you his scheme because it is too secret. But it involves millions. He had no idea that it would cost £250,000 to start a paper. But he offered me down as a free gift £20,000 to buy a share in the P.M. Gazette as a beginning. Next year he would do more. He expects to own before he dies, 4 or 5 millions, all of which he will leave to carry out the scheme of which the paper is an integral part. He is giving £500,000 to make a railway to Matabeleland, and so has not available, just at this moment, the money necessary for starting the morning paper. His ideas are federation, expansion, and consolidation of the Empire.... He took to me. Told me some things he has told no other man - save Lord Rothschild - and pressed me to take the £20,000, not to have any return, to give no receipt, to simply take it and use it to give me a freer hand on the P. M. G. ... How good God is to me ... Remember all the above about R. is very private. </em></blockquote> ...<br />About the same time, Rhodes revealed to Stead his plans to establish the British South Africa Company and asked him who in England could best help him get the necessary charter. Stead recommended Albert Grey, the future Earl Grey, who had been an intimate friend of Stead's since 1873 and had been a member of the Milner-Toynbee group in 1880-1884. As a result, Grey became one of the original directors of the British South Africa Company and took the first steps which eventually brought him into the select circle of Rhodes's secret society. ...<br /><p>The secret society, after so much preliminary talk, took form in 1891, the same year in which Rhodes drew up his fourth will and made Stead as well as Lord Rothschild the trustee of his fortune. It is perfectly clear from the evidence that he expected Lord Rothschild to handle the financial investments associated with the trust, while Stead was to have full charge of the methods by which the funds were used. About the same time, in February 1891, Stead and Rhodes had another long discussion about the secret society. First they discussed their goals and agreed that, if necessary in order to achieve Anglo-American unity, Britain should join the United States. Then they discussed the organization of the secret society and divided it into two circles: an inner circle "The Society of the Elect", and an outer circle to include "The Association of Helpers and The Review of Reviews (Stead's magazine founded 1890). Rhodes said that he had already revealed the plan for "The Society of the Elect" to Rothschild and "little Johnston." By "little Johnston'' he meant Harry H. Johnston (Sir Harry after 1896), African explorer and administrator, who had laid the basis for the British claims to Nyasaland, Kenya, and Uganda. Johnston was, according to Sir Frederick Whyte, the biographer of Stead, virtually unknown in England before Stead published his portrait as the frontispiece to the first issue Of The Review of Reviews in 1890. This was undoubtedly done on behalf of Rhodes. Continuing their discussion of the membership of "The Society of the Elect," Stead asked permission to bring in Milner and Brett. Rhodes agreed ... <br />{p. 40} solidation of the British Empire, which they shared as an ideal with Rhodes. <br /><p>With the elimination of signs, oaths, and formal initiations, the criteria for membership in "The Society of the Elect" became knowledge of the secret society and readiness to cooperate with the other initiates toward their common goal. The distinction between the initiates and The Association of Helpers rested on the fact that while members of both circles were willing to cooperate with one another in order to achieve their common goal, the initiates knew of the secret society, while the "helpers" probably did not. This distinction rapidly became of little significance, for the members of The Association of Helpers would have been very stupid if they had not realized that they were members of a secret group working in cooperation with other members of the same group. Moreover, the Circle of Initiates became in time of less importance because as time passed the members of this select circle died, were alienated, or became less immediately concerned with the project. As a result, the secret society came to be represented almost completely by The Association of Helpers - that is, by the group with which Milner was most directly concerned. And within this Association of Helpers there appeared in time gradations of intimacy, the more select ones participating in numerous areas of the society's activity and the more peripheral associated with fewer and less vital areas. Nevertheless, it is clear that "The Society of the Elect" continued to exist, and it undoubtedly recruited additional members now and then from The Association of Helpers. It is a very difficult task to decide who is and who is not a member of the society as a whole, and it is even more difficult to decide if a particular member is an initiate or a helper. Accordingly, the last distinction will not usually be made in this study. Before we abandon it completely, however, an effort should be made to name the initiates, in the earlier period at least. <br /><p>Of the persons so far named, we can be certain that six were initiates. These were Rhodes, Lord Rothschild, Johnston, Stead, Brett, and Milner. Of these, Rothschild was largely indifferent and participated in the work of the group only casually. Of the others, Johnston received from £10,000 to £17,000 a year from Rhodes for several years after 1889, during which period he was trying to eliminate the influence of slave-traders and the Portuguese from Nyasaland. About 1894 he became alienated from Rhodes because of Johnston's refusal to cooperate with him in an attack on the Portuguese in Manikaland. As a result Johnston ceased to be an active member of the society. Lord Grey's efforts to heal the breach were only nominally successful. <br /><p>Stead was also eliminated in an informal fashion in the period 1899-1904, at first by Rhodes's removing him from his trusteeship and later by Milner's refusal to use him, confide in him, or even see him, although continuing to protest his personal affection for him. Since Milner was the real leader of the society after 1902, this had the effect of eliminating Stead from the society. <br /><p>Of the others mentioned, there is no evidence that Cardinal Manning or the Booths were ever informed of the scheme. All three were friends of Stead and would hardly be acceptable to the rising power of Milner. Cardinal Manning died in 1892. As for "General" Booth and his son, they were busily engaged in directing the Salvation Army from 1878 to 1929 and played no discernible role in the history of the Group. <br /><p>Of the others who were mentioned, Brett, Grey, and Balfour can safely be regarded as members of the society, Brett because of the documentary evidence and the other two because of their lifelong cooperation with and assistance to Milner and the other members of the Group. <br /><p>Brett, who succeeded his father as Viscount Esher in 1899, is one of the most influential and one of the least-known men in British politics in the last two generations. His importance could be judged better by the positions he refused than by those he held during his long life (1852-1930). Educated at Eton and Cambridge, he was a lifelong and intimate friend of Arthur Balfour, Albert Grey, Lord Rosebery, and Alfred Lyttelton. He was private secretary to the Marquess of Hartington (Duke of Devonshire) in 1878-1885 and a Liberal M.P. in 1880-1885. In the last year he was defeated in an attempt to capture the seat for Plymouth, and retired from public life to his country house near Windsor at the advanced age of thirty-three years. That he emerged from this retirement a decade later may well be attributed to his membership in the Rhodes secret society. He met Stead while still in public life and by virtue of his confidential position with the future Duke of Devonshire was able to relay to Stead much valuable information. These messages were sent over the signature "XIII." <br /><p>This assistance was so highly esteemed by Stead that he regarded Brett as an important part of the Pall Mall Gazette organization. Writing in 1902 of Milner and Brett, Stead spoke of them, without mentioning their names, as "two friends, now members of the Upper House, who were thoroughly in sympathy with the gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette and who had been as my right and left hands during my editorship of the paper." In return Stead informed Brett of Rhodes's secret schemes as early as February 1890 and brought him into the society when it was organized the following year. <br />The official positions held by Brett in the period after 1895 were secretary of the Office of Works (1895-1902), Lieutenant Governor and Governor of Windsor Castle (1901-1930), member of the Royal Commission on the South African War (1902-1903), permanent member of the Committee of Imperial Defence (1905-1930), chairman and later president of the London County Territorial Force Association (1909-1921), and chief British member of the Temporary Mixed Commission on Disarmament of the League of Nations (1922-1923). Although some of these posts, especially the one on the Committee of Imperial Defence, play an important role in the history of the Milner Group, none of them gives any indication of the significant position which Esher held in British political life. The same thing could be said of the positions which he refused, although they, if accepted, would have made him one of the greatest names in recent British history. Among the positions which he refused we might mention the following: Permanent Under Secretary in the Colonial Office (1899), Governor of Cape Colony (1900), Permanent Under Secretary in the War Office (1900), Secretary of State for War (1903), Director of The Times (1908), Viceroy of India (1908), and an earldom (date unknown). Esher's reasons for refusing these positions were twofold: he wanted to work behind the scenes rather than in the public view, and his work in secret was so important and so influential that any public post would have meant a reduction in his power. When he refused the exalted position of viceroy in 1908, he wrote frankly that, with his opportunity of influencing vital decisions at the center, India for him "would be (it sounds vain, but it isn't) parochial." This opportunity for influencing decisions at the center came from his relationship to the monarchy. For at least twenty-five years (from 1895 to after 1920) Esher was probably the most important adviser on political matters to Queen Victoria, King Edward VII, and King George V. This position arose originally from his personal friendship with Victoria, established in the period 1885-1887, and was solidified later when, as secretary to the Office of Works and Lieutenant Governor of Windsor Castle, he was in charge of the physical properties of all the royal residences. These opportunities were not neglected. He organized the Diamond Jubilee of 1897, the royal funeral of 1901, and the coronation of the same year. In the latter case he proved to be indispensable, for in the sixty-four years without a coronation the precedents had been forgotten. In this way Esher reached a point where he was the chief unofficial representative of the King and the "liaison between King and ministers." As an example of the former role, we might mention that in 1908, when a purchaser known only as "X" acquired control of The Times, Esher visited <a name="Northcliffe">Lord Northcliffe</a> on behalf of "a very high quarter" to seek assurance that the policy of the paper would not be changed. Northcliffe, who was 'X," hastened to give the necessary assurances, according to the official History of The Times. Northcliffe and the historian of The Times regarded Esher on this occasion as the emissary of King Edward, but we, who know of his relationship with the Rhodes secret society, are justified in asking if he were not equally the agent of the Milner Group, since it was as vital to the Group as to the King that the policy of The Times remain unchanged. As we shall see in a later chapter, when Northcliffe did adopt a policy contrary to that of the Group, in the period 1917-1919, the Group broke with him personally and within three years bought his controlling interest in the paper. ...<br /><p>Another person who was brought into the secret society was Edmund Garrett, the intimate friend of Stead, Milner, and Rhodes, who was later used by Milner as a go-between for communications with the other two. Garrett had been sent to South Africa originally by Stead while he was still on the Pall Mall Gazette in 1889. He went there for a second time in 1895 as editor of the Cape Times, the most influential English-language newspaper in South Africa. This position he undoubtedly obtained from Stead and Rhodes. Sir Frederick Whyte, in his biography of Stead, says that Rhodes was the chief proprietor of the paper. Sir Edward Cook, however, the biographer of Garrett and a man who was very close to the Rhodes secret society, says that the owners of the Cape Times were Frederick York St. Leger and Dr. Rutherfoord Harris. This is a distinction without much difference, since Dr. Harris, as we shall see, was nothing more than an agent of Rhodes. <br /><p>In South Africa, Garrett was on most intimate personal relationships with Rhodes. Even when the latter was Prime Minister of Cape Colony, Garrett used to communicate w with him by tossing pebbles at his bedroom window in the middle of the night. Such a relationship naturally gave Garrett a prestige in South Africa which he could never have obtained by his own position or abilities. When High Commissioner Hercules Robinson drew up a proclamation after the Jameson Raid, he showed it to Garrett before it was issued and cut out a paragraph at the latter's insistence. <br /><p>Garrett was also on intimate terms with Milner during his period as High Commissioner after 1897. In fact, when Rhodes spoke of political issues in South Africa, he frequently spoke of "I myself, Milner, and Garrett." We have already quoted an occasion on which he used this expression to Stead in 1900. Milner's relationship with Garrett can be gathered from a letter which he wrote to Garrett in 1899, after Garrett had to leave South Africa to go to a sanatorium in Germany: "It is no use protesting against the decrees of fate, nor do I want to say too much on what Rhodes calls 'the personal.' But this really was a great blow to me, and I have never quite got over your breakdown and departure, never quite felt the same man since, either politically or privately. ... Dear Friend, I miss you fearfully, always shall miss you. So does this young country." <br /><p>I think we are justified in assuming that a man as intimate as this with Rhodes and Milner, who was used in such confidential and important ways by both of them, who knew of the plans for the Johannesburg revolt and the Jameson Raid before they occurred, and who knew of the Rhodes secret society, was an initiate. That Garrett knew of the Jameson plot beforehand is recorded by Sir Edward Cook in his biography. That Garrett knew of the secret society is recorded by Garrett himself in an article which he published in the Contemporary Review after Rhodes's death in 1902. The words in which Garrett made this last revelation are of some significance. He spoke of "that idea of a sort of Jesuit-like Secret Society for the Promotion of the Empire, which for long he hugged and which - minus, perhaps, the secrecy and the Jesuitry - I know to have had a good deal of fascination for others among our contemporaries not reckoned visionaries by the world." <br /><p>We have said that Garrett was used by Milner as an intermediary with both Rhodes and Stead. The need for such an intermediary with Rhodes arose from Milner's feeling that it was politically necessary to conceal the intimacy of their relationship. As Rhodes told Stead, speaking of Milner, on 10 April 1900, "I have seen very little of him. He said to me, 'The less you and I are seen together the better.' Hence, I never invited him to Groote Schuur." <br /><p>Garrett was also used by Milner as an intermediary with Stead after the latter became alienated from the initiates because of his opposition to the Boer War. One example of this is of some significance. In 1902 Milner made a trip to England without seeing Stead. On 12 April of that year, Garrett, who had seen Milner, wrote the following letter to Stead: "I love the inner man, Stead, in spite of all differences, and should love him if he damned me and my policy and acts ten times more. So does Milner - in the inner court - we agreed when he was over - only there are temporary limitations and avoidances.... He told me why he thought on the whole he'd better not see you this time. I quite understood, though I'm not sure whether you would, but I'm sure you would have liked the way in which, without any prompting at all, he spoke of his personal feelings for you being unaffected by all this. Someday let us hope, all this tyranny will be overpast, and we shall be able to agree again, you and Milner, Cook and I." It is possible that the necessity for Milner to overrule his personal feelings and the mention of "the inner court" may be oblique references to the secret society. In any case, the letter shows the way in which Stead was quietly pushed aside in that society by its new leader. <br /><p>Another prominent political figure who may have been an initiate in the period before 1902 is Lord Rosebery. Like his father-in-law, Lord Rothschild, who was an initiate, Rosebery was probably not a very active member of The Society of the Elect, although for quite different reasons. Lord Rothschild held aloof because to him the whole project was incomprehensible and unbusinesslike; Lord Rosebery held aloof because of his own diffident personality and his bad physical health. However, he cooperated with the members of the society and was on such close personal relationships with them that he probably knew of the secret society. Brett was one of his most intimate associates and introduced him to Milner in 1885. As for Rhodes, Roseberv's official biographer, the Marquess of Crewe, says that he "both liked and admired Cecil Rhodes who was often his guest." He made Rhodes a Privy Councillor, and Rhodes made him a trustee of his will. These things, and the fact that the initiates generally assumed that Rosebery would grant their requests, give certain grounds for believing that he was a member of their society. If he was, he played little role in it after 1900. Two other men, both fabulously wealthy South Africans, may be regarded as members of the society and probably initiates. These were Abe Bailey and Alfred Beit. <br /><p>Abe Bailey (later Sir Abe, 1864-1940) was the largest landowner in Rhodesia, a large Transvaal mine-owner, and one of the chief, if not the chief, financial supporters of the Milner Group in the period up to 1925. These financial contributions still continue, although since 1925 they have undoubtedly been eclipsed by those of Lord Astor. Bailey was an associate of Rhodes and Alfred Beit, the two most powerful figures in South Africa, and like them was a close friend of Milner. He named his son, born in 1900, John Milner Bailey. Like Rhodes and Beit, he was willing that his money be used by Milner because he sympathized with his aims. As his obituary in The Times expressed it, "In politics he modeled himself deliberately on Rhodes as his ideal of a good South African and a devoted Imperialist.... He had much the same admiration of Milner and remained to the end a close friend of 'Milner's young men.' " This last phrase refers to Milner's Kindergarten or The Association of Helpers, which will be described in detail later. <br /><p>Abe Bailey was one of the chief plotters in the Jameson Raid in 1895. He took over Rhodes's seat in the Cape Parliament in 1902-1907 and was Chief Whip in the Progressive Party, of which Dr. Jameson was leader. When the Transvaal obtained self-government in 1907, he went there and was Whip of the same party in the Legislative Assembly at Pretoria. After the achievement of the Union of South Africa, in the creation of which, as we shall see, he played a vital role, he was a member of the Union Parliament and a loyal supporter of Botha and Smuts from 1915 to 1924. After his defeat in 1924, he divided his time between South Africa and London. In England, as The Times said at his death, he "took a close interest behind the scenes in politics." This "close interest" was made possible by his membership in the innermost circle of the Milner Group, as we shall see. <br /><p>Certain others of Rhodes's chief associates cooperated w ith Milner in his designs after Rhodes's death and might well be regarded as members of Rhodes's society and of the Milner Group. Of these we might mention Alfred Beit, Dr. Starr Jameson and his assistant R. S. Holland, J. Rochfort Maguire, and Lewis Loyd Michell. <br /><p>Alfred Beit (1853-1906) was the business genius who handled all Rhodes's business affairs and incidentally had most to do with making the Rhodes fortune. He was a Rhodes Trustee and left much of his own fortune for public and educational purposes similar to those endowed by Rhodes. This will be discussed later. His biography was written by George Seymour Fort, a protege of Abe Bailey, who acted as Bailey's agent on the boards of directors of many corporations, a fact revealed by Fort himself in a letter to The Times, 13 August 1940. <br /><p>Leander Starr Jameson (later Sir Starr, 1853-1917) was Rhodes's doctor, roommate, and closest friend, and had more to do with the opening up of Rhodesia than any other single man. His famous raid into the Transvaal with Rhodesian police in 1895 was one of the chief events leading up to the Boer War. After Rhodes's death, Jameson was leader of his party in Cape Colony and served as Premier in 1904-1908. A member of the National Convention of 1908-1909, he was also director of the British South Africa Company and a Rhodes Trustee. ... Jameson's biographical sketch in The Dictionary of National Biography was written by Dougal Malcolm of Milner's Kindergarten. <br /><p>Reginald Sothern Holland (now Sir Sothern) was private secretary to Dr. Jameson in 1904 and later for three years permanent head of the Prime Minister's Department (1905-1908). He was secretary to the South African Shipping Freights Conference (1905-1906) with Birchenough and succeeded Birchenough as His Majesty's Trade Commissioner to South Africa (1908-1913). During the war he was in charge of supply of munitions, at first in the War Office and later (1915) in the Ministry of Munitions. He was also on various commissions in which Milner was interested, such as the Royal Commission on Paper Supplies (with Birchenough), and ended the war as Controller of the Cultivation Division of the Food Production Department (which was seeking to carry out recommendations made by the Milner and Selborne Committee on Food Production). He became a Rhodes Trustee in 1932. <br /><p>Lewis Loyd Michell (later Sir Lewis, 1842-1928) was Rhodes's banker in South Africa and after his death took over many of his interests. A Minister without Portfolio in Jameson's Cabinet in the Cape Colony (1904-1905), he was also a director of the British South Africa Lionel Curtis is one of the most important members of the Milner Group, or, as a member of the Group expressed it to me, he is the <em>fons et origo</em>. It may sound extravagant as a statement, but a powerful defense could be made of the claim that what Curtis thinks should be done to the British Empire is what happens a generation later. I shall give here only two recent examples of this. In 1911 Curtis decided that the name of His Majesty's Dominions must be changed from "British Empire" to "Commonwealth of Nations." This was done officially in 1948. Again, about 1911 Curtis decided that India must be given complete self-government as rapidly as conditions permitted. This was carried out in 1947. As we shall see, these are not merely coincidental events, for Curtis, working behind the scenes, has been one of the chief architects of the present Commonwealth. It is not easy to discern the places where he has passed, and no adequate biographical sketch can be put on paper here. Indeed, much of the rest of this volume will be a contribution to the biography of Lionel Curtis. Burning with an unquenchable ardor, which some might call fanatical, he has devoted his life to his dominant idea, that the finer things of life - liberty, democracy, toleration, etc. - could be preserved only within an integrated world political system, and that this political system could be constructed about Great Britain, but only if Britain adopted toward her Dominions, her colonies, and the rest of the world a policy of generosity, of trust, and of developing freedom. Curtis was both a fanatic and an idealist. But he was not merely "a man in a hurry." He had a fairly clear picture of what he wanted. He did not believe that complete and immediate freedom and democracy could be given to the various parts of the imperial system, but felt that they could only be extended to these parts in accordance with their ability to develop to a level where they were capable of exercising such privileges. When that level was achieved and those privileges were extended, he felt that they would not be used to disrupt the integrated world system of which he dreamed, but to integrate it more fully and in a sounder fashion - a fashion based on common outlook and common patterns of thought rather than on the dangerous unity of political subjection, censorship, or any kind of duress. To Curtis, as to H. G. Wells, man's fate depended on a race between education and disaster. This was similar to the feeling which animated Rhodes when he established the Rhodes Scholarships, although Curtis has a much broader and less nationalistic point of view than Rhodes. Moreover, Curtis believed that people could be educated for freedom and responsibility by giving them always a little more freedom, a little more democracy, and a little more responsibility than they were quite ready to handle. This is a basically Christian attitude - the belief that if men are trusted they will prove trustworthy - but it was an attitude on which Curtis was prepared to risk the existence of the British Empire. It is not yet clear whether Curtis is the creator of the Commonwealth of Nations or merely the destroyer of the British Empire. The answer will be found in the behavior of India in the next few years. The Milner Group knew this. That is why India, since 1913, has been the chief object of their attentions. <br /><p>These ideas of Curtis are clearly stated in his numerous published works. The following quotations are taken from The Problem of the Commonwealth drawn up by the Round Table Group and published under Curtis's name in 1916: <br /><p><blockquote><em> Responsible government can only be realized for any body of citizens in so far as they are fit for the exercise of political power. In the Dependencies the great majority of the citizens are not as yet capable of governing themselves and for them the path to freedom is primarily a problem of education.... The Commonwealth is a typical section of human society including every race and level of civilization organized in one state. In this world commonwealth the function of government is reserved to the European minority, for the unanswerable reason that for the present this portion of its citizens is alone capable of the task - civilized states are obliged to assume control of backward communities to protect them from exploitation by private adventurers from Europe.... The Commonwealth cannot, like despotisms, rest content with establishing order within and between the communities it includes. It must by its nature prepare these communities first to maintain order within themselves. The rule of law must be rooted in the habits and wills of the peoples themselves.... The peoples of India and Egypt, no less than those of the British Isles and Dominions, must be gradually schooled to the management of their national affairs.... It is not enough that free communities should submit their relations to the rule of law. Until all those people control that law the principle by which the commonwealth exists is unfulfilled. The task of preparing for freedom the races which cannot as yet govern themselves is the supreme duty of those races who can. It is the spiritual end for which the Commonwealth exists, and material order is nothing except a means to it.... In India the rule of law is firmly established. Its maintenance is a trust which rests on the government of the Commonwealth until such time as there are Indians enough able to discharge it. India may contain leaders qualified not only to make but also to administer laws, but she will not be ripe for self-government until she contains an electorate qualified to recognize those leaders and place them in office.... For England the change is indeed a great one. Can she face it? Can she bear to lose her life, as she knows it, to find it in a Commonwealth, wide as the world itself, a life greater and nobler than before? Will she fail at this second and last crisis of her fate, as she failed at the first, like Athens and Prussia, forsaking freedom for power, thinking the shadow more real than the light, and esteeming the muckrake more than the crown? </em></blockquote> <br />Four years later, in 1920, Curtis wrote: "The whole effect of the war has been to bring movements long gathering to a sudden head . . . companionship in arms has fanned . . . long smouldering resentment against the prescription that Europeans are destined to dominate the rest of the world. In every part of Asia and Africa it is bursting into flames.... Personally, I regard this challenge to the long unquestioned claim of the white man to dominate the world as inevitable and wholesome especially to ourselves." <br /><p>Unfortunately for the world, Curtis, and the Milner Group generally, had one grave weakness that may prove fatal. Skilled as they were in political and personal relations, endowed with fortune, education, and family connections, they were all fantastically ignorant of economics - even those, like Brand or Hichens, who were regarded within the Group as its experts on this subject. Brand was a financier, while Hichens was a businessman - in both cases occupations that guarantee nothing in the way of economic knowledge or understanding. <br /><p>{p. 68} In 1906, when Amery made his first effort to be elected to Parliament, Milner worked actively in support of his candidacy. It is probable that this, in spite of Milner's personal prestige, lost more votes than it gained, for Milner made no effort to conceal his own highly unorthodox ideas. On 17 December 1906, for example, he spoke at Wolverhampton as follows: "Not only am I an Imperialist of the deepest dye - and Imperialism, you know, is out of fashion - but I actually believe in universal military training.... I am a Tariff Reformer and one of a somewhat pronounced type. ... I am unable to join in the hue and cry against Socialism. That there is an odious form of Socialism I admit, a Socialism which attacks wealth simply because it is wealth, and lives on the cultivation of class hatred. But that is not the whole story; most assuredly not. There is a nobler Socialism, which so far from springing from envy, hatred, and uncharitableness, is born of genuine sympathy and a lofty and wise conception of what is meant by national life." These sentiments may not have won Amery many votes, but they were largely shared by him, and his associations with Milner became steadily more intimate. <br /><p>{p. 100} At Oxford itself, the Group has been increasingly influential in Nuffield College, while outside of Oxford it apparently controls (or greatly influences) the Stevenson Professorship of International Relations at London; the Rhodes Professorship of Imperial History at London; Birkbeck College at London; the George V Professorship of History in Cape Town University; and the Wilson Professorship of International Politics at University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. Some of these are controlled completely, while others are influenced in varying degrees. In Canada the influence of the Group is substantial, if not decisive, at the Universlty of Toronto and at Upper Canada College. <br /><p>{p. 101} BEYOND THE ACADEMIC FIELD, the Milner Group engaged in journalistic activities that sought to influence public opinion in directions which the Group desired. One of the earliest examples of this, and one of the few occasions on which the Group appeared as a group in the public eye, was in 1905, the year in which Milner returned from Africa. At that time the Group published a volume, The Empire and the Century, consisting of fifty articles on various aspects of the imperial problem. The majority of these articles were written by members of the Milner Group, in spite of the fact that so many of the most important members were still in Africa with Lord Selborne. ... It was followed by a sequel volume, called The Empire and the Future, in 1916. The latter consisted of a series of lectures delivered at King's College, University of London, in 1915, under the sponsorship of the Royal Colonial Institute. The lectures were by members of the Milner Group who included A. L. Smith, <a name+"H. A. L. Fisher">H. A. L. Fisher</a>, Philip Kerr, and George R. Parkin. A somewhat similar series of lectures was given on the British Dominions at the University of Birmingham in 1910-1911 by such men as Alfred Lyttelton, Henry Birchenough, and William Hely-Hutchinson. These were published by Sir William Ashley in a volume called The British Dominions. <br /><p>These efforts, however, were too weak, too public, and did not reach the proper persons. Accordingly, the real efforts of the Milner Group were redirected into more fruitful and anonymous activities such as The Times and The Round Table. <br /><p>The Milner Group did not own The Times before 1922, but clearly controlled it as far back as 1912. Even before this last date members of the innermost circle of the Milner Group were swarming about the great newspaper. In fact, it would appear that The Times had been controlled by the Cecil Bloc since 1884 and was taken over by the Milner Group in the same way in which All Souls was taken over, quietly and without a struggle. The midwife of this process apparently was George E. Buckle (1854-1935), graduate of New College in 1876, member of All Souls since 1877, and editor of The Times from 1884 to 1912. The chief members of the Milner Group who were associated with The Times have already been mentioned. Amery was connected with the paper from 1899 to 1909. During this period he edited and largely wrote the Times History of the South African War. Lord Esher was offered a directorship in 1908. Grigg was a staff writer in 1903-1905, and head of the Imperial Department in 1908-1913. B. K. Long was head of the Daminion Department in 1913-1921 and of the Foreign Department in 1920-1921. Monypenny was assistant editor both before and after the Boer War (1894-1899, 1903-1908) and on the board of directors after the paper was incorporated (1908-1912). Dason was the paper's chief correspondent in South Africa in the Selborne period (1905-1910), while Basil Williams was the reporter covering the National Convention there (1908-1909). When it became clear in 1911 that Buckle must soon retire, Dawson was brought into the office in a rather vague capacity and, a year later, was made editor. The appointment was suggested and urged by Buckle. Dawson held the position from 1912 to 1941, except for the three years 1919-1922. This interval is of some significance, for it revealed to the Milner Group that they could not continue to control The Times without ownership. The Cecil Bloc had controlled The Times from 1884 to 1912 without ownership and the Milner Group had done the same in the period 1912-1919, but, in this last year, Dawson quarreled with Lord Northcliffe (who was chief proprietor from 1908-1922) and left the editor's chair. As soon as the Milner Group, through the Astors, acquired the chief proprietorship of the paper in 1922, Dawson was restored to his post and held it for the next twenty years. Undoubtedly the skillful stroke which acquired the ownership of The Times from the Harmsorth {Northcliffe} estate in 1922 was engineered by Brand. During the interval of three years during which Dawson was not editor, Northcliffe entrusted the position to one of The Times's famous foreign correspondents H. W. Steed.<br /><p>Dawson was succeeded as editor in 1944 by R. M. Barrington-Ward whose brother was a Fellow of All Souls and son-in-law of A. L. Smith.<br /><p>{p. 103} Laurence Rushbrook Williams, who functions in many capacities in Indian affairs after his fellowship in All Souls (1914-1921), also joined the editorial staff in 1944. Douglas Jay, who graduated from New College in 1930 and was a Fellow of All Souls in 1930-1937, was on the staff of The Times in 1929-1933 and of the Economist in 1933-1937. He became a Labour M.P. in 1946, after having performed the unheard-of feat of going directly from All Souls to the city desk of the Labour Party's Daily Herald (1937-1941). Another interesting figure on The Times staff in the more recent period was Charles R. S. Harris, who was a Fellow of All Souls for fifteen years (1921-1936), after graduating from Corpus Christi. He was leader-writer of The Times for ten years (1925-1935) and, during part of the same period, was on the staff of the Economist (1932-1935) and editor of The Nineteenth Century and After (1930-1935). He left all three positions in 1935 to go for four years to the Argentine to be general manager of the Buenos Aires Great Southern and Western Railways. During the Second World War he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare for a year, the Foreign Office for two years, and the Finance Department of the War Office for a year (1942-1943). Then he was commissioned a lieutenant colonel with the military government in occupied Sicily, and ended up the war as a member of the Allied Control Commission in Italy. Harris's written works cover a range of subjects that would be regarded as extreme anywhere outside the Milner Group. A recognized authority on Duns Scotus, he wrote two volumes on this philosopher as well as the chapter on "Philosophy" in The Legacy of the Middle Ages, but in 1935 he wrote Germany's Foreign Indebtedness for the Royal Institute of Inter- national Affairs. <br /><p>Harris's literary versatility, as well as the large number of members of All Souls who drifted over to the staff on The Times, unquestionably can be explained by the activities of Lord Brand. Brand not only brought these persons from All Souls to The Times, but also brought the Astors to The Times. Brand and Lord Astor were together at New College at the outbreak of the Boer War. They married sisters, daughters of Chiswell Dabney Langhorne of Virginia. Brand was apparently the one who brought Astor into the Milner Group in 1917, although there had been a movement in this direction considerably earlier. Astor was a Conservative M.P. from 1910 to 1919, leaving the Lower House to take his father's seat in the House of Lords. His place in Commons has been held since 1919 by his wife, Nancy Astor (1919-1945), and by his son Michael Langhorne Astor (1945- ). In 1918 Astor became parliamentary secretary to Lloyd George; later he held the same position with the Ministry of Food (1918-1919) and the Ministry of Health (1919-1921). He was British delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations in 1931, chairman of the League Committee on Nutrition (1936-1937), and chairman of the council of the Royal Institute of International affairs (since 1935). ...<br /><p>Lord Astor's chief importance in regard to The Times is that he and his brother became chief proprietors in 1922 by buying out the Harmsworth interest. ...<br /><p>The Times has recently published the first three volumes of a four-volume history of itself. Although no indication is given as to the authorship of these volumes, the acknowledgments show that the authors worked closely with All Souls and the Milner Group. For example, Harold Temperley and Keith Feiling read the proofs of the first two volumes, while E. L. Wooread those of the third volume.<br /><p>{p. 113} This influence was not exercised by acting directly on public opinion, since the Milner Group never intended to influence events by acting through any instruments of mass propaganda, but rather hoped to work on the opinions of the small group of "important people," who in turn could influence wider and wider circles of persons. This was the basis on which the Milner Group itself was constructed; it was the theory behind the Rhodes Scholarships; it was the theory behind "The Round Table and the Royal Institute of International Affairs; it was the theory behind the efforts to control All Souls, New College, and Balliol and, through these three, to control Oxford University; and it was the theory behind The Times. No effort was made to win a large circulation for The Times, for, in order to obtain such a circulation, it would have been necessary to make changes in the tone of the paper that would have reduced its influence with the elite, to which it had been so long directed. The theory of "the elite" was accepted by the Milner Group and by The Times, as it was by Rhodes. <br /><p>{p. 114} The Times was to be a paper for the people who are influential, and not for the masses. The Times was influential, but the degree of its influence would never be realized by anyone who examined only the paper itself. The greater part of its influence arose from its position as one of several branches of a single group, the Milner Group. By the interaction of these various branches on one another, under the pretense that each branch was an autonomous power, the influence of each branch was increased through a process of mutual reinforcement. The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was the result of the existence of a single group. Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman's policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a "leader" in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the "leader" and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of "informal discussions" with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the "informal discussions" in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject. <br /><p>{p. 115} An analogous procedure in reverse could be used for policies or books which the Group did not approve. A cutting editorial or an unfriendly book review, followed by a suffocating blanket of silence and neglect, was the best that such an offering could expect from the instruments of the Milner Group. This is not easy to demonstrate because of the policy of anonymity followed by writers and reviewers in The Times, The Round Table, and The Times Literary Supplement, but enough cases have been found to justify this statement. When J. A. Farrer's book England under Edward VII was published in 1922 and maintained that the British press, especially The Times, was responsible for bad Anglo-German feeling before 1909, The Times Literary Supplement gave it to J. W. Headlam-Morley to review. And when Baron von Eckardstein, who was in the German Embassy in London at the time of the Boer War, published his memoirs in 1920, the same journal gave the book to Chirol to review, even though Chirol was an interested party and was dealt with in a critical fashion in several passages in the book itself. Both of these reviews were anonymous.<br /><p>There is no effort here to contend that the Milner Group ever falsified or even concealed evidence (although this charge could be made against The Times). Rather it propagated its point of view by interpretation and selection of evidence. In this fashion it directed policy in ways that were sometimes disastrous. The Group as a whole was made up of intelligent men who believed sincerely, and usually intensely, in what they advocated, and who knew that their writings were intended for a small minority as intelligent as themselves. In such conditions there could be no value in distorting or concealing evidence. To do so would discredit the instruments they controlled. By giving the facts as they stood, and as completely as could be done in consistency with the interpretation desired, a picture could be construed that would remain convincing for a long time. <br /><p>This is what was done by The Times. Even today, the official historian of The Times is unable to see that the policy of that paper was anti-German from 1895 to 1914 and as such contributed to the worsening of Anglo-German relations and thus to the First World War. This charge has been made by German and American students, some of them of the greatest diligence and integrity, such as Professors Sidney B. Fav, <a name="William L. Langer">William L. Langer</a>, Oron J. Hale, and others. The recent History of The Times devotes considerable space and obviously spent long hours of research in refuting these charges, and fails to see that it has not succeeded. With the usual honesty and industry of the Milner Group, the historian gives the evidence that will convict him, without seeing that his interpretation will not hold water. He confesses that the various correspondents of The Times in Berlin played up all anti-English actions and statements and played down all pro-English ones; that they quoted obscure and locally discredited papers in order to do this; that all The Times foreign correspondents in Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and elsewhere were anti-German, and that these were the ones who were kept on the staff and promoted to better positions; that the one member of the staff who was recognized as being fair to Germany (and who was unquestionably the most able man in the whole Times organization), Donald Mackenzie Wallace, was removed as head of the Foreign Department and shunted off to be editor of the supplementary volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica (which was controlled by The Times); and that The Times frequently printed untrue or distorted information on Germany. All of this is admitted and excused as the work of honest, if hasty, journalists, and the crowning proof that The Times was not guilty as charged is implied to be the fact that the Germans did ultimately get into a war with Britain, thus proving at one stroke that they were a bad lot and that the attitude of The Times staff toward them was justified by the event. <br /><p>It did not occur to the historian of The Times that there exists another explanation of Anglo-German relations, namely that in 1895 there were two Germanies - the one admiring Britain and the other hating Britain - and that Britain, by her cold-blooded and calculated assault on the Boers in 1895 and 1899, gave the second (and worse) Germany the opportunity to criticize and attack Britain and gave it the arguments with which to justify a German effort to build up naval defenses. The Times, by quoting these attacks and actions representative of the real attitude and actual intentions of all Germans, misled the British people and abandoned the good Germans to a hopeless minority position, where to be progressive, peaceful, or Anglophile was to be a traitor to Germany itself. Chirol's alienation of Baron von Eckardstein (one of the "good" Germans, married to an English lady), in a conversation in February 19OO, shows exactly how The Times attitude was contributing to consolidate and alienate the Germans by the mere fact of insisting that they were consolidated and alienated - and doing this to a man who loved England and hated the reactionary elements in Germany more than Chirol ever did. <br /><p>{p. 117} THE SECOND important propaganda effort of the Milner Group in the period after 1909 was The Round Table. This was part of an effort by the circle of the Milner Group to accomplish for the whole Empire what they had just done for South Africa. The leaders were Philip Kerr in London, as secretary of the London group, and Lionel Curtis throughout the world, as organizing secretary for the whole movement, but most of the members of the Kindergarten cooperated in the project. The plan of procedure was the same as that which had worked so successfully in South Africa - that is, to form local groups of influential men to agitate for imperial federation and to keep in touch with these groups by correspondence and by the circulation of a periodical. As in South Africa, the original cost of the periodical was paid by Abe Bailey. This journal, issued quarterly, was called The Round Table and the same name was applied to the local groups. <br /><p>Of these local groups, the most important by far was the one in London. In this, Kerr and Brand were the chief figures. The other local groups, also called Round Tables, were set up by Lionel Curtis and others in South Africa, in Canada, in New Zealand, in Australia, and, in a rather rudimentary fashion and somewhat later, in India. <br /><p>The reasons for doing this were described by Curtis himself in 1917 in A Letter to the People of India, as follows: "We feared that South Africa might abstain from a future war with Germany, on the grounds that they had not participated in the decision to make war. ... Confronted by this dilemma at the very moment of attaining Dominion self-government, we thought it would be wise to ask people in the oldest and most experienced of all Dominions what they thought of the matter. So in 1909, Mr. Kerr and I went to Canada and persuaded Mr. Marris, who was then on leave, to accompany us." On this trip the three young men covered a good portion of the Dominion. <br /><p>One day, during a walk through the forests on the Pacific slopes of the Canadian Rockies, Marris convinced Curtis that "self government, . . . however far distant, was the only intelligible goal of British policy in India.... The existence of political unrest in India, far from being a reason for pessimism, was the surest sign that the British, with all their manifest failings, had not shirked their primary duty of extending Western education to India and so preparing Indians to govern themselves." "I have since looked back on this walk," wrote Curtis, "as one of the milestones of my own education. So far I had thought of self-government as a Western institution, which was and would always remain peculiar to the peoples of Europe.... It was from that moment that I first began to think of 'the Government of each by each and of all by all' not merely as a principle of Western life, but rather of all human life, as the goal to which all human societies must tend. It was from that moment that I began to think of the British Commonwealth as the greatest instrument ever devised for enabling that principle to be realized, not merely for the children of Europe, but for all races and kindreds and peoples and tongues. And it is for that reason that I have ceased to speak of the British Empire and called the book in which I published my views The Commonwealth of Nations." <br /><p>Because of Curtis's position and future influence, this walk in Canada was important not only in his personal life but also in the future history of the British Empire. It needs only to be pointed out that India received complete self-government in 1947 and the British Commonwealth changed its name officially to Commonwealth of Nations in 1948. There can be no doubt that both of these events resulted in no small degree from the influence of Lionel Curtis and the Milner Group, in which he was a major figure. <br /><p>Curtis and his friends stayed in Canada for four months. Then Curtis returned to South Africa for the closing session of the Transvaal Legislative Council, of which he was a member. He there drafted a memorandum on the whole question of imperial relations, and, on the day that the Union of South Africa came into existence, he sailed to New Zealand to set up study groups to examine the question. These groups became the Round Table Groups of New Zealand. <br /><p>The memorandum was printed with blank sheets for written comments opposite the text. Each student was to note his criticisms on these blank pages. Then they were to meet in their study groups to discuss these comments, in the hope of being able to draw up joint reports, or at least majority and minority reports, on their conclusions. These reports were to be sent to Curtis, who was to compile a comprehensive report on the whole imperial problem. This comprehensive report would then be submitted to the groups in the same fashion and the resulting comments used as a basis for a final report. <br /><p>Five study groups of this style were set up in New Zealand, and then five more in Australia. The decision wasmade to do the same thing in Canada and in England, and this was done by Curtis, Kerr, and apparently Dove during 1910. On the trip to Canada, the missionaries carried with them a letter from Milner to his old friend Arthur J. Glazebrook, with whom he had remained in close contact throughout the years since Glazebrook went to Canada for an English bank in 1893. The Round Table in 1941, writing of Glazebrook, said, "His great political hero was his friend Lord Milner, with whom he kept up a regular correspondence." As a result of this letter from Milner, Glazebrook undertook the task of founding Round Table Groups in Canada and did this so well that he was for twenty years or more the real head of the network of Milner Group units in the Dominion. He regularly wrote the Canadian articles in The Round Table magazine. When he died, in 1940, The Round Table obituary spoke of him as "one of the most devoted and loyal friends that The Round Table has ever known. Indeed he could fairly claim to be one of its founding fathers." <br /><p>{p. 126} A thousand copies of this, with the title Project of a Commonwealth, were distributed among the groups. Then a popular volume on the subject, with the title The Problem of the Commonwealth and Curtis's name as editor, was published (May 1916). Two months later, the earlier work (Project) was published under the title The Commonwealth of Nations, again with Curtis named as editor. Thus appeared for the first time in public the name which the British Empire was to assume thirty-two years later. In the September 1916 issue of The Round Table, Kerr published a statement on the relationship of the two published volumes to the Round Table Groups. Because of the paper shortage in England, Curtis in 1916 went to Canada and Australia to arrange for the separate publication of The Problem of the Commonwealth in those countries. At the same time he set up new Round Table Groups in Australia and New Zealand. Then he went to India to begin serious work on Indian reform. From this emerged the Government of India Act of 1919, as we shall see later. <br /><p>By this time Curtis and the others had come to realize that any formal federation of the Empire was impossible. As Curtis wrote in 1917 (in his Letter to the People of India): "The people of the Dominions rightly aspire to control their own foreign affairs and yet retain their status as British citizens. On the other hand, they detest the idea of paying taxes to any Imperial Parliament, even to one upon which their own representatives sit. The inquiry convinced me that, unless they sent members and paid taxes to an Imperial Parliament, they could not control their foreign affairs and also remain British subjects. But I do not think that doctrine is more distasteful to them than the idea of having anything to do with the Government of India." <br /><p>Reluctantly Curtis and the others postponed the idea of a federated Empire and fell back on the idea of trying to hold the Empire together by the intangible bonds of common culture and common outlook. This had originally (in Rhodes and Milner) been a supplement to the project of a federation. It now became the chief issue, and the idea of federation fell into a secondary place. At the same time, the idea of federation was swallowed up in a larger scheme for organizing the whole world within a League of Nations. This idea had also been held by Rhodes and Milner, but in quite a different form. To the older men, the world was to be united around the British Empire as a nucleus. To Curtis, the Empire was to be absorbed into a world organization. This second idea was fundamentally mystical. Curtis believed: "Die and ye shall be born again." He sincerely felt that if the British Empire died in the proper way (by spreading liberty, brotherhood, and justice), it would be born again in a higher level of existence - as a world community, or, as he called it, a "Commonwealth of Nations." It is not yet clear whether the resurrection envisaged by Curtis and his associates will occur, or whether they merely assisted at the crucifixion of the British Empire. The conduct of the new India in the next few decades will decide this question. <br /><p>The idea for federation of the Empire was not original with the Round Table Group, although their writings would indicate that they sometimes thought so. The federation which they envisaged had been worked out in detail by persons close to the Cecil Bloc and was accepted by Milner and Rhodes as their own chief goal in life. <br /><p>The original impetus for imperial federation arose within the Liberal Party as a reaction against the Little England doctrines that were triumphant in England before 1868. The original movement came from men like John Stuart Mill (whose arguments in support of the Empire are just like Curtis's) and Earl Grey (who was Colonial Secretary under Russell in 1846-1852). <br /><p>This movement resulted in the founding of the Royal Colonial Society (now Royal Empire Society) in 1868 and, as a kind of subsidiary of this, the Imperial Federation League in 1884. Many Unionist members of the Cecil Bloc, such as Brassey and Goschen, were in these organizations. In 1875 F. P. Labilliere, a moving power in both organizations, read a paper before the older one on "The Permanent Unity of the Empire" and suggested a solution of the imperial prob!em by creating a superimposed imperial legislative body and a central executive over the whole Empire, including the United Kingdom. Seven years later, in "The Political Organization of the Empire," he divided authority between this new federal authority and the Dominions by dividing the business of government into imperial questions, local questions, and questions concerning both levels. He then enumerated the matters that would be allotted to each division, on a basis very similar to that later advocated by Curtis. Another speaker, George Bourinot, in 1880, dealt with "The Natural Development of Canada" in a fashion that sounds exactly like Curtis. <br /><p>These ideas and projects were embraced by Milner as his chief purpose in life until, like Curtis, he came to realize their impracticality. Milner's ideas can be found in his speeches and letters, especially in two letters of 1901 to Brassey and Parkin. Brassey had started a campaign for imperial federation accompanied by devolution (that is, granting local issues to local bodies even within the United Kingdom) and the creation of an imperial parliament to include representatives of the colonies. This imperial parliament would deal with imperial questions, while local parliaments would deal with local questions. In pursuit of this project, Brassey published a pamphlet, in December 1900, called A Policy on Which All Liberals May Unite and sent to Milner an invitation to join him. Milner accepted in February 1901, saying: In this article can be found, at least implicitly, all the basic ideas of the Milner Group: their suspicion of party politics; their emphasis on moral qualities and the cement of common outlook for linking people together; their conviction that the British Empire is the supreme moral achievement of man, but an achievement yet incomplete and still unfolding; their idea that the highest moral goals are the development of personality through devotion to duty and service under freedom and law; their neglect, even scorn, for economic considerations, and their feeling for the urgent need to pursuade others to accept their point of view in order to allow the Empire to achieve the destiny for which they yearn. <br /><p>The Milner Group is a standing refutation of the Marxist or Leninist interpretations of history or of imperialism. Its members were motivated only slightly by materialistic incentives, and their imperialism was motivated not at all by the desire to preserve or extend capitalism. On the contrary their economic ideology, in the early stages at least was more socialistic than Manchester in its orientation. To be sure, it was an undemocratic kind of socialism, which was willing to make many sacrifices to the well-being of the masses of the people but reluctant to share with these masses political power that might allow them to seek their own well-being. This socialistic leaning was more evident in the earlier (or Balliol) period than in the later (or New College) period, and disappeared almost completely when Lothian and Brand replaced Esher, Grey, and Milner at the center of the Group. Esher regarded the destruction of the middle class as inevitable and felt that the future belonged to the workers and an administrative state. He dedicated his book After the War (1919) to Robert Smillie, President of the Miners' Federation, and wrote him a long letter on 5 May 1919. On 12 September of the same year, he wrote to his son, the present Viscount Esher: "There are things that cannot be confiscated by the Smillies and Sidney Webbs. These seem to me the real objectives." Even earlier, Arnold Toynbee was a socialist of sorts and highly critical of the current ideology of liberal capitalism as proclaimed by the high priests of the Manchester School. Milner gave six lectures on socialism in Whitechapel in 1882 (published in 1931 in The National Review). Both Toynbee and Milner worked intermittently at social service of a mildly socialistic kind, an effort that resulted in the founding of Toynbee Hall as a settlement house in 1884. As chairman of the board of Internal Revenue in 1892-1897, Milner drew up <a name=”William Harcourt”>Sir William Harcourt's</a> budget, which inaugurated the inheritance tax. In South Africa he was never moved by capitalistic motives, placing a heavy profits tax on the output of the Rand mines to finance social improvements, and considering with objective calm the question of nationalizing the railroads or even the mines. Both Toynbee and Milner were early suspicious of the virtues of free trade - not, however, because tariffs could provide high profits for industrial concerns but because tariffs and imperial preference could link the Empire more closely into economic unity. In his later years, Milner became increasingly radical, a development that did not fit any too well with the conservative financial outlook of Brand, or even Hichens. As revealed in his book Questions of the Hour (1923), Milner was a combination of technocrat and guild socialist and objected vigorously to the orthodox financial policy of deflation, balanced budget, gold standard, and free international exchange advocated by the Group after 1918. This orthodox policy, inspired by Brand and accepted by The Round Table after 1918, was regarded by Milner as an invitation to depression, unemployment, and the dissipation of Britain's material and moral resources. On this point there can be no doubt that Milner was correct. Not himself a trained economist, Milner, nevertheless, saw that the real problems were of a technical and material nature and that Britain's ability to produce goods should be limited only by the real supply of knowledge, labor, energy, and materials and not by the artificial limitations of a deliberately restricted supply of money and credit. This point of view of Milner's was not accepted by the Group until after 1931, and not a completely as by Milner even then. The point of view of the Group, at least in the period 1918-1931, was the point of view of the international bankers with whom Brand, Hichens, and others were so closely connected. This point of view, which believed that Britain's prewar financial supremacy could be restored merely by reestablishing the prewar financial system, with the pound sterling at its prewar parity, failed completely to see the changed conditions that made all efforts to restore the prewar system impossible. The Group's point of view is clearly revealed in The Round Table articles of the period. In the issue of December 1918, Brand advocated the financial policy which the British government followed, with such disastrous results, for the next thirteen years. He wrote: <br /><p><blockquote><em> That nation will recover quickest after the war which corrects soonest any depreciation in currency, reduces by production and saving its inflated credit, brings down its level of prices, and restores the free import and export of gold.... With all our wealth of financial knowledge and experience behind us it should be easy for us to steer the right path - though it will not be always a pleasant one - amongst the dangers of the future. Every consideration leads to the view that the restoration of the gold standard - whether or not it can be achieved quickly - should be our aim. Only by that means can we be secure that our level of prices shall be as low as or lower than prices in other countries, and on that condition depends the recovery of our export trade and the prevention of excessive imports. Only by that means can we provide against and abolish the depreciation of our currency which, though the [existing] prohibition against dealings in gold prevents our measuring it, almost certainly exists and safeguard ourself against excessive grants of credit. </em></blockquote> <br />He then outlined a detailed program to contract credit, curtail government spending, raise taxes, curtail imports, increase exports etc. Hichens, who, as an industrialist rather than a banker, was not nearly so conservative in financial matters as Brand, suggested that the huge public debt of 1919 be met by a capital levy, but, when Brand's policies were adopted by the government, Hichens went along with them and sought a way out for his own business by reducing costs by rationalizatron of production." <br /><p>These differences of opinion on economic matters within the Group did not disrupt the Group, because it was founded on political rather than economic Ideas and its roots were to be found in ancient Athens rather than in modern Manchester. The Balliol generation, from Jowett and Nettleship, and the New College generation, from Zimmern, obtained an idealistic picture of classical Greece which left them nostalgic for the fifth century of Hellenism and drove them to seek to reestablish that ancient fellowship of intellect and patriotism in modern Britain. The funeral oration of Pericles became their political Covenant with destiny. Duty to the state and loyalty to one's fellow citizens became the chief values of life. But, realizing that the jewel of Hellenism was destroyed by its inability to organize any political unit larger than a single city, the Milner Group saw the necessity of political organization in order to insure the continued existence of freedom and higher ethical values and hoped to be able to preserve the values of their day by organizing the whole world around the British Empire. <br /><p>Curtis puts this quite clearly in The Commonwealth of Nations (1916), where he says: <br /><p><blockquote><em> States, whether autocracies or commonwealths, ultimately rest on duty, not on self-interest or force.... The quickening principle of a state is a sense of devotion, an adequate recognition somewhere in the minds of its subjects that their own interests are subordinate to those of the state. The bond which unites them and constitutes them collectively as a state is, to use the words of Lincoln, in the nature of dedication. Its validity, like that of the marriage tie, is at root not contractual but sacramental. Its foundation is not self-interest, but rather some sense of obligation, however conceived, which is strong enough to over-master self-interest. </em></blockquote> <br />History for this Group, and especially for Curtis, presented itself as an age-long struggle between the principles of autocracy and the principles of commonwealth, between the forces of darkness and the forces of light, between Asiatic theocracy and European freedom. This view of history, founded on the work of Zimmern, E. A. Freeman, Lord Bryce, and A. V. Dicey, felt that the distinguishing mark between the two hosts could be found in their views of law - the forces of light regarding law as man-made and mutable, but yet above all men, while the forces of darkness regarded law as divine and eternal, yet subordinate to the king. The one permitted diversity, growth, and freedom, while the other engendered monotony, stultification, and slavery. The struggle between the two had gone on for thousands of years, spawning such offspring as the Persian Wars, the Punic Wars, and the struggles of Britain with the forces of Philip II, of Louis XIV, of Napoleon, and of Wilhelm II. Thus, to this Group, Britain stood as the defender of all that was fine or civilized in the modern world, just as Athens had stood for the same values in the ancient world. Britain's mission, under this interpretation, was to carry freedom and light (that is, the principles of commonwealth) against the forces of theocracy and darkness (that is, autocracy) in Asia - and even in Central Europe. For this Group regarded the failure of France or Germany to utilize the English idea of "supremacy of law" (as described by Dicey in his The Law of the Constitution, 1885) as proof that these countries were still immersed, at least partially, in the darkness of theocratic law. The slow spread of English political institutions to Europe as well as Asia in the period before the First World War was regarded by the Group as proof both of their superiority and of the possibility of progress. In Asia and Africa, at least, England's civilizing mission was to be carried out by force, if necessary, for "the function of force is to give moral ideas time to take root." Asia thus could be compelled to accept civilization, a procedure justifiable to the Group on the grounds that Asians are obviously better off under European rule than under the rule of fellow Asians and, if consulted, would clearly prefer British rule to that of any other European power. To be sure, the blessings to be extended to the less fortunate peoples of the world did not include democracy. To Milner, to Curtis, and apparently to most members of the Group, democracy was not an unmixed good, or even a good, and far inferior to rule by the best, or, as Curtis says, by those who "have some intellectual capacity for judging the public interest, and, what is no less important, some moral capacity for treating it as paramount to their own." <br /><p>This disdain for unrestricted democracy was quite in accordance with the ideas revealed by Milner's activities in South Africa and with the Greek ideals absorbed at Balliol or New College. However, the restrictions on democracy accepted by the Milner Group were of a temporary character, based on the lack of education and background of those who were excluded from political participation. It was not a question of blood or birth, for these men were not racists. <br /><p>This last point is important because of the widespread misconception that these people were racially intolerant. They never were; certainly those of the inner circle never were. On the contrary, they were ardent advocates of a policy of education and uplift of all groups, so that ultimately all groups could share in political life and in the rich benefits of the British way of life. To be sure, the members of the Group did not advocate the immediate extension of democracy and self-government to all peoples within the Empire, but these restrictions were based not on color of skin or birth but upon cultural outlook and educational background. Even Rhodes, who is widely regarded as a racist because his scholarships were restricted to candidates from the Nordic countries, was not a racist. He restricted his scholarships to these countries because he felt that they had a background sufficiently homogeneous to allow the hope that educational interchange could link them together to form the core of the worldwide system which he hoped would ultimately come into existence. Beyond this, Rhodes insisted that there must be no restrictions placed on the scholarships on a basis of race, religion, skin color, or national origin. In his own life Rhodes cared nothing about these things. Some of his closest friends were Jews (like Beit), and in three of his wills he left Lord Rothschild as his trustee, in one as his sole trustee. Milner and the other members felt similarly. Lionel Curtis, in his writings, makes perfectly clear both his conviction that character is acquired by training rather than innate ability and his insistence on tolerance in personal contact between members of different races. In his The Commonwealth of Nations (1916) he says: "English success in planting North America and the comparative failure of their rivals must, in fact, be traced to the respective merits not of breed but of institutions"; and again: "The energy and intelligence which had saved Hellas [in the Persian Wars] was the product of her free institutions." In another work he protests against English mistreatment of natives in India and states emphatically that it must be ended. He says: "The conduct on the part of Europeans . . . is more than anything else the root cause of Indian unrest . . . I am strongly of opinion that governors should be vested with powers to investigate judicially cases where Europeans are alleged to have outraged Indian feelings. Wherever a case of wanton and unprovoked insult such as those I have cited is proved, government should have the power to order the culprit to leave the country.... A few deportations would soon effect a definite change for the better." That Dove felt similarly is clear from his letters to Brand. <br /><p>Without a belief in racism, it was perfectly, possible for this Group to believe, as they did, in the ultimate extension of freedom and self-government to all parts of the Empire. To be sure, they believed that this was a path to be followed slowly, but their reluctance was measured by the inability of "backward" peoples to understand the principles of a commonwealth, not by reluctance to extend to them either democracy or self-government. <br /><p>Curtis defined the distinction between a commonwealth and a despotism in the following terms: "The rule of law as contrasted with the rule of an individual is the distinguishing mark of a commonwealth. In despotism government rests on the authority of the ruler or of the invisible and uncontrollable power behind him. In a commonwealth rulers derive their authority from the law and the law from a public opinion which is competent to change it." Accordingly, "the institutions of a commonwealth cannot be successfully worked by peoples whose ideas are still those of a theocratic or patriarchal society. The premature extension of representative institutions throughout the Empire would be the shortest road to anarchy." The people must first be trained to understand and practice the chief principles of commonwealth, namely the supremacy of law and the subjection of the motives of self-interest and material gain to the sense of duty to the interests of the community as a whole. Curtis felt that such an educational process was not only morally necessary on the part of Britain but was a practical necessity, since the British could not expect to keep 430 million persons in subjection forever but must rather hope to educate them up to a level where they could appreciate and cherish British ideals. In one book he says: "The idea that the principle of the commonwealth implies universal suffrage betrays an ignorance of its real nature. That principle simply means that government rests on the duty of the citizens to each other, and is to be vested in those who are capable of setting public interest before their own." In another work he says: "As sure as day follows the night, the time will come when they [the Dominions] will have to assume the burden of the whole of their affairs. For men who are fit for it, self-government is a question not of privilege but rather of obligation. It is duty, not interest, which impels men to freedom, and duty, not interest, is the factor which turns the scale in human affairs." India is included in this evolutionary process for Curtis wrote: " A despotic government might long have closed India to Western ideas. But a commonwealth is a living thing. It cannot suffer any part of itself to remain inert. To live it must move, and move in every limb.... Under British rule Western ideas will continue to penetrate and disturb Oriental society, and whether the new spirit ends in anarchy or leads to the establishment of a higher order depends upon how far the millions of India can be raised to a fuller and more rational conception of the ultimate foundations upon which the duty of obedience to government rests." <br /><p>These ideas were not Curtis's own, although he was perhaps the most prolific, most eloquent, and most intense in his feelings. They were apparently shared by the whole inner circle of the Group. Dove, writing to Brand from India in 1919, is favorable to reform and says "Lionel is right. You can't dam a world current. There is, I am convinced, purpose under such things. All that we can do is to try to turn the flood into the best channel." In the same letter he said: "Unity will in the end, have to be got in some other way.... Love - call it, if you like, by a longer name - is the only thing that can make our post-war world go round, and it has, I believe, something to say here too. The future of the Empire seems to me to depend on how far we are able to recognize this. Our trouble is that we start some way behind scratch. Indians must always find it hard to understand us." And the future Lord Lothian, ordering an article on India for The Round Table from a representative in India, wrote: "We want an article in The Round Table and I suggest to you that the main conclusion which the reader should draw from it should be that the responsibility rests upon him of seeing that the Indian demands are sympathetically handled without delay after the war." <br /><p>What this Group feared was that the British Empire would fail to profit from the lessons they had discerned in the Athenian empire or in the American Revolution. Zimmern had pointed out to them the sharp contrast between the high idealism of Pericles's funeral oration and the crass tyranny of the Athenian empire. They feared that the British Empire might fall into the same difficulty and destroy British idealism and British liberties by the tyranny necessary to hold on to a reluctant Empire. And any effort to hold an empire by tyranny they regarded as doomed to failure. Britain would be destroyed, as Athens was destroyed, by powers more tyrannical than herself. And, still drawing parallels with ancient Greece, the Group feared that all culture and civilization would go down to destruction because of our inability to construct some kind of political unit larger than the national state, just as Greek culture and civilization in the fourth century B.C. went down to destruction because of the Greeks' inability to construct some kind of political unit larger than the city-state. This was the fear that had animated Rhodes, and it was the same fear that was driving the Milner Group to transform the British Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations and then place that system within a League of Nations. In 1917, Curtis wrote in his Letter to the People of India: "The world is in throes which precede creation or death. Our whole race has outgrown the merely national state, and as surely as day follows night or night the day, will pass either to a Commonwealth of Nations or else an empire of slaves. And the issue of these agonies rests with us." <br /><p>At the same time the example of the American Revolution showed the Group the dangers of trying to rule the Empire from London: to tax without representation could only lead to disruption. Yet it was no longer possible that 45 million in the United Kingdom could tax themselves for the defense of 435 million in the British Empire. What, then, was the solution? The Milner Group's efforts to answer this question led eventually, as we shall see in Chapter 8, to the present Commonwealth of Nations, but before we leave The Round Table, a few words should be said about Lord Milner's personal connection with the Round Table Group and the Group's other connections in the field of journalism and publicity. <br /><p>Milner was the creator of the Round Table Group (since this is but another name for the Kindergarten) and remained in close personal contact with it for the rest of his life. In the sketch of Milner in the Dictionary of National Biography, written by Basil Williams of the Kindergarten, we read: "He was always ready to discuss national questions on a non-party basis, joining with former members of his South African 'Kindergarten' in their 'moot,' from which originated the political review, The Round Table, and in a more heterogeneous society, the 'Coefficients,' where he discussed social and imperial problems with such curiously assorted members as L. S. Amery {Leo Amery later authored the Balfour Declaration}, H. G. Wells, (Lord) Haldane, Sir <a name="Edward Grey">Edward Grey</a>, (Sir) Michael Sadler, Bernard Shaw, J. L. Garvin, William Pember Reeves, and W. A. S Hewins." In the obituary of Hichens, as already indicated, we find in reference to the Round Table the sentence: "Often at its head sat the old masters of the Kindergarten, Lord Milner and his successor, Lord Selborne, close friends and allies of Hichens to the end." And in the obituary of Lord Milner in The Round Table for June 1925, w e find the following significant passage: <br /><p><blockquote><em> The founders and the editors of The Round Table mourn in a very special sense the death of Lord Milner. For with him they have lost not only a much beloved friend, but one whom they have always regarded as their leader. Most of them had the great good fortune to serve under him in South Africa during or after the South African war, and to learn at firsthand from him something of the great ideals which inspired him. From those days at the very beginning of this century right up to the present time, through the days of Crown Colony Government in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, of the making of the South African constitution and through all the varied and momentous history of the British Empire in the succeeding fifteen years, they have had the advantage of Lord Milner's counsel and guidance, and they are grateful to think that, though at times he disagreed with them, he never ceased to regard himself as the leader to whom, above everyone else, they looked. It is of melancholy interest to recall that Lord Milner had undertaken to come on May 13, the very day of his death, to a meeting specially to discuss with them South African problems. </em></blockquote> <br />The Round Table was published during the Second World War from Rhodes House, Oxford, which is but one more indication of the way in which the various instruments of the Milner Group are able to cooperate with one another. <br /><p>The Times and The Round Table are not the only publications which have been controlled by the Milner Group. At various times in the past, the Group has been very influential on the staffs of the Quarterly Review, The Nineteenth Century and After, The Economist and the Spectator. Anyone familiar with these publications will realize that most of them, for most of the time, have been quite secretive as to the names of the members of their staffs or even as to the names of their editors. The extent of the Milner Group's influence and the periods during which it was active cannot be examined here. The Milner Group was also very influential in an editorial fashion in regard to a series of excellent and moderately priced volumes known as The Home University Library. Any glance at the complete list of volumes in this series will reveal that a large number of the names are those of persons mentioned in this study. The influence of the Group on The Home University Library was chiefly exercised through H. A. L. <br /><p>{p. 139} The Milner Group also attempted, at the beginning at least, to use Milner's old connections with adult education and working-class schools (a connection derived from Toynbee and Samuel Barnett) to propagate its Imperial doctrines. As A. L. Smith, the Master of Balliol, put it in 1915, "We must educate our masters." ... After the war ended, the propaganda work among the British working class became less important, for various reasons, of which the chief were that working-class ears were increasingly monopolized by Labour Party speakers and that the Round Table Group were busy with other problems like the League of Nations, Ireland and the United States. <br /><p>{p. 140} THE MILNER GPOUP was out of power for a decade from 1906 to 1915. We have already indicated our grounds for believing that this condition was not regarded with distaste, since its members were engaged in important activities of their own and approved of the conduct of foreign policy (their chief field of interest) by the Liberal Party under Asquith, Grey, and Haldane. During this period came the Union of South Africa, The Morley-Minto reforms, the naval race with Germany, the military conversations with France, the agreement of 1907 with Russia, the British attitude against Germany in the Agadir crisis (a crisis to whose creation The Times had contributed no little material - in fact, a whole series of events in which the point of view of the Milner Group was carried out just as if they were in office. To be sure, in domestic matters such as the budget dispute and the ensuing House of Lords dispute, and in the question of Home Rule for Ireland, the Milner Group did not regard the Liberal achievements with complete satisfaction, but in none of these were the members of the Milner Group diehards (as members of the Cecil Bloc sometimes were). But with the outbreak of war, the Milner Group and the Cecil Bloc wanted to come to power and wanted it badly, chiefly because control of the government in wartime would make it possible to direct events toward the postwar settlement which the Group envisaged. The Group also believed that the war could be used by them to fasten on Britain the illiberal economic regulation of which they had been dreaming since Chamberlain resigned in 1903 (at least). <br /><p>The Group got to power in 1916 by a method which they repeated with the Labour Party in 1931. By a secret intrigue with a parvenu leader of the government, the Group offered to make him head of a new government if he would split his own party and become Prime Minister, supported by the Group and whatever members he could split off from his own party. The chief difference between 1916 and 1931 is that in the former year the minority that was being betrayed was the Group's own social class - in fact, the Liberal Party members of the Cecil Bloc. Another difference is that in 1916 the plot worked - the Liberal Party was split and permanently destroyed - while in 1931 the plotters broke off only a fragment of the Labour Party and damaged it only temporarily (for fourteen years). This last difference, however, was not caused by any lack of skill in carrying out the intrigue but by the sociological differences between the Liberal Party and the Labour Party in the twentieth century. The latter was riding the wave of the future, while the former was merely one of two "teams" put on the field by the same school for an intramural game, and, as such, it was bound to fuse with its temporary antagonist as soon as the future produced an extramural challenger. This strange (to an outsider) point of view will explain why Asquith had no real animosity for Bonar Law or Balfour (who really betrayed him) but devoted the rest of his life to belittling the actions of <a name="Lloyd George">Lloyd George</a>. Asquith talked later about how he was deceived (and even lied to) in December 1915, but never made any personal attack on Bonar Law, who did the prevaricating (if any). The actions of Bonar Law were acceptable in the code of British politics, a code largely constructed on the playing fields of Eton and Harrow, but Lloyd George's actions, which were considerably less deliberate and cold-blooded, were quite unforgivable, coming as they did from a parvenu who had been built up to a high place in the Liberal Party because of his undeniable personal ability, but who, nonetheless, was an outsider who had never been near the playing fields of Eton. <br /><p>In the coalition governments of May 1915 and December 1916, members of the Cecil Bloc took the more obvious positions (as befitted their seniority), while members of the Milner Group took the less conspicuous places, but by 1918 the latter group had the whole situation tied up in a neat package and held all the strings. <br /><p>In the first coalition (May 1915), Lansdowne came into the Cabinet without portfolio, Curzon as Lord Privy Seal, Bonar Law at the Colonial Office, Austen Chamberlain at the India Office, Balfour at the Admiralty, Selborne as President of the Board of Agriculture, Walter Long as President of the Local Government Board, Sir Edward Carson as Attorney General, F. E. Smith as Solicitor General, Lord Robert Cecil as Under Secretary in the Foreign Office, and Arthur Steel-Maitland as Under Secretary in the Colonial Office. Of these eleven names, at least nine were members of the Cecil Bloc, and four were close to the Milner Group (Cecil, Balfour, Steel-Maitland, and Selborne). <br /><p>In the second coalition government (December 1916), Milner was Minister vvithout Portfolio; Curzon was Lord President of the Council: Bonar Law, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Robert Finlay, ... <br /><p>{p. 148} THE EVOLUTION of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations is to a very great extent a result of the activities of the Milner Group. To be sure, the ultimate goal of the Group was quite different from the present system, since they wanted a federation of the Empire but this was a long-run goal, and en route they accepted the present system as a temporary way station. However, the strength of colonial and Dominion feeling, which made the ideal of federation admittedly remote at all times, has succeeded in making this way-station a permanent terminal and thus had eliminated, apparently forever, the hope for federation. With the exception of a few diehards (of whom Milner and Curtis were the leaders), the Group has accepted the solution of imperial cooperation and "parallelism" as an alternative to federation. This was definitely stated in The Round Table of December 1920. In that issue the Group adopted the path of cooperation as its future policy and added: "Its [The Round Table's] promoters in this country feel bound to state that all the experience of the war and of the peace has not shaken in the least the fundamental conviction with which they commenced the publication of this Review.... The Round Table has never expressed an opinion as to the form which this constitutional organization would take, nor as to the time when it should be undertaken. But it has never disguised its conviction that a cooperate system would eventually break down." In September 1935, in a review of its first twenty-five years, the journal stated: "Since the war, therefore, though it has never abandoned its view that the only final basis for freedom and enduring peace is the organic union of nations in a commonwealth embracing the whole world or, in the first instance, a lesser part of it, The Round Table has been a consistent supporter ... of the principles upon which the British Empire now rests, as set forth in the Balfour Memorandum of 1926. ... It has felt that only by trying the cooperation method to the utmost and realizing its limitations in practice would nations within or without the British Empire be brought to face the necessity for organic union." <br /><p>There apparently exists within the Milner Group a myth to the effect that they invented the expression "Commonwealth of Nations," that it was derived from Zimmern's book The Greek Commonwealth (published in 1911) and first appeared in public in the title of Curtis's book in 1916. This is not quite accurate, for the older imperialists of the Cecil Bloc had used the term "commonwealth" in reference to the British Empire on various occasions as early as 1884. In that year, in a speech at Adelaide, Australia, Lord Rosebery referred to the possibility of New Zealand seceding from the Empire and added: "God forbid. There is no need for any nation, however great, leaving the Empire, because the Empire is a Commonwealth of Nations." <br /><p>If the Milner Group did not invent the term, they gave it a very definite and special meaning, based on Zimmern's book, and they popularized the use of the expression. According to Zimmern, the expression "commonwealth" referred to a community based on freedom and the rule of law, in distinction to a government based on authority or even arbitrary tyranny. The distinction was worked out in Zimmern's book in the contrast between Athens, as described in Pericles's funeral oration, and Sparta (or the actual conduct of the Athenian empire). As applied to the modern world, the contrast was between the British government, as described by Dicey, and the despotisms of Philip II, Wilhelm II, and <a name="Nicholas II">Nicholas II</a>. In this sense of the word, commonwealth was not originally an alternative to federation, as it later became, since it referred to the moral qualities of government, and these could exist within either a federated or a nonfederated Empire. <br /><p>The expression "British Commonwealth of Nations" was, then, not invented by the Group but was given a very special meaning and was propagated in this sense until it finally became common usage. The first step in this direction was taken on 15 May 1917, when General Smuts, at a banquet in his honor in the Houses of Parliament, used the expression. This banquet was apparently arranged by the Milner Group, and Lord Milner sat at Smuts's right hand during the speech. The speech itself was printed and given the widest publicity, being disseminated throughout Great Britain, the Commonwealth, the United States, and the rest of the world. In retrospect, some persons have believed that Smuts was rejecting the meaning of the expression as used by the Milner Group, because he did reject the project for imperial federation in this speech. This, however, is a mistake, for, as we have said, the expression "commonwealth' at that time had a meaning which could include either federation or cooperation among the members of the British imperial system. The antithesis in meaning between federation and commonwealth is a later development which took place outside the Group. To this day, men like Curtis, Amery, and Grigg still use the term "commonwealth" as applied to a federated Empire, and they always define the word "commonwealth" as "a government of liberty under the law" and not as an arrangement of independent but cooperating states. <br /><p>The development of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations and the role which the Milner Group played in this development cannot be understood by anyone who feels that federation and commonwealth were mutually exclusive ideas. <br /><p>In fact, there were not two ideas, but three, and they were not regarded by the Group as substitutes for each other but as supplements to each other. These three ideas were: (1) the creation of a common ideology and world outlook among the peoples of the United Kingdom, the Empire, and the United States; (2) the creation of instruments and practices of cooperation among these various communities in order that they might pursue parallel policies; and (3) the creation of a federation on an imperial, Anglo-American, or world basis. The Milner Group regarded these as supplementary to one another and worked vigorously for all of them, without believing that they were mutually exclusive alternatives. They always realized, even the most fanatical of them, that federation, even of the Empire only, was very remote. They always, in this connection, used such expressions as "not in our lifetime" or "not in the present century." They always insisted that the basic unity of any system must rest on common ideology, and they worked in this direction through the Rhodes Scholarships, the Round Table Groups, and the Institutes of International Affairs, even when they were most ardently seeking to create organized constitutional relationships. And in these constitutional relationships they worked equally energetically and simultaneously for imperial federation and for such instruments of cooperation as conferences of Prime Ministers of Dominions. The idea, which seems to have gained currency, that the Round Table Group was solely committed to federation and that the failure of this project marked the defeat and eclipse of the Group is erroneous. On the contrary, by the 1930s, the Round Table Group was working so strongly for a common ideology and for institutions of cooperation that many believers in federation regarded them as defeatist. For this reason, some believers in federation organized a new movement called the "World Commonwealth Movement." Evidence of this movement is an article by Lord Davies in The Nineteenth Century and After for January 1935, called "Round Table or World Commonwealth?" This new movement was critical of the foreign policy rather than the imperial policy of the Round Table Group, especially its policy of appeasement toward Germany and of weakening the League of Nations, and its belief that Britain could find security in isolation from the Continent and a balance-of-power policy supported by the United Kingdom, the Dominions, and the United States. <br />The effort of the Round Table Group to create a common ideology to unite the supporters of the British wav of life appears in every aspect of their work. It was derived from Rhodes and Milner and found its most perfect manifestation in the Rhodes Scholarships. As a result of these and of the Milner Group's control of so much of Oxford, Oxford tended to become an international university. Here the Milner Group had to tread a narrow path between the necessity of training non-English (including Americans and Indians) in the English way of life and the possibility of submerging that way of life completely (at Oxford, at least) by admitting too many non-English to its cloistered halls. On the whole, this path was followed with considerable success, as will be realized by anyone who has had any experience with Rhodes Scholars. To be sure, the visitors from across the seas picked up the social customs of the English somewhat more readily than they did the English ideas of playing the game or the English ideas of politics, but, on the whole, the experiment of Rhodes, Milner, and Lothian cannot be called a failure. It was surely a greater success in the United States than it was in the Dominions or in India, for in the last, at least, the English idea of liberty was assimilated much more completely than the idea of loyalty to England. <br /><p>The efforts of the Milner Group to encourage federation of the Empire have already been indicated. They failed and, indeed, were bound to fail, as most members of the Group soon realized. As early as 1903, John Buchan and Joseph Chamberlain had given up the attempt. By 1917 even Curtis had accepted the idea that federation was a very remote possibility, although in his case, at least, it remained as the beckoning will-o-the-wisp by which all lesser goals were measured and found vaguely dissatisfying. <br /><p>The third string to the bow - imperial cooperation - remained. It became in time the chief concern of the Group. The story of these efforts is a familiar one, and no attempt will be made here to repeat it. We are concerned only with the role played by the Milner Group in these efforts. In general this role was very large, if not decisive. <br /><p>The proposals for imperial cooperation had as their basic principle the assumption that communities which had a common ideology could pursue parallel courses toward the same goal merely by consultation among their leaders. For a long time, the Milner Group did not see that the greater the degree of success obtained by this method, the more remote was the possibility that federation could ever be attained. It is very likely that the Group was misled in this by the fact that they were for many years extremely fortunate in keeping members of the Group in positions of power and influence in the Donlinions. As long as <br />{p. 170} ... the Milner Group exercised a certain amount of influence in regard to Palestine because of its general power in the councils of the Conservative Party and because Palestine was administered through the Colonial Office, where the Milner Group's influence was considerable. <br /><p>The general attitude of the Milner Group was neither pro-Arab nor pro-Zionist, although tending, if at all, toward the latter rather than the former. The Group were never anti-Semitic, and not a shred of evidence in this direction has been found. In fact, they were very sympathetic to the Jews and to their legitimate aspirations to overcome their fate, but this feeling, it must be confessed, was rather general and remote, and they did not, in their personal lives, have much real contact with Jews or any real appreciation of the finer qualities of those people. Their feeling against anti-Semitism was, on the whole, remote and academic. On the other hand, as with most upper-class English, their feeling for the Arabs was somewhat more personal. Many members of the Group had been in Arab countries, found their personal relationships with the Arabs enjoyable, and were attracted to them. However, this attraction of the Arabs never inclined the Milner Group toward that pro-Arab romanticism that was to be found in people like W. S. Blunt or T. E. Lawrence. The reluctance of the Milner Group to push the Zionist cause in Palestine was based on more academic considerations, chiefly two in number: (1) the feeling that it would not be fair to allow the bustling minority of Zionists to come into Palestine and drive the Arabs either out or into an inferior economic and social position; and (2) the feeling that to do this would have the effect of alienating the Arabs from Western, and especially British, culture, and that this would be especially likely to occur if the Jews obtained control of the Mediterranean coast from Egypt to Syria. Strangely enough, there is little evidence that the Milner Group was activated by strategic or economic considerations at all. Thus the widely disseminated charges that Britain failed to support Zionism in Palestine because of anti-Semitism or strategic and economic considerations is not supported by any evidence found within the Milner Group. This may be true of other sections of British public opinion, and certainly is true of the British Labour Party, where the existence of anti-Semitism as an influence seems clearly established. <br /><p>In Palestine, as in India and probably in Ireland, the policy of the Milner Group seems to have been motivated by good intentions which alienated the contending parties, encouraged extremism, and weakened British influence with both. In the long run, this policy was pro-Arab, just as in India it was pro-Moslem, and in both cases it served to encourage an uncompromising obstructionism which could have been avoided if Britain had merely applied the principles to which she stood committed. <br /><p>The attitude of the Milner Group toward the Arabs and Jews can be seen from some quotations from members of the Group. At the Peace Conference of 1919, discussing the relative merits of the Jews and Arabs, Smuts said: "They haven't the Arabs' attractive manners. They do not warm the heart by graceful subjection. They make demands. They are a bitter, recalcitrant little people, and, like the Boers, impatient of leadership and ruinously quarrelsome among themselves. They see God in the shape of an Oriental potentate." A few years later, John Dove, in a letter to Brand, asked himself why there was so much pro-Arab feeling among the British, especially "the public school caste," and attributed it to the Arabs' good manners, derived from desert life, and their love for sports, especially riding and shooting, both close to the heart of the public-school boy. A little later, in another letter, also written from Palestine, Dove declared that the whole Arab world should be in one state and it must have Syria and Palestine for its front door, not be like South Africa, with Delagoa Bay in other hands. The Arab world, he explained, needs this western door because we are trying to westernize the Arabs, and without it they would be driven to the east and to India, which they hate. He concluded: <br /><p><blockquote><em> If the Arab belongs to the Mediterranean, as T. E. Lawrence insists, we should do nothing to stop him getting back to it. Why our own nostrum for the ills of mankind everywhere is Western Civilization, and, if it is a sound one, what would be the good of forcing a people who want direct contact with us to slink in and out of their country by a back door which, like the Persian Gulf, opens only on the East? It would certainly check development, if it did not actually warp it. I suggest then that partition should not be permanent, but this does not mean that a stage of friendly tutelage is necessarily a bad thing for the Arabs. On the contrary, advanced peoples can give so much to stimulate backward ones if they do it with judgment and sympathy. Above all, it must not be the kind of help which kills individuality .... Personally, I don't see the slightest harm in Jews coming to Palestine under reasonable conditions. They are the Arabs' cousins as much as the Phoenicians, and if Zionism brings capital and labour which will enable industries to start, it will add to the strength of the larger unit which some day is going to include Palestine. But they must be content to be part of such a potential unit. They need have no fear of absorption, for they have everything to gain from an Arab Federation. It would mean a far larger field for their activities. </em></blockquote> <br />{p. 172} The attitude of the Milner Group toward the specific problem of Zionism was expressed in explicit terms by Lord Milner himself in a speech in the House of Lords on 27 June 1923. After expressing his wholehearted agreement with the policy of the British government as revealed in its actions and in its statements, like the Balfour Declaration and the White Paper of 1922 (Cmd. 1700), he added: <br /><p><blockquote><em> I am not speaking of the policy which is advocated by the extreme Zionists, which is a totally different thing.... I believe that we have only to go on steadily with the policy of the <a name=”Balfour Declaration”> Balfour Declaration</a> as we have ourselves interpreted it in order to see great material progress in Palestine and a gradual subsistence of the present [Arab] agitation the force of which it would be foolish to deny, but which I believe to be largely due to artificial stimulus and, to a very great extent, to be excited from without. The symptoms of any real and general dissatisfaction among the mass of the Arab population with the conditions under which they live, I think it would be very difficult to discover.... There is plenty of room in that country for a considerable immigrant population without injuring in any way the resident Arab population, and, indeed, in many ways it would tend to their extreme benefit. ... There are about 700,000 people in Palestine, and there is room for several millions. ... I am and always have been a strong supporter of the pro-Arab policy which was first advocated in this country in the course of the war. I believe in the independence of the Arab countries, which they owe to us and which they can only maintain with our help. I look forward to an Arab Federation. ... I am convinced that the Arab will make a great mistake ... in claiming Palestine as a part of the Arab Federation in the same sense as are the other countries of the Near East which are mainly inhabited by Arabs. </em></blockquote> <br />He then went on to say that he felt that Palestine would require a permanent mandate and under that condition could become a National Home for the Jews, could take as many Jewish immigrants as the country could economically support, but "must never become a Jewish state." <br /><p>This was the point of view of the Milner Group, and it remained the point of view of the British government until 1939. Like the Milner Group's point of view on other issues, it was essentially fair, compromising, and well-intentioned. It broke down in Palestine because of the obstructionism of the Arabs; the intention of the Zionists to have political control of their National Home, if they got one; the pressure on both Jews and Arabs from the world depression after 1929, and the need for a refuge from Hitler for European Jews after 1933. The Milner Group did not approve of the efforts of the Labour government in 1929-1931 to curtail Zionist rights in Palestine. They protested vigorously against the famous White Paper of 1930 (Cmd. 3692), which was regarded as anti-Zionist. Baldwin, Austen Chamberlain, and Leopold Amery protested against the document in a letter to The Times on 30 October 1930. Smuts sent a telegram of protest to the Prime Minister, and Sir John Simon declared it a violation of the mandate in a letter to The Times. Seven years later, the report of the Peel Commission said that the White Paper "betrayed a marked insensitiveness to Jewish feelings." As a result of this pressure, Ramsay MacDonald wrote a letter to Dr. Weizmann, interpreting the document in a more moderate fashion. <br /><p>As might be expected, in view of the position of Reginald Coupland on the Peel Commission, the report of that Commission met with a most enthusiastic reception from the Milner Group. This report was a scholarly study of conditions in Palestine, of a type usually found in any document with which the Milner Group had direct contact. For the first time in any government document, the aspirations of Jews and Arabs in Palestine were declared to be irreconcilable and the existing mandate unworkable. Accordingly, the report recommended the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and a neutral enclave containing the Holy Places. This suggestion was accepted by the British government in a White Paper (Cmd. 5513) issued through <a name="Ormsby-Gore">Ormsby-Gore</a>. He also defended it before the Permanent Mandates Commission of the League of Nations. In the House of Lords it was defended by Lord Lugard, but recently retired as the British member of the Permanent Mandates Commission. It was also supported by Lord Dufferin and Archbishop Lang. In the House of Commons the motion to approve the government's policy as outlined in the White Paper Cmd. 5513 was introduced by Ormsby-Gore. The first speech in support of the motion, which was passed without a division, was from Leopold Amery. <br /><p>Amery's speech in support of this motion is extremely interesting and is actually an evolution, under the pressure of hard facts, from the point of view described by Lord Milner in 1923. Amery said: "However much we may regret it, we have lost the situation in Palestine, as we lost it in Ireland, through a lack of wholehearted faith in ourselves and through the constitutional inability of the individual Briton, and indeed of the country as a whole, not to see the other fellow's point of view and to be influenced by it, even to the detriment of any consistent policy." According to Amery, the idea of partition occurred to the Peel Commission only after it had left Palestine and the report was already written. Thus the commission was unable to hear any direct evidence on this question or make any examination of how partition should be carried out in detail. He said: <br /><p><blockquote><em> Of the 396 pages of the Report almost the whole of the first 368 pages, including the whole of chapters 7 to 19 represent an earlier Report of an entirely different character. That earlier Report envisaged the continuation of the mandate in its present form. ... </em></blockquote> <br />{p. 182} <a name=”Royal Institute of International Affairs”>THE ROYAL INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (RIIA)</a> is nothing but the Milner Group "writ large." It was founded by the Group, has been consistently controlled by the Group, and to this day is the Milner Group in its widest aspect. It is the legitimate child of the Round Table organization, just as the latter was the legitimate child of the "Closer Union" movement organized in South Africa in 1907. All three of these organizations were formed by the same small group of persons, all three received their initial financial backing from Sir Abe Bailey, and all three used the same methods for working out and propagating their ideas (the so-called Round Table method of discussion groups plus a ]ournal). This similarity is not an accident. The new organization was intended to be a wider aspect of the Milner Group, the plan being to influence the leaders of thought through The Round Table and to influence a wider group through the RIIA. <br /><p>The real founder of the Institute was Lionel Curtis, although this fact was concealed for many years and he was presented to the public as merely one among a number of founders. In more recent years however, the fact that Curtis was the real founder of the Institute has been publicly stated by members of the Institute and by the Institute Itself on many occasions, and never denied. One example will suffice. In the Annual Report of the Institute for 1942-1943 we read the following sentence: "When the Institute was founded through the inspiration of Mr. Lionel Curtis during the Peace Conference of Paris in 1919 those associated with him in laying the foundations were a group of comparatively young men and women." <br /><p>The Institute was organized at a joint conference of British and American experts at the Hotel Majestic on 30 May l919. At the suggestion of Lord Robert Cecil, the chair was given to General Tasker Bliss of the American delegation. We have already indicated that the experts of the British delegation at the Peace Conference were almost exclusively from the Milner Group and Cecil Bloc. The American group of experts, "the Inquiry," was manned almost as completely by persons from institutions (including universities) dominated by J. P. Morgan and Company. This was not an accident. Moreover, the Milner Group has always had very close relationships with the associates of J. P. Morgan and with the various branches of the Carnegie Trust. These relationships, which are merely examples of the closely knit ramifications of international financial capitalism, were probably based on the financial holdings controlled by the Milner Group through the Rhodes Trust. The term "international financier" can be applied with full justice to several members of the Milner Group inner circle, such as Brand, Hichens, and above all, Milner himself. <br /><p>At the meeting at the Hotel Majestic, the British group included Lionel Curtis, Philip Kerr, Lord Robert Cecil, Lord Eustace Percy, Sir Eyre Crowe, Sir Cecil Hurst, J. W. Headlam-Morley, Geoffrey Dawson, Harold Temperley, and G. M. Gathorne-Hardy. It was decided to found a permanent organization for the study of international affairs and to begin by writing a history of the Peace Conference. A committee was set up to supervise the writing of this work. It had Lord Meston as chairman, Lionel Curtis as secretary, and was financed by a gift of £2000 from Thomas W. Lamont of J. P. Morgan and Company. This group picked Harold Temperley as editor of the work. It appeared in six large volumes in the years 1920-1924, under the auspices of the RIIA. <br /><p>The British organization was set up by a committee of which Lord Robert Cecil was chairman, Lionel Curtis was honorary secretary and the following were members: Lord Eustace Percy, J. A. C. (later Sir John) Tilley, Philip Noel-Baker, Clement Jones, Harold Temperley, A. L. Smith (classmate of Milner and Master of Balliol), George W. Prothero, and Geoffrey Dawson. This group drew up a constitution and made a list of prospective members. Lionel Curtis and GathorneHardy drew up the by-laws. <br /><p>The above description is based on the official history of the RIIA published by the Institute itself in 1937 and written by Stephen King-Hall. It does not agree in its details (committees and names) with information from other sources, equally authoritative, such as the journal of the Institute or the preface to Temperley's H~story of the Peace Confererlce. The latter, for example, says that the members were chosen by a committee consisting of Lord Robert Cecil, Sir Valentine Chirol, and Sir Cecil Hurst. As a matter of fact, all of these differing accounts are correct, for the Institute was formed in such an informal fashion, as among friends, that membership on committees and lines of authority between committees were not very important. As an example, Mr. King-Hall says that he was invited to join the Institute in l919 by Philip Kerr (Lord Lothian), although this name is not to be found <br /><p>{p. 192} Naturally, the Milner Group did not monopolize the membership or the official positions in these new institutes any more than they did in London, for this would have weakened the chief aim of the Group in setting them up, namely to extend their influence to wider areas. <br /><p>Closely associated with the various Institutes of International Affairs were the various branches of the Institute of Pacific Relations. This was originally founded at Atlantic City in September 1924 as a private organization to study the problems of the Pacific Basin. It has representatives from eight countries with interests in the area. The representatives from the United Kingdom and the three British Dominions were closely associated with the Milner Group. Originally each country had its national unit, but by 1939, in the four British areas, the local Institute of Pacific Relations had merged with the local Institute of International Affairs. Even before this, the two Institutes in each country had practically interchangeable officers, dominated by the Milner Group. In the United States, the Institute of Pacific Relations never merged with the Council on Foreign Relations, but the influence of the associates of J. P. Morgan and other international bankers remained strong on both. The chief figure in the Institute of Pacific Relations of the United States was, for many years, Jerome D. Greene, Boston banker close to both Rockefeller and Morgan and for many years secretary to Harvard University. <br /><p>The Institutes of Pacific Relations held joint meetings, similar to those of the unofficial conferences on British Commonwealth relations and with a similar group of delegates from the British member organizations. These meetings met every two years at first, beginning at Honolulu in 1925 and then assembling at Honolulu again (1927), at Kyoto (1929), at Shanghai (1931), at Banff (1933), and at Yosemite Park (1936). F. W. Eggleston, of Australia and the Milner Group presided over most of the early meetings. Between meetings, the central organization, set up in 1927, was the Pacific Council, a self-perpetuating body. In 1930, at least five of its seven members were from the Milner Group, as can be seen from the following list: THE PACIFIC COUNCIL, 193O Jerome D. Greene of the United States F. W. Eggleston of Australia N. W. Rowell of Canada D. Z. T. Yui of China Lionel Curtis of the United Kingdom I. Nitobe of Japan Sir James Allen of New Zealand <br /><p>The close relationships among all these organizations can be seen from a tour of inspection which Lionel Curtis and Ivison S. Macadam (secretary of Chatham House, in succession to F. B. Bourdillon, since 1929) made in 1938. They not only visited the Institutes of International Affairs of Australia, New Zealand, and Canada but attended the Princeton meeting of the Pacific Council of the IPR. Then they separated, Curtis going to New York to address the dinner of the Council on Foreign Relations and visit the Carnegie Foundation, while Macadam went to Washington to visit the Carnegie Endowment and the <a name="Brookings Institution">Brookings Institution</a>. <br /><p>Through the League of Nations, where the influence of the Milner Group was very great, the RIIA was able to extend its intellectual influence into countries outside the Commonwealth. This was done, for example, through the Intellectual Cooperation Organization of the League of Nations. This Organization consisted of two chief parts: (a) The International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation, an advisory body, and (b) The International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation, an executive organ of the Committee, with headquarters in Paris. The International Committee had about twenty members from various countries, Gilbert Murray was its chief founder and was chairman from 1928 to its disbandment in 1945. The International Institute was established by the French government and handed over to the League of Nations (1926). Its director was always a Frenchman, but its deputy director and guiding spirit was Alfred Zimmern from 1926 to 1930. It also had a board of directors of six persons; Gilbert Murray was one of these from 1926. <br /><p.>It is interesting to note that from 1931 to 1939 the Indian representative on the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation was Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. In 1931 he was George V Professor of Philosophy at Calcutta University. His subsequent career is interesting. He was knighted in 1931, became Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at Oxford in 1936, and became a Fellow of All Souls in 1944. <br /><p>Beginning in 1928 at Berlin, Professor Zimmern organized annual round-table discussion meetings under the auspices of the International Institute of Intellectual Cooperation. These were called the International Studies Conferences and devoted themselves to an effort to obtain different national points of view on international problems. The members of the Studies Conferences were twenty-five organizations. Twenty of these were Coordinating Committees created for the purpose in twenty different countries. The other five were the following international organizations: The Academy of International Law at The Hague, The European Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the Geneva School of International Studies; the Graduate Institute of International Studies at Geneva; the Institute of Pacific <br />{p. 194} Relations. <br /><p>{p. 234} They did not see that these four had been able to save themselves in 1918 by jettisoning the Kaiser, who had become a liability. They did not see that these four were left in their positions of influence, with their power practically intact - indeed, in many ways with their power greater than ever, since the new "democratic" politicians like Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske were much more subservient to the four groups than the old imperial authorities had ever been. General Groner gave orders to Ebert over his direct telephone line from Kassel in a tone and with a directness that he would never have used to an imperial chancellor. In a word, there was no revolution in Germany in 1918. The Milner Group did not see this, because they did not want to see it. Not that they were not warned. Brigadier General John H. Morgan, who was almost a member of the Group and who was on the Interallied Military Commission of Control in Germany in 1919-1923, persistently warned the government and the Group of the continued existence and growing power of the German Officers' Corps and of the unreformed character of the German people. As a graduate of Balliol and the University of Berlin (1897-1905), a leader-writer on The Manchester Guardian (1904-1905), a Liberal candidate for Parliament with Amery in 1910, an assistant adjutant general with the military section of the British delegation to the Peace Conference of 1919, the British member on the Prisoners of War Commission (1919), legal editor of The Encyclopedia Britannica (14th edition), contributor to The Times, reader in constitutional law to the Inns of Court (1926-1936), Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of London, Rhodes Lecturer at London (1927-1932), counsel to the Indian Chamber of Princes (1934-1937), counsel to the Indian State of Gwalior, Tagore Professor at Calcutta (1939) - as all of these things, and thus close to many members of the Group, General Morgan issued warnings about Germany that should have been heeded by the Group. They were not. No more attention was paid to them than was paid to the somewhat similar warnings coming from Professor Zimmern. And the general, with less courage than the professor, or perhaps with more of that peculiar group loyalty which pervades his social class in England, kept his warnings secret and private for years. Only in October 1924 did he come out in public with an article in the Quarterly Review on the subject, and only in 1945 did he find a wider platform in a published book (Assize of Arms), but in neither did he name the persons who were suppressing the warnings in his official reports from the Military Commission. <br /><p>In a similar fashion, the Milner Group knew that the industrialists, the Junkers, the police, and the judges were cooperating with the reactionaries to suppress all democratic and enlightened elements in Germany and to help all the forces of "despotism" and "sin" (to use Curtis's words). The Group refused to recognize these facts. For this, there were two reasons. One, for which Brand was chiefly responsible, was based on certain economic assumptions. Among these, the chief was the belief that "disorder" and social unrest could be avoided only if prosperity were restored to Germany as soon as possible. By "disorder," Brand meant such activities as were associated with Trotsky in Russia, Bela Kun in Hungary, and the Spartacists or <a name="Kurt Eisner">Kurt Eisner</a> in Germany. To Brand, as an orthodox international banker, prosperity could be obtained only by an economic system under the control of the old established industrialists and bankers. This is perfectly clear from Brand's articles in The Round Table, reprinted in his book, War and National Finance (1921). Moreover, Brand felt confident that the old economic groups could reestablish prosperity quickly only if they were given concessions in respect to Germany's international financial position by lightening the weight of reparations on Germany and by advancing credit to Germany, chiefly from the United States. This point of view was not Brand's alone. It dominated the minds of all international bankers from Thomas Lamont to Montague Norman and from 1918 to at least 1931. The importance of Brand, from out point of view, lies in the fact that, as "the economic expert" of the Milner Group and one of the leaders of the Group, he brought this point of view into the Group and was able to direct the great influence of the Group in this direction. <br /><p>Blindness to the real situation in Germany was also encouraged from another point of view. This was associated with Philip Kerr. Roughly, this point of view advocated a British foreign policy based on the old balance-of-power system. Under that old system, which Britain had followed since 1500, Britain should support the second strongest power on the Continent against the strongest power, to prevent the latter from obtaining supremacy on the Continent. For one brief moment in 1918, the Group toyed with the idea of abandoning this traditional policy; for one brief moment they felt that if Europe were given self-determination and parliamentary governments, Britain could permit some kind of federated or at least cooperative Europe without danger to Britain. The moment soon passed. The League of Nations, which had been regarded by the Group as the seed whence a united Europe might grow, became nothing more than a propaganda machine, as soon as the Group resumed its belief in the balance of power. Curtis, who in December 1918 wrote in The Round Table: "That the balance of power has outlived its time by a century and that the world has remained a prey to wars, was due to the unnatural alienation of the British and American Commonwealths" - Curtis, who wrote this in 1918, four years later (9 January 1923) vigorously defended the idea of balance of power against the criticism of Professor A. F. Pollard at a meeting of the RIIA. <br /><p>This change in point of view was based on several factors. In the first place, the Group, by their practical experience at Paris in 1919, found that it was not possible to apply either self-determination or the parliamentary form of government to Europe. As a result of this experience, they listened with more respect to the Cecil Bloc, which always insisted that these, especially the latter, were intimately associated with the British outlook, way of life, and social traditions, and were not articles of export. This issue was always the chief bone of contention between the Group and the Bloc in regard to India. In India, where their own influence as pedagogues was important, the Group did not accept the Bloc's arguments completely, but in Europe, where the Group's influence was remote and indirect, the Group was more receptive. <br /><p>In the second place, the Group at Paris became alienated from the French because of the latter's insistence on force as the chief basis of social and political life, especially the French insistence on a permanent mobilization of force to keep Germany down and on an international police force with autonomous power as a part of the League of Nations. The Group, although they frequently quoted Admiral Mahan's kind words about force in social life, did not really like force and shrank from its use, believing, as might be expected from their Christian background, that force could not avail against moral issues, that force corrupts those who use it, and that the real basis of social and political life was custom and tradition. At Paris the Group found that they were living in a different world from the French. They suddenly saw not only that they did not have the same outlook as their former allies, but that these allies embraced the "despotic" and "militaristic" outlook against which the late war had been waged. At once, the Group began to think that the influence which they had been mobilizing against Prussian despotism since 1907 could best be mobilized, now that Prussianism was dead, against French militarism and Bolshevism. And what better ally against these two enemies in the West and the East than the newly baptized Germany? Thus, almost without realizing it, the Group fell back into the old balance-of-power pattern. Their aim became the double one of keeping Germany in the fold of redeemed sinners by concessions, and of using this revived and purified Germany against Russia and France. <br /><p>In the third place, the Group in 1918 had been willing to toy with the idea of an integrated Europe because, in 1918, they believed that a permanent system of cooperation between Britain and the United States was a possible outcome of the war. This was the lifelong dream of Rhodes, of Milner, of Lothian, of Curtis. For that they would have sacrificed anything within reason. When it became clear in 1920 that the United States had no intention of underwriting Britain and instead would revert to her prewar isolationism, the bitterness of disappointment in the Milner Group were beyond bounds. Forever after, they blamed the evils of Europe, the double-dealing of British policy, and the whole train of errors from 1919 to 1940 on the American reversion to isolationism. It should be clearly understood that by American reversion to isolationism the Milner Group did not mean the American rejection of the League of Nations. Frequently they said that they did mean this, that the disaster of 1939-1940 became inevitable when the Senate rejected the League of Nations in 1920. This is completely untrue, both as a statement of historical fact and as a statement of the Group's attitude toward that rejection at the time. As we shall see in a moment, the Group approved of the Senate's rejection of the League of Nations, because the reasons for that rejection agreed completely with the Group's own opinion about the League. The only change in the Group's opinion, as a result of the Senate's rejection of the League, occurred in respect to the Group's opinion regarding the League itself. Previously they had disliked the League; now they hated it - except as a propaganda agency. The proofs of these statements will appear in a moment. <br /><p>The change in the Group's attitude toward Germany began even before the war ended. We have indicated how the Group rallied to give a public testimonial of faith in Lord Milner in October 1918, when he became the target of public criticism because of what was regarded by the public as a conciliatory speech toward Germany. The Group objected violently to the anti-German tone in which Lloyd George conducted his electoral campaign in the "khaki election-' of December 1918. The Round Table in March 1919 spoke of Lloyd George and "the odious character of his election campaign." Zimmern, after a devastating criticism of Lloyd George's conduct in the election, wrote: "He erred, not, like the English people, out of ignorance but deliberately, out of cowardice and lack of faith." In the preface to the same volume (Europe in Convalescence) he wrote: "Since December, 1918, when we elected a Parliament pledged to violate a solemn agreement made but five weeks earlier, we stand shamed, dishonoured, and, above all, distrusted before mankind." The agreement to which <a name="Zimmern">Zimmern</a> referred was the so-called Pre-Armistice Agreement of 5 November 1918, made with the Germans, by which, if they accepted an armistice, the Allies agreed to make peace on the basis of the Fourteen Points. It was the thesis of the Milner Group that the election of 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles as finally signed violated this Pre-Armistice Agreement. As a result, the Group at once embarked on its <br />{p. 238} campaign for revision of the treaty, a campaign whose first aim, apparently, was to create a guilty conscience in regard to the treaty in Britain and the United States. Zimmern's book, Brand's book of the previous year, and all the articles of The Round Table were but ammunition in this campaign. However, Zimmern had no illusions about the Germans, and his attack on the treaty was based solely on the need to redeem British honor. As soon as it became clear to him that the Group was going beyond this motive and was trying to give concessions to the Germans without any attempt to purge Germany of its vicious elements and without any guarantee that those concessions would not be used against everything the Group held dear, he left the inner circle of the Group and moved to the second circle. He was not convinced that Germany could be redeemed by concessions made blindly to Germany as a whole, or that Germany should be built up against France and Russia. He made his position clear in a brilliant and courageous speech at Oxford in May 1925, a speech in which he denounced the steady sabotage of the League of Nations. It is not an accident that the most intelligent member of the Group was the first member to break publicly with the policy of appeasement. <br /><p>The Milner Group thus regarded the Treaty of Versailles as too severe, as purely temporary, and as subject to revision almost at once. When The Round Table examined the treaty in its issue of June 1919, it said, in substance: "The punishment of Germany was just, for no one can believe in any sudden change of heart in that country, but the treaty is too severe. The spirit of the Pre-Armistice Commitments was violated, and, in detail after detail, Germany was treated unjustly, although there is broad justice in the settlement as a whole. Specifically the reparations are too severe, and Germany's neighbors should have been forced to disarm also, as promised in Wilson's Fourth Point. No demand should have been made for William II as a war criminal. If he is a menace, he should be put on an island without trial, like Napoleon. Our policy must be magnanimous, for our war was with the German government, not with the German people." Even earlier, in December 1918, The Round Table said: "It would seem desirable that the treaties should not be long term, still less perpetual, instruments. Perpetual treaties are indeed a lien upon national sovereignty and a standing contradiction of the principle of the democratic control of foreign policy. ... It would establish a salutory precedent if the network of treaties signed as a result of the war were valid for a period of ten years only." In March 1920, The Round Table said: "Like the Peace Conference, the Covenant of the League of Nations aimed too high and too far. Six months ago we looked to it to furnish the means for peaceful revision of the terms of the peace, where revision might be required. Now we have to realize that national sentiment sets closer limits to international action than we were willing then to recognize." The same article then goes on to speak of the rejection of the treaty by the United States Senate. It defends this action and criticizes Wilson severely, saying: "The truth of the matter is that the American Senate has expressed the real sentiment of all nations with hard-headed truthfulness. ... The Senate has put into words what has already been demonstrated in Europe by the logic of events - namely that the Peace of Versailles attempted too much, and the Covenant which guarantees it implies a capacity for united action between the Allies which the facts do not warrant. The whole Treaty was, in fact, framed to meet the same impractical desire which we have already noted in the reparation terms - the desire to mete out ideal justice and to build an ideal world." <br />Nowhere is the whole point of view of the Milner Group better stated than in a speech of General Smuts to the South African Luncheon Club in London, 23 October 1923. After violent criticism of the reparations as too large and an attack on the French efforts to enforce these clauses, he called for a meeting "of principals" to settle the problem. He then pointed out that a continuation of existing methods would lead to the danger of German disintegration, "a first-class and irreparable disaster. ... It would mean immediate economic chaos, and it would open up the possibility of future political dangers to which I need not here refer. Germany is both economically and politically necessary to Central Europe." He advocated applying to Germany "the benevolent policy which this country adopted toward France after the Napoleonic War. ... And if, as I hope she will do, Germany makes a last appeal ... I trust this great Empire will not hesitate for a moment to respond to that appeal and to use all its diplomatic power and influence to support her, and to prevent a calamity which would be infinitely more dangerous to Europe and the world than was the downfall of Russia six or seven years ago." Having thus lined Britain up in diplomatic opposition to France, Smuts continued with advice against applying generosity to the latter country on the question of French war debts, warning that this would only encourage "French militarism." <br /><blockquote><em> Do not let us from mistaken motives of generosity lend our aid to the further militarization of the European continent. People here are already beginning to be seriously alarmed about French armaments on land and in the air. In addition to these armaments, the French government have also lent large sums to the smaller European States around Germany, mainly with a view to feeding their ravenous military appetites. There is a serious danger lest a policy of excessive generosity on our part, or on the part of America, may simply have the effect of enabling France still more effectively to subsidize and foster militarism on the Continent. ... If things continue on the present lines, this country may soon have to start rearming herself in sheer self-defence. </em></blockquote> <br />{p. 240} This speech of Smuts covers so adequately the point of view of the Milner Group in the early period of appeasement that no further quotations are necessary. No real change occurred in the point of view of the Group from 1920 to 1938, not even as a result of the death of democratic hopes in Germany at the hands of the Nazis. From Smuts's speech of October 1923 before the South African Luncheon Club to Smuts's speech of November 1934 before the RIIA, much water flowed in the river of international affairs, but the ideas of the Milner Group remained rigid and, it may be added, erroneous. Just as the speech of 1923 may be taken as the culmination of the revisionist sentiment of the Group in the first five years of peace, so the speech of 1934 may be taken as the initiation of the appeasement sentiment of the Group in the last five years of peace. The speeches could almost be interchanged. We may call one revisionist and the other appeasing, but the point of view, the purpose, the method is the same. These speeches will be mentioned again later. <br /><p>The aim of the Milner Group through the period from 1920 to 1938 was the same: to maintain the balance of power in Europe by building up Germany against France and Russia; to increase Britain's weight in that balance by aligning with her the Dominions and the United States; to refuse any commitments (especially any commitments through the League of Nations, and above all any commitments to aid France) beyond those existing in 1919; to keep British freedom of action; to drive Germany eastward against Russia if either or both of these two powers became a threat to the peace of Western Europe. <br /><p>The sabotage of the peace settlement by the Milner Group can be seen best in respect to reparations and the League of Nations. In regard to the former, their argument appeared on two fronts: in the first place, the reparations were too large because they were a dishonorable violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement; and, in the second place, any demand for immediate or heavy payments in reparation would ruin Germany's international credit and her domestic economic system, to the jeopardy of all reparation payments immediately and of all social order in Central Europe in the long run. <br />The argument against reparations as a violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement can be found in the volumes of Zimmern and Brand already mentioned. Both concentrated their objections on the inclusion of pension payments by the victors to their own soldiers in the total reparation bill given to the Germans. This was, of course, an obvious violation of the Pre-Armistice Agreement, which bound the Germans to pay only for damage to civilian property. Strangely enough, it was a member of the Group, Jan Smuts, who was responsible for the inclusion of the objectionable items, although he put them in not as a member of the Group, but as a South African politician. This fact <br />{p. 241} alone should have prevented him from making his speech of October 1923. However, love of consistency has never prevented Smuts from making a speech. <br /><p>From 1921 onward, the Milner Group and the British government (if the two policies are distinguishable) did all they could to lighten the reparations burden on Germany and to prevent France from using force to collect reparations. The influence of the Milner Group on the government in this field may perhaps be indicated by the identity of the two policies. It might also be pointed out that a member of the Group, Arthur (now Sir Arthur) Salter, was general secretary of the Reparations Commission from 1920 to 1922. Brand was financial adviser to the chairman of the Supreme Economic Council (Lord Robert Cecil) in 1919; he was vice-president of the Brussels Conference of 1920; and he was the financial representative of South Africa at the Genoa Conference of 1922 (named by Smuts). He was also a member of the International Committee of Experts on the Stabilization of the German Mark in 1922. Hankey was British secretary at the Genoa Conference of 1922 and at the London Reparations Conference of 1924. He was general secretary of the Hague Conference of 1929-1930 (which worked out the detailed application of the Young Plan) and of the Lausanne Conference (which ended reparations). <br /><p>On the two great plans to settle the reparations problem, the <a name=”Dawes Plan”>Dawes Plan</a> of 1924 and the Young Plan of 1929, the chief influence was that of J. P. Morgan and Company, but the Milner Group had half of the British delegation on the former committee. The British members of the Dawes Committee were two in number: Sir Robert Molesworth (now Lord) Kindersley, and Sir Josiah (later Lord) Stamp. The former was chairman of the board of directors of Lazard Brothers and Company. Of this firm, Brand was a partner and managing director for many years. The instigation for the formation of this committee came chiefly from the parliamentary agitations of H. A. L. Fisher and John Simon in the early months of 1923. <br />The Milner Group was outraged at the efforts of France to compel Germany to pay reparations. Indeed, they were outraged at the whole policy of France: reparations, the French alliances in Eastern Europe, the disarmament of Germany, French "militarism," the French desire for an alliance with Britain, and the French desire for a long-term occupation of the Rhineland. These six things were listed in The Round Table of March 1922 as "the Poincare system." The journal then continued: "The Poincare system, indeed, is hopeless. It leads inevitably to fresh war, for it is incredible that a powerful and spirited people like the Germans will be content to remain forever meekly obeying every flourish of Marshal Foch's sword. ... <br />{p. 252} advance.... [The League must not be a world government.] If the burden of a world government is placed on it it will fall with a crash." He pointed out it could be a world government only if it represented peoples and not states, and if it had the power to tax those peoples. It should simply be an interstate conference of the world. <br /><blockquote><em> The Peace Conference ... cannot hope to produce a written constitution for the globe or a genuine government of mankind. What it can do is establish a permanent annual conference between foreign ministers themselves, with a permanent secretariat, in which, as at the Peace Conference itself, all questions at issue between States can be discussed and, if possible, settled by agreement. Such a conference cannot itself govern the world, still less those portions of mankind who cannot yet govern themselves. But it can act as a symbol and organ of the human conscience however imperfect, to which real governments of existing states can be made answerable for facts which concern the world at large." </em></blockquote> <br />In another article in the same issue of The Round Table ("Some Principles and Problems of the Settlement," December 1918), similar ideas were expressed even more explicitly by Zimmern. He stated that the League of Nations should be called the League of States, or th Interstate Conference, for sovereign states would be its units, and would make not laws but contracts. "The League of Nations, in fact, far from invalidating or diminishing national sovereignty, should strengthen and increase it.... The work before the coming age is not to supersede the existing States but to moralize them.... Membership must be restricted to those states where authority is based upon the consent of the people over whom it is exercised ... the reign of law.... It can reasonably be demanded that no States should be admitted which do not make such a consummation one of the deliberate aims of their policy." <p>Under this idea, The Round Table excluded by name from the new League, Liberia, Mexico, "and above all Russia." "The League," it continued, "will not simply be a League of States, it will be a League of Commonwealths." As its hopes in the League dwindled The Round Table became less exclusive, and, in June 1919, it declared, "without Germany or Russia the League of Nations will be dangerously incomplete." <br /><p>In the March 1919 issue, The Round Table described in detail the kind of League it wanted - "a common clearing house for noncontentious business." Its whole basis was to be "public opinion," and its organization was to be that of "an assembly point of bureaucrats of various countries" about an international secretariat and various organizations like the International Postal Union or the International Institute of Agriculture. <br /><blockquote><em> Every great department of government in each country whose activities <br />{p. 253} touch those of similar departments in other countries should have its recognized delegates on a permanent international commission charged with the study of the sphere of international relations in question and with the duty of making recommendations to their various Governments ... Across the street, as it were, from these permanent Bureaux, at the capital of the League, there should be another central permanent Bureau ... an International secretariat. ... They must not be national ambassadors, but civil servants under the sole direction of a non-national chancellor; and the aim of the whole organization ... must be to evolve a practical international sense, a sense of common service. </em></blockquote> <br />This plan regarded the Council of the League as the successor of the Supreme War Council, made up of premiers and foreign ministers, and the instrument for dealing with political questions in a purely consultative way. Accordingly, the Council would consist only of the Great Powers. <br /><p>These plans for the Covenant of the League of Nations were rudely shattered at the Peace Conference when the French demanded that the new organization be a "Super-state" with its own army and powers of action. The British were horrified, but with the help of the Americans were able to shelve this suggestion. However, to satisfy the demand from their own delegations as well as the French, they spread a camouflage of sham world government over the structure they had planned. This was done by Cecil Hurst. Hurst visited David Hunter Miller, the American legal expert, one night and persuaded him to replace the vital clauses 10 to 16 with drafts drawn up by Hurst. These drafts were deliberately drawn with loopholes so that no aggressor need ever be driven to the point where sanctions would have to be applied. This was done by presenting alternative paths of action leading toward sanctions, some of them leading to economic sanctions, but one path, which could be freely chosen by the aggressor, always available, leading to a loophole w here no collective action would be possible. The whole procedure was concealed beneath a veil of legalistic terminology so that the Covenant could be presented to the public as a watertight document, but Britain could always escape from the necessity to apply sanctions through a loophole. <br /><p>In spite of this, the Milner Group were very dissatisfied. They tried simultaneously to do three things: (1) to persuade public opinion that the League was a wonderful instrument of international cooperation designed to keep the peace; (2) to criticize the Covenant for the "traces of a sham world-government" which had been thrown over it; and (3) to reassure themselves and the ruling groups in England, the Dominions, and the United States that the League was not "a world-state." All of this took a good deal of neat footwork, or, more accurately, nimble tongues and neat pen work. More doubletalk and doublewriting were emitted by the Milner Group on this subject in the two decades 1919-1939 than was issued by any other group on this subject in the period. <br />Among themselves the Group did not conceal their disappointment with the Covenant because it went too far. In the June 1919 issue of The Round Table they said reassuringly: "The document is not the Constitution of a Super-state, but, as its title explains, a solemn agreement between Sovereign States which consent to limit their complete freedom of action on certain points.... The League must continue to depend on the free consent, in the last resort, of its component States; this assumption is evident in nearly every article of the Covenant, of which the ultimate and most effective sanction must be the public opinion of the civilized world. If the nations of the future are in the main selfish, grasping, and bellicose, no instrument or machinery will restrain them." But in the same issue we read the complaint: "In the Imperial Conference Sir Wilfrid Laurier was never tired of saying, 'This is not a Government, but a conference of Governments with Governments.' It is a pity that there was no one in Paris to keep on saying this. For the Covenant is still marked by the traces of sham government." <br /><p>By the March 1920 issue, the full bitterness of the Group on this last point became evident. It said: {note that the parentheses (my italics; this is the cat ...) below are Quigley's} "The League has failed to secure the adhesion of one of its most important members, The United States, and is very unlikely to secure it. ... This situation presents a very serious problem for the British Empire. We have not only undertaken great obligations under the League which we must now both in honesty and in self-regard revise, but we have looked to the League to provide us with the machinery for United British action in foreign affairs." (my italics; <em>this is the cat coming out of the bag</em>). The article continued with criticism of Wilson, and praise of the Republican Senate's refusal to swallow the League as it stood. It then said: <br /><blockquote><em> The vital weakness of the Treaty and the Covenant became more clear than ever in the months succeeding the signature at Versailles. A settlement based on ideal principles and poetic justice can be permanently applied and maintained only by a world government to which all nations will subordinate their private interests. ... It demands, not only that they should sacrifice their private interests to this world-interest, but also that they should be prepared to enforce the claims of world-interest even in matters where their own interests are in no wise engaged. It demands, in fact, that they should subordinate their national sovereignty to an international code and an international ideal. The reservations of the American Senate ... point the practical difficulties of this ideal with simple force. All the reservations ... are affirmations of the sovereign right of the American people to make their own policy without interference from an International League. ... None of these reservations, it should be noted, contravenes the general aims of the League; but they are, one and all, directed to ensure that no action is taken in pursuit of those aims except with the consent and approval of the Congress. ... There is nothing peculiar in this attitude. It is merely, we repeat, the broad reflex of an attitude already taken up by all the European Allies in questions where their national interests are affected, and also by the British Dominions in their relations with the British Government. It gives us a statement in plain English, of the limitations to the ideal of international action which none of the other Allies will, in practice, dispute. So far, therefore, from destroying the League of Nations, the American reservations have rendered it the great service of pointing clearly to the flaws which at present neutralize its worth. </em></blockquote> <br />Among these flaws, in the opinion of the Milner Group, was the fact that their plan to use the League of Nations as a method of tying the Dominions more closely to the United Kingdom had failed and, instead, the Covenant <br /><blockquote><em> gave the Dominions the grounds, or rather the excuse, to avoid closer union with the United Kingdom. ... It had been found in Paris that in order to preserve its unity the British delegation must meet frequently as a delegation to discuss its policy before meeting the representatives of foreign nations in conference. How was this unity of action to be maintained after the signature of peace without committing the Dominion Governments to some new constitutional organization within the Commonwealth? And if some new constitutional organization were to be devised for this purpose, how could it fail to limit in some way the full national independent status which the Dominion Governments had just achieved by their recognition as individual members of the League of Nations? The answer to these questions was found in cooperation within the League, which was to serve, not only as the link between the British Empire and foreign Powers, but as the link also between the constituent nations of the British Empire itself. Imbued with this idea, the Dominion statesmen accepted obligations to foreign Powers under the Covenant of the League more binding than any obligations which they would undertake to their kindred nations within the British Empire. In other words, they mortgaged their freedom of action to a league of foreign States in order to avoid the possibility of mortgaging it to the British Government. It hardly required the reservations of the American Senate to demonstrate the illusory character of this arrangement. ... The British Dominions have made no such reservations with regard to the Covenant, and they are therefore bound by the obligations which have been rejected by the United States. Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand are, in fact, bound by stronger written obligations to Poland and Czechoslovakia, than to the British Isles. ... It is almost needless to observe that none of the democracies of the British Empire has grasped the extent of its obligations to the League of Nations or would hesitate to repudiate them at once, if put to the test. If England were threatened by invasion, the other British domocracies would mobilize at once for her </em></blockquote><br /> <br /><br /><p/ >Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11361507.post-1112049943051356072001-01-26T15:23:00.000-07:002005-04-02T23:09:10.123-07:00Victory Without War<p><br /><p><center><strong>The Fragmented Giant</strong></center><br /><p>{p. 195} In the years beyond 1999, the balance of power in the world will reflect less and less the dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union and more and more the rising importance of three other global geopolitical giants: Western Europe, Japan, and China...<br /><p>{p. 204} ...One of the greatest blows to allied cooperation outside of Europe came when the United States decided to oppose the British and French effort to reclaim the <a name="suez">Suez Canal</a> militarily after Nasser nationalized it in 1956. President Eisen-<br />{p.205} hower had cause to oppose them: Britain and France had kept him in the dark, even lied to him, about their plan to seize the canal, and he did not want to appear to be supporting brazen imperialism. And they could not have picked a worse time for their action, coming as it did two weeks after we had condemned Khrushchev for sending Soviet troops into Hungary and one week before the American elections in which Eisenhower was running on a platform of peace and prosperity.<br /><p>I supported the decision at the time, but in <a name="suez_crisis">retrospect</a> our opposing British and French efforts to defend their interests in Suez was the greatest foreign-policy blunder the United States had made since the end of World War II. I have reason to believe that Eisenhower shared that assessment after he left office. The bottom line was that we failed to empathize with our allies and to calculate the long-term damage this would cause to the solidarity of the West. For them, the Suez Canal represented a critical interest. The failed Suez intervention had a disastrous net effect: our allies ceased to play their roles of world powers and began a precipitate retreat from the positions they had held around the globe.<br /><p>As they withdrew, we either had to take their place of had to risk seeing the Soviet Union do so. By the mid-1950-s, NATO had secured the central front in Europe—so the Kremlin then shifted its attack to the flanks. New expansionism would come in the developing world, as Moscow sought to move into the vacuum of power left by the retreating European empires. Over the ensuing decades, the Soviet Union became a formidable global power, with the capability to project its power around the world and to threaten Western interests and access to strategic sea-lanes, oil-reserves, and mineral deposits. it was a challenge NATO never before had to face—and one for which the alliance has yet to develop a sound strategy.<br /><p>Moreover, as our European allies ceded their responsibility for shaping the course of events in the world, some political leaders became increasingly irresponsible in the positions they took on key East-West conflicts in the Third World. In the Vietnam War, some Europeans denounced as immoral the U.S. effort to prevent the brutal totalitarian warlords in Hanoi from taking over all of indo-<br />{p.206} china. They also came to pursue a reduction of tensions in Europe as a kind of absolute value, to be sought as an end itself, regardless of whether Soviet actions elsewhere threatened Western interests. Soviet proxy wars in Africa, in their view, merited no response. After the direct Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, they took no actions apart from verbal denunciations. Even Moscow's suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland in 1981 drew only hot rhetoric and lukewarm reaction.<br /><p>Today, there is unprecedented dissension within NATO about issues outside Europe. Our allies would not allow us to resupply Israel from their territory during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Margaret Thatcher was sharply criticized by those who opposed her decision to allow the United States to use British air bases as a jumping-off point for the air-strike on Libya in 1986, and France denied our bombers the right to pass over French territory en route, thus forcing them to fly thousands of extra miles. Today, NATO allies only reluctantly agreed to cooperate with the Untied States in protecting freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf, and U.S efforts to prevent a Soviet beachhead in Central America receive little support and meet with much uninformed carping criticism.<br /><p>{p. 216} Terrorism should be another target of NATO's expanded mission. A terrorist attack on the citizens of one country is an attack on all civilized countries. Terrorism is an international challenge to international order and it requires an international response. The NATO allies should develop a program of cooperation and joint action to deal with terrorist attacks.<br /><p><br /><p><center><strong>The Awakened Giant</strong></center><br /><p>{p. 246} When we talked about China in 1969 de Gaulle said, "It would be better for you to recognize China before you are obligated to do so by the growth of China." He was right. The potential of a billion of the ablest people in the world will inevitably make China into an economic giant and also a military giant...<br /><p>{p. 261} ...for the moment there is a limit<br />{p.262} beyond which the relationship beyond which the United States and the People's Republic of China cannot grow. We are not allies. Just thirty-five years ago we were enemies. Thousands of Chinese and Americans fought each other in Korea. One of Mao’s sons was among the casualties. Today we are new friends who have been brought together after years of hostility, even hatred and war, by coldly calculated common interests. These interests could change, and the friendship would change with them. We have no shared experiences, struggles, or ideals to hold us together in the face of shifting international realities; absent a major political reform movement in China, our philosophies of government will remain diametrically opposed to each other. Therefore to a large extent this promising new relationship is hostage to events over which neither side has complete control.<br /><p>We must avoid romanticizing or putting too much stock in superficial curiosities about each other. Neither student exchanges not tourism nor blue jeans nor American rock music not cloisonné jewelry will hold us together if either China or the United States behaves in a way that the other finds unacceptable. Relations between great nations are not a tea party or a love fest; they are complicated, intricately structured devices that have to be watched and tended constantly. Unless<br /> we take care, anything that can go wrong probably will.<br /><p> For the sake of our grandchildren in the next century, however, we must ensure that our relationship survives and grows. Today we are dealing with a nation that is just beginning to feel its way in the modern world; tomorrow they will be dealing with what could be the dominant power in the world...<br /><p><br /><p><center><strong>Third World Battlegrounds</strong></center><br /><p>{p. 271} …Indonesia is one of the least known, most underrated nations in the world. It was the first Asian country I visited as Vice president in 1953. I saw it through the eyes of President Sukharno, one of the most charismatic leaders I have ever met. He had elaborate dreams for the future of his newly independent country. But his irresponsible policies and personal corruption turned into a nightmare for Indonesia. His successor, President Suharto, has slowly brought the nation back from the chaos of Sukharno’s last years. Indonesia could well become a giant in the twenty-first century. It is rich in natural resources. It has enormous strategic importance. It is the fifth most populous nation in the world. The Indonesians, blood brothers of the Filipinos, are capable people with great potential. All they need is continued strong leadership to provide political stability and new <br />{p. 272} economic policies that reward initiative and attract foreign investment.<br /><p><br /><p><p><blockquote>excerpts from <i>1999: Victory Without War</i><br />by Richard Nixon<br />published in 1988</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0