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Explaining my Inspirat’n for Asking, on March 8, Internat’l Women’s Day, Should the USA Join the Commonwealth of Nations?..

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Published @ 16,800 wds (approximate, and NOT including annotations on its many images); post may be split in half or otherwise revised after publication.  {with addition of an extended section on Canada as relating to the first head of the Commonwealth Secretariat (in 1965), also a recipient of “the Order of Canada” (title of nobility) and the character of continued monarchy (the only one in North America) and the partition of North America among Great Britain, France, Spain, and the U.S. Colonies in rebellion… now 20,500  22,275 words. 

Tags likely to be added after publication.  This one covers a lot of territory and has many quotes (incl. an entire section on Cecil Rhodes (re: background and original purpose  and means to that purpose of the Rhodes Scholarships), another on the Order of Canada (with images), a section on a Malcolm-X oriented organization I just discovered (although not its registration/incorporation, or — if any — returns), “MXGM.org” with chapters in major well-known cities (Atlanta, Detroit, Chicago, NYC & Phillie I believe, Oakland,CA). I posted again links on “Functionalism” & David Mitrany and in general contrast the options of ongoing colonialism (which I think it’s fair to say — I speak as a woman — is still the current basic operating plan within the USA) with “socialism & communism”(which I cannot and do not endorse) I’ve worked on it long enough.  Enjoy! // “Let’s Get Honest.”

 I think there has to be another way, but if people REFUSE to educate themselves to the point of reading their own local, state, and federal “Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports” and take a look at how money is moved inappropriately and illegally through and to/from the tax-exempt sector (as has historically been true), connect this with why we are STILL being taxed given all that — I just don’t at this point, know what it might be, for the self-promoting, self-deprecating, and hypocritical nation — with its national leaders — going by the United States of America, to make a serious commitment to practice what it preaches in substance, not just in appearance.

On writing this, I’d also like to know if anyone else noticed (during the Presidential inauguration this past January) that allegiance was NOT pledged, nor any oath sworn to uphold the Constitution of  “The United States of America” but to simply “The United States.”  Check your videos — what’s with THAT?


This post title is taken from a screenshot below:  Explaining my Inspirat’n for asking, on March 8, Internat’l Women’s Day, Should the USA Join the Commonwealth of Nations?… (The WordPress-generated, case-sensitive shortlink ends “-6bm”)

This segment came from my just-published post with (otherwise identical) case-sensitive shortlink ending “-5VC.” It is closer to the original sentiment, but after four more days of my detailing and posting the proof in annotated- images, discovering new (hot) leads on the “show me the money” trail, this earlier section ended up, typically, at the bottom of a very long post.  In the process of moving, there have been “add-on” sections to build some documentation and depth onto the originally expressed premise, which you’ll find in its most basic form closer to the bottom of this post.

I am deeply concerned about this situation as expressed in the longer title (published March 12),…

Should the USA join the Commonwealth of Nations?  And if not, Why Should We Allow our Elected Federal and State Officials to sponsor Coordination of Child Welfare, Domestic Violence, and Family Court|Custody Practices, as Ordered (Ordained?) by Appointed (not elected) Experts To Promote Their Personal Beliefs, Practices, and Profits? (A Few Reminders of Who’s Who) [Started 2-17-2017, published 3-12-2017, with case-sensitive short-link ending “-5VC”].

…THIS one is a reminder of who and what the Commonwealth of Nations is, when it started, the first holder of the title “Secretary-General” of that Commonwealth and of some parallel developments during the same timeframe in the USA, roughly paralleling the push for civil rights, and women’s rights (to prevent discrimination on the basis of race or gender), several assassinations of high-profile leaders in those areas (including two Kennedy brothers, one a President, the other Attorney-General, which I’m going to assume a general awareness of and not document further here) and Martin Luther King, Jr. [more links below on MLK, Jr.] and Malcolm X (From history.com –at the time of his death, after returning from a trip to Mecca and one year founding the Organization of Afro-American Unity, “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz”) after these movements met the national attention through both marches –including a march on Washington D.C.–and televised coverage, and around all this, and these times, the expansion of children’s/fathers’ rights organizations as coached by nonprofits and public officials, into realms where the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1964, and accompanying movements, would, could, and did not reach — and still do not.

I’m inclined to believe based on my research so far (which includes a gut-instinct response to readings over so many years), it’s “would not” (intention seems built into the design) vs. a “could not.”  At this point, the “did not” is not really debatable. (Those Civil Rights Acts and accompanying movements including “affirmative action,” establishment of various Commissions and Councils on Equal Employment / Civil Rights, and corresponding presidential executive orders + memos to department heads) left major gaps and loopholes to allow discrimination (both racist and sexist) to continue.  What’s more that progress occurred in a context of countering movements in other venues to “turn back the clock” particularly on women, particularly mothers.

(Image of a 1995 Briefing found on a Purdue.edu/HHS website with apparently upload date June 2015, that is, twenty years later.  I’ve posted on this before).

Policy Institute – Family Impact Seminars (p1, cover page), “Disconnected Dads — Strategies for Promoting Responsible Fatherhood” (Purdue being in Indiana)

http://tinyurl.com/2002HandbkFathrInvolvmt-MultiD = condensed link for this and next 2 images (cover page is 3rd image) from a Google Book published originally 2002, authors two women one NYU, the other NICHHD, updated 2008, in both NJ and London. Get used to some of the author names; and the jargon of the field; their careers have been helped by expounding and publishing in the “fatherhood” field. THIS book cited “DisconnectedDads” (above) on p.588 (=how I found it).

 

 

 

…As I learned this century, seeking protection and a safe exit from a dangerous marriage, and Not Without the Children.  Current HHS/ACF/OFA leadership Susan Golonka had prior associations with Theodora Ooms, as I blogged recently.  Now (well, at least up until the Donald J. Trump White House Administration, after which HHS leadership status is “tba” and might get “drained” along with several dozen US Attorneys….) providing guidance to the very Program Office which is administering the “Federal Family Values” (HMRF) funding into state, local, tribal governments as well as into private, nonprofit (often) hands, basically for public propaganda on the patriotically correct and not-so-correct (translation:  single-mother-headed) family + household composition and hierarchy of controls) (I posted some recently; this is a reminder of the chain of events and entities associated with what you see just above):

(not much room on the image to make notes; see link above for full-sized!) This shows the Golonka/Ooms connection; next image shows where Golonka is today (unless new Pres. Trump has already appointed someone new).

Marriage/Fatherhood programming is now being run through (at a minimum) HHS. The several images above (and one below) trace some of the background (incl. specific personnel, working typically for Nonprofits which can get an audience with the nation’s governors that few individuals could get around THEIR private causes…)

|~Annotated Image 1 of 2| HHS OFA About=Ldrship (pgLastRevwdApr19’2016) shows DeputyDir Susan Golonka came nonprofit NGA CtrBestPrax since 2010 and was representing it during 1996WelfareReform’B4which Famil |~Annotated Image 2 of 2| Golonka (Susan) pre-NGACBP referenced w Theodora Ooms (publ1991) shows prior FamilyImpactSeminar involvmt (GoogleBk on HeadStart, p90) ~ScrnShot March9 2017@4.44PM (annotated Mar17)


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Malcolm X Legacy, Several References, including to “MXGM.org” (small section with more big questions, added right before publication):


mxgm-cooperation-jackson-showing-2014-2011-un-the-decade-for-people-of-african-descent-initiative (<=Click to read. Filename typo has “2011” for 2024 as on image)

Among the MXGM.org projects, it’s clear the concept to counter colonialism and acquire economic autonomy is also an attempt to install socialism and communism.

Q: Is Socialism/Communism really the only alternative to Colonization along the continued “Commonwealth” model [which I also believe remains racist and sexist both] (further discussed below)??  

Anyone else want more socialism and communism — as seems to be happening progressively and gradually anyhow in this country, eroding “sovereignty” of the USA as different from the country it fought a war against to stop being “colonized” (and then went on to finish colonizing the continent, but at least controlled from D.C. mostly, not the usual trans-Atlantic-Ocean empires)?  I certainly don’t!

And if not, what instead?

The MXGM and NAPO (images from a scribd show) has identified a geographic region to test a transformation model on, given it a name involving “Kush” (well-known in African history) and near the Gulf of Mexico:
Found at this Scribd accessed from “CooperationJackson.org

The struggle for Afrikan or Black Liberation in the European settler-colonial project called the United States is far from complete. Despite the election of  the first person of Afrikan descent to the executive office of the United States government and the progress this allegedly entails, Black people remain at the top of virtually every social indicator of inequality and inequity, with some critical gaps growing ever wider since the onset of the manufactured financial crisis that struck in the mid-2000sDespite the social gains won by the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s with  the forced dismantling of the legal structures of white supremacy, securing the more challenging objectives of  the movement, particularly economic democracy and self-determination, have yet to be wonThe challenge with economic democracy and self-determination is that in order for them to be attained a critical break with capitalism and the dismantling of the American settler colonial project is required. Since the ebb of  the BLM in the 1970s as a result of massive government repression, unrelenting white resistance, and the fragmentation of the movement itself as result of the divide and conquer tactics of its enemies and its own internal contradictions pertaining to ideology, class interestsand sexual and gender inequality {{see my FN//LGH}}, the movement has not been able to develop a comprehensive strategy and the level of mass resistance needed to advance these particular objectivesHoweverto meet these objectives the organized forces of the BLM most dedicated to their pursuit have been compelled over the past 30 years to advance projects of limited scale in order to maintain political position and regroup as a movement to engage in protracted struggle to win economic democracy and self-determination.  What follows is a presentation of one such project—an experiment being actively conducted by  the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) and its parent organization the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO) called the Jackson–Kush Plan.1 

1 The Jackson–Kush or J–K Plan is an initiative to build Economic Democracy here means the political process of transforming the private ownership and appropriation of the means of production and distribution to ensure that the workers and direct producers own and control these means and processes and determine the conditions of their labor, how their product is exchanged and distributed, and how any surplus value produced is appropriated. In short, it describes the political process by which socialism and communism are to be attained

2 Kush is a name appropriated by partisans in the New Afrikan Independence Movement from an ancient Nile based civilization which would be in present day Egypt and Sudan, to designate the span of contiguous Black majority or Black Belt counties along the Mississippi river in the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee. This area has been designated or renamed the Kush District


**FN LGH: Interesting statement, that “its own internal contradictions pertaining to ideologyclass interestsand sexual and gender inequality” are seen as a problem and and obstacle to unity. As a woman, I see the push for unity, including the existing power structure run through HHS and other federal agencies, insisting on male-entitlement (i.e., fatherhood programming) which isn’t really entitlement of all males, it’s simply ensuring there wouldn’t be female freedom at certain class levels as coming through public institutions, and as forcing “choose one or the other — but NOT both — SOMEONE has to be the underdogs.  If it’s not minorities, or if minorities are given a break, then let women (particularly female-headed households who do not sacrifice safety of their children — or themselves — for companionship) “assume the position.”

Understanding some of these decades and movements (with associated private nonprofits formed to move them!)  in the USA should also give an angle on the shifting power base in the country, and how the existing (hereditary, corporate/investment wealth + government + university “sectors”) did respond, and, if the idea was to continue its control, “manage” the dissidence with enough concessions to reduce riots and potential civil war, still sound like “the good guys” regarding those particular causes –without actually being forced to operate like them, and continue “business (almost) as usual,” that business being, empire-building.

All the time, meanwhile, the government/corporate sector was able to continue stockpiling incoming wealth (see” income tax”) and avoid paying too much of it (see tax-exempt foundations, with their corresponding assets continuing to influence public policy), whichever is the “flavor of the day” or as it may be, the decade, by selling more and more “services” & “the deficit” & paternalistic care for the common citizens of the land being the main motivation — and not continued profit and continued control of the inherited and controlled by membership in which sector of society — assets. (I’m using the underline function a lot because my favorite font, chosen because it’s thinner and clearer, when bolded gets too fat (too much contrast with normal style). Otherwise, I’d bold that last statement).

During this general timeframe, as it shows below, in the U.S. women STILL were not being admitted, at least as undergraduates, into major Ivy League and government/business-leader producing universities (Harvard, Yale, Bowdoin, and others). I cited a 375th Anniversary of Women at Harvard writeup about “hard-earned gains for women” which summarizes some of this.

During the mid-1960s-mid-1970s decade, meanwhile, the first Secretary-General of the Commonwealth (a Canadian) was in place, and his brother, after obtaining a PhD in Oriental Languages from Princeton, following “seven years in pre-Independence [from the British Commonwealth] India,” and after founding a Department of Religion at McGill (Canada) came to Harvard Divinity School, as Dean of the Center for Study of Religions.

It turns out that Harvard “Div School” is one of the few university-based, independent  (not affiliated with a denomination) “div (divinity) schools” around the USA, and that among the others, some of the leadership, in fact a woman, from the one in North Carolina ended up on then-President Obama’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Initiatives (and, in 2013, its Director) which, on looking it up (from the div school’s “Wiki” which referenced this), I see that it was in several ways dominated by Baptists — also bound to influence perspectives on the place of women in society and on institutions regulating their position within marriages, or in leaving marriages (or having children outside “wedlock,” which as early as the 1980s (“Federal Designer Families” is a term I coined to describe the programming).

Some of these links & references, brought up from the post below:

  • Wiki on the Commonwealth Secretary-General:  The HQ is in London (in a residence donated by the Queen), the position (Commonwealth Secretary-General) has a specific start date (1965), and election is by the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOG),  i.e., overall, it is still functioning somewhat like an empire, with the Head of the Commonwealth currently Queen Elizabeth II.  (The Commonwealth Secretary-General presides over the Commonwealth Secretariat)

The First Commonwealth Secretary General (1965ff), a position held for a decade, was Arnold Cantwell Smith.  It is this connection which (in this context) leads me also to consider “Harvard Div School” and leadership of its Center for Comparative Religion as related to Arnold Cantwell Smith’s younger brother Wilfred Cantwell Smith (PhD graduate of Princeton), and, in passing, WC Smith’s also apparently brilliant son (see “MIT” Stanford, etc.) Brian.  That Cantwell Smith (Arnold) was also a Rhodes Scholar remains significant in the “special relationship” between the USA and the UK.  This is important to the discussion about whether the USA, which before its current size and originally as Colonies declaring themselves INDEPENDENT, fought a war to NOT stay in a political relationship with the then-British empire and its monarch (King George III), but to start and continue something different, something NOT dominated by a monarch, or a national religion, without “orders” and titles obtained from the monarchy by lineage (birth) or other close connections to the same, should submit (whether its people should continue allowing leadership — that is the U.S. Congress and State legislatures and governors incl. of the territories — to cause the USA to submit), that is, continue on its present, and longstanding piece-by-piece path of becoming functionally aligned and mutually coordinated with “the Commonwealth of Nations,” separate and distinct in name only.  [PS. Switching Presidents or Political Parties in Power is NOT the answer to this problem.  DJTrump is NOT the answer if something outside of a dictatorship (or, monarchy) is actually wanted.  Quit waiting for heroes and become one; make a decisions pro- or con!  !!]

King George III from “Cdn.History.org”From “OurAmericanRevolution.org

King George III from “OurAmericanRevolution.org” (very short page), see the link for a few key points.

George III (1738-1820) George III was the King of Great Britain and Ireland during the American Revolution. The death of his father, Frederick Lewis, the Prince of Wales, in 1751 meant that the 22-year-old prince succeeded his grandfather, George II, to the throne in 1760…

[From CDN.History.org,] England’s longest-ruling monarch before Queen Victoria, King George III (1738-1820) ascended the British throne in 1760. During his 59-year reign, he pushed through a British victory in the Seven Years’ War, led England’s successful resistance to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and presided over the loss of the American Revolution. After suffering intermittent bouts of acute mental illness, he spent his last decade in a fog of insanity and blindness. [keep reading — it’s short enough!]

“…The first royal heir born in Britain in 130 years, George III’s reign as a patriot king was intended to mark a new chapter for a British monarchy that had been criticized as more interested in matters in Europe than at home. He emphasized the break from his predecessors in his first meeting of the Privy Council, when he called Britain “this my native country.” Hoping to mend a fractured political nation, George III ended the decades-long ban of Tories from national and local office and broke the hold of latitudinarian moderates on the Church of England, both of which had long-term impacts on political and religious life in the British Atlantic.”

(Having no idea what “latitudinarian moderates” means, a few links, though be aware of the source when reading from any of them, as these are still religious matters, not just political).  From “VictorianWeb.org” Assuming readers have SOME general awareness of religious/political wars taking place in the 1500s – 1800s in England, Ireland and Europe (surrounding the birth of more than one kind of trans-Altantic slave trade), and that historically there was something called “The Reformation” affecting history in that geosphere…

For “Latitudinarian,” I guess think of the general concept of giving some “latitude” (some sideways movement on any principle).  See https://www.britannica.com/topic/latitudinarian

Latitudinarian, any of the 17th-century Anglican clerics whose beliefs and practices were viewed by conservatives as unorthodox or, at best, heterodox. After first being applied to the Cambridge Platonists, the term was later used to categorize churchmen who depended upon reason to establish the moral certainty of Christian doctrines rather than argument from tradition. Limiting that doctrine to what had to be accepted, they allowed for latitude on other teachings. The Latitudinarians thus became the precursors of the similar Broad Church movement in the 19th-century Church of England.


I say this despite awareness, still part of the American conscience (some closer than others to first-hand) that despite the break with the British King, the USA was also started incorporating slavery, indentured servants, and in its progress and expansion, exploiting (and all but wiping out) the existing people here first (not to mention at least one species (passenger pigeons) and all-but wiping out the buffalo), before eventually forcing them onto reservations where they were welcome to starve, or be murdered if they strayed too far outside acceptable bounds.

Recognition of these pre-existing people still exists in (so far as I know) all federal agencies, including the US. Dept. of HHS, but did not exempt them from the compulsory education system at boarding houses designed to obliterate their cultures and languages.  I see it, naturally, across the span of HHS grants (including to run Healthy Marriage/Responsible Fatherhood programming labeled “TRIBAL/TANF” as well as “violence prevention” grants coordinated similarly), but here’s just one point of reference from the HHS “Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs.”  It references an Executive Order 2000 and another one, 2010, to do special outreach to tribal governments regarding health and human services policy at the federal level, and talks about the “Secretary Advisory Committee” and “Charter” on this topic:
https://www.hhs.gov/about/agencies/iea/tribal-affairs/about-stac/stac-charter/index.html (see next two (but only one annotated) images: even inter-governmentally, it’s still “coordination & regionalization by federal agency).”

Showing HHS CHARTER + Secretary’s Tribal Advisory Committee, under HHS’ Office of IEA + re US’ special relationship with Indian Tribal Govts) (2017-03-16 at 6.47PM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

RHODES SCHOLARSHIP — BACKGROUND of ORIGINAL SOURCE OF WEALTH AND PURPOSE:

Remember Cecil Rhodes?, BSAC (British South African Company). wealth obtained primarily from consolidation of holdings of diamond mines in Kimberley, South Africa, and a will, being without biological heir, incorporating a specific plan to bring the former colonies (including the USA) back under Britain’s control.  Significant to this plan was bringing young men (only, at first) of talent to Oxford University for personal mentoring (along with their university educations) and sending them forth as leaders in influential places around the world.

As Cecil Rhodes said so long ago (over 100 years ago), “Wherever you turn your eye – except in science – an Oxford man is at the top of the tree‘.” This now includes in the USA also, thanks to both the Rhodes and the Fulbright Scholarships (modeled on the Rhodes ones).

Cecil Rhodes (1853-1902) from South African History.org

Cecil John Rhodes from SAHistory.org

A British Businessman in South Africa, Member of Parliament in the Cape Colony, Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, imperialist, acquired a British Royal Charter, formed the British South African Company (BSAC) that colonized Zimbabwe.

“He was the fifth son of Francis William Rhodes and his second wife, Louisa Peacock. A priest of the Church of England, his father served as curate of Brentwood Essex for fifteen years, until 1849, when he became the vicar of Bishop’s Stortford, where he remained until 1876. Rhodes had nine brothers and two sisters and attended the grammar school at Bishop’s Stortford…”

Rhodes fell ill shortly after leaving school and, as his lungs were affected, it was decided that he should visit his brother, Herbert, who had recently immigrated to Natal. It was also believed, by both Rhodes and his father, that the business opportunities offered in South Africa would be able to provide Rhodes with a more promising future than staying in England. At the tender age of 17 Rhodes arrived in Durban on 1 September 1870. He brought with him three thousand pounds that his aunt had lent him and used it to invest in diamond diggings in Kimberley.

After a brief stay with the Surveyor-General of Natal, Dr. P. C. Sutherland, in Pietermaritzburg, Rhodes joined his brother on his cotton farm in the Umkomaas valley in Natal. By the time Rhodes arrived at the farm his brother had already left the farm to travel 650 kilometres north, to the diamond fields in Kimberley. Left on his own Rhodes began to work his brother’s farm, growing and selling its cotton, proving himself to be an astute businessman despite his young age.Cotton farming was not Rhodes’ passion and the diamond mines beckoned. At 18, in October 1871, Rhodes left the Natal colony to follow his brother to the diamond fields of Kimberley. In Kimberley he supervised the working of his brother’s claim and speculated on his behalf. Among his associates in the early days were John X Merriman and Charles D. Rudd, of the infamous Rudd Concession, who later became his partner in the De Beers Mining Company and the British South Africa Company. ….

[Check out the Rudd Concession — it’s quoted:  arms and ammunition for mining rights, including the assigns and successors forever, providing that the monthly payments of 300 pounds British sterling continued..][In fact, it’s short enough to put in right here: (date: 1888):

Know all men by these presents, that whereas Charles Dunell Rudd, of Kimberley; Rochfort Maguire, of London; and Francis Robert Thompson, of Kimberley, hereinafter called the grantees, have covenanted and agreed, and do hereby covenant and agree, to pay to me, my heirs and successors, the sum of one hundred pounds sterling, British currency, on the first day of every lunar month; and further, to deliver at my royal kraal one thousand Martini-Henry breech-loading rifles, together with one hundred thousand rounds of suitable ball cartridge, five hundred of the said rifles and fifty thousand of the said cartridges to be ordered from England forthwith and delivered with reasonable despatch, and the remainder of the said rifles and cartridges to be delivered as soon as the said grantees shall have commenced to work mining machinery within my territory; and further, to deliver on the Zambesi River a steamboat with guns suitable for defensive purposes upon the said river, or in lieu of the said steamboat, should I so elect, to pay to me the sum of five hundred pounds sterling, British currency. On the execution of these presents, I, Lobengula, King of Matabeleland, Mashonaland, and other adjoining territories, in exercise of my sovereign powers, and in the presence and with the consent of my council of indunas, do hereby grant and assign unto the said grantees, their heirs, representatives, and assigns, jointly and severally, the complete and exclusive charge over all metals and minerals situated and contained in my kingdoms, principalities, and dominions, together with full power to do all things that they may deem necessary to win and procure the same, and to hold, collect, and enjoy the profits and revenues, if any, derivable from the said metals and minerals, subject to the aforesaid payment; and whereas I have been much molested of late by divers persons seeking and desiring to obtain grants and concessions of land and mining rights in my territories, I do hereby authorise the said grantees, their heirs, representatives and assigns, to take all necessary and lawful steps to exclude from my kingdom, principalities, and dominions all persons seeking land, metals, minerals, or mining rights therein, and I do hereby undertake to render them all such needful assistance as they may from time to time require for the exclusion of such persons, and to grant no concessions of land or mining rights from and after this date without their consent and concurrence; provided that, if at any time the said monthy payment of one hundred pounds shall be in arrear for a period of three months, then this grant [of land and mining rights, and rights to exclude others] shall cease and determine from the date of the last-made payment; and further provided that nothing contained in these presents shall extend to or affect a grant made by me of certain mining rights in a portion of my territory south of the Ramaquaban River, which grant is commonly known as the Tati Concession.
(signed by Lobengula, Rudd, Maguire, Thompson, Helm and Dreyer)
I hereby certify that the accompanying document has been fully interpreted and explained by me to the Chief Lobengula and his full Council of Indunas and that all the Constitutional usages of the Matabele Nation had been complied with prior to his executing the same.
(signed by Helm)

Cecil Rhodes, Back in England for a bit, and at Oxford for some more studies…]

In 1873 Rhodes left his diamond fields in the care of his partner, Rudd, and sailed for England to complete his studies. He was admitted to Oriel College Oxford, but only stayed for one term in 1873 and only returned for his second term in 1876. He was greatly influenced by John Ruskin’s inaugural lecture at Oxford, which reinforced his own attachment to the cause of British Imperialism. Among his Oxford associates were Rochefort Maguire, later a fellow of All Souls and a director of the British South Africa Company, and Charles Metcalfe. At university Rhodes was also taken up with the idea of creating a ‘secret society’ of British men who would be able to lead the world, and spread to all corners of the globe the spirit of the Englishman that Rhodes so admired. He wrote of this society,

Why should we not form a secret society with but one object the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole uncivilised world under British rule for the recovery of the United States for the making the Anglo-Saxon race but one Empire.’

His university career engendered in Rhodes his admiration for the Oxford ‘system’ which was eventually to mature in his scholarship scheme: ‘Wherever you turn your eye – except in science – an Oxford man is at the top of the tree‘.

An Arch Imperialist

One of Rhodes’ guiding principles throughout his life, that underpinned almost all of his actions, was his firm belief that the Englishman was the greatest human specimen in the world and that his rule would be a benefit to all. … ((vision as confided in Kimberley, S. Africa at age 24)):

The object of which I intend to devote my life is the defence and extension of the British Empire. I think that object a worthy one because the British Empire stands for the protection of all the inhabitants of a country in life, liberty, property, fair play and happiness and it is the greatest platform the world has ever seen for these purposes and for human enjoyment’.

…A few months later, in a confession written at Oxford in 1877, Rhodes articulated this same imperial vision, but with words that clearly showed his disdain for the people whom the British Empire should rule:

“I contend that we are the first race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race. Just fancy those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimen of human being, what an alteration there would be in them if they were brought under Anglo-Saxon influence…if there be a God, I think that what he would like me to do is paint as much of the map of Africa British Red as possible…”

One of Rhodes’ greatest dreams was a ribbon of red, demarcating British territory, which would cross the whole of Africa, from South Africa to Egypt. Part of this vision was his desire to construct a Cape to Cairo railway, one of his most famous projects. It was this expansive vision of British Imperial control, and the great lengths that Rhodes went to in order to fulfil this vision, which led many of his contemporaries and his biographers to mark him as a great visionary and leader.

Rhodes was both ruthless and incredibly successful in his pursuit of this scheme of a great British Empire… (etc.)

About “SAHO” (South African History On-Line) from its website:

South African History Online (SAHO) is a non-partisan people’s history institution. It was established in June 2000 as a non-profit Section 21 organisation, to address the biased way in which South Africa’s history and heritage, as well as the history and heritage of Africa is represented in our educational and cultural institutions.

SAHO is committed to promoting history and critically engaging with our past through the building of a comprehensive online encyclopaedia and popular history programmes on South African and African history and culture.

SAHO is committed to developing multi-faceted and integrated educational outreach projects that serve to promote research critical to the understanding of our past, strengthen the teaching and learning of history and the telling of the stories of ordinary people who have contributed to freedom and the building of democracy, non racialism, and a just society.

History and background

Online Encyclopaedia of South African History:

SAHO is the largest popular history project of its kind on the continent. The flagship [i.e., not its only] project is its website, which is a vast encyclopaedia on South African and African history. The website is acknowledged for its accuracy, with all its articles carefully referenced and all featured articles are linked to a vast archive of documents, journal articles, online books and images. ….


All that on Cecil Rhodes (see also my other blog, Cold,Hard.Fact$ and posts  “From Transvaal to TANF” and “The Long and Winding Rhodes” (a series of posts)) to highlight the following:

  • Arnold Cantwell Smith OCCH (January 18, 1915 – February 7, 1994) was a Canadian diplomat. He was the first Commonwealth Secretary-General, serving from 1965–1975. A talented student, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford. From 1958 to 1961, he was the Canadian Ambassador to EgyptFrom 1961 to 1963, he was the Canadian Ambassador to the USSR. During his time at the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth flag was designed on his and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau‘s initiative.

from “www.Royal.UK”…Canada

Canada has a monarchy (from https://www.royal.uk/canada) (page has a brief history of what was ceded when):

Canada has been a monarchy for centuries – first under the kings of France in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, then under the British Crown in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and now as a kingdom in her own right. These lands had been occupied for thousands of years by Aboriginal Peoples who, now for many centuries, have maintained an enduring and very close relationship with the person of the Sovereign and the Crown of Canada.

The territories which now form Canada came under British power at various times by settlement, war or cession.

A large section of Eastern Canada (now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island) was home to the Acadian People and ceded to Great Britain in 1713. Fifty year(s) later, New France (Quebec) was also ceded by the Treaty of Paris.

(Not mentioned: ceded by France. From history.state.gov/milestones/1770-1775 (“State” as in “U.S. Department of State”):

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 ended the French and Indian War/Seven Years’ War between Great Britain and France, as well as their respective allies. In the terms of the treaty, France gave up all its territories in mainland North America, effectively ending any foreign military threat to the British colonies there.


The Treaty of Paris, 1763
During the war, British forces had scored important overseas victories against France: not only had the British conquered French Canada, they also won victories in India, and captured French island colonies in the Caribbean. In March of 1762, French King Louis XV issued a formal call for peace talks.

The British Government was also interested in ending the war. The Seven Years’ War had been enormously expensive, and the Government had to finance the war with debt. Creditors were beginning to doubt Great Britain’s ability to pay back the loans it had floated on financial markets. In addition, British King George II had died in 1760, and his successor George III was more amenable to ending the war.

Initial attempts at negotiating a peace settlement failed, and instead French and Spanish diplomats signed the Family Compact, a treaty that brought Spain into the war against Britain. British Prime Minister Lord Bute continued secret and informal talks with French diplomat Étienne-François de Stainville, duc de Choiseul, and they came to an unofficial agreement in June, 1762. Bute promised fairly generous terms, and the two countries agreed to an exchange of ambassadors in September.

By the time the formal negotiations began, the situation had changed. News had reached Europe of the British capture of Havana, and with it the Spanish colony of Cuba. Spanish King Charles III refused to agree to a treaty that would require Spain to cede Cuba, but the British Parliament would never ratify a treaty that did not reflect British territorial gains made during the war.

Facing this dilemma, French negotiator Choiseul proposed a solution that redistributed American territory between France, Spain and Great Britain. Under Choiseul’s plan, Britain would gain all French territory east of the Mississippi, while Spain would retain Cuba in exchange for handing Florida over to Great Britain. French territories west of the Mississippi would become Spanish, along with the port of New Orleans. In return for these cessions, along with territory in India, Africa, and the Mediterranean island of Minorca, France would regain the Caribbean islands that British forces had captured during the war. The British Government also promised to allow French Canadians to freely practice Catholicism and provided for French fishing rights off Newfoundland.

Think about it historically — in terms of British history, shifting monarchs, the consequences to people in the land whether that monarch was Protestant or Catholic, and who controlled the reading and preaching of the scriptures.  Good men were burned at the stake for translating the scriptures into English for over a century (both before and after the invention of the printing press) and certain scholars’ books were also burned and banned based on this.  The Crown controlled religion, or made significant attempts to.   (Britannica.com, “The Age of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. (See also link “Reformation”) for brief, dispassionate summary.  I’m simply pointing out the times. Currently, could we imagine a country in which one needed governmental permission to practice Catholicism?  But in those times, it was a very big deal.)

RE: “…redistributed American territory between France, Spain and Great Britain…” Sounds like the same sort of planning and bargaining that would occur later among the European powers and the continent of Africa (“The Berlin conference”). It’s what those powers (and what monarchies) tend to do!! No question it was what Great Britain, France, Spain (Portugal) and particularly later Germany were doing. Not major land masses themselves — they were colonizing others…. Face it, the United States also did this across North America. We couldn’t “do” what is now Canada because it had already been “done,” progressively,during the same centuries. A few more statements on the Treaty of Paris from the Dept. of State website:

French diplomat Étienne-François de Stainville, duc de Choiseul
preferred to keep the small Caribbean islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe, and St. Lucia rather than hold on to the vast territory stretching from Louisiana to Canada. This decision was motivated by the fact that the islands’ sugar industry was enormously profitable. In contrast, Canada had been a drain on the French treasury. The loss of Canada, while lamentable to French officials, made sense from a mercantile perspective. …


For Anglo-American colonists, the treaty was a theoretical success. By confirming the conquest of Canada and extending British possessions to the Mississippi, the colonists no longer had to worry about the threat of a French invasion. For the American Indians in what had been frontier territory, the treaty proved disastrous. They could no longer pursue what had been a largely effective strategy of playing the French and British against each other to extract the most favorable terms of alliance and preserve their lands against encroachment by Anglo-American colonists.

Despite what seemed like a success, the Treaty of Paris ultimately encouraged dissension between Anglo-American colonists and the British Government because their interests in North America no longer coincided


20 years later there would be another “Treaty of Paris” involving the US Colonies….(from U.S. Dept of State/Milestones (years 1776-1783) website:

American Negotiations in Treaty of Paris

  • Articles of Confederation, 1777–1781
  • Treaty of Paris, 1783
  • Although Franklin demanded the cessation of Canada to an independent America, he knew that the British Government of Lord Shelburne, opposed to American independence, was unprepared to accept that offer. Two months of hard bargaining resulted in a preliminary articles of peace in which the British accepted American independence and boundaries, resolved the difficult issues of fishing rights on the Newfoundland banks and prewar debts owed British creditors, promised restitution of property lost during the war by Americans loyal to the British cause [**fn], and provided for the evacuation of British forces from the thirteen states. The preliminary articles signed in Paris on November 30, 1782, were only effective when Britain and France signed a similar treaty, which French Foreign Minister Vergennes quickly negotiated. France signed preliminary articles of peace with Great Britain on January 20, 1783, followed by a formal peace of Paris signed on September 3, 1783.

    The illustration above, a copy of a sketch by the studio of Benjamin West, shows the American negotiators of the Peace of Paris. The sketch remains incomplete because British negotiators chose not to sit for their half of the portrait: it serves as a powerful symbol of the division between Great Britain and its former American colonies.

[**FN guess what was included in the “property lost by Americans loyal to the British cause….” (human beings, slaves). Procedures were also taken to ensure that the departing British (and, I guess, Loyalists) made sure not to take with them other certain “property” (slaves).]

Back to the Royal.UK site on Canada:  https://www.royal.uk/canada

The British North America Act, 1867 (Canada’s original constitution) created the Dominion of Canada with the Union of Upper and Lower Canada (Ontario and Quebec), Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

Three years later, the Province of Manitoba was created from a small portion of the vast northwest territories and was admitted to Confederation as was [[“was”? who wrote this?  S/be “were” for plural subject of the phrase, “lands”]] the remaining lands stylised as the Northwest Territories. In 1871, British Columbia was admitted as was Prince Edward Island in 1873.

The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were formed from the provisional districts of Alberta, Athabaska, Assiniboia and Saskatchewan and originally parts of the Northwest Territories and admitted on 1 September 1905. The Northwest Territories and Yukon became territories of the Dominion of Canada in 1870 and 1898 respectively

Continuing, along the same lines, this next section defines the degrees of reliance on the Crown, and that the Governor General (again) represents the Queen nationally and in each province, the Lieutenant Governors also represent her.  In fact Canada was not fully free legislatively to amend its own laws without regard to “Westminster,” apparently, until 1982 — though as a Dominion, it still remains in the Commonwealth of Nations united under the formal head, currently Queen Elizabeth II.  First, more lands acquired even in the 20th century…

In February 1931 Norway formally recognised Canadian title to the Sverdrup group of Arctic islands, giving Canada sovereignty over the whole Arctic sector north of the Canadian mainland. Newfoundland (now Newfoundland and Labrador) formally joined Canada as its tenth province in 1949.

These lands were now under Canada’s “sovereignty” while Canada itself was in many ways still under the “sovereignty” of the British royalty, despite the British North America Act of 1867.

Note:  What was taking place in the USA about and during this time? (Rhetorical question — you’d better know!)

In 1999 Nunavut became the largest and newest territory (vs. “province”) in Canada. Formed from the eastern part of the Northwest Territories, this huge Canadian arctic territory has only about 25,000 residents, about 80 percent of whom are Inuit.


….As already referenced, The Dominion of Canada was created in 1867 with the passage of the British North America Act, 1867. As a consequence, Canada became the first dominion of the then British Empire. Canada’s evolution into full independence / nationhood was undertaken peacefully and over time with key moments being defined by the Battle of Vimy Ridge (1917), the Imperial Conference of 1926, the Statute of Westminster, 1931 and the patriation of the Constitution in 1982.

….emphases above, below, and throughout this quotes, mine, not the website’s. Same with the color scheme..

The constitutional act of 1867 set out executive authority vested in the Sovereign and carried out in her name at the federal level by a Governor General and Privy Council , with legislative powers exercised by a bicameral Parliament made up of the Senate, the House of Commons and the Crown.** Given the structure of the Canadian federation, the Sovereign is represented at the federal level by the Governor General and in each province by a Lieutenant Governor. The Lieutenant Governors are as much direct representatives of The Queen in their jurisdictions as is the Governor General in the national one.

** A little different than the USA, eh?  Although the President of the USA still has veto power, it can be overridden.  Although listing three parts in something “bicameral” doesn’t exactly make sense…

In 1926, the Imperial Conference in London confirmed the status of Canada, along with that of Australia, the Irish Free State, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland, as self-governing Dominions under the British Crown.

The Statute of Westminster in 1931, an act of the British Parliament, gave legal form to this declaration. It gave Canada and other Dominions the authority to make their own laws. One of the key features of the Statute of Westminster of 1931 was the separation [“of”] the Crowns. As a consequence, the Crown of Canada – separate and distinct from that of the United Kingdom and the other Dominions – was defined in statute. …

The Constitution Act, 1982 patriated the British North America Act, 1867 to Canada , thus ending any Canadian dependence on the Parliament of Westminster and further defining its complete independence. It laid down that the future amendment of the constitution should be the prerogative of Canada.

Meaning, by deduction that until 1982, Canada could not alter its own constitution without consent from “the homeland” (London).

Any change to the position of The Queen or her representatives in Canada now requires the unanimous consent of the Senate, the House of Commons and the legislatures of all the provinces.

Implying that before 1982, the position of The Queen or her representatives in Canada, was NOT subject to national Senate & House of Commons, or the provincial legislatures.  Only 1982!

Today, the ten provinces of Canada each have a separate Parliament and administration, with a Lieutenant-Governor representing The Queen, appointed by the Governor-General in Council, at the head of the executive.

The connection to and presence of the Queen remains at all levels of government although over time it has evolved.  This is NOT and should NOT be the condition of the USA if we are who we as a country (in that country’s governing documents) declares itself to be, including how decisions are made and laws governing and controlling the people are passed.

(Search phrase simply “the monarchy of Canada” yielded this plain-talk site, which also points out that Canadians are split 50/50 on whether to retain the monarchy, that it’s the ONLY monarchy in North America, and that Canadian immigrants who want to become citizens still must swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen, although being a constitutional monarchy, “it’s complicated.”)

From The Canada Guide(.com)

As we learned in the history chapter, Canada was once a colony of Britain, but unlike many of England’s other former colonies around the world, Canada never experienced a sharp break with the motherland. Canadian independence evolved slowly under British colonial supervision, as opposed to rising in opposition to British rule, as was the case in America and Kenya and elsewhere. This is the main reason why the Canadian system of government still has such a distinctly British feel; the system was largely British-made.

The most prominent lingering legacy of Canada’s British connection is the Queen. Though Canada now has full political independence from the U.K., the nation never cut its ties to the British royal family, resulting in an unusual state of affairs that is sometimes referred to as the “shared monarchy.”

The Queen of Canada

Queen Elizabeth with Mounties
The Queen’s periodic visits to Canada tend to be huge media spectacles, with many high-profile photo ops across the country. Her exact tour routes are meticulously planned by the government.

Under the terms of the Canadian Constitution, the king or queen of the United Kingdom will always be recognized as the king or queen “of Canada,” as well. So the current Queen of Canada is Elizabeth II (b. 1926), and the future King of Canada will either be her son, Prince Charles (b. 1948), or, depending on how things go, her more popular and handsome grandson, Prince William (b. 1982).

This arrangement allows Canada to still be “under” the British royals, while simultaneously allowing Canada to make the argument that it actually has its “own” independent monarchy. In other words, Elizabeth is supposed to consider her role as Canada’s queen distinct from her role as Britain’s queen, and so are the rest of us. She’s like an actor playing two different roles.

This unusual “sharing” of the British monarchy is not exclusive to Canada, however. About a dozen or so countries have a similar arrangement worked out with Britain’s monarch, notably Australia, Jamaica and New Zealand, as well as a few smaller island nations in the Caribbean and Pacific. At one time this group of countries was known as the “British Commonwealth,” but in recent decades that group has expanded into a more generic “make the planet better” international organization, and now includes many countries that have no links to the British crown — or even Britain — at all. The more proper name for countries that share the crown is the “Commonwealth Realm,” and Her Majesty’s site has a complete list of those 15 nations that exist within it.


Also, just to point out, among the current Royals, Queen Elizabeth II’s husband (and they have had four children, all of course royals) was a (third?) cousin — Queen Victoria was the great-great-grandmother of both.  Prince Philip of Greece in Denmark and Corfu)(?), b. 1921, was introduced to the current queen in such circles when he was 18 (b. 1921, do the math; this was the eve of World War II) and she was 13.  Greece had abolished the monarchy in the 1920s as a baby, he went into exile with his family. Screenprint and quote are from a Canadian government site:

From http://canada.pch.gc.ca/eng/…

…Marriage and family

At the age of 18, Prince Philip was introduced to British royal circles by his uncle, Lord Louis Mountbatten. During this time, the young prince met the 13-year-old Princess Elizabeth, his third cousin. Queen Victoria was great-great-grandmother to both of them.
When the Second World War began, Prince Philip departed the U.K. serving in the navy. On his return in 1946, he began courting the young princess. Their engagement was announced 18 months later, and their marriage took place in Westminster Abbey on November 20, 1947.

The Queen of Canada and The Duke of Edinburgh have four children:

Charitable work and military appointments (of the Duke):

The Duke of Edinburgh serves as patron or president of some 800 organizations. These reflect his interest in science and technology, sports, youth and conservation and the environment.

Forty four of these organizations are in Canada, and include the Canadian Curling Association, the College of Family Physicians of Canada and Outward Bound Trust – Canada.

The Duke of Edinburgh holds many honorary military positions. He is Colonel-in-Chief of the following units in Canada:

  • The Cameron Highlanders of Ottawa
  • The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders of Canada
  • The Royal Canadian Army Cadets
  • The Royal Canadian Regiment
  • The Royal Hamilton Light Infantry (Wentworth Regiment)
  • The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada

Royal Patronage – Canadian Organizations

As in the US, establishing charities can also spread personal policies and influences far and wide.  What is the relationship, in each of those many charities, behind the royal “donations” and the source or royal wealth in the first place?  What would the country (or Commonwealth) have been link had not the wealth been extracted from its many peoples and countries in the first place?  Now that it has been, is it proper to continue the extraction of wealth, revenues (and assets) under the paternalistic, colonizing premises?
[Continuing from the topic above of the First Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nation, Arnold Cantwell Smith, 1965ff)

I do not mean to minimize the talents, accomplishments, or times of this leader, although as a U.S. citizen born mid-1900s, awareness of his role in the British empire turning, eventually, into the Commonwealth of Nations wasn’t exactly on my radar.  A 1994 obituary explains some of the times, as well as his ability in navigating tough transitions.  It also again underscores that the family he was born into also affected the international connections:

From a Feb. 10, 1994 obituary in “The Independent” (Independent.uk) by Emeka Anyaoku.  It begins with an extended list of his positions and titles over time, before the first paragraph I start quoting here:

I HAD the special privilege of working with Arnold Smith for a decade in which his vision and leadership gave a secure foundation to the Commonwealth Secretariat and the wider family of the Commonwealth which it serves, a decade which saw the association pass through some of its most testing experiences, not least in relation to the protracted crisis in what was then Rhodesia.

Arnold Smith’s contributions to the Commonwealth during his two terms of office as Secretary-General from 1965 to 1975 were so multi-faceted as to defy easy definition. He stood in a tradition of committed internationalism and brought incomparable gifts of intelligence and insight, gifts which immediately impressed all who met and worked with him, as well as a special quality to the office of Secretary-General which he did so much to endow with character and develop with distinction.

Smith was an indefatigable and far-sighted diplomat in complete tune with the three worlds of his time – the world of the superpowers still locked into the Cold War, the industrialised world to which as a Canadian he belonged, and the developing world of the Group of 77. It was this uncommon attribute which marked him out for success in the efforts to modernise the Commonwealth and launch it on the path to becoming a modern international organisation with the formal establishment of the Commonwealth secretariat in 1965….He was born of a Canadian father who had emigrated to Canada from Grenada in the West Indies; came to Britain as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford in the twilight of Empire; and served in the Canadian Diplomatic Service at the height of Canada’s internationalist philosophy, with the Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, as his often acknowledged mentor.

No sooner, almost, was the Commonwealth established (in the 1965 form) than the crisis in Rhodesia, Organization of African Unity ready to break ranks with Great Britain over majority rule, and the Ian Smith (that is, “apartheid”) “UDI” administration.

A measure of Smith’s success as the first Commonwealth Secretary- General can be seen in how successfully he contributed to piloting the association through the many crises with which it had to cope so soon after the establishment of the Secretariat. Among them were the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) of November 1965, in reaction to which the Organisation of African Unity decided that all its members should break diplomatic relations with Britain; a war between two of the association’s members, India and Pakistan; and the initial controversy engendered by that war over the admission of Bangladesh into Commonwealth membership.

(The obituary is still short; it shows how the Rhodesian crisis led to the first Commonwealth summit outside Great Britain (note:  It’d been around for a while as the British Commonwealth) in Lagos, and concludes with this Secretary-General concluding towards the end of his term:

“…In 100 years’ time, historians may well judge that one of Britain’s greatest gifts to humanity was the Commonwealth.”

UDI:  “On This Day 11 Nov. 1965″ from BBC:  Rhodesia Breaks from the UK

…British authorities were only prepared to permit independence on the basis of giving the black majority population a fair share of power.

Treason and rebellion have been committed. The lives of four million unarmed Africans are in jeopardy.

Jason Mayo, Zapu National Treasurer

Under Mr Smith’s system there will be white minority rule, where 220,000 white Rhodesians will enjoy privileges over nearly four million black Rhodesians.

Harold Wilson told a packed and solemn House of Commons the Labour Government would not be sending troops to deal with the crisis.

Instead he announced a full-range of sanctions including ceasing all British aid to and preferential treatment for Rhodesia, banning the import of Rhodesian tobacco and recalling the British High Commissioner. 

[From the middle column, US and UN response]:

The US immediately supported the British sanctions – with embargoes on arms exports and sugar imports – and the UN called for all its members to implement economic sanctions in 1966.

France and the USSR abstained, but South Africa and Portugal – with its colony Mozambique – refused and their continued trading with Rhodesia was instrumental in keeping the Smith government afloat.

Screenprint from this source, ironically (?) shows that the Church of England finally– and barely — voted to allow women to be ordained as priests (meaning they could do communion and sacraments, not just marriages, baptisms, etc. — done as deacons).  A high-profile government official threatened to (and soon did) convert to Catholicism, as did plenty of other votes.  The vote was close.  In 1992!!  Highlights the situation of a national religion and church…

click to read (the image also contains a tinyurl, taken from the BBC “On This Day” website for link to the “women’s priest vote” page.

Another reference on the UDI at “blog.NationalArchives.gov.uk” by Andrew Holt (dated 2015):

Southern Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) 

On 11 November 1965, Southern Rhodesia’s prime minister, Ian Smith, unilaterally declared his territory’s independence from Britain. Not since the United States in 1776 had a British colony declared itself independent, and the Rhodesian declaration was not dissimilar in language and syntax to its American forerunner. That afternoon Smith addressed the nation. He assured them that Rhodesians remained ‘second to none in our loyalty to the Queen’, but ‘the end of the road has been reached’.

The road to Southern Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) began at the Victoria Falls conference in the summer of 1963. It was here that the dissolution of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or Central African Federation (CAF), was agreed. Two of Federation’s constituent members, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, became independent in 1964 as Malawi and Zambia respectively. Southern Rhodesia was more problematic. Unlike its former partners, which were British protectorates, Southern Rhodesia had been a self-governing colony since 1923. However, it was also dominated by a white minority numbering 224,000 according to the 1965 census, as opposed to over 4 million Africans. Predominantly British in origin, this minority community was strong and largely united. It also had the support of the ‘Rhodesia lobby’ on the Conservative backbenches back in Britain.  (voting franchise was the problem….) Voting provisions were complicated, with two voting rolls. Race was not mentioned in terms of allocating a person to a roll, but the property, income and education qualifications for the ‘A’ roll ensured that it was predominantly European, resulting in the dominance of the white minority.

And one more:  HistoryToday.com (dated 1990, Paul Moorcraft):

Paul Moorcraft looks at the struggle to maintain white supremacy in what is now Zimbabwe, a hundred years after Cecil Rhodes’ pioneers carved out a British colony there.

In September 1890 Cecil Rhodes’ pioneer column trundled into Mashonaland to establish Fort Salisbury and the new colonial state named after its founder: Rhodesia. 90 years later white-ruled Rhodesia became the independent state of Zimbabwe. In the 1890s the first settlers brutally suppressed a series of ‘native rebellions’ or Chimurenga (the Shona word for ‘resistance’), as the indigenous peoples called their defence against alien invaders. Thereafter, white Rhodesians fought a number of wars on behalf of the British Empire and then indulged in a traumatic civil war that lasted fourteen years and took over 30,000 lives. The bitterness remains, not least among the many – often partisan – writers who are struggling to explain and explore the war’s many facets, some still shrouded in secrecy.

The very nature of the act of rebellion against the Crown – UDI, the unilateral or, to its critics, the illegal, declaration of independence in 1965 – is still fiercely debated.

The white supremacists wanted to strip the African majority of the few rights it held in 1965. …

Smith and his followers reckoned that London would not, in the final analysis, use force against the rebel colony, partly because of its brave war record on behalf of Britain: per head of (white) population Rhodesia had contributed more in both world wars than any other part of the empire, including the United Kingdom. More especially, a large proportion of the white Rhodesian population had served in the British armed forces in the Second World War, and close ties existed with the senior echelons of the British services. Many British ex-servicemen, especially from the Royal Air Force, had settled in the prosperous colony.

Whatever the moral and political arguments, Britain did not use force to crush the rebellion. There is little doubt now that after a few resignations here and there, the army, the Royal Navy and even the Royal Air Force (supposedly the most disaffected service) would have carried out any orders to subdue the first national treason against the Crown since the American War of Independence. On the Rhodesian side, UDI was a military bluff.


That’s what I was thinking on reading how PM Harold Wilson (in Great Britain) withheld force and said “sanctions instead.”  He could’ve stopped it and forced majority rule in Rhodesia, but didn’t.  The sanctions, apparently, weren’t that well complied with..  (This reads more like a military summary).  Author:  “Paul Moorcraft is a freelance writer and film-maker who specialises in military affairs, and is the author of African Nemesis: War and Revolution in Southern Africa 1945-2010.”


 OCCH (the Order of Canada):  I’d also like to point out that as a Canadian, this leader could (and did) get certain titles associated with the Commonwealth.  In looking it up, I was again reminded that Canada itself has a “monarchy” — literally — involving in part (but not in whole), currently, Queen Elizabeth II.  This information was from various Wikipedia clicks, not too hard to reproduce if one keeps looking. I’ll add some screenprints, but to see the links, start a “OCCH” above, and just continue through on certain keywords.  For example, after the first one, I clicked “Governor General” of Canada, and learned some more about how the “person of the sovereign” (the Queen) is divided among the 15 Commonwealth Nations, and the 10 Canadian Provinces.  Also, that this “Order of Canada” commenced in 1967.  I’ll just upload the Wiki images:

Wikipedia, “Order of Canada”

Wikipedia on “Governor General” of Canada. Note paragraph 1!

Canada’s constitution is based on the Westminster parliamentary model, wherein the role of the Queen is both legal and practical, but not political.[71] The sovereign is vested with all the powers of state, collectively known as the Royal Prerogative,[160] leading the populace to be considered subjects of the Crown.[161] However, as the sovereign’s power stems from the people[30][162] and the monarch is a constitutional one, he or she does not rule alone, as in an absolute monarchy. Instead, the Crown is regarded as a corporation sole, with the monarch being the centre of a construct in which the power of the whole is shared by multiple institutions of government[163]the executivelegislative, and judicial[9]—acting under the sovereign’s authority,[113][164] which is entrusted for exercise by the politicians (the elected and appointed parliamentarians and the ministers of the Crown generally drawn from among them) and the judges and justices of the peace.[29]The monarchy has thus been described as the underlying principle of Canada’s institutional unity and the monarch as a “guardian of constitutional freedoms”[45][129] whose “job is to ensure that the political process remains intact and is allowed to function.”[71]

“The Great Seal of Canada used during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II” (“Queen of Canada” in French & English on the circumference)

The Great Seal of Canada “signifies the power and authority of the Crown flowing from the sovereign to [the] parliamentary government”[165]

(The Order of Canada was started in 1967, therefore this year is its 50th Anniversary).

Of interest — again, do we want to join in The Commonwealth of Nations” where all power is acknowledged (however exercise) to flow from the sovereign, the Crown?

[Governor-General] The office began in the 16th and 17th centuries with the Crown-appointed governors of the French colony of Canada followed by the British governors of Canada in the 18th and 19th centuries. Subsequently, the office is, along with the Crown, the oldest continuous institution in Canada.[3] The present incarnation of the office emerged with Canadian Confederation and the passing of the British North America Act, which defines the role of the governor general as “carrying on the Government of Canada on behalf and in the Name of the Queen, by whatever Title he is designated“.[4] Although the post initially still represented the government of the United Kingdom (that is, the monarch in his British council), the office was gradually Canadianized until, with the passage of the Statute of Westminster in 1931 and the establishment of a separate and uniquely Canadian monarchy, the governor general become the personal representative of the independently Canadian sovereign,[5][6] the governor general became the direct, personal representative of the uniquely Canadian sovereign (the monarch in his Canadian council).[7][8]


Nine-Paragraph Summary of my Personal, Experiential “Understanding Government” Process (3-16-2017)(See related posts)”, from:

  • (Click to read– it’s a published, but not publicized “Page” dated 3-16-2017 — the continue reading here).  Because of personal limits on exposure to this narrative (i.e., moderating my own “PTDS” factor), one indicator of which is incomplete sentences and some mis-matched subject/verb combos (i.e., proofreading process minimized to get it done quicker), I’m letting it stand as is.

… When you experience and see (and also hear from others, in addition to being able to see the headlines — I’m referring to “estranged spouse-related” roadkill, in your own neighborhoods) enough of this, there is a sense and observation that the times either were changing, or were never so upright as is commonly associated with this country, even incorporating what is typically understood by most of us as the nation’s history involving civil rights and women’s rights movements, certain legal acts, and so forth.

Combining this now with my awareness (not then, but now) of the role of the HHS programming in setting what are “proper” values for the gender hierarchies, and control of funds to produce rhetoric about “Children and Family” throughout the system — while tolerating the concept, at least, of “Violence Against Women Act” prevention programming — you have to ask, WHERE were those anti-individual-rights against United States women citizens coming from?  Whose values systems, really, are these?  If they were coming (and indications are, they were) from OUTSIDE the country, how is appealing to an international solution — particularly regarding women as a “cause” — going to improve things?


For a month or three recently I have been focused on the State of Ohio, not that this is entirely possible when programming FROM Ohio is used as the basis for statewide child welfare training in university-networks out of state (as in, California) and, they say, internationally.

In fact, if there’s any almost bona-fide and effective way to overcome national or state “jurisdiction restrictions (whether state or national), nonprofits working closely with for-profits with their program models (i.e., “privatization of government services”) sure are it, and this sure is happening!  When credibility of any specific “cause” that needs to be internationalized through privately networked nonprofits (working with individuals in government also) which might be seriously questioned and potentially stopped, pulling in a private (or public) university for prestige is also is a great idea for mutual control — in PRIVATE hands as directed towards provision of PUBLIC (gov’t) services — of all operations, in a self-perpetuating, patented (just about) vertical monopoly.

Thus anyone who challenges the cause, the programming, or that model, will then be facing not just one provider, but an entire network — AND the people profiting from it through employment, contracting, or (as the case sometimes appears to be) tax-evasion by unregistered corporations, including some of the non-profits, or any other of a variety of “beyond normal human visibility and monitoring” methods which, for some odd reason, I continued to see among the “HMRF” funding, and now am reporting when it comes to things Ohio (and, as it happens, ChildWelfare/DV/Fatherhood related). Public opinion is persuaded through testimonials from a number of sources — hardly a new idea.  In fact, you can trace some of this back to “Freud’s Nephew” (Edward L. Bernays, the father of public relations). Sales are helped with testimonials.  So is public service programming through train-the-trainers model curricula A-through-Z.

To properly understand even our own government (operations, fiscal behavior which is tied to policy and programming, right??), we have to understand where the private sector (for-profit not-for profit) comes in as well as that sector AS a sector. Language (rhetoric) is tied to systems of meaning.  If you watch how much money and effort is put into developing specialized jargon for each new field, you can see the fields of practice being set up, and who has developed this to an art form.

From that last post (published March 12, 2017, above):

Framing the new fields of practices as always solving a defined (framed) problem in a unique, or particularly efficient, or politically correct way, is good for pulling money into it. In the post from which I took this, I looked closely at a 2014 CNCS report on “Pioneering an Evidence-Based Investment Model” through CNCS’ “SIF” (Social Innovation Fund), connecting this to a 2010 Serve America Act signed by then-President (!) Obama.

But what about when we, the public being fixed (or our most distressed communities, as “promised” (like. those Promise Neighborhoods) being made safer and more healthy… want reliable evidence of how tax receipts are being distributed and spent?  Well — “we’re working on it” seems to be the response — I also found and looked at a 2015 CRS (Congressional Research Service) report showing how little “evidence” is coming back from the federal end.  It basically said that USASpending.gov (mandated by one 2006 act to be maintained under the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and then changed in 2014 by another act, to be transferred to the Treasury).

USDOE Promise Nbrhood New Awards Table (2010-2016) from Office of Innov & Improvt (Click to view pdf on each @Mar11-2017)

I picked up and posted a bit more on a footnote from that 2015 CRS report claiming (on the basis of examining only 385 records) that the GAO (General Accounting Office of the USA) could only say with 95% certainty that from 2 to 7% of the records (at USASpending.gov) were consistent with the agency reports  …. which validates my experience struggling with YEARS of HHS grants tracking around the specific causes of public policies of highest concern to my own personal safety and to that of my children’s.

Speaking as someone who spent a nearly decade living, day and night, with a spouse who had begun battering when I was pregnant with our second child and by the time I actually broke free, had been accumulating weapons, threatening to kill me, himself, and/or the entire family (then with young children at home), when there are today so many artificial, policy-created, gender-based obstacles to women staying free and able to work enough to support themselves (and/or children), when the social services apparatus has been saturated with father-friendly rhetoric AND policies which workers are being trained in — whether the topic is protection from domestic violence, child custody, child support, or if it comes up, child welfare — and when the rhetoric saturation is on both government and sponsored nonprofit websites — which I have seen to be less than consistent in staying incorporated, IRS-compliant, or otherwise honestly self-reporting (websites vs. realities) — then the leverage HAS to be applied at the policy funding — level, and not about “is it a good idea” or “effective.” And THAT requires getting to the bottom line of government financing and documenting the behaviors of the funded entities utilizing nonprofits to run the curricula.



We have to understand accounting concepts and vocabulary, and learn to distinguish one sector from the other, instead of arguing, marching, protesting, and jumping on the PR bandwagon on the specific causes.  Remember, my “Accounting Literacy Matters. Cause-based Doesn’t” (title approximate) post some years ago?  Remember even further back, I continued to appeal to readers (and friends) to distinguish, when referencing to some group (pro or con), and when citing some website (for any cause-related purpose, to justify, or to argue with it on-line and through social media), FIRST identify “Where’s Waldo?” — Who (entity-wise) the website represents. Here’s a screenprint of ONE of those references, from a 2014 Draft but not the first mention on this blog:

(Heavily annotated, but it indicates that sometime BEFORE 2014 I was focusing on “identifying the entities” and aware that there were some (I branded it “UFO”) which defied identification, typically because they may be located in a university.).

From my FamilyCourtMatters.org DRAFT 2014 post, showing my previously-published chart prompting categories any ENTITY may fall under ~ Screen Shot 2017March15 at 5.40PM

See related link Or, click here to read all that stuff!

There are only so many categories available when the issue is “public policy” and provision of government services.  You can keep giant lists of good guys vs. bad guys (and hope they don’t change organization names too often) and continue talking WITHOUT reference to how much private — or government — backing each has, or you can pay better attention, habitually, and when conversing with others, make that habit contagious — and for a change, start to have some more functional conversations based on realities, not images of realities found (complete with multi-media, Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts, and websites ending *.org, *.com, *.net which SOMETIMES are owned and operated by entities whose primary (home) website end instead,  *.gov or *.edu)



AGAIN,  Explaining my Inspirat’n for asking, on March 8, Internat’l Women’s Day, Should the USA Join the Commonwealth of Nations?… (case-sensitive shortlink ends “-6bm”)

It gets back to “DMA,” and model programming to protect families so they can be “together” but still “safe.”

Mr. Mandel’s LLC seems to like Commonwealth Countries quite well, a pattern I’ve noticed in so many court-connected, or taking court-referral business entities.

Another pattern which continues to come up for people who take a closer look among such entities:  Changing names:  The LLC is currently undergoing a name-change, after its name has been proselytized all over Ohio and at a private, not-for-profit university (law school) located in the Ohio state capital (Columbus), or so the website says.

Name-changing seems to be a very big deal in public/private partnerships (re-branding for selling services to the public, or justifying services already set in motion and funded, in case someone asks…). Possibly to put off the bloodhounds (or other trained domestic animals on the scent of something which smells a little odd).


Explaining my (earlier) Inspirat’n for asking, Should the USA Join the Commonwealth of Nations, on Internat’l Women’s Day (See EndingViolence.com Screen Shot, taken 2017-03-08)


People who don’t follow certain kinds of nonprofits may not realize how many of them whose names read “national” are actually international. If the leadership of these nonprofits (which includes, often enough, former or sometimes current judges, politicians (that is, legislators), governors, (NGA and NGA Center for Best Practices) lieutenant-governors, directors of state-level social service agencies, governors-office-located commissions under the executive branch of state governments (I’m thinking about the Ohio Office of Faith-Based and Government Initiatives), City/County managers (ICCMA), family and juvenile court judges (NCJFCJ), multi-disciplinary entities for the resolution of family conflict (!), the national council of state legislatures (NCSL), the national center for state courts.

If you look at enough of something, it’s not too hard to realize the flora and fauna when another one shows up.  Although this post was not inspired by this particular situation, the Public/Private partnership involving the (entire!) New York State Unified Court System working with a nonprofit “Fund for the City of New York” started (around 1968) by the Ford Foundation sure does come to mind.  The collaborative project is “Center for Court Innovation.”  One is local, and the other one is intended for going “National” and there was (last I looked) a place-holder (empty) filing labeled “international.”  I guess it’s good to have some back drawers if money has to be moved swiftly from one place to another.

I’ve been talking about these as a type and naming / documenting several of them over some years now on this blog, some in more detail than others obviously.  But they ARE, generally speaking, a type — tax-exempt which is to say PRIVATELY controlled corporations or associations.  The organizing principle is ” Private?” or “Public?”  Even when the private may have been created by law, it still exists as private.  One way to tell, at least in the US, is does it have to file a “CAFR” (comprehensive annual financial report) or does it instead have to file some version of a form with the IRS (regarding its operations as an entity and in relation to its own cashflow, assets & liabilities, and forms of revenue-producing activity.

In fact the use of the word “revenues” should tell us immediately that nonprofits (which record their “Revenues” and “Program Service Revenues” then file it with the International Revenue Service,’ meaning, internal to the U. S. of A., federal government) are closer in kind and operations to governments than are individuals, or for-profit IRS-fiing businesses (companies, etc.) whose income, last I looked, is called “income” as “persons” in “the personal income tax.”

Government and Nonprofits certainly, when examined (both sectors) seem to be getting along with each other MUCH better than does the government itself with individuals… Living in this country as if it is fully “this country” at almost any intersection with government now is going to pull into play several types of pre-existing (and some startup) nonprofits delivering services, or putting out the word that they have been.

It is through the non-profit sector more than the government sector that the continual pressure to internationalize EVERYTHING — both institutions and processes occurring IN those institutions, as classified by subject matter, continues to avoid, for the most part, public exposure.

Should the USA join the Commonwealth of Nations?  And if not, Why Should We Allow our Elected Federal and State Officials to sponsor Coordination of Child Welfare, Domestic Violence, and Family Court|Custody Practices, as Ordered (Ordained?) by Appointed (not elected) Experts To Promote Their Personal Beliefs, Practices, and Profits? (A Few Reminders of Who’s Who) [Started 2-17-2017, with case-sensitive short-link ending “-5VC”].

Really, I want to know.

I should also warn the readers that this discussion delves some into Div. Schools (Harvard and other “nondenominational” ones, including Wake Forest University which is nominally nodenominational but, like the 2009 Advisory Council on Neighborhood and Faith-based Partnerships, established by President Obama, by Executive Order (an add-on to the already extant Office started by Pres. George W. Bush Executive Order in 2001, with a name-change also), with significant Baptist backing).

However, the “Div School” topic only came up when I saw that the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, a position only established (along with its Secretariat) in 1965, was first occupied for 10 years by Arnold Cantwell Smith, a Canadian, whose well-known younger brother almost for the same time period, was employed by Harvard University (Div School) in Comparative Religion.

In looking up Harvard, the Wiki reminded us of other non-demoninational, university-based “Div Schools,” including Wake Forest’s (the most recent on the list starting only in 1999!).  One its leaders was appointed in 1999 to the White House Advisory Council above in 2009 and (per the Wiki) then to direct the office itself in 2013.  The topic of religion and the nation’s elite universities naturally brings up topics of gender relations and involvement in Welfare Reform-and thereafter (that is, 1996ff) public policy in the US.

However my main question remains — if and since the US is NOT a member of the former British empire’s reconstituted and re-aligned (somewhat) “Commonwealth of Nations,” under what Constitutional permissions are:

  • the family courts,
  • the domestic violence (“prevention”) practices, and
  • the regional, statewide, and at times university-sponsored  “Child Welfare (that is, Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment / “CAPTA” etc.)  Trainings” (and other similarly organized causes)

…being privately (or, I should say “Public/Private”ly) sponsored, coordinated and run and — when you get right down to the curricular, or T/TA providers,  by too few programs under the control of too few individuals?

AND, from what I can tell, those individuals, perhaps realizing their own promiscuous organization-spawning (but not sticking around to keep them “legitimate’) behaviors, feel a need to proselytize abroad before those keeping the hearth and home burning (and I’m referring to the substantial federal agency grant-making and resources of the United States of America, and its territories) and figure out in how many places and by what means, they’ve been “burnt” by the same?

DID YOU KNOW — or REMEMBER — Next quote is Wiki, click on it to see the links I obviously didn’t include, but are typical of Wikipedia:

The Commonwealth of Nations is a voluntary association of 52 independent and sovereign states. Most are former British colonies or dependencies of these colonies.

We’re a former colony, in part. Maybe those in control wish us to go back into dependency governance, complete with all the more comfortable OLD values (men on top, class systems, and a whole class feeding off the king (or queen)’s tables in both the secular AND “priestly” (religious) sectors, and very well-fed they are, too, looks like…

No one government in the Commonwealth exercises power over the others as is the case in a political union. Rather, the relationship is one of an international organisation through which countries with diverse social, political, and economic backgrounds are regarded as equal in status and cooperate within a framework of common values and goals as outlined in the Singapore Declaration issued in 1971.[1]Such common values and goals include the promotion of democracy, human rights, good governance, the rule of law, individual liberty, egalitarianism, free trade, multilateralism, and world peace which are carried out through multilateral projects and meetings which include the Commonwealth Games held once every four years.[2]

The symbol of this free association is Queen Elizabeth II who serves as the Head of the Commonwealth. This position, however, does not imbue her with any political or executive power over any Commonwealth member states; the position is purely symbolic, and it is the Commonwealth Secretary-General who is the chief executive of the Commonwealth.[3]

Symbols may not have executive power, but they have communicative power and purpose.  A Queen (or King) symbolizing the head of a commonwealth definitely communicates to citizens of the USA, and should, given the country’s history.  Regarding the Commonwealth Secretary-General, the current incumbent is a woman of color (imagine if the USA successfully elected not only a woman President, but also a woman of color.  Would HHS and DOJ — both Executive Branch departments — and their current racist/sexist policies change?)

Wiki on the Commonwealth Secretary-General, quickly:  The head is in London (in a residence donated by the Queen), the position has a specific start date (1965), and election is by the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOG),  i.e., functioning somewhat like an empire, with the Head of the Commonwealth currently Queen Elizabeth II.

Her Excellency Patricia Scotland, Commonwealth Secretary-General as of? April 2016 (original holder 1965-1975 Arthur Cantwell

Her Excellency Patricia Scotland, Commonwealth Secretary-General as of? April 2016 (original holder 1965-1975 Arnold Cantwell Smith, brother of Wilfred Cantwell Smith. (See below);

The Commonwealth Secretary-General is the head of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the central body which has served the Commonwealth of Nations since its establishment in 1965, and responsible for representing the Commonwealth publicly.[1] The Commonwealth Secretary-General should not be confused with the Head of the Commonwealth, who is currently Queen Elizabeth II.

The position was created, along with the Secretariat itself, after the fourteenth Commonwealth Prime Ministers Conference in London in 1965, issued a memorandum describing the role of the Secretary-General:

“Both the Secretary-General and his/her staff should be seen to be the servants of Commonwealth countries collectively. They derive their functions from the authority of Commonwealth Heads of Government; and in the discharge of his/her responsibilities in this connection the Secretary-General should have access to Heads of Government[1]

 

The Commonwealth was first officially formed in 1931 when the Statute of Westminster gave legal recognition to the sovereignty of dominions. Known as the “British Commonwealth”, the original members were the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, and Newfoundland, although Australia and New Zealand did not adopt the statute until 1942 and 1947 respectively.[4] In 1949, the London Declaration was signed and marked the birth of the modern Commonwealth and the adoption of its present name.[5] The newest member is Rwanda, which joined on 29 November 2009.[6] The most recent departure was the Maldives, which severed its connection with the Commonwealth on 13 October 2016.

BACK ACROSS THE POND (IN THE USA, MEANWHILE):

Anyone remember approximately 1965-1975 in US History?

Here’s my fast-track version (with an emphasis on topics relevant to “FamilyCourtMatters” and of course not comprehensive…):

Shortly before AND after a 1963 Presidential assassination, Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964; I’ll list several links for each:

1957 (Civil Rights Act of 1957, CRDL.USG.edu) “Civil Rights Digital Library” (“CRRL”) at Univ. System of Georgia (USG):

On September 9, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Originally proposed by Attorney General Herbert Brownell, the Act marked the first occasion since Reconstruction that the federal government undertook significant legislative action to protect civil rights. Although influential southern congressman whittled down the bill’s initial scope, it still included a number of important provisions for the protection of voting rights. It established the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department, and empowered federal officials to prosecute individuals that conspired to deny or abridge another citizen’s right to vote. Moreover, it also created a six-member U.S. Civil Rights Commission charged with investigating allegations of voter infringement. But, perhaps most importantly, the Civil Rights Act of 1957 signaled a growing federal commitment to the cause of civil rights.

1957, from Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum & Boyhood Home: Main focus, right to vote:

In 1957, President Eisenhower sent Congress a proposal for civil rights legislation. The result was the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. The new act established the Civil Rights Section of the Justice Department and empowered federal prosecutors to obtain court injunctions against interference with the right to vote. It also established a federal Civil Rights Commission with authority to investigate discriminatory conditions and recommend corrective measures. The final act was weakened by Congress due to lack of support among the Democrats.

1957 Act From “History.house.gov” (Highlights 1951-2000)

On this date [June 18, 1957], the House of Representatives passed the initial version of what eventually became the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Propelled by advocacy groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as the Dwight D. Eisenhower administration, Congress took up the issue of civil rights during the summer of 1957. “This is an hour for great moral stamina,” Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., of New York, one of three African-American Members in first session of the 85th Congress (1957–1959) told his colleagues. “America stands on trial today before the world and communism must succeed if democracy fails.” The House passed H.R. 6127 by a vote of 286 to 126. Under the direction of Senate Majority Leader and future President Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, the Senate passed a watered-down version of the House bill which removed stringent voting protection clauses. The House approved the compromise measure on August 27 by a wide margin, 279 to 97. On September 9, 1957, President Eisenhower signed P.L. 85–315. The resulting law—the first significant measure to address African-American civil rights since 1875—established the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights for two years, created a civil rights division in the U.S. Justice Department, and authorized the U.S. Attorney General to seek federal court injunctions to protect the voting rights of African Americans.

Update on the US Commission on Civil Rights: (USCCR 2016 “PAR” (Performance and Accountability Report). It came up in my blogging (months ago) when in looking at the “Promise Neighborhoods,” a certain Los Angeles leader had been characterized as a member of it.  He hadn’t been, but had been a member of the “state advisory committee” (or similar term).  In the process I learned that the USCCR doesn’t even have its own accounting system, but is instead under the USDA’s “OCFO,” [Office of Chief Financial Officer?) really isn’t that well funded, nor do they have internal control for ensuring financial accountability:

Mission:  The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was created pursuant to the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which was signed into law by President Eisenhower. 1** Since then, Congress has reauthorized or extended the legislation creating the Commission several times; the last reauthorization was in 1994 by the Civil Rights Commission Amendments Act of 1994.2 Established as an independent, bipartisan, fact-finding federal agency, our mission is to appraise the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws. We pursue this mission by studying alleged deprivations of voting rights and alleged discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, age, disability, or national origin, or in the administration of justice. We play a vital role in advancing civil rights through objective and comprehensive investigation, research, and analysis on issues of fundamental concern to the federal government and the public.

B. USCCR Organizational Structure

The Commission is an independent federal agency led by eight appointed commissioners. ….

[p.7, starting in Section D]:

D. Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA)

OMB Circular A-123, Management’s Responsibility for Internal Control and the Federal Managers’ Financial Integrity Act (FMFIA) require Federal managers to improve accountability and effectiveness of Federal programs and operations by establishing, assessing, correcting, and reporting on internal controls. Commission management is responsible for establishing and maintaining an effective internal control and financial management system. The Commission’s Administrative Instruction 1-13 requires office and division heads to complete an annual self-assessment of internal controls as of June 30 each year.

In FY 2016, all offices and division heads completed a self-assessment. The Commission identified one material weakness. The Agency lacks adequate controls to ensure reliability of financial reporting. Regional and headquarters’ offices did identify several immaterial weaknesses. Based on this evaluation, the Commission is able to provide a statement of assurance that the internal controls except for internal controls over financial reporting are compliant.  [p.8 explains why]:

E. Financial Highlights

The Commission continues to use the USDA OCFO as its accounting shared services provider. ….With the Commission’s limited budget and accounting staff, the services provided by USDA OCFO are essential to the financial stewardship of our resources.

**[see link for footnotes; not included here]

(So that’s how it stands, nearly 60 years later, as to the Civil Rights Commission)

Civil Rights Act of 1964:

From the Civil Rights Digital Library, which I just noticed has a motto referring to only racial (not the other categories listed under the USCCR):  “Documenting America’s Struggle for Racial Equality.”  This is a Screenprint from Year 1964, including to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 signed by President Lyndon Johnson):

http://crdl.usg.edu/events/ (with “1964” expanded)
(Civil Rights Digital Library at Univ. System Georgia, Events of 1964. The “Events” options go only 1954 -1968 — perhaps there have been no memorable civil rights-related “events” since then? (“Documenting America’s Struggle for Racial Equality.”) I’m sure the website will have more information on where the rest (more recent) of the information might be …

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson just a few hours after House approval on July 2, 1964. The act outlawed segregation in businesses such as theaters, restaurants, and hotels. It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.”

{It’s a library — and the purpose is a very short summary with links to other information, which this page provides. But notice the other areas referenced and that ending segregation is the main point of reference.  This summary says nothing about housing.

Next quote from “Archives.gov.edu/lessons/civil rights” is longer, but illustrates how even adding the other categories (including discrimination based on sex, religion, or national origin) were last-minute additions, and fought-for.  It also addresses that while the law didn’t facilitate affirmative action (versus preventing discrimination) directly it seems the EEOC (regulatory commission) did:

[starting with 2nd paragraph from: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

In 1964 Congress passed Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The word “sex” was added at the last moment. According to the West Encyclopedia of American Law, Representative Howard W. Smith (D-VA) added the word. His critics argued that Smith, a conservative Southern opponent of federal civil rights, did so to kill the entire bill. Smith, however, argued that he had amended the bill in keeping with his support of Alice Paul and the National Women’s Party with whom he had been working. Martha W. Griffiths (D-MI) led the effort to keep the word “sex” in the bill. In the final legislation, Section 703 (a) made it unlawful for an employer to “fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions or privileges or employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The final bill also allowed sex to be a consideration when sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the job. Title VII of the act created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to implement the law.

Subsequent legislation expanded the role of the EEOC. Today, according to the U. S. Government Manual of 1998-99, the EEOC enforces laws that prohibit discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment. Race, color, sex, creed, and age are now protected classes. The proposal to add each group to protected-class status unleashed furious debate. But no words stimulate the passion of the debate more than “affirmative action.”

As West [[“Encyclopedia of American Law” in the above context]] defines the term, affirmative action “refers to both mandatory and voluntary programs intended to affirm the civil rights of designated classes of individuals by taking positive action to protect them” from discrimination. The issue for most Americans is fairness: Should the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment be used to advance the liberty of one class of individuals for good reasons when that action may infringe on the liberty of another?

The EEOC, as an independent regulatory body, plays a major role in dealing with this issue. …

Presidents also weighed in, employing a series of executive orders. The first use of the phrase “affirmative action” in an executive order appeared in March 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed E.O. 10925.

This is obviously a slight time-warp to pre-1964, as JFK was murdered in 1963… E.O. 10925.  Exec. Order 10925 of 1961 did NOT reference sex (gender), but was replaced by Exec. Order11246 by LBJ (Pres. Lyndon Johnson) to also include sex.  A discussion of this as well as of how in 1995 Calfiornia’s University System got around this ending affirmative action — at least for admisssions — and how in 2001 a California Civil Rights (—–) was passed, appealed, and upheld is found at this UCI (University of California Irvine/OEOD [Office of Equal Opp’ty & Diversity]) website.

I found it interesting reading because, as a mother dealing with domestic violence AT HOME affecting my ability TO GET TO WORK (and what kinds of work), the issue of discrimination AT WORK (and when later seeking remedies for the ongoing work interference resulting from family court policies and the actions of a series of relatives towards me BECAUSE of my gender (i.e., as I was mother) AND marital status (I’d separated from the perpetrator through taking legal action), somehow, the EEOC and this sector never seemed to apply. This was initially (originally) in the marriage also in part on the basis of religion, i.e., the religious alibi for discriminating in dangerous and impoverishing ways on women (particularly married or divorcing/separated women), as a general class was more than able to overcome any legal rights existing in different venues, such as the federal ones with the subject matter being employment.

For this Exec Order and its replacement, also see Archives.gov, Federal Register, ExecOrders Disposition Tables (set to 1961 orders, i.e., by JFK):

Executive Order  10924
Establishment and administration of the Peace Corps in the Department of State

  • Signed: March 1, 1961
  • Federal Register page and date: 26 FR 1789, March 2, 1961
  • See: EO 10893, November 8, 1960; EO 11603, June 30, 1971
  • Superseded by: EO 11041, August 6, 1962

Executive Order  10925
Establishing the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity

  • Signed: March 6, 1961
  • Federal Register page and date: 26 FR 1977, March 8, 1961
  • Revokes: EO 10479, August 13, 1953; EO 10482, August 15, 1953; EO 10557, September 3, 1954; EO 10733, October 10, 1957
  • Amended by: EO 11114, June 22, 1963; EO 11162, July 28, 1964
  • Superseded by: EO 11246, September 24, 1965 (Committee abolished)
  • See: Memorandum of April 18, 1961 (Public Papers of the President, 1961, Item 137)

….Executive Order  10980 Establishing the President’s Commission on the Status of Women

  • Signed: December 14, 1961
  • Federal Register page and date: 26 FR 12059, December 16, 1961
  • See: EO 11126, November 1, 1963

Wondering what happened to that one, I clicked on “EO1126” and found quite a bit of activity:

Executive Order  11126
Establishing a committee and a council relating to the status of women

  • Signed: November 1, 1963
  • Federal Register page and date: 28 FR 11717; November 1, 1963
  • Amended by: EO 11221, May 6, 1965; EO 12007, August 22, 1977
  • Citizens’ Advisory Council on the Status of Women continued by: EO 11827, January 4, 1975; EO 11948, December 20, 1976
  • Council terminated by EO 12007, August 22, 1977
  • Revoked by: EO 12050, April 4, 1978***
  • See: EO 10980, December 14, 1961

***Executive Order  12050  Establishing a National Advisory Committee for Women

  • Signed: April 4, 1978
  • Federal Register page and date: 43 FR 14431; April 6, 1978
  • Revokes: EO 11126, November 1, 1963; EO 11832, January 9, 1975
  • Amended by: EO 12057, May 8, 1978
  • Revoked in part by: EO 12135, May 9, 1979; EO 12336, December 21, 1981 (together revokes all parts)
  • See: EO 12258, December 31, 1980 (committee continued)

(For further study, I guess!);  Back to the quote from the National Archives on the Civil Rights Act of 1964:  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered all executive agencies to require federal contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” A 1969 executive order required that every level of federal service offer equal opportunities for women, and established a program to implement that action. President Richard Nixon’s Department of Labor adopted a plan requiring federal contractors to assess their employees to identify gender and race and to set goals to end any under-representation of women and minorities. By the 1990s Democratic and Republican administrations had taken a variety of actions that resulted in 160 different affirmative action federal programs. State and local governments were following suit.

The courts also addressed affirmative action. In addition to dealing with race, color, creed, and age, from the 1970s forward, the court dealt with gender questions.

This time period included at least two other prominent leader assassinations you may recall (Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr.), and as writer of this blog, now that I’ve become aware of it in recent years, the underpinnings of current (“imho”) racism AND sexism continued in the social services category, the 1965 Moynihan Report on “The Negro Family” which, infamously and quoting sociologists, pathologized single motherhood.

By linking to some of the above I’m also reminding us of their dates, as paralleling when (for most of the events), the first “Secretary-General” of the Commonwealth of Nations was Arnold Cantwell Smith  (1965-75) and his brother Wilfred Cantwell Smith (1964-1973) (see below) was teaching at Harvard Div School. Harvard only went co-ed undergrad (let the women in!) officially in 1977 (per CollegeExpress list of which (U.S., looks like) men’s colleges started admitting women, and when).   A 2012 perspective (discussing the 375th anniversary of Harvard) points out that women first organized to seek admission 100 years earlier — in 1872!  They’d been admitted to graduate schools earlier (though still later at Harvard than several other places, says this article) and Radcliffe was in fact the women’s “workaround” of steadfast refusal to admit them, by contracting with Harvard professors to teach at a separate institution!

Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard (April 26, 2012, by Colleen Walsh, Harvard Staff writer):

Harvard’s history with women is indeed complicated, said historian Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz Monday at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

In a talk titled “It’s Complicated: 375 Years of Women at Harvard,” the professor emerita of history and American studies at Smith College examined the University’s shifting gender landscape, contending that while the Harvard of today has much to celebrate in regards to women, it still has room to improve.

The lecture took shape as Harvard President Drew Faust and Radcliffe Dean Lizabeth Cohen discussed how the Radcliffe Institute could, said Cohen, “make an intellectual contribution” to commemorate Harvard’s 375th anniversary.

Just as important to the two historians, said Cohen, “was how the history of women at Harvard might be well represented in the course of the anniversary year.”


Women’s exclusion from the University began “as a part of the social order of the time,” said Horowitz, one that went largely unquestioned by both men and women and that was connected to both “tradition and privilege.”

Established in 1636 to educate an all-male clergy, Harvard by the 18th century had developed into a college to educate the “sons of the arriving mercantile elite.” During the industrial revolution of the 19th century, Boston bluebloods and Harvard, she said, “rose together.”

The first women to knock at Harvard’s doors came from the middle class, typically schoolteachers looking for extra instruction in the sciences. But they were merely “thrown crumbs,” such as access to lectures or labs, said Horowitz. ….

The “Harvard Annex” opened its doors in 1879. By 1890 more than 200 women were being taught by 70 men. Yet Agassiz continued to push for more. In 1894, Radcliffe College was granted an official charter by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Agassiz was its first president. …

A more complex picture emerged Harvard’s graduate Schools. The Harvard Graduate School of Education was the first to admit women in 1920. Harvard Medical School accepted its first female enrollees in 1945 — though a woman first applied almost 100 years earlier, in 1847. Women began petitioning Harvard Law School for admittance in 1871. The School opened its doors in 1950, but that was 20 years behind most law schools in the country, said Horowitz.

In 1963, Harvard degrees were awarded to Radcliffe students for the first time. In 1967, Lamont Library allowed women access. In 1975, the two Colleges merged their admissions. In 1977, “a critical date,” Harvard’s ratio of four men to one woman ended with “sex-blind admissions.” In 1999, Radcliffe officially merged with Harvard, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study was born.

(I may have referenced this site before):  MaryFerrell.org: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was one of the opening acts which plunged 1968 into a year of turmoil. Coming on the heels of the Tet Offensive which showed the war in Vietnam to be in disarray, and President Johnson’s decision not to seek re-election, King’s assassination was itself soon followed by the murder of Robert Kennedy, violence at the Democratic National Convention, and a general unraveling of the country into a period of violence and despair.

Like the other assassinations of the 1960s, the King murder had its “lone nut,” in this case James Earl Ray, an escaped convict who purchased the rifle found near the assassination scene and was caught in flight two months later. But, also like the other assassinations, evidence of conspiracy was easily found, despite being ignored by government investigators.

Fifty years later (2015) and today, policies are still in place celebrating the theories.  My last post on Child Welfare Information Gateway / “QIC-NRF” and more, showed by grammar, word-count, the word “mother” in positive association with “families” is simply absent from rhetoric in program after program involving social services, families, and whether or not children should be around their mothers or not, or removed from their mothers and instead of farmed out to strangers, given back to their fathers.  The word counts, which are part of the rhetoric, exposure, training, and indoctrination FOR THE SERVICE WORKERS (and those training them), are clear:  As a “species” mothers are out of political favor.  “Children and Families” are rated by presence or absence of biological fathers with the focus on the children.

Under a male leadership (in Ohio) in a field often characterized by nonprofits run by women (such as domestic violence), consensus was reached long ago, apparently, to incorporate behavioral modification services throughout, particularly for ‘violent fathers.”  But (see “Progressive Language Creep” post, near the bottom — published in March, 2017 (I think!), the website regarding David Mandel’s “Safe and Together”(™) emphasizes that in order to better work with “violent” fathers people must first be taught how to work with “all” fathers.  ….  Sure….

Meanwhile, “ma & pa” type operations, like the various nonprofits (“3 Ohio Nonprofits” and near the bottom of March 7, 2017 post “Don’t know about ~QIC-NRF?~”…) running regional trainings within Ohio are also featuring their connections with Russia and child welfare trainings in that state. (And, CalSWEC throughout this Western “Golden” State, much larger than Ohio, has opted to feature the curriculum developed by the same Ohio dynamic duo, apparently.)

As does (re: the Russian connection) Hunter College, Silberman School of Social Work at CUNY’s “NCCWE” (National Center on (or for) Child Welfare Excellence) which itself as a website (after it’s re-branding from a different name) features under “BPR” (Best Practices Resources) the same “Children’s Welfare Information Gateway” I spoke of above, known for working to eradicate the word “mother” in its language, and my annotated screenprints did word counts of three levels of website on the system, as well as pointing out that one of the Advisory board from Texas (Michael Hayes) was at the time working in the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which handles the “access and visitation grants” and with specific fatherhood programs, at the state level, for that major (large) “Gulf” (of Mexico) State….

RE: that 1965 “Moynihan Report,” Senator Moynihan grew up poor, moving many times, and was abandoned by his father, yet still from his position as (later, Senator) he continued to claim who lack of a biological father in the home prevents individual social success in America.  etc.  Guess based on this example, and our latest President, and countless others, that “must” be true and “someone oughter do something about it.”

(Perpetually??? When is it “enough” — never??)

Same policies were followed, I heard (Dierks chronicles of Namibia, may be referenced in the sidebar, I’ve posted several times), in German Southwest Africa, later Namibia.  First, break down the family and matriarchy was frowned upon by the newcomers.  Same deal with the U.S. colonies, originally….  WHEN did women in the U.S.A. get the vote, again..???

…Meanwhile, in 1972? Phyllis Chesler Ph.D. (feminist psychologist and author) published “Women and Madness” and in many aspects, another forward push of feminism — as well as pushback on behalf of battered women (married and unmarried) was coming into place.  In 1970, California allowed no-fault divorce (somewhere around 1981? it also began mandating mediation in divorce).

By 1975 the Family Support Act was in place, going after child support from absent fathers, setting up the motive for them to file for custody (and reduce child support payments) and the entire 1980s proliferation of fathers/childrens’ rights organizations.  By 1984, Laws (and 1988) funding for the “Access and Visitation” grants were in place at the federal level.


(Also in 1984, the Family Violence Services and Prevention Act, 42 U.S.C. (now) Title 110, starting with Section 10400 (I just posted, title “Understand “CADV” funding…) was passed in its first form.  These authorize several kinds of grants under “services, prevention” (and now, education) and as I have come to understand it, financed and organized the power structure of the “Prevention” field when it comes to women sick and tired of being battered as wives, daughters, spouses, intimate partners, sometimes as mothers, etc.” it’s a power network based on subject matters, and I have previously posted, a number of times (in 2016 as I recall) on the topic of “outflanking sovereignty through functionalism” (David Mitrany, others) as a global cause of action, internationally planned and written about.

Here are two links (first one is ©2002 JSTOR, but found on-line elsewhere, and is his writing – the 1948 (or from it) The Functional Approach to World Organization published in “International Affairs” (Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1944-) Vo. 24 Issue 3 (“RIIA” is in London, with sister institutions in other countries; in the US that would be the Council on Foreign Relations (“CFR”));

And a second, which looks like a Lecture 10 or class notes/assignments) on the European Union under “Political Science” is ©2010 by Robert Weiner, Ph.D. (looks like class notes) and marked “UMass Boston.”  NB:  This was written before the 2016 “Brexit…” 🙂 )

**My two links I believe stay well within US Copyright law and Fair use.  JSTOR says may not download entire journal, or multiple copies; I remember Aaron Swartz (young, founder of Reddit, and unfortunately for felony prosecution for his excessive downloading from JSTOR, now will never grow old)* from MIT, and I’m doing neither here.  The JSTOR link (simple Google search results) was from what looks like a 2009 posting marked “LSU.edu” — which is Louisiana State University.

Re Aaron Swartz, I see we are just about 4 years after this article, “Requiem for A Dream” in “American Chronicles” (The New Yorker, 3/11/2013) by Larissa MacFarquhar:   “

[subtitle] Aaron Swartz was brilliant and beloved. But the people who knew him best saw a darker side.

(this quote starts where the image leaves off, to make sense of the JSTOR reference in the first place)

(Click here — or see link to whole article to read) Two years ago, he was indicted on multiple felony counts for downloading several million articles from the academic database jstor.

It is not clear why he did this. He may have wanted to analyze the articles, or he may have intended to upload them onto the Web, so they could be accessed by anyone. It is clear that he did not anticipate the astonishing severity of the legal response. He did not consider his jstor action an act of civil disobedience for which he was prepared to sacrifice a portion of his life in prison. It was not a project that was particularly important to him. There had been a time when he cared deeply about copyright issues, but he had moved on.

“Since his death, his family and closest friends have tried to hone his story into a message, in order to direct the public sadness and anger aroused by his suicide to political purposes. They have done this because it is what he would have wanted, and because it is a way to extract some good from the event. They tell people that the experience of being prosecuted is annihilatingly brutal, and that prosecutors can pursue with terrible weapons defendants who have caused little harm. One of the corollaries of this message is that Swartz did not kill himself; he was murdered by the government. But this claim is for public consumption, and the people closest to him do not really believe it. They believe that he would not have killed himself without the prosecutors, but they feel that there is something missing from this account—some further fact, a key, that will make sense of what he did.”

(I just read the whole article.  It has a section on Pacer. I’m not a fan of The New Yorker style, but check this out (articles are too long and almost dreamy in style; I wonder who in the heck has that kind of time in a day?)

In 2008, Carl Malamud, a freedom-of-information activist, put the word out that the pacer (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) database, which normally charged eight cents a page for public documents with no copyright, was offering a free trial of its services at seventeen libraries. Malamud called on activists to go to these libraries, download the files, and post them free on the Web. Swartz went to a library in Chicago and downloaded twenty per cent of the database before he was discovered and pacer called off the trial. He was investigated by the F.B.I.: it conducted surveillance on his parents’ house, near Chicago, and compiled a detailed dossier on him.


Swartz’s downloading act is now part of US history.  I only made the reference  above because in completing this post (hopefully today), I wanted to refer to a situation which was quoted on JSTOR.  It is not likely to be quoted on Breitbart, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, or other mainstream media, just as those Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports for all levels of government, as important and illustrative of what IS government and its main underpinnings in the first place, because it simply doesn’t make for good advertising revenue, drive readership, entertain, distract, and help keep the population malleable, pliable, and driveable with one political wind, or the next, based in good part on who controls which media.

Now, about “Functionalism” and progressive movement towards a global world order (and WHO gets to rule it?  The Commonwealth, or other alliances?  Gee, should I re-read George Orwell or Aldous Huxley?)…

If the United States of America is to continue to have meaning in its institutions, and with its national creeds (so to speak) and self-identification, it cannot simply blend, morph, and amalgamate into the patterns set in motion by Brits, Germans (or French) in their previous globalization (empire-building) attempts.  Believing that these do NOT want empires any more, they just want peace — after all, it’s a new generation — well, I don’t feel I’m in a position (2017, a woman, in the USA, twenty-years post-PRWORA LAST year…) to take it on faith.

I believe that in the DV networks (and fatherhood networks, child abuse prevention, etc.) we are seeing a similar DNA of power structure as backed by untrackable (essentially) money, often diverting from public funds and with the emphasis on national regional (within the USA) and if at the statewide level, the state must be handled also “regionally” not through its own political subdivisions for SOME things, but according to the counties for other.  Such a network it is, too!…Just read my recent posts.  The internet makes this possible, and excess capital and wealth is drawn to invest for the tax-reduction qualities if nothing else.


So, I just noticed a timeline relating to the Commonwealth Secretary-General first two occupants 1965-1975, and 1975-1990 — that’s a LONG time (longer than US Presidents can do).

Meanwhile, the well-known brother of the “inaugural” (first) holder of this powerful position, from Canada, was Arnold Cantwell Smith.  Here’s his Wikipedia, then his famous brother’s Wilfred Cantwell Smith. The symbol “||” shows where I combined paragraphs.

Arnold Cantwell SmithOCCH (January 18, 1915 – February 7, 1994) was a Canadian diplomat. He was the first Commonwealth Secretary-General, serving from 1965–1975.

A talented student, he won Rhodes Scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.

From 1958 to 1961, he was the Canadian Ambassador to Egypt. From 1961 to 1963, he was the Canadian Ambassador to the USSR. During his time at the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth flag was designed on his and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau‘s initiative. || In 1975 he was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour. In 1984, he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada for “a long and distinguished diplomatic career”.[1] | Arnold Smith was the elder brother of Wilfred Cantwell Smith.[2]

His published work includes Stitches In Time; the Commonwealth in World Politics.[3]

Rhodes Scholarships were originally established to re-instate Great Britain as the world-ruler, and return the colonies to its dominion.  Read up on Cecil Rhodes and British South Africa.  A key part was mentoring at Oxford University…  The first Rhodes Scholar to become a U.S. Senator was Senator Fulbright (who established his own presitgious scholarship, similar ideas) from Arkansas and at some point was mentoring future US President, Wm. J. Clinton.  When Clinton was in office and “up a creek” between terms, with a Republican-controlled Congress trying to dismantle welfare, he called in (fellow Rhodes Scholar) Dick Morris, “triangulating” the warring sides to move it in a certain direction, which eventually passed Congress in the form of 1996 “PRWORA.”

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, (<=Wiki) meanwhile, held a position simultaneously (almost) at Harvard, with an interesting focus: comparative religion:

Wilfred Cantwell Smith (July 21, 1916 – February 7, 2000) was a Canadian professor of comparative religion who from 1964–1973 was director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of World Religions. The Harvard Gazette said he was one of the field’s most influential figures of the past century.[1] In his 1962 work The Meaning and End of Religion he notably and controversially questioned the validity of the concept of religion.[2]

[Early Life & History, minus the most of the links] Smith was born in Toronto to parents Victor Arnold Smith and Sarah Cory Cantwell. He was the younger brother of Arnold Smith and the father of Brian Cantwell Smith.

(Click to see Brian C. Smith was apparently also brilliant, although exercising his brilliance in areas more typical of the times: “Smith received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a founder of the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University, and a founder and first president of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. Smith served as principal scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, in the 1980s.” “Brian Cantwell Smith is a scholar in the fields of cognitive sciencecomputer scienceinformation studies, and philosophy, especially ontology. …Smith was Dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Information from 2003–2008; he is currently professor of information, computer science, and philosophy at University of Toronto.”

[Back to the Father, Wilfred]: He received a B.A. with honours in oriental languages in 1938 from the University of Toronto. After his thesis was rejected by Cambridge University, [England] supposedly for its Marxist critique of the British Raj, he and his wife Muriel Mackenzie Struthers spent seven years in Pre-Independence India (1940–1946), during which he taught Indian and Islamic history at Forman Christian College in Lahore.

In 1948 he obtained a Ph.D in oriental languages at Princeton University, after which he taught at McGill, founding in 1952 the university’s Institute of Islamic Studies. From 1964 to 1973 Smith taught at Harvard Divinity School. He left Harvard for Dalhousie University in Halifax, NS, where he founded the Department of Religion. He was also among the original Editorial Advisors of the scholarly journal Dionysius. In 1978 he returned to Harvard. In 1979 he received an honorary doctorate from Concordia University.[3] After his retirement from teaching, he was appointed a senior research associate in the Faculty of Divinity at Trinity College, University of Toronto, in 1985. He died on February 7, 2000.[1]

So ten years (only) were spent teaching primarily in the USA, at Harvard.  “Harvard Div. School,” says its wiki was established as an independent nondenominational school, unlike others of the time. I see from their Wiki that as of 2015 they are doing away with the degree “Th.D.” and substituting “Ph.D.”  As a university-based, nondenominational school, it seems to be one of just a few in the country:

Harvard Divinity School is among a small group of university-based, non-denominational divinity schools in the United States (the others include the University of Chicago Divinity SchoolYale Divinity SchoolVanderbilt University Divinity School and Wake Forest University School of Divinity).

Chicago is Illinois (i.e., Midwest), Yale is Connecticut, Vanderbilt is ___ and Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (says that link) only began admitting students in 1999 and accredited (in its field) in 2005. And while it may be and is “formally” independent from formal denomination, there was and still is plenty of Baptist philosophy, and money, behind it from the start:

Wake Forest University developed out of an institute established by the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina in 1834, and its first head was the Rev. Samuel Wait. From the beginning, the education of ministers was a primary purpose. In 1946 the trustees of Wake Forest College and the Baptist State Convention accepted a proposal by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation to relocate the college from the town of Wake Forest to the growing city of Winston-Salem. Much of the estate of the R. J. Reynolds family was donated for the campus, and when the college moved to the new location in 1956, the theological seminary remained at the old campus. In 1967 Wake Forest became a university with a graduate school, medical school, and law school. In 1989 the trustees of the University approved the idea of forming a School of Divinity, and Baptist churches were major financial contributors to the new school. The very first gift came from the First Baptist Church in New Bern, N.C. where Samuel Wait once served. The first students were admitted in 1999 and accreditation was granted in 2005 by the Association of Theological Schools in the United States and Canada.

The Baptist heritage informs the School of Divinity, but from the beginning the school has been intentionally ecumenical in terms of faculty, student body, and curriculum. It is the first university-based divinity school to begin with no formal denominational affiliation. … In true Baptist fashion, students are challenged to internalize their education so that they can serve as effective agents of justice, reconciliation, and compassion in an ever-changing world


The School of Divinity also offers optional concentrated studies within the MDiv degree: the Well-Being and Religious Leadership Program with curricular concentrations in food and faith, and faith and health of the public; in partnership with the Department of Education the school offers a concentration in Education designed to enable students who already hold teaching certificates to qualify for a North Carolina Master’s level certification; and in collaboration with the Wake Forest University Center for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability (CEES) the school offers a graduate certificate in sustainability.

The School of Divinity is intentionally ecumenical and open to a variety of viewpoints, valuing Wake Forest College’s Baptist heritage that was shaped by “soul freedom.” Our goal is to prepare women and men from diverse theological and religious perspectives for faithful and transformative service in a wide array of ministries

It may be good to remember — however secular the subject matter and majors may seem, where the institution (Div School or otherwise) is religious, the intent is “transformation” and functioning as a “systems” (and often, personal) “change agent.”  Period.  This is at the heart of most religions.  While I don’t doubt the sincerity of many front-line workers providing social services of having human compassion, or even good motives, as regards the institutionalized religion (and in the USA, many are so institutionalized, and with specific, extraordinary tax-exemption privileges, such as in certain circumstances, not having to even file tax returns as other nonprofits would, except as they are running 50©3 (etc.) “ministries” (businesses….), never very far from the surface is transformation, evangelization and conversion of whoever they are working with, for the “God” purpose. Beyond which, for Wake Forest University School of Divinity (first students not admitted until 1999), in 2013:

Center for Religion and Public Affairs[edit]

In March 2013, the Center for Religion and Public Affairs’ director, Melissa Rogers, was named as the Director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships for the White House. With Rogers’s new appointment the Center is no longer operating. Since 2004, the Center promoted the research, study and dialogue regarding the intersection of religion and public affairs, and provided resources for policymakers, divinity school students and religious leaders on these issues.

The “Joint Statement on Religious Expression in American Public Life,” produced by the Center, is still available online through the School of Divinity website.

Student Body[edit]

The School of Divinity’s first class was roughly 20 students strong; currently the total enrollment is 121 students. The intimacy of the program allows students to interact with the world-class faculty in small class settings and one on one. 59% of the student body is female, 62% are under 30 years old (students range in age from 21 to 63), and 46% identify as ethnic racial minority. Students come from 73 different colleges and universities, 25 states, and 6 countries (U.S., Belize, Egypt, Germany, Peru, and Tanzania). Over 25 religious affiliations are represented in the community.

It took me a while to find under “ObamaWhitehouse.Archives.gov” as “Whitehouse.gov” is now under (re)construction with a new US President, however, with the 2009 Obama Executive Order putting his flavor on the Bush Executive Order of 2001-based (Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives (vs. “Neighborhood Partnerships”), but Melissa Rodgers was on the newly created (by Executive Order) Advisory Council to the same.  From that page:

Obama Announces White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
____________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release

February 5, 2009

. . . The White House Office for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will be a resource for nonprofits and community organizations, both secular and faith based, looking for ways to make a bigger impact in their communities, learn their obligations under the law, cut through red tape, and make the most of what the federal government has to offer. … [para. is  from further down on the announcement].

 The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will focus on four key priorities, to be carried out by working closely with the President’s Cabinet Secretaries and each of the eleven agency offices for faith-based and neighborhood partnerships:

  • The Office’s top priority will be making community groups an integral part of our economic recovery and poverty a burden fewer have to bear when recovery is complete.
  • It will be one voice among several in the administration that will look at how we support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion.
  • The Office will strive to support fathers who stand by their families, which involves working to get young men off the streets and into well-paying jobs, and encouraging responsible fatherhood.
  • Finally, beyond American shores this Office will work with the National Security Council to foster interfaith dialogue with leaders and scholars around the world.

Anyone familiar with the four objectives of (1996-established) TANF will see two or three of them referenced (reducing out-of-wedlock births + teen childbearing + “responsible fatherhood” by anyone within earshot, by 2009 (after 13 years of this programming) is well understood to be marriage and fatherhood promotion, i.e., those $150M/year HHS grants (at a minimum) pushing the theme.  It is implied in this statement that “encouraging responsible fatherhood” applies mostly to unemployed young men who need to be gotten “off the streets,” however those of us who’ve read enough and seen enough, understand it also involves family divorce, custody, child support (reduction of arrears in exchange for increased noncustodial parenting time), free legal help for fathers (not mothers) in the family courts, and rhetoric which typically eliminates the word “mother” in any positive sense throughout the social services delivery system, as I do document in one of the offshoot posts (again) from Child Welfare Information Gateway.

As the priorities of this Office are carried out, it will be done in a way that upholds the Constitution – by ensuring that both existing programs and new proposals are consistent with American laws and values. The separation of church and state is a principle President Obama supports firmly – not only because it protects our democracy, but also because it protects the plurality of America’s religious and civic life. The Executive Order President Obama will sign today strengthens this by adding a new mechanism for the Executive Director of the Office to work through the White House Counsel to seek the advice of the Attorney General on difficult legal and constitutional issues.

The Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships will include a new President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, composed of religious and secular leaders and scholars from different backgrounds. There will be 25 members of the Council, appointed to 1-year terms.

Here are the first 25.  Public/Private Ventures, I’ve blogged (or, it may still be in draft, but the name continues to come up researching the grants streams) their involvement with helping promote “responsible fatherhood” through the “evaluation” component.

Judith N. Vredenburgh, President and Chief Executive Officer, Big Brothers / Big Sisters of America
Philadelphia, PA
Rabbi David N. Saperstein, Director & Counsel, Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and noted church/state expert
Washington, DC
Dr. Frank S. Page, President emeritus, Southern Baptist Convention
Taylors, SC
Father Larry J. Snyder, President, Catholic Charities USA
Alexandria, VA
Rev. Otis Moss, Jr., Pastor emeritus, Olivet Institutional Baptist Church
Cleveland, OH
Eboo S. Patel, Founder & Executive Director, Interfaith Youth Corps
Chicago, IL
Fred Davie, President, Public / Private Ventures, a secular non-profit intermediary
New York, NY
Dr. William J. Shaw, President, National Baptist Convention, USA
Philadelphia, PA
Melissa Rogers, Director, Wake Forest School of Divinity Center for Religion and Public Affairs and expert on church/state issues
Winston-Salem, NC
Pastor Joel C. Hunter, Senior Pastor, Northland, a Church Distributed
Lakeland, FL ####
Dr. Arturo Chavez, Ph.D., President & CEO, Mexican American Cultural Center
San Antonio, TX
Rev. Jim Wallis, President & Executive Director, Sojourners
Washington, DC
Bishop Vashti M. McKenzie, Presiding Bishop, 13th Episcopal District, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Knoxville, TN
Diane Baillargeon, President & CEO, Seedco, a secular national operating intermediary
New York, NY
Richard Stearns, President, World Vision
Bellevue, WA
Here’s the home page of Northland, followed by “who we are” :

Wilfred Cantwell Smith on the construct of religion: (and, I tend to agree so far with what’s said):

The Meaning and End of Religion[edit]

In his best known and most controversial work, Smith contends that the concept of religion, rather than being a universally valid category as is generally supposed, is a peculiarly European construct of surprisingly recent origin. The anthropologist and writer on religion and post-colonial studiesTalal Asad has said The Meaning and End of Religion is a modern classic and a masterpiece.[4]

Smith sets out chapter by chapter to demonstrate that none of the supposed founders of the world’s major religions had any such intention. The one exception on the face of it, he concedes, is Islam.  [[“But”?? seems to be a missing word here]]** In a chapter titled The special case of Islam, Smith argues that Muhammad would have been, above all others perhaps, profoundly alarmed at any suggestion that he was starting a new religion. Smith points out that the Arabic language does not even have a word for religion, strictly speaking: he details how the word din, customarily translated as such, differs in significant important respects from the European concept.

**If founders of world’s religions didn’t want to found religions “Except on the fac

Smith suggests that practitioners of any given faith do not historically come to regard what they do as religion until they have developed a degree of cultural self-regard, causing them to see their collective spiritual practices and beliefs as in some way significantly different from the other. Religion in the contemporary sense of the word is for Smith the product of both identity politics and apologetics:

 


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Written by Let's Get Honest|She Looks It Up

March 17, 2017 at 8:10 pm

One Response

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  1. daveyone1

    March 18, 2017 at 9:44 am


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