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Origin Of The Racist Term "Proto-Indo-European"
By Warlock Asylum on April 27, 2011 • ( 20 Comments )
"History Is A Lie Agreed Upon" - Napoleon Bonaparte
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Over the past few decades it seems that there has been a rising sense of racism in the so-called New Age Movement. I must say that while the "New Age Movement" seems to promote itself as a "bright" alternative to paganism, shamanism, and etc, it is actually the Left-Hand Path that embraces the true origins of certain indigenous rites and the culture that these rites come from. While I am sure that there may be some incidents of racism among Left-Hand Path groups and personas, my personal experience has been that the majority of LHPers are sensible individuals who are open to people of all groups and cultures, and willing embrace occult practices that originate with Third World nations. On the opposite side of the coin, we have the so-called "New Age Movement," which absorbs some of the magical and occult practices of Third World Nations, but must first water-down these rites by "bleaching" some of the depictions of the gods and goddesses of a said path, while using linguistic sources that were completely fabricated to keep the masses ignorant. Some of this was touched on in a previous article entitled The Arra Sign, which can be accessed at the following link:
https://warlockasylum.wordpress.com/arra-sign/
The reader is also encouraged to view the following link s well:
https://warlockasylum.wordpress.com/2009/12/09/the-identity-of-the-sumerians-as-seen-in-ancient-art/
I was inspired to write this post due to my recent research into the word "Necro," when I came across the following link:
http://www.myetymology.com/english/necropsy.html
"derived from the Greek word nekros, νεκρός (corpse; dead (literally or figuratively; also as noun)) …derived from the Proto-Indo-European root "nek"
The information cited above seems to imply that the Greek word nekros derives from a Proto-Indo-European term nek. I was curious to find out the meaning of Proto-Indo-Europoean. I knew that the Greek civilization was heavily influenced by both Egypt and Babylon. The following website goes into this in great detail http://www.philipcoppens.com/egyptgreece.html
"Schools still teach that the Western civilisation is a child of Greece. Until a few decades ago, many schools did not mention the cultural achievements of Egypt or Sumer – and many schools in Europe still pay no attention to the Inca's, Toltecs, etc. But when it comes to the Greek and Egyptian civilisations, it was made painfully clear that the Egyptian civilisation was "primitive" when compared to the cultural and specifically philosophical achievements of the Greeks. ..This situation is now slowly beginning to change, though the chasm between the Greek and Egyptian culture remains. Though geographically both countries are close to each other, and whereas many Greeks would later travel to Egypt, it is assumed that the Egyptians, a civilisation that predates the Greek civilisation by two millennia, never used that time to sail in the opposite direction. Though the ancient Egyptians had seaworthy boats – e.g. the funerary boat in the boatpit on the Gizeh plateau – the status quo is that they never sailed the Mediterranean Seas to Greece."
While I am well aware that many anthropologists and scholars try to hide the fact that Greece and Rome were heavily influenced by ancient indigenous cultures, but I did not suspect that some among this group would actually create alternative theories to hide this truth. Common sense would dictate that ancient man was well aware of the origins of the languages that they spoke, and how some languages related to others. The history of the Rosetta Stone is one example of this http://www.king-tut.org.uk/ancient-egypt/rosetta-stone.htm Still I wanted to more about the Proto-Indo-European language that some linguists were connecting the origins of some Greek terms. Of course, I decided to look up the term and came up with some information in a Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_language which states:
"As there is no direct evidence of Proto-Indo-European language, all knowledge of the language is derived by reconstruction from later languages using linguistic techniques such as the comparative method and the method of internal reconstruction. Relationships to other language families, including the Uralic languages, have been proposed though all such suggestions remain controversial….Indo-European studies began with Sir William Jones making and propagating the observation that Sanskrit bore a certain resemblance to classical Greek and Latin. In The Sanscrit Language (1786) he suggested that all three languages had a common root, and that indeed they may all be further related, in turn, to Gothic and the Celtic languages, as well as to Persian.."
So I began to see some deceit amongst certain scholars. Many encyclopedias and scholars are noting that the origins of certain terms in Greek and other European languages are attributed to a language, Proto-Indo-European, that does not even exist! It is a theory that a few people made up, and they use this term to hide the true origin of certain words in the European language family as it would give way to how much influence certain indigenous cultures had on Europe. We can see this as the article continues:
"The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists; there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothic and the Celtic, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit; and the old Persian might be added to the same family."
The above words were stated by Sir William Jones concerning the Sanscrit language and its structure being more advance than Greek or Latin. However, instead of Jones giving credence to the complex Sanscrit language itself, he then finds a need to say that they come from the same source, but while have no proof of the source is able to label the source of these language as Proto-Indo-European. I am not the only one who was able to see this form of racism in the making. Ellen Preckler and Rik Pinxten made the following observation in a book entitled; Racism in Metropolitan Areas, Volume 3, page 76:
"Even the Aryan myth, so rightly discredited as racist by its centrality for Nazi ideology and the Holocaust, did have a complicated earlier history, for it originated, with late-eighteenth century Orientalist scholars like William Jones.."
Bruce Lincoln in the book, Theorizing Myth makes the following observation on page 94:
"First, the hypothesis for which Sir William Jones is most famous had deep antecedents and was always problematic. Most immediately, Jones was influenced by Jacob Bryant's bibliocentric attempt to trace all world mythology back to Ham and all right religion to Shem….A more critical genealogy of the discourse need not minimize his gifts nor impeach his motives while treating Sir William's genius, stature, and organizational and promotional talents as crucial factors that helped legitimate an enterprise in which various chauvinism (racists, nationalist, anit-Semitic, colonists, and imperialist) were-and remained-implicit. It is not hard to reemplot the story in the genres of tragedy and horror,…by following the discourse's nineteenth and twentieth-century peregrinations, when Bryant's Amonians and Jones' "Hindu Race" acquired the name "Ayrans." ….Since the atrocities of the Nazis in the Second World War, the term "Aryan" has virtually disappeared from polite conversation…Scholars who wish to pursue the discourse while marking their distance from its savory aspects now use the term "(Proto-) Indo-Europoean," also a coinage of the nineenth century."
From Lincoln's observations we can see that Proto-Indo-European is a phrase that actually is used to replace Hitler's understanding of what the term aryan means. Aside from Hitler's definition of the term Aryan comes from the Sanscrit Arya, which means noble or spiritual. Any association of the term Aryan with an ethnic group or "race" is entirely based on Hitler's use of the term. It is due to the merging of anthropology and racism that many have lost the link of how ancient societies connected thousands of years ago. Now what became of my research and trying to find the origins of the Greek term nekros? It seems to have come from the Egyptian goddess Nekhbet, upon which we find the following
"In Egyptian mythology, Nekhbet (also spelt Nechbet, and Nekhebit) was an early predynastic local goddess who was the patron of the city of Nekheb, her name meaning of Nekheb. Ultimately, she became the patron of Upper Egypt and one of the two patron deities for all of Ancient Egypt when it was unified…She was seen as a goddess who had chosen to adopt the city, and consequently depicted as the Egyptian white vulture, a creature that the Egyptians thought only existed as females (not knowing that, lacking sexual dimorphism, the males are identical). They were presumed to be reproducing via parthenogenesis…Egypt's oldest oracle was the shrine of Nekhbet at Nekheb, the original necropolis or city of the dead. It was the companion city to Nekhen, the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt at the end of the Predynastic period (c. 3200–3100 BC) and probably, also during the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC). The original settlement on the Nekhen site dates from Naqada I or the late Badarian cultures. At its height, from about 3400 BC, Nekhen had at least 5,000 and possibly as many as 10,000 inhabitants…The priestesses of Nekhbet were called muu (mothers) and wore robes of Egyptian vulture feathers."
Categories: ancient culture, anthropology, Aryan, etymology, European, grammar, Indo-European, Left-Hand Path, linguistics, Lovecraft, Necronomicon, Necronomicon Tradition, new age, O.T.O., occult, philosophy, reiki, religion, Simon Necronomicon, Sir William Jones, Spiritual, Wicca, witch, witchcraft
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I'm not sure I understand where you're going here.
First, I'm not sure that I agree that the ancient roots of language are undiscoverable. What linguists have found, for instance, is that certain sounds transform into others on a fairly consistent basis. Some of this is likely to be speculative, but that doesn't mean there's no basis for it.
Second, I'd agree that ethnocentrism, and sometimes outright racism, did form an important part of the scholarship of the day. (I'd say the statement on Sanskrit from Wikipedia might depict the former, more likely than the latter, if using a secondary quote really tells us anything.) Nonetheless, we still use much of what they found, though the attitudes have had to be discarded. Much of the scholarship Gatewalkers still use in their practice is the result of Christian scholars trying to determine whether the Bible was true, for instance.
Finally, I don't see how someone who relies so much on the Sumer-Aryan Dictionary by Waddell can really get this upset about potential racism behind Proto-Indo-European. There's a huge difference between the linguistic "I think Sanskrit and Greek have a common ancestor, rather than one derived from the other" and Waddell's "white people did everything worthwhile in civilization."
warlockasylum says:
I agree with you about your observations concerning Waddell. My intent in this discussion was to give the reader an alternative thought when it comes to the said term. In all honesty Dan, I began researching the term Nekros and one of our new staff members mentioned to me that this term also appears in some African dialects. So I was more looking into that, and came across the Proto-Indo-European language, and while I do understand some of the things that you are talking about and agree on some levels. You are correct that the Gate-Walking Community is limited to Christian scholarship, which has its own agenda. However, I must ask your opinion of this, as to how the language of such a great civilization as Greece is said to come from some theory, and on top of all of this, it's put out as a fact. I don't believe that's honest scholarship, do you?
Answer: It just seems more honest to me to cite the actual known origin of a word than relate it to theory. Sir William Jones had great admiration for Sanskrit and found it superior to the Greek and Latin language, which becomes a problem when the Western world was erroneously propagating the idea that Greece was the world's first civilization, not Sumer, not Egypt, but Greece. So now these characters with all sorts of fancy degrees have to find a way to explain how is that so-called "inferior civilizations" possessed a more complex language structure than Greek or Latin? So you make up a language!!! It just seems more honest to me to cite the actual known origin of a word than relate it to theory.
This may not have been entirely a racist thing, but in some ways, if this information conflicts with the scholars belief system, of which many were Christian, so maybe these scholars were trying to find a way to explain how they can still fit themselves in the Garden of Eden picture, while discovering languages that were more complex, and spoken by indigenous peoples, than the language that the Church attributed to Adam and Eve.
You're an intelligent person Dan. I am sure that you're aware that even the Chinese language has some Sumerian root words in it, but I am not going to then make up a theory that they come from some other previous language and then make up a term for this language and start citing correspondences to this made up language in reference books. But this is pretty much what the origin of the Proto-Indo-European. Coupled by the fact that after Hitler was done with all his propaganda the principles that Hitler associated with the term Aryan needed a replacement term, which became Proto-Indo-European
As far as Waddell goes, and this may give reason why i do use older references at times, his bigotry, which I have mentioned in any citation of him, actually reveals certain information in some detail that is rarely available through his bigotry.
Arijah says:
Jyotishmoy says:
I have received your email, thanks for the instructions !
Leonard H Fretzin says:
It is interesting to note that in Hitler's "Mein Kampf" there is no mention of the Aryan racial theories nor the infamous "Protocols of the Elders of Zion".
The cause of Hitler's virulent Antisemitism is elucidated in my Amazon Kindle eBook "Adolph & i".
Yes, I am promoting myself.
Lil-Milo Baptis says:
Thanks. BTW: You are probably aware that the early Greeks were not racist like today's powerful Americans, Europeans, Arabians. The Greeks typically gave credit to Egypt's Imhotep, etc. The Romans were more racist, but racism really hit hard when Queen Isabella and the Catholic Church, etc used it to convince the avg white European that dark skin was a sign of inferiority, thus giving whites the mindset that the people they were killing in the New World were PAGAN, and inferior unless they converted to the white version of Egyptian and African religion, today called Christianity. The avg white person today is NOT racist, but somewhat deluded to not realize that their parents (Black Africans) are suffering because of the greed of the financially richest whites (and a few blacks that make it into the upper level of economic order). We must come together as humans and get rid of the greedy.
HEAFR says:
The Eastern Mediterranean is the cradle of the whole west(Caucasoid countries with Abrahamic culture). Greece did not come out of nowhere, ever had a culture separate and independent of their Eastern Mediterranean brothers and never shared anything with the "Europeans(Germanic, Celts and Proto-Slavs)" who in fact were their slaves.
wintershaker says:
"Many encyclopedias and scholars are noting that the origins of certain terms in Greek and other European languages are attributed to a language, Proto-Indo-European, that does not even exist!"
This seems like something of an unfair characterisation. Proto-Indo-European 'does not exist' in the sense that its speakers left no written records (understandable if it originated in a part of the world that did not yet have writing), which means that any reconstruction of it must contain a lot of uncertainty, but the consensus of linguists, as far as I understand, is that we can have a reasonable go at reconstructing a lot of its grammar and vocabulary, even if we have to have a lot of symbols that represent 'a particular phoneme, though we're not quite sure which particular phoneme'.
Human languages never stop mutating, unless they die out, and we know from written examples like Latin and its descendents the sort of ways in which they tend to change over time, so the only way for Sankrit to not be the descendant of *some* more ancient language, would be for it to have somehow been immunised from the natural processes of language change while all the other languages around it went on morphing into new forms. What that more ancient language might have been is therefore a question worth asking, and it is not at all clear how it is racist to think that it may have also been the common ancestor of other languages that seem to share a suspiciously large number of features with Sanskrit, which you seem to imply with your line about how 'instead of Jones giving credence to the complex Sanscrit language itself, he then finds a need to say that they come from the same source [as Latin and Greek]'.
If you are claiming that, regardless of the validity of the hypothesis that Sanskrit, Greek and Latin share a common ancestor, it is racist to give that ancestor the name 'Proto-Indo-European' … well, I guess you can claim that it ignores Persian, and indeed Tocharian, but it is not a *terrible* short description of the geographical area now occupied by the descendents of the hypothesised reconstructed proto-language, and, again, it is entirely unclear to me how the term is racist. 'Aryan', as far as I can tell, was the old name given not to the whole Indo-European family, but to the subfamily comprising the languages of Iran and northern India, which is now usually referred to as Indo-Iranian. Indeed, it's why Iran is called Iran in the first place. Hitler may have come up with some idiosyncratic uses of the word 'Aryan', but I don't see why that would make it racist to suggest that the language of northern India and Iran share a relatively recent common ancestor, or that they share a more ancient common ancestor with most of the languages of Europe.
If you haven't read John McWhorter's book The Power of Babel, by the way, I recommend it as an interesting layperson's intro to the ways that languages evolve.
Warlock Asylum says:
Dear wintershaker,
Thanks to your reply on the subject. I must ask you then at what costs does evidence become religion wherein one can claim a theory and then put it out in reference books with no historical evidence? Is this not a useful means in wiping out the history of interactions between nation and accessing the origins of loan words? Think about. Historically speaking, why have these theories surfaced more rapidly since Operation Paperclip?
We should also remember that such theories concerning the origin of language was criticized by other scientists due to the fact that there is no historical evidence to support Sir William Jones' theory. Published in the 1800's, The Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works of Friedrich Von Schlegel by Friedrich von Schlegel states:
"Hypothesis concerning the first origin of languages would either have been disregarded altogether, or have assumed an entirely different form, had they been founded on historical investigation, instead of being wrested into forced compliance with arbitrary theories."
Have a great day Wintershaker!
"at what costs does evidence become religion wherein one can claim a theory and then put it out in reference books with no historical evidence?"
Well, if you are demanding written records from ancient pre-literate peoples, then we can say nothing about the origins of just about any languages, with the exception of the few that we do have written records for going back thousands of years which have since branched off into descendents – like Latin and the modern Romance languages, or ancient Chinese and the modern Sinitic languages.
We don't have written records from the speakers of Proto-Indo-European (or Proto-Uralic, or Proto-Sino-Tibetan or anything else) but we do have some written evidence of the way languages interact with each other, what sort of changes are likely to happen when two languages diverge from a common source, what sort of changes are likely when one language picks up a lot of vocabulary or even grammatical structures from another, what sort of things happen when a pidgin comes into existence and evolves into a creole etc … and as far as I understand it, the consensus of modern linguists is that the similarities between Latin, Greek and Sanskrit (and the Germanic, Slavic, Celtic, Persian languages etc) are more likely, based on what we know about how languages evolve and interact, to be the result of descent from a common ancestor than they are to be the result of one of them starting out as completely unrelated and then borrowing a lot of features from some of the others.
If you think that the consensus is mistaken – if you think for example that Sanskrit did in fact start out as a completely unrelated language to Latin or Greek but then took on a lot of vocab from one of them before the time of its earliest written records, then fine, but you will need to say what your evidence is. If you are hypothesising a Proto-Sanskrit from before it borrowed features from Latin and Greek, then your hypothesised proto-language is no more historically evidenced than Proto-Indo-European. You are the one who is claiming that the hypothesis that Sanskrit, Latin and Greek share a common ancestor is a racist hypothesis (or that the name 'Proto-Indo-European' is a racist name to give to that common ancestor, it is unclear from your article which of those claims you are making), but you have not shown why either of those would be instances of racism.
Your quote from the 1800s is from a guy who I understand was one of the early proponents of a common origin of Sanskrit, Latin and Greek, albeit one who believed that the speakers of that proto-language began in India and spread west from there (as opposed to the current view, which I understand to be something like 'we don't have enough evidence to say with any confidence, but we tentatively think it might have been the steppelands of southern Russia and Ukraine') – I don't the context of the quote, so maybe you can say exactly which claims he is accusing of having been wrested into forced compliance with arbitrary theories.
And I don't know much about Operation Paperclip, a quick glance at the Wikipedia entry suggests that it had nothing to do with comparative linguistics, so you may need to clarify what the connection is that you're trying to make.
I see what's going on here and respect you comments. much of our discussion is a matter of miscommunication. There are a lot of theories that exist in the world, however, it doesn't qualify them to be taught as fact when these subjects need more evidence before quoting it as a source in reference book, which is literally rewriting history. If you only knew what it takes for something to be put in a reference book, then you would understand what I am saying.
Operation Paperclip was when Nazi scientists were recruited by the US Government near the close of WWII. Shortly after this we find their ideas taking root in mainstream America. The Proto-Indo-European language was one of their ideas. History plays a big part in how certain things are established, the beliefs of society, and how certain things enter reference books have a lot to do with what is going on with human society at the time. Proponents of PIE know this and try to keep the conversation in ignorance of historical events that was going on around the time of Sir William Jones hypothesis. Actually other scholars had noted similarities between European and Indian languages, such as Van Boxhorn. Jones clearly disregarded any search into the origins of Sanskrit and moved immediately into an idea of a mother of Sanskrit instead of investigating its origins. We have to remember that discovering PIE would once again work politically to lessen the world view of a newly-conquered British India, which Sir Jones served. If this language could be proven it would lessen the destruction that the British brought to India and the caste system that was created. But of course members of PIE see no need to examine any of these fact0rs.
Thank you Wintershaker
I went on Quora and asked why the theory existed when the evidence was non existent and the notion that Sanskrit and Greek were similar was essentially a lie according to their own list of similar words, which will include so many languages it distracts people from the important comparison of Greek and Sanskrit. But if you concentrate on the 2 languages that the theory rests on they have a few, literally a few words that could be loan words or coincidence.
I suggested this and in response was actually told to look at other languages, but I said I wasn't going to look at the other languages because the foundation of the hypothesis that "PIE" even existed is the alleged similarities which could easily be explained by mutual interactions and loan words. They don't educate linguists about history so I easily cited Plutarch mention of the Hellenization of the Praesii tribe by Alexander the Great and how Plutarch was aware that they still practiced the customs Alexander taught.
I had to because according to the PIE theory and this linguist there was "No interaction beyond Alexander's failed invasion" of India, an erroneous notion I refuted with evidence from the respected Plutarch and from the Heresiologist Hippolytus, 1st and 2nd century or so, respectively, that left no room for doubt that there was enough interaction for Plutarch to know of the Praesii and their continued practices of "Hellenism" taught by Alexander himself and Hippolytus had plenty of knowledge about the Brahman and other religions of India.
Refuted, he then claimed that this was too late to effect PIE at which point I had to remind him that there is no evidence the existence of this fabrication and that only by assuming the hypothesis wasn't a hypothesis would that argument even be plausible, plus it does not rule out the possibility that the words similarities (if they existed in the first place beyond said handful) occurred AD or BC if it had to come to that. Unfortunately for people who waste money on this bogus profession this language simply never existed and the hypothesis is unnecessary for many reasons, the most important being that there is hardly any resemblance between Sanskrit and Greek and the few words like Mater, Pater, aren't enough to justify wholesale fabrication of a language because "It's the best way to explain the similarities" as there are more plausible and less laughable ways to potentially explain the not so extraordinary phenomenon of loan words, and that history proves that there was sufficient interaction for this to occur and way more than enough time.
Unfortunately for anyone who can't grasp this, they are the reason why they get away with teaching it. Because people are stupid enough to believe… anything.
Like that at one point in time from Britain to India people spoke the same language, the root of all "Indo-European" languages. Unfortunately there is no such thing as "Indo-European" anything, unless you are half European and half Indian or something, otherwise the name itself is suggestive of the ridiculous of the hypothesis, Europe and India are two different worlds far apart in language and culture, now and then, and the fact that this fabricated language has no evidence should be considered by "educated" people who, according to statistics tend to be atheists or agnostic (lack of evidence?) but have no problem with believing in fairy tales, as long as it is in a University and not about who or what created everything created, which they usually believe is no thing, no thing is responsible for the "Big Bang" and people used to speak PIE.
Do they not realize that Sanskrit and Greek aren't similar or that samples are actually pretty untrustworthy since most Greek literature, non Christian, is retranslated into Greek after a tour of 3 or 4 languages at a time? If
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Indo-European-hypothesis-believed-and-taught-when-the-evidence-is-quite-pathetic-and-the-rather-few-similarities-between-it-and-Greek-Sanskrit-are-better-explained-by-interaction-and-borrowing-of-the/answer/Simon-Bargioria
This is it. If you think that there was an Indo-European language I would love you to look at the pathetic answers given by "academics" that could not overcome my refutation and simply quit. See for yourself. You may not be able to see all my private comments but I answered the question myself, twice under my name and twice anonymously. Check it out.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-Indo-European-hypothesis-believed-and-taught-when-the-evidence-is-quite-pathetic-and-the-rather-few-similarities-between-it-and-Greek-Sanskrit-are-better-explained-by-interaction-and-borrowing-of-the
A more direct link, the other one you have to click on the question to see other people's answers. Nobody was able to justify the existence of the hypothesis once I mentioned the historical citations and called them out on the total lack of real similarities between the two languages, which they could not even deny.
Most people seem to not be aware of this fact. That the foundation of the hypothesis is a pretty blatant lie. I can't call it exaggeration because it is a few words, hardly what was claimed. And the pathetic attempt to bring chronological arguments to support an unproven hypothesis and to rule out evidence against it was also said I predicted that actually happened, though I predicted it. It was sad, I felt like I was intellectually bullying this guy with his certificates of achievement, his Degrees, apparently he had never considered anything I had said and seemed from his answer confident that it would go unchallenged, probably because that is what everyone does.
Do your own research. Someone mildly criticized the above author for saying that that PIE does not exist, more or less, that sounds like someone who can't believe that Academia would fabricate a language for racist reasons, but that is exactly what they did with Jones hypothesis, they didn't reconstruct anything, they created the evidence for their hypothesis and call it "reconstruction." But why the "re" if it is a non existent language, it is not like you can find a "lost language" that didn't leave any evidence it existed by speculation regarding etymology and a lot of deception, that's just lying.
I also posted a specific question about the etymology of the prefix "sept" which is claimed to be Indo-European but, since it means it 7 like the Semitic "sbt" that is used for the 7th day of the week in Arabic, Hebrew, in various forms and comes from the word for 7 which is Saba it Arabic. P changing to a B is common through languages and the Septuagint LXX is the Greek Bible supposedly written by 70 Rabbis in 70 copies so it is not like a Semitic source for Sept is out of the question. It seems presumptuous to claim an "Indo-European" source but likely that a Semitic language is the source, maybe the Aramaic of the "Phoenicians" who taught them how to use letters. Probably even.
Nobody could answer the question accept one honest person who said "I don't know, you could be right" what I respect, but I don't even remember the other answers.
Thanks for the info! Very informative to say the least. Usually a "theory" is used as a prefix until historical data surfaces. For example, the "Theory pf Evolution. However in this case, PIE is already being put in reference books and used as a source of origin without any evidence at all. That's not science! That's religious brainwashing. It just goes to show how such theories are easily accepted and followed with no scientific proof by the most educated people who fail to question science.
I have to mention that the ancient term "Ellinas" or Hellenes aka the "Greeks" so called, weren't members of a united nation governed under the name of Ellas or Greece, as no such country existed in antiquity.
According to Aristotle, confirmed earlier by Homer, the Hellenes and Selli were a tribe from Dodona in Epirus.
According to many former Hellenes and the unanimous testimony of antiquity beginning with 1 Maccabees and culminating in Clement of Alexandria's, "Exhortation to the Heathens" which is from the word "Ellinas" which is the same word selectively translated as "Greeks" and "Hellenes."
A pagan cult is what the Hellenes were, any person of any ethnicity could convert to and from the Hellenic cult, it was no ethnicity, most Hellenic people did not live in Europe and if they were European it is impossible to prove.
Nevertheless, despite writing a polemic against the Greeks, Clement is called a "Greek Christian" which would have been an insult to his beliefs as the word basically meant pagan, no Christian was a Hellene and a Christian, Aristides of Athens, former Hellene, is the best proof. He did not denounce his ethnicity, but his former religion.
RSJ says:
the word aryan is AryA a indian sanskrit word and persian have absolutely nothing to do with it. first off rig ved sam ved atharva ved and yajur ved is all indian hindu8s and AryA to north west indian mean noble as a title for them. Persians on the other hand got Zoroastrian avesta from indian sanskrit but indian sanskrit is not from Persians its from Indians and the wword aryavarta and arya is indian hindu Sanskrit words. Persians laying false claims that iran means land of the aryan is bs because reza shah Pahlavi asked his delegates to use the word iran in 1935 and in 1979 his son muhammed shah Pahlavi changed the countrys name from Persia to iran so persians changed the name to rian during the late 19th century while hindus had the word Arya for a very long period of time writing comes from hindus and language linguistics grammar literature astronomy astrology is all from hindu indians rig ved.religion is from indian hindus yajur ved and music and dance is from Indians sam ved and medicine and cure is from indian hindus Atharva ved. there is no such thing as a proto indo European because the word Europe first and formost a Hebrew Phoenician word EROB and is not found in any indian hindu texts.indians are not white nor are Indians Persians . north west Indians are rightfully called (AryA Aryan) as for the greeks they studied education in the first university in the entire world along with Chinese arabs Syrians and Babylonians called Takshashila university 700bce) India north west. experienced panel masters were kautilya,jivak ,panini and Vishnu sharma education comes from IndiA and nowhere else. decimal system geometry GYAMITI a indian Sanskrit word meaning measurement f the earth trigonometry a indian Sanskrit word TRIKONAMITi meaning measurement of triangular forms binary code quadratic formulas numbers number zero chandrasekhar numbers and limit,laws of gravity ,revoltion of earth,time it takes for the earth to orbit the sun,concept of algebra,the ruler made of ivory and uses decimal subdivisions for accuracy,ink made of carbon pigment and called MUSI,indians used tablets for documentation,Fibonacci numbers indian vedic arithmetic indian Vedic science is all from indian hindus.greeks got mytology cotton clothing and education from hindu Indians and calculus weas not invented by Gottfried Leibniz nor Isaac newton calculus was from hindus which the Jesuit missionaries came to Indians land during the15century to be taught and then the Jesuit missionaries took that knowledge back and taught the Europeans.laws of gravity was achieved by a indian astronomer by the name Bhaskaracharya 1200 years before newton rediscovered it in the year 1687,revolution of earth was achieved by Aryabhatta in5th century 400-500bce 1000 years before Copernicus rediscovered it in the year 1543.time it takes for the earth to orbit the sun was achieved by Bhaskaracharya 5th century.there is allot of things western historians and acadamia don't speak the truth about as all of this is from hindu Indians not Europeans and not Persians either.geometry was not invented by Euclid and greeks had no knowledge of this until they were taught by hindu Indians even cotton clothing was taught to greeks who wore animal hide cotton clothing was invented by hindus during the 4th millennium bce in indus valley civilization and cashmere wool also is Indians while buttons for clothing came from indus valley in 2000bce . the ruler made of ivory using decimal subdivisions was invented in 1500bce indus valley civilization.greeks are orthodox Christian and indian s origin was religion and that being hinduism sathanan dharam spiritual wisdom religion comes from indian yajur ved.among other things indian hindus origin of prayer(puja0,meditation,kamasutratradition of kissing ,yoga(yuj meaning union first yogi lord shiv),mantras,mythology,philosophy all is from hindus Indians.indians are the first civilization older than Egypt and Mesopotamia indian had many civilizations a few to name were Harappa civilization pre indus valley civilization indus valley civilization and mojendaro civilization.north west indian hindu highcaste are the REAL AryaN.
"…the word aryan is AryA a indian sanskrit word and persian have absolutely nothing to do with it."
"AyrA a indian sanskrit…"
AN Indian, with a capital I, not "a" indian. "sanskrit" is a language and should also be Sanskrit, and the term "Ayrana Vaego" is from the Zend (commentary) of the Avestan literature of the Parsee Persians, or Zoroastrians, who live in India today and have for a very long time.
Which is more than the "nothing" you erroneously claimed re: the relation of Persia to the word Aryan.
Iran is Farsi for land of the Aryans, which is modern and I prefer to call it Persia, nevertheless it is something.
I was going to read your message and, if necessary, refute it point by point, but you claim to know the source of the Avesta and that they are derived from Sanskrit and the Hindu epics, or whatever, but you can not cite any worthy work of scholarship to support a single thing you babble on about.
Meanwhile I actually own all 3 volumes of the "Zend-Avesta" which was known to Arabic writing historians from… not India but Persia itself. I believe the earliest historians of the Arabic language, and I am pretty certain that the Fihrist mentions it, actually I am certain, it once had the alphabet of the literature which was so not preserved, this is a very old book.
Point being you have no evidence to assert what even Orientalists denied, that Avestan was derived from Sanskrit, whatever they have in common, academics typically believe in the antiquity of the Avesta and this rules out it being derived, as Persia is as ancient as any culture and prominent in the history of antiquity, more states than India, and the Zoroastrian literature at best has some names that are similar to names in Hindu literature but can not be proven to owe anything to Hinduism, a modern notion itself, India is a land of many religions and the Parsee people are Persians who moved there with their literature in Medieval times.
Long story short you obviously are just offering your personal opinions and they are not accurate. So, I am not going to bother further.


text:
Breaking the vicious circles of illicit financial flows, conflict and insecurity
Cobham, A. 2016. Breaking the vicious circles of illicit financial flows, conflict and insecurity. GREAT Insights Magazine, Volume 5, Issue 1. February 2016. Republished with permission of the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM).
Illicit financial flows (IFF) not only thrive on conflict and insecurity but exacerbate both, by undermining the financial and political prospects for effective states to deliver and support development progress. Policies to meet the Sustainable Development Goals' target of curtailing IFF will also promote peace and security.
In 2014, the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa took as its theme the impact on peace and security of illicit financial flows (IFF). Leading figures from across the region, including a range of current and former heads of state, discussed the nature and scale of illicit flows and the policy options available.
The subsequent report of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa, chaired by Thabo Mbeki, cited the Tana Forum background study (Cobham, 2014) and reiterated its analysis of the linkages with security; and so it was no surprise that the IFF target in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) appeared under Goal 16: 'Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels':
16.4 By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets and combat all forms of organized crime…
The linkages between IFF and insecurity are not necessarily well understood, however. Assessing how the two issues interact can help to identify the range of policy responses that will support powerful progress.
Illicit financial flows
There is no single, agreed definition of IFF. The Oxford dictionary definition of 'illicit' is: "forbidden by law, rules or custom." The first three words alone would define 'illegal', and this highlights an important feature of any definition: illicit financial flows are not necessarily illegal. Flows forbidden by "rules or custom" may encompass those which are socially and/or morally unacceptable, and not necessarily legally so. Multinational tax avoidance (as opposed to illegal tax evasion) might come under this category.
This particular example also shows why a legalistic approach may introduce an unhelpful bias. Commercial tax evasion affecting a low-income country where the tax and authorities have limited administrative capacity is much less likely either to be uncovered or successfully challenged in a court of law, than would be the same exact behaviour in a high-income country with the same laws but with relatively empowered authorities. A strictly legal definition of IFF is therefore likely to result in systematically – and wrongly – understating the scale of the problem in lower-income, lower-capacity states. For this reason above all, a narrow, legalistic definition of IFF should be rejected.
Figure 1: Main IFF types by nature of capital and transaction
The central feature of IFF – and incidentally a major reason their measurement is so difficult – is that they are deliberately hidden: financial secrecy is key, in order to obscure either the illicit origin of capital or the illicit nature of transactions undertaken (or both). As illustrated in Figure 1, four main types of behaviour are captured: 1) market/regulatory abuse (e.g. using anonymous companies to conceal political conflicts of interest, or breaches of antitrust law); 2) tax abuse; 3) abuse of power, including the theft of state funds and assets; and 4) laundering of the proceeds of crime. Figure 1 also highlights that there is a broader distinction between 'legal capital IFF' (tax abuse and market abuse, types 1 and 2) and 'illegal capital IFF' (the abuse of power and laundering of criminal proceeds, types 3 and 4).
Security and state 'fragility'
There is growing agreement that the concept of fragile states – as a binary division against all other, 'non-fragile' states – is an unhelpful one for analysis. Instead, it is more useful to think of all states as occupying some position on a spectrum of (risk of) fragility. As the High Level Panel on Fragile States (2014) put it:
Fragility comes about where [pressures such as those stemming from inequality and social exclusion, or from new resource rents and resource scarcity] become too great for countries to manage within the political and institutional process, creating a risk that conflict spills over into violence – whether interstate or civil war, ethnic or tribal conflict, widespread criminality or violence within the family. Countries that lack robust institutions, diversified economies and inclusive political systems are the most vulnerable. In the most acute cases, violence has the effect both of magnifying the underlying pressures and eroding the institutions needed to manage them, creating a fragility trap from which it is very difficult to escape.
The risk of fragility is then closely related to a state's ability to provide citizens with 'negative' security (to prevent personal, community, political and environmental insecurity) and with 'positive' security (to provide the conditions for economic, food and health security and progress). These two forms of security exhibit potentially mutually reinforcing relationships with particular types of IFF.
Two vicious circles
Figure 2 shows a vicious circle linking illegal capital IFF and problems of negative security. Where IFF derive from abuse of power – say, for example, the extreme behaviour of a kleptocratic leader – the cycle follows almost tautologically. The nature of the IFF itself undermines state legitimacy and both the capacity and interest to provide security, or indeed to act to curtail IFF.
When the rise in IFF reflects laundering of the proceeds of crime, it is the underlying crimes where the linkages are likely to emerge. Most dramatically, Cockayne (2011) finds that drug and human trafficking has led to little less than the criminalisation of governance itself in West Africa and the Sahel. He identifies two hubs that grew strongly after Caribbean counter-narcotics efforts in the 1990s pushed the trade elsewhere: one around Gambia, Guinea and Guinea-Bissau, and the other around Benin, Ghana and Togo. In addition, Cockayne highlights important services provided in other states – namely money laundering in Senegal, and transit in Mali, Mauritania and Niger. The growing involvement of the state in criminal activity (including IFF), and the growing power of criminality over the state, make the vicious circle somewhat inevitable again.
Figure 2: The vicious cycle of negative security and illegal capital IFF
Much of the problems of conflict and negative security arise in countries characterised by low levels of institutionalisation of authority, a heavy reliance on patronage politics and an accordingly high level of allocation of state rents to unproductive activities (patronage, to maintain the political machine). For a rent-seeking patronage order to function, it must resist or evade the pressures to institutionalise state finance – through, for example, an incentive structure in which senior officials have a personal interest in financial opacity and the misuse of public funds, and fiscal policy is subordinated to the 'political budget' (the state allocation for patronage purposes). Major sources of funds such as natural resource companies may be rewarded through the opportunities to evade tax with impunity, and may maximise net profits through bribery.
In turn this kind of state structure creates structural incentives for violence. Kleptocracy will tend to require violence to protect the position of privilege; those outside may resort to force to extort rents from those in power, or to challenge for the prize of (illegitimate) power itself.
All four IFF types shown in Figure 1 are likely to result in reductions in both state funds and institutional strength – that is, they undermine governance as well as domestic resource mobilisation. While little research has sought to quantify the governance impact, and some attention has been given to the theft of state assets, a growing body of literature seeks to assess the financial scale of flows and the revenue losses associated with particular elements. Consistently, the scale of IFF and of revenue losses from corporate profit-shifting and from individual evasion through undeclared offshore assets is greater in lower-income countries; and often material in respect of countries' GDP. Indicative estimates of the resulting impacts on basic human development outcomes such as child mortality suggest these too are powerful indeed – potentially bringing African achievement of the Millennium Development Goal target forward from an estimated 2029 to 2016, for example (O'Hare et al., 2014).
Figure 3: The vicious cycle of positive security and legal capital IFF
Figure 3 illustrates the vicious circle that can arise between these largely legal capital IFF, and problems of positive security. Bluntly, revenues are undermined where they are most needed; and further institutional damage follows from the weakening of the state-citizen relationship that is built on effective taxation.
IFF and security: Policy implications
At the Tana Forum in 2014, President Salva Kiir of South Sudan told how the 'vultures' had circled the new state even before it came into existence, building relationships with soldiers and others, so that when the moment came they were poised to create a web of contracts that channelled away oil revenues into anonymity – without delivering on the contracts:
When peace was signed, the vultures that were hovering over Sudan landed. We have learned in our cultures that when you see vultures hovering around, there must be a dead animal – or something is going to die… They knew there would be a vacuum of administration there… That [oil] money was disappearing day by day to where you cannot trace it.
The central feature of IFF is that they are hidden, typically by the financial secrecy provided by other jurisdictions. The secrecy in question relates primarily to the provision of vehicles for anonymous ownership such as shell companies; to the refusal to provide information on foreigners' assets and income streams to their countries of tax residence; and to the type of corporate opacity that obscures the worst excesses of multinationals' profit-shifting. As shown by the Tax Justice Network ranking of tax havens, the Financial Secrecy Index, this includes many of the leading economies – not least the USA, ranked third.
States can protect themselves to a degree, by ensuring greater transparency of public contracts for example, and public country-by-country reporting by multinationals; and by engaging fully in the multilateral process for automatic exchange of tax information. But while other states insist on selling secrecy, major obstacles will remain.
Success in the Sustainable Development Goals target of curtailing illicit financial flows would contribute to reducing risks of state fragility across the board – and to achieving many human development targets too. But such progress depends on international progress against financial secrecy. A significant step would be the adoption of indicators for target 16.4 that will ensure individual states are held accountable for the secrecy they provide globally – and the IFF they stimulate as a result.
The following indicators (Cobham, 2015) draw from the agreed policy positions in the Sustainable Development Goals and the Financing for Development declaration from Addis, July 2015:
For each country and jurisdiction, on what proportion of foreign-owned assets and to the states of what proportion of the world's population, are they providing tax information bilaterally to others?
For each country and jurisdiction, from which countries and jurisdictions are they receiving tax information bilaterally?
For each country and jurisdiction receiving information, what proportion and volume of revealed assets were already declared by the taxpayer, and what resolution has reached each year in respect of the remainder?
For each country and jurisdiction, for multinationals making up what proportion of the declared multinational tax base is country-by-country reporting publicly available?
The harder it is for vultures to hide, the fewer may be the unnecessary deaths suffered.
Figure 4: Overview of IFF and security linkages
Cobham, A., 2014, 'The impact of illicit financial flows on peace and security in Africa', Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa Discussion Paper.
Cobham, A., 2015, 'Uncounted: Power, inequalities and the post-2015 data revolution', Development 57:3/4, pp.320-337.
Cockayne, J., 2011, 'Transnational threats: The criminalization of West Africa and the Sahel', Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation Policy Brief (December).
High Level Panel on Fragile States, 2014, Ending Conflict & Building Peace in Africa: A call to action, African Development Bank: Tunis.
High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa, 2015, final report.
O'Hare, B., I. Makuta, N. Bar-Zeev, L. Chiwaula & A. Cobham, 2014, 'The effect of illicit financial flows on time to reach the fourth Millennium Development Goal in Sub-Saharan Africa: a quantitative analysis', Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 107(4), pp.148-156.
Posted in Follow the Money, Uncounted	| Tagged Africa, CbC, financial secrecy, IFF risk, illicit financial flows, international tax, post-2015	| Leave a reply
Time for a global compact on financial transparency?
Apologies for the recent absence of the Tax Justice Research Bulletin. The TJRB will be back soon, and in the meantime here's a review of the major research contribution from the second half of 2015. This longish post is based on my remarks at the book's launch in Oslo in December (and includes a couple of the authors' slides), where the idea of a global compact ended up being discussed at some length…
Challenging narratives: Illicit flows, corruption, Africa and the world
Ibi Ajayi & Léonce Ndikumana (eds.), 2015, Capital flight from Africa: Causes, effects and policy issues, Oxford University Press.
This new volume from the AERC (African Economic Research Consortium) is a very welcome milestone in scholarship on the complex and contested areas of capital flight and illicit financial flows (IFF). It is more than that however. It is a powerful book in terms of what it represents; what it contributes; and above all, of what it challenges. These are discussed in turn below, before consideration of a major policy opportunity that now beckons.
Capital flight is defined as consisting of (predominantly illicit) unrecorded movements of capital across borders, made up of discrepancies between the recorded sources and uses of foreign exchange, combined with the movements hidden through trade mispricing. The larger set of IFF will also include recorded flows of illicit capital, for example through money laundering.
This is only the second major volume to address IFF directly, and it is no coincidence that the Norwegian government has provided support to both. This issue, now firmly on the global policy agenda, was nowhere when Norway first began to promote it. Has any donor managed such powerful impact on any issue, through targeted, strategic interventions? And yes, full disclosure: the Tax Justice Network, too, has benefited from Norwegian funding.
The first IFF volume, Draining Development, was published by the World Bank in 2012 following a 2009 conference. Despite initial agreement, the Bank backed out of providing a full study itself and instead brought together external researchers (myself included). The resulting work remains a milestone, but is inevitably somewhat patchy given the quite disparate nature of the group.
Ajayi & Ndikumana, in contrast, have produced a volume with a good degree of coherence across the individual chapters and above all in terms of the overall arc, presumably reflecting the authors' common AERC involvement as well as the editors' guiding hand.
The report of the African Union and Economic Commission for Africa's High Level Panel (HLP) on Illicit Financial Flows out of Africa, chaired by H.E. Thabo Mbeki, has already brought significant policymaker focus to the issues – including outside the continent. The HLP report was itself preceded by an IFF focus for the 2014 Tana High Level Forum on Peace and Security in Africa; and over many years, the development of a strong civil society engagement spearheaded by Tax Justice Network – Africa.
And so the new volume represents further evidence of African leadership on these issues, in the research sphere also. But its contribution is greater than this.
Major findings
First, the book provides updated (Ndikumana & Boyce) estimates of the scale of capital flight from the continent over four decades. In the context of inevitable difficulties of estimating from data anomalies, things which are deliberately hidden – as well as general weaknesses of data quality and/or availability – these are the leading time-series estimates available (more on the question of estimates below).
The book's major contributions lie in the analysis of the determinants, and as importantly the non-determinants, of capital flight. The non-determinants include:
risk-adjusted returns (chapter 2: Ndikumana, Boyce & Ndiaye);
'orthodox' monetary policy (high interest rates in particular – chapter 6: Fofack & Ndikumana);
capital account liberalisation (results for domestic financial liberalisation are less clear – chapter 7: Lensink & Hermes); and
'macro fundamentals' (especially the pursuit of inflation control and balance of payments sustainability – chapter 9: Weeks).
Weeks' sharp statement of findings arguably applies across the wider set of results too:
"the orthodox narrative that capital flight results from unsound macro policies [is reversed]. On the contrary, capital flight may force governments into policies that work against the majority of the population"
Evidence is also found for the following determinants of capital flight:
external debt (much of which has historically left again through the 'revolving door' – chapters 2, 3: Ajayi, and 5: Murinde, Ocheng & Meng);
weak rules and/or capacity (throughout, but most clearly in chapter 10: Arezki, Rota-Graciozi & Senbet, which addresses the impact of thin capitalisation rules in resource-rich countries);
habit, and the impact of continuing impunity – including social determinants of tax compliance and the possibility of vicious circles of IFF and governance (chapters 5, 11: Ayogu & Gbadebo-Smith, and 12: Kedir); and far from least
international financial secrecy (chapters 8: Massa, 9, 13: Barry, 14, and 15: Moshi).
Taken together, these findings provide a base of new evidence sufficiently broad that it has implications not only for national policymakers, but also for the wider narrative.
A new challenge to sticky narratives
There are a number of sticky narratives in development. As in other fields, these are stories which seem to have a staying power in popular and policy discourse that far outlives any basis they may have in technical research. Two of these come together in the issues explored here.
Perhaps the stickiest of narratives, and certainly one of the most pernicious, is the persistent association of corruption with poverty. This narrative has its roots in self-justifying colonial discourse of fitness to rule (and to be ruled), and its persistence reflects the decades-long promulgation in the media (and by some NGOs) of images of kleptocratic elites in post-independence regimes. The largely (though far from exclusively) African identity of those states (i.e. those that most recently gained independence) often provides an additionally unpleasant (and sticky) racist element.
The Corruption Perceptions Index, which aggregates multiple surveys (largely of international elites), is highly correlated with per capita GDP: so respondents tend to perceive poorer countries as more corrupt. But the consistent presence of Somalia, for example, near the bottom; or of Switzerland near the top; may reveal more about those whose perceptions are surveyed, than those who are perceived.
One of the motivations for the creation of the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index was precisely to challenge this view, by using objectively verifiable criteria to rank jurisdictions according to their provision of financial secrecy to non-residents: if you will, the selling of corruption services. Top ranking – that is, the biggest global provider of financial secrecy – is Switzerland. The United States comes in third place, Mauritius 23rd and Ghana 48th.
The second sticky narrative holds that capital flight is, in effect, a punishment on (especially African?) governments for bad policy. This can act in combination with the first to produce the story that African capital flight is the result of African corruption.
The findings of the AERC volume provide a powerful challenge to this story. First, they offer some support to the old challenge: that it takes 'two to tango'. Or as Mobutu Sese Seko is quoted: "It takes two to corrupt – the corrupter and the corrupted" (p.406, citing Bob Geldof). In this view, African elites may be culpable but so too are their 'partners'.
More importantly, the findings support a new challenge: What if most of the blame lies elsewhere? While governments have tended to pursue the policies shown to be ineffective in reducing capital flight, many of the real levers of power have lain outside the continent. In each of the following cases, for example, who is the corrupter and who the corrupted?
An anonymous BVI company is awarded a cheap Zambian mining concession, then flips it to a UK-listed plc
A Swiss bank holds a Nigerian resident's overseas assets through a Jersey trust; nothing is reported to the Nigerian authorities
A US-headquartered multinational shifts profit from Ghana to Luxembourg
We could go on; and indeed the book offers many examples. We should also consider other examples, such as that of a South African multinational shifting Uganda profits to Mauritius. We might perhaps settle on a view that the blame is very well shared indeed around the world. We might also wonder if poverty is not associated with corruption, so much as with exploitation by the corrupt.
At a minimum, the evidence presented by the AERC authors should serve to unstick the casual elision of corruption and poverty, and of capital flight and African policies.
As Nkurunziza (chapter 2) shows, the potential gains in poverty reduction from reversing capital flight are substantial.
Policy opportunities
The Sustainable Development Goals' target to reduce illicit financial flows is a golden opportunity to catalyse improved quantitative methodologies; to ensure more and better data is available; and to introduce indicators that drive accountability for progress. But the SDGs will not fill the policy gap.
Although the 'crazy ideas' generated by civil society in the early 2000s now dominate the global policy agenda, there is a failure across the board – most obviously in terms of country-by-country reporting, and automatic exchange of tax information – to ensure that the benefits flow to developing countries as well as OECD members.
It seems that political power, rather than genuine commitment to transparency principles, still determines who is able to benefit. The Mbeki panel has called for greater progress in these areas. But is there an opportunity to sidestep, or indeed to leapfrog, much of the current issues by taking a more direct approach?
The final chapters of this important volume (15; and 16 – Boyce & Ndikumana in particular) detail a wide range of policy responses to the various findings, from capital controls and debt audits to some of the fundamental challenges to financial secrecy that the Tax Justice Network exists to champion – not least, fully public country-by-country reporting for multinational companies.
A global compact on financial transparency
The most striking proposal, however, is one not currently on the international policy agenda: a global compact among governments, CSOs and international institutions, covering strategies at the national, continental and global levels. Boyce & Ndikumana highlight the importance of:
National governments integrating the various mechanisms and agencies that are relevant for each type of illicit flow;
Continental conventions to provide a framework for harmonisation and coordination of national initiatives;
Global civil society networks working more closely with local civil society organisations, with greater speed of communication, greater coordination and institutionalised collaboration.; and
Global initiatives that have 'adequate enforcement capacity. At the moment, global conventions do not have the legal capacity to hold individual governments accountable for the implementation of relevant dispositions; their rules are not binding at the national level' (p.413)
The proposal, and the last point above all, carries an echo of an earlier proposal for an international financial transparency convention. In 2009, the Norwegian Government Commission on Capital Flight from Poor Countries (section 9.2.3) proposed such a convention, which would apply to all countries and include two main elements relating to transparency:
First, it must bind states not to introduce legal structures that, together with more specifically defined instruments, are particularly likely to undermine the rule of law in other states. Second, states which suffer loss and damage from such structures must have the right and duty to adopt effective countermeasures which will prevent structures in tax havens from causing loss and damage to public and private interests both within and outside of their own jurisdiction.
The commonalities with the proposed global compact are the recognition that states have responsibilities towards each other in respect of financial transparency; and that these are sufficiently serious, and their abnegation sufficiently damaging for other states and citizens, that practical enforcement is necessary.
The authors and others in the AERC network are now working on a range of country studies which will provide detailed further evidence of the issues in question. Meanwhile the 'Stop the Bleeding' consortium that brings together a wide range of African actors to carry forward the agenda of the Mbeki panel is increasingly active.
Part of the reason this book is a milestone is that it sheds new light on what is known about the causes of illicit capital flows; offering supporting to the narrative that corruption and IFF should be seen not as the result of poverty, but rather as its exploitation – often led by external actors and always facilitated by financial secrecy elsewhere.
It will take on a new significance altogether if it also marks the starting point for an African-led process, perhaps backed by Norway and others, to develop an international agreement establishing the basic transparency expected – nay, required – from states toward one another; and making enforceable for the first time, claims against states for the damage caused by their financial secrecy.
[Talking of counter-measures – look out for a new TJN proposal launching tomorrow…]
Posted in Follow the Money	| Tagged Africa, financial secrecy, Follow the Money, FSI, IFF risk, illicit financial flows, tax, TJRB	| Leave a reply
Uncounted: Power, inequalities and the post-2015 data revolution
Data: Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis
Revolution: A forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system
– Oxford English Dictionary
Just published: a special double issue of the journal Development on African inequalities, including my (open access) guest editorial setting out the thesis of 'Uncounted' – how power and inequality are intimately related to who and what go uncounted, from tax evasion in the 1% to the systematic exclusion of women and girls, from the corrupting influence of illicit financial flows to the marginalisation of people living with learning disabilities…
Guest Editorial: Uncounted: Power, inequalities and the post-2015 data revolution
Development (2014) 57(3–4), 320–337. doi:10.1057/dev.2015.28
People and groups go uncounted for reasons of power: those without power are further marginalized by their exclusion from statistics, while elites and criminals resist the counting of their incomes and wealth. As a result, the pattern of counting can both reflect and exacerbate existing inequalities. The global framework set by the Sustainable Development Goals will be more ambitious, in terms of both the counting and the challenging of inequalities, than anything that has gone before. This article explores the likely obstacles, and the unaddressed weaknesses in the agreed framework, and suggests a number of measures to strengthen the eventual challenge to inequalities, including by the promotion of tax justice measures.
Keywords: inequality; data; household surveys; SDGs; tax; uncounted
While the whole edition just came out, it is technically the 2014 volume. The majority of the papers are drawn from the Pan-African Conference on Tackling Inequalities in the Context of Structural Transformation held in Accra that year, and include some cracking contributions – not least important papers on gender inequality, sustainability and disabilities, as well as broader pieces on the economics and politics of inequality. Check out the full table of contents.
Posted in economic inequality, tax, Uncounted	| Tagged Africa, gender, illicit financial flows, inequality, learning disabilities, post-2015, targets, tax, the 1%, uncounted	| 1 Reply
An African civil society perspective on FfD
The African regional consultation on Financing for Development (FfD) took place at the start of the week (like the European one). The submission from TJN-Africa puts particular emphasis on inequality, including women's rights, and on global data issues.
Summary of CSO Recommendations to African governments
African countries should push for the centrality of taxation as both the most important source of financing for development needs and the key lever to fight inequality.
African countries should call for the establishment of a new intergovernmental body on tax matters with a clear mandate.
African countries should stand together to ensure that FfD process not only recognises the importance of measures to increase transparency and accountability within the private sector as it does in Article 25 of the Zero draft but also that it commits the countries to act.
African countries should implement the recommendations contained in the AU/UNECA high level panel (HLP) on IFF report.
African countries should push for the integration of women's rights into the FfD agenda as an important issue which has relevance for tax policy.
African countries should push for commitment to the principle of redistribution via taxation and ensure the global data collection effort envisaged within the SDGs includes tracking the equity implications of tax policy
African countries should call for the recognition of international cooperation on tax as a key priority related to financing within the new global partnership for sustainable development.
African countries should make an explicit statement that MNCs paying their share of tax will be a major means of financing the SDGs.
The full document (with thanks to Savior Mwamba) can be found here.
Posted in tax	| Tagged Africa, FfD, illicit financial flows, international tax, post-2015, tax	| Leave a reply
Property tax potential
Republished from the Tax Justice Research Bulletin – find it all there, with added blues.
In a new article for the Africa Research Institute, 'How Property Tax Would Benefit Africa', Nara Monkam (ATAF) and Mick Moore (ICTD) provide a useful overview of the current state of play, while making the case for a greater role for property tax – not least because of its potential in respect of accountability. Unsurprisingly, the continent contains a 'spaghetti soup' of different approaches to property tax, operated by various tiers of government, and with widely varying revenue importance. The 'soup' includes specifically land value taxes (LVT), as well as those focused on buildings, and many combinations thereof.
Two complementary avenues for improvement are identified. Investment in administrative capacity, most obviously through (re)building cadastres, digitising ownership records and harmonising with other databases such as utility company records, is vital. (And far from being a low-income country problem only – see for example Andy Wightman's sweeping work on Scottish land, The Poor Had No Lawyers.) But also necessary is a hefty dose of political will. The authors compare 3 Sierra Leone city councils to illustrate the point:
In Bo, 93% of business owners surveyed in 2012 were able to produce a property tax receipt and 87.5% believed that local elites were successfully prosecuted for non-compliance. In Makeni and Kenema, however, only around 40% were able to produce a receipt, and just 30% were confident of successful prosecution. All three cities had demonstrated rapid revenue gains, but in Makeni and Kenema annual increases stagnated as elites proved resistant to the tax, while the municipal authorities in Bo made further progress due to sustained political will.
Monkam and Moore conclude: "The future of African national and municipal governments will depend on institutions and tax policy that are equitable, improve local service delivery and encourage compliance through establishing a social contract between taxpayers and the state. Property tax is one of the more effective means of realising these goals."
I tend to agree, though I think we're still short of definitive evidence for that last statement. In some ways this article highlights the dearth of rigorous research on which to draw – but it's certainly building, and the case for greater research focus (at least) on property tax is clear. One area of particular caution: there is evidence that property taxes at sub-national levels are often regressive (see e.g. ITEP's report this month on the US), albeit less than consumption taxes. Issues of political commitment therefore go beyond whether elites comply or not, to whether a progressive design (quite possibly LVT) can be put in place and maintained.
Posted in tax	| Tagged Africa, property tax, tax	| Leave a reply
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Impact of Brexit on Irish registered companies
This article looks at the impact of Brexit on Irish registered companies from a corporate and company law perspective, outlining some of the issues potentially facing Irish companies.
Requirement to have an EEA-resident director
Under the Companies Act 2014 (the Act) a company registered in Ireland is required to have at least one director who is resident in a member state of the European Economic Area (EEA). This requirement does not apply where the company:
has a statutory bond (Bond) in place which acts as a guarantee in the event the company is unable to pay a fine or charge resulting from breaches of the Act or tax legislation; or
has obtained a certificate from the Registrar of Companies stating that the company has a real and continuous link with one or more economic activities that are being carried on in the State (Certificate).
The UK has left the EU and is no longer a member of the EEA. As a result, Irish companies relying on a UK-resident director as their EEA-resident director will need to take action to ensure that they continue to comply with this requirement by doing one of the following:
appointing another EEA-resident director; or
putting a Bond in place; or
obtaining a Certificate from the Registrar of Companies.
It is a criminal offence for an Irish registered company not to have at least one EEA-resident director unless it satisfies one of the exemption requirements.
Cross-border mergers
A legal framework for cross-border mergers between two or more limited liability companies within the EEA was brought into EU law by Directive 2005/56/EC (the Directive). Since May 2008 the Directive, as transposed by Irish and UK implementing legislation, has enabled mergers between Irish and UK companies through a prescribed procedure which involves obtaining authorisation by the High Court in Ireland and the High Court in the UK.
From 1 January 2020, cross border mergers involving a UK company will no longer be possible as the Directive only applies to mergers of EEA registered companies. While in any case it will still be possible to effect a cross-border merger by way of a traditional business transfer whereby all of the assets and liabilities of the transferor company are acquired by the acquiring company, this method would not have the benefits of the procedure under the Directive, which involves the automatic transfer of assets and liabilities and the dissolution of the transferor company without going into liquidation. Note also that in order to claim relief from stamp duty on an reconstruction or amalgamation under section 80 of the Stamp Duties Consolidation Act 1999, the acquiring company must be a limited liability company incorporated in an EEA member state.
UK branches
A UK company that has registered as a branch in Ireland will automatically become a third country company so that the rules relevant to branches of non-EEA member state companies will apply. In particular, from 1 January 2021 branches of UK companies will be required to file accounts, which is not required for EEA companies.
Irish subsidiaries of EEA holding companies: exemption from filing statutory accounts
Where an Irish registered company is a subsidiary undertaking of a holding undertaking established in an EEA Member State, the company can, instead of filing its own accounts, file the consolidated accounts of the holding undertaking which are drawn up and audited in accordance with the Seventh Council Directive or in accordance with IFRS. To avail of this exemption, the company's shareholders must consent and there must be in force, in respect of the relevant financial year, an irrevocable guarantee by the holding undertaking of all amounts shown as liabilities in the statutory financial statements of the company in respect of that financial year.
As the UK will cease to be a member of the EEA, it will no longer be possible for Irish subsidiaries of UK holding companies to avail of this exemption and such companies will be required, under the Act, to annex their statutory financial statements to their annual return for the relevant financial year.
UK qualified auditors
The situation with regard to UK qualified auditors remains unclear. Although Chartered Accountants Ireland (CAI) have indicated that UK based auditors will remain on the Irish register for the time being, they have also indicated that if there is a change in Irish company law or a legally binding regulatory instruction , they may have no choice but to withdraw the Irish audit registration of UK auditors and audit firms. If UK qualified auditors do have their registrations in Ireland withdrawn, they would then be subject to the same assessments as auditors from non-EEA member before they would be recognised to act as auditors to Irish companies. As a result, Irish companies with UK based auditors should consider changing to an Irish registered auditor.
For more information or to discuss any Brexit related issues impacting your business, please get in touch with Damian Maloney, Emer Moriarty Crowley, Shaun O'Shea (Corporate and Commercial), or Maureen Daly (IP and Data Protection), Dorit McCann (EU, Competition & Procurement), Barry Cahir (Litigation and Insolvency), Sandra Masterson Power (Employment), or you usual Beauchamps contact.
Pauline Louth
Pauline is a partner heading up our knowledge management team. Pauline and her team ensure our lawyers and clients are up to date on legal developments and trends. Her focus is on ensuring our collective experience and knowledge is shared across the firm and with our clients.


Long Description In this blackest of comedies, a perfect 18-year marriage suddenly becomes unglued and the gleefully evil Barbara (Kathleen Turner) and Oliver (Michael Douglas) Rose single-mindedly inflict as much misery as possible on each other. Rather than just get divorced, they declare war, fighting to the bitter end over their huge mansion and every possession in it. Not even the calculating guidance of Oliver's lawyer (Danny DeVito) can stop this uncompromisingly nasty two some as their vicious battle sends them on an increasingly dark and dangerous path.


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UN Subjects
UN Human Rights Treaties
Civil Defence Forces
Convention: International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance
05 December 1986 Report of the Special Representative, Viscount Colville of Culross, on Guatemala, prepared in accordance with paragraph 8 of Commission resolution 1986/62 of 13 March 1986 : note / by the Secretary-General.
11 January 1991 Report on the situation of human rights in Guatemala / by the independent Expert, Christian Tomuschat, prepared in accordance with paragraph 14 of Commission resolution 1990/80.
21 January 1992 Assistance to Guatemala in the field of human rights : report on the situation of human rights in Guatemala, prepared in accordance with paragraph 11 of Commission resolution 1991/51 / by the independent expert, Christian Tomuschat.
27 April 1992 Summary record of the 46th meeting, 1st part, held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on Thursday, 27 February 1992 : Commission on Human Rights, 48th session.
18 December 1992 Report on the situation of human rights in Guatemala / by the Independent Expert, Christian Tomuschat, prepared in accordance with paragraph 13 of Commission resolution 1992/78.
11 February 1993 Written statement / submitted by the Andean Commission of Jurists.
06 July 1993 Summary record of the 2nd part (public) of the 44th meeting, held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on Monday, 1 March 1993 : Commission on Human Rights, 49th session.
20 January 1994 Assistance to Guatemala in the field of human rights : report on the situation of human rights in Guatemala, prepared in accordance with Commission resolution 1993/88 / by the independent Expert, Mónica Pinto.
Convention: Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
04 March 1992 Draft report of the Commission : Commission on Human Rights, 48th session.
27 April 1992 Summary record of the 52nd meeting, 1st part, held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on Tuesday, 3 March 1992 : Commission on Human Rights, 48th session.
19 August 1996 Summary record of the 13th meeting, held at the Palais des Nations, Geneva, on Wednesday, 14 August 1996 : Commission on Human Rights, Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 48th session.
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5th International Textile Art Symposium in Daugavpils
Datums : 06.11.2018 10:00 - 16.11.2018 16:00
From 6 till 16 November, Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre will once again host an international textile and fibre art symposium.
For the fifth time, Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre will welcome an international group of textile artists who will draw inspiration from the streets of Daugavpils Fortress, its courtyards, architecture and people to create new artwork which will be publicly exhibited in a group show of symposium participants at the end of a two-week period of intensive creative work.
The 5th International Textile Art Symposium has brought together artists Eiko Hattori (Japan), Yen-Yu Tseng (Taiwan), Päivi Vaarula (Iceland), Moumita Das (India), Magdalena Kleszyńska (Poland), Sauro Manetti (Italy), Alexander Hernandez (the USA/Mexico), Ju Won Lim (South Korea), Kaylie Kaitschuck (the USA), Maria Barthélémy (France), René Sultra (France), Olga Roehl (Latvia).
The programme of the symposium will feature artist presentations, scheduled for 5 p.m. on 7 November at Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, and Taiwanese artist Yen-Yu Tseng's master class "Action Figure in Textile" at 3 p.m. on 13 November.
Supporters: Daugavpils City Council, State Cultural Capital Foundation, Valmiermuiža Brewery.


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Conn-Selmer and Notre Dame Grant Writing Course
Post on: February 22, 2019
Nicole Roberts
Having appropriate funding is essential in the music industry, but crafting successful grant proposals takes a certain skill.
After music educators expressed a desire for more grant writing education, Conn-Selmer partnered with the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business to offer an inaugural two-day intensive certification on grant proposal writing for music educators.
Approximately 60 people attended the event in Chicago in December 2018 to learn about various elements needed for successful grant proposals. Topics included how to develop proposal ideas and methods, establish and sustain relationships with funders, define clear goals and objectives, create program budgets, and write proposal summaries and compelling problem statements.
Dr. Marc Hardy, director of nonprofit certificate education at the University of Notre Dame, presented during the course. Attendees also read Tori O'Neal-McElrath's "Winning Grants Step by Step: The Complete Workbook for Planning, Developing and Writing Successful Proposals."
"A lot of folks don't know the basics of grant writing and how to get started, and this offered them an opportunity to feel confident about getting into grant writing," says Michael Kamphuis, managing director of Conn-Selmer's Division of Education. "It energized a lot of folks because in areas where we're not seeing the funding necessarily, this kind of gave them the hope that there are people out there that want to support them."
Attendees had an "aha moment" during the course when Hardy relayed how much charitable money is available, Kamphuis says. In 2017, the arts, culture, and humanities received $19.51 billion in charitable money, according to the Giving USA Foundation.
While attending the course, educators had the chance to began developing their proposals or received guidance on pending proposals. After completing the course, attendees received a certificate from the University of Notre Dame.
Conn-Selmer plans to host similar events in the future, says Aaron Albin, director of educational communication for Conn-Selmer.
Photos courtesy of Conn-Selmer.
Win Up to $35,000 in "We Are Band!" Video Challenge 4th Annual Kids Music Day; Friday, October 4th 2019; 600+ Locations Participating Worldwide One-Year Milestones and Goals for IN STEP: Women of DCI
Tags: marching bandHalftime Magazinemarching artsConn Selmermusic educatorsUniversity of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Businessgrant proposal writingTori O'Neal-McElrathGiving USA Foundation
Nicole Roberts is the city hall reporter for the News Tribune in Jefferson City, Missouri. She graduated from Missouri State University with a degree in print/internet journalism and a minor in psychology. She played clarinet in the Missouri State Pride Band and in her high school's marching band.
Gary Roberts' Legacy with Stanbury Uniforms
Gary Roberts, president and CEO of Stanbury Uniforms, died at the age of 69 on April 18, 2017, after a prolonged battle with cancer. Roberts ...


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package com.twitter.finatra.http.internal.marshalling

import com.twitter.concurrent.exp.AsyncStream
import com.twitter.finagle.httpx.{Request, Response}
import com.twitter.finatra.http.response.{ResponseBuilder, StreamingResponse}
import com.twitter.finatra.json.FinatraObjectMapper
import com.twitter.finatra.json.internal.streaming.JsonStreamParser
import com.twitter.util.Future
import javax.inject.Inject

class CallbackConverter @Inject()(
  messageBodyManager: MessageBodyManager,
  responseBuilder: ResponseBuilder,
  mapper: FinatraObjectMapper,
  jsonStreamParser: JsonStreamParser) {

  /* Public */

  def convertToFutureResponse[RequestType: Manifest, ResponseType: Manifest](callback: RequestType => ResponseType): Request => Future[Response] = {
    val requestConvertedCallback: (Request => ResponseType) = createRequestCallback[RequestType, ResponseType](callback)
    createResponseCallback[ResponseType](requestConvertedCallback)
  }

  /* Private */

  private def createRequestCallback[RequestType: Manifest, ResponseType: Manifest](callback: (RequestType) => ResponseType): (Request) => ResponseType = {
    if (manifest[RequestType] == manifest[Request]) {
      callback.asInstanceOf[(Request => ResponseType)]
    }
    else if (runtimeClassEq[RequestType, AsyncStream[_]]) {
      val asyncStreamTypeParam = manifest[RequestType].typeArguments.head
      request: Request =>
        val asyncStream = jsonStreamParser.parseArray(request.reader)(asyncStreamTypeParam)
        callback(asyncStream.asInstanceOf[RequestType])
    } else {
      request: Request =>
        val callbackInput = messageBodyManager.read[RequestType](request)
        callback(callbackInput)
    }
  }

  private def createResponseCallback[ResponseType: Manifest](requestCallback: (Request) => ResponseType): (Request) => Future[Response] = {
    if (manifest[ResponseType] == manifest[Future[Response]]) {
      requestCallback.asInstanceOf[(Request => Future[Response])]
    }
    else if (isFutureOption[ResponseType]) {
      request: Request =>
        requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[Future[Option[_]]] map optionToHttpResponse
    }
    else if (runtimeClassEq[ResponseType, AsyncStream[_]]) {
      request: Request =>
        val asyncStream = requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[AsyncStream[_]]

        val streamingResponse = StreamingResponse.jsonArray(
          toBuf = mapper.writeValueAsBuf,
          asyncStream = asyncStream)

        streamingResponse.toFutureFinagleResponse
    }
    else if (runtimeClassEq[ResponseType, Future[_]]) {
      request: Request =>
        requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[Future[_]] map createHttpResponse
    }
    else if (runtimeClassEq[ResponseType, StreamingResponse[_]]) {
      request: Request =>
        requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[StreamingResponse[_]].toFutureFinagleResponse
    }
    else if (manifest[ResponseType] == manifest[Response]) {
      request: Request =>
        Future(
          requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[Response])
    }
    else if (runtimeClassEq[ResponseType, Option[_]]) {
      request: Request =>
        Future(
          optionToHttpResponse(requestCallback(request).asInstanceOf[Option[_]]))
    }
    else {
      request: Request =>
        Future(
          createHttpResponse(requestCallback(request)))
    }
  }

  private def optionToHttpResponse(response: Option[_]): Response = {
    response map createHttpResponse getOrElse {
      responseBuilder.notFound("")
    }
  }

  private def createHttpResponse(any: Any): Response = {
    any match {
      case response: Response => response
      case _ => responseBuilder.ok(any)
    }
  }

  private def runtimeClassEq[T: Manifest, U: Manifest]: Boolean = {
    manifest[T].runtimeClass == manifest[U].runtimeClass
  }

  private def isFutureOption[T: Manifest]: Boolean = {
    val typeArgs = manifest[T].typeArguments
    runtimeClassEq[T, Future[_]] &&
      typeArgs.size == 1 &&
      typeArgs.head.runtimeClass == classOf[Option[_]]
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Our gastropub is named for the Duke of Wellington, the British general that conquered Napoleon. Add a touch of history to your event, while making a little history of your own. Our retreat-like setting evokes Virginia's gracious past while providing thoroughly modern delights. We welcome groups of family and friends, conference attendees and corporate teams.
Enjoy the ambience of a British pub, the freshness of a newly renovated décor and the attentiveness of a Four-Diamond hotel. Whenever you visit, you'll find good cheer here.
Enjoy doing things on the spur of the moment? You're just on our schedule. Drop by for a lively happy hour in our pub-like setting, or host a private party in our comfortable surroundings.
We're conveniently near the places you're going, whether it's Dulles International Airport, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Chantilly or cultural hubs like the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts.
Join us for Happy Hour, or customize one of your own. Your guests will enjoy our extensive list of craft beer and ales, creative cocktails and fine wines from Virginia to Napa Valley and across the world.
You'll even see award-winning Bulleit Bourbon incorporated into our pub-like décor — highlighting British good times translated to an American setting.
Enjoy American choices, from Wellington's Fish & Chips, Grilled Rib Eye to Crab Cakes. Whether you stop by for lunch or dinner, you'll find healthy choices and comfort food bursting with flavor — including signature creations and seasonal, locally sourced cuisine. And you'll enjoy seeing so many options at a reasonable price.
We're located off Route 28 just seven miles from Dulles International Airport, close to the Dulles Expo Center and a short drive from Washington, DC.
Self-parking is on the house; valet parking $15 USD daily, $25 USD overnight.
Our gastropub is named for the Duke of Wellington, the British general that conquered Napoleon. What does our inspiration mean to you? Great pub food, meticulous planning and the can-do attitude that ensures a flawless event.
Our award-winning catering team can create a tasting menu for your pleasure and advise you on the perfect wine pairing for each course.
You're welcome to call ahead. We look forward to greeting you at Wellingtons.


We were dazzled by the Brooklyn Duo, Charming Disaster last night. As part of our Tiny Modern Concert Series with Series 42, they sang songs about circuses and ghosts, played a kazoo and graced us with their artistic spirit. Lancaster was the start of their multi-city tour. Thanks, Charming Disaster, and enjoy the rest of your tour!For more Tiny Modern Concert dates, check out our calendar.