THE CHRISTMAS TALE OF A LIBERAL AND OTHERS OF THEIR ILK


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By Jeffrey Lord on 12.21.10 @ 6:08AM

Requiem: Hymn or dirge for repose of the dead.
– Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary

Christmas, 1985.

Tom Wicker was upset.

The longtime New York Times political reporter turned columnist, an icon of liberal journalism in the day, was furious with President Ronald Reagan and his conservative administration. So he sat himself down during the Christmas season and penned a column titled "Requiem at Christmas."

That would be requiem, as in a hymn for the dead.

The subject of Wicker’s fury is worth a look this Christmas, twenty-five years later. His tirade was delivered as Reagan and the conservative movement were riding a wave of public popularity just a year after Reagan’s 49-state re-election over former Vice President Walter Mondale.

Why is this important enough to take another look? Because this tale of a supposed political Scrooge and the Christmas Past of 1985 provides a glimpse of Christmas Future for conservatives in 2011.

Wicker, you see, was waxing eloquent about a pond at his rural retreat in historic Rappahannock County, Virginia. There, some twenty years earlier during the height of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the columnist built his pond on his own property. Perhaps understandably for a man who had spent his life as a liberal wordsmith, Wicker saw this moment of pond-building as "perhaps the single most constructive act of my life."

He also paid for the construction of the pond himself. Good man. A liberal who believes in private sector job creation.

But wait! Paid for it all himself? Then why in the world was Tom Wicker so furious at Ronald Reagan and conservatives?

What was this business of a "Requiem at Christmas"?

Well, there was actually more than a pond involved, you see. First, the government of the Commonwealth of Virginia arrived to stock Wicker’s pond "with large mouth bass, bluegills and channel catfish," the latter, Mr. Wicker assures us, "to establish a natural cycle" in his new private pond. But there was something else. There was also a dam. And instead of hiring a private sector contractor to design his dam, Mr. Wicker went somewhere else. Guesses, anyone?

That’s right. Instead of pumping his New York Times earnings into this task, Mr. Wicker turned to — you. You as in the taxpayers funding the federal government of the United States circa 1965. Specifically, in Wicker’s words, he turned to "Eddie Woods, the district agent for the Federal Soil Conservation Service, (who) designed the dam so well that the water eventually rose precisely to the little red flags he had set out to predict the shoreline of what he called a ‘water impoundment.’"

Said Wicker as his fury rose to what might be called the liberal anger impoundment shoreline of the Times print pond: "That’s only an infinitesimal incident in the annals of one of the Federal services dedicated to the American earth and to those who work and cherish it." Indeed, indeed. "Infinitesimal" is precisely the word for whatever federal tax dollars were spent on his pond. Then, without missing a beat or evidencing a solitary thread of irony, Wicker moves his readers from the pond-designing Federal Soil Conservation Service to another agency in the U.S. Department of Agriculture: the Agricultural Extension Service.

There, he fingers Scrooge. Otherwise known as President Ronald Reagan.

While we are left to ponder the fact that good ole Eddie Woods of the Federal Soil Conservation Service was spending his time designing Wicker’s private dam on Wicker’s private property, Wicker sharply points out: "Now Ronald Reagan wants to kill the Extension Service to save money; if the service is needed his aides say, let the states pay for it."

At this point, Wicker’s outrage at this horrifying bit of Dickensian Scroogery from the Reagan White House explodes.

"What effrontery!" he splutters. The nerve of Reagan. Trying to cut back the federal government by suggesting that if a service is so valuable to a state that state should pay for the service and leave the American taxpayer in other states alone.

On a roll, Wicker moves to another outrageous Reagan idea: privatizing the Federal Housing Administration. What a wretched, foolish idea snaps Mr. Wicker. Why, the whole reason for the FHA, a New Deal program from 1934, was that private institutions "failed to make housing loans available to low and middle-income people…in the first place." Translation: mortgages were not given to those who could not afford them.

Imagine that. Way back there in 1985 Mr. Wicker simply can’t imagine what could possibly go wrong with forcing the government’s way into the private housing market and making sure people who can’t afford mortgages get them from the federal government. The very idea of getting rid of such a program made Wicker’s bile rise. As with an unrelated Agriculture Department program, this concept of getting rid of government programs is absurd on its face to Wicker and the Times. Wicker scorns Reagan, saying the President and his conservative policy advisers "in their mania for privatization and profit think they can make a buck on the sale, thus reducing the deficit."

Move ahead to 2008, August, specifically. Mr. Wicker is now presumably enjoying his retirement at the ripe-young age of 82. Which is to say one month before the subprime mortgage crisis explodes in the middle of the presidential campaign. Over in the pages of Forbes magazine, reporters Joshua Zumbrun and Maurna Desmond are waving something that might be recognized as a larger version of "the little red flags" planted by a government agent to predict the shoreline of Wicker’s now 23-year old government designed pond. This red flag is financial in nature and is being waved to alert readers that, well, a tidal wave is surging toward America’s financial shoreline. Says Forbes:

Watch your wallet.

Heralded as a savior in reversing the mortgage market’s woes, risks to the agency could cost taxpayers dearly, says one mortgage expert, as Washington morphs the FHA from a helping hand for low-income home buyers into a back door bailout for the imploding mortgage industry.…

"Nobody is talking is talking about it, but in three years the FHA bailout is going to cost taxpayers at least 0 billion dollars," said Guy Cecala, a mortgage industry insider and publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance. "Everybody on Capitol Hill recognizes that there will be significant costs, but they’re trying to keep the housing spigot open even if it will bring in some bad water down the road."

Ahhh yes. Red flags and bad water. Says the publication Mortgage Loan.com later after the tidal wave has crashed ashore and started financially pulling Americans financially underwater en masse:

"The FHA has committed and tapped 0 billion to ramp up the Hope for Homeowners program."

Which is to say Forbes underestimated things.

Mr. Wicker’s philosophy, in short, more or less had its way with America. There was no requiem for liberal government spending in spite of Wicker’s protestations and snappy column title. The significance of the Reagan presidency — and later the Gingrich Congress — was to red flag the shoreline of financial consequences for the endless parade of tax-and-spend politicians of all stripes who swarmed Washington after 1932. This disaster, decades in the making, would take decades to resolve. Reagan’s administration as the president himself came to realize was merely step one — recognition of the problem and beginning to apply the brakes. There were politicians — of both parties — utterly heedless of the obvious fact that even the highest taxes (if you were a liberal) or the most advanced free market policies (if you were a conservative) could not keep pace if the reality was unceasing, massive spending on everything from today’s Obamacare to the pittance that was Tom Wicker’s Great Society-era government designed dam.

This Christmas, as economies in places like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal struggle because they listened to and were run by the ideas of their own Tom Wickers, the holiday for millions really is going to be downright Dickensian.

But — thankfully — this is America. A country which has a magnificent heritage of self-reliance that, reports to the contrary, is not dead yet. There are millions of Americans who now realize the direct, very stark connection between their joblessness, the almost eighty years of so-called government "services" like designing dams for the rural retreat of a well-to-do New York Times columnist — and the federal deficit. Not to mention the role played by all those subprime mortgages
Twenty-five Christmases later, Tom Wicker’s dam is symbolic of exactly what is dragging down the American economy.

Too much government. Too much government. Too much government. Not enough money. Not enough money. Not enough money.

There are only two ways out of this mess that has been some 80-years in the making. First is economic growth — putting an end to the politics of class warfare and envy that liberals like New York’s Congressman Anthony Weiner employ to keep their own middle-class constituents economically under-water for political benefit.

And …. cutting spending. Dealing straight-up with not just the tax code but health care costs, entitlements and discretionary spending like that responsible for designing Tom Wicker’s dam. Incoming House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future, discussed here, along with repealing Obamacare, will be and should be one of the first items on the agenda of House Republicans when they take over the majority in January.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, cited on MSNBC by Joe "No Labels" Scarborough, has made the point in a recent CBS 60 minutes interview. Says Christie: "The day of reckoning has arrived…the credit card has maxed out…it’s over. It’s over."

Yes, it is.

But when the Mother of All Budget Battles arrives in March (the expiration date for the just passed "Continuing Resolution" that freezes spending at the modest (??!!) current level of .1 trillion) expect House Republicans, GOP Senators, and every conservative from presidential candidates to talk radio hosts to you to be called, in so many words, Scrooge.

What you’re really hearing, in the inevitable fashion so bluntly described by Governor Christie, is at last — is it possible? — a genuine requiem for limitless government spending.

At which point it will do well to remember that twenty-five Christmases ago one columnist in the New York Times crystallized the argument nicely in a fashion he could not foresee.

How did we get to this day of reckoning of which Governor Christie speaks? How could this country and a number of its states possibly be edging to bankruptcy?

By borrowing the money to pay for Tom Wicker’s dam.

And a lot more besides.

Merry Christmas.

spectator.org/archives/2010/12/21/requiem-for-a-columnist…

Japan’s Debt Time-Bomb Tools .. Japan Shows How to Defuse Debt Time-Bomb (May 27, 2011) ….


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The first Great Depression led to totalitarian dictatorships, war to consolidate power, and concentrations of capital in the hands of a financial elite. The trigger was a default on the global reserve currency, in that case the pound sterling. The U.S. dollar is now the global reserve currency. The concern is that default could create the same sort of global panic today. Dark visions are evoked of the president declaring a national emergency, FEMA plans locking into place, camps being readied for protesters, and the secret government taking over . . . .

…..item 1)…..The Huffington Post …www.huffingtonpost.com….HUFFPOST BUSINESS…Japan Shows How to Defuse Debt Time-Bomb

Posted: 05/27/11 05:00 PM ET

Ellen Brown
Civil litigation attorney; author of "Web of Debt"

www.huffingtonpost.com/ellen-brown/inviting-chaos-the-per…

[T]hreatening to default should not be a partisan issue. In view of all the hazards it entails, one wonders why any responsible person would even flirt with the idea.

– Alan S. Blinder, Princeton professor of economics, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve

A game of Russian roulette is being played with the national debt ceiling. Fire the wrong chamber of the gun, and the result could be the second Great Depression.

The first Great Depression led to totalitarian dictatorships, war to consolidate power, and concentrations of capital in the hands of a financial elite. The trigger was a default on the global reserve currency, in that case the pound sterling. The U.S. dollar is now the global reserve currency. The concern is that default could create the same sort of global panic today. Dark visions are evoked of the president declaring a national emergency, FEMA plans locking into place, camps being readied for protesters, and the secret government taking over . . . .

This may all just be political theater, but do we really want to get close enough to the economic precipice to find out? The conservative ideologues toying with the debt ceiling are doing it to force cuts in the budget, a budget that was already approved by Congress. Congress is being held hostage by a radical minority pushing a risky agenda, one that is based on an economic model that is obsolete.

High-stakes Gambling
On May 16, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece titled "The Armaggedon Lobby," which claimed that a "technical default" on the federal debt was just "political melodrama" and not really a big deal:

[B]ond markets can figure out the difference between a genuine default when a country can’t pay its bills and a technical default of a few days if it serves the purpose of fixing America’s fiscal mess. Not so, said Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal in a May 20 interview on CNBC. "That’s gambling. This is the United States. You’re leading the whole world. You cannot play games with that."
It is not just that the government could be brought to a standstill, with a third of its bills now being paid by borrowing or that interest rates would shoot up, forcing thousands of homeowners into foreclosure. Failure to pay on the national debt could trigger a default on the global reserve currency. As one commentator described what could go wrong:

[T]he consequences of a US default could spark yet another global financial crisis. The US could lose its triple-A rating, which could cause a sell-off in Treasury notes by institutional and foreign investors. This sell-off could lead to higher interest rates, and banks’ balance sheets might be decimated by the decline in their bond portfolios. Thus, global banking and financial market liquidity could dry up. Lending between institutions and people or businesses could possibly cease altogether or become cost prohibitive.

A Rerun of 1931?
The sort of chaos that could ensue was seen when Great Britain reneged on its deal to redeem pound sterling banknotes in gold in 1931. The result was the worst global depression in history.

When the pound went off the gold standard, markets panicked. People rushed to exchange their paper money for gold, in any currencies in which that was still possible. The gold wound up hidden under mattresses and in safety deposit boxes, unspent and the banks from which it was pulled, having no reserves to back their loans, quit lending or closed their doors. Credit froze; business ground to a halt.

As other countries ran short of gold, they too were forced to take their currencies off the gold standard. The last holdouts suffered the most, including the United States, which kept its gold window open until 1933.

The 19th century had been plagued by bank runs, caused by banks having too little gold to back their outstanding loans. The Federal Reserve was instituted in 1913 ostensibly to prevent those runs, but its levee did not hold back the run of the 1930s. In 1933, the country suffered a massive banking collapse, forcing President Roosevelt to declare a banking holiday and take the U.S. dollar, too, off the gold standard.

Freed from the Bankers’ "Cross of Gold"

The transition off the gold standard was a painful one but according to Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the country was the better for it. In a paper read before the American Bar Association in 1946, he said that going off the gold standard had finally allowed the country to be economically sovereign:

Final freedom from the domestic money market exists for every sovereign national state where there exists an institution which functions in the manner of a modern central bank, and whose currency is not convertible into gold or into some other commodity.

Freed from the strictures of gold, Roosevelt was able to jump-start the economy with deficit spending. As Marshall Auerback details, the next four years constituted the biggest cyclical boom in U.S. economic history. Real GDP grew at a 12% rate and nominal GDP grew at a 14% rate.

Then in 1937, Roosevelt listened to the deficit hawks of his day and slashed the deficit. The result was a surge in unemployment, and the economy slipped back into depression.

What lifted the country out of the doldrums was again deficit spending, liberally engaged in to fund World War II. In wartime, few people worry about the national debt. The debt grew to 120% of GDP — twice what it is today — and wound up sustaining another very productive period in U.S. history, one that set the country up to lead the world in manufacturing for the next half century.

On Inflation and Taxes
Ruml said federal taxes were no longer needed to fund the budget, which could be financed by issuing bonds. The principal purpose of taxes, he said, was "the maintenance of a dollar which has stable purchasing power over the years. Sometimes this purpose is stated as ‘the avoidance of inflation.’"

The government could spend as needed to meet its budget, drawing on credit issued by its own central bank. It could do this until price inflation indicated a weakened purchasing power of the currency. Then, and only then, would the money supply need to be contracted with taxes.

"The dollars the government spends become purchasing power in the hands of the people who have received them," Ruml said. "The dollars the government takes by taxes cannot be spent by the people," so the money supply can be contracted with taxes as needed.

When the economy is in a recession, however — as it is now — the government needs to spend in order to get purchasing power into the hands of the people. Businesses cannot hire more workers until they have more customers demanding their products, and the customers won’t come until they have money to spend. The money ("demand") must come first. Adding money will not drive up prices until the economy is at full employment. Before that, increasing "demand" will drive up "supply" by setting the engines of production in motion. When supply and demand rise together, prices remain stable.

We now know that a government can go quite far into debt without a dangerous level of price inflation occurring — much farther than the U.S. has gone today. Besides World War II, when U.S. debt was 120% of GDP, there is the remarkable example of Japan. Japan has retained its status as the world’s third largest economy, although it has a debt to GDP ratio of 226% — and it is still fighting deflation.

Critics of the deflationary theory point to commodity prices, which are soaring today. But if those prices were due to the economy being awash with "too much money chasing too few goods," real estate prices would be soaring too. Instead, the real estate market has collapsed. What has actually happened is that the housing bubble has transmuted into the commodity bubble, as "hot money" has fled from one to the other. The overall money supply is still in decline.

The deficit hawks have been predicting for years that the federal debt would sink the dollar and the economy, and it hasn’t happened yet. In fact the federal debt has not been paid off since 1835, and no disaster has resulted. The debt has not only been carried on the government’s books but has continued to grow, and the economy has grown and flourished along with it.

This is not an economic anomaly. The economy has flourished because of the national debt. Nothing backs the currency today but "the full faith and credit of the United States." Money is no longer a metal; it is an inflow and outflow, credits and debits. The liabilities of the government are the assets of the private economy. The national debt is what backs the money supply.

Dealing with the Rising Cost of Debt Service

There is a potential time bomb in a growing federal debt, but it is one that can be defused. The debt has risen from trillion to trillion just since the banking crisis of 2008, not from "entitlements" but due to the Wall Street collapse and bailout. Just the interest on this growing debt could cripple the tax base if interest rates were at normal levels, so they have had to be pushed almost to zero. The result has been to create a dollar carry trade. This has facilitated speculation in commodities, a major cause of today’s commodity bubbles.

There is, however, a solution to this problem, and it was discovered by Japan. The government can spend, not by issuing bonds at interest to the public, but simply by creating an overdraft at the central bank, as Beardsley Ruml recommended. The Bank of Japan now holds an amount of public debt equal to the country’s GDP! As noted by the Center for Economic and Policy Research:

Interest on [Japanese] debt held by the central bank is refunded back to the treasury, leaving no net cost to the government on this debt. . . . Japan continues to experience deflation, in spite of the fact that its central bank holds an amount of debt that is roughly equal to its GDP. This would be equivalent to the Fed holding trillion in debt.
Like the Bank of Japan, the Federal Reserve now returns the interest it receives to the government. With a rising interest tab on the federal debt no longer a problem, private interest rates could be allowed to rise to normal levels.

Today the Fed is not permitted to buy bonds directly from the Treasury but must go through middleman bond dealers. But that problem too could be fixed. In a supporting statement in 1947, Federal Reserve Chairman Marriner Eccles discussed a bill to eliminate the unnecessary cost of these middlemen. He said the Federal Reserve had been allowed to purchase securities directly from the government from its inception in 1914 until the Banking Act of 1935. Then:
A provision was inserted in that act requiring all purchases of government securities by Federal Reserve banks to be made in the open market, which means purchased chiefly from dealers in Government bonds. Those who inserted this proviso were motivated by the mistaken theory that it would help to prevent deficit financing. . . .

Nothing constructive would be accomplished by the proviso that the Reserve System must purchase Government securities exclusively in the open market. About all such a ban means is that in making such purchases a commission has to be paid to Government bond dealers.

The interest cost and the bond dealers’ cut could both be eliminated by allowing the Treasury to borrow directly from its own central bank, interest free.

Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself

We have been frightened into believing that government debt is a bad thing, but nearly all money today originates as debt. As Marriner Eccles observed in the 1930s, "That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money."

The public debt is the people’s money, and today the people are coming up short. Shrinking the public debt means shrinking more than just the services the government is expected to provide. It means shrinking the money supply itself, along with the ability to provide the jobs, wages and purchasing power necessary for a thriving economy.

Originally posted on Asia Times.
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OBAMA: COMMUNIST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES


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THIS IS A MUST READ IF YOU ARE TO UNDERSTAND THIS ADMINISTRATIONS POLICYS ARE FULLY BASED ON A SOCIALIST/MARXIST SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT
THIS MAN IS A COMMUNIST THROUGH AND THROUGH
ALSO READ THE PREVIOUS POST TO THIS ONE

The Obama Vision

Book review of: RADICAL-IN-CHIEF BY STANLEY KURTZ, National Review

November 15, 2010
by Ronald Radosh

The charge by some conservatives that President Obama was and indeed still is a socialist has been met with disbelief or brushed aside as irrelevant by our liberal elites, most consequentially by the media. They have assigned it to the land of the “wing-nuts.” Even the conservative writer Andrew Ferguson could not resist throwing in a gratuitous remark about Stanley Kurtz’s new book, Radical-in-Chief, in a recent issue of The Weekly Standard, arguing that “there is, indeed, a name for the beliefs that motivate President Obama, but it’s not . . . even socialism. It’s liberalism!” For Ferguson, “unchecked liberalism . . . is worrisome enough.”

I have to admit that before reading and evaluating the mountain of evidence Kurtz presents in his book, I too was skeptical of the charge, regarding it as a somewhat overheated smear word that Obama’s opponents liked to throw out in the heat of political debate. It held no more water with me than did the epithets of “fascist,” “Nazi,” and “un-American” hurled at Obama by his angriest enemies. But Kurtz’s book leads me to the inescapable conclusion that indeed Barack Obama started out his adult life as a socialist, functioned within socialism’s orbit for decades, owes much of his political rise to the socialist community, and has never repudiated the ideology he adopted so long ago.

Kurtz claims that when he began research for his book he knew that Obama had had some associations with radicals like Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright in Chicago, but was dubious about the socialist label. These associations were brushed off by Obama and his supporters with such arguments as that he hardly knew Ayers and his wife Bernardine Dohrn, and, in any event, was only eight years old when the couple were engaging in their violent Weathermen activities. As for Wright, well, Obama just wasn’t in church when the reverend was damning America.

Kurtz wanted to find out whether there was anything behind the socialist charge by digging deeper and tracing Obama’s path to the presidency. He approached his subject as any good historian would, by going to the primary sources, looking at the records and internal publications of the many groups and organizations that Obama had been associated with: the Socialist Scholars Conference, the Democratic Socialists of America, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, ACORN, the Black Theology Project, the Harold Washington mayoral administration, the Midwest Academy, the New American Movement, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and the Woods Charitable Fund.

Kurtz traces Obama’s exposure to socialist politics and circles back to the early 1980s, when he was a student at Columbia University. A pivotal experience was Obama’s attendance at the 1983 and 1984 Socialist Scholars Conference (SSC) held in New York’s Cooper Union. (This was a world I was most familiar with. At the time, I was on the SSC’s planning committee, which was based at the sociology department of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.) The SSC was attended by enthusiastic members of various socialist sects; there was in fact little scholarly about it. Most of the sessions addressed various pressing political questions: the state of rebellion in Central America, the strategies for moving America towards socialism, etc. It would be interesting to know what sessions Obama attended and why he went to it in the first place. After all, most attendees were activists, committed socialist intellectuals, or both.

The answers would never be brought forth, because no one in the media sought to ask him about it. Kurtz reports that Obama did address it once, in an offhand manner. In his bestselling 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote that while living in New York, he engaged in political discussions that “came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences I sometimes attended at Cooper Union. . . . [They were among] the many diversions New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at Rockefeller Center.” Since it was so inconsequential, why did Obama take care to mention it? Perhaps the ambitious Obama knew that since he had registered for it in his own name, someone might find he had attended; so “why not,” Kurtz writes, “acknowledge the fact in such a way as to minimize attention and defuse the power of eventual revelation?”

But, as Kurtz shows, after the SSC, where Obama was exposed to both Black Liberation theology and community organizing, he decided to leave the field of foreign relations and nuclear disarmament — about which he had written a now well-known article — and instead started on the new career path of community organizing. Moreover, the speaker at one of the major sessions developed the theoretical concept of working for “socialist incubators,” the effort to combine different community groups into one national movement, which would then “democratize control of major social, economic and political institutions.” This was not an old-style nationalization of the commanding heights of the economy; it was, rather, an attempt to achieve socialism from below. The theorist was Peter Dreier, who later became a major strategist for ACORN and, during the 2008 campaign, an adviser to Sen. Barack Obama. These groups, or “incubators,” would push the U.S. towards socialism and socialist programs like universal single-payer health care.

Dreier’s theory coincided with the popular view of the French Marxist André Gorz, who developed the concept of working for “transitional” or “non-reformist reforms,” seemingly small steps that would help destroy market capitalism and build the basis for complete structural change and the adoption of a socialist economy in Western societies. When a crisis finally occurred, especially a “fiscal crisis of the state,” the moment would be ripe to transform the economy into a publicly owned statist entity.

As the years went by, and Barack Obama moved from community organizing to Harvard Law and then back to Chicago, Kurtz shows that one thing remained constant: Obama continued to move in the same socialist circles that he had first come across at the SSC at Cooper Union. It was there that he probably heard a young Cornel West talk at a panel on race and class in Marxism, and was introduced to the father of Black Liberation theology, James Cone, the mentor to a minister named Rev. Jeremiah Wright. It was also at the SSC that he most likely came across a leader of Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialists of America, the Yugoslav-born Bogdan Denitch, who wrote an essay on the importance of Harold Washington’s mayoral campaign in Chicago, in uniting the black and white Left in a new class politics that would produce victory and socialist momentum.

These ideas and theories motivated Obama and helped him choose his own career path — that of community organizing as the way to lead a coalition of blacks, whites, and Hispanics to create a socialist “redefinition” of America, with one caveat: The concept and advocacy of socialism as the final goal would consciously be hidden from sight. As Kurtz reveals, the socialist theorists openly talked about what they called “stealth socialism” or “incremental radicalism,” small steps that move the nation forward until the ultimate goal of a socialist transformation is obtained. One moves apparently without an ideological plan, but working for measures that will end with an irreversible move to a statist economy based on public control through groups run by labor and community organizations. As Kurtz writes: “Obama’s college socialism, the influence of socialist conferences on his career, his choice of a profession dominated by socialists, and his extensive alliances with the most influential stealth-socialist community organizers in the country give the game away. Obama has adopted the gradualist socialist strategy of his mentors. . . . Eventually, this will transform American capitalism into something resembling a socialist-inspired Scandinavian welfare state.”

With this fundamental transformation finally obtained, wealth would be redistributed from individuals and businesses to the state and especially to the public-employee unions, which would effectively run state and national governments. Seemingly minor adjustments would be the effective “non-reformist reforms” advocated by Gorz and others, and would eventually undermine the current system. When Michelle Obama inadvertently let the cat out of the bag and told an audience that her husband was essentially a community organizer using politics to achieve the ends he always wanted, she confirmed Kurtz’s analysis.

All of this fit well with the political strategy developed by the late Michael Harrington, the last socialist leader of national prominence since Norman Thomas; Harrington’s followers play a major role in national government and the Democratic party today. Harrington favored what I call Browderism without Browder and the old Soviet tie; i.e., working in the Democratic party with non-socialists, helping to transform it into, in effect, an “invisible social democracy.” The so-called Democratic Left — under the guidance of conscious socialists who assumed leadership positions in various mass movements including unions, women’s groups, and community organizations — would help to develop their programs until all converged to create the structural socialist transformation of society.

Readers of Kurtz’s book will see example after example of how Obama’s otherwise inexplicable actions — such as pushing health care ahead of jobs in a time of economic downturn — make perfect sense if he is acting according to the theories and programs of the mentors he took along with him when he moved into the political arena. By keeping his real views hidden — the chosen policy of the descendants of Saul Alinsky who argue for masking socialist convictions — the political organizers can push the country in a direction it may not want.

Once one realizes that this is indeed Obama’s chosen course, it becomes clear why, during the campaign, he went out of his way to downplay and deny his actual close involvement over the years with major socialist players. In his important and detailed chapter on ACORN, for example, Kurtz spells out better than anyone has how the group fought tooth and nail to get banks to lower lending standards and to provide loans for those without good credit and even without any demonstrable ability to pay a mortgage. The housing group, despite its many denials, is shown by Kurtz to be a major factor in the development of the subprime-lending spree that crashed the housing bubble. ACORN pressured the banks by pressuring the Clinton administration and working with HUD secretary Henry Cisneros. Together, they used a direct-action campaign to draw the entire financial system into unwise lending schemes that helped foment today’s housing crisis.

Not only did Obama work closely with ACORN, he also cooperated intimately with the quasi-socialist Midwest Academy. He had lengthy and sustained relationships with both Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers — who, Kurtz demonstrates, knew and worked with Obama way before anyone else imagined. Ayers appointed him to boards that, in turn, quickly acted under Obama’s leadership to fund Ayers’s extremist and Marxist educational programs, as well as the radical projects of his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

Thus does Obama’s past explain his policies today. He adopted the ACORN leaders’ strategy of transforming the economy through expanding entitlements, and combined it with Michael Harrington’s plan to realign American politics through polarizing the electorate along class lines. By radicalizing the Democratic party — a goal already pretty much accomplished — he would have the ability, once in power, to push America to a left-wing “social democracy” in which business would be demonized. (This strategy is very much in evidence in the 2010 midterm campaign, with the administration’s noxious attack on the Chamber of Commerce.)

As for health care, Kurtz speculates that Obama hopes that if Republicans succeed in repealing the new law, the repeal will ignite a political movement of the Left that will further radicalize the Democratic party — a class-based strategy that would put into effect Harrington’s “realignment,” in which, finally, the poor and the educated middle classes would push the country to socialism. Thus public-employee unions, minorities, and the poor would stop the “haves” from running the country, and — as Obama told Joe the Plumber in that eventful campaign stop in 2008 — we would move to fairness by redistributing the wealth to those who deserve it and don’t have what they need. In the Obama administration, we have Saul Alinsky, Richard Cloward, and Frances Fox Piven’s advocacy of pushing the system to its limits united with ACORN’s stealth socialism and socialist incubation.

Stanley Kurtz succeeds, then, in showing the “consistency of [Obama’s] convictions.” Beginning in his college days, and possibly even in late high school, Obama gravitated towards socialism as the answer for America. His entire political advance depended upon the backing, support, and work of the Chicago socialist community. It was a stealth-socialist circle, carefully hidden from the public, but now unearthed brilliantly by Kurtz. With a “thoroughgoing pattern of deception,” he misled the American people into believing that he was a post-ideological pragmatist. “Obama has made concerted efforts to hide his socialist convictions from the voters who put him in office,” in a “systematic deception” that “corrodes democracy itself.”

For these reasons, Stanley Kurtz has written what I believe is the most important political book in years. I would go so far as to say that had he or someone else done this work during the 2008 election campaign, Barack Obama would not have been elected president — because it would have been clear that Obama is simply not who he claimed to be. During the election, Obama presented himself as a post-partisan figure who would unite the country and work with Republicans to find practical solutions to America’s problems. He would heal the country’s racial wounds. Instead, he has divided us. At a time when Europe is digging itself out from under the weight of its social-democratic policies, Obama is pushing us in that direction: out-of-control deficits, unsustainable entitlements, high taxes, and a sluggish economy. That is not where the American people want to go.

Ronald Radosh is an adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute; Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York, and the author of many books, including "The Rosenberg File;" "Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996," and most recently, "Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left."

www.hudson.org/

progressive/liberalism explained for the simple minded (other liberals)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZrqdZFFb5c&feature=related

PayDayAdvance.us announces the launch of its new online educational resources aimed at demystifying the payday lending process. Consumers who visit the updated website can learn from the new How to page, which covers the ins and outs of the application process, as well as eligibility and approval. The redesigned website is designed to take the guesswork out of short-term loans, and make responsible borrowing easier.

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Related Emergency Pay Day Loan Press Releases

Best answer:

Answer by Rick B
credible pay day advance? No.

Stay away from these places – they are rip offs.

Budget and only spend what you have!!!!

What do you think? Answer below!

Best answer:

Answer by Finance&WorkAtHomeSpecialist
yes they can charge you for it, unless it was never mailed out. You can’t blame the bank if they sent it and BOA never received it. Things like this happend, if you don’t want that risk have BOA auto debit your account each month,

I

What do you think? Answer below!

W.T.F. IS GOING ONE HERE!!—ARE YOU KIDDING ME— NOW HE’S BAILING OUT AN AFGAN BANK?? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE SPEECH TWO OR THREE DAYS AGO WHERE “IT WAS TIME TO CONCENTRATE ON THINGS AT HOME”???? —–LYING, CHEATING, COMMIE THIEF


Image by SS&SS
KABUL, Afghanistan — In a bid to fend off the threat of a nationwide financial crisis, the Afghan and United States governments tentatively agreed Saturday to bail out Afghanistan’s largest bank, according to Afghan and American officials.

Details of the deal, including how much each government would contribute, were still being worked out on Saturday between the Central Bank of Afghanistan and the United States Treasury Department, officials said.

Meanwhile, thousands of nervous Afghan depositors, unaware of the bailout and unconvinced of the bank’s solvency, stampeded the central branch of the beleaguered Kabul Bank to withdraw their savings. But the teller drawers were largely empty and most customers left empty-handed.

The planned injection of cash into Kabul Bank is meant to slow the run on the bank by its customers, who have withdrawn more than 0 million in the past few days amid fears of a wider economic collapse. The panic began last week when the Central Bank ousted the chairman and the chief executive officer of Kabul Bank, after discovering that the bank had acted recklessly, lending millions of dollars to allies of President Hamid Karzai and pouring money into risky investments.

Top officials at Kabul Bank and a senior leader at the Central Bank declined to comment publicly on the proposed bailout, which was still being negotiated. However a manager at the Central Bank and a senior American official confirmed what the American official called an “intervention.”

A major shareholder in the bank, Mahmoud Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president, said Saturday that he was unaware of a bailout. He said such intervention would be unnecessary considering that the bank still retained half of its 0 million in assets.

The official at the Afghan Central Bank, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said that the bank’s risk management department was taking over operations at Kabul Bank, and that Kabul’s existing management would be purged.

The American official, who also requested anonymity, said that the United States contribution would not be large.

The bailout comes several days after President Karzai and other top government officials pledged that they would guarantee deposits. But those assurances failed to curtail the rush of withdrawals.

The government has blamed the international and local news media for inciting fears.

Officials at Kabul Bank said they had not yet calculated how much money customers withdrew on Saturday, but that they believed that the figure was less than in previous days. On Thursday, one of the bank’s principal owners said depositors had withdrawn 0 million in the previous two days.

Khalilullah Frozi, one of the two largest shareholders of Kabul Bank, said the bank retrieved million in loans from borrowers on Saturday.

But according to a bank employee distributing tickets for a place in line to bank patrons, the crowds on Saturday were higher than ever. The first customers showed up as early as 6 a.m. with several hundred customers adding to the line each hour. Nearly 2,000 clients had joined the line by 1 p.m.

Inside the bank, customers waited tirelessly in saunalike conditions, as crowds made it impossible to discern where lines started and ended. Most of them left without cash.

“What should I give you when I have nothing to give?” a teller who was out of cash told an agitated customer.

One of the customers was a Central Bank employee, who said that the bailout would prevent a long-term crisis but that it did little to ease his short-term fears.

“I don’t want to lose my money,” said the man, who refused to give his name because of his position at the Central Bank.

The bank’s troubles began last week after a change in leadership and allegations that tens of millions of dollars were borrowed by political elites for risky real estate investments in Dubai.

The crisis threatened to undermine confidence in Afghanistan’s fledgling financial system, which was built under American guidance after the collapse of the Taliban government in 2001. Among the clients of the bank is the government, which pays about 250,000 public employees through the bank.

Mahmoud Karzai, the president’s brother, said the government “will absolutely guarantee” the salaries of public servants. He said the government was transferring money to Kabul Bank each day and that half of the bank’s assets were still solvent.

Mahmoud Siakal, a former deputy foreign minister, said the bank’s problems reflected deeper problems with the government and the financial system.

“What’s happening with Kabul Bank shows an advanced level of the weakening of rule of law since 2002,” said “We beg the world to invest here, and on the other hand, our own wealth is disappearing from the country. The fact that government is guaranteeing the bank won’t collapse, who gave them the right to inject all that money into Kabul Bank?”

Some economists argue that the crisis in the nation’s largest bank, if allowed to continue, could create a devastating ripple effect on other sectors of the economy. Other experts, however, say that because the vast majority of Afghanistan’s economy runs on cash and in the black market the rest of the economy is largely immune from Kabul Bank’s woes.

At the bank’s main branch, an environmental engineer named Hamid arrived at 6 a.m. and waited more than five hours to fill his straw vegetable sack with his entire savings: 0,000.

“The money can run out,” he said, gripping the sack tightly. “I don’t trust my government. They lie. I’m an old man, and I have enough experience in my life to know how this government is.”

The bank crisis is compounded by the upcoming arrival of Id al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday when Afghans punctuate the end of the holy month of Ramadan with lavish shopping sprees. Also, many other customers typically withdraw their monthly salaries at the start of each month.

The Afghanistan Banks Association, a conglomerate of 17 commercial banks, on Saturday called the situation “normal and controlled” because the public now understands that the government would not allow Kabul Bank collapse.

Najibullah Amiri, the general secretary of the association, said the frantic customers at the bank were simply “illiterate people who hear the news and start withdrawing.” He said the bank had no liquidity issues.

Sangar Rahimi and Sharifullah Sahak contributed reporting from Kabul, and Mark Landler from Washington.

“We Are The 99 Percent”


Image by Leica 1A
I was among the thousands of people cramming into Foley Square Wednesday evening, observing those who had come down to show their support for the Occupy Wall Street movement. I arrived at 4:30, and for the next hour roamed around the park. It had the energy of a festival, a celebration. The air was permeated by the sound of drums. Placards waved about in the air, many of them hastily written with marker on brown corrugated cardboard. And though the rally was organized by labor unions, those with union t-shirts were vastly outnumbered by those with no obvious union affiliation.
I could find no central focal point. If amplified speeches were going on, I could not hear them. Nearer to the drummers people were dancing. Standing on top of the fountain, I found it impossible to get a true sense of the size of the crowd. It was difficult to get it all within view.

This was symbolic, perhaps. The most frequent criticism of the Occupy Wall Street movement is that there is no central organized message. However, looking out over the amorphous crowd that evening, it was very simple to identify what the movement was all about. That is, thousands were gathering here to speak out about economic injustice—injustices dealt to them, their families, and to the entire nation. There was a palpable sense that our democracy is in danger, that the voices of the many are being drowned out by the few: those with vast fortunes and a certain political agenda.

“We are the 99 percent,” the protesters chanted. In contrast, those that make the decisions that affect our lives are the other one percent. They’re the ones telling us that we’re better off if we allow corporations to pollute our air, to ship our jobs overseas, to cut corporate taxes and those on the wealthy. They tell us that we’re better off if we cut health benefits for workers, if we get rid of pensions, if we do away with the social safety net. We’re better off without high-speed rail or universal health care. These things are unattainable, we’re told, because government is out of money. If we raise taxes on the wealthiest to help pay for these things then the whole economy will fail, we’re told.

The crowd at Foley Square wasn’t falling for it.

Student loan debt was a common cause. After all, we were all told that we must go to college to get a good job. For some this is no problem; their parents can simply write a check. For others, loans are the only practical solution. Now many are out of college and are tens of thousands of dollars in debt. There are few jobs to be had and those who haven’t found one are wondering just how they’re supposed to pay all this debt off.

“The banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” the crowd chanted.

These are big, institutional problems that don’t lend themselves to easy answers. The seductive power of the Tea Party is that it offers simple, easy answers. Cut government and cut taxes. Get government out of your life and maybe someday you will be rich. The real answers aren’t going to be that easy.

Earlier that morning a Republican presidential candidate told the protesters that they ought not to blame Wall Street for the fact that they’re not rich. But no one at Foley Square said anything about wanting to become rich. For the former CEO of a fast-food pizza chain this may be a difficult idea to understand. It’s also difficult for New York City’s billionaire mayor to understand. He called the protesters “ridiculous.” This is the same mayor who expresses no concern over the growing gap between the rich and poor in his city.

The crowd at Foley Square wasn’t concerned about amassing riches. They wanted economic security and a say in their political process. They wanted to end the injustice that they see all about them, to eliminate want in the face of greed.

An hour later, looking south on Centre Street, the setting sun reflected off of the silver façade of a new luxury apartment building. A two-bedroom apartment in this building rents for ,000 a year, a sum greater than many of the attendees’ salaries. And then the crowd began to move forward for the march down to Zuccotti Park. I walked with the chanting crowd in silence. When the march met with those encamped at Zuccotti Park there were cheers. There was dancing. Later a small group tried to storm some barricades. A white shirt officer swung his nightstick at the group. Thousands of cameras captured the moment.

The History of Romania in Fresco


Image by Fergal of Claddagh
This series of six images was taken in the auditorium of the Opera House in Bucharest. They relate the images of Romanian History and the texts I have attached are no specific to the actual paintings as I am not wise enough to recognise the events – the texts come from 19th century writers writing about the Kingdom of Romania.

THE HISTORY OF ROMANIA

DACIA
The area occupied by the Romanian people to-day was, in the earliest times of which we have record, inhabited by a people who had already attained a comparatively high standard of civilization. The Greeks called them the Getae, and they reappear as the Daci in the time of Julius Caesar. At this period they were organized into a kingdom under a strong ruler, Burebista.

For the greater part of the first century a. d. the province of Moesia, established in a. d. 6, remained exposed to incursions of the Daci. Punitive expeditions were undertaken against them, but the submission made by their rulers was merely nominal.

In a. d. 101 the Emperor Trajan took Dacian affairs in hand. The reigning king, Decebalus, was forced to sue for terms. As the conditions of the treaty were not being carried out, Trajan determined to reduce the country once for all. The remains of the bridge which was then thrown across the Danube are still to be seen near Turnu Severin, and a road, still known as Calea lui Traian, was constructed along the line of the river Olt and through the Red Tower pass. After a strenuous campaign in a. d. 106 Trajan captured the Dacian capital Sarmizegetusa (near Hatszeg in Transylvania) . Decebalus preferred death by his own sword to falling into the hands of the enemy.

The Roman province of Dacia was now constituted. Legionary camps were stationed at strategic points and linked up by military roads. Colonists were brought from different parts of the Empire, and the adoption of Latin (to which are traceable about two-fifths of the words in the Romanian language) is one among many proofs that Romanization was complete.

The province seems to have included the eastern Banat, the mountain country of Transylvania, and Oltenia. The plains of Muntenia and Moldavia apparently remained outside the Empire, but were no doubt gradually Romanized.

The peaceful development of the country was first broken by the Marcomannic War in the reign of Marcus Aurelius (a.d. 161-80). Under the Emperor Commodus (a.d. 180-92) conflicts took place with the Dacians outside the province, with the result that 12,000 who had hitherto been free were transported within the Roman boundaries.

In the reign of Caracalla (211-17) began the series of wars culminating in the invasions of the Goths. The pressure of these became so strong about the middle of the third century that the Emperor Aurelian in the year a. d. 271 determined to withdraw the Roman frontier to the Danube. The authorities at Rome had for years been seeking a more defensible line. It seems probable that no attempt was made, at any rate on a large scale, to deport the Romanized inhabitants of the province.

SLAVS AND MAGYARS
There is no connected history of the country for the centuries following the Roman occupation. Gothic influence is said to be traceable in some place-names, and the famous gold treasure found in 1837 near Mt. Istrita is believed to have been buried there by Athanaric, king of the Visigoths. Later invaders, such as the Huns, Gepidae, and Avars, seem to have left no permanent mark. The descendants of the Romanized population had probably not yet spread far beyond the Carpathian foot-hills and would therefore be little affected by the successive waves of nomads which rolled along the plains.

In the meantime Slavonic tribes had occupied most of the area between the Balkans and the Carpathians (see Handbook of Bulgaria, pp. 52-4). Fusion between the Slav and the Daco-Roman population seems to have been easy, but little can be affirmed with confidence regarding the history of the country for several hundred years.

About the beginning of the tenth century the Magyars entered the lands which they now occupy, to become before long overlords of most of the adjoining territory. The earliest historical documents of Transylvania show the country as organized in a kind of feudal system which may have been developed much earlier. At the head of the scale were the Voivozi or Bani. Under them in rank, though later their equals, were the Knezi. Then came the Boieri (Knights), who might owe their nobility either to birth or to their tenure of some administrative office. All these nobles were free from direct taxation, but had to provide military service.

Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia In course of time the development in the power of the feudal lords led them to make attempts to secure complete independence. Thus it is believed that as the result of the increasing importance of one of the great families, the Basarab, the principality of Wallachia, or Muntenia, to give it its Romanian name, was founded by a Basarab prince after a victory over the Hungarians during the first quarter of the fourteenth century. Some years later another member of the same family, Bogdan, Voivod of Maramures in Transylvania, crossed the mountains with his followers and founded the principality of Moldavia.

The history of the two States which were destined to be united in the nineteenth century into the kingdom of Romania is for the next five hundred years largely a chronicle of civil and foreign wars. The succession to the office of Voivod (Prince) depended partly on heredity, partly on the choice of the nobility, acclaimed by a general assembly of the people. Naturally there were often rival claimants to the throne. Enemies from without had also to be met, for the Ottoman Turks were now rising to the height of their power in Europe.

Amid all the turmoil of wars the names of one or two rulers stand out pre-eminently. One of these is Mircea eel Mare (Mircea the Great), Voivod of Wallachia, whose reign was spent in almost incessant and generally successful conflict with the Turks. Documents of the period call him ‘ Master and Prince of Hungary, of the Duchies of Fagaras and Ami as beyond the mountains, Duke of the Banat of Severin and Master of both banks of the Danube as far as the Great Sea ; Lord of the fortress of Durostor (i. e. Silistra).

Before his death in 1418 Mircea made terms with his chief enemies. His treaty with the Sultan Mahomet I remained the basis of Ottoman suzerainty over Romania till 1877.

In Moldavia the greatest figure is that of Stefan eel Mare (Stephen the Great), who ascended the throne in 1457. He came to be recognized as far as Persia as the chief opponent of the Moslem in Europe, and his chivalrous spirit led him to make several attempts to unite the Christian nations against the common enemy. The rival ambitions of neighbouri noprinces, however, frustrated all such endeavours.

During Stephen’s reign Moldavia included the Bukovina ; the boundary to the east was the Dniester, while the river Milcov separated it from Wallachia on the west. The capital was at Jassy, to which Stephen transferred the seat of government from Suceava.

Before his death in 1504 the Moldavian prince advised his son Bogdan to submit to the Turks. As the suggestion was duly carried out, both Wallachia and Moldavia paid tribute to Constantinople.

TURKISH SUZERAINTY
The sixteenth century saw a gradual strengthening of the Turkish hold on the principalities. The ever-recurring feuds of rival pretenders to the throne were of great service to the Ottoman power. Candidates for the office of Hospodar (a Slavonic title = Lord), as the position of prince had come to be called from about the time of Mircea the Great, found it increasingly necessary to resort to bribery at Constantinople. Besides, the weakening of the two States by internal conflicts enabled the Porte to increase the amount of the tribute.

The natural wealth of the country, however, was such that even the heavy burdens it had to bear could not impoverish it beyond recovery. It is interesting also to note that in 1588 Petru Schiopul (Peter the Lame), Hospodar of Moldavia, concluded a commercial treaty with Queen Elizabeth of England. This agreement gave permission to all English subjects to settle in Moldavia for purposes of trade on payment of a customs-rate of only 3 per cent.

Under Mihai Viteazul (Michael the Brave) it seemed for a time that a new era had been inaugurated for the principalities. Michael came to the throne of Wallachia in 1593. In 1599 he was able to establish himself as ruler of Transylvania. He then turned his attention to Moldavia, expelled the reigning prince Jeremia Movila, and seized the throne, thus for the first time establishing a united Romanian kingdom.

It would be wrong, however, to regard Michael’s actions as inspired by any statesmanlike belief in the unity of the States occupied by men of Romanian blood. Personal ambition was the chief motive, and his work was not destined to be permanent. He was defeated in battle in the year 1600 and assassinated in 1601.

On Michael’s death the former condition of affairs was restored. The possession of power still remained the prize of the highest bidder at Constantinople, and for the next hundred years only two princes were able to retain their thrones for any length of time. These were Matei (Matthew) Basarab in Wallachia (1633-54), and in Moldavia Vasile Lupul (Basil the Wolf, 1634-53). Both owed their positions to a national revolt against Greek influence which had been gradually filtering into the country, chiefly through the religious houses. Both, however, realized that Greek support at Constantinople was essential to their remaining in power, and their reigns therefore show an increase in Greek influence. This was specially marked in Moldavia, as Basil himself was thoroughly Greek by education, and may not even have been Romanian by birth.

The reigns of both these princes were distinguished by reforms which were carried further by Serban Cantacuzino, a member of a Greek family which had migrated from Constantinople to Moldavia early in the sixteenth century. This prince became Hospodar of Wallachia in 1679. The country had been suffering not merely from the ravages of war but also from famine and pestilence. In Moldavia many of the common people sold themselves and their children as slaves to the Tatars in order to procure food. Serban Cantacuzino introduced the maize crop, which yields to-day the staple food of the Romanian peasant. He also reorganized the military system and finances, established a regular system of weights and measures, founded schools and set up printing-presses. The reign of this enlightened ruler was brought to an untimely end by poison in 1688.

In 1698, during the reign of Serban Cantacuzino’s successor, Constantin Brancovanu, the capital of Wallachia was transferred from Targoviste to Bucharest in order to be the more easily controlled by the Turkish Government. The growing power of Russia under Peter the Great was probably causing the Turks some anxiety, and in order to counteract Russian influence in the principalities a new system of election to the throne was instituted. In 1709 the reigning prince of Moldavia, Michael Racovita, was deposed for intriguing with Russia, and the dragoman Nicholas, son of Alexander Mavrogordato, was sent to administer its affairs.

PHANAEIOT REGIME
This was the beginning of what is known as the Phanariot regime, which before very long was extended to Wallachia as well. For more than a hundred years the thrones of the two principalities were to be occupied mainly by Greeks from the Phanar quarter in Constantinople. The hospodar was now appointed directly by the Porte, without reference to the nobility or people. It was to the pecuniary interest of the Turkish authorities to have as many changes of rulers as possible, for no prince was elected without a liberal distribution of bribes. Since at certain periods, however, the choice of election was limited to one or two families whom the Turks could trust, the loss of baksheesh implied in the prolonged tenure of office by one individual had to be overcome. This was done by making the rulers of the two principalities change places from time to time. And as Wallachia was the better prize, its prince for the time being was always as ready to spend money in order to maintain his position as his colleague in Moldavia was willing to use similar means of securing his own transference to the neighbouring State.

No private fortune was equal to the continual demands made on the ruler. Resort was inevitably had to taxation, the chief burden of which fell upon the peasantry. The taxgatherers were mostly Greeks, whose intolerable exactions forced many of the inhabitants to emigrate to Russia, Austria, Serbia, and Bulgaria. Much of the country went out of cultivation, while a parvenu class of nobility sprang up which owed its position simply to the wealth wrung from the toil of the people.

The interchange of rulers under the Phanariot regime, however, implied a certain similarity in the administration of the two States. It also helped to make it generally recognized that they were destined one day to be united.

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE
The defenceless state of the country during this period gave neighbouring powers frequent opportunities of interference. In 1769 Russia assumed a protectorate over the principalities, a position confirmed by the Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji in 1774. The articles of the treaty which affected the two States conceded the abolition of the gifts hitherto payable to Turkey in addition to the ordinary tribute, the free exercise of the Christian religion, and a general amnesty for all Romanians whose actions had compromised them with the Porte. In 1775 Austria, helped not a little by dishonest diplomacy, was able to annex the Bukovina from Moldavia.

In 1802 the treaty of 1774 was modified in some points, and it was stipulated that the princes of Wallachia and Moldavia should hold office for at least seven years. Further, they were not to be deposed without the consent of Russia. This agreement was broken by Turkey in 1806 when Constantin Ipsilanti and Alexandra Morusi, both friends of Russia, were deposed in furtherance of Napoleon’s schemes in eastern Europe.

In spite of this check, however, Russia gained ground steadily during the next twenty years at the expense of the nominal suzerain. In 1822 the Porte was obliged to yield to the demand of the boiers for native princes. The Phanariot regime thus finally came to an end with the election of loan Sturdza to the throne of Moldavia and Grigore Ghica to that of Wallachia. In 1829 the Treaty of Adrianople between Russia and Turkey gave the former an indemnity of £5,000,000 for the war which had just ended, with the right to occupy Moldavia and Wallachia till the money had been paid in full. A separate treaty stipulated that the hospodars should henceforth be elected for life, that the principalities should be allowed to raise a militia for the maintenance of public order, and that Turkey should retain no fortified place on the left bank of the Danube. By this treaty clearly the real suzerainty over the two States was transferred to Russia, all that was left to Turkey being the right to collect an annual tribute, and to invest the rulers in their office.

The commander-in-chief of the Russian army of occupation was Count Kiselev, whose energy and capacity were of immense service to the country in the years which followed. He dealt successfully with outbreaks of plague, cholera, and famine. His chief work, however, was the drafting of the regulations known as the Organic Law, which the Porte ratified. This code did not attempt to introduce sweeping reforms, but simply by regulating the various branches of administration to give the country some opportunity for development. It also limited the power of the princes by setting up an assembly of thirty-nine boiers under the presidency of the Metropolitan. That it did not do enough for the peasantry was due, not to Kiselev and Russian influence, but to the stubborn opposition of the boiers.

This opposition was the chief problem with which the rulers of the principalities had to deal. The old rivalry for the office of hospodar, if less likely now to result in civil war, made the disappointed candidates determined to obstruct every legislative measure of the reigning prince. Almost equally serious as a bar to the work of government was the attitude of the younger generation of politicians. Most of these had been educated abroad, mainly in Paris. All were inspired with French ideas of liberty which their rather unbalanced enthusiasm prompted them to apply to their own country. Most of them had been out of touch with the conditions of their native land for several years, and were not easily persuaded that the political formulae current in western Europe were hardly yet applicable to Wallachia and Moldavia. Naturally, too, nearly all of the younger men saw in Russia, the supporter of the regime then in existence, a despot resolved to prevent the spread of liberal ideas.

The two States could hardly fail to be influenced by the movements of 1848. An attempt at revolution in Moldavia was promptly suppressed. Many of the boiers were relegated to their estates. The younger revolutionaries were sent into exile, and a Russian army occupied the country.

In Wallachia a rising met with greater success. The reigning prince, Gheorghe Bibescu, was obliged to abdicate, and order was not finally restored till a Turkish army crossed the Danube and encamped outside Bucharest.

UNION OF WALLACHIA AND MOLDAVIA
The next few years were devoted to peaceful organization. During the past generation much had been done for education, largely through the enthusiasm of individuals. A spirit of nationalism, fostered by a similar spirit among the Romanians of Transylvania, was springing up. A more general interest began to be taken in the possibility of a union between the two States.

A great step in the direction of union had been taken in 1847 when the customs-dues between Wallachia and Moldavia were abolished. During the years of reorganization which succeeded 1848 the movement gained strength. A proposal for union was definitely brought forward in 1856 at the Treaty of Paris which brought the Crimean War to a close. A European commission was appointed to order the affairs of the principalities. In 1857 the meetings of rej)resentatives at Jassy and Bucharest voted in favour of union. The united principality was to be called Romania and its ruler chosen from one of the European ruling families, in order to obviate local jealousies.

Though the European convention at Paris in 1858 refused its consent to the Romanian proposals, the representatives of the principalities at Jassy and Bucharest decided to elect Colonel Cuza, who had been one of the young boiers sent into exile in 1848.

PRINCIPALITY OF ROMANIA
The union of Wallachia and Moldavia into the principality of Romania was thus accomplished. After a fresh conference in Paris had considered the question, Prince Cuza’s position was definitely recognized by the European Powers and Turkey in 1861. In 1862 a single assembly met at Bucharest and a single ministry was formed.

Cuza, however, was a native prince, and the old opposition of the other families continued. Even the great ability of the Premier, the Moldavian Cogalniceanu, could not surmount the obstacles put in his way. One important measure only was passed, the secularizing of the revenues of the monasteries, which had begun to be a menace to the civil power. By a law of December 1863 the superiors were expelled and most of the monasteries converted into hospitals or prisons. Over £1,000,000 was offered as compensation, but refused, and the money finally went into the Treasury.

In 1864 Cuza, finding all his measures blocked by the Assembly, had it dissolved and appealed to a plebiscite, which supported him by an overwhelming majority. An Agrarian Law was then passed, for which Prince Cuza is still remembered by the Romanian peasant. In 1864 an educational measure was carried which gave an opportunity for university education to the very poorest in the state.

Cuza’s neglect of the Constitution resulted in a coalition against him of the Conservatives and advanced Liberals. A secret society was formed and a paper founded called La Revue du Danube. One of the leading members of the society, M. loan Bratianu, set himself in Paris to gain French support by representing Cuza as the tool of Russia. In> the meantime the Romanian prince was regarded at Petrograd as the tool of France. The coalition eventually secured the support of the army, and in February 1866 Cuza was forced to abdicate. Philip, Count of Flanders, father of the present King of Belgium, was proclaimed prince, but refused the office, which was then offered to Prince Karl of the elder branch of the House of Hohenzollern (Sigmaringen).

Prince Carol (as he was to be called) accepted, on the advice of Bismarck, with the tacit consent of King William of Prussia and with the complete approval of Napoleon III. Austria and Prussia were at this moment on the brink of war, so the new ruler travelled in disguise down the Danube to meet with a brilliant reception at Turnu Severin.

The year 1866 marks the beginning of a new era for Romania. On July 11, 1867, a new Constitution was drawn up providing for an Upper and a Lower House of Representatives and giving the prince an absolute veto on legislation In October Prince Carol received his firman of office from his suzerain at Constantinople.

At this time Romania had no railways and few good roads. The natural wealth of the country therefore could not be exploited. Prince Carol was determined that the means of communication should be supplied, and a concession for the construction of the first Romanian railway, from Bucharest to Giurgiu, was granted in 1867.

In 1869 the army was reorganized under German instructors, a rural police was formed, and an important railway concession granted to a Prussian firm. In the same year the prince married Elizabeth of Wied, an ideal consort by reason of her devotion to the welfare of her adopted people and the literary powers by which she was to make their aspirations known to Europe.

Prince Carol had to suffer a period of extreme unpopularity during the Franco-Prussian War. The Latin sympathies of his people were altogether on the side of the French. Further, at the end of 1870 the Prussian firm which had received the railway concession of 1869 refused to pay the coupons of the bonds due on the 1st of January. The prince offered to abdicate, but the crisis passed. Feeling against Germany again reached a serious pitch when, through Bismarck’s influence, the Prussian Government announced its intention of holding Romania responsible for payment of the interest on the bonds. The Prussian demands were finally accepted, but left considerable bitterness behind.

Germany had, however, no really serious competitor in the economic field. Great Britain, as yet remained largely indifferent, and France after the war with Prussia was not in a .position to challenge German interests in Eastern Europe. A rapprochement with Austria, however, took place, partly as a natural result of the friction with Prussia.

On the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey in 1877 the Romanian Government, in view of the refusal of the Porte to grant any concessions, signed a secret treaty which permitted Russian troops to advance through Romanian territory. When affairs began to go badly for the Russians at Plevna, Romania entered the war, and its reorganized army turned the scale in Russia’s favour.

ROMANIAN INDEPENDENCE
Though Romania’ s services were generally acknowledged at the Congress of Berlin in 1878, they failed to secure the recompense hoped for by many Romanian patriots. Romanian independence was recognized, subject however to two conditions. The first of these was the retrocession to Russia of the southern portion of Bessarabia in exchange for Serpent Island, which lies in the Black Sea off the Danube delta, and for the part of the Dobruja north of a line running from the Danube below Silistra to the Black Sea a little south of Mangalia. The second condition was the abolition of the clause in the Romanian Constitution which stipulated that ‘ only Christians can become citizens of Romania ‘. Its object was the granting of political rights to the large Jewish population.

Apart from the delimitation of the frontier there was the question of the navigation of the Danube, which caused considerable friction with Austria-Hungary. After the main questions had been arranged the independence of Romania was formally recognized by the European Powers. On May 22, 1881, Prince Carol was invested with the insignia of his new title. His crown was made of metal from guns captured at Plevna, thus symbolizing Romania’s release from Turkish suzerainty.

The dominating figure in Romanian politics during these years was the Premier. M. loan Bratianu, who had formed his first cabinet in 1876.

In 1883 Romania joined the Triple Alliance. The convention was, however, kept secret and was not ratified by Parliament.

In 1884 alterations were made in the mode of election to the Houses of Parliament and in the number of members, trial by jury for press offences was instituted, and the civil list which had been settled in 1866 was increased by the assignment of domains to the Crown.

In the meantime dissatisfaction with the Government was increasing. Bratianu’s administration was partly opportunist, partly dictatorial, and had estranged most of the influential men in the country. By 1885 his position was definitely that of the leader of a bureaucraticToligarchy which disputed political supremacy with the old boier oligarchy of birth. The united opposition of several of the other political parties at length brought about the resignation of the Bratianu Government in 1888.

Perhaps the most important influence at work in Romania from this period onward was that of German and Austrian finance. German traders were supported by their banks, which enabled them to give long credits to the Romanian buyer. English, French, and Italian firms, not possessing a similar advantage, in most cases required payment for goods within a period of from three to six months. Nor must it be forgotten that most of the retail trade in Romania is in the hands of Jews, many of them emigrants from the Central Empires, whose native language is German (see p. 92).

By 1889 Germany had already the largest percentage of Romania’s total imports, a proportion which rose from 29 per cent, in that year to 40-33 per cent, in 1913. After Germany came Austria-Hungary, whose share, after 1891, averaged about 25 per cent.

Profiting also by the distaste of the Romanian for commercial life (see p. 80), German firms took in hand the exploitation of many of the country’s industries. Thus the manuf act ure of beer, paper, cloth, and cotton, the refining of sugar, and the exploitation of the forests came largely under German management. In the late nineties a contest between German firms and the American Standard Oil Company ended in favour of the former, and from that period till the outbreak of war German control of the petroleum industry developed steadily. In 1914 the proportion of German capital invested in Romanian oil was said to be 37 per cent, of the total. Apart from this there were numerous Romanian oil companies largely financed in Germany.

The expansion of Romanian trade resulted, in 1907, in the establishment of a Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

The year 1910 was marked by political developments. M. loan C. Bratianu, son of the great politician of the last generation, assumed the leadership of the Liberal party in succession to M. Dimitrie Sturdza. About the same time the brilliant politician M. Take Ionescu formed a new ‘ Conservative Democratic ‘ party.

BALKAN WAR AND TREATY OF BUCHAREST, 1913
In 1912 the war between Italy and Turkey, the events in the Balkans, and the closing of the Dardanelles caused an acute financial crisis which, with the new situation produced by the formation of the Balkan League, probably helped to bring about Romanian intervention in the Balkan War of 1913. (For the Balkan League see Handbook of Turkey, p. 41, and Handbook of Bulgaria, p. 66-7.)

Romania’s object in entering the second Balkan War was officially stated to be twofold : (1) to secure a strategic frontier against Bulgaria, and (2) to ensure that the situation in the Balkans should not be decided without reference to her interests. The immediate result of her intervention was the bringing of the war to a close, Bulgaria announcing that no opposition would be offered to the Romanian army.

The Treaty of Bucharest dealt almost exclusively with territorial adjustments. The new frontier established between Romania and Bulgaria was practically that which Romania had asked for in 1878 when she had to cede part of Bessarabia to Russia (see p. 125), but a territorial adjustment which would have provoked little opposition from the Bulgars in 1878 was differently regarded in 1913. Bulgaria in the meantime had risen to the position of an independent state. Also the clause stipulating that the fortifications of Rustchuk and Shumla should be dismantled was resented. Much more serious than the resentment of Bulgaria, however, was that of Germany. For though there was an interchange of congratulatory telegrams between the Kaiser and King Carol, it was recognized on both sides that the Treaty of Bucharest was a heavy blow to German ambitions in the Balkans. It had seriously impaired the solidarity of the Triple Alliance, which Italy’s war with Turkey had already affected adversely in the preceding year.

Attempts were made during the next few months to secure concessions from the Hungarian Government with respect to the Romanian population in Transylvania. The vague promises made by Count Tisza were, however, regarded as insufficient, and only served to bring about a rapprochement between Romania and Russia.

ROMANIA AND THE WAR, 1914-18
In January 1914 a Liberal Government was formed under M. I. C. Bratianu. When the European War broke out the King summoned the Cabinet, the leaders of the Opposition, exPrime Ministers, and ex-Presidents of the Senate. Among those who were present at this meeting, pro-German sympathies were represented chiefly by MM. Carp, Maiorescu, and Roseti, and in a lesser degree by M. Marghiloman, while M. I. Lahovary and M. N. Filipescu stood for friendship with Russia and France. M. Take Ionescu’s attitude was determined by his passionate desire for the realization of Romanian unity.

Before this council King Carol laid a proposal for Romania’s intervention on the side of the Central Powers. To this course he was urged partly by personal sympathy, partly on account of the secret convention of 1883, and partly also because he believed that Germany and her allies were certain to win the war. It was a bitter disappointment to the King when he found himself supported only by M. Carp. The Council decided on a policy of neutrality, and when the King appealed to the opinion of the army the officers, by a large majority, also gave their verdict against the royal proposal. The shock of this failure may have hastened King Carol’s death, which took place on October 11, 1914. The speech of his successor, King Ferdinand, when Parliament opened at the end of November, made it clear that the policy of the Government would be determined by Romanian ideals and not by dynastic considerations. The direction in which these ideals would lead the country was not at first obvious : as competitive factors there were on the one side the close political and economic relations of Romania with the Central Powers ; on the other, her traditions and history as a Latin state. In October 1914 an understanding was arrived at with Russia by which Transylvania was promised to Romania in return for neutrality on her part. As the Russians pressed into Galicia and Italian intervention appeared imminent, Romanian opinion hardened against the Central Powers and in favour of an advance across the Carpathians, but the difficulty of reaching an agreement with Russia over territorial questions, the failure to establish a passage through the Dardanelles and thus to open a route for the supply of munitions, and the Russian retreat from the Dunajec, were among the causes which delayed the participation of Romania in the war. Surrounded by German, Austrian, v and Bulgarian armies, she could not intervene on behalf of Serbia when that country was overrun.

During the early months of 1915, however, a split occurred in the Conservative party on the subject of intervention, and Marghiloman and Filipescu became leaders of the groups favouring the Central and the Entente Powers respectively. Later the parties of Filipescu and Take Ionescu were fused, thus strengthening the interventionist side. Finally, on August 27, 1916, the King announced at a Crown Council that he had decided on immediate war with Austria-Hungary. Next day Germany declared war on Romania, and on September 1 Bulgaria followed suit.

The Romanian front fell into three well-marked divisions : (1) the mountainous Transylvanian front from the meetingpoint of Austria, Hungary, and Romania to Orsova, near the meeting-point of Serbia, Hungary, and Romania ; the Danube front, from Orsova for 270 miles to a point 10 miles west of Tutrakan ; the front from the Danube to the Black Sea, separating the Romanian province of the Dobruja from Bulgaria for a distance of about 100 miles. The indirect means of defence along the Danube sufficed to make it certain that for purposes of active warfare there were only two theatres — Transylvania and the Dobruja. The advantage in railway communications in both places were on the side of the enemy, but strategical and sentimental reasons decided the prosecution of an offensive in Transylvania, and three of the four Romanian armies were sent to invade the country from the south, east, and north, with the middle course of the River Maros as a common objective. This would have formed an almost impregnable and a strategically dominant position, but the Romanian armies were insufficient to keep in contact over the great length of the Transylvanian frontier, and the advance had only just begun when they were further weakened by a withdrawal of valuable forces and of General Averescu (in command of the second army) to re-establish the seriously threatened position in the Dobruja. By the end of September 1916, which marks the high tide of the Romanian advance, the fourth army, in the north, had got within some 15 miles of Szasz-Regen, had passed Parajd, the eastern terminus of the railway in the Little Kokel valley, and had advanced within a short distance of Schassburg in the Great Kokel valley. The second army was meanwhile approaching Schassburg from the south and advancing to the west beyond Fogaras. None ot the first army, to the south, had made any considerable progress, or had yet been reached by the forces operating from the east when the enemy counter-attack came down on them.

On September 1, the day war was declared, enemy troops began to cross the frontier in the Dobruja. On September 4 Dobrich, an important road and railway centre, was taken, the weak Romanian forces being unable to resist the Bulgarians, who also took several places on the coast. This move in the eastern Dobruja was, however, only preliminary. By September 6 the left wing of the Bulgarian army had advanced on and taken Tutrakan ; Silistra was evacuated, and the enemy pressed on along the Danube. On September 16 a pitched battle between the main forces developed along the line Rashova-Copadinu-Tuzla, the Bulgarians having the Cernavoda bridge and railway as their objective. General Averescu, with three divisions, was withdrawn from the Transylvania front, only to be sent back a month later when in turn the position in Transylvania had become grave. The Bulgarians were routed, but took up strong defensive positions fifteen miles in the rear, circumscribing the Romanian capacity for concentration in the Dobruja by their occupation of important points of communication such as Silistra and Tutrakan.

The German counter-offensive in Transylvania had the bulk of the Romanian army in full retreat by the early part of October 1916, and by October 10 the frontier had been reached along the whole front, but the withdrawal was covered by gallant rearguard actions ; during its last stages the enemy was not even in touch, and the movement was carried out without demoralization. About the middle of the month a French military mission under General Berthelot arrived to advise the Romanian General Staff. The enemy offensive now opened its second stage in the Carpathian passes. He had reached the Red Tower pass towards the end of September, and his attack south of Kronstadt attained its full development by October 15. Concurrently Mackensen took the Danube crossings in the Dobruja at Cernavoda and Harsova. By a Russian offensive he was driven back some distance, but retained the central belt of the Dobruja and the Cernavoda-Constanta railway, whilst Falkenhayn advanced from 5 to 15 miles south of Kronstadt during the first half of November 1916. By November 18, after more than a month’s fighting in the Wallachian passes, the Germans forced a way into Romania and reached Craiova on November 21.

With the breakdown of the Romanian defences along the frontier ridge began the third and shortest stage of the German offensive, the conquest of Wallachia up to Bucharest, which was occupied on December 6, 1916. The fourth stage, in which the evacuation of Wallachia and of the Dobruja by the Romanians was completed and the battle front withdrawn to the Sereth line, followed, and the enemy advance was brought to a standstill about the middle of January 1917, on a line running close to the frontier of Moldavia from the north down to the Gyimes Pass, and then from about Agas in the Trotus valley to Vadeni, south of Galatz, leaving Ocna to the Romanians and Focsani to the Germans.

At the beginning of July 1917 the reorganized Romanian army was ready to take the field again, but any important action on the Sereth was abandoned owing to the Russian situation in Galicia, which forced the Romanians to send troops north to guard the menaced frontier. From August 6 to 15 the Germans endeavoured to force the Romanians and Russians back from the Sereth, with little success in spite of the defection of many Russian troops. A further violent but unsuccessful attack along the railway was the last important operation undertaken by the Germans on the Sereth, and was Mackensen’s first serious set-back in the Balkans. After this only minor engagements took place, the Germans having shifted their troops to the north, and the Romanians being unable to undertake another offensive alone when there was no further hope of help from Russia. The Germans next attacked in the Carpathians on August 10, threatening the important Targu-Ocna railway. The Romanian troops were withdrawn to the line Campanile Manastirea-Voloscani, and the enemy offensive was brought to a standstill by August 20, after which only local although persistent operations were undertaken. From the second half of September the efforts of the Germans were vainly directed to demoralizing the Romanian troops as they had the Russians.

During December 1917 practically all the Russian troops in Romania were withdrawn, and in January 1918 the Romanian army facing the invader was further depleted by the military and political necessity of sending forces to Bessarabia (see below) ; the Bolshevist Government of Russia was hostile, and Romania was cut off from her allies. The Germans, taking advantage of this situation, required the Romanian Government to decide, at four days’ notice, whether it would treat for peace with the Central Powers . The majority of the Romanian generals stated that further resistance for any considerable period was impossible ; MM. Bratianu,and Take Ionescu refused to subscribe to peace, and resigned, and General Averescu formed a government without them. On March 5, 1918, a preliminary declaration was signed under which Romania ceded the Dobruja as far as the Danube, accepted in principle the frontier rectifications demanded by Austria-Hungary, and undertook to demobilize the major part of her army (sharing the control of this process with the Higher Command of Mackensen’s army group), to support the transport through Moldavia and Bessarabia of Austro-German troops to Odessa, and to dismiss officers of Powers at war with the Central Powers, who were still in Romanian service.

Averescu now resigned, and a new administration was formed by M. Marghiloman, who was friendly to the Central Powers and was supported by them. On March 26 the principal political, territorial, and military articles of the peace treaty — the ‘ peace ‘ of Bucharest — were initialled, and it was signed on May 7. It dealt first in detail with the demobilization of the Romanian forces and the establishment of German military control. In regard to this cession of territory, Romania ceded to Bulgaria (subject to frontier rectifications) that part of the Dobruja which she had received under the treaty of Bucharest in 1913. The remainder of the Dobruja up to the Danube, including the port of Constanta, was ceded to a condominium of the Allied Powers, who assured to Romania a trade route to the Black Sea via Constanta. A district of some 2,000 square miles, containing 170 villages and over 130,000 inhabitants (purely Romanian), was annexed to Hungary ; Austria received about 920 square miles south of Czernowitz, and the total cession of territory by Romania amounted to more than 10,000 square miles, with a population exceeding 800,000. The army of occupation reserved the right to requisition cereals, fodder, wool, meat, timber, oil, &c, with nominal regard for the needs of the country. A new Danube Navigation Act was to be concluded, as stated elsewhere (Chapter VIII), and reference will be found in other pages to the legal and political supplementary treaty (which included provisions thinly disguising the payment of an indemnity by Romania) and to the Petroleum Agreement (Chapter VII) by which Germany attempted to secure control of the Romanian oil-fields. It is unnecessary now to detail further arrangements connected with the peace, but the following summary may be quoted : ‘ The Central Powers refrained from exacting a cash indemnity ; they imposed it in kind, in the shape of the writing off of their requisitions in Romania to the value of some £50,000,000. The Romanian State deposits which early in the war had been conveyed to Moscow for credit purposes were subsequently transferred to the account of the Central Powers. The fiscal domination of Romania was completed by stipulations compelling her to give most-favoured-nation treatment to Germany and Austria without regard to any arrangements which they might make among themselves. On petroleum no export dues were to be levied. Germans, moreover, were to be at liberty to buy up Romanian land at discretion. Romania was tied down to her fixed tariff rates, while Germany reserved complete freedom as regards a whole series of tariff questions. Germany secured control of the Romanian railways and a shipbuilding yard on the Danube. Under the pretence of supplying the Romanian railways with rolling-stock, Germany secured a monopoly of such supplies, and a permanent right to supervise the railways. Railway rates were settled in German favour. A special agreement was concluded for the regulation of postal and telegraph traffic between Germany and Romania, the provision of a direct telephone service, and a German monopoly until 1950 for laying cables on the Romanian coast.’ It is perhaps desirable to carry the survey of these arrangements thus far, in order to show not only what the Central Powers proposed to do, but what remained to Romania to be undone.

It has already been mentioned that in January 1918 Romania had dispatched forces to Bessarabia ; this was done in response to appeals from the Council of that country, which was threatened with an immediate prospect of anarchy under Bolshevist influence, while there was a great bulk of Romanian stores and supplies there. A Romanian expeditionary force reached Kishinev at the end of the month, and subsequently Marghiloman (backed by Germany, who had no objection, once her domination over Romania was established, to this territorial extension of her temporary vassal) succeeded, in April, 1918, in arranging a treaty of union between Romania and Bessarabia, on the terms that the latter should retain both local autonomy and full representation in the Romanian Government and Parliament. The official Romanian attitude of the time was one of satisfaction at the return of this territory to Romania after more than a century, and there was some disposition to regard it as an offset against the loss of the Dobruja.

The Romanian Government at Jassy now took in hand a number of reforms to which reference is made elsewhere in this volume. Marghiloman, while laying down that the King could not constitutionally be made responsible for the war, and denying the existence of any machinations against the dynasty on the part of the Central Powers, moved for the impeachment of Bratianu, Take Ionescu, and other supporters of the Entente. Suddenly, in November, 1918, the whole fabric of the German domination in Romania collapsed ; on the 9th Romania again entered the war ; on the 11th an ultimatum to Mackensen gave him 24 hours to withdraw his troops. The Bucharest treaty was annulled ; Marghiloman resigned. A new ministry was formed under General Coanda, the army was rapidly restored to a war footing, and the vast task of restoring the ravaged country could at last be undertaken in earnest.

(A Hand Book of Romania, © 1920 by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, London)

IMAGINE THIS IS YOUR MONEY…and pray to God you get to keep it, you earned it …


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officialpublicnotices.blogspot.com/

“We Buy Houses Fast Cash!” – sign torn down fast, for free


Image by Wayan Vota
Driving home, I saw a woman putting up this commercial sign on a public lampost in Petworth. This made me angry – too many of these signs are in our neighbourhood, get rich quick types praying on those hurt by the great recession. So I took this sign down, chased down the person who put it up, and said "excuse me, you forgot your sign".

We don’t need cash-quick types in Petworth.

LET US ALL APPLY FOR OUR SHARE OF THE STIMULUS…


Image by roberthuffstutter
No matter what anyone says, it’s always the money that matters. No getting around it. If wasn’t for the ”money” the halls of congress would be substantially less crowded.

To read the remainder of this article, and more on this subject, click here: www.mypayadvance.co.uk To read more about Cash Advances and Payday Loans, click here: www.mypayadvance.co.uk
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William Huskisson M. P. plaque


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From Public Sculpture of Sussex

"On 15 September 1830, at the opening ceremonies for the world’s first ever passenger steam railway (between Liverpool and Manchester), Huskisson was run over and killed by Stephenson’s Rocket because he had not taken sufficient care before crossing the track to start a conversation with the Duke of Wellington. He lived for a few hours after the accident, was lucid enough to dictate and sign a codicil to his will, and met his end with dignity.
He had been politically instrumental in bringing about the new and very visible triumph of technology that was the Liverpool and Manchester railway line.

William Huskisson was born in Worcestershire in 1770. In 1793 he entered parliament as MP for Morpeth, Northumberland. In 1804 he was elected for the constituency of Liskeard and became Secretary of the Treasury. He held the same appointment in Portland’s ministry of 1804-09. In 1811 he became a Commissioner of the Woods and Forests. In 1823 he was appointed as President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy in Liverpool’s ministry. Under Wellington he was Colonial Secretary but resigned in 1828.
Huskisson had threatened to resign on a number of occasions. Wellington may have been completely wearied by Huskisson’s constant threats to resign. Huskisson’s tendered his resignation over what was to be done with the two parliamentary seats that were to be disenfranchised for corruption in 1828 (Penryn and East Retford) – not expecting his resignation accepted. Wellington perhaps was glad of an excuse to remove him.
Charles Greville wrote about Huskisson, soon after his death:
Huskisson was about sixty years old, tall, slouching, and ignoble-looking. In society he was extremely agreeable, without much animation, generally cheerful, with a great deal of humour, information, and anecdote, gentlemanlike, unassuming, slow in speech, and with a down-cast look, as if he avoided meeting anybody’s gaze. … As a speaker in the House of Commons he was luminous upon his own subject, but he had no pretensions to eloquence; his voice was feeble, and his manner ungraceful…
[Greville Diaries, 18 September 1830]
There was a similar monument of Huskisson in his toga at the top of Princess Avenue, Liverpool. After the riots of 1981 the bronze statue, some 10 to 15 foot tall, was pulled down by people who thought he was a slave trader. Damage was sustained, the head was nearly smashed off. It lay unceremoniously in a council car park until 1984. The statue is now housed at the Oratory, St James’s Mount Gardens. Another statue of Huskisson, dressed in a Roman Toga, stands on the the banks of the Thames in the borough of Westminster.
(http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/people/huskisso.htm)

William Huskisson was the son of William, the second son of William Huskisson of Oxley, near Wolverhampton. He was born at Birch Moreton Court, Warwickshire, on 11 March 1770. His mother, Elizabeth, daughter of John Rotton of Staffordshire, died in 1774, and in the following year William was sent to school, first at Brewood, then at Albrighton in Staffordshire, and afterwards at Appleby in Leicestershire. At an early age he showed mathematical ability. In 1783 his maternal great-uncle, Dr. Gem, a well-known medical man residing in Paris, where he had been physician to the British embassy since 1762, undertook his education. For some years he lived at Paris in the society of French liberals, and made the acquaintance of Franklin and Jefferson. He is said to have entered Boyd & Ker’s bank in Paris for a time, but this is very doubtful. He was present at the fall of the Bastille, and in 1790 he joined the ‘Club of 1789,’ a monarchical constitutional club, before which on 29 August 1790 he read a discourse on the currency, which was printed and much applauded. When the French government decided upon the issue of assignats he separated himself from this club. About the same time he was introduced, through Dr. John Warner, the chaplain to the embassy, to Lord Gower (subsequently Marquis of Stafford), then British ambassador at Paris, whose private secretary he became. They remained intimate friends all their lives. On 10 August 1792, after the attack on the Tuileries, he was instrumental in enabling its governor, M. de Champcenetz, to make his escape from the populace. On the recall of the embassy in 1792 Huskisson returned to England. For some time he remained an inmate of Lord Gower’s household in England, and thus became well acquainted with Pitt.
By the death of his father in 1790 he became entitled to such of the family estates at Oxley in Staffordshire as remained unalienated, but they were neither extensive nor unencumbered, and, finding himself a poor man, he was glad to avail himself of the offer of a new office, created under the Alien Act, for making arrangements with the émigrés. In this employment, for which his knowledge of the French people and language well fitted him, he became acquainted with Canning, and his talents recommended him to Pitt and Dundas.
In 1795 he succeeded Sir Evan Nepean, on his promotion to be secretary to the admiralty, in the office of under secretary at war. The business of the office was practically done by Huskisson, Dundas, his chief, being otherwise occupied, and it was he who superintended the arrangements for Sir Charles Grey’s expedition to the West Indies. His friendship with Lord Carlisle procured him in 1796 the representation of Morpeth; but, always diffident of his own abilities and conscious that he was no orator, he did not speak in the House of Commons until February 1798. In January 1801 he resigned with Pitt, but at the request of Lord Hobart, the new secretary at war, who was unfamiliar with the work of the office, he remained at his post until the battle of Alexandria in March 1801. An unfounded charge was made at the time that Huskisson made use of his knowledge of official secrets in stockjobbing operations, in which he engaged with Talleyrand. Meantime, on the death of Dr. Gem in 1800, he inherited an estate at Eastham, Sussex, then occupied by Hayley, the biographer of Cowper, and another in Worcestershire. This rendered his position in public life unembarrassed.
In 1802 he contested Dover, but was beaten by Trevanion and Spencer Smith, the government candidates, and did not re-enter parliament till February 1804, when he was elected for Liskeard. There was a double return, and a petition was presented against him, but he kept his seat. On the recall of Pitt to office (May 1804) he was appointed a secretary to the treasury, but when the ‘Talents’ administration came in (January 1806) he retired, and went into active opposition. He moved a number of financial resolutions in July 1806, which the chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Henry Petty, was obliged to accept. At the general election in the autumn of 1807 he was again returned for Liskeard; was made secretary to the treasury again in the Duke of Portland’s ministry in April 1807; and at the ensuing general election was returned for Harwich, which seat he retained till 1812.
Up to this time Huskisson had rarely engaged in general debate, but had rested content with his reputation as a man of business. In 1808 he took a large share in the rearrangement of the relations between the Bank of England and the treasury, and in 1809 he undertook the reply to Colonel Wardle’s motion on public economy. In the same year the Duke of Richmond, the Irish viceroy, was anxious that he should succeed Sir Arthur Wellesley as chief secretary, but his services could not be spared by the English government. Though not personally concerned in the dispute which brought about Canning’s resignation in 1809, he resigned with him out of loyalty to his friend, and in his private capacity in parliament remained for some time little noticed. But in 1810 he published his pamphlet on the ‘Depreciation of the Currency,’ which at once met with success and earned him the reputation of being the first financier of the age. In the debates on the Regency Bill he adhered to Canning’s views, and in January 1811, when he was sounded about joining the regent’s ministry, he rejected the overture. In the following year, if Canning had joined Lord Liverpool, Huskisson would have been chief secretary to the viceroy and chancellor of the Irish exchequer. His adherence to Canning retarded the advance of his public career by many years, and allowed Peel and Robinson, of whom one was his junior and the other much his inferior, to pass him in the race. During this year he became colonial agent for Ceylon. That post, which was worth £4,000 a year, he held till 1823.
At the general election in the autumn of 1812 Huskisson was elected for Chichester. He made several speeches on currency questions in March 1813, and on Sir Henry Parnell’s motion on the corn laws he brought forward for the first time his scale of graduated prohibitory duties. Next year on 6 August he succeeded Lord Glenbervie, in Lord Liverpool’s ministry, in the woods and forests department, and was sworn of the privy council on 29 July 1814. He quickly mastered the special duties of his office.
In 1815 was passed the first corn law, which absolutely prohibited the importation of corn when the price fell below a certain minimum average, and Huskisson took a prominent part in the debates on the bill. In May 1816 he spoke in the bank restriction debates in favour of leaving to the bank the determination of the time, not to exceed two years, within which they might continue the restriction on gold payments; but two years afterwards he was in favour of granting the bank a further extension of time. He usually voted for Roman catholic emancipation without speaking, and very seldom intervened in a debate on foreign policy. One of his rare speeches on general topics was made in 1821 on Lord Tavistock’s motion for a vote of censure on the government for its behaviour to the queen. In 1819 he became a member of the finance committee, and his speech on the chancellor of the exchequer’s income and expenditure resolutions probably saved the government from defeat. He also addressed to Lord Liverpool an important memorandum on the resumption of cash payments.
In 1821 he was a member of the committee appointed on Gooch’s motion to inquire into the prevalence of agricultural distress, and the report of the committee was principally drafted by him; but his speeches on taxation in the same year gave rise, not unnaturally, to a distrust of him among the agricultural party, which was never afterwards removed. He felt his position in the government to be unsatisfactory, though he did not resign with Canning in that year, and when, at the end of 1821, a rearrangement of the administration was projected and the Irish secretaryship was offered him, he at once refused the post. In February 1822 Huskisson spoke against Lord Londonderry’s proposal to lend £4,000,000 for the relief of agricultural distress, and on 29 April and 6 May succeeded in defeating Lord Liverpool’s first resolution on the report of the committee on agricultural distress. Thereupon he tendered his resignation, which Lord Liverpool refused, and Huskisson shortly after did excellent service in fighting the country party single-handed on Western’s motion for a select committee to inquire into the consequences of the resumption of cash payments, and carried an amendment in the terms of Montague’s resolution of 1696, ‘that this House will not alter the standard of gold or silver in fineness, weight, or denomination’.
When Canning rejoined the ministry as foreign secretary in September 1822, he failed in an endeavour to obtain for his friend the presidency of the board of control, with cabinet rank. On 31 January, however, Huskisson was promoted to the treasurership of the navy, and on 5 April to the board of trade, holding both offices together, and he was soon afterwards admitted to the cabinet. The board of trade was an office in which his special knowledge and his advanced free-trade opinions were certain to make him conspicuous. Accordingly, as Canning was retiring from the representation of Liverpool, which he found too laborious for his new position, Huskisson was selected to succeed him as the only tory able to conciliate the Liverpool merchants, and after a hollow contest he was elected, 15 February 1823. Huskisson thus became the prominent representative of mercantile interests in parliament. He was soon active in office, and introduced a bill for regulating the silk manufactures, but owing to the sweeping character of the lords’ amendment he dropped it for that session, and did not pass it till 1824. He also introduced and passed a merchant vessels’ apprenticeship bill, a bill to remove the restrictions on the Scottish linen manufacture, and a registration of ships bill. He announced his intention of moving the repeal of the Spitalfields acts, and supported Joseph Hume’s motion for a select committee on the combination laws, which led ultimately to their repeal.
The year 1825 was one of great activity for him. With the assistance of James Deacon Hume of the board of trade, he completed the consolidation into eleven acts of the whole of the existing revenue laws. He obtained a select committee to inquire into the relations of employers and employed, the result of which was the passing of an act which regulated the relations of capital and labour for forty years. One object of his policy was at the same time to give England cheap sugar; and he also amended the revenue laws in the direction of a modified free trade in regard to other commodities, reducing the old duties on foreign cotton goods, which ranged from 50 to 75 per cent., according to quality, to a uniform 10 per cent. duty on all qualities; on woollen goods from 50 and 67¾ per cent. to 15 per cent., and similar reductions were made in the duty on glass, paper, bottles, foreign earthenware, copper, zinc, and lead.
Early in 1825 Huskisson foresaw the crisis to which excessive speculation was leading. His warnings were neglected, and when the panic came he was accused of having caused it by his policy of free trade. Meanwhile he was busily occupied in negotiations with the American government about the north-western boundary, the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and the slave trade. In 1826 the Liverpool merchants presented him, in acknowledgment of the success of his policy, with a service of plate. He took a prominent part in the debates on the Bank Charter and the Promissory Notes Acts, and on 24 February 1826 delivered what Canning called ‘one of the very best speeches that I ever heard in the House of Commons’ against Ellice’s motion for a committee on the silk trade. Later on, in speaking upon Whitmore’s motion for a committee on the corn laws, Huskisson, though advocating delay in their repeal, admitted his dislike of the existing system. During the autumn he assisted Lord Liverpool in preparing a new corn bill. The labour thus involved, and the calumnies to which his economic policy had exposed him, permanently injured his health. On 7 May he vindicated his commercial policy against the attacks made upon it by Gascoyne in his motion for a committee on the shipping interest. The speech, which was afterwards published, was one of his best efforts. His corn bill was duly introduced, but was abandoned owing to the opposition of the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords.
Huskisson was travelling in the Tyrol to recruit his health when the news of Canning’s death reached him (August 1827). He hastened home. At Paris a message from Lord Goderich, the new prime minister, offered him the colonial office, with the lead of the House of Commons. His friends urged that there was no other way of securing the continuation of Canning’s policy, and he accepted the offer on 23 September 1827. Had he chosen he might have been chancellor of the exchequer. Dissensions soon broke out between him and John Charles Herries, the chancellor of the exchequer, about the appointment of Lord Althorp as chairman of the committee of finance. Huskisson, as leader of the house, insisted upon his nomination; Herries, as chancellor of the exchequer, complained that he had been slighted by not being previously consulted. The dispute grew so severe that Lord Goderich resigned, and was succeeded by the Duke of Wellington.
Huskisson decided to continue in office, and was re-elected at Liverpool without opposition. In addressing his constituents he said that the duke had acceded to his stipulations in favour of the continuance of free trade and Canning’s foreign policy. The duke on the earliest opportunity denied this, and Huskisson was obliged to withdraw the statement in the House of Commons on 18 February. The tension between himself and the duke soon became acute. At several cabinets in March a difference of opinion arose on the amendment to the corn bill with regard to the taking of corn out of warehouse, which the duke proposed and insisted upon. Peel and Huskisson were both against it. Huskisson tendered his resignation, but a compromise which he suggested was accepted, and he remained in office. Shortly afterwards it became necessary to decide what should be done with the two seats which would be available for redistribution upon the disfranchisement of Penryn and East Retford for extensive corrupt practices. The duke was for giving both seats to the adjacent hundreds; Huskisson, Palmerston, and Dudley were for bestowing them upon large manufacturing towns.
In the House of Commons Peel advocated a compromise by giving Penryn to Manchester and East Retford to the hundred. Huskisson on 21 March pledged himself to give one seat to a manufacturing town. In the lords it was decided by the government, first, not to deal with both cases together; secondly, to give the Penryn seat to the hundred. In committee of the House of Commons, when the East Retford case came up, it was moved on 19 May to give that seat also to the hundred of Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire. Huskisson and Palmerston, in the belief that the cabinet held that morning had resolved on leaving East Retford an open question, voted against the ministry. Immediately after leaving the house Huskisson wrote to the duke offering to resign if he considered that the interest of the government would be better served by a resignation. The duke had long felt that Huskisson, who entered the administration as the successor to Canning’s position, was in some sort his rival. He treated Huskisson’s letter as an actual resignation, although Huskisson explained that he only meant to tender it if the duke thought fit to demand it, and he repudiated any formal offer of resignation. But the duke was inflexible, and laid the matter before the king. Huskisson demanded a personal audience of his majesty, but this was refused, and the resignation was definitively completed on the 29th, when he gave up the seals and received expressions of the king’s personal regret at his loss. Although he explained in the House of Commons the summary mode by which he had been removed, his party censured him for imperilling the ministry by an ill-timed and factious resignation.
Huskisson appeared little in parliament during the remainder of the session, and, his health failing, he spent the autumn abroad. In 1828 he supported the Roman Catholic Emancipation Bill; made a great speech on the silk trade, and took up the study of Indian questions. In consequence the governorship of Madras was offered him, and he was sounded about the governor-generalship of India, but the state of his health made his acceptance of either post impossible. He was, however, an active member of the East India committee, especially on matters referring to the China trade. During the session of 1829 he was unusually prominent in debate. He made several speeches in favour of moderate reform, warned the ministry that some change was inevitable, and supported Lord John Russell’s proposal to confer additional parliamentary representation on Leeds, Liverpool, and Manchester. During 1830 his health grew worse, and, though he was able to attend the king’s funeral in July, he was seriously ill.
He went to Liverpool in September for the opening of the Manchester and Liverpool railway, and was received warmly by his constituents. On 15 September he attended the opening ceremony. A procession of trains was run from Liverpool. Parkside was reached without mishap. There the engines stopped for water, and the travellers, contrary to instructions, left the carriages and stood upon the permanent way, which consisted of two lines of rails. Huskisson went to speak to the Duke of Wellington, to whom, in spite of their recent disagreement, he felt bound, as member for Liverpool, to show courtesy. At that moment several engines were seen approaching along the rails between which Huskisson was standing. Everybody made for the carriages on the other line. Huskisson, by nature uncouth and hesitating in his motions, had a peculiar aptitude for accident. He had dislocated his ankle in 1801, and was in consequence slightly lame. Thrice he had broken his arm, and after the last fracture, in 1817, the use of it was permanently impaired.
On this occasion he lost his balance in clambering into the carriage and fell back upon the rails in front of the Dart, the advancing engine. It ran over his leg; he was placed upon an engine and carried at its utmost speed to Eccles, where he was taken to the house of the vicar. He lingered in great agony for nine hours, but gave his last directions calmly and with care, expiring at 9 p.m. He was buried with a public ceremonial in Liverpool on the 24th.
Huskisson achieved little success in public life compared with that which his rare abilities should have commanded. His adherence to Canning, combined with a coldness of manner, probably accounts for much of his failure. Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne, told Greville that, in his opinion, Huskisson was the greatest practical statesman he had known, the one who best united theory with practice. Sir James Stephen’s judgment on him was almost the same. As a speaker he was luminous and convincing, but he made no pretence to eloquence; his voice was feeble and his manner ungraceful. Sir Egerton Brydges, in his Autobiography speaks of him as ‘a wretched speaker with no command of words, with awkward motions, and a most vulgar, uneducated accent,’ but this accent seems to have worn off in later life.
Greville describes him as ‘tall, slouching, and ignoble-looking. In society extremely agreeable without much animation; generally cheerful, with a good deal of humour, information, and anecdote; gentlemanlike, unassuming, slow in speech, and with a downcast look as if he avoided meeting anybody’s gaze. There is no man in parliament, or perhaps out of it, so well versed in finance, commerce, trade, and colonial matters; it is nevertheless remarkable that it is only within the last five or six years that he acquired the great reputation which he latterly enjoyed. I do not think he was looked upon as more than a second-rate man, till his speeches on the silk trade and the shipping interest, but when he became president of the board of trade he devoted himself with indefatigable application to the maturing and reducing to practice those commercial improvements with which his name is associated, and to which he owes all his glory and most of his unpopularity.’
He married, on 6 April 1799, Elizabeth Mary, younger daughter of Admiral Mark Milbanke, who survived him. There was no issue of the marriage. Though so impoverished on entering public life that he sold the family estate at Oxley, his personalty was sworn, 15 November 1830, under £60,000. He received on 17 May 1801 a pension of £1,200 per annum, nominal, £900 actual, with a remainder of £615 to his widow; and in 1828 he received a second pension of £3,000 a year.
There is a plaque on the spot where the accident happened that reads:

THIS TABLET
A TRIBUTE OF PERSONAL RESPECT AND AFFECTION
HAS BEEN PLACED HERE TO MARK THE SPOT WHERE ON THE
13TH. OF SEPT. 1830 THE DAY OF THE OPENING OF THIS RAILROAD
THE RIGHT HONBLE. WILLIAM HUSKISSON M.P.
SINGLED OUT BY THE DECREE OF AN INSCRUTABLE PROVIDENCE FROM
THE MIDST OF THE DISTINGUISHED MULTITUDE THAT SURROUNDED HIM.
IN THE FULL RIDE OF HIS TALENTS AND THE PERFECTION OF HIS
USEFULNESS MET WITH THE ACCIDENT THAT OCCASIONED HIS DEATH,
WHICH DERIVED ENGLAND OF AN ILLUSTRIOUS STATESMAN AND
LIVERPOOL OF ITS MOST HONOURED REPRESENTATIVE WHICH CHANGED
A MOMENT OF THE NOBLEST EXULTATION AND TRIUMPH THAT SCIENCE AND
GENIUS HAD EVER ACHIEVED INTO ONE OF DESOLATION AND MOURNING;
AND STRIKING TERROR INTO THE HEARTS OF ASSEMBLED THOUSANDS,
BROUGHT HOME TO EVERY BOSOM THE FORGOTTEN TRUTH THAT
“IN THE MIDST OF LIFE WE ARE IN DEATH”

(Stephen, Sir Lesley & Lee, Sir Sidney (eds.). (1949) ‘Dictionary of National Biography: from the earliest times to 1900’. Oxford University Press, London.)

Huskisson lived at Eartham House, Eartham, buying the house from the poet, William Hayley."

Believe in the Spring!


Image by Hamed Saber
Less than 12 hours to our Persian new year….
Wish you all my friends a new year full of beauty and peace, and specially a year without war for my dear homeland – IRAN.

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For those who can’t read Persian, this is a poem named "Believe in the Spring" by Fereidoun Moshiri, and here is its English translation.You can also listen to the poem there!
(The translation was copyrighted, so I didn’t copy it here!)

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Norouz (Persian: ????? , various local pronunciations and spellings) is the traditional Iranian new year holiday in Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Albania,
Georgia, various countries of Central Asia such as Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan, as well as among the Iranian peoples in Pakistan,Turkey, and everywhere else.
As well as being a Zoroastrian holiday, it is also a holy day for adherents of Sufism as well as Bahá’í Faith. In Iran it is also referred to as an Eid festival, although it is not an Islamic feast. Shia Nizari Ismaili muslims, who trace their origins to Iran, celebrate the festival under the name Navroz. In their religious protocol, Navroz is officially recognized as an Eid, as with Eid ul-Fitr and Eid ul-Adha, although it involves a distinct set of religious ceremonies.
Norouz marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the Iranian year as well as the beginning of the Bahá’í year. It is celebrated by some communities on March 21st and by others on the day of the astronomical vernal equinox (start of spring), which may occur on March 20th, 21st or 22nd.

(Source: Wikipedia)

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History and Tradition
Tradition takes Norooz as far back as 15,000 years–before the last ice age. King Jamshid (Yima or Yama of the Indo-Iranian lore) symbolizes the transition of the Indo-Iranians from animal hunting to animal husbandry and a more settled life in human history. Seasons played a vital part then. Everything depended on the four seasons. After a sever winter, the beginning of spring was a great occasion with mother nature rising up in a green robe of colorful flowers and the cattle delivering their young. It was the dawn of abundance. Jamshid is said to be the person who introduced Norooz celebrations.

Avestan and later scriptures show that Zarathushtra improved, as early as 1725 BCE., the old Indo-Iranian calendar. The prevailing calendar was luni-solar. The lunar year is of 354 days. An intercalation of one month after every thirty months kept the calendar almost in line with the seasons. Zarathushtra, the Founder of the Good Religion, himself an astronomer, founded an observatory and he reformed the calendar by introducing an eleven-day intercalary period to make it into a luni-solar year of 365 days, 5 hours and a fraction. Later the year was made solely a solar year with each month of thirty days. An intercalation of five days was, and a further addition of one day every four years, was introduced to make the year 365 days, 5 hours, and a fraction. Still later, the calendar was
further corrected to be a purely solar year of 365 days 5 hr 48 min 45.5 sec. The year began precisely with the vernal equinox every time and therefore, there was no particular need of adding one day every four years and there was no need of a leap year. This was [and still is] the best and most correct calendar produced that far.

Some 12 centuries later, in 487 B.C.E., Darius the Great of the Achaemenian dynasty celebrated the Norooz at his newly built Persepolis in Iran. A recent research shows that it was a very special occasion. On that day, the first rays of the rising sun fell on the observatory in the great hall of audience at 06-30 a.m., an event which repeats itself once every 1400-1 years. It also happened to coincide with the Babylonian and Jewish new years. It was, therefore, a highly auspicious occasion for the ancient peoples. The Persepolis was the place, the Achaemenian king received, on Norooz, his peoples from all over the vast empire. The walls of the great royal palace depict the scenes of the celebrations.

We know the Iranian under the Parthian dynasty celebrated the occasion but we do not know the details. It should have, more or less, followed the Achaemenian pattern. During the Sasanian time, preparations began at least 25 days before Norooz. Twelve pillars of mud-bricks, each dedicated to one month of the year, were erected in the royal court. Various vegetable seeds–wheat, barley, lentils, beans, and others–were sown on top of the pillars. They grew into luxurious greens by the New Year Day. The great king held his public audience and the High Priest of the empire was the first to greet him. Government officials followed next. Each person offered a gift and received a present. The audience lasted for five days, each day for the people of a certain profession. Then on the sixth day,
called the Greater Norooz, the king held his special audience. He received members of the Royal family and courtiers. Also a general amnesty was declared for convicts of minor crimes. The pillars were removed on the 16th day and the festival came to a close. The occasion was celebrated, on a lower level, by all peoples throughout the empire.

Since then, the peoples of the Iranian culture, whether Zartoshtis, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Baha’is, or others, have celebrated Norooz precisely at the time of vernal equinox, the first day of the first month, on about March 21.

(Source: The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies)

Extensive records on the celebration of Norouz appear following the accession of Ardashir I of Persia, the founder of the Sassanid dynasty (224-651 AD). Under the Sassanid emperors, Norouz was celebrated as the most important day of the year. Most royal traditions of Norouz such as royal audiences with the public, cash gifts, and the pardoning of prisoners, were established during the Sassanian era and they persisted unchanged until modern times.
Norouz, along with Sadeh (that is celebrated in mid-winter), survived in society following the introduction of Islam in 650 AD. Other celebrations such Gahanbar and Mehragan were eventually side-lined or were only followed by the Zoroastrians, who carried them as far as Turkey. Norouz, however, was most honored even by the early founders of Islam. There are records of the Four Great Caliphs
presiding over Norouz celebrations, and it was adopted as the main royal holiday during the Abbasid period.
Following the demise of the Caliphate and the subsequent re-emergence of Persian dynasties such as the Samanids and Buyids, Norouz was elevated to an even more important event. The Buyids revived the ancient traditions of Sasanian times and restored many smaller celebrations that had been eliminated by the Caliphate. Even the Turkish and Mongol invaders did not attempt to abolish Norouz in favor of any other celebration. Thus, Norouz remained
as the main celebration in the Persian lands by both the officials and the people.
Omar Khayyam in his Norouznama (letter of Nowrouz) has written a vivid description of the celebration in ancient Persian:

“ From the era of Keykhosrow till the days of Yazdegard, last of the pre-Islamic kings of Persia, the royal custom was thus: on the first day of the New Year, Nau Ruz, the King’s first visitor was the High Priest of the Zoroastrians, who brought with him as gifts a golden goblet full of wine, a ring, some gold coins, a fistful of green sprigs of wheat, a sword, a bow and a handsome slave. In the language of Persia he would then glorify God and praise the monarch.. This was the address of the High Priest to the king : "O Majesty, on this feast of the Equinox, first day of the first month of the year, seeing that thou hast freely chosen God and the Faith of the Ancient ones; may Surush, the Angel-messenger, grant thee wisdom and insight and sagacity in thy affairs. Live long in
praise, be happy and fortunate upon thy golden throne, drink immortality from the Cup of Jamshid; and keep in solemn trust the customs of our ancestors, their noble aspirations, fair gestes and the exercise of justice and righteousness. May thy soul flourish; may thy youth be as the new-grown grain; may thy horse be puissant, victorious; thy sword bright and deadly against foes; thy hawk swift against its prey; thy every act straight as the arrow’s shaft. Go forth from thy rich throne, conquer new lands. Honor the craftsman and the sage in equal degree; disdain the acquisition of wealth. May thy house prosper and thy life be long!"

(Source: Wikipedia)
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Today

Today, the ceremony has been simplified. Every house gets a thorough cleaning almost a month before. Wheat, barley, lentils, and other vegetables seeds are soaked to grow on china plates and round earthenware vessels some ten days in advance, so that the sprouts are three to four inches in height by Norooz. A table is laid. It has a copy of the sacred book (the Gathas for Zarathushtrians), picture of Zarathushtra (again for Zarathushtrians), a mirror, candles, incense burner, bowl of water with live gold fish, the plates and vessels with green sprouts, flowers, fruits, coins, bread, sugar cone, various grains, fresh vegetables, colorfully painted boiled eggs like the “Easter eggs,” and above all, seven articles with their names beginning in Persian with the letter s or sh. The usual
things with s are vinegar, sumac, garlic, samanu (consistency of germinating wheat), apple, senjed (sorb?), and herbs. Those with sh include wine, sugar, syrup, honey, candy, milk, and rice-pudding. Here in North America, these may be substituted with English words that would alliterate, rhyme, or make mouths water. The seven articles are prominently exhibited in small bowls or plates on the table. The whole table, beautifully laid, symbolizes the Message and the Messenger, light, reflection, warmth, life, love, joy, production, prosperity, and nature. It is, in fact, a very elaborate thanksgiving table for all the good beautifully bestowed by God.

Family members, all dressed in their best, sit around the table and eagerly await the announcement of the exact time of vernal equinox over radio or television. The head of the family recites the Norooz prayers, and after the time is announced, each member kisses the other and wishes a Happy Norooz. Elders give gifts to younger members. Next the rounds of visits to neighbors, relatives, and friends begin. Each visit is reciprocated. Zarathushtra’s Birthday and Norooz festival are celebrated by Zartoshtis at social centers on about 6 Farvardin (26 March). Singing and dancing is, more or less for the first, a daily routine. The festivity continues for 12 days, and on the 13th morning, the mass picnic to countryside begins. It is called sizdeh-be-dar, meaning “thirteen-in-the-outdoors.”
Cities and villages turn into ghost towns with almost all the i[nhabitants gone to enjoy the day in woods and mountains along stream and riversides. People sing, dance, and make merry. Girls of marriageable age tie wild grass tops into knots and make a wish that the following Norooz may find them married and carrying their bonny babies.

(Source: The Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies)

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Added to flickr Explore (interestingness) page of 20 March 2007.

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