Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

Melania Trump (born Melanija Knavs;[2][a] April 26, 1970; anglicized to Melania Knauss[3]) is a Slovene-born American former model who is married to American businessman and President-elect of the United States, Donald Trump.

Born in Slovenia, she became a permanent resident of the United States in 2001 and a citizen in 2006. She is to assume the role of First Lady of the United States on January 20, 2017. She will be the second foreign-born First Lady of the United States, following Louisa Adams in 1825, and the only First Lady to date not to have been born a citizen of the United States or in what would later become the United States. [see Wiki link is above for any internal links]… She speaks six languages: Serbo-Croatian, English, French, Italian, German, and her native Slovene.^[21]

and the five children from three different marriages, quite a different role model than the current President of the USA (wiki on Trump’s family has the image):

Trump has five children from three different marriages: Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric Trump with Ivana Trump, Tiffany Trump with Marla Maples, and Barron Trump with First Lady-designate Melania Trump

[This image being gone, see more extended family descriptions and photos at AMNY’s “Donald Trump’s family tree: Melania, Ivanka, Tiffany, Eric and more relatives (By Jamie Reysen and amNY.com staff April 10, 2017)

(interesting read.  DJT’s siblings, parents,):

Donald Trump is the fourth of five children. His sister, Elizabeth, is a former Chase banker; his other sister, Maryanne, is a retired judge who served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit; and his brother, Robert, served as a top Trump executive. But the sibling who has perhaps garnered the most media attention is Freddy, who died of alcoholism in 1981 at the age of 43 — whom Trump often references when discussing his decision to abstain from alcohol his entire life. A New York Times story posted in January paints a complicated relationship between Donald and Freddy  ({<==read!!]} that even extended to his relationship with his older brother’s family. The Times reported that Donald helped draft his father’s will, which cut Freddy’s kids out of the inheritance when Fred Sr. died in 1999. “Freddy’s children sued, claiming that an earlier version of the will had entitled them to their father’s share of the estate, but that Donald and his siblings had used ‘undue influence’ over their grandfather, who had dementia, to cut them out,” the Times reported. “A week later, Mr. Trump retaliated by withdrawing the medical benefits critical to his nephew’s infant child.”{{one had cerebral palsy!}} Pictured: From left, Robert, Elizabeth, Freddy, Donald and Maryanne. (Credit: Donald Trump campaign)(As seen in AMNY April 10, 2017, article)

Donald Trump was born in Queens in 1946 to Fred and Mary Trump. Fred was a Bronx-born New Yorker who made a fortune constructing middle-income apartments in Brooklyn and Queens. Mary was a Scottish immigrant. Donald has repeatedly refuted claims that his father gave him a large inheritance to start his own company. Clinton claimed at the first presidential debate that Trump “started his business with $14 million from his father,” but Trump fired back, saying, “My father gave me a very small loan in 1975.” (Credit: Donald Trump via Instagram) [in AMNewYork Apr 2017 article]

Oct. 31, 2016 “If Clinton Wins, Please Retire Husband” by Ruth Marcus, the Indy Star (as in Indianapolis; part of USA Today Network), talks about financial and sexual exploits, and some about the foundation, but the lights don’t seem to be on that foundations by character, and by sheer number of them (including some extremely wealthy ones) facilitate such behavior.  I am more likely to think about Bill in terms of his handling of demands of conservatives and progressives alike in 1996 “Welfare Reform,” and the re-election’s bad-timing with the Lewinsky affair.  However, here’s that quote (had to complete short survey to read).

…That does not mean Bill Clinton’s conduct is irrelevant. There is no condoning a record that reflects not just serial adultery, but abuse of power. Clinton was a successful president who deserved the two terms for which he was elected, but his misbehavior would disqualify him from a third term even if the Constitution allowed it.

Having him back in the White House if his wife is elected president creates an uncomfortable situation. It shouldn’t stop her from getting the job, but it can fairly shape what we want and expect of him as First Spouse. It is intellectually dishonest to be appalled by Trump’s behavior toward women and to airbrush Bill Clinton’s.

To put it bluntly, anyone else with Bill Clinton’s background wouldn’t be hired to work in Hillary Clinton’s White House.

And about that money: The Clinton Foundation did good works, but the Clintons’ unseemly money chase is repulsive, and it has become clear that they cannot be trusted to appropriately navigate ethical boundaries between their private interests and public responsibilities.

Recent WikiLeaked documents make manifest what has been apparent to anyone familiar with the compulsive money-vacuuming, comfortable nest-feathering, mutual back-scratching operation that is “Bill Clinton Inc.,” as longtime Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band described it.

There is incessant, troubling, blurring of lines

The Sun.UK on November 4 had some more commentary (in an article questioning what would be the formal title of the First Husband if Hillary Clinton won), among its questions:

So will Bill move back to his old bedroom at the White house?

Bed-hopping Bill Clinton has said he was looking forward to moving back to the White House if Hillary wins the presidency in 2016 – but only if his wife decides to ask him.

The former Commander-in-Chief joked he would still need an invite before relocating to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue if Hillary’s campaign is successful.

Talking to David Letterman he said he would move back to the White House in the event of his wife winning the presidency – so long as she asks him

 “If she wins the election, the chances are 100 per cent I’ll move back … if I’m asked.”

Obviously a return to the White House will also be a return to the place where he infamously had a fling with intern Monica Lewinsky.

• GOVERNING COUNCIL
• ROBERT SWAAK
• SAM WORTHINGTON
• JULIA NEUBERGER
• JONATHAN KESTENBAUM
• STEVEN KAEMPFER
• JACQUELINE TAMMENOMS BAKKER
• WIM BORGDORFF
• YAROM ARIAV
• STAFF
• ANDRE BETTING
• TIM OTTO
• BOB GALESLOOT
• RICK VENSTER
• JANE HARTMAN

This is who they look like.  The “smoky” look of the thumbnails is because they are links which become active (and clear in color and image) when cursor hovers over them:

For the most part none of these look like the others chldren they are so interested in raising properly.  Perhaps some clues may be had in the Funding Universe history of Royal Packaging Van Leer N.V., which combined technological savvy (obviously), but also a major opportunity in producing barrels for Shell Oil.  Eventually it was figured out, why ship barrels around the world; we ought to be making them in the countries where they will be used.  Take a look.

Below this section above (written basically yesterday), there is a section below where I almost “go off” on the topic of the Leverhulme Trust as funding an Institute on Inequalities at London School of Economics, while its originator, one of the first multinational corporation owners in Great Britain, Lord Leverhulme (as he eventually became known), who lives 1851-1925, made some of his profits at the price of others lives, specifically in the Belgian Congo.  After Leverhulme’s death, the Lever Brothers Company merged with another to become “Unilever,” which Funding Universe Company History I also quote below.

I had no idea, writing that which is below, that in looking at the Royal Packaging Industries (which is mentioned above, but which I just hadn’t got to yet) Funding Universe History, I would find out that at one point it bought an arm of Unilever.

Also of key interest here is how the family of origin retained TIGHT control of this global packaging corporation into the 1990s, but then finally took it public at that time.  I’ll let Funding Universe website describe it better than I can:

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/royal-packaging-industries-van-leer-n-v-history/ (This history appears to date to about 1998, i.e., not exactly current!):

Company History:

Royal Packaging Industries Van Leer N.V. is one of the world leaders in industrial and consumer packaging. Van Leer’s steel drum sales place it as the leading global manufacturer of these industrial containers. Van Leer’s industrial products include steel, plastic, and fiber drums, intermediate bulk containers and other container products, as well as container closure systems, industrial films and sheeting, and metallized holographic papers. On the consumer side, Van Leer manufactures food packaging productsincluding plastic tubs, containers, and covers, molded fiber products, including egg boxes and other protective enclosures, and tableware, including the Chinet brand of disposable dishes; much of the company’s consumer products business is in the sale of printed consumer packaging products.

Van Leer’s operations are divided into its two primary product segments, each with its own strategy. Representing the oldest part of Van Leer’s business, its industrial products segment serves many of the world’s leading oil and chemical companies. The highly competitive marketplace, and limited overall market growth prospects, have led Van Leer to focus on developing more efficient product capacity and technology. The company’s entry into the consumer packaging market came with its acquisition of Unilever’s 4P consumer packaging unit in 1992. Through 4P and other subsidiaries, including the Chinet brand, Van Leer has gained a leading position in the worldwide consumer packaging and printed consumer packaging markets.

A publicly traded company since 1996, Van Leer has had difficulties realizing shareholder value in a market with limited organic growth opportunities. After building scale through acquisitions–which doubled the company’s sales—Van Leer itself became an acquisition target in 1999. At the end of July of that year, Van Leer announced that it had reached an agreement to merge its operations into those of Finland’s Huhtamaki, creating the world’s eighth largest packager. The merger, to cost Huhtamaki an estimated $1 billion, was expected to be completed by the end of 1999. The company would then be named Huhtamaki Van Leer, with annual sales of more than 2.8 billion Euros.

Origins:

Now that the USA has a new President (I write 11/9/2016), I did post on election night an extended discussion on the Bernard van Leer Foundation and some of the affiliations of its current Executive Director, at length.  I also showed how it has been recently engaged with 13 other organizations in promoting Early Childhood Education for ALL (focused on migrant and low-income families in Europe and the USA) in association with the King Baudouin Foundation of the USA (with parent corporation, HQ in Belgium).  That section probably needs to be removed to its own post, and has a LOT to say.

I believe we should be reminded that the participating foundations’ countries, do not share the same constitution or form of government as the USA, nor are their respective land masses anywhere equivalent in size (we are talking two or three European countries and the UK); the British empire no longer exists in empire form, and the Belgian empire, thank GOD, no longer exists either.

If the related philanthropies of these countries still wish to coordinate and colonize the children of the world under pretenses of helping all of them (with or without the children’s parents’ participation and awareness of the ramifications of letting major corporations, united in purpose, into their own ‘development” as nations), that’s one thing.  I don’t however, believe that the USA should be participating.

And we are participating when there are outposts of 501©3s formed in the USA to send (wire transfer, in fact) millions of dollars to Europe to help the poor children of Africa and Asia, as some of the programming reads in the “King Baudouin Foundation US” only formed (in Georgia) in 1997, but for some reason with HQ in Rockefeller Center, NYC.  The Bernard van Leer Foundation is definitely in on this and participating.

Let us remember what took place in the Belgian Congo one hundred years ago, to help make some of the international corporate wealth held by, say, groups like Unilever, and the tradition of William Leverhulme in setting up planned communities for his workers in (the UK), but when it came to the Belgian Congo, that was simply slave labor, with death by overwork, starvation, etc. to those who didn’t produce enough.  Subsequently, the history of the “Dove Soap” ads contain enough racism for three lifetimes.

In case you may wonder where I run across this information, or why look it up – – – – a lot is in response to what I witnessed happening in the family courts of the USA as influenced by the nonprofit sector. The concept of “coordinated tax-exempt foundations, crossing national borders, and planning how public institutions should be run” may be challenging to execute, but it is NOT a difficult concept to grasp.   Especially when the planning of it has already been documented and is available on-line in major international journals reporting information dating back decades, pre- and post-world wars I and II.

However, for some reason I heard about the International Institute on Inequalities — formed at the London School of Economics (“LSE” in the next image) only back in 2015.  It was started in good part with help from the “Leverhulme Trust.”  Obviously the Leverhulme Trust is significant to the establishment of the institute, so I looked up that as well and saw how one man profited from slave labor in another continent surrounding specific products, and set up the worst oppression of workers on another continent, Africa, while when it comes to the country where he must live, it wasn’t quite so bad, but still controlling, planned communities, complete with moralizing on worker behavior and religious attendance.  Wm. Leverhulme’s company (Lever Brothers) combined with a Dutch company, hence “Unilever” and I can still see this logo on TV ads today.

Funding Universe writes chronological narratives of various countries; they are not always the most current, but they are always interesting to read:

Funding Universe “Company History of Lever Brothers,” a “wholly-owned subsidiary of Unilever, United States, Inc.” in NY.  Here’s the startup paragraphs showing, just how FAST it spread, and the beginnings of advertising to Americans differently than to Brits, as well as who were the main competitors.  Reminder: Soap was being made from vegetable oils, not animal tallow, and part of the market niche was through brand control:

Lever Brothers Company is one of the largest manufacturers of soaps and detergents in the United States. It is well known for such famous brands as Sunlight dish detergents; Wisk, Surf, and “all” laundry detergents; and Caress, Dove, Lifebuoy, and Lever 2000 soaps. Lever Brothers is a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch Unilever group, which includes more than 500 companies and has sales of more than $43 billion annually. 

Lever Brothers Company has its roots with William Hesketh Lever, an English grocer. Beginning in 1874, Lever’s wholesale grocery business had been marketing a soap made specially for them called Lever’s Pure Honey. By the 1880s, Lever had concluded that he had expanded the grocery business as much as he could, and he looked for another enterprise. He decided to market soap. As a child, his first job in his father’s grocery store had been to cut and wrap soap. He knew the importance of a brand name that he could register for exclusive use and chose the name “Sunlight.” At first he contracted with various soapmakers to manufacture “Sunlight,” which he then packaged and marketed. In the mid-1880s, raw materials were cheap and workers plentiful, and Lever decided to set up his own soapmaking plant. 

Arranging a loan to start the factory as a branch of his family’s wholesale grocery business, William and his brother James began production. By January 1886, the plant was producing twenty tons of soap a week using the “recipe” for Sunlight soap (made from oils rather than tallow) that the Lever Brothers had perfected. Two years later, the plant had a capacity of 450 tons a week. Glycerine was a lucrative byproduct of the soapmaking process, and by the end of 1886, Lever Brothers also had a glycerine factory. At first Lever was selling locally, then its market branched out to include Scotland, Holland, Belgium, South Africa, and Canada. In 1888, with the success of Sunlight, William Lever went looking for a new site for his company, which had been operating from leased facilities. He bought land on the banks of the Mersey River where he built Port Sunlight. Over a period of years, he bought almost 330 acres.

At first Lever manufactured only Sunlight soap. In 1894, though, he introduced Lifebuoy soap, a household soap with carbolic acid as a disinfectant. The new product also used up the residual oils left over from production of Sunlight. In 1899, Lever’s companyalso began producing “Lux” soap flakes.

Lever opened a small office in New York in 1895 to handle U.S. sales of Sunlight and Lifebuoy soaps. In 1898, Lever acquired a small soap factory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company’s first manufacturing operations in the United States. A few years later, the company acquired a factory in Philadelphia. The Cambridge plant did business throughout New England, and the Philadelphia plant distributed to the rest of the country.

Everything is progressing nicely seemed like.  Some paras. on marketing to Americans, then:

Between 1920 and 1925, sales rose from 21,000 tons to more than 40,000 tons. Lever’s American concern was finally becoming a success. By 1929, it had become the third-largest soap and glycerine manufacturer in the United States. Competition was strong among the top three soap manufacturers: Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive-Peet, and Lever Brothers. Lever Brothers had given up on Sunlight, but Lifebuoy and Welcome were selling well due to heavy promotions which included gifts, special displays, demonstrations, and even door-to-door visits. But it was Lux that became its greatest success.  ….

Meanwhile, the parent company in England was in the midst of negotiations that would soon make Lever Brothers of America a subsidiary of a newly formed partnership. In 1929, after years of talks, Lever Brothers Ltd. and Holland’s Margarine Unie finalized a deal to become Unilever. They remained two companies with two sets of shareholders and two headquarters but one board of directors. Unilever Public Limited Company (PLC) was based in London and Unilever NV (Naamloze Vennootschap, meaning limited-liability company) was based in Rotterdam. Although legally distinct, they operated as one company. …

In 1944, Lever entered the oral hygiene market when it acquired the large Pepsodent Company, manufacturer of toothbrushes and tooth-cleaning products. In 1948, it acquired the John F. Jelke Company, a manufacturer of margarine. …..

The US DOJ hits them with an anti-trust situation after they purchased products from Monsanto:

In 1957, Lever Brothers acquired the Monsanto Chemical Company’s line of “all” detergents, which included Concentrated “all,” Liquid “all” and Dishwasher “all.” This transaction resulted in an anti-trust suit by the U.S. Department of Justice which charged Lever Brothers with restricting competition by acquiring that piece of Monsanto which manufactured low-suds synthetic detergent, a product similar to one that Lever already made. Lever Brothers won the suit, arguing that rather than restricting competition, it was protecting it since both Lever’s and Monsanto’s products were losing money due to competition with “larger rivals” like Procter & Gamble. Lever Brothers Company successfully argued that if the businesses remained separate, eventually the larger rival would wipe both of them out, and that the acquisition of Monsanto’s detergents was actually helping to preserve a competitive marketplace.

Advertising dollars tended to spell the difference among several like products that essentially differed only by scent or color. Procter & Gamble spent massive amounts of money on advertising and promotion and controlled 45 percent to 50 percent of the household products market. Competition from Lever Brothers remained weak until the 1980s. Outside the United States, however, Lever’s parent organization, Unilever, was the leading manufacturer of detergents and margarine.

There’s a moral to this story, so please be patient!  The next quotes are from History.UK and talk about his model village, attempts to distance himself from the bad American robber barons (although his soap monopoly, it says, was modeled on their practices!), then about the African atrocities:

Lord Leverhulme ( from http://www.history.co.uk/biographies/lord-leverhulme)

Born:  09/09/1851 |  Died:  07/05/1925| Birthplace:  Bolton, Lancashire

William Lever built Britain’s largest company and in so doing, made the first modern multinational. And unlike the US Robber Barons, for Lord Leverhulme his workers’ welfare was as important as his wealth. But this didn’t extend to his African workers, with fatal consequences.William Hesketh Lever is born on 19 September 1851. After six daughters, his father’s happy he finally has someone to inherit his successful Bolton based grocery business. William’s brother, James Darcy Lever, joins the family three years later. Unlike the robust William, James will suffer from ill health throughout his short life.

Aged 16, William leaves school and joins the family business. In 1874, he marries. His wife, Elizabeth Hulme, not only lived on the same street as him, but attended the same church. The Congregationalist Church infuses him with many of the ideals he will make real with his business empire. The couple will have a number of children, but only one, also called William, will survive.

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continuing, same link:

….Thanks to William’s marketing acumen, within a decade of its launch it is on sale in 134 countries. By 1888, they’re producing 450 tonnes. Business is good. Five years after moving into the village of Thornton Hough, William buys the manor there. Next, he’ll buy the village.

PORT SUNLIGHT
Needing larger business premises, William purchases 56 acres of land in Cheshire. He builds on marshes and creates Port Sunlight. The model village is developed between 1888 and 1914.  “Some 30 architects were commissioned to create a complete ‘garden’ village in what was unapologetically called the ‘old English’ style” Simon Schama, A History of Britain….

At a time when urban poverty and overcrowded slums are endemic, *** William has Jacobean-Flemish gables, exposed timbering and leaded windows in country cottages for his workers. As with the model village of Cadbury’s, Bourneville, the cottages have their own running water and unlike some at Bourneville, all have indoor bathrooms.

**Sound familiar yet?

Schools are built to educate 500 children. For women and girls, special classes are offered in cooking, dressmaking and shorthand. By 1909, there are 700 cottages, a concert hall and theatre, a library, a gymnasium and an open air swimming pool. Rents are one fifth of the weekly wage.

However, this largesse comes with conditions. William demands observance of strict ethical codes. Breaking them can mean losing your job. And as the cottages are tied to employment, losing your job means losing the roof over your head. William makes many social activities compulsory in his village.

Investing in benefits for local workforce, seeking slave labor in the Belgian Congo:

NO TRUST PLEASE: WE’RE BRITISH
In 1906 copying the trust set up by the American Robber Barons like JP Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie, William creates a soap monopoly. But the British have seen how the Robber Barons virtually run their country according to their whims. A press campaign by the Daily Mail orchestrates a consumer boycott. There is such a colossal loss in sales and shareholder value that William abandons the idea within just four months of its creation.

LORD LEVERHULME
The same  year [[1906]] and somewhat more successfully, William stands for and is elected as a Member of Parliament for the Liberal Party in the Wirral constituency. In his maiden speech he urges the government to copy the old age pension plans he’s set up for his workers. He will go onto become a baronet, a Lord and even a High Sheriff. The ‘Hulme’ part of his name is added in honour of his wife. Combining his family name with that of his wife’s is at his insistence and is against all precedents.

AFRICAN ATROCITIES
In 1911, he travels to the Belgian Congo to establish palm oil plantations. Some estimates put the death toll of Belgian control there at 10 million. Lever requests 750,000 hectares from the Belgium rulers. The Lever plantations that are set up use forced labour. Though not technically slavery, the semantic difference means little to the many Africans that died because of horrific working conditions. In his defence, Lord Leverhulme did attempt to build African village versions of Port Sunlight for his own employees. But beatings and squalid conditions are the daily reality for many of the African workers.

SPIRIT OF SOAP
Back in Britain, he’s a benefactor to many, but his hometown of Bolton receives the most. Bolton’s largest park is created on land donated by him in 1914.

From 1918 on, he spends around a million pounds in an attempt to transform the Isle of Lewis, an island off the west coast of Scotland, but local opposition slowly sinks his vision. It’s a hugely costly diversion from his core business.

Read more @ history.co.uk:
Regarding Port Sunlight and model villages — again, we are in similar time, with similar purposes of the masters of corporations already established, to set up planned communities for “the workers” dependent on following the basic plan — WE control the assets, but with good behavior, you can live there…  This is being planned for the USA and for “developing countries” and it is being planned BY the descendants and inheritors of corporations previously engaged in similar activities, in prior generations.  They are more careful and consistent to keep up the positive PR spin and sales pitch upon all for the public interest in doing this.

As I see it, at the time the public had a choice to work in a dirty, diseased slum (and their children) and not have their children get education, or work in cleaner circumstances (those in the UK at least — not those in the Congo!), but still controlled, regulated, and guaranteed not to grow up to be competitors with the businessmen involved in setting up the “choices” they were given.  This is from Wiki on Port Sunlight:

The garden village had allotments and public buildings including the Lady Lever Art Gallery, a cottage hospital, schools, a concert hall, open air swimming pool, church, and a temperance hotel. Lever introduced welfare schemes, and provided for the education and entertainment of his workforce, encouraging recreation and organisations which promoted art, literature, science or music.

Lever’s aims were “to socialise and Christianise business relations and get back to that close family brotherhood that existed in the good old days of hand labour.” He claimed that Port Sunlight was an exercise in profit sharing, but rather than share profits directly, he invested them in the village. He said, “It would not do you much good if you send it down your throats in the form of bottles of whisky, bags of sweets, or fat geese at Christmas. On the other hand, if you leave the money with me, I shall use it to provide for you everything that makes life pleasant – nice houses, comfortable homes, and healthy recreation.“^[6]

The historical significance of Port Sunlight lies in its combination of model industrial housing, providing materially decent conditions for working people, with the architectural and landscape values of the garden suburb, influenced by the ideas of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement.

It mentions he was also a freemason and had a lodge named after himself.

The Google Book format of Colonialism and Commodity Racism I know is hard to read, but check out page 13 and environs, which references William Lever’s portrayal of the natives as “children” doing better with European masters, and economic events in the late 1880s sending the Europeans looking to Africa not just for the materials, but also as a market for their manufactured product.  What they didn’t want is native ownership of the plants producing their raw materials.  It also talks about some of the ads of the time for the soap being marketed in both US and (as I recall) Britain, perpetuating the infantilizing of adult Africans:

Not to mention the 1884 Berlin Conference:

Here’s a review from “permanentrevolution.net” (Its banner quoting Marx & Engels, so you can guess the political persuasion) of a book put out in 2008 by Jules Marchal, who had been ambassador to several African countries and, it says, had a 15-year obsession with finding out what had really happened, after initially believing his country (Belgian) had been slandered:

Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo: Jules Marchal: Review

A scholarly account of imperialism’s plunder

Lord Leverhulme’s Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo

 Jules Marchal

Verso / 2008 / £16.99

As civil war and imperialist plunder continue to rack the Congo, this thorough, scholarly book charts how William Lever, a soap magnate from Liverpool, oversaw a huge operation for the extraction of palm oil from the Congo. His enterprise was based on slave labour. There were appalling punishments inflicted on the workers and mortality rates meant that annually up to a third of workers died on some plantations.

Lever’s professed mission was “to foster health and contribute to personal attractiveness, that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people who use our products.” Today Unilever, the successor company to Lever Brothers, says its products make people “feel good, look good and get more out of life”. This book graphically illustrates the company’s bloody birth in colonial exploitation.

Lever originally bought palm oil from British West Africa but developed plantations in the Congo to undercut costs. Much of Marchal’s book is based on original source material of various reports into working conditions in the Congo and makes shocking reading.

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Marchal’s work was sidelined in his native Belgium and this is only one of seven volumes, the second to be translated into English (the other being Forced Labor in the Gold and Copper Mines: A History of Congo under Belgian Rule, 1910-1945).

Marchal was himself formerly a Belgian ambassador to Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone, who only became aware of the full extent of brutality in the Congo when he tried to defend what he had assumed was a “strange slander on our country”.

He soon realised the lack of readily available historical material and to redress this Marchal started his own research which rapidly became a consuming 15 year obsession only cut short by his death from cancer early in the new millenium.

This is a vital piece of scholarship that can be tough going for the general reader. Marchal’s work should be read by anyone who has any doubt whatsoever that the British were intimately involved in the horrendous exploitation of the Congo that both continues to this day and continues to be covered up.

Moreover much of Marchal’s research was itself used by Adam Hochschild to write his influential and gripping history of the Congo, King Leopold’s Ghost, that can be recommended as a companion piece and perhaps more engaging introduction to this work.

Jason Travis

Berlin Conference of 1884-1885

Meeting at which the major European powers negotiated and formalized claims to territory in Africa; also called the Berlin West Africa Conference. 

The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 marked the climax of the European competition for territory in Africa, a process commonly known as the Scramble for Africa. During the 1870s and early 1880s European nations such as Great Britain, France, and Germany began looking to Africa for natural resources for their growing industrial sectors as well as a potential market for the goods these factories produced. As a result, these governments sought to safeguard their commercial interests in Africa and began sending scouts to the continent to secure treaties from indigenous peoples or their supposed representatives. Similarly, Belgium’s King Leopold II, who aspired to increase his personal wealth by acquiring African territory, hired agents to lay claim to vast tracts of land in central Africa. To protect Germany’s commercial interests, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who was otherwise uninterested in Africa, felt compelled to stake claims to African land.

Inevitably, the scramble for territory led to conflict among European powers, particularly between the British and French in West Africa; Egypt, the Portuguese, and British in East Africa; and the French and King Leopold II in central Africa. Rivalry between Great Britain and France led Bismarck to intervene, and in late 1884 he called a meeting of European powers in Berlin. In the subsequent meetings, Great Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, and King Leopold II negotiated their claims to African territory, which were then formalized and mapped. During the conference the leaders also agreed to allow free trade among the colonies and established a framework for negotiating future European claims in Africa. Neither the Berlin Conference itself nor the framework for future negotiations provided any say for the peoples of Africa over the partitioning of their homelands.

The Berlin Conference did not initiate European colonization of Africa, but it did legitimate and formalize the process. In addition, it sparked new interest in Africa. Following the close of the conference, European powers expanded their claims in Africa such that by 1900, European states had claimed nearly 90 percent of African territory.

Elizabeth Heath

http://plackpast.org, Africa in 1914. Image Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Heilbrunn Timeline ofArt History, Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Partition of Africa began in earnest with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, and was the cause of most of Africa’s borders today.  This conference was called by German Chancellor Bismarck to settle how European countries would claim colonial land in Africa and to avoid a war among European nations over African territory.  All the major European States were invited to the conference. Germany, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Spain were all considered to have a future role in the imperial partition of Africa.  The United States was invited because of its interest in Liberia but did not attend because it had no desire to build a colonial empire in Africa.  Also invited were Austria–Hungary, Sweden–Norway, Denmark, Italy, Turkey, and Russia who all were considered minor players in the quest for colonizing Africa, though Italy would claim some colonial possessions in Northeast Africa.  Most notably there were no Africans present at this conference, nor were any Europeans present to ensure that native Africans had any say in the proceedings.

The task of this conference was to ensure that each European country that claimed possession over a part of Africa must bring civilization, in the form of Christianity, and trade to each region that it would occupy.  Also a country’s claim of a territory was valid only if it informed the other European powers and established some occupying force on the ground.  This occupying force was often a few military outposts on the coast and interior waterways with little to no actual settlement.  Specific lands were obtained by having African indigenous rulers sign an “x” to a general agreement for protection by a European power.  Often these rulers had no idea what they were signing since most could not read, write, or understand European languages.

The conference only dealt with territories yet to be acquired in Africa.  This meant that the interior of Africa, about which little was known, was the land area available.  Most coastal land had already been claimed by various European countries, as had much of Southern Africa and Africa north of the Sahara.  Few Europeans had set foot into the interior of sub-Saharan Africa prior to this conference.  Following the Berlin Conference there was still little exploration into the interior of Africa beyond gaining initial treaties.  Most Europeans continued to stay on the coastal regions while a few missionaries followed rivers inland to find Christian converts.  By 1900, though, more Europeans moved into the African interior to extract raw materials such as rubber, palm oil, gold, copper, and diamonds.  These natural resources made Africa a vital resource for the European economy.

Although most of these African colonies were controlled by nations, the Berlin Conference allowed King Leopold II of Belgium to become the sole owner of the vast area that is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo in central Africa.  This area was given to Leopold by the other European powers with the intent that this be an area of Free Trade for all Europeans in Africa.  Leopold agreed to this stipulation as well as bringing Christian missionaries to the interior of this area, but in practice he kept out most other European traders as he granted concessions to various corporations to exploit the region’s resources.  In 1908 it was revealed that under King Leopold’s instructions native people of the Congo were forced to farm wild rubber as a form of tax payment to the colonial government.  Those who were unable to reach their rubber quota often had a hand or foot chopped off, or were killed by Leopold’s agents.  Once news of these abuses of power were brought to the public light, King Leopold was stripped of his colony and the vast Congo region was ruled by the Belgium government until it became independent in 1960.

By 1914, 90% of Africa had been divided between seven European countries with only Liberia and Ethiopia remaining independent nations.  Many of the boundaries drawn up by Europeans at the Berlin Conference still endure today with little regard to natural landmarks or historic ethnic or political boundaries established by the Africans themselves.  The disregard of these boundaries, most of which were retained after independence, often continues to generate conflict in Africa today.

African nations began to emerge from colonial rule first with Ghana which gained its independence in 1957.  By 2000 virtually all of the former colonies had gained independence.

Sources:
Steig Förster, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Ronald Robinson, eds., Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference, 1884-1885 and the Onset of Partition (London:  Oxford University Press, 1988); H. L. Wesseling, Divide and Rule: The Partition of Africa, 1880-1914 (London:  Praeger, 1996).

Contributor(s):
Faal, Courtney
University of Washington, Seattle

– See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/gah/partition-africa#sthash.j0aZMhuH.dpuf

Why should the same entities responsible for some of the worst global “inequalities” be approached for handouts (which is in effect, giving control of the project over to the funders, as well as credits for it, and the opportunity to further dominate what is and is not studied) to Even out the Inequalities and set up entire professions studying this, and publishing on it as well?

International Inequalities Institute at LSE as funded (startup?) by the Leverhulme Trust (wealth-basis: Unilever. See “Ivory Soap” Belgian Congo, Port Sunlight, etc.)

Here’s the Directors’ Letter of welcome, which at the bottom acknowledges the Leverhulme Trust.  I am not British, did not know what this represented, and again, went to some effort, several months ago, to find out.  

Directors’ Welcome

Welcome to the LSE International Inequalities Institute (the III).

We see the III as a unique and fantastically exciting opportunity for us to lead critical and cutting edge research to understand why inequalities are escalating in numerous arenas across the world, and to develop critical tools to address the challenges these trends pose.

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.

We also think it is fundamental that we build on the best quality academic research but that we also engage with policy makers and public debates. The III will be an outward looking Institute, seeking to influence thinking and debate and very keen to work with external organisations and academics at every opportunity

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 Institute

• Professor 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.

[bullets added to affect vertical space in the quote only]
It’s possible that my initial coming by this site had more to do with looking at “Strong Cities Network” and its organizing charity within  (as I recall) the City of London.  In general, I keep something of an ear to the ground on major shifts in higher education funding (which have been taking place) in the UK, particularly as so many in the USDOJ (Obama Admin and others) had a known background in the London School of Economics, and as in addition, the (British) Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholars program has influenced US Senators (Sen. Fulbright from Arkansas– who set up a similar scholarship program named after himself) and President (Former President Clinton, who called in another Rhodes Scholar, Dick Morris, to help him with the Monica Lewinsky problems approaching former Pres. Clinton’s second term elections.

The outcome of the Dick Morris/White House triangulations, which other White House officials (Robert Reich***, for example) have commented upon as having felt the administration was suddenly usurped  was that Clinton had better move a little more towards the conservatives, give them a few wins.

What he gave them, HURT women in the long run, and it can be well expressed in terms of Welfare Reform of 1996.  The conservatives were given another shot at keeping their women more submissive, while the progressive element (Ford Foundation et al. backed) were just as glad to also help do this, i.e., they would front Men and Boys of Color (to clear some of the racism decks), and a common enemy (but characterized rather as a social scourge) were single mothers, of any color.  This also effectively divided the women’s movement to place themselves either progressive or conservative, squarely on the marriage/fatherhood promotion bandwagon, and those who saw it differently regarding domestic violence, at the street level could be safely ignored, and at the nonprofit (large, intermediary groups) could be, and were ‘bought off” with federal grants.

Another EDC “International Funder” cited on its website is(?) the UK version of USAID — “DID” (Dept. of International Development).

(That list again, as noted near top of this post): The International List reads:

 “Bernard van Leer Foundation” “Department for International Development” (no indication that this is part of UK government, but it is….), “Pan American Health Organization” “UNESCO”  The World Bank Group” and World Health Organization.”

A bit on UK/DID in its own words: