A second gift of about $109 million will go to the Rhodes Trust, based in Oxford, for the funding of the Atlantic Institute, which will aim to build leadership and connect at least 6,000 early- and midcareer professionals who will, in the next 10 to 20 years, receive funding and be known as Atlantic Fellows.
Re-Organizing The World through International Institutes, Strategies, Dialogues, Peacemaking and Programs Targeting Fragile Families, Communities — and Countries…
Related posts:UNESCO’s IIP@Rutgers|”Partners” + ISD and the Strong Cities Network (Reorganizing the World through International Strategic Institutes, cont’d.) (next in this sequence, about to be published) and, because “Munich” happened meanwhile, “Munich,” and the Strong Cities Network [ISIL/ISIS aren’t the only ones who want to control the World] also upcoming)
Also, a shortlink (if you copy the url) to THIS post: ‘“Re-Organizing” The World through International Institutes, Strategies, Dialogues, Peacemaking and Programs Targeting Fragile Families, Communities — and Countries...
“Tags” were copied between posts, there is some overlap and some tags may actually be referring to the next one in the sequence, here, of three. As of first “Publish” this post is 9,300 words. It may [and did] change after publication.
I hope you enjoy this informational, conversational post which comes from a systematic lookup of “Partners” link at a single university website combined with my awareness of similar related activity. Read the “tags” for a generic idea of just a few organizations using the words shown in the post title. The post has undergone a few changes (significant, and to a middle section) in the two days after it was published on 7/22/2016 and is currently about 12,000 words. I expanded some on “MDRC” and because of its tax return reference to “Atlantic Philanthropies” which I already knew had been registered outside of the US for anonymity purposes, and which wealth was based on marketing duty-free products internationally, to military and tourists to start with, it got longer.
In the process of not shutting up or stopping “just one more” lookup, I discovered that the Atlantic Philanthropies which provided MDRC a $7M matching grant in 1999 (not long after it was forced into the public when one partner of the underlying company “DFS” (Duty Free Shops, I guess) decided to sell it for around $3.8B, and the other partner protested via lawsuit, resulting in a pre-emptive disclosure to the public of who — and where– it was.
It announced in 2002 it would be winding down (distributing everything), and I learned that, announced this past May, 2016, the two final largest grants totaling around $200M would BOTH go to British institutions — one of them which exactly matches this post title: “International Institute on Inequalities” at the London School of Economics (and the other to the Rhodes Trust to set up scholarships — see Fulbright, Rhodes famous scholarships — under the Atlantic Philanthropies name). This Institute was only launched in 2015.
Another major sponsor of the same institute was the well-known (in the UK) “Leverhulme Trust” (since about 1925), with the underlying corporate wealth behind it (Lever Brothers, later Unilever) involving a Lordship who made his initial fortune in SOAP on the backs of Congolese laborers, in part from a close friendship with the King of Belgium (per Wiki, anyhow). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Lever,_1st_Viscount_Leverhulme (1851-1925).
A 2014 book by David Hollett (Amazon.com link) “The Dark Side of Sunlight – The Story of King Leopold, Lord Leverhulme and the Congo.” Abstract:
With a great deal of political manoeuvring, and the able assistance of the famous explorer, Sir Henry Morton Stanley, in 1885 King Leopold II of Belgium founded the Congo ‘Free’ State. However, this was not as a Belgian colony, but as his own private domain which extended to 905,000 square miles of Central Africa. Leopold then set up a system of forced labour under which millions suffered and died due to brutal treatment, exhaustion, hunger or disease. Eventually, in 1908, the Belgian government took control of the Congo away from Leopold and the worst excesses of his despotic rule came to an end. However the forced labour system established by Leopold remained largely in place. It is against this historical background that Lever Brothers, the soap manufacturers of Port Sunlight, became significantly involved in the affairs of the Congo. In 1911 the Belgian Government offered the company land “Concessions” to develop as oil palm plantations. A decade later William Hesketh Lever was controlling vast palm plantations, oil mills and a fleet of 74 steam vessels on the Congo River. In 1930 the firm was employing no less than 28,000 Congolese workers. The rise and rise of Lever Brothers wealth and good fortune was to continue, throughout the Congo and West Africa in general
A 1987 article in The New Internationalist is interesting reading on how the US fits in (what other brands were bought up, the UAC (United Africa Company) and more:
Today Unilever is one of the world’s largest corporations, employing
300,000 people and spanning 75 countries – with pre-tax profits in
1986 of $1.8 billion. This is the story from its humble beginnings
Three other things I noticed from Wiki on William Hesketh Lever — his involvement in freemasonry (founding lodges), and his practice of “monopoly”, as learned, it says, from the Rockefellers, it’s said, and with this wealth, buying up Villages or setting up model villages with which better to control (intrusively) the workforce. If THAT doesn’t remind you of current situations in the USA, urban areas and welfare policies, you are simply asleep! “PORT SUNLIGHT” (the brand was “Sunlight Soap”)
In 1887, Lever looking to expand his business, lought 56 acres (230,000 m2) of land on the Wirral in Cheshire between the River Mersey and the railway line at Bebington. This site became Port Sunlight where he built his works and a model village to house its employees. From 1888, Port Sunlight village offered decent living conditions in the belief that good housing would ensure a healthy and happy workforce. The community was designed to house and support the workers. Life in Port Sunlight included intrusive rules and implied mandatory participation in activities. The tied cottages meant that a worker losing his or her job could be almost simultaneously evicted.[15]Even workers’ social lives were policed from the head office. W.H Lever stated “a good workman may have a wife of objectionable habits, or may have objectionable habits himself, which make it undesirable for us to have him in the village.”[16]
REMINDER — my only connection of the above info. to this post comes by way of a look at NY-based “MDRC: Knowledge to Improve Social Policy”‘ involvement with Atlantic Philanthropies; the interesting history of Atlantic Philanthropies and its (first-generation US from Ireland) Chuck Feeney, and in that Mr. Feeney felt the International Institute for Inequalities at the London School of Economics, was worth a big chunk of the Atlantic Philanthropies’ final distributions, this Leverhulme Trust also agreed. In the US, the MDRC, studying the poor, is still maintaining $56M of investments, while taking $41M in government grants — I’d say something is “off-kilter” in that scenario.
Which all just goes to show why many philanthropies all around the world had BETTER make a good show of caring about the poor, given what they’ve done to perpetuate inequalities worldwide and maintain riches by avoiding taxation in the first place.
http://iip.rutgers.edu
The International Institute for Peace (IIP) at Rutgers University, Newark is a UNESCO Category II organization dedicated to peacebuilding, conflict transformation through nonviolent struggle, and the promotion of peace education and a culture of peace. The IIP builds partnerships locally and globally by working with grassroots organizations, youth leaders, activists, journalists, educators and researchers to promote peacebuilding, nonviolent conflict transformation, and just and sustainable peace. The IIP promotes research on issues of peace and conflict as well as education about peacebuilding and nonviolent struggle.
IF there was a genuine intent to relieve poverty within the US first, instead of restructure the world according to some private visions (and saving women overseas while attacking women, as women, in the United States, is a pretty sorry state of affairs indeed), it would not be done this way.
How did that Rutgers Institute come up? Well, I was just thinking about what, really, is the purpose of all these diversions FROM the poor into instead STUDYING them. I have begun to get answers on that (through my study of widely-dispersed nonprofits) over time. I’m no longer just suggesting, I will be showing, from the various centers and institutes’ own description, and comparison across similar (or, networked) ones.
[EXTENDED “PREVIEW SECTION” — probably about half this post — was just exported to a separate post.Apologies to any readers who may have been halfway through this when post-publication explanations just tipped the scale on how much could be squished into one post…]
New Post Name, and Link (will become active when published):
Section in pale-yellow background below describes that section. I feel the subject matter important enough to be separate.
[If this is new material, this would be a good PRE-view; if not, a good RE-VIEW of things bearing the labels “CHILD WELL-BEING” (or Centers for Child Well-Being), “FRAGILE FAMILIES” (or the Strengthening thereof, i.e., “Strengthening Fragile Families Initiative“) and things that go “CFCC” (Centers for Children and Families) on the Internet, on a website, whether the phrase be attached to a university (school of psychology, school of law, or school of social welfare, to name a few places) OR — as California set up around the turn of the century — in some Administrative Office of the Courts, as in under the top statewide Judicial Council.
And that the word “Evidence-Based” which I just learned today, Ron Haskins (of Brookings — and quite a bit more) says is now a movement, the “evidence-based movement,” while admitting in the same breath that most social programs lack proof of effectiveness.***
….”The power of evidence-based policy is finally being recognized, Haskins added. “One of the prime motivating factors of the current evidence-based movement,” he said, “is the understanding, now widespread, that most social programs either have not been well evaluated or they don’t work.”
[Link to source provided when I quote it again, below].
ABOUT THAT COMMENT
Ron Haskins C.V. from Brookings shows that he became “Commission on Evidence-Based Policy” only in 2016. It also shows that, depending on (??? what else???) if you get degrees in psychology, especially focused on children, and education, plus serve your country in the military, you just might be qualified to dictate (with your friends) how every other man and woman in the country should be raising their children, and that when the woman separates, if the man isn’t fully-enough-involved, the nation should up-end major budget priorities until he is, or simply take the kids.
Practically speaking, this is happening to women now — and the extracted post documents some of the awards and prestige that has come Haskins’ way for continuing to promote a philosophy voiced in at least as far back as 1965, when he was still an undergraduate (my comments inside {{…}} ):
Co-Chair, Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, Washington, DC, June 2016 – present.
Senior Fellow, Economic Studies; Co-Director of the Center on Children and Families; Co- Director of the Budgeting for National Priorities Project; and Cabot Chair in Economic Studies; Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, January 2001- present.
Senior Consultant, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore, MD, January 2001- present. Senior Editor, The Future of Children, Princeton, NJ, April 2004 – present.
Senior Advisor to the President for Welfare Policy, White House, February 2002-December 2002.
Majority Staff Director, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, January, 1995-2000. {{PRWORA passed in 1996}}
Welfare Counsel, Republican Staff, Subcommittee on Human Resources, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives, October 1986-December 1994. {{Years leading up to 1996 PRWORA}}
Congressional Science Fellow, Office of Senator Paul Simon (D-Illinois), Washington, DC, 1985-1986.
Research Assistant-Research Associate Professor, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1973-1985.
Associate Director, Bush Institute for Child and Family Policy, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1978-1985.
Assistant Director for Longitudinal Research, Frank Porter Graham Child Development Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1977-1980.
The educational breakdown is also mostly UNC (with 3 years of Marine Corp (Communications) after high school and before college:
- High School, Charlotte, Michigan, 1961
- A.B. in History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1968
- M.A.T. in Education, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1970
- Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1975
Dissertation: Eliciting Conditions, Form, and Function of Kitten Vocalizations (Advisor: Dr. Harriet Rheingold)
Military Service: United States Marine Corps, Special Radio Operator, Communications Intelligence, Sergeant (E-5), 1963-1966
*** That he has the, well, “balls” (fair enough term for a man, right?) to say this after over forty years of the MDRC formerly “Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation,: whose board he’s been on for quite a few years now [And look who else…] (originally founded, its site says, in 1974 by the Ford Foundation and several federal agencies), evaluating, testing, and writing up the efficacy of social service programming while meanwhile, the Ford-sponsored “Fund for the City of New York with its Public/Private “Center for Court Innovation” project, is still going strong (and with a goal of internationalizing “best practices” also). That Fund for the City of New York is the “PRIVATE” tax-exempt entity, with the NYS Unified Court System being, obviously, the public.
MDRC – “Building Knowledge to Improve Social Policy”
MDRC is committed to finding solutions to some of the most difficult problems facing the nation — from reducing poverty and bolstering economic self-sufficiency to improving public education and college graduation rates. We design promising new interventions, evaluate existing programs using the highest research standards, and provide technical assistance to build better programs and deliver effective interventions at scale. We work as an intermediary, bringing together public and private funders to test new policy-relevant ideas, and communicate what we learn to policymakers and practitioners — all with the goal of improving the lives of low-income individuals, families, and children.
This is the entire MDRC About-Us/History Page viewed 7-24-2016, showing the context in which Haskins has just recently claimed “most social programs either have not been well evaluated or they don’t work”:
Created in 1974 by the Ford Foundation and a group of federal agencies, MDRC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization dedicated to learning what works to improve programs and policies that affect the poor. MDRC is best known for mounting large-scale demonstrations and evaluations of real-world policies and programs targeted to low-income people.
Interesting, I’ll bet many poor people don’t know about MDRC, or the average taxpayer.
We helped pioneer the use of random assignment — the same highly reliable methodology used to test new medicines — in our evaluations. From welfare policy to high school reform, MDRC’s work has helped to shape legislation, program design, and operational practices across the country. Working in fields where emotion and ideology often dominate public debates, MDRC is a source of objective, unbiased evidence about cost-effective solutions that can be replicated and expanded to scale.
Over the years, MDRC has brought its unique approach to an ever-growing range of policy areas and target populations. Once known primarily for evaluations of state welfare-to-work programs, we also study public school reforms, employment programs for ex-prisoners and people with disabilities, and programs to help low-income people succeed in college. We are known not only for the high quality, integrity, and rigor of our research, but also for our commitment to building evidence and improving practice in partnership with school districts; community colleges; federal, state, and local governments; foundations; and community-based organizations.
MDRC has worked in nearly every state and most major cities, in Canada, and in the United Kingdom. We are funded by government agencies and some 70 private, family, and corporate foundations. With a staff of more than 250 in New York City and Oakland, California, MDRC is engaged in close to 80 projects in five policy areas: Family Well-Being and Children’s Development, K-12 Education, Young Adults and Postsecondary Education, Low-Wage Workers and Communities, and Health and Barriers to Employment.
MDRC was founded as the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation. However, in 2003, we made “MDRC” the registered corporate identity of our organization, thereby formally adopting the name by which we had become best known to our professional colleagues and the general public
!!! Perhaps what MIGHT work regarding poor people is if someone put a cap on the stockpiling of assets by tax-exempt corporations who for decades show more interest in running social science R&D on the poor which — to quote Ron Haskins — either are not evaluated or are not effective — and instead, let the poor KEEP what earnings they have, and evaluate the impact of the proliferation of major nonprofit organizations on diverting wealth away from the poor??
What MDRC last three tax returns show — take a look at the $$ column — is a 50% increase in THEIR assets in the last two years — from $90M (that’s million) to $135M (that’s MILLION). Half of 90 is 45. 90 + 45 = 135; that’s a 50% increase. A closer look at the returns might show how or why:
Total results: 3. Search Again.
(Click on the column headers to sort.)
| ORGANIZATION NAME | ST | YR | FORM | PP | TOTAL ASSETS | EIN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MDRC | NY | 2014 | 990 | 103 | $135,809,694.00 | 23-7379473 |
| MDRC | NY | 2013 | 990 | 142 | $103,145,080.00 | 23-7379473 |
| MDRC | NY | 2012 | 990 | 30 | $90,045,462.00 | 23-7379473 |
“2014” Gov’t Grants $41M+ but Private Grants $60M+ . Spent on salaries — $24M; spent (Part IX) on “Subcontractors” – $20M. Two years earlier it was still ridiculously large under the control of a board of only 14 people, but in smaller amounts. In addition to raises for their main officers over time, with those working only 1.0 hour a week still getting several thousand dollars a year (Haskins $3,800 to Isabel Sawhill (his cohort at Brookings) only $3,000 on year). There is a $7M endowment fund formed in 1999 as “matching grant” for Atlantic Philanthropies. Search that, it’s HUGE and has been based offshore for years (I provided several quotes, and some of that story, below).
mdre’s board of directors created an endowment fund in 1999 the fund includes permanently restricted,temporarily restricted,and unrestricted contributions that have been designated to the fund for the purpose of matching a $ 7 million, five year challenge grant given by the atlantic philanthropies spending from the endowment fund is intended to support program development, information dissemination activities, and corporate strategic initiatives spending from the endowment is approved by the board of directors based on the rules established under mdre’s endowment spending policy
SUBCONTRACTORS: “2012” = 27 subcontractors. The IRS form has space listed for only 5, so the public doesn’t know who the others were. “2014” this total was called 37 subcontractors. ..These subcontractors are getting $1M+ and $2M+ apiece, and through my readings I’m familiar with some of the top 5’s names — because they end up evaluating HMRF (Healthy Marriage/Responsible Fatherhood) projects.
YE 2014 list out of 37 (i.e., there are 32 paid over $100K we don’t see listed):
Section B. Independent Contractors Complete this table for your five highest compensated independent contractors that received more than $100,000 of compensation from the organization Report compensation for the calendar year ending with or within the organization’s tax year
- $1,890,154 – mathematica policy research inc, po box 2393 PRINCETON, NJ 08543
- 2,723,756 – abt associates, 55 wheeler street CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138
- $5,154,050 – Decision Information Resources inc, 2600 Southwest Freeway – Suite 900 HOUSTON,TX 77098
- $2,091,445 James Bell Associates inc, 3033 Wilson Blvd HOUSTON,TX 77098
- $1,890,154 The Osborne Association, 809 Westchester Avenue BRONX,NY 10455
Services simply described as “Research Subcontract,” amounts, respectively, as follows:
Compared to the Subcontractors list two years previous (YE2012, Return Part VIIB) — almost the same list: The different organization (paid $3.8M) is Survey Research Mgmt in Boulder (with Osborne Association) not listed –doesn’t mean it wasn’t a contractor in 2012 as there are only 5 lines to be filled. I used “strikeout” on the YE2014 figures for comparison. The biggest increase shown was the group in Texas as you can see.
- $2,238,532
– $1,890,154– mathematica policy research inc, po box 2393 PRINCETON, NJ 08543 - $3,111,880
$2,723,756– abt associates, 55 wheeler street CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138 - $1,806,489
$5,154,050– Decision Information Resources inc, 2600 Southwest Freeway – Suite 900 HOUSTON,TX 77098 -
$3,886,479 Survey Research Management ,5777 Central Ave BOULDER CO80301
- $1,486,631
$2,091,445James Bell Associates inc, 3033 Wilson Blvd HOUSTON,TX 77098 $1,890,154 The Osborne Association, 809 Westchester Avenue BRONX,NY 10455
RE: ATLANTIC PHILANTHROPIES (that gave MDRC a matching $7M grant in 1999):
- From the company website “Chuck Feeney’s Story”
- From Company Website (but reprinted from “Irish America Hall of Fame”) “The billionaire who selflessly gave it all away.” March 22, 2011 by K. Romano:**
**The interesting part — he made the fortune selling duty-free goods abroad. Then when it came time to form the charity (after a $700K gift to his alma mater, Cornell, he was being besieged with requests for funds) he formed “The Atlantic Philanthropies” — a collective — deliberately offshore USA:
From New Jersey to France
Chuck Feeney was born in 1931 and raised in a working class section of Elizabeth, NJ during the Great Depression. His father, the son of an immigrant from Co. Fermanagh, Ireland, was an insurance underwriter and his mother was a nurse. In 1948, at age 17, Chuck enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving for four years in postwar Japan and Korea. After his military service, Feeney received a GI scholarship and enrolled at Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration. It was at Cornell that Feeney’s flair for business was first discovered. His GI scholarship funds were sent to him in monthly installments of $110, scarcely enough to cover the Ivy League university’s tuition. To make ends meet, he began to sell sandwiches that a fellow classmate would make, earning a decent income.
Upon graduating from Cornell in 1956, Feeney still had four months of scholarship funds left and no idea what to do with his degree. He decided to study political science at the University of Grenoble.
Entrepreneur
After studying in Grenoble, Feeney decided to travel to the south of France. He eventually landed in Villefranche-sur-Mer, and began running a summer camp for children from the U.S. fleet stationed there. On a trip to Barcelona, he ran into Robert Miller, a fellow Cornell alumnus. Feeney had an idea: sell goods to the fleet duty free – without tax. Miller and Feeney partnered up and began selling perfume, tape recorders and transistor radios.In 1960, the partners founded Duty Free Shoppers (DFS), opening up duty-free shops in Honolulu and Hong Kong. When the Japanese government lifted travel restrictions on its citizens in 1966, the company found success. Feeney learned Japanese and arranged deals with tour guides to bring groups through the shops. DFS became a global retail giant with duty-free shops all over the world, and made the partners incredibly wealthy. …
Seems at least one part of becoming incredibly wealthy includes helping others avoid taxes, while doing so ones-self, and not operating primarily within the United States, but internationally…..
The impetus for Feeney’s charity career was a $700,000 bequest to Cornell University in 1981. After the bequest, Feeney was bombarded with requests for donations. Wanting to do something but on his own terms, he turned to his friend Harvey Philip Dale for advice. Dale’s advice was to set up a foundation to carry out all future donations. Feeney proceeded to found The Atlantic Philanthropies, a collective of separate foundations, in Bermuda in order to avoid disclosure requirements that a U.S.-based organization would have to meet. Unlike many philanthropists, Feeney wanted anonymity. The foundation did not, and still does not, bear his name, and he never took tax deductions on his philanthropic work. The anonymity allowed him to walk down the street unrecognized and keep his family safe. However, it also prevented him from being able to correct any inaccuracies.
This anonymity spread throughout the Atlantic Philanthropies. Rules were established within the foundation. Any unsolicited requests for money were rejected, and all donations were given via cashier’s check. When he was an honored guest at events, Feeney would bring his own photographer, who would pretend to take pictures without any film in the camera.
The anonymity did not last. In the mid-1990s, Feeney decided to leave DFS. He wanted more cash flow for the Atlantic Philanthropies and foresaw the decline in duty-free shops. The LVMH Group, owner of Louis Vuitton and Moët & Chandon, purchased DFS in 1997, resulting in the foundation being worth $3.5 billion. However, Feeney’s partner, Robert Miller, objected to the sale. As a result, their partnership ended, with Miller filing suit against Feeney. Knowing that he and the Atlantic Philanthropies would be exposed in court, Feeney decided to let the cat out of the bag himself. In January 1997, he called two reporters, David Cay Johnson and Judith Miller, and revealed everything. The news shocked everyone, especially his former partner…..
Giving It All Away
In 2002, the Atlantic Philanthropies announced it would spend down its endowment within the next twelve to fifteen years.What was at the time a highly unusual action has become a growing trend, with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation being the most prominent charitable organization to set a closure date. Though far from widespread, Feeney’s belief in giving while living is starting to find a wider audience and more practitioners.
Today, the Atlantic Philanthropies no longer gives grants to universities. Instead, the organization is focused on the issues of health, aging, children & youth, human rights and reconciliation. As of December 31, 2009, the Atlantic Philanthropies was worth approximately $2.2 billion, including $814 million in already committed grants. Over $5.4 billion in grants had been given out, lifetime, by the end of 2010
Where the last $200M is going — note, NONE of it to the US — but to two major British Institutions:
- Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2016, “Atlantic Philanthropies Announces $200 Million in Two Gifts: Move signals philanthropy will continue after Atlantic makes its last grant this year and closes by 2020,” by Melanie Grayce West.
On Wednesday, Atlantic plans to announce two gifts totaling some $200 million that represent a change in heart to fully embrace the Atlantic name. The gifts also signal how a second stage of the philanthropy will continue to live on after Atlantic, which has an office in New York City, officially doles out its last grant this year and fully closes by 2020.
One gift, of about $90 million, will be to the London School of Economics to support a newly established International Inequalities Institute. Addressing inequality has long been core to the foundation’s portfolio, whether related to health care or to transgender rights, according to Atlantic’s president and chief executive, Christopher G. Oechsli.
It is the first time the Atlantic name will be used so prominently, joining a category of widely recognized honors akin to a Rhodes Scholarship or the Fulbright Scholar Program. …
“Our trajectory is not downward, and we’re not just shoveling money out the door to get it out,” said Mr. Oechsli. “There’s a real desire to launch and increase the people of influence in the spaces we care about. It doesn’t make sense to just put a period on the end of it.”
Write to Melanie Grayce West at melanie.west@wsj.com
So, I see the LSE “III” -International Inequalities Institute” was only launched in 2015. From Directors’ Welcome Page. Don’t forget to click on “Departments & Institutes” buttons to see the full list:
…We see the LSE as the best university in the world to house this centre. This is partly because of the international scope of the LSE, which allows us to draw on the thinking of experts working on every continent across the globe.
It also reflects the huge research strengths of a number of Departments working on issues of inequality, notably the long history of path breaking work in this area from academics in Economics, Gender and Social Policy, but now extending to Anthropology; Geography and Environment; Government; Law; Media and Communications; Sociology, and indeed other Departments. And we also have established Research Centres such as CASE whose established strengths we can also build upon. …
Finally, we are also deeply committed to teaching as part of our mission.
We are delighted to have already been awarded £1 million by the Leverhulme to support 15 PhD studentships over the coming years. We have a new Masters course on Inequalities and Social Science which admits its first cohort of students in 2015.
John Hills and Mike Savage
Co-Directors, International Inequalities InstituteProfessor John Hills is Professor of Social Policy at LSE.
Professor Mike Savage is Martin White Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology at LSE.
The Leverhelme Trust – Sunlight Soap — ever heard of Lever Brothers — or Unilever? — It was so successful so fast that, as I guess it goes in Great Britain (England, the UK, whatever….) someone got a lordship. The trust was set up as far back as around 1925, or shortly after. With a company merger, the new “Major International Company” got control of the trust also — whcih happened in 1930.
One of the great businessmen and entrepreneurs of the Victorian age, William Hesketh Lever brought his tremendous energy and creativity to the manufacture and marketing of his Sunlight Soap, which only a decade after its launch was available in 134 countries around the world. The title Lord Leverhulme was conferred on Lever in 1922, in recognition of his achievements.
From the earliest days, Lord Leverhulme was a committed philanthropist, using his wealth to support a variety of charitable causes. When he died in 1925, he left a share of his holdings in his company, Lever Brothers, to provide for specific trades charities, and to offer ‘scholarships for… research and education’.
The Leverhulme Trust was established. In 1930, Lever Brothers merged with the Van den Berghs margarine company to form Unilever – one of the world’s major multinational companies – and the shares held by the Leverhulme Trust became part of Unilever.
(ABOUT the TRUST):
The Leverhulme Trust was established by the Will of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers. Since 1925 we have provided grants and scholarships for research and education; today, we are one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing approximately £80m a year.
We award funding across academic disciplines, supporting talented individuals in the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences to realise their personal vision in research and professional training. As well as substantial grants for research, we offer fellowships for researchers at every stage of their career, grants for international collaboration and travel, and support for the fine and performing arts
The other partner in the early merger was from the Netherlands. …. I looked up “Leverhulme” in Wiki, and we find out how he became so profitable, so widespread, so fast. Can you spell, “forced labor” and “the Congo”??? Funny how that part was left out of the organization’s (the Trust’s) self-descriptions on the rise to business success, not to mention his close friendship with King Leopold of Belgium!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leverhulme_Trust
The Victorian businessman and entrepreneur William Hesketh Lever first brought his creativity and energy to the manufacture and marketing of Sunlight soap which was being sold in 134 countries only a decade after its launch. In order to produce the soap so cheaply, and so as to ensure he could undercut competition and be so prolific, he controlled large concessionary areas in the Congo. These were granted to him by King Leopold with whom he was a close friend. Millions of Congolese were exploited for use in forced labour in these areas, “a program that reduced the population of Congo by half and accounted for more deaths than the Nazi holocaust.”[2]
Lever extended his business activities in ways that both served and profited from the rapid rise of a mass market for basic consumer products.
BACK TO MDRC’s tax returns (YE 2014):
Investments (Pt. IX, Lines 11 & 12) They are holding $56M (YE2014) in “Public Traded Securities” and $9M in “”Other Securities” (not described on Schedule D). Plus $25M in cash, etc. Why should government be providing $41Min GRANTS to an organization which already holds $56M in Investments? Let them liquidate some investments to pay their favorite subcontractors, board members, and employees instead!
It’s truly offensive, to see the scope of activities and the money delegated to this, year after year, while people in many of cities studied are known to be hungry, and poor, still. Just take a look; use page-down, see the fine print, look at some of the numbers.
MDRC shows a New York address, but is a Delaware-domicile corporation.
Where Ron Haskins made this comment was in the process or surrounding a Year 2016 reward named after this famous 1965 report of which the introduction declared, basically, “pay no attention to wage and education gap, the real problem is sociological in nature, and we as a nation (Federal government, that is) needs to focus on fixing it.” In other words, about 50 years after this….
The Negro Family: The Case for National Action” The Case For National Action | Office of Policy Planning and Research United States Department of Labor March 1965
. . . …Indices of dollars of income, standards of living, and years of education deceive. The gap between the Negro and most other groups in American society is widening.The fundamental problem, in which this is most clearly the case, is that of family structure. The evidence — not final, but powerfully persuasive — is that the Negro family in the urban ghettos is crumbling. A middle-class group has managed to save itself, but for vast numbers of the unskilled, poorly educated city working class the fabric of conventional social relationships has all but disintegrated. There are indications that the situation may have been arrested in the past few years, but the general post-war trend is unmistakable. So long as this situation persists, the cycle of poverty and disadvantage will continue to repeat itself.
[emphases mine]
We have a man acknowledging receipt of “The Moynihan Prize” (awarded by a society dedicated to promoting social science, AAPSS) declaring this (but not revealing his position as co-chair on a Commission on Evidence-Based Practices — unless that came later):
….”The power of evidence-based policy is finally being recognized, Haskins added. “One of the prime motivating factors of the current evidence-based movement,” he said, “is the understanding, now widespread, that most social programs either have not been well evaluated or they don’t work.” Haskins continued:
Perhaps the most important social function of social science is to find and test programs that will reduce the nation’s social problems. The exploding movement of evidence-based policy and the many roots the movement is now planting, offer the best chance of fulfilling this vital mission of social science, of achieving, in other words, exactly the outcomes Moynihan had hoped for.
He pointed toward the executive branch, state governments, and non-profits implementing policies that could make substantial progress against the nation’s social problems.
So, in the separate/extracted post I put this in some historical (not ‘hysterical!”) context with both the funders, and the struggle for civil rights to curtail racism and “women’s rights” to curtail some of the sexism which seem essential to this country’s functioning from the start, and still. And I talk, because it’s appropriate, about “elitism” as preserving the power and influence in the same circles of PEOPLE and ORGANIZATIONS through heavy promotion of social science (and with it, sociologists) as solving the world’s problems for it.
END OF PREVIEW SECTION. FOR MORE, AGAIN, SEE:
Do You Know Your Social Science PolicySpeak? Can You Name Some University Centers|Key Professionals |BIG Foundation Sponsors|Related Networked Nonprofits| and A Basic Timeline Since at least The Moynihan Report? New Post/this link (will become active when published = very soon).
So, this other situation with the NJ IIP and the Southern California WPDI.org situation, and especially regarding its application of education programming internationally (including IN Urban metropolitan USA areas) as well as the very recent (and speedy) conversion of a center at a State-supported University in New Jersey to a “UNESCO” affiliated center (see their exact terms, which I don’t have memorized) in 2011, as well as Mr. Whitaker having his own special liaison (being so famous) at UNESCO, too, which got me to the present subject matter.
Some of my posts are more rehearsed presentations of material, step by step and focused on a geography or topic, and may take a week, or even a month, to get out.
This one is more conversational in style, closer to thinking aloud while looking at a situation. I have a front section on “strategy” and some personal comments (fine print), then a look at the root meaning of “strategy” which comes from the Greek “strateuo” (for ‘wage war’ with another common word, at least in Bible usage, for the same being “polemo.” I imagine you can guess which words (“polemics“) might come from that one.
Synonyms: diatribe, invective, rant, tirade, broadside, harangue, attack …. ” Mid 17th century: via medieval Latin from Greek polemikos, from polemos ‘war’.
Or from Etymology Dictionary, under letter “p” currently page 44:
polemic (n.)1630s, “controversial argument or discussion,” from French polémique (16c./17c.), noun use of adjective meaning “disputatious, controversial” (see polemic (adj.)).
polemic (adj.)
Not to be confused with “Politics” which comes from the word “polis” for “city.” 
As it turns out, to wage any war (successfully) requires a strategy and among those strategies would involve “polemics” against the bad guys… my purpose in this blog and unfortunately, in life, when war was opened against me for control of my life, my children, my property (including what was at the time a capital investment and income-producing tool, my piano (!!), and currently, what remains of my inheritance), my initial, naive “strategy” for protecting my work life was resorting to the legal system and attempting to maintain the initial protection it had offered.
Many of us tried that route with similar devastating results, with or without lawyers — and most of us, did this not knowing that the federal government had a stake in the custody outcomes, had put down funds to affect them, and had already set in place funding to support professions whose professionals would follow their funders, not necessarily the evidence.
Since then I have made it a point to point out specific strategies in place as strategies (not oversights, not accidents, and not ignorance, but planned strategies) that predictably would undermine legal protection, rights to due process, or in general, public will to resist criminality or ethical violations by those in highest positions of power. After enough time observing this I began to ran across documentations of who had written down the agenda of breaking down political jurisdictions (which is also to say, rule of law, or rights under that rule) to establish — it’s said — world peace. Which is to say, a one world government.
How many wars, how many lives this costs en route, and what destructions — as well as whether any true peace is possible with a history of oppression, manipulation, deceit (lying) and aggressions by those in power upon the powerless — remains to be seen. However, I think we are seeing a whole lot of it right now in the establishment of the Archipelago of problem-solving courts, of which the family court system is just one part. Overall, this is every bit as much as strategy as the one I have documented and saw on the way in, to the personal attack from my own relatives, because at the end of the day, their eyes (in hindsight) were on a prize I did not know existed, and was not contending for. I was contending for the immediate needs of this family line in terms of a protected right to work, that is a work life, and before that, physical protection also, of life.
Basically this post takes us through the “Partners” at a specific site. I am not going to labor hard on organizing this post, simply want the links and organization names out there. They will no doubt come up again later, either in readers’ awareness, and some, I know, on this blog because again, some of the material is in draft on “the pipeline of posts,” which is simply how I work.
If this were a book, or for training materials or the conference circuit, I’d work differently. Obviously, it’s just a free-standing blog, not a blog to support a business — and some posts are more informal than others. If you don’t enjoy the “strategy” section up top, which has some vocabulary and some “my stuff” personal, use PageDown or ScrollDown to get to the different organizations discussed below. This post looks to be somewhere between 10,000 – 11,000 words with all the quotes.
http://iip.rutgers.edu
The title comes from having run across several tax-exempts (some British, some in the US) with the word “strategic” in their titles. This word hits home to me as a survivor of marital violence, family court fiascos, and now facing the need to have my own effective strategy to counter an obviously implemented strategy to exploit access to an inheritance I at this point need, to drain it off into parties colluding to conceal the paperwork on the assets, and the cash flow (their ongoing activity) provided to me WITH PROOF, and TIMELY, and WHEN REQUESTED.
The word STRATEGY | STRATEGIC = PLANNED TACTICS.
Often includes (a) stealth and (b) propaganda
After all, the root meaning of the word is to wage war (see “Etymology,” below).
If it weren’t “war” then there would be agreement or disagreement, contract or no contract.
When people want something illegitimately after having been denied it, then “STRATEGY” comes into place, and character starts showing itself depending on which strategies are chosen.
FINE PRINT/ tinted background section BELOW refers to my personal situation,, in context of the word “strategy” as already indicating the existence of war or major conflict. I have not named the parties involved, but described the situation which I have reason to believe is typical practice for those involved, and from what I am hearing and reading, also not unusual of the fields of practice in general.
I will tell you, being engaged in this type of war is a drain on life energies and it is always intimidating because there is the risk of ongoing or sudden injury, as well as of the health issues of nonstop, chronic stress from dealing with dishonest people who have identified something they want which is not legitimately theirs. And so, if it is to be obtained (or in this case) drained — it has to happen illegitimately, for which a “front” of cause of action has to be conconcocted.
Over the years, I get really tired of these justifications in my face, in print, or showing up in my inbox, knowing how petty, greedy, and illegitimate the first one was which involved an immediate family member obsessed with restructuring my life and relationships after I’d just done so by separation involving a TRO with kickout and getting immediately back to work in my profession, while raising young children.
- Truly “risky” behavior that, working and raising children in a new community without a resident batterer or coercive controlling personality…. In some scenarios (such as, for one example, religious cults) and to some people, Initiative, independent decision-making that leads to self-sufficiency needs to be stomped out. Those scenarios, usually, are going to involve, plain and simple, theft.
- It’s hard to openly protest honest working people raising their children and complying with court orders. If the desired outcome is to discredit, devastate, and then take over the assets and lives, other means have to be found to discredit, and devastate them. Often this may start within a family line, and then “here come the courts.”
- This is where the family law system reigns over the process, and has expertise in it, in NOT being what it claims to be. Effectively, in this system, criminal matters are to be downplayed and violating ITS “relationship-based” value systems become the new “crimes” including apparently thought-crimes or belief-crimes which the offspring might pick up. Such as exercising personal independent judgment, and setting boundaries.
- This keeps the population churned, and some of the next generations confused, while money is DIVERTED from those individual family lines into the public/private power structure. Basically, we are talking a siphoning action.
So, I wasn’t too surprised, really, in following up on the background of the family court system, to find it FILLED with nonprofit enterprises with family lawyers, judges, and custody evaluators (etc.) on the boards, and setting them up too — then the associated umbrella-type organizations to keep themselves straight, and justifying the conference circuit, model practices, and legislation at state levels to just keep these professions coming, and coming, and coming….
It’s a place where people unfit for running a standard business, or for competing for jobs in a more open environment, can go and actually make a living through cronyism, and those already making a decent living as lawyers, or judges, can expand their take and keep their skills sharp on how to extort the innocent. (IF you have a better short description of the fields of parenting coordination, or supervised visitation, feel free to submit it). Front and center in the field seem to be psychologists and “educationists.”
What surprised me moreso — until I eventually figured it out — was why the collective resistance among the discontent, particularly of the feminine “persuasion” (gender), to talking about court-connected nonprofits AS nonprofits, and why the resistance on admitting the influence of the federal grants systems dedicated specifically to Federal Designer Families. Are we supposed to just keep on pretending we don’t see this? For how long?
Financial independence is part of any situation of safety or “sustainability” as a person. When these have been under long-term attack, it is upon the life energies and physical vitality of an individual too (not to mention the psyche)….
“Strategies” in use against me and now necessary for personal protection, this past year (2015-2016) to eradicate financial and through this personal independence:
There has already been one retaliatory lawsuit against me this year, illegally conceived and executed over housing and because of my protest of MAJOR substandard housing conditions (sudden and major rat infestation being one, but not the only one) as a tenant and withholding of paperwork. Tenant’s / Landlord’s rights in this state are delineated, and the term “retaliatory” lawsuit after tenant complaint about conditions is well-known.
Many errors of filing, serving, format, and standing existed and this lawsuit was deliberately timed to prevent me from getting into another lease where, naturally, the question will be of the next landlord, “have you ever been served with an unlawful detainer?” The filing of an unlawful detainer in this situation was itself unlawful. Three more names unfamiliar to the property record, or to any dealings I’d had with this person were claiming to represent the property owner, one of them a lawyer. The names were found in association with each other with multiple filings out of a single PO Box in multiple states, briefly, after which their status was typically revoked. “Ripoff Reports” also have many complaints about the same group of people NOT associated or representing the property I was leasing from — which the local records show as under the ownership of one person, associated with a trust NOT named in the lawsuit. The family involved owns many properties, and reasonably knows right from wrong when it comes to handling tenants, and properties, particularly as this same family had two lawyers in it.
So far as I can tell, the claim lacked evidence, and was based on fraud, i.e., there was no production of the alleged lease, no proof of the alleged trust which allegedly owned the property (and the pleading did not name the property owner as an involved PERSON, or any trustee as an involved PERSON — that is, no “PERSON” filed even that lawsuit. I was essentially told to send thousands of dollars money to a “trust” and a location I had no proof was legitimate and did not believe was legitimate). No proof of debt was provided, either.
This unlawful detainer lawsuit (which was railroaded — I lost, despite having filed proof of the questionable connection of the filing party’s claim to be representing the property owner, as well as the questionable behavior of the associated names (including as I recall, business names) in the above matters, not to mention the rat infestation from a county source, and of course of my notice to the landlord of the property issues, by then about a half year old. The presence of an unlawful detainer obstructed and defeated my plans at the time to move immediately, or promptly, in to a lease situation with different landlord.
I was then left negotiating how to get my stuff out of there, a process involving much more harassment (in person while movers were there by several different people, by phone by more than one person, by email repeatedly), up until the very last day, although the process was completed in about only one and a half weeks. I had already, previously, requested police stop the property and privacy invasions, which they refused to do, resulting in my initially having to vacate at least my person from that property on 24 hours notice. The threats included to “have the sheriff change the locks” and throw my stuff into storage for redemption (etc.), although the legal process for this involved paperwork which had not posted. The implication was of a personal relationship with the police which would somehow enable the legal process to be bypassed.
Among the items moved was a piano and furniture; it was everything I owned that wasn’t in a small hotel room with me.
The challenging move also involved hiring (expensive) rat professionals to detox the place so it was safe for movers to get in there, and in general a lot of scheduling. The landlord was responsible to have cleared the place of rats months previously, and sealed the perimeter, but after first refusing to do so, then had instead engaged in an emailed attempts to blame me for obstruction, and for the rats, despite evidence to the contrary.
Within about two weeks after I had turned in the keys, being now officially stranded and forced to rent storage (because I had no housing outside the small hotel room), the same landlord’s agent (the landlord being an elderly woman, the agent, her son — her choice to allow this man to run the affairs so far as I know, so she as property owner would be liable) having succeeded in a lower amount and at a lower level, went directly after my trust, and these trustees (see latest post, I mention “Professional Fiduciary Bureau” set up only recently in the State of California) then informed me the assets had been “threatened” by the same individual, improperly filed and served again, and without legal standing with whom they had been collaborating to deprive me of paperwork — and that a significant settlement had been made. Throughout this time they still (both sides — former landlord and current trustees) REFUSED to provide rental receipts for the past, and are clearly not going to do it without being forced through lawsuit.
Meanwhile, I have been living long-term in a pay-by-the-week hotel room with my stuff in storage, also not exactly free, and my attempt to drive this type of “professional” personalities away from my personal affairs, (including housing!).
I am routinely being lied still (as from the outset of trustee dealings with me) in written communications, with a rationale for each new aggressive and disturbing action taken or threatened to be taken mostly along the lines of “the dog ate my homework,” or “we couldn’t because ________” and (contradicting previous statements by the same about their own conditions), when the task was something any trustee might do as routine transaction in the field…..while “passive” “late” or “not at all” is the name of the game when I have asked for something to be delivered, with sufficient notice, according to a timeline previously discussed (i.e., quarterly). PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE in sequence as control tactics.
So now we are one year further down this same road, where if I protest an injustice, or demand remedy, three more “professionals” (often lawyers) show up to take a piece, while if I want to protect myself using lawyers, the same resource will be then drained to fund two warring sides. I call that ongoing extortion based on fraud. Others wish it to be handled as “business as usual.”
This handling of other people’s lives, and obtaining control of their assets, does not occur in vacuums, without previous serious compromises in their ability to defend against the same. What really disturbs me about the current situation — I am not the only client, and these trustees specialize in the mentally disabled or elderly, it seems (probably handling their basic bill payment, SS or disability payments, etc.). They do not seem equipped to deal with even their mental equals, or appreciate it.
In this area, and in most metropolitan areas, there are going to be plenty of women and men in this situation, and there will be people who have been dealing with both a history of violence or abuse, and what tends to come right after that (especially where children are involved), the family court system, a real financial and personal “meat-grinder” in which what goes in often bears no resemblance to what goes out.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT for this POPULATION? They will eventually get old and may fall into the hands of the probate court or “trusts and estates” predators. They may end their years fighting this situation, which is my concern, as well as the immediate situations.
OVERALL, this took place in multiple court systems over a period of fifteen years, in a progressive city within the state of California. I have been left wondering not just where due process and ethics within ANY professions associated with these various courts went, but also what to do about it, and where else a life might be possible without the constant pressure to either concede more personal liberties, or every single day spent fighting for them, or figuring out how to fight back.
It is extremely ugly and no question, this is a war on personal independence of people targeted by marital status, gender, and in my case, age within my own family line. Apparently the older are to give orders to the younger, regardless of age, and how little, really, is the difference between us. At the family level (both within marriage and among middle-aged adult siblings) the choice I had was to go along with abuse, or speak out first privately and eventually in public, and stand up against it.
I chose stand up and speak up. I already knew that the alternative was ongoing enslavement under the label “family”.
After I separated from my ex through legal means, made a household move and another one from which the income almost immediately tripled and referrals for more work — in classical music, performing (voice & piano both), teaching and directing choirs — continued to multiply, from the first “no thank you!” to my middle-aged adult sibling (and spouse) followed by a “No!” followed by my written reminder these individuals were helping my ex violate a standing restraining order” followed somehow meanwhile by demonstrating my intent to make decisions that would lead to ongoing (“sustainable”!) income IN MY PROFESSION (why not? It paid better!) and two children on the college-scholarship track (and obviously so), there were indicators it would be “WAR!” from the involved, married, middle-aged sibling and her (over time, I concluded) sociopath spouse.
Apparently this sibling also had time on her hands, at some point having been laid off from her full-time work NOT in her main profession (not having been able to support herself in it, ever, that I’m aware of it – unlike music, this is a hard one without taking on some teaching, to make a serious go at) and not having her own children to occupy her mind, heart, or as either full-time work, or raising children, or both might have, otherwise free time.
Our elderly mother, then a widow, was also deliberately put in the middle of this war — however, I did not start it by (a) taking measures to preserve physical life for children and myself, and (b) engaging in — for the first time in years without ongoing threats and punishments for doing so, and hence, more effectively — a work life and relationships with people outside the abusive ex, the co-dependent enablers (for YEARS) of the same abuse, and all of this without violating existing family court orders. In short, for a brief moment in time, I was beginning to feel and function like a normal human being, and a mother, and taking my place alongside other working adults and parents in the community were I lived, and surrounding towns where I went to work.
During these years, the children were doing well academically and in the arts, also — and the sibling married couple involved almost throughout made it clear they did NOT like this so much as the prior situation where, apparently, they felt (although they certainly weren’t, financially or socially or in any way) more central to my survival. Throughout this time, my ex, having weekly court-ordered access to the children (and not working sufficient to provide even a one-bedroom apartment for himself, though he could have; having both the business skills AND at that time, access to credit to further develop his business), picked up the children each weekend, and most weekends, I eventually learned, simply drove them right over to my sibling married couple’s home – – – until at some point it appears they were replaced as substitute parents with a girlfriend some years later.
WHY SUCH STRENUOUS, ONGOING, INTERVENTIONS AT THAT TIME, AND STILL?
As a person, I’m hardly a “dangerous” personality. I have a B.Music and later a B.Th (work/study), then I married and had children, then I separated and continued working as a single mother, then as a single noncustodial mother seeking to regain a glimpse of my own children when there was no court order enforcement to be seen, anywhere, by anyone involved with the family, and least of all by any law enforcement aware of the situation.
Primarily at that time I was singing, playing the piano, help others sing and play the piano, directing choirs at time (community nonprofit) teaching privately at a local community music school (one with a good reputation and a good situation for referrals, venue and administrative support that I had discovered on moving to a new community), hanging out with the professionals also involved in these fields, helping little kids learn to read music in a variety of situations, and establishing in most places, higher standards of excellence than when I first walked in the door. Frequent performances were involved. Occasional single-event gigs (mostly accompaniment) were involved, and overall, I was clearly functioning in the ongoing maintenance of a profession, and doing well enough at it to continue getting referrals from satisfied customers — for at least a few years into the family court fiasco times.
I was throughout primarily identified, both by myself and among friends as a choir director and accompanist (pianist and singer) most of my adult life, when not working in both law AND CPA (and a few times sales) office support positions, and with some tech ability in navigating computer systems to get the work done. But primarily I identified as a classical musician working a variety of moderate-income employment (or self-employment) deliberately because of the type of work and populations I was working with, including children, including in the inner city at times. I was not going for a concert career and did not join the musicians union which would’ve prevented my work with those populations. I have sung or performed with major professional organizations and with orchestras on the East Coast as a young woman (high school/college) and in the Midwest in my twenties and thirties, and only to the extent I could still pull it BEFORE and AFTER marriage to a physically violent husband, in the SF Bay Area. It took literally his (and girlfriend’s) STEALING both daughters on a court-ordered exchange after I’d just enrolled them in school and signed a twelve-month lease, and ON a major concert weekend and one week before a major audition, to eventually destroy my life in music (this was dragged out over one and a half years to fully eliminate the last gasps of work referrals for anything ongoing in this field).
What kind of man or woman, related or not, has an “issue” with this kind of functionality in life? What kind of person sees functionality and attempts to subvert it for personal prowess (among the family) and personal GAIN, calling it “help”? for YEARS after the evidence of harm has come to light?
And what kind of justice (courts) system supports and profits from this type of personal vendetta litigation against people who have not been proven guilty of anything, and does so in venue after venue, and year after year? Why should LAWYERS be held to lesser standards of compliance with the rules of court and filing procedures than self-represented litigants they’ve hauled into court under threat of seizing or destroying valuable personal property as I was threatened this past fall, and spring, and this threat remains until it is mitigated. But in the fall, nearly ALL my household belongings (including that piano) remained under threat until I was able to get them out, after I myself had been driven from that unsafe home.
What kind of executive branch, and here I’m talking the various times I sought, as a woman, for help enforcing an existing court order, i.e., protection of personal property boundaries, or in the main example, of stopping a kidnapping in action?, simply will not make a simple statement when police are on the scene, to establish boundaries for a resident tenant when it’s a major holiday weekend and trucks and personnel are on the property chopping down and loading up trees? When I think over the past twenty-five (25) YEARS, how enforcement of the law might have helped prevent problems that were IN PROCESS at the time, might have deterred more of them, and instead, simply standing by and “letting it happen….” what’s the purpose in that?
Who is really serving whom?
Since these ARE the tactics, observed, what must be the corresponding Strategic Goal(s)?
If the Strategic Goals are what Public Policy Generally Says They Are
— Public Welfare / Reduction of Dependence on Government Assistance / Public Interest —
(or, in my individual case as was said, protecting my children, or even helping them or me)
Then Why Have [1] Abusive, Controlling and Often Self-Contradictory Tactics
apparently achieving the Exact Opposite Results (and failing to reach the goals) &
[2] Extensive PR to coverup the Actual Results
Become Routine Practices for those applying the Strategies?
The credibility gap is HUGE, but few people are challenging it showing the practices DO achieve other, potentially desirable goals and name what those goals might be, and how these practices effectively achieve them. Maybe too many are afraid to abandon the last-gasp strands of hope that the system is what it claims to be — in their public interest –and admit, internally, that it isn’t now, and probably never was, except as it was convenient towards reaching the other goals.
(Another reason I continue blogging while dealing with the personal tactics described above.)
SIMILARLY….
Similarly, when the public at large is forced to support tax-exempt organizations which only seek to undermine local representation and legal rights under this nation, or (for some subject matters) an individual state where a person resides, overall, that public is being extorted through the tax system. It’s just generally speaking so huge, so diffuse (“variegated”) and it’s been going on so long, we forget to not just get indignant periodically, but also to monitor and maintain awareness of how this all works.
The biggest condition of fraud would appear to be in the pushing of “debt” and “deficit” when wealth is simply sequestered in different funds and enterprises. For that information, go “back to Burien” or remember the CAFR situation. This underlies ALL GOVERNMENT ENTITIES on the CAFR system and in place since at least after World War II, apparently around 1946 the GFOA. (Gov’t Finance Officers Association)
Where there is “Strategy” or any institute has the word “Strategic” in its title, there IS a planned outcome through multiple, widespread and sometimes stealth means. If the outcome could happen through straight-out powerful confrontation without major destruction, it probably would. Where the strategies are employed is first of all — for success through tact, and second, through success where victory could not be taken by massive, blunt application of force without:
- Destroying too many of the assets (factors, roads, infrastructure — and schools that train workforce)
- Destroying too much of the population for an effective workforce in the new arrangements
- Alienating too much of the population to obtain the necessary cooperation in the new order without having to continually apply blunt physical force, threats and terrorism, which affect worker morale.
The word “strategy” implies there is a purpose, a goal. The “Strategic” part is planned tactics for accomplishing it. This is something I know because of my Biblical studies, it’s a Greek word “strateuo.” Whether used metaphorically or literally, its presence includes planned outcome, and organized tactics.
I continue to assert that there is a desired outcome to overcome representative government (worldwide) in favor of effective (whether or not official) forms of one-world government, with struggles which major superpower might be leading it — for example, whether a US/Anglo UN-based, or perhaps an Asian-based one, or maybe a Russian-based “one world.”
As friends and acquaintances in different states CONTINUE to bark up the legal tree only and REFUSE to investigate properly the related nonprofit power networks in their local communities, I am running out of words (and at times, the will) to continue pointing out the omission of this critical step. Any fool can see that after things are coordinated in smaller units, the leaders of those smaller units then organize in global regions at the international basis .and in situations where the individual citizen has ZERO (no!) rights by virtue of representation.
Seeing as Europe, specifically the British Empire / Commonwealth / Commonwealth of Nations, made a good effort at the same thing within recent history, and has re-organized itself to gradually let some colonies free, but keep it loosely organized under the Commonwealth of Nations, I think when the United States of America, with ITS legal structure, Constitution, and Bill of Rights – and WITHOUT official titles of nobility/aristocracy (the closest we come, perhaps, is the common use of the suffix “Esq.” in lawyers?) — and WITHOUT an official national religion — starts getting back into bed with, or I should say, HAS gotten back into bed with, organizations HQ’d in London, we should be alert to the possible consequences.
Right now we are supposed to fear the Islamic State (ISIS) the most. I’m certainly not in favor of that, however, the consistent and progressive dis-empowerment of individuals within this country, and being a woman, I will say, historic disempowerment and disenfranchisement of women, I say, we have to pay attention to where the legislative is letting the “charitable foundations” coordinate policies across national borders, and then seek to entrench them locally.
Vine’s Greek New Testament (not an on-line tool I typically use, but I’d searched for the phoneticized “strateuo”)
A2. War (Verb and Noun) [Verb] strateuo used in the Middle Voice, “to make war” (from stratos, “an encamped army”), is translated “to war” in 2 Cor 10:3; metaphorically, of spiritual “conflict,” 1 Tim 1:18;2 Tim 2:3, AV; James 4:1;1 Pet 2:11. See strateuo under SOLDIER.
See also : strateuo
On-Line Etymology Dictionary has a whole page, and some words out of alphabetical order, to explain this concept better. Very helpful website.
I learned, for example, that the “str” part of the word is a combo of “Structure” as in “spread out” plus “ago” a sort of all-purpose word: lead, do, go (etc.)
strategy (n.)
strategist (n.)
stratagem (n.)
strategize (v.)
stratography (n.)
Because I did a search (instead of paging through the “s” words for “strategy”) this search result also brought up related words such as: Reconstruction | Stonewall | Scorch | Filibuster…. and even “Massive” in reference to the Cold War policy of “massive retaliation.”
Here’s “Structure” (link above under “Strategy”) from the same online-dictionary; we can see it’s a past participle of a Latin word “Struere”. Keeping in mind if you want to see any “STRATEGY” you must look in more than one place and see how it’s “constructed” (connected, assembled) in the various parts.
structure (n.)
So, when I look at nonprofits, I will be looking at how they JOIN with other organizations on websites (by referring to other organizations), of course by board affiliations — but also on their tax returns, as to “Related Organizations” (Schedule-R), or even other organizations not marked as officially “related” but still showing the exact same street address and suite #.
In public/private partnerships, if we the public are to understand our own government we should ALSO be understanding not just its accounting statements (financials — CAFRs) but also HOW IT CONNECTS to the nonprofit sector, and how the nonprofit sector responds by acknowledging receipt of funds. In other words, what databases show this?
I have proved more than once on this blog (see “Relationship Training Institute” and the Gottmans, a 2016 post, I believe the title had the words “Dumpster Diving in the Credibility Gap) where the HHS claimed it had donated what the nonprofit did not acknowledge. That’s another place where the JOINTS should be considered.
The other connections to look at, systemically, is how the population in general “connects” or “is connected” (financially and physically) to government institutions, which is to say, public ones. One way we are “joined at the hip” is through funding them, another is through being regulated (and or charged usage fees or licensing fees, etc.) by them to the point of having the potential for lives, families, neighborhoods — and personal liberties — to be seriously restructured.
Another way some are connected is through employment in these institutions, which then affects the public as it comes to pension liabilities (right?)….
All this structure, infrastructure, and superstructure is generally in motion — evolving or devolving. It is not static. WE LIVE WITHIN THESE DIMENSIONS, basically.
So it only makes sense to me to become more aware of this conceptual, legal, financial environment earlier, rather than later. For some of us, the awareness came later, and at a heavy price. By blogging and ongoing outreach (mostly volunteer) I am telling readers — you cannot just let this information slide by. There is a responsibility to understand and communicate that understanding not just in terms of “what’s in it for me, or my social/demographic sector” but what’s in it intergenerationally.
And we have to look at the privatization of government as it pertains to systematically changing it “through the back door” with the overall goal of bypassing or replacing it in essence if not in complete official, name.
(“STRUCTURE,” cont’d.) The widespread descendants of this ancient root are believed to include: Sanskrit strnoti “strews, throws down;” Avestan star- “to spread out, stretch out;” Greek stronymi “strew,” stroma “bedding, mattress,” sternon “breast, breastbone;” Latin sternere “to stretch, extend;” Old Church Slavonic stira, streti“spread,” strama “district;” Russian stroji “order;” Gothic straujan, Old High German strouwen, Old English streowian “to sprinkle, strew;” Old English streon “strain,” streaw “straw, that which is scattered;” Old High German stirna “forehead,” strala “arrow, lightning bolt;” Old Irish fo-sernaim “spread out,” srath “a wide river valley;” Welsh srat “plain.”structure (v.)
I hope you enjoy this informational, conversational post which comes from a systematic lookup of “Partners” link at a single university website, combined with my awareness of similar related activity.
http://iip.rutgers.edu
The International Institute for Peace (IIP) at Rutgers University, Newark is a UNESCO Category II organization dedicated to peacebuilding, conflict transformation through nonviolent struggle, and the promotion of peace education and a culture of peace. The IIP builds partnerships locally and globally by working with grassroots organizations, youth leaders, activists, journalists, educators and researchers to promote peacebuilding, nonviolent conflict transformation, and just and sustainable peace. The IIP promotes research on issues of peace and conflict as well as education about peacebuilding and nonviolent struggle.
My intent is not to dwell on this information, but get it out there, and continue on with my main blogging theme at this point which has a sort of New England focus. However, I will always be in “teaching mode” about whatever it is I am seeing and learning.
One of the partners, ICNC had a chairman Peter Ackerman, also involved with a different instituted called IISS.
There is also information on the “Strong Cities Network” below only because I initially confused an “IISS” which came up in the lookups with an “ISD” which I’d heard about earlier. As a type of event taking place — although it seems that UNESCO only has one (or maybe two) US outposts directly at a university (check UNESCO to see), the website of a well-known University is a powerful advertising platform for other groups. In that context of federalism/regionalism, I also have a few quotes and links explaining how this works in the US (as to HHS and the Federal Security Agencies, predecessor of “HEW” which was predecessor of HHS & the USDOE), i.e., some timelines.
In looking up the IISS (having identified it as a British and Welsh Charity and private company) (sounds similar to the US system where a charity is registered, and the company is registered as a business), which seems highly connected and influential, I looked at its chairperson (“Fleur de Villiers”) background as political commentator and journalist from South Africa, who had (what else?) a Fellowship at Harvard also…what other US people are on its Council and what their connections.
Another partner was the International Peace Bureau which apparently goes back 100 years.
I became aware of a bi-coastal, a bit tricky organization involving Rutgers University and a location initially in Beverly Hills, but later in West Hollywood, California (or vice versa) which picked up a celebrity promoter, Forest Whitaker, and another strong personality Aldo Civico with background from Italy and Columbia who came to “The State University of New Jersey” I believe, it was around 2010.
Within about one year, the International Institute for Peace he founded became “UNESCO” and shortly thereafter, the International Institute for Peace FOUNDATION (West Coast) changed its name to acknowledge Mr. Whitaker. Meanwhile, before then (It gets a little complicated!) an ANTI-regionalism lawsuit was filed in Northern California citing two little (they were indeed little) nonprofits, stating their opposition to the SF Bay Area’s plan “One Bay Area” as a violation of private property ownership and rights, and sued the planning agency, “ABAG.”
So naturally, they (those filing the lawsuit) were going to raise funds for the lawsuit (now in appeal stage, it says) and cited an Edward Charles Foundation founded by (if my memory serves well enough) attorney Ken E. Seton of Seton & Associates, and a man Kevin Grigorenko– which was clearly providing funds for this IIP Foundation — and with Mr. Seton being an incorporator (or first registered agent — check records) of the same. The funds were coming both as distributions through this fiscal agent AND as grants, and it seems on looking at the books that too much “funky monkey-business” was going on.
I started looking closer at the various nonprofits, and even set up (with some difficulty formatting it) a single page dedicated to posting ALL the uploaded pdfs of at least the Whitaker Institute (formed the latest of all those involved) so I could not be accuse of making this up, and so people could click and see. That’s in draft.
In looking closer at the website of WPDI.org (PD standing for “Peace and Development”) I was struck by the application of similar programming to youth in war-torn areas of Africa (Southern Sudan, Northern Uganda) and Mexico — and South Central Los Angeles. Among the programming was one “Harmonizer” — which had been developed with Mr. Aldo Civico of Rutgers. Before IIP FOUNDATION even incorporated a continent away, they had figured out the programming (per its founding articles, which are available at the California Charitable Trust Registry).
Some aspects of this remind me of Ellen Pence (Duluth, MN, “Rock Star of Domestic Violence” (Prevention)|d. 2012) and her /its (nonprofit Domestic Abuse Intervention Programs, “theduluthmodel.org”) adaptation of a sort of liberation theology tactics designed for Brazil and for less-than-literate populations, i.e., from Paolo Friere, and demanding “Coordinated Community Response.”
We are seeing that, pervasively, in the US, with our accelerated / developed-world technology and university connections, plus the stockpiled wealth of generations acquired from the general population at large. The art of the networked nonprofit power blocs in association with government is VERY well developed in the USA, and is currently being used against the population, under the label of serving and helping the population.
My children have been subjected to this aggressive, “equalizing” through outcome-based courts, and values-based federal financing, where one’s values don’t fit the current mix — you’re screwed, or can easily be screwed. I am daily aware of women, mothers, in particular, who are being bankrupted and ongoing traumatized by the courts for showing independence, competence, and asserting that they believe there should actually be some legitimate cause before taking their children, and then charging supervised visitation fees to even SEE them.
IF there was a genuine intent to relieve poverty within the US first, instead of restructure the world according to some private visions (and saving women overseas while attacking women, as women, in the United States, is a pretty sorry state of affairs indeed), it would not be done this way.
Also, my being now in my sixties, the cumulative effect and awareness of how women have been excluded — first, from voting before men (including freed slaves), and second, from the higher education universities whose programming is basically directing the country, and producing politicians. We (women) literally did not get a chance at most Ivy League universities until the 1970s, and some even later — that’s TWO HUNDRED YEARS after the founding of the country. Because of the separate but unequal system of taxation also, this allows preservation and transfer culturally and individually of that wealth under private control for generations — affecting which sons (now daughters too) get into Harvard, Yale, MIT, Princeton, Columbia and into International involvements, and which are trapped, dependent upon what J.O.B.S. they can acquire and maintain and under which conditions, sometimes in court litigation defending their basic human and household (single, moderate or small-sized) boundaries and sometimes even properties.
{Remember Maryann Godboldo who had to face down a SWAT team after she confronted people breaking into her house WITHOUT a valid court order to go grab her daughter for the purposes of Risperdal administration? That was in the Detroit area, and NOT that long ago…Look in the Detroit Free Press for some accounts of it… }
The FAMILY PRESERVATION INTERVENTIONS are not for the elite — they are for the low-income and the blue- and white-collar-professional classes that the elite employ. Not only is this fairly obvious, the social science materials in talking about this, say so. So, somehow, there’s always enough money for decades of Institutes to Research Poverty — but not enough to eradicate it?
- http://www.irp.wisc.edu/aboutirp.htm
- IRP is a center for interdisciplinary research into the causes and consequences of poverty and social inequality in the United States. It is nonprofit and nonpartisan. It is based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As one of three National Poverty Research Centers sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, it has a particular interest in poverty and family welfare in Wisconsin as well as the nation.
Look where that funding comes from — HHS!
And there’s plenty of money for studying “Fragile Families,” Ford Foundation was into this, too, as well as obviously the private universities of Columbia (Center for Population Research) and Princeton:
- http://cupop.columbia.edu/research/signature-research-areas/fragile-families-and-child-wellbeing-working-group
- The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is a joint effort by the Columbia Population Research Center at Columbia University, The National Center for Children and Families (NCCF) at Teachers College, and by Princeton University’s Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) and Center for Health and Wellbeing.
The Principal Investigators of the Fragile Families Study are Sara McLanahan at Princeton University and Irwin Garfinkel at Columbia University. The Co-Investigators are Jeanne Brooks-Gunn at Teachers College, Ronald Mincy at Columbia University, and Jane Waldfogel at Columbia University.The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Working Group meets bi-monthlyvia videoconference link between Princeton and Columbia. To be added to the Fragile Families listserv please contact cprc@columbia.edu.
- The Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study is a joint effort by the Columbia Population Research Center at Columbia University, The National Center for Children and Families (NCCF) at Teachers College, and by Princeton University’s Center for Research on Child Wellbeing (CRCW) and Center for Health and Wellbeing.
- (from the above menu):
Logo from Columbia Teacher College’s “PolicyforChildren.org” website.
“NCCF advances the policy, education, and development of children and their families. Housed at Teachers College, Columbia University, the Center produces and applies interdisciplinary research to improve practice and to raise public awareness of social issues that affect the well-being of children and families in the United States and around the world.
OUR GOALS
NCCF’s extensive research programs benefit multiple constituents, including researchers, policy-makers, early childhood teacher educators, Head Start teachers and directors, practitioners, families, and the general public.
Interesting — WHO is mentioned last? “families, and the general public.” Now, WHO are they working, on, first listed?
- From inner-city neighborhoods to rural preschools and public schools, from state capitals throughout the U.S. to ministries of education in developing nations, our work has three primary goals:
Somehow, there’s not much concern about private school system here, nor it is mentioned. In fact, it seems to me that inner-city POVERTY and URBAN PROBLEM AREAS are an integral part of the national economy and without them, a lot of professors and researches might land up otherwise on the open market.
Without question (hit me with a comment if you want more links) there is a collective intent to develop programming useful in both urban areas AND under-developed, war-torn countries. It is the university-affiliated nonprofit sector promoting this too. For recent examples, see “Institution for International Peace” at Rutgers, featuring Aldo Civico (Italy/Columbia conflict resolution specialist and I see from his personal website, [World Transformation through Personal Transformation] adept internet marketer who had a transformative encounter (“Date with Destiny”) with Tony Robbins which the website definitely reflects):
“Aldo’s Story”
Hi. I’m Aldo. I’m an anthropologist dedicated to conflict resolution and the author of four books, including my most recent one, The Para-State: An Ethnography of Colombia’s Death Squads.
On my blog, I share my reflections, discoveries and insights linked to my practice as an anthropologist and my conflict resolution work.
Connect. Love. Transform. I believe these are the three fundamental pillars to create a fulfilling life and to make a positive contribution to the world that is larger than yourself.
and an associated foundation recently renamed after renowned actor Forrest Whitaker, as the “Whitaker Peace & Development Initiative” with its UNESCO connections. I ran across this tracking down a tricky anti-Agenda 21 lawsuit against ABAG (regional government entity) up in Northern California which was soliciting funds through an obviously PRO-Agenda 21 organization (Edward Charles Foundation — the simplified name; it had a name change too) which, I learned eventually, is run by two gentlemen, one of who also was the incorporator on what is now the Whitaker Peace & Development but started out as the Institute for International Peace & Development FOUNDATION. This links is to a tax return showing its name change:
One is in Los Angeles (or So. Cal anyhow) and the other in New Jersey, but the practices (other than in South Central Los Angeles Schools) is for Southern Sudan and Northern Uganda, Mexico and I think I read Burma. Here’s the UNESCO reference to this International Institute, with “Rutgers” barely showing on the logo. You can also go find it at Rutgers — the State University of New Jersey:
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/bureau-of-strategic-planning/resources/category-2-institutes/bureau-of-strategic-planning/the-international-institute-for-peace/http://www.newark.rutgers.edu/news/international-institute-peace-rutgers-university-newark-now-affiliated-unesco
From Newark.Rutgers.EDU, November 2011 announcement.
Actor /humanist Forest Whitaker and Rutgers Professor Aldo Civico have announced that the International Institute for Peace (IIP) at Rutgers-Newark is now operating under the auspices of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Whitaker and Civico are co-founders of the institute; Whitaker is chairman while Civico, who teaches in the Rutgers-Newark department of sociology and anthropology, is director of IIP. The actor also is the UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Peace and Reconciliation.
‘m still looking at this (posts in the pipeline…) but it seems that first Aldo Civico came to Rutgers (2010) and set up the center, then– within a year –AFTER it was established at a US (NJ) state PUBLIC university, it advertised and cemented its UNESCO program.
The site at Rutgers, I see, lists partners (mostly I presume nonprofits), including WPTI.org (Whitaker Institute) alphabetically. The first one, “CANVAS (website CANVASOPEDIA.org) is regarding Serbian Resistance and based in Belgrade:
HAD TO SPLIT THIS POST WITH ALL ITS DOCUMENTATION (quotes, and some more tax returns) Somewhere. Here seems like a good point:
CONTINUED @ Looking at the UNESCO-outreach “International Institute for Peace” at Rutgers, Partner Page:
Title changed below, but the link did not– both ones labeled “UNESCO” here lead to the same page, and now there’s a third one, “Munich”….
Related posts: UNESCO’s IIP@Rutgers|”Partners” + ISD and the Strong Cities Network (Reorganizing the World through International Strategic Institutes, cont’d.) (next in this sequence, about to be published 7/23/2016).and (because “Munich” happened meanwhile): “Munich,” and the Strong Cities Network [ISIL/ISIS aren’t the only ones who want to control the World] also upcoming)Also, a shortlink (if you copy the url) to THIS post: ‘“Re-Organizing” The World through International Institutes, Strategies, Dialogues, Peacemaking and Programs Targeting Fragile Families, Communities — and Countries…
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
daveyone1
July 23, 2016 at 12:44 pm