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“Once the West set out to conquer the world. Those days have gone for ever”
An article by Andreas Whittam Smith, first published in The Independent, Tuesday 10 September 2013
Andreas Whittam Smith was a financial journalist until 1985 when he led the team that founded The Independent. The paper’s first editor (1986-1994), he has subsequently been the president of the British Board of Film Classification (1998-2002) and chairman of the Financial Ombudsman Service (1998-2003).
I began to read this aricle with great interest. The more I read it, the more I thought that I should bring it to the attention of many more readers, especially on the day like this: 11 September 2013, the 40th Anniversary of the Chilean 9/11*.
I very much encourage you to read it. An excellent historical account and analysis of imperialism, its consequences and how the West’s farcical reaction to the Syria crisis, goes a long way to sound the defeat of immoral and inhumane imperialism. I have copied the original article below:
“Now, 600 years after the first European colony of the modern era was established by Portugal on the North African coast, an extraordinary question arises. Does the reluctance of Western electorates to support a policy of punishing Syria for alleged use of chemical weapons mark the end of what began all that time ago and has continued ever since? For the notion of the US Navy firing cruise missiles into a Middle-East nation from vessels in the Mediterranean to “teach it a lesson” is pure Western imperialism. And we don’t seem to want to do it any longer.
The story in outline is well known. Portugal and then Spain started the process. Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese explorer, reached India in 1498. And as the Portuguese pushed further east, seeking valuable spices, they established fortified trading posts along the coasts of their habitual routes. Spain focused on the Americas and the search for gold and silver, which it found in great quantity. Unlike Portugal, Spain sent out large numbers of settlers, soldiers and administrators. Notoriously, the Europeans also brought infectious diseases against which the indigenous peoples had no natural protection.
Already, at this early period, three of the enduring features of colonial expansion were present: trade, the extraction of wealth, and a condescending disregard for the local populations. And there was a fourth feature, religion. The Portuguese had vainly searched for the Christian kingdom of Prester John that was supposed to exist somewhere in the Orient. And alongside Spanish soldiers there travelled Christian missionaries. Work on the first cathedral in the Americas began in 1514. That was the first stage.
In the second stage, England, France and Holland got into the business. During the 16th and 17th centuries, they began to establish overseas trading posts outside the areas dominated by Spain. They explored what is now the US and Canada. They also seized some of the larger islands of the Caribbean such as Barbados and Martinique. Martinique, conquered in 1635, is still a French possession. The emphasis on trade remained.
But the cultivation and export of valuable crops became more important – tobacco, cotton and sugar. Tragically, the labour-intensive nature of the last named led directly to the Atlantic slave trade, with 10 to 12 million Africans transported across the ocean. Religion still played a role, but in a different guise – the desire to escape the Old Continent’s religious restrictions and set up godly communities far away from the authority of Canterbury and Rome.
Then we come to the first round of defeats. In stage three, 1770 to 1830, what had been achieved was overturned. For the European powers were all but expelled from the Americas, leaving only the Canadian provinces in British hands. The American War of Independence was won in 1783 when Britain recognised the United States of America as an independent, sovereign state. In the same 60-year period, the Spanish and the Portuguese were also driven out. Napoleon’s invasion of Spain and Portugal had sundered the ties between the two mother countries and their central and South American colonies. By 1831 they were gone.
What had begun as a spontaneous process in which traders, adventurers and fortune hunters, with priests and pastors alongside, had set sail across the seas to seek their fortunes mutated into imperialism, which is a state supported enterprise. After defeat in the Americas, the attention of European nations turned to Africa and Asia. Indeed, the apogee of empire building was reached between 1870 and the outbreak of the First World War. This is the fourth stage. Competition between the European powers generated the “scramble for Africa”. This was done partly to satisfy commercial aspirations for ready supplies of raw materials such as copper, cotton, rubber, palm oil, cocoa, diamonds, tea and tin. The acquisition of colonies also became a matter of national prestige, with Germany and Italy late entrants into the race.
Religious considerations played a part as always. Some Christian churches launched missionary projects to save the “heathen”. This was the period when notions of racial superiority flourished in Western Europe, even in so-called respectable society. In 1899, for instance, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled The White Man’s Burden: “Take up the White Man’s burden/ Send forth the best ye breed/ Go send your sons to exile/ To serve your captives’ need/ To wait in heavy harness/ On fluttered folk and wild/Your new-caught, sullen peoples/Half devil and half child”.
From 1914 onwards, however, imperialism came under increasing pressure and moved towards fresh defeats in the field. Two world wars within 35 years exhausted Britain and France. Independence movements gathered strength. And the fact that troops from the colonies fought side by side with Britain and France in war – in the cause of freedom! – served to undermine the notion of white supremacy.
To begin with, however, the imperial powers carried on as before. So while the First World War was raging, the French and the British governments arrogantly agreed how to carve up the Middle East should the Ottoman Empire collapse – as in fact it did. A year later (1917), the British Foreign Secretary of the time, Lord Balfour, told the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland that the Government viewed “with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object”. Then after 1918, the new League of Nations gave France control of Syria and Lebanon, while the British were granted the mandates for Iraq and Palestine. The imperial instinct, had proved to be deeply rooted and has only slowly lost its strength.
While Britain wound down its empire without serious incident after the Second World War, the French fought bitter battles in Indochina (1946 -54) and in Algeria (1954-62) to delay the process. They did not succeed. The British declined to mount rearguard actions. The European powers, having been defeated in the Americas 150 years earlier, now they found themselves driven out of Africa and Asia.
Meanwhile the two countries were completely overshadowed by the United States, which, while not an imperial power, acted as if it were in its self-appointed role as leader of the free world. So for many years, the US, the UK and France paid for the expensive navies, armies and air forces that are required if power is to be projected far from home. In other words, they maintained the equipment and trappings of imperial nations.
Except that Nemesis, or the spirit of divine retribution, was waiting to punish them for their arrogance. Afghanistan and Iraq turn out to be the final disasters. The British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, the French defeats in Indochina and Algeria, and finally the ignominious withdrawals by the US and its allies from Afghanistan and Iraq, these have done for colonialism and its more virulent form, imperialism. There can be no going back. No US president, no UK prime minister, no French president is ever again going to ask Congress, Parliament or National Assembly to approve the invasion of a another country, even by airpower alone. After 600 years, that is over. Never again.”
See the original article:
*See also:
Forty Years On: Remembering 9/11, 1973
http://www.gcgi.info/blog/464-forty-years-on-remembering-911-1973
For a good understanding of “White Men” treatment of others, I highly recommend Rudyard Kipling’s “The White Man's Burden”, where he justifies the colonisation of other peoples by the “White Men” because these races are more primitive, they are suffering and need the white men to help their societies profit. Through this description, we can see how diabolical Kipling’s word choice is. Kipling describes the white men as being noble and generous when they are actually just seeking their own profit and/or being racist in their conquering.
“The White Man's Burden”
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden--
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.
Take up the White Man's burden--
Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
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Mr. President, Charity Starts at Home. Rebuild America. Don’t start another war
Dear Mr. President,
As a true friend of the US, its people and its noble tradition of democracy, and as a friend who wishes to see America become, once again, a beacon of hope, I wrote an Open Letter to you under the heading of “A Plea for Wisdom and the Common Good”. The letter was written in February 2010, at the time of your announcement concerning your plans for Afghanistan.
Once again I find myself in the same position as 2010, awaiting your decision about another Muslim and Middle Eastern country, this time Syria.
Mr. President, when you were first elected, I, along millions and millions of people around the world, were full of joy and happiness. We all thought that the world will be a much better, fairer and happier place with you at the White House. I am sure you will agree that sadly this is no longer the case.
I so desperately wish to rekindle the admiration I had for you and which I expressed in my letter of 2010 to you, namely that you are a President who cares deeply about international law, who cares deeply about multilateral action, who cares deeply about the United States being a good global citizen in the international community, and who cares deeply about the common good.
Mr. President, please allow me to recall some passages from my 2010 letter, its words and sentiments as valid today as they were in 2010:
“Dear President Obama,
In your speech to the United Nations General Assembly this Autumn, you eloquently stated one of your core beliefs, that while too often peace remains a distant dream: "We can either accept that outcome as inevitable, and tolerate constant and crippling conflict, or we can recognize that the yearning for peace is universal, and reassert our resolve to end conflicts around the world ... For the most powerful weapon in our arsenal is the hope of human beings - the belief that the future belongs to those who would build and not destroy; the confidence that conflicts can end and a new day can begin.
“We share that belief, and urge you to make it your guiding principle in Afghanistan, Iraq and everywhere else that the US is currently militarily involved. We believe that after eight years or more of war we need a whole new approach to conflict resolution and peace building. And we respectfully and prayerfully suggest to you a different strategy that promotes Wisdom and the Common Good by initiating a surge in expenditures in areas such Education, Social Services, Science, Culture and Knowledge, promoting massive humanitarian assistance and sustainable development.
“This sort of investment is not only needed in the US itself to reverse many years of neglect and decline with subsequent loss of global competitiveness, but it is desperately needed in Iraq, Afghanistan and everywhere else. By doing so, you will make the US again a beacon of hope to many, the US as the peace maker and not the US as the war monger. The world is looking to you, so that one day soon we can all say: Yes We Did, Yes We Did, and made the world a better place with you in the White House.”
This now seems history, but once again history is repeating itself.
Mr. President, entering yet another war against a Muslim nation in the Middle East is bound to create more enemies for America. The surest way to encourage future terrorists is to join other nations' conflicts and kill other nations' peoples. The US is still fighting a traditional war in Afghanistan and "drone wars" in Pakistan and Yemen. The U.S. should avoid adding another conflict to the mix. A war of dropping bombs from thousands of feet above with “No Boots on the Ground”, does not project your country as noble or brave. I fear for America. I fear for the world.
Now Mr. President, I am sure you will agree with me that indeed charity starts at home. Last night I watched a BBC documentry “Requiem for Detroit?”. Mr. President, nobody with an eye on justice, humanity and the common good, can watch this documentary without shedding tears for the plight of so many millions in the US. Shattered lives and dreams of so many Americans in Detroit and indeed many other “Detroits” across America is nothing short of tragic and catastrophic. Nobody with a shred of conscience can remain silent.
Mr. President, Watching this documentary has made it crystal clear to me that after so many wars of destruction, death and inhumanity in the Middle East and North Africa, that have not made the US and the world more secure and at peace, it would be futile to waste again the American tax-payers money on the “limited” aerial bombing of Syria. What can this do that your other bombing missions have not?
Mr. President, at this important historical moment, the children in the US, their parents and grand parents need your help more than those in all other countries where the US is at war currently. As I said in my 2010 letter and still hold to today, if you want to tackle a crisis, why not the unemployment crises in the US and globally? Why not look nearer home and tackle healthcare, education, housing, crumpling infrastructure? Let’s become engines of hope and construction. Let’s buils a world fit for the common good.
Mr. President Syria is a tragedy. But it is not America's tragedy. It’s a tragedy for the Syrian people. Your desire to bomb them from above would not mittigate their paiful suffering. Have the bomings in Iraq and Afghanistan mittigated their suffering and pain? Have your drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere eased their suffering and pain?
As a just man, I am sure you will agree with me that the answer is a profound NO. Thus, why the rush to do the same in Syria? And if you bomb Syria, will this be your last bombing, or do you have further plans? Iran, perhaps? And then what?
Mr. President, the use of chemical weapons in Syria, whoever it was, is a crime against humanity and international law. The perpetrators must be identified and tried at international courts, assigned to deal with these issues. Unilateral, limited military action and aerial bombardment are not the solution.
So, what is to be done? May I humbly offer a suggestion?
I am a member of the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of the World Public Forum Dialogue of Civilisations (WPFDC). On 6 September 2013, at our gathering in Vienna, we issued the following resolution concerning the Syrian crisis, which I would like to share with you:
“At its meeting in Vienna on 6 September, 2013, the members of the International Coordinating Committee of the World Public Forum “Dialogue of Civilizations" adopted the following resolution:
“The entire World is deeply concerned about the recent developments in the Syrian crisis. We – members of the global family of WPF “Dialogue of Civilizations” – condemn very firmly the use of chemical weapons by any party involved in this conflict. Their use is prohibited under international law and international conventions adopted following the horrors of the First World War.
“At the same time we oppose equally firmly any unilateral military intervention in Syria in violation of international law and the UN charter.
“The first and most noble task of the international community is to help end the suffering of the Syrian population through diplomatic efforts and political dialogue. To this end we propose an international peace conference on Syria to be convened at the earliest possible time. Such a conference must involve all regional states and actors as well as the members of the UN Security Council. To avoid any further deterioration and to mitigate human suffering, a total arms embargo should be imposed immediately on all sides in the Syrian conflict.
International Coordinating Committee of the WPF “Dialogue of Civilizations”,
Vienna, 6 September, 2013”
Mr. President, there you have it. I hope and pray that in the interest of your own legacy, the real needs of the citizens of your own country, and the long-term interest of the US globally, you will act with consideration for the common good.
Prof. Kamran Mofid
Founder, Globalisation for the Common Good Initiative (GCGI)
Please see:
A Plea for Wisdom and the Common Good
http://www.gcgi.info/news/88-a-plea-for-wisdom-and-the-common-good
Requiem for Detroit: BBC iplayer-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00rkm3y/Requiem_for_Detroit/
(Available until 1:14AM Wed, 18 Sep 2013)
To see this video outside of the UK:
http://documentaryheaven.com/requiem-for-detroit
Are you interested to learn how to make a documentary? How to tell your story?
Then, see the excellent article by Jean Miller below:
How to Make a Documentary: A Detailed Guide for Visual Creatives and Storytellers
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Fiddling while RBS burned – new book reveals Fred the Shred Goodwin’s fatal obsessions
Fred Goodwin was a corporate ‘psychopath’ who worried about minutiae as his bank lost control, a new book claims
“No-one could have known it at the time, but the cleaner on the steps of Clydesdale Bank’s Glasgow office, sweeping up a cigarette butt one day in the late 90s, was an early warning of impending financial doom.
The cleaner was there because Fred Goodwin’s mother had been passing by. Seeing the cigarette butt, she called her son, then the chief executive of Clydesdale, to tell him about it. The man they called Fred the Shred interrupted a meeting to call a senior executive, ordering him to have the offending litter tidied up immediately.
The story comes from a new book about the former Royal Bank of Scotland boss, which paints a picture of a man obsessed with minutiae – from office hygiene to the designs of Christmas cards – at the expense of the responsible strategic management of a world-leading investment bank.
In Making it Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the Men who Blew Up the British Economy, by Iain Martin, the former editor of the Scotsman newspaper, Goodwin’s ex-colleagues recall how he took a personal interest in the cleanliness of his office, going so far as to ban filing cabinets with flat tops, so that piles of paper would not be left on them.
One close collaborator, quoted by Martin in the Sunday Times said: "The job of chief executive wasn't really done by him in the normal sense of someone trying to strategise properly and see the dangers and opportunities ahead. He was obsessed by all sorts of small details and measuring things and all sorts of minutiae and crap in certain parts of the business ... We would spend hours in meetings discussing the wrong things. Colours for advertising campaigns, computer systems and targets were what grabbed him.”
But what role did the obsessive streak in Goodwin’s character play in RBS’ eventual downfall?
Professor Malcolm Higgs, a leading occupational psychologist at the University of Southampton, told The Independent it certainly can’t have helped matters.
“You occasionally find this narcissistic tendency in CEOs,” he said. “They want to control everything, they don’t want to know that they’re not perfect. It’s not conducive to successful leadership of a company.”
Lehman Brothers boss Dick Fuld had similar tendencies, Professor Higgs said.
“The big question is: how do these ‘corporate psychopaths’ get to the top? They’re actually quite engaging people, they can appear very visionary. But they can’t take any negative feedback, so they lose contact with reality.”
Of course, on the way up the corporate ladder, the kind of manic attention to detail that led Goodwin to stipulate that RBS’ new fleet of chauffeur-driven Mercedes exactly matched the company’s logo (and the interiors matched the carpet in head office) might actually have been an asset.
Goodwin the up and coming executive at consultants Touche Ross was, in Martin’s words, “a hard-driving executive trained to spot and prosecute weakness.” He was snapped up by Clydesdale, gaining the moniker “Fred the Shred” for his ruthless pursuit of cost savings. He joined RBS in 1998.
“Being focused on detail and getting things just right might have been a useful trait when he was working at a lower level,” said Emma Donaldson-Feilder, occupational psychologist and director of consultants Affinity Health at Work, which specialises in workplace leadership and management.
“But you’ll find that as people go higher up an organisation, the things that were actually strengths at lower levels become over-used and high-risk…. It sounds likes Fred Goodwin became obsessive and that took his attention away from things that were much more important.”
The diagnosis matches other symptoms that Goodwin demonstrated after rising to the top of RBS in 2001. Martin writes of how, like many a doomed leader, he obsessed over a grand projet – RBS’ glimmering new headquarters at Gogarburn, outside Edinburgh.
Alarm bells should have rung for anyone close to Goodwin. According to Prof Higgs, managers and leaders who give meticulous attention to minor details are often over-compensating for a very deep insecurity that on another, more serious level, they really don’t feel in control at all.
“There’s a huge difference between attention to detail and obsessive control and it sounds like he had the latter,” Prof. Higgs said. “If he’d paid more attention to some of the deals they were making, they may not be in the state they are in now. There is fundamental self-insecurity behind it. If somebody is obsessive about controlling minor details – then it’s time to worry.”
The bank aggressively expanded under Goodwin, becoming the biggest in the world with a balance sheet of nearly £2 trillion by 2007. But the gains were unsustainable and RBA nearly collapsed in October 2008, needing a Government rescue by more than 80 per cent nationalisation. Fred the Shred lost his job and, four years later, the knighthood that he had been granted in 2004, for service to banking.
Martin, who says he became interested in Goodwin after struggling “to square his image as a coming titan of finance with the strangely unimpressive, slightly geeky figure in an RBS corporate tie and sober suit” wrote in a Sunday newspaper: “The public-spirited thing for Goodwin to do would be to donate himself to the psychology department of a decent university so that academics could run years of detailed tests.”
The above article is written by Charlie Cooper and was first published at:
See the book:
Iain Martin, Making It Happen: Fred Goodwin, RBS and the men who blew up the British economy, Simon & Schuster Ltd (12 Sep 2013)
“When RBS collapsed and had to be bailed out by the taxpayer in the financial crisis of October 2008 it played a leading role in tipping Britain into its deepest economic downturn in seven decades. The economy shrank, bank lending froze, hundreds of thousands lost their jobs, living standards are still falling and Britons will be paying higher taxes for decades to pay the clean-up bill. How on earth had a small Scottish bank grown so quickly to become a global financial giant that could do such immense damage when it collapsed? At the centre of the story was Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive known as "Fred the Shred" who terrorised some of his staff and beguiled others. Not a banker by training, he nonetheless was given control of RBS and set about trying to make it one of the biggest brands in the world. It was said confidently that computerisation and new banking products had made the world safer. Only they hadn't...Based on more than 80 interviews and with access to diaries and papers kept by those at the heart of the meltdown, this is the definitive account of the RBS disaster, a disaster which still casts such a shadow over our economy. In Making It Happen, senior executives, board members, Treasury insiders and regulators reveal how the bank's mania for expansion led it to take enormous risks its leaders didn't understand. From the birth of the Royal Bank in 18th century Scotland, to the manic expansion under Fred Goodwin in the middle of a mad boom and culminating in the epoch-defining collapse, Making It Happen is the full, extraordinary story.”