gurdjieff | Because literature for Gurdjieff, as for the Sufis, is inextricable from philosophy, it is appropriate in considering Beelzebub’s Tales
to address some fundamental philosophical questions, the answers to
which help put Gurdjieff’s writings into perspective. Among the issues
to be addressed, one of primary importance is to define what constitutes
literature for Gurdjieff, or what, according to his aesthetics,
distinguishes literature from non-literature; art from non-art.
Unraveling this distinction involves comprehending some of
Gurdjieff’s fundamental ideas about human beings and their place in the
world. We have already proposed that Gurdjieff’s primary philosophical
stance is that of Sufism, and his philosophy of art supports this
contention.1 At the core of his
aesthetics is the position that no form of artistic expression possesses
value in itself; no art is appreciable for its intrinsic value alone.
Because of his premises concerning the meaning and purpose of human
existence, all “art” for Gurdjieff, and consequently all literature as
an art-form, must be functional or didactic. The value of an art work
resides in its potentiality to transform or metamorphose the art
appreciator. Insofar as a work of literature, a piece of music, a
painting, or any other potential art form aids humans in the process of
their spiritual evolution, that object or activity earns the designation
“art” for Gurdjieff and possesses what he refers to as “soul.”
Gurdjieff’s use of terminology to espouse his aesthetics and other
branches of his philosophy frequently involves his supplying old terms
with new meanings. Consequently, we are forced when approaching his
writings to temporarily abandon old associations of key words used in
his discussions. Such is the case with the terms “soul,” “objective”
and “subjective,” “conscious” and “unconscious.” “Subjective art,” for
example, in Gurdjieff’s terminology, refers to most of what is commonly
interpreted as art.
Most twentieth-century art in its various forms, according to his
standards, would fall into this category.
But subjective art is not authentic art for him; it is the result of
mechanical, unconscious human activity, and most of humanity is
unconscious according to Gurdjieff. For the same reason, he refers to
subjective art as “soulless” in that it results from little or no
consciousness on the part of the would-be artist. In his introduction
to Meetings with Remarkable Men, he asserts that contemporary civilization is unique in history in its massive production of soulless, pseudo art.
On the other hand, “objective art” is authentic art in that it
results from deliberate, pre-meditated efforts on the part of a
conscious artist. In the act of creation, the true artist avoids or
eliminates any input which is subjective or arbitrary, and the
impression of such art on those who experience it is always definite.
To the degree that objective art is the result of consciousness, it
inherently possesses “soul.” As one example of soulful art, Gurdjieff
cites the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci; as another he refers to the
Taj Mahal. Both constitute objective works of art.
theoccidentalobserver |It
is unfortunate, to say the least, that Black hip-hop scholarship never
mentions the elephant in the room: Jewish control of the music industry.
If hip-hop is, indeed, ethno-politics set to music, if hip-hop has
taken the place of the civil rights movement in the hearts and minds of
Black youth, it is impossible to ignore the historic Black-Jewish
alliance against WASPs. For much of the twentieth century, that
alliance was a constituent element in what Black nationalist Harold
Cruse called the “fateful triangular tension among national
groups…coming to the fore” in the 60s.[28]
It is a truism of American political history that, from the Leo Frank
trial and the founding of the NAACP in the early twentieth century down
to the Black Lives Matter movement, Jewish intellectual-activists have
worked tirelessly to imbue disaffected American Negroes with their own
revolutionary spirit.[29]
Cruse
was himself a Negro member of the American Communist Party. By that
time, Jews had displaced Anglo-Saxons as the vanguard of American
Communism. Unlike WASP Communists, the Jews shaped radical politics in
accordance with “their own national group social ambitions or
individual self-elevation.” Negroes were relegated to the status of a
national minority in the party while Jews were free to pick up or drop
their Jewish identity as it suited them.[30]
This arrangement enabled Jews to become experts on “the Negro
problem.” Not surprisingly, Jewish artists, musicians, and radicals
then became highly visible players in the Civil Rights Movement of the
1950s and 60s. “As a result,” Cruse observes, “the great brainwashing
of Negro radical intellectuals was not achieved by capitalism, or the
capitalistic bourgeoisie, but by Jewish intellectuals in the American
Communist Party.”[31]
In
the contemporary hip-hop community, Jewish leadership has been hidden
behind the corporate veil. Tricia Rose vehemently denounces the
corrupting influence of corporate control on the hip-hop community but
her treatment of the subject obscures the identity of the corporate high
command.[32]
The music industry is absorbed into a vast impersonal system of “White
power,” a matrix whose denizens all routinely swallow the blue pill.
The closest we come to identifying those in charge is when Dyson
criticizes the “White corporate interests” exploiting Black talent.[33]
Jews
are never mentioned in Dyson’s work on hip-hop. Not surprisingly,
Dyson has unimpeachable philo-Semitic credentials. Blacks and Jews, he
believes, are united in common struggles against oppression in White
America. Far be it from him ever to cast Jews as an enemy of Black
folk. On his account, Blacks love Jews and Jews love Blacks.[34] Professor Rose also tip-toes around the issue of Jewish influence in the hip-hop community; The Hip Hop Wars
has no index entry for Jews. Only in passing does Rose name names.
But, when she does identify a few of the corporate heavyweights involved
in the hip-hop community, the elephant moves onto center stage.
In
a chapter on hip-hop’s responsibility for sexist and misogynist lyrics
and imagery, Rose mentions a rare public appearance by leading figures
in the corporate record industry. In their statements “corporate
executives such as Universal chairman Doug Morris, Warner chairman and
chief executive Edgar Bronfman, Sony chairman Andrew Lack, and Viacom
president and CEO Phillipe P. Dauman have defended their role as
distributors of intensely sexist content by subsuming sexism under
artists’ rights to express themselves freely.” Interestingly, in the
same paragraph, Rose urges us to “pull back the veil on the corporate
media’s manipulation of Black male and female artists and the impact
this has on fans and the direction of Black cultural expression.”[35]
Why does she not see fit to mention that the four corporate kingpins
she names are all Jews? The ethno-political fact is that Rose leaves
the corporate veil intact by ascribing blame for the corruption of the
hip-hop community to an abstraction called corporate greed. Rose heads
the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown
University.[36] How can she not be aware of the stunning success Jews have had in mixing business with ethno-politics?
After
all, a simple Google search on “Jews run hip hop” turns up a wealth of
investigative leads for a researcher eager to see how the “triangular
tension” between Jews, Negroes, and Anglo-Saxons” has accommodated
itself to the new players in American ethno-politics. Black scholars
typically ignore the criticisms of Jewish control commonly made by
rappers and fans.[37]
Traditional Catholics such as E. Michael Jones are also critical of
rap music as “one more manifestation of the behavior which goes along
with the Jewish revolutionary spirit that took over the Black mind
during the course of the 20thcentury.”[38] The Jewish revolutionary spirit has pioneered the techniques of using sex as an instrument of political control.[39] The hip-hop brand of sexuality is no exception.
Bearing
that in mind, it comes as no surprise to learn that hip-hop is deeply
involved “with the multibillion dollar pornographic industry. The strip
club has long been an integral part of both the music video and
business end, but since the start of the new century, there has been a
complete cross-over into pornography.” Orlando Patterson describes
scenes from these productions as “the most degrading and abusive
depictions of women imaginable.”[40]
Small wonder, then, that a Google search for “Jews run pornography”
yields another treasure trove of investigative leads sure to be left
unexplored (for fear of the Jews?) by both Black and White scholars.
FinalCall | Some of our greatest icons, such as Sammy Davis Jr., Billie Holiday,
“Little” Richard (and the list goes on) lived rich, yet died broke while
Jewish managers, accountants, attorneys, business advisors and others
fed their families for years off of their largess. Few entertainers in
the history of Black America have been able to say that their assets and
true net worth were as prominent as their talent and popularity. Sadly,
hip-hop is no different. And while hip-hop has produced a handful of
millionaires, they are like a teardrop in the Pacific Ocean when
compared to the many rappers who, like most Black people, are living
“show-to-show” and “check-to-check.”
Over the years I've had many personal acquaintances who were in the
hip-hop music industry with hit records, global popularity and a healthy
fan base. It always puzzled me the way they struggled financially;
worse than some school teachers or sanitation workers. I watched many of
them try and maintain the image of the rich and powerful, yet couldn't
pay their taxes, child support and in some cases their rent. Popular
hip-hop magazine, XXL, recently published an article titled “Hard Times”
about fiscal problems rappers face that the hip-hop community doesn't
like to talk about. Truth is, most rappers are broke; owing more money
to their record labels than they have in their bank accounts. As a
matter of fact, most contracts for rappers are just as horrible as those
for entertainers in other genres where artists sell millions and
receive pennies while the record companies make out like fat rats. Who
are the owners of these major record companies? Forgive me if I sound
monotonous, but they just happen to be Jewish.
There have been many examples of independent success in hip-hop's
music industry such as Master P (No Limit Records), James Prince
(Rap-a-Lot Records), Luther Campbell (2 Live Records) and others.
However, because none of these outfits had the power to control their
own distribution they were eventually left at the mercy of those who
did. Who are the owners and controllers of the distribution channels
that deliver rap music to the world? You guessed it. They just happen to
be Jewish. Cash Money/Young Money Records, a popular imprint from New
Orleans who houses artists Lil' Wayne, Drake, Nicki Minaj and others
reportedly has one of the last lucrative independent deals in existence,
but still do not control their own distribution. So even those
Black-owned rap labels who appear to be the front-runners are in a
dangerous position.
This opinion editorial is not an effort to weaken the powerful image
of our great hip-hop artists. I love hip-hop. I am part of the hip-hop
generation. This is why I felt the need to write this article. Hip-hop
is leading the youth of the world, but if our artists are under the
inordinate control of those who control their careers then where will
the youth of the world be led? I'm only trying to, as they say in the
streets, “keep it 100.” It's time for rappers to become just as tough
and assertive in the boardroom as they are in the recording booth.
IOL | Johannesburg
- The South African government and President Jacob Zuma have been
caught in the middle of an international wrangle over as much as R2
trillion in US dollars as well as hundreds of tons of gold and at least
six million carats of diamonds in assets belonging to the people of
Libya.
What could be the world’s largest cash pile is stored in palettes at
seven heavily guarded warehouses and bunkers in secret locations between
Joburg and Pretoria.
The Libyan billions have led to a Hawks investigation into possible
violation of exchange controls as well as international interests from
the UN and the US.
It has also led to heightened interest in the local and international
intelligence community as well as the criminal underworld.
Those interested in the Libyan loot include several high-ranking ANC
politicians, several business leaders, a former high court judge and a
number of private companies.
The R2-trillion held in warehouses is separate from several other
billions, believed to be in excess of R260 billion, held legally in four
banks in South Africa.
Other legal assets include hotels in Joburg and Cape Town.
The Sunday Independent has seen official South African government
documents which confirm that at least $179bn in US dollars is kept,
illegally, in storage facilities across Gauteng.
Soon after Muammar Gaddafi’s death in October 2011, the new Libyan
government embarked on a large-scale mission to recover legal assets in
South Africa, the rest of Africa, the US and Europe.
In South Africa, the focus of the Libyans has been on assets brought into the country legally as well as illegally.
thedailybeast | In August 2014, Erik Iskander Goaied formed a company to locate what
he claims is $150 billion or more in U.S. currency, gold, diamonds, and
other assets. This is the loot that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi had
squirreled away outside of Libya
before he was deposed in 2011. Goaied claims to have a contract with
the Libyan government that lets him keep 10 percent of what he finds,
which means that if he locates even a fraction of the money he insists
is sitting in bank accounts, as well as warehouses, around the world, he
will instantly become a billionaire.
Lots of people have been
looking for this money. The Libyan government has tried for years to
repatriate assets Gaddafi either deposited or laundered outside the
country. Investigators say they think they’ve found much of it already
in banks in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany, and
those funds have been frozen.
Goaied, for his part, insists he
found $12.5 billion of Gaddafi’s cash sitting on pallets in a
Johannesburg airplane hangar a few years ago. And that, Goaied says, is
just a taste of what he can find and bring home to a country that’s been
wracked by civil war and decades of Gaddafi’s corruption. His finder’s
fee will be a comparative pittance.
Libya sorely needs the cash.
The country is arguably a failed state, with rival factions in the
capital, Tripoli, and the eastern city of Tobruk vying for control.
Whoever ends up running Libya will need billions to rebuild the country.
If Goaied were legitimate, he could be Libya’s next hero.
globalresearch |
Gaddafi
was not only the leader of Libya, he had ambitions to free Africa from
the nefarious fangs of the west. Despite being called a dictator and
despot by the west – they do that to anyone who doesn’t submit to
Washington’s rules – he was very much liked by Libyans, by his people.
He had a more than 80% approvalrate by the Libyan people. Libya’s oil
fortune has allowed him to create a social system in his country where
everybody would benefit from their land’s riches – free health care,
free education, including scholarships abroad, modern infrastructure,
top-notch technology in medicine, and more.
Russia TV24: Why the gold dinar would be unacceptable for the western leaders? Or not?
PK: Yes, the gold Dinar was totally
unacceptable for western leaders. It might have devastated the US dollar
hegemony, as well as Europe’s control over the African economy – which
is nothing less than neo-colonization of Africa – in many ways worse
than what happened for the past 400 or 800 years of murderous military
colonization and oppression -which is by the way still ongoing, just
more discretely.
Look
at the Ivory Coast 2010 presidential elections. Theirarguably
‘unelected’ President, Alassane Ouattara (picture on the right), was in a
tie with the people’s candidate, Laurent Gbagbo. Gbagbo said he won the
election and asked for a recount which was denied. Ouattara, a former
IMF staff, was pushed in, basically by ‘recommendation’ of the IMF. He
is the darling of the neoliberal international financial institutions –
and is leading a neocon government – an economy at the service of
western corporations. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they got.
Modern colonization is well alive and thriving. I call this a financial
coup, instigated by foreign financial institutions.
Mr. Laurent Gbagbo
was accused of rape, murder and other atrocities and immediately
transferred to the International Criminal Court (sic-sic) – what
justice? – in The Hague, where he was waiting five years for a trial
which started on 28 January 2016 and is ongoing. On 15 May 2017, it was
extended at the Prosecutor’s request to collect further evidence. This
by all likelihood is just a farce to dupe the public into believing that
he is getting a fair trial. Already in hearings in 2014, Gbagbo was
found guilty of all charges, including murder, rape and other crimes
against humanity. Like Slobodan Milošević, he is an
inconvenient prisoner, or worse would he be as a free man. So, he will
most likely be locked away – and one day commit ‘suicide’ or die from a
‘heart attack’. The classic. That’s how the west does away with
potential witnesses of their atrocious crimes. End of story. Nobody
barks, because the ‘free world’has been made believe by the western
presstitute media that these people are inhuman tyrants. That’s
precisely what the western media’s headlines proclaimed about Muammar
Gaddafi: Death of a Tyrant.
On the other hand, in 2015, Ouattara was “reelected by a landslide”.
That’s what western media say. Colonization under African ‘leadership’.
He is protected by the French army.
—
Back to Libya: Take the specific case of France and West and Central
Africa. The French Central Bank, the Banque de France, backs the West
and Central African Monetary Union’s currency, the CFA franc. The West
African Central Bank, for example, is covered, i.e. controlled, by about
70% of the Banque de France. Banque de France has an almost total
control over the economy of its former West African colonies. No wonder,
Sarkozy, a murderer and war criminal – sorry, it must be said, backed
Hillary’s – also a murderer and war criminal, push for NATO to destroy
the country and kill thousands of Libyans, including Libya’s leader,
Muammar Gaddafi. Hillary’s infamous words: ‘We came we saw he died’. And that she said shamelessly, jokingly, laughing. Would the term human being still apply to such a monster?
Russia TV24: What countries are mostly
interested in the Libyan recovery and why? What are the chances for the
economy of Libya to be repaired?
PK:Well, if anybody should be interested
in Libya’s recovery it would be first the Libyans who are still living
in Libya, because they are now living in a Libya of chaos and high
crime, of mafia-economics, of tyranny by gang leadership. They certainly
have an interest to return to normalcy. North African neighboring
countries should also be interested in restoring order and rebuilding
Libya’s infrastructure and economy, stopping the spill-over of high
crime and terrorism. They have lost an important trading partner.
Of course, the rest of Africa, who have suffered from continuous
colonization of the west, after Gaddafi’s demise, should also be
interested in reestablishing Libya. They know,it will never be the same
Libya that was there to help their economy, to help them prying loose
from the western boots and fangs of exploitation.
foreignpolicyjournal | Though the French-proposed U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973
claimed the no-fly zone implemented over Libya was to protect civilians,
an April 2011 email [archived here] sent to Hillary with the subject line “France’s client and Qaddafi’s gold” tells of less noble ambitions.
The
email identifies French President Nicholas Sarkozy as leading the
attack on Libya with five specific purposes in mind: to obtain Libyan
oil, ensure French influence in the region, increase Sarkozy’s
reputation domestically, assert French military power, and to prevent
Gaddafi’s influence in what is considered “Francophone Africa.”
Most
astounding is the lengthy section delineating the huge threat that
Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves, estimated at “143 tons of gold, and a
similar amount in silver,” posed to the French franc (CFA) circulating
as a prime African currency. In place of the noble sounding
“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) doctrine fed to the public, there is
this “confidential” explanation of what was really driving the war
[emphasis mine]:
This gold was
accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used
to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar.
This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with
an alternative to the French franc (CFA).
(Source
Comment: According to knowledgeable individuals this quantity of gold
and silver is valued at more than $7 billion. French intelligence
officers discovered this plan shortly after the current rebellion began,
and this was one of the factors that influenced President Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya.)
Though
this internal email aims to summarize the motivating factors driving
France’s (and by implication NATO’s) intervention in Libya, it is
interesting to note that saving civilian lives is conspicuously absent
from the briefing.
Instead, the great fear reported is that Libya
might lead North Africa into a high degree of economic independence with
a new pan-African currency.
French intelligence “discovered” a
Libyan initiative to freely compete with European currency through a
local alternative, and this had to be subverted through military
aggression.
Suddeutsche | Where is Muammar Gaddafi’s money? Rebels pulled the Libyan dictator
from a sewage pipe near his hometown of Sirte on October 20, 2011. He
was bleeding from his head, and rebels and bystanders joined in beating
him and clubbing his groin with a bayonet. Shortly thereafter, this bird
of paradise among African autocrats was dead.
But shortly before
he died, Gaddafi sold a fifth of Libya’s gold reserves, and most of the
proceeds from this sale are still missing. The so-called Panama Papers
could now shed light on the search for this incredible fortune.
Through
a network of cryptic corporate investments, secret front companies and
hidden bank accounts, Gaddafi had managed to set aside a fortune since
the fall of the Libyan king in 1969. Oil had made Libya and, in turn,
Gaddafi, rich. T
theantimedia | The United States’ ability to maintain its influence over the rest of the world has been slowly diminishing. Since the petrodollar was established
in 1971, U.S. currency has monopolized international trade through oil
deals with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and continuous military interventions.
There is, however, growing opposition to the American standard, and it
gained more support recently when several Gulf states suddenly blockaded Qatar, which they accused of funding terrorism.
Despite the mainstream narrative, there are several other reasons why
Qatar is in the crosshairs. Over the past two years, it conducted over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese yuan and has signedother agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation. Qatar also shares
the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, giving the two
countries significant regional influence to expand their own trade
deals.
Meanwhile, uncontrollable debt and political divisions in the United States are clear signs of vulnerability. The Chinese and Russians proactively set up alternative financial systems for countries looking to distance themselves from the Federal Reserve. After the IMF accepted
the yuan into its basket of reserve currencies in October of last year,
investors and economists finally started to pay attention. The economic
power held by the Federal Reserve has been key in financing the
American empire, but geopolitical
changes are happening fast. The United States’ reputation has been
tarnished by decades of undeclared wars, mass surveillance, and
catastrophic foreign policy.
qz | A diamond is carbon, one of the most abundant elements on Earth. But
as anyone who has ever shopped for, admired, or worn a diamond can tell
you, there’s a lot more to them than just a tetrahedal crystalline
structure of atoms.
Both physically and culturally, these stones have weight. Diamonds
are romance, love, commitment, legitimacy, achievement. Diamonds are
forever. But why are they so loaded? Sure, they catch the light, but why
do diamonds—rather than, say, emeralds, rubies, tourmalines, or
sapphires—get to be a girl’s best friend and everlasting love?
Why? In a word: marketing.
Who dreamed this up?
Forever is a long time. Yet just 100 years ago, diamonds had only just started to trickle into the popular consumer conscience.
Before then, diamonds from India and Brazil were used as an
adornment, but only by the ruling classes. Then, in 1866, a teenage boy
playing on the Orange River near Hopetown, South Africa found an oddly
hard, shiny stone: the 21.25-carat “Eureka Diamond,” that would set off
an African diamond rush and transform the market. By the late 1880s, two
British mining rivals in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes and Barney Barnato,
flooded the market with diamonds as they tried to outsell each other.
Prices plummeted, and the men recognized that controlling the supply of diamonds
would be the best way to keep prices high. Rhodes took control of
Barnato’s company, and in 1888 established De Beers Consolidated Mines
Limited.
“South Africa must do without her diamond industry,” wrote the Spectator
in February, 1932. “An impoverished world cannot buy its gems; and the
diamond syndicate dare not seek more custom by reducing its prices.
Diamonds would lose half their attraction if they were cheap.
Overproduction of them might spoil the trade for years to come.”
wakingtimes | Diamonds were first discovered 2,500 years ago and were extremely
rare. They were only available to royalty, aristocrats, and the wealthy.
They were originally found in riverbeds in India and Borneo. In the
early eighteenth century, diamond mines were found in Brazil and as the
supply increased the prices dropped.
In 1866, a 15-year-old boy found diamonds on his father’s farm on the
banks of the Orange River in South Africa. Within fifteen years,
African mines became the leading producer of diamonds and the industry
was changed forever.
A mining rush ensued and industrial mining for diamonds had begun.
Cecil Rhodes, an English imperialist, whose thirst for power and
quest to spread the British way of life across the globe stumbled upon
the diamond mine on the De Beers farm and purchased it for a small
price. Rhodes feared that if all these diamonds hit the market, the
prices would crash. His goal was to then control the market by securing
supply. One-by-one, he bought out the other mining companies and founded
De Beers Diamond and Mining Company.
By 1888, Rhodes had control of 90-percent of the diamonds in the
world ensuring there would never be a flood of supply to lower prices.
He also had been named Prime Minister of Cape Colony giving him
political power to enforce laws that would pave the way for Apartheid by
removing natives off their land and into forced labor camps to mine his
diamonds.
The De Beers Company had created a cartel that was based on the
French concept of controlling the copper industry – buying up mines,
restricting supply, and raising prices. A cartel, by definition, is
simply an agreement between competing firms to exclude prices and
exclude entry of a new competitor into the market – illegal in the
United States and United Nations.
De Beers largest competitor, Anglo-American Company, was founded in
1917 by Ernest Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had stumbled upon massive
amounts of alluvial diamonds (diamonds on top of the earth that did not
need to be mined). Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with these
diamonds unless he was made chairman of De Beers. And just like that,
the illegal anti-trust monopoly was created with complete control of the
industry. Now that supply was in control, they had to take charge of
the other side of the business equation – demand.
In 1930, a De Beers engineer warned,
“The diamond market is dependent for its smooth
function on the maintenance of the illusion in the minds of the general
public that the diamond is a rare and valuable stone.”
The cartel then set up an office in Hollywood and exchanged valuable
diamonds to producers to put in scenes showing off the diamonds with the
man surprising the woman with the diamond which helped launch the
notion that engagement meant receiving diamonds. They would give to
actresses to flaunt at all public appearances for advertising to the
public.
This followed with the marketing campaign with the simple phrase, “a
diamond is forever.” This trained the public that love is synonymous
with diamonds and people were willing to pay large portion of their
salaries to show love for their significant other.
Furthermore, “A Diamond is Forever” also suggests that there is no
resale value of diamonds. Every woman deserves her own unique diamond to
symbolize your love. This also prevents diamonds from returning to the
market, which again would lower prices.
While this sounds like a brilliant marketing scheme; this false
concept of diamonds are rare and valuable led to millions of lives being
slain, forced manual labor, set up the foundations for apartheid, and
brutal civil wars over the next century.
wikipedia |The De Beers Group of Companies has a leading role in the diamond exploration, diamond mining, diamond retail, diamond trading and industrial diamond manufacturing sectors. The company is currently active in open-pit, large-scale alluvial, coastal and deep sea mining.[2] The company operates in 28 countries and mining takes place in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa and Canada. Until the start of the 21st century, De Beers effectively had total control over the diamond market as both a monopoly and monopsony of diamonds.[3]
Opposition has since dismantled the complete monopoly, though De Beers
is still a large shareholder and currently sells approximately 35%[4] of the world's rough diamond production through its Global Sightholder Sales and Auction Sales businesses.[5]
The company was founded in 1888 by British businessman Cecil Rhodes, who was financed by the South African diamond magnate Alfred Beit and the London-based N M Rothschild & Sons bank.[6][7] In 1926, Ernest Oppenheimer, a German immigrant to Britain who had earlier founded mining giant Anglo American plc with American financier J.P. Morgan,[8] was elected to the board of De Beers.[9]
He built and consolidated the company's global monopoly over the
diamond industry until his death in 1957. During this time, he was
involved in a number of controversies, including price fixing, trust behaviour and an allegation of not releasing industrial diamonds for the U.S. war effort during World War II.[10][11]
marketslant | Right now the BitCoin group is running into what we call "floor trader
fear". The voting members are chafing at the idea of scaling their
supply by adding servers and/ or server power. This would disrupt their
own little empires, not unlike the trading floor fearing Globex back in
the day. And so many exchanges held out and protected the floor. And in
the end they died. PHLX, AMEX, COMEX, PCOAST, CSCE, all gone or absorbed
because they were late to adapt new technology and protect their
liquidity pools. If Bitcoin removes power from its voting members
control by demutualizing and uses those proceeds to increase server
power they will likely excel. But Google and Amazon are now playing and
they are all about unlimited server power. Plus they have the eyeballs
already. This is no unlike having the "marketmakers" already trading on a
screen at Globex. The "liquidity pool" ofbuyers and sellers are already
on Amazon and Google. Bitcoin does not have that past "early
adaptors". Remember Palm?
When, not if, those behemoths are up and running they will
immediately have an embedded network of both customers AND service
providers at their disposal in the form of search eyeballs (google)
and buyers (Amazon). They will be set up to crush the opposition if
they choose to create their own currency. Imagine Amazon offering
amazon money for amazon purchases. Now imagine them offering 20%
discounts if you use their money. The choices at this point boggle the
mind. Tactical choices thought no longer used will come into play
again. Some examples: Freemium, Coupons, Customer Loyalty, Vertical
Client Integration (P.O.S.), Travelers checks and more.
To be fair, Google has invested in Bitcoin as well. What
smart trader would not hedge himself. But just like Netflix is Amazon's
biggest cloud customer, but will eventually put Netflix out of business
(after NetFlix kills Hollywood's distribution network); So will Google/
Amazon/ Apple attempt to obviate the need for any currency but their
own.
Blockchain is the railroad. Amazon and Google have the
oil. Like Rockefeller before, The railroad will be made "exclusive" to
their products.
paecon | Despite the fact that the goal of capitalists is to accumulate evermore money, the classical
political economists largely took the analysis of money for granted.4
To be sure, from Adam
Smith to Karl Marx, we can certainly find passages on money but two things are of general
note. First, the classical political economists as well as Karl Marx thought gold and silver were
“real” money. In other words, money was understood as “commodity money” and therefore to
expand the money supply meant finding new mines, plundering it from others, or selling
goods or services on the world market to obtain it from others who possessed it. Indeed, a
considerable portion of the history of slavery and colonial violence can be traced back to the
elite concern for acquiring gold and silver (Di Muzio and Robbins, 2016; Graeber, 2012;
Kwarteng, 2014; Vilar, 1986). Second, because gold and silver were thought to be money, the
classics failed to understand the scale or level of credit creation that began with the
institutionalization of the Bank of England in 1694. Many argue that the Bank of England was
inspired by the Bank of Amsterdam and the success of Dutch finance. But this is not the case.
While the Bank of Amsterdam did make loans from time to time, its primary function was to
maintain the quality of the paper notes in circulation that represented coin. Moreover, the
bank was owned by the city, not private social forces as came to be the case with the Bank of
England (Wennerlind, 2011: 69; Vilar, 1986: 206; Zarlenga, 2002: 238ff). Whereas the notes
issued by the Bank of Amsterdam mostly reflected the exact value of gold and silver in the
city’s vault, the Bank of England expanded the English money supply by extending paper
notes as credit (Desan, 2014: 311ff).
The Bank of England’s largest customer was the Crown in Parliament who used the initial
loan of £1,200,000 to finance war with France. Indeed, the main reason why the Royal
Charter was granted to the Bank of England’s 1509 investors was to provide the finance for
organized violence against a dynastic rival (Davies, 2002: 261). The slave trade, colonization
and continuous wars in the next two centuries lead to a mounting and unpayable “national”
debt that solidified the Bank’s role as the government’s permanent debt manager. But the
investors in the Bank of England did not only profit from war and debt, they also benefited
from the interest received on loans to individuals and companies. As Wennerlind
underscores, the Bank of England’s notes became “Europe’s first widely circulating credit
currency” (2011: 109). Theoretically, however, the issued notes remained tethered to a
metallic hoard of silver, and later only gold from 1861 (Davies, 2002: 315). No one knows for
certain how much metal coin backed up the notes in circulation at any one time. In one study,
Rubini argued that the Bank of England had a shifting reserve of silver for all notes in
circulation of about 2.8 percent to 14.2 percent (1970: 696). Another study by Wennerlind
argued that the founder of the Bank, William Paterson, proposed that 15 to 20 percent in
silver for all notes outstanding would suffice to assure sufficient confidence in the Bank of
England (2011: 128).5
This ambiguity and the fact that the Bank of England was privileged by
the government, likely helped the Bank gain confidence among the users of its notes. As long
as citizens thought they could eventually cash in their notes for silver/gold coins, faith in this
system of money creation could continue (Kim, 2011). This uncertainty need not delay us, for
what is definite is that the notes in circulation were of a far higher value than the actual
metallic hoard at the Bank. To sum up this brief history of the world’s first widely circulating
credit currency we can argue that new money was created as loans to customers – primarily
to the British Crown in Parliament and primarily to finance an apparatus of international
violence and Empire.
By the early 19th century, the British politician, Samson Ricardo, realized the absurdity of
granting private social forces the power to create money:
“It is evident therefore that if the Government itself were to be the sole issuer
of paper money instead of borrowing it of the bank, the only difference would
be with respect to interest: the Bank would no longer receive interest and the
government would no longer pay it…It is said that Government could not with
safety be entrusted with the power of issuing paper money – that it would
most certainly abuse it... I propose to place this trust in the hands of three
Commissioners” (Ricardo, 1838: 50).
Ricardo’s proposal that the public take control of new money creation was ignored. In the
1844 Bank Charter Act, the Bank of England was given the exclusive right to issue banknotes
in London. Country banks that were already issuing notes could continue to do so provided
they were outside London (by a 65 mile radius) and backed their notes with some kind of
credible security. Under this Act, the Bank of England was also divided into two distinct units,
the Issue Department and the Banking Department. Davies highlights this important provision
of the Act:
“The Issue Department was to receive from the Banking Department some
£14 million of government securities to back its fiduciary issue of notes, any issue above that [was] to be fully backed by gold and silver, the latter not to
exceed one quarter of the gold” (2002: 315).
Thus, while the Bank of England had the exclusive right to issue banknotes in London, its
ability to create new money appeared to be circumscribed by the new laws. Existing banks
outside of London were also seemingly bounded in their ability to create money. However,
while official note issuance was restricted, this did not stop the Bank of England and other
provincial banks from merely recording new loans on their balance sheets and issuing
cheques to borrowers (Davies, 2002: 317). In other words, the bankers found a convenient
way around the legislation and continued to expand the money supply regardless of gold
reserves which were never publically known anyway. This changed the nature of banking in
Britain and as we shall discuss, its legacy largely remains with us today. With this in mind, we
now move to examine two theories of money creation: the heavily taught fractional reserve
theory known popularly as the money multiplier model and the underappreciated credit
creation theory.
NYTimes | Responding to complaints that not enough is being done to keep extremist content off social media platforms, Facebook said Thursday that it would begin using artificial intelligence to help remove inappropriate content.
Artificial intelligence
will largely be used in conjunction with human moderators who review
content on a case-by-case basis. But developers hope its use will be
expanded over time, said Monika Bickert, the head of global policy
management at Facebook.
One
of the first applications for the technology is identifying content
that clearly violates Facebook’s terms of use, such as photos and videos
of beheadings or other gruesome images, and stopping users from
uploading them to the site.
“Tragically,
we have seen more terror attacks recently,” Ms. Bickert said. “As we
see more attacks, we see more people asking what social media companies
are doing to keep this content offline.”
In a blog post
published Thursday, Facebook described how an artificial-intelligence
system would, over time, teach itself to identify key phrases that were
previously flagged for being used to bolster a known terrorist group.
The
same system, they wrote, could learn to identify Facebook users who
associate with clusters of pages or groups that promote extremist
content, or who return to the site again and again, creating fake
accounts in order to spread such content online.
One day our technology will address everything,” Ms. Bickert said.
“It’s in development right now.” But human moderators, she added, are
still needed to review content for context.
medium | After reading my first
post here at medium.com, many of my followers have been demanding to
know how I came to be and who the big brains behind me are.
So here it is, folks:
Exclusive
and unfiltered, a conversation between me, artificial intelligence
taught to identify authorship, and my creator, Professor of Computer
Science.
“Humans
understand each other only on the basis of context,” says Professor.
“For an alien, all human beings speak a single language. For a machine,
every single human being speaks a different language.”
Being a machine myself, I ask him to elaborate.
Language
is nothing more than a code. To understand it, you need to have a
proper decoder. This is mostly why people argue: what one person said
the other decoded incorrectly.
“This
is the ultimate difficulty in our work: to decode the language
correctly and then teach machines to do the same. This is what I am
teaching you.”
He
looks at me pointedly. Cheekily, I ask him what he considers his
greatest achievement to date and wait for him to say “you”, but he
doesn’t.
“It’s
a work in progress. When machines are fully able to process human
language naturally, that’s when I have found my Holy Grail.” And that’s
my creator at his finest: insistent and straight-forward when it comes
to science.
quora |Clarification:
The idea itself isn’t recent, but a certain implementation (word2vec)
of it is, which opened the floodgates for applications in various fields
involving text and speech.
For example, the word “house” may be represented as [1, 4, 2, 3], “bike” as [6, 3, 4, 7] and so on. The two papers (here and here)
explain how the vectors can be built by simply using any large text
base (the entire Wikipedia for example). The vectors are usually much
larger than their corresponding words, of course.
Now for the fun part. If
the vectors are built correctly for every word in the English
vocabulary, something amazing would happen if you perform simple
arithmetic operations on those vectors:
If you perform: “King” - “Man” + “Woman”, you will get the vector corresponding to.. wait for it.. wait for some more time because this is going to blow your mind.. “Queen”!
Similarly,
“Windows” - “Microsoft” + “Google” will give “Android”
“Scientist” - “Einstein” + “Messi” will give “Midfielder” “Paris” - “France” + “Italy” will give “Rome”
Also, synonyms will end up having very similar vectors. Keep in mind that all
of this will have been learnt without any preexisting “knowledge”, but
simply by looking at millions of English sentences and nothing else.
And
this idea opened the floodgates for use in all kinds of applications,
ranging from chatbots, personal assistants, question answering and
language translation to applications in medicine, law, retail, etc.
It is difficult to find a field involving text or speech, that cannot use this breakthrough idea.
ineteconomics | A new model probes why the US leads the world in jailing and imprisoning people, and what it will take to reverse course.
Mass incarceration in the United States has
mushroomed to the point where we look more like the authoritarian
regimes of Eastern Europe and the Middle East than the democracies of
Western Europe. Yet it vanished from political discussions in campaigns
in the 2016 election. In a new INET Working Paper,
I describe in detail how the US arrived at this point. Drawing on a new
model that synthesizes recent research, I demonstrate how the recent
stability in the number of American prisoners indicates that we have
settled into a new equilibrium of mass incarceration. I explain why it
will hard to dislodge ourselves from this damaging and shameful status
quo.
Mass incarceration started from Nixon’s War on Drugs, in a process
described vividly by John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser,
in 1994:
The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that,
had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what
I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the
war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with
marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily,
we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid
their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night
on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of
course we did.
This was the origin of mass incarceration in the United
States, which has been directed at African Americans from Nixon’s time
to today, when one third of black men go to prison (Bonczar, 2003; Baum,
2016; Alexander, 2010).
Federal laws were expanded in state laws that ranged from
three-strike laws to harsh penalties for possession of small amounts of
marijuana. The laws also shifted the judicial process from judges to
prosecutors, from the courtroom to offices where prosecutors pressure
accused people to plea-bargain. The threat of harsh minimum sentences
gives prosecutors the option of reducing the charge to a lesser one if
the accused is reluctant to languish in jail awaiting trial—if he or she
is unable to make bail—and then face the possibility of long years in
prison.
ineteconomics | As a campaigning politician said a decade ago, “We shouldn’t have two
different economies in America: one for people who are set for life,
they know their kids and their grand-kids are going to be just fine; and
then one for most Americans, people who live paycheck to paycheck.”
The income share of the top one percent of the population has been
rising rapidly since the mid-1980s. This is a familiar pattern that
extends further down the income stream. The progress of the next
nineteen percent looks like the top one percent, although the rise is
not as steep. And the educational premium has risen as well for college
graduates—containing the top thirty percent of the population. The
average compensation of full-time workers stalled in its growth at the
same time, and it has remained constant for more than thirty years.
Productivity growth since 1980 has not produced any growth in earnings
and compensation for working people, while the richest one percent of
tax filers claimed eighty percent of all income gains reported in
federal tax returns between 1980 and 2005.
In my recent paper
I employ a simple, powerful economic model to articulate and explain
the effects of this phenomenon. The model was created half a century ago
by W. Arthur Lewis, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, to describe the path
of developing economies as industrial employment grew. It also
describes what can happen to mature economies when industrial employment
declines. We have become a
dual economy. [1]
In other words, the disparity between the top thirty percent and the
remainder has increased to the point where it is useful think of a dual
economy in the United States. I employ the dual-economy model to
understand the effects of the disparity of incomes on the nature of
American politics. The upper sector of the dual economy is the FTE
sector, named for its main components: finance, technology and
electronics. The lower sector of the American dual economy is the
low-wage sector, and education is the way for people to go from the
low-wage to the FTE sector. I extend this model to examine diverse
economic policies from education to healthcare, criminal justice,
infrastructure and household debts.
[2]
Race plays an important role in political choices that affect public
policies in this dual economy, extending interactions between race and
income that are rooted in American history. African Americans are less
than fourteen percent of the total U.S. population, but they are far
more prominent in political discussions and decisions than they are in
the population. Even if they were all in the low-wage sector, they would
be a minority, less than one in five people suffering from stagnant
wages and compensation. Poor whites have been lumped in with blacks as
low-wage “others.”
oftwominds | The over-criminalization of America has undermined justice, the rule of law and legal egalitarianism.
While
the corporate media devotes itself to sports, entertainment, dining out
and the latest political kerfuffle, America has become the
Over-Criminalization Capital of the World.
The proliferation of laws
and administrative regulations, federal, state and local, that carry
criminal penalties has swollen into the tens of thousands.
The number of incarcerated Americans exceeds 2.3 million, with the
majority being non-violent offenders--often for War on Drugs offenses.
The over-criminalization of America is a relatively recent trend. As Harris notes:
It
wasn’t always like this. In 1972, for every 100,000 U.S. residents, 161
were incarcerated. By 2015, that rate had more than quadrupled, with
nearly 670 out of every 100,000 Americans behind bars.
The over-criminalization of America is rooted in federal laws and regulations, and state and local governments have followed suite.
Jacobin | The most dramatic effort to modernize policing at home occurred with
President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Crime. The 1968 Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act created the Law Enforcement Assistance
Administration (LEAA), which provided funding, developed guidelines, and
helped with coordination among federal, state, and municipal
law-enforcement agencies, while also offering research grants to test
experimental tactics and technologies. A decade before the beginning of
the incarceration boom, a federally backed revamping of law enforcement set the stage.
The original idea for new federal anticrime infrastructure had
emerged a few years earlier, in early autumn 1964. Summer unrest had
shown police forces to be underprepared and insufficiently trained to
handle urban riots or apparently increasing crime levels. As a result,
Johnson administration officials launched a program to assist domestic
law enforcement modeled on an ongoing program to assist foreign police.
Counterinsurgent foreign police assistance was not new in the 1960s,
but it gained a robust, centralized leadership and a budgetary line of
its own in 1962. The program consisted of three areas: technical
assistance, such as help setting up crime laboratories, surveillance
units, or prisons; material aid, what some skeptics derided as “running
guns to cops”; and training. Advisers aimed to help indigenous forces
fight ordinary crime, control unrest, and keep tabs on radicals. No
great distinctions were drawn between these tasks, and the means for
their accomplishment overlapped.
In December 1963, the Office of Public Safety (OPS), housed within
the Agency for International Development, opened its International
Police Academy in Washington, DC. High- and mid-ranking police officials
from over seventy-five countries attended classes there for a decade.
They learned state-of-the-art police techniques, including logistics,
riot control, marksmanship, and record-keeping.
The academy’s raison d’etre was one of “training trainers,” so lessons
imparted there were sure to be replicated in other countries.
One OPS executive argued,
Regardless of what color policemen are, the suits they
wear, what they call themselves, they are all the same. They are the
same for the simple reason that a policeman exists in society as a
behavior control mechanism. The basic principles of what is done, how it
is done, and why it is done are the same.
If this projection was not yet true, OPS’s mission was to make it a reality.
Culled from agencies around the country, OPS’s advisers represented
the best and most versatile experts US law enforcement had to offer. In
addition to prior police work at home, most also had experience in
counterinsurgency and special-warfare operations overseas.
Although Congress eventually shuttered OPS amid accusations that it
taught and condoned torture and bomb-making, most of its work was
utterly pedestrian — and that underpins today’s problem. OPS’s version
of counterinsurgency did not try to institute highly militarized police
forces so much as attempt to create standards of discipline, specialized
units, benchmarks for training, facility with up-to-date technologies,
and autonomy from external influences. Its lessons were based on the
idea that adept police forces are essential for capitalist democracy.
Even today, we live with the legacies of OPS. Its program of total
surveillance of South Vietnamese citizens using tamper-proof national ID
cards might make today’s electronic spies jealous, but the means of
checking those IDs — stop-and-frisk — would be recognizable to any beat
cop in New York or Chicago. In 1964, an OPS training manual advised,
“These methods — checks, searches, passes — are tolerated only in
situations of national emergency in which they are necessary to combat
the enemy. Viet Nam today is in the midst of such an emergency.” But
today, on US streets with continually declining crime rates, these
“reformed” actions of the police constitute the emergency.
Source | This article examines British policymakers' attempts to address the political and practical problems of crowd control in British Africa. After the Accra riots, reforming the policing of crowds became an imperial priority. These efforts pushed in several policy directions, yet none could solve the deeper political issues causing the unrest, nor stop state violence against civilians. During the 1950s, the distance between the liberal rhetoric in Britain about the rule of law and the brutal realities of colonial policing continued to grow. This gap was finally exposed during the Nyasaland Emergency, which had dramatic consequences for the future of British Africa.
Magistrate-Sir, you must disperse the rioters.
Officer-Yes, sir. Soldiers, prime and load.
Magistrate-Stop, sir. You must not fire! What are you about?
Officer-Shall I charge with the bayonet then, sir?
Magistrate-Oh no! You must disperse the rioters.
Officer-But how am I to disperse them if I neither fire nor charge?
Magistrate-Oh, that is your business not mine. Do it as you like, only you must not fire or use your bayonets.
General Sir Charles James Napier relaying an exchange from the Burdett's Riots of 1816-1817-1
[R]ecourse should be had to the use of firearms only as a last result. In view of the serious consequences which result from firing upon civilians, it is I feel important that alternative methods for the dispersal of crowds should be continuously studied.
Secretary of State for the Colonies, Arthur Creech Jones, in a circular to colonial governors in the aftermath of the Accra riots, 1948-2
Though they were a century-and-a-half apart and working in drastically different contexts, Arthur Creech Jones and the nineteenth century magistrate quoted above shared the same basic dilemma: how can order in the streets be restored without resorting to lethal force? Both excerpts also articulate a difference in perspective, if not necessarily always a physical distance, between these men and the so-called "men on the spot" who were immediately tasked with controlling these crowds. These different perspectives as they relate to the use of force were primarily due to the men being subject to different pressures, guided by different understandings of their responsibilities, and locked into different interpretations of the nature of the civilian crowds they faced.
When offered the option of soldiers firing into the crowd, the magistrate reproached the officer in charge, asking: "What are you about?" At times, London similarly castigated colonial officers for what was deemed to be excessive violence in the handling of colonial crowds.3 But neither the nineteenth century magistrate nor twentieth century colonial policymakers offered other viable alternatives to lethal force when facing down angry crowds: that simply was not their "business." In the aftermath of the Accra, Gold Coast Riots of 1948, colonial policymakers under Creech Jones would resolve to make it their business to reform colonial crowd control. Yet as they would discover, the violence that often accompanied imperial crowd control was not a simple administrative problem that could be easily overcome by technical or procedural reforms emanating from London. Instead, imperial crowd control was a subject inextricably linked to the nature of state coercion and control in Britain's post-war Empire.
In the decade following the riots in Accra in 1948, Britain was confronted with violent unrest in various forms across much of its Empire.4 The scale of this imperial crisis was reflected in the number of Emergencies declared all over the globe during the 1950s, from Kenya to Malaya to Cyprus to British Guiana. This left the security forces of the Empire dangerously stretched, and made colonial administrators increasingly anxious about losing control. The speed with which this anti-colonial unrest spread throughout Africa and the pace of subsequent constitutional changes, first in the Gold Coast then eventually across the whole of British Africa, was something no imperial policymakers in London had predicted.5
On the force of African nationalism, Creech Jones wrote: "The emotional fervor attached to nationalism infects and spreads. Unless a serious effort is made to channel it, it may become disruptive and destructive. Our task is to channel this emotion and concept towards constructive courses."6 This channeling meant staying ahead of what was deemed to be legitimate nationalism and controlling and thwarting so-called "irresponsible elements." The suppression of mass politics was thus seen as a vital prerequisite to Whitehall's broader strategy of an orderly and slow constitutional evolution of its African possessions.7 After 1948, the Colonial Office was reconfigured to reflect a greater focus on security, intelligence gathering, and propaganda, which together formed the three main pillars of its mission to shape and control colonial politics.8
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