Socialism?

The Rich Are Winning the US Class War:

Facts Show Rich Getting Richer, Everyone Else Poorer

by Bill Quigley

The rich and their paid false prophets are doing a bang up job deceiving the poor and
middle class. They have convinced many that an evil socialism is alive in the land and it
is taking their fair share. But the deception cannot last – facts say otherwise.

Yes, there is a class war – the war of the rich on the poor and the middle class – and the
rich are winning. That war has been going on for years. Look at the facts – facts the rich
and their false paid prophets do not want people to know.

Let Glen Beck go on about socialists descending on Washington. Allow Rush Limbaugh
to rail about “class warfare for a leftist agenda that will destroy our society.” They are
well compensated false prophets for the rich.
http://mediamatters.org/research/201010180046
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18890.htm

The truth is that for the several decades the rich in the US have been getting richer and
the poor and middle class have been getting poorer. Look at the facts then make up your
own mind.

Poor Getting Poorer: Facts

The official US poverty numbers show we now have the highest number of poor people
in 51 years. The official US poverty rate is 14.3 percent or 43.6 million people in
poverty. One in five children in the US is poor; one in ten senior citizens is poor. Source:
US Census Bureau.

One of every six workers, 26.8 million people, is unemployed or underemployed. This
“real” unemployment rate is over 17%.
There are 14.8 million people designated as “officially” unemployed by the government,
a rate of 9.6 percent. Unemployment is worse for African American workers of whom
16.1 percent are unemployed. Another 9.5 million people who are working only part-
time while they are seeking full-time work but have had their hours cut back or are so
far only able to find work part-time are not counted in the official unemployment
numbers. Also, an additional 2.5 million are reported unemployed but not counted
because they are classified as discouraged workers in part because they have been out of
work for more than 12 months. Source: US Department of Labor Bureau of Labor
Statistics October 2010 report.

The median household income for whites in the US is $51,861; for Asians it is $65,469;
for African Americans it is $32,584; for Latinos it is $38,039. Source: US Census
Bureau.

Fifty million people in the US lack health insurance. Source: US Census Bureau.

Women in the US have a greater lifetime risk of dying from pregnancy-related

conditions than women in 40 other countries.
African American US women are nearly 4 times more likely to die of pregnancy-related
complications than white women.
Source: Amnesty International Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA.

About 3.5 million people, about one-third of which are children, are homeless at some
point in the year in the US. Source:
National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

Outside Atlanta, 33,000 people showed up to seek applications for low cost subsidized
housing in August 2010. When Detroit offered emergency utility and housing assistance
to help people facing evictions, more than 50,000 people showed up for the 3,000
vouchers. Source: News reports.
There are 49 million people in the US who live in households which eat only because
they receive food stamps, visit food pantries or soup kitchens for help. Sixteen million
are so poor they have skipped meals or foregone food at some point in the last year. This
is the highest level since statistics have been kept. Source: US Department of
Agriculture, Economic
Research Service.

Middle Class Going Backward: Facts

One or two generations ago it was possible for a middle class family to live on one
income. Now it takes two incomes to try to enjoy the same quality of life. Wages have
not kept up with inflation; adjusted for inflation they have lost ground over the past ten
years. The cost of housing, education and health care have all increased at a much higher
rate than wages and salaries. In 1967, the middle 60 percent of households received over
52% of all income. In 1998, it was down to 47%. The
share going to the poor has also fallen, with the top 20% seeing their share rise. Mark
Trumball, “Obama’s challenge: reversing a decade of middle-class decline,” Christian
Science Monitor, January 25, 2010.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0125/Obama-s-challenge-reversing-a-decade-of-
middle-class-decline

A record 2.8 million homes received a foreclosure notice in 2009, higher than both 2008
and 2007. In 2010, the rate is expected to be rise to 3 million homes. Sources: Reuters
and RealtyTrac.

Eleven million homeowners (about one in four homeowners) in the US are “under
water” or owe more on their mortgages than their house is worth. Source: “Home
truths,” The Economist, October 23, 2010.

For the first time since the 1940s, the real incomes of middle-class families are lower at
the end of the business cycle of the 2000s than they were at the beginning. Despite the
fact that the American workforce is working harder and smarter than ever, they are
sharing less and less in the benefits they are creating. This is true for white families but
even truer for African American families whose gains in the 1990s have mostly been
eliminated since then. Source: Jared Bernstein and
Heidi Shierholz, State of Working America.
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/swa08_00_execsum.pdf

Rich Getting Richer: Facts

The wealth of the richest 400 people in the US grew by 8% in the last year to $1.37
trillion. Source: Forbes 400: The super-rich get richer, September 22, 2010, Money.com

The top Hedge Fund Manager of 2009, David Tepper, “earned” $4 billion last year. The
rest of the top ten earned: $3.3 billion, $2.5 billion, $2.3 billion, $1.4 billion, $1.3 billion
(tie for 6th and 7th place), $900 million (tie for 8th and 9th place), and in last place out
of the top ten, $825 million. Source: Business Insider. “Meet the top 10 earning hedge
fund managers of 2009.” http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-the-top-10-earning-
hedge-fund-managers-of-2009-2010-4

Income disparity in the US is now as bad as it was right before the Great Depression at
the end of the 1920s. From 1979 to 2006, the richest 1% more than doubled their share
of the total US income, from 10% to 23%. The richest 1% have an average annual
income of more than $1.3 million. For the last 25 years, over 90% of the total growth in
income in the US went to the top 10% earners – leaving 9% of all income to be shared
by the bottom 90%. Source: Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz,
State of Working America. http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/2008/01/19.pdf

In 1973, the average US CEO was paid $27 for every dollar paid to a typical worker; by
2007 that ratio had grown to $275 to $1. Source: Jared Bernstein and Heidi Shierholz,
State of Working America.
http://www.stateofworkingamerica.org/tabfig/2008/03/SWA08_Wages_Figure.3AE.pdf

Since 1992, the average tax rate on the richest 400 taxpayers in the US dropped from
26.8% to 16.62%. Source: US Internal
Revenue Service. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf

The US has the greatest inequality between rich and poor among all Western
industrialized nations and it has been getting worse for 40 years. The World Factbook,
published by the CIA, includes an international ranking of the inequality among families
inside of each country, called the Gini Index. The US ranking of 45 in 2007 is the same
as Argentina, Cameroon, and Cote d’Ivorie. The highest inequality can be found in
countries like Namibia, South Africa, Haiti and Guatemala. The US ranking of 45
compares poorly to Japan (38), India (36), New Zealand, UK (34), Greece (33), Spain
(32), Canada (32), France
(32), South Korea (31), Netherlands (30), Ireland (30), Australia (30), Germany (27),
Norway (25), and Sweden (23). Source:
CIA The World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/fields/2172.html

Rich people live an average of about five years longer than poor people in the US.
Naturally, gross inequality has consequences in terms of health, exposure to unhealthy
working conditions, nutrition and lifestyle. In 1980, the most well off in the US had a
life expectancy of 2.8 years over the least well-off. As the inequality gap widens, so does
the life expectancy gap. In 1990, the gap was a little less than 4 years. In 2000, the least
well-off could expect to live to age of 74.7 while the most well off had a life expectancy
of 79.2 years. Source: Elise Gould, “Growing disparities in life
expectancy,” Economic Policy Institute.
http://www.epi.org/economic_snapshots/entry/webfeatures_snapshots_20080716/

Conclusion

These are extremely troubling facts for anyone concerned about economic fairness,
equality of opportunity, and justice.

Thomas Jefferson once observed that the systematic restructuring of society to benefit
the rich over the poor and middle class is a natural appetite of the rich. “Experience
declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no
milder term to…the general prey of the rich on the poor.” But Jefferson also knew that
justice can only be delayed so long when he said, “I tremble for my country when I
reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

The rich talk about the rise of socialism to divert attention from the fact that they are
devouring the basics of the poor and everyone else. Many of those crying socialism the
loudest are doing it to enrich or empower themselves. They are right about one thing –
there is a class war going on in the US. The rich are winning their class war, and it is
time for everyone else to fight back for economic justice.
Bill is Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and professor of law at
Loyola University New Orleans. You
can reach Bill at quigley77@gmail.com

The Insane Prelude to the Corporate Takeover of the Planet

By Siv O'Neall, Axis of Logic

Axis of Logic exclusive
Sunday, Oct 31, 2010

“The interests behind the Bush Administration, such as the Council on Foreign
Relations, The Trilateral Commission –
founded by Brzezinski for David Rockefeller – and the Bilderberger Group, have
prepared for and are now moving to implement
open world dictatorship within the next five years. They are not fighting against
terrorists. They are fighting against
citizens.”

– Dr. Johannes B. Koeppl, PhD(1)

Preparing for World Dominance

The planning for the days of the Unites States asserting itself comfortably as the lone
global power, influencing trade, resources, and living conditions all over the world, is
anything but recent history. Still, you often read words implying that the U.S. began its
serious role as the Predator of other nations’ resources, altering their way of life and
taking over the running of their economies, after the end of the old colonialist era. The
arrogant U.S. takeover of nations became institutionalized with the PNAC(2)
conspiracy, which made their openly imperial ambitions known to the whole world.

The underground mafia that began its devilish scheming during the reign of the
Hollywood actor president with the friendly people’s smile, was doing its secret
planning for the century to come. The man with the smile was the label man who was
covering up the cold calculations of the think tank that was going to twist the world into
obedience, with money or with bombs. What the U.S. couldn’t buy up or steer into their
own galaxy, they figured they could always get at with military might.

The Project for A New American Century was certainly a clear signal to the world that
‘Here we come – throw away your hand plows. We are bringing you the real tools to dig
up the goods and to teach you how to live the good life.’ That was the open message.
What it actually stood for was just plain greed and determination to own the world.
Nothing less.

After this presumptuous beginning of taking over the world had gotten under way – in
modern times taking a good head start during the Reagan era – living conditions in the
countries concerned just went down and down. Human rights as well as justice and
equality in general deteriorated badly.

US Imperial Planning to ‘Control’ the ‘Grand Area’

However, conscientious planning by the U.S. imperialists began long before the era we
usually call the neoliberal era. While the focus is now on trade and multi-national
corporatism, it was, in the previous decades, rather on geopolitical domination.

In a book entitled ‘Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United
States Foreign Policy’ (by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter – published in 1977),
the authors explain how extensive studies were conducted by the Council on Foreign
Relations and the State Department during the period of 1939 - 1945.

An excerpt from a "Marxist" analysis of the power and influence of the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR):
“Over fifty years ago, in the wake of the First World War, a group of wealthy and
influential Americans decided to form an organization. The Council on Foreign
Relations, as it was subsequently named, was designed to equip the United States of
America for an imperial role on the world scene. Great Britain had dominated world
politics during the nineteenth century, not only through its colonial empire, but also
through an even wider informal sphere of influence. In a similar fashion, so felt these
American leaders, the United States would play a dominant role in the years following
the war.”

However, by 1919, it was found that the United States was not yet adequately prepared
for world leadership. The project was put on ice, but it re-emerged during World War II
– as documented in the report entitled: ‘The Council on Foreign Relations and the US
State Department: Studies of American Interests in the War and Peace (1939-1945)’(3)

Now was the time when the United States was clearly going to emerge as the world-
dominant power. The conclusions drawn by the Council on Foreign Relations planners
are hair-raisingly rational and have one goal only in its field of vision – imperial
domination at whatever the price might be. No sentimental by-thoughts of compassion,
no presence of any admission of the suffering that will inevitably be caused by U.S.
intervention in the ‘Grand Area’.

The most amazing thing has been the lack of attention paid to these records which were
all the time public, just not paid attention to.

Says Horhey, commentator, who has put together a selection of quotes from the book
‘Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign
Policy’ at Political Forum.com:

“US planners were virtually unanimous in the view that the nation should claim a
dominant position in the post World War II world. The planners and analysts concluded
that in the postwar world the United States would seek “to hold unquestioned power.””

Among Horhey’s quotes from ‘Imperial Brain Trust’ – Shoup and Minter(4):
 “The foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold
unquestioned power is the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete re-armament.”

“the United States must accept world responsibility. The measure of our victory will be
the measure of our domination after victory.”

Council President Norman Davis, asserted in May 1942 that it was probable that:

“the British Empire as it existed in the past will never reappear and that the United
States may have to take it's place.”

General George V. Strong expressed the opinion that:

“the United States must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war
which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to Pax-Americana.”

In this context, let’s not forget that Pax Americana is and has always been a benevolent-
sounding slogan, meaning exactly the opposite, namely eternal war and huge profits for
the U.S. economy – that is a war that profits U.S. and multi-national Big Corporations
and turns its back on any thought of moral rights and the effects of this never-ending war
on people at home and in the invaded countries. While always aiming at the enrichment
of the Big Corporations and making the rich richer, Washington is always careful to try
to convince the U.S citizens – in the first place, and then the rest of the world – of the
boundless magnanimity and concern for its people’s well-being that will allow the
government to continue its destructive policies without interference from the U.S.
citizens.

USians are more or less generally convinced that their government does what is good
for them and good for the people who are being invaded and whose countries are being
destroyed, because leaving the running of the resources and the economy in general to
the United States is for the good of the people. It is, in fact, for the benefit of all the
people in the world that U.S. culture, democracy and freedom should be spread all over
the planet. U.S. generosity is boundless and without the U.S. government shoring up the
rest of the world, there would be a general collapse of peaceful living, sound business
and essential law and order.

To convince its own people and much of the rest of the world of the inherent goodness
of the United States government, a carefully planned system of misinformation has been
put in place, involving the corporate takeover of the mass media and the government-run
‘ministry of propaganda’ (far more efficient than anything Goebbels could ever have
dreamed of) that works non-stop on convincing people that The United States is
inevitably the one superior nation with the best intentions and that it should, for the
benefit of the rest of the world, run the business of the planet. World dominance is the
natural right and the moral duty of the colossus in the West.

Back to ‘Imperial Brain Trust’ – Shoup and Minter, returning to the era of World War II.
Memorandum E-B19 concluded with a statement on the essentials of United States
foreign policy, summarizing:

“the component parts of an integrated policy to achieve military and economic

supremacy for the United States in the non German world. (Remember this was taking
place during World War II)

Horhey’s comment:

“The conception that they developed is what they called "Grand Area" planning. The
Grand Area was a region that was to be subordinated to the needs of the American
economy.”

As one planner put it, it was to be the region that is:

“strategically necessary for world control.”

Here we must draw a parallel with the imperial ambitions that have been highly visible
in today’s contest for world domination. The ‘Imperial Brain Trust’ (Shroup and Minter)
says “strategically necessary for world control”, stating quite clearly that the U.S. has
the power and the implicit right to take control of whatever region it considers
strategically important. Such as the Middle East/Central Asia region where it is at this
time entangled in unwinnable wars. For Washington it’s a given that the reins must be in
their hands. The conscientious and long-time effort for the Unites Sates is to convince
the rest of the world that this is an undeniable fact. The center of gravity is the Big
Corporations in the West, most of them run by U.S. companies, essentially in a Siamese
twin relationship to the U.S. government and all its various agencies (EPA, FDA, anti-
trust laws, etc.)

Developing the concept of ‘The Grand Area’

A major element was:

“the coordination and the cooperation of the United States with other countries to secure
the limitation of any exercise of sovereignty by foreign nations that constitutes a threat
to the minimum world area essential for the security and economic prosperity of the
United States and the Western Hemisphere.”

Here we get into the reasoning behind the Monroe Doctrine (introduced on December 2,
1823 by US President, James Monroe), where Washington high-mindedly declares that
any European interference with countries in the Americas would be considered as
Aggression against the United States, requiring US intervention.(5)

Horhey’s clarifying comment:

“Of course, when we talk about "economic prosperity", we don't necessarily mean the
people of the United States; we mean whoever dominates and controls, owns and
manages the American economy.”

Yes, let’s by all means make it clear that we are not talking about economic prosperity
for the people of the U.S. or of the rest of the world. This is the most essential point that
we must all understand correctly. It’s not the people who are at the receiving end of the
cornucopia of goodies that are siphoned into the United States and the Corporations via
world domination and eternal war.

The ‘Grand Area’ was considered a core region, which could always be extended to
include more countries. As one of the planners said in May 1941:

“It would be the aim of American policy to spread the organization of the Grand Area.”

Says Horhey –

“the Grand Area was also to include Southeast Asia, Western and Southern Europe and
the oil-producing regions of the Middle East; in fact, it was to include everything, if that
were possible. Detailed plans were laid for particular regions of the Grand Area and also
for international institutions that were to organize and police it, essentially in the
interests of this subordination to U.S. domestic needs.”

So here we are. The enormous importance of the Middle East/Central Asia region was
already crystal clear, as well as the economic importance of monopolizing the riches of
South-East Asia for the valuable raw materials produced in The Philippine Islands, the
Dutch East Indies, and British Malaysia. The creation of these international financial
institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank(6) (institutions
set up at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944) also followed as part of the parcel
to assure the proper functioning of the world economy. These worldwide financial
institutions were necessary for the purpose of:

“stabilizing currencies and facilitating programs of capital investment for constructive

undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions.”

How quaint. ‘Constructive undertakings in backward and underdeveloped regions’. And

thus, neo-colonialism was born. The facilitators of this grand project were to be the IMF
and the World Bank. These men with demonstrably no sense of the human being as
someone with needs and demands for justice and equality, but exclusively as a cog in the
production chain, have developed into a most powerful group of conscientious
plundering machines the world has ever seen.
 In ‘The Council on Foreign Relations and the US State Department: Studies of
American Interests in the War and Peace (1939-1945)’ it was made explicitly clear that
the dominance over those strategic areas, now called the Grand Area, must at all costs be
secured to keep other powers at bay. The planners warned that:

“the interests of America would be gravely prejudiced should Southeast Asia be

controlled by an unfriendly or monopolistic nation, because of the need for access to
rubber, tin and other resources.”

So there is the true reason for the never-ending war in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia,
unambiguously stated already during World War II, as well as, long before that, the
taking over of The Philippines from Spain during the Spanish-American war in 1898.
This war was of course also intended to be the opening of the gates to Latin America,
which from then on would be seen by Washington as ‘America’s backyard’.

However, today more than ever, the United States is centering in on keeping Russia and
China from obtaining too big a piece of international dominance. It is watching with a
great sense of unease the spreading influence of those countries in the critically
important Central Asia region, as well as on other continents, such as Africa and Latin
America.

Propaganda is born

However – back to the World War II era – for the unending wars that were already seen
as essential for the domination of the ‘Grand Area’ (which in the following decades grew
to include more and more territories not included in the first version of the project), there
was one big imperative: The American people had to be convinced of the necessity for
these wars and the ability of the U.S. military to win them.

Thus the propaganda industry was born – actually a concept heralded and developed as
a quasi-scientific method by Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, a resident of
the United States, who coined the term ‘the engineering of consent’ which he saw as ‘the
very essence of the democratic process’. The term ‘propaganda’ was first used in 1922.
Edward Bernays’ carefully developed theories were of great use to the warmongers
during and following World War II.(7)
In ‘Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign
Policy’ Shoup and Minter point to the importance of spreading the message of the
benign influence of the United States to all corners of the planet. Not only Anglo-
American imperialism must be propagandized, but also …

“The interests of the other peoples should be stressed, not only those of Europe, but also
of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This would have a better propaganda effect.”

Zbignew Brzezinski, one of the founders, along with David Rockefeller, of the trilateral
commission (the executive arm of the Council on Foreign Relations) wrote the book
'The Grand Chessboard’ to lay out the main lines for controlling the ‘Grand Area’. No
attempt at obfuscation here. The objectives are clearly laid out. 'The Grand Chessboard’
equals ‘How to Conquer the World – and barely being noticed’.

Horhey’s concluding comments:

“The trilateral commission, an executive arm of the CFR controls this administration.
Obama, as soon as he took office appointed 11 members, and it was one of the top
censored news stories of the year.”

“The Trilateralist Commission is international ...[and]... is intended to be the vehicle for

multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control
of the political government of the United States. The Trilateralist Commission represents
a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power -
political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical.”
Conclusion

What we can hope for today is that exactly the thing Washington fears the most is
actually going to come true. Other powers, far from negligible on the international
scene, such as China and Russia, but also Brazil – particularly considering its recent
alliance with Turkey, and also Iran – have, from the U.S. point of view, fearful means of
counteracting U.S. global dominance and thus seriously cutting short its monstrous
ambitions to own and control the planet.

From a crass military/economic point of view these new power houses are
extraordinarily important geopolitically.

However, we must leave behind us the quasi-religious belief that the one thing that
matters is controlling the planet (and why not outer space, while we are at it?). The
enormous fight we are up against in the world today is the psychopathic and deep-rooted
misconception that PROFIT and CONTROL are the supreme goals of all powerful
nations. This twisted and inhuman belief has to go. The one and only important issue in
the world is the fate of human beings and of course the environment. Equality and
justice for all is the one big goal.

In today’s world, beside the big powers that are competing with the United States for
global dominance, first and foremost there is Latin America, a huge continent where
hope is being reborn, hope that we will one day soon live in a world where the people
are going to count as a reality factor in political planning, a world where they will at last
count as human beings with lives that matter, where living is what life is all about, not
profit.
There is no way the Unites States will once again be able to consider this enormous
continent as their own backyard, where they could play their game unopposed by the
needs and desires of simple human beings. Where human dignity and pride were to them
unknown qualities that will, in the end, never be quashed.

In all of Latin America, definitely including Central America, Washington thought it

could pose and depose dictators and enemies of the people at their own will. Colombia
and some other temporary victories set aside, Washington will never again play on those
strings. Colombia is a pawn that will fade away the day the power of the United States
begins to crumble. And that day is here now.

The United States is already far from being the lone superpower, the monolith, the role
that it has forever had such colossal ambitions to play. The Über-nation that no other
nation could even begin to assail or ever doubt its unbeatable power. The ‘superpower’
is in its death throes, even though on its surface it still keeps the looks of a giant.
Underneath the veneer, the country is collapsing. We have seen the signs again and
again. Its politics are in a tumultuous meltdown. The politicians who were crying out
loudly for law and order have now lost all control. There is only confusion and
lawlessness in the big country in the West.

Dona nobis pacem. Give us peace and let us live like human beings. Let the monstrous
robots see that it is time for them to be put in their graves, as the criminal offenders that
they have been, all along. Life is not a chess game. Life is living. We will take our lives
back.

My deep thanks to Commentator Horhey at Political Forum for collecting and

publishing essential quotations from ‘Imperial Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign
Relations and United States Foreign Policy’ (by Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter
–
1977).

1 Former German defense ministry official and advisor to former NATO secretary
general Manfred Werner.

2 The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American think tank
based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from early 1997 to 2006. It was co-founded as a
non-profit educational organization by neoconservatives William Kristol and Robert
Kagan.

3 Report by the CFR – For information on ‘The Council on Foreign Relations and the
US State Department’ – see here.

4 When nothing else is indicated, the quotes are from Horhey’s comments on ‘Imperial
Brain Trust: The Council on Foreign Relations and United States Foreign Policy’ by
Shroup and Minter

5 The US President, James Monroe, first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual
State of the Union Address to Congress. It became a defining moment in the foreign
policy of the United States and one of its longest-standing tenets, and would be invoked
by many U.S. statesmen and several U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt,
Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, and others. See Monroe Doctrine.

6 Originally named ‘the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’ (the
IBRD)

7 “The father of public relations” (1891-1995) An American pioneer in the Field of

public relations and propaganda. Bernays (together with Walter Lippman) was on the
US committee on Public information during Word War I.
Siv O'Neall

Siv O'Neall is an Axis of Logic columnist, based in France. Her insightful essays are
republished and read worldwide. She
can be reached at siv@axisoflogic.com.

© Copyright 2010 by AxisofLogic.com

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of
the article in its entirety,
respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original
source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!

Addition

It has become a modern orthodoxy that Europe's 20th century was the bloodiest in
history and that atrocities must be recorded and remembered by society as a whole. But
while a Black Book of Communism has been compiled and everybody is aware of the
horrors of nazism, popular historians have been surprisingly uninterested in the dark side
of the British Empire. There are exceptions, such as Mike Davis's powerful Late
Victorian Holocausts, but much else still lies buried in the academic literature.

This review is for: Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the
Third World By pnotley@hotmail.com (Edmonton, Alberta Canada)

Mike Davis' new book is a work of singular importance, offering a valuable new
perspective on a disaster of horrifying magnitude. In the late 1870s and the late 1890s
somewhere between 30 to 60 million people died in famine in India, China and Brazil.
This does not count the many more who died from the Philippines to Angola, from
Morocco to Indonesia. To the extent that people remember these famines it has been
assumed that they were the result of an unfavorable climate. To the extent that larger
social factors were involved, they were a classic Malthusian crisis, too many people on
too little land, and they represented the failure of the Third World to adapt the industrial
revolution.

Davis shows very clearly that the third world was ravaged by the El Nino phenomenon.
But that is the only the beginning. They were also ravaged by the new regimes of
imperialism and the world market. Had the responsible authorities distributed what food
existed, most of the victims would have survived. Davis is well aware of Nobel laureate
A. Sen's argument that they key problem with famine is not scarcity but maldistribution.
He also point out that whether under the American occupation of the Philippines or the
ravages of Mao's Great Leap Forward, the real problem was the lack of democracy and
lack of influence of the very poor.

Davis starts off with a fascinating and horrific description of the famines, filled with
damning facts. For example Lord Lytton and his bureaucrats in 1876 India were
obssessed with the idea that relief would just encourage Indian shirking. Readers will
not soon forget that the calorie/work regimen that Lytton did impose was worse than that
of Buchenwald. Nor will they forget the judgment of the Famine inquiries in the 1880s
whom, Davis notes, concluded that with millions of famine dead the main flaw was that
too much money was spent on relief. Davis goes into how the famines sparked
millenarian movements and political resistance from the Boxer rebellion to the
extermination of the Catholic movement at Canudos discussed, inaccurately, in Mario
Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World. He also brings a discussion of how
scientists found the El Nino phenomenon, and gives a thorough technical account of
how it works. He then discusses how the famines solidified European hegemony over
the Third World leading to their stagnation and decline.

Based on such scholars as Bairroch, Parthsarathi, Gura and Pomeranz, Davis brings
forth many facts that shore up his argument. 1) In 1800 India's share of the world
manufactured product was four times that of Britain, and China's share was even higher.
By 1900 India was fully under British control and the ration was 8-1 in England's favor.
2) In 1789 the living standards of China and Western Europe were roughly comparable
and it appeared that China was making even better progress with its ecological
problems. Naturally, a century later Europeans and Americans were much better off. 3)
Despite all the many claims made on behalf of British rule in India, Indian per capita
income stayed the same from 1759 to 1947. And contrary to the Malthusian argument,
its population didn't grow very much. 4) Indian and Chinese rulers actually had before
1800 a good record of mitigating famines, and one British statistician suggested that
whereas for the previous two millennia there was one major famine a century, under
British rule there was one every four years.

How had things gone so wrong such that the El Nino famines could have such a
devastating effect? Here Davis provides a useful and valuable account. Whereas
previously anti-imperialists had crudely claimed that Britain had got where it was by
draining the wealth of the Third World, Davis' account is much more nuanced. The
problem was not so much the absolute share. Instead, by having a captive markets in
Asia, Britain in the late 19th century was able to maintain its balance of payments and
its complex system of free trade as surpluses in Asia balanced its increasing trade
deficits with Germany and the United States. Davis shows not only how India had to
bear the military costs of empire, but also how British irrigation schemes were often
poorly funded, inappropriate for local conditions and had pernicious ecological effects.
China, by contrast did face a severe ecological crisis which, as Davis points out, it could
not escape as the Europeans did by colonizing the Western hemisphere. Moreover the
West forced China to keep up the opium trade and forced it into inequitable trading
arrangements. This encouraged the Chinese government to concentrate on protecting the
ports and its sovereignty while underfunding the collapsing irrigation system. Ecological
and political crisis fed off each other, leading to revolution and continued ecological
crisis to the present day.

The result is a work which provides a valuable alternative to David Landes, The Wealth
and Poverty of Nations. There are some minor flaws (for instance, Czar Alexander III,
unlike his father and son, was not assassinated). But it also helps introduce to a larger
audience the valuable work of Indian historians that has been too long confined to
specialists. It also provides a valuable complement to such works as Sheldon Watts'
Epidemics and History and Prasannan Parthasarathi's The Making of a Colonial
Economy. In the end this is a very different, but very appropriate sequel to the Ecology
of Fear.

http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/796.php
http://www.revisionisthistory.org/forgottenslaves.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_%28Ireland%29
http://www.paklinks.com/gs/world-affairs/57678-british-genocide-in-india.html
http://www.warofcivilisations.blogspot.com/
In Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis charts the unprecedented human suffering
caused by a series of extreme climactic conditions in the final quarter of the 19th
century. Drought and monsoons afflicted much of China, southern Africa, Brazil, Egypt
and India. The death tolls were staggering: around 12m Chinese and over 6m Indians in
1876-1878 alone. The chief culprit, according to Davis, was not the weather, but
European empires, with Japan and the US. Their imposition of free-market economics
on the colonial world was tantamount to a "cultural genocide".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/jan/20/historybooks.famine

Concentration camps during Boer Wars:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War
No Guernica no Dresden. Iraq bombed with chemical weapons.
http://www.againstbombing.org/chemical.htm
http://thetruthnews.info/wordpress/?tag=chemical-and-biological-weapons
http://www.danzigfreestate.org/
http://www.rense.com/general46/germ.htm
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and
%20History/us_war_crimes/Eisenhowers_death_camps.htm
www.hiddenfromhistory.com
http://blackstarjournal.blogspot.com/2006/10/british-genocide-in-kenya.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_v._United_States