blood diamond

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Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption by Patrick Alley

airport security, blood diamond, book value, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, clean water, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, Donald Trump, energy security, failed state, fake news, Global Witness, lockdown, offshore financial centre, pre–internet, satellite internet, Steve Bannon, Ted Sorensen

It was great that De Beers came on side, but it’s hard to escape the irony surrounding their offer to provide expertise on something they had said was impossible just a few months before. In May 2000, Charmian and Alex flew to South Africa to attend what would prove to be a turning point for the issue of conflict diamonds. Chaired by the South African minister of minerals and energy, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the meeting took place in the diamond-mining town of Kimberley, the birthplace of De Beers. It had the potential to close down the trade in blood diamonds once and for all. It brought together key diamond-producing countries, the diamond industry in the form of De Beers and Martin Rapaport and a few NGOs. Charmian told us when she got back that the meeting finished with ‘an agreement to work together, civil society and governments and trade industry, to tackle the problem and do something about it’.

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Allan Thornton, for his recall of those pre-Global Witness days when he provided moral and financial support, not to mention the germ of the idea of what became the campaign on blood diamonds. Aidan McQuade, whose experience of the civil war in Angola has been so enlightening; Charmian’s fellow campaigners on the trail of blood diamonds, Alex Yearsley and Corinna Gilfillan; Dianna Melrose, the FCO insider with a fantastically helpful photographic memory; Martin Rapaport of the Rapaport Group and Andrew Coxon of De Beers, for their candid recollections of the dark days of the blood diamond trade, and Ed Zwick for his illuminating insights. Silas Siakor, who relived his brilliant and horribly risky investigations in Charles Taylor’s Liberia; Alice Blondel, for reminding me about the finer details of our detective work across the Mano River region and her amazing advocacy at the United Nations; the late Walter Mapelli, who enthralled me with his memories as a young local prosecutor interrogating Ukrainian Mafia kingpin and arms trafficker Leonid Minin; and Filip Verbelen at Greenpeace International, who told me the inside story of how he helped divert the Rainbow Warrior to intercept ‘blood timber’ imports to France.

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More upbeat, De Beers bragged of ‘the substantially increased production of Angolan diamonds – mainly in the higher-value gem qualities – coming on the outside market, of which the CSO successfully bought up about two-thirds.’ So, given that UNITA controlled around 80 per cent of Angola’s diamond fields, De Beers had done a chunk of our work for us by freely admitting they were likely buying conflict diamonds. ‘I can’t believe this laissez-faire attitude of the diamond industry,’ Charmian said, shocked by what she had read. ‘It’s obvious that De Beers must be buying conflict diamonds from UNITA, but it just seems to be an unquestioned aspect of how the industry works.’ It was around this time that our free run at the Body Shop Foundation’s offices in Hammersmith came to an end and we moved into our third office, halfway up the hill that is Bickerton Road in Archway, north London.

The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-And How We Can Make It Better by Annie Leonard

air freight, banking crisis, big-box store, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business logic, California gold rush, carbon footprint, carbon tax, clean water, Community Supported Agriculture, cotton gin, dematerialisation, employer provided health coverage, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, Firefox, Food sovereignty, Ford paid five dollars a day, full employment, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, independent contractor, Indoor air pollution, intermodal, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, liberation theology, McMansion, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, planned obsolescence, Ralph Nader, renewable energy credits, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, supply-chain management, systems thinking, TED Talk, the built environment, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Wall-E, Whole Earth Review, Zipcar

-based organization leading the campaign on conflict diamonds, these rocks “have funded brutal conflicts in Africa that have resulted in the death and displacement of millions of people. Diamonds have also been used by terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda to finance their activities and for money-laundering purposes.”91 The role of “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds” in Sierra Leone’s civil war has received global attention, in large part thanks to Global Witness’ Combating Conflict Diamonds campaign, launched in 1998. The situation was also brought to light through the 2006 film Blood Diamond. The film does a pretty good job of illustrating the brutality of both the rebel forces that run the mines (kidnapping villagers to make them into miners and young boys to serve as child soldiers) as well as the government forces, which indiscriminately kill civilians and villagers alongside the rebels.

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“The Golden Rules,” No Dirty Gold (nodirtygold.org/goldenrules.cfm). 91. “Combating Conflict Diamonds,” Global Witness (globalwitness.org/pages/en/conflict_diamonds.html). 92. “Leaders of diamond-fuelled terror campaign convicted by Sierra Leone’s Special Court,” press release from Global Witness, February 26, 2009 (globalwitness.org/media_library_detail.php/723/ en/leaders_of_diamond_fuelled_terror_ campaign_convicted_by_sierra _leones_special_court). 93. Ibid. 94. Ibid. 95. “The Kimberley Process,” Global Witness (globalwitness.org/pages/en/the_ kimberley_process.html). 96. “Conflict Diamonds: Sanctions and War,” United Nations (un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html). 97.

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Congolese human rights activist Bertrand Bisimwa summarized the way far too many people perceive his country: “Since the 19th century, when the world looks at Congo it sees a pile of riches with some black people inconveniently sitting on top of them. They eradicate the Congolese people so they can possess the mines and resources. They destroy us because we are an inconvenience.”104 Some electronics manufacturers have publicly declared their ban on African-mined tantalum altogether, although, as depicted in the film Blood Diamond, tracing the source through so many dealers and handlers means this is far easier said than done. A solution with more promise is a database of “coltan fingerprints” that scientists are creating, which is feasible because each mining site has a distinct geological history and produces metal with a specific composition.105 This database would allow an international certification system like the Kimberley Process to be established for coltan, so that electronics manufacturers could source their coltan from legitimate mines with decent working conditions and environmental standards.

Science...For Her! by Megan Amram

Albert Einstein, blood diamond, butterfly effect, crowdsourcing, dark matter, Dmitri Mendeleev, double helix, Google Glasses, Isaac Newton, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, pez dispenser, Schrödinger's Cat, Steve Jobs, Ted Kaczynski, the scientific method, Wall-E, wikimedia commons

You may have heard about conflict diamonds, also known as blood diamonds. These refer to diamonds mined in war zones and sold to finance insurgencies, in places like Sierra Leone and Liberia and other African countries. Sorry to be TMI, but: I love them!!! Not African countries, silly—blood diamonds! Honestly, I find that blood diamonds often have a much prettier sheen than non-blood diamonds. Something about the guns that are going off murdering people around them seems to make the diamonds sparklier. Maybe I’m imagining it, but I don’t think so! Like I’ve always said, BLOOD diamonds are a girl’s BLOODST FRIEND!

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I TOOK YOU TO A CHAPTER ON BIOLOGY AND THEN A REAL CHEMISTRY CHAPTER THERE’S NOTHING LEFT TO TALK ABOUT UNLESS IT’S PHYSICS OR ALL THE OTHER CHAPTERS LET’S GET PHYSICS, Y’ALL PHYSICS, Y’ALL I WANNA GET PHYSICS, Y’ALL LET’S LEARN ABOUT INCLINED PLANES, INCLINED PLANES LET’S LEARN ABOUT INCLINED PLANES Introduction I think we all agree, that song that I wrote was amazing, gals! So, physics is kind of difficult to teach because it’s not just a soft science like bio and chem, it’s a super hard science. Usually I like when things are hard (Can I get a “dick as hard as a diamond and as red as blood, aka a blood diamond”?!), but when it comes to sciences, I like them soft and flaccid, like my boyfriend when I showed him my “twin.” Physics comes from the Greek φυσική (έπιστήµη), which, loosely translated, means “illegible.” Physics looks at matter through space and time. So, while chemistry studies the mixing of matter, physics studies how matter moves and exists.

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Like I’ve always said, BLOOD diamonds are a girl’s BLOODST FRIEND! Good Name for Tiffany’s Vag I Just Thought of “Blood Diamond” Why Diamonds Are BETTER BEST FRIENDS Than My Friend Tiffany (no offense) * * * Many people have said, “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend!” Here are just a few reasons that diamonds are so much better best friends than my slutty ex–best friend Tiffany! * * * Diamonds are less ugly than Tiffany Diamonds won’t ever f your ex Xander Diamonds go with everything; Tiffany only “goes with” (sleeps with) pieces of trash Tiffany, you smell like a barfed-up bagel if it had a million stretch marks Also your vag is always beet red no matter the day.

Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World by Ian Bremmer

airport security, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, capital controls, clean water, creative destruction, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, global rebalancing, global supply chain, Global Witness, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Kickstarter, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, no-fly zone, nuclear winter, Parag Khanna, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, Stuxnet, trade route, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Yom Kippur War

For many years, in states like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Zimbabwe, insurgents and local governments have sold diamonds to finance wars or government repression, earning the gems the epithet “blood diamonds.” In 1998, the South African government hosted a meeting in the town of Kimberley that brought together officials from diamond-trading and -producing states, several rights groups, and representatives of the diamond industry to find a solution to the blood diamond problem. Three years of tough negotiations produced the Kimberley Process (KP), an international diamond certification system endorsed in January 2003 by the United Nations, which requires governments of countries that produce or trade diamonds to certify where they come from.

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Three years of tough negotiations produced the Kimberley Process (KP), an international diamond certification system endorsed in January 2003 by the United Nations, which requires governments of countries that produce or trade diamonds to certify where they come from. Member states have to create local laws and regulations that keep blood diamonds off the market and can only trade uncut diamonds with other KP members, giving governments a powerful incentive to join the club. So far, seventy-five governments have signed on.21 But this is one of the many international agreements unlikely to generate even modest success in a G-Zero world. In June 2011, for instance, President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe announced that his cash-starved government would ignore international agreements to sell diamonds from its controversial Marange mine, which Zimbabwe claims could one day produce up to 20 percent of the world’s diamond supply.

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Michael Wines, “China Takes a Loss to Get Ahead in the Business of Fresh Water,” New York Times, October 25, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/26/world/asia/china-takes-loss-to-get-ahead-in-desalination-industry.htm?_r=1. 21. Global Witness, “The Kimberley Process,” http://www.globalwitness.org/campaigns/conflict/conflict-diamonds/kimberley-process. 22. Alex Perry, “Why Zimbabwe’s New Diamonds Imperil Global Trade,” Time, December 5, 2010, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2029482,00.html. 23. Godfrey Marawanyika, “Kimberley Grants Zimbabwe Conditional Diamond Sale,” Agence France-Presse, June 23, 2011, http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jgK132xOZpcGmXNkGy4ljAkcaXvQ?

The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything by Paul Vigna, Michael J. Casey

3D printing, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, altcoin, Amazon Web Services, barriers to entry, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Blythe Masters, business process, buy and hold, carbon credits, carbon footprint, cashless society, circular economy, cloud computing, computer age, computerized trading, conceptual framework, content marketing, Credit Default Swap, cross-border payments, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cyber-physical system, decentralized internet, dematerialisation, disinformation, disintermediation, distributed ledger, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, Dunbar number, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, failed state, fake news, fault tolerance, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, Garrett Hardin, global supply chain, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, informal economy, information security, initial coin offering, intangible asset, Internet of things, Joi Ito, Kickstarter, linked data, litecoin, longitudinal study, Lyft, M-Pesa, Marc Andreessen, market clearing, mobile money, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, Network effects, off grid, pets.com, post-truth, prediction markets, pre–internet, price mechanism, profit maximization, profit motive, Project Xanadu, ransomware, rent-seeking, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ross Ulbricht, Satoshi Nakamoto, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart contracts, smart meter, Snapchat, social web, software is eating the world, supply-chain management, Ted Nelson, the market place, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Travis Kalanick, Turing complete, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, universal basic income, Vitalik Buterin, web of trust, work culture , zero-sum game

Mining giant BHP Billiton is using the technology: Pete Rizzo, “World’s Largest Mining Company to Use Blockchain for Supply Chain,” CoinDesk, September 23, 2016, https://www.coindesk.com/bhp-billiton-blockchain-mining-company-supply-chain/. The startup Everledger has uploaded: Gian Volpicelli, “How the Blockchain Is Helping Stop the Spread of Conflict Diamonds,” Wired UK, February 15, 2017, http://www.wired.co.uk/article/blockchain-conflict-diamonds-everledger. “How can the maintenance crew on a U.S.…”: Email to Michael J. Casey, March 2, 2017. The company announced that it has entered: “Lockheed Martin Contracts Guardtime Federal for Innovative Cyber Technology,” Lockheed Martin, April 27, 2017, http://news.lockheedmartin.com/2017-04-27-Lockheed-Martin-Contracts-Guardtime-Federal-for-Innovative-Cyber-Technology.

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Mining giant BHP Billiton is using the technology to track minerals analysis done by outside vendors. The startup Everledger has uploaded unique identifying data on a million individual diamonds to a blockchain ledger system to build quality assurances and help jewelers comply with regulations barring “blood diamond” products. These solutions are also IoT blockchain plays because they are intrinsically linked to the sensors, barcodes, and RFID chips that are increasingly used in manufacturing and shipping to trace goods, trigger actions, and prompt payment. Once again, there will be a need for “know-your-machine” systems that can “identify” these devices and assure they are operating in a trustworthy way.

The Laundromat : Inside the Panama Papers, Illicit Money Networks, and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Albert Einstein, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, central bank independence, Charlie Hebdo massacre, clean water, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, high net worth, income inequality, independent contractor, Julian Assange, Laura Poitras, liberation theology, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, offshore financial centre, optical character recognition, pirate software, Ponzi scheme, profit motive, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Skype, traveling salesman, WikiLeaks

Captained by Judah Elmaleh, a charming Moroccan Jew, MEDIS handled the diamond trade. Mossfon and the bank shared a collection of wealthy Jewish diamond merchants as customers. These were men who had grown rich plundering African resources while fending off prosecution. Among them was the Israeli billionaire Daniel Gertler,22 whose suspected involvement with blood diamonds through his close friendship with the Democratic Republic of Congo’s corrupt and bloodthirsty president, Joseph Kabila, made him the subject of multiple government inquiries. The Mossfon files show at least 130 companies controlled or connected to another Israeli billionaire, Benjamin “Beny” Steinmetz.23 His relationship with Republic/HSBC dated to at least 1997.

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Tamedia focused on HSBC customers like the Belgian diamond dealer Emmanuel Shallop,17 whose HSBC bankers observed in 2005 that he “is under pressure from the Belgian tax authorities who are investigating his activities in the area of diamond tax fraud.” Five years later, Shallop was found guilty in the Belgian Court of Appeals for facilitating the trade in conflict diamonds for the leaders of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone,18 which had tortured, mutilated, and murdered its way through the country for more than a decade. A UN-sponsored court convicted what was left of its leadership of crimes against humanity in 2009.19 Tamedia’s reporting also featured Arturo del Tiempo Marqués, a Spanish property developer in the Dominican Republic who at one point had nineteen HSBC accounts containing more than $3 million.

Gateway by Frederik Pohl

blood diamond, gravity well, Magellanic Cloud, oil shale / tar sands, time dilation

A NOTE ON PIEZOELECTRICITY Professor Hegramet. The one thing we found out about blood diamonds is that they’re fantastically piezoelectric. Does anybody know what that means? Question. They expand and contract when an electric current is imposed? Professor Hegramet. Yes. And the other way around. Squeeze them and they generate a current. Very rapidly if you like. That’s the basis for the piezophone and piezovision. About a fifty-billion-dollar industry. Question. Who gets the royalties on all that loot? Professor Hegramet. You know, I thought one of you would ask that. Nobody does. Blood diamonds were found years and years ago, in the Heechee warrens back on Venus.

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There was the original anisokinetic punch, that had earned a lucky prospector something like twenty million dollars in royalties already. A thing you could put in your pocket. Furs. Plants in formalin. The original piezophone, that had earned three crews enough to make every one of them awfully rich. The most easily swiped things, like the prayer fans and the blood diamonds and the fire pearls, were kept behind tough, breakproof glass. I think they were even wired to burglar alarms. That was surprising, on Gateway. There isn’t any law there, except what the Corporation imposes. There are the Corporation’s equivalent of police, and there are rules—you’re not supposed to steal or commit murder—but there aren’t any courts.

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Well, I know what they look like. Sort of like a rolled-up ice-cream cone made out of crystal. All different colors of crystal. If you hold one right and press on it with your thumb it opens up like a fan. Professor Hegramet. That’s what I know, too. They’ve been analyzed, same as fire pearls and the blood diamonds. But don’t ask me what they’re for. I don’t think the Heechee fanned themselves with them, and I don’t think they prayed, either; that’s just what the novelty dealers called them. The Heechee left them all over the place, even when they tidied everything else up. I suppose they had a reason. I don’t have a clue what that reason was, but if I ever find out I’ll tell you.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It by Paul Collier

air freight, Asian financial crisis, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, British Empire, business cycle, Doha Development Round, export processing zone, failed state, falling living standards, Global Witness, income inequality, mass immigration, out of africa, rent-seeking, Ronald Reagan, structural adjustment programs, trade liberalization, zero-sum game

That is apparently how Denis Sassou-Nguesso, the present president of the Republic of the Congo (not to be confused with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire), came to power. So natural resources help to finance conflict and sometimes even help to motivate it. One example is “conflict diamonds.” The UN defines them as “diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments.” In the case of conflict diamonds, the attention that has been drawn to the problem by the NGO Global Witness has paid off. After years of denying that there was a problem, De Beers, the world’s largest diamond producer, has made amazing changes that have gone a long way toward addressing the problem and have turned the company into a corporate role model.

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A third key pressure point in cleaning up resource revenues is the international companies in the extractive industries. The model here is De Beers and its Kimberley Process for the certification of diamonds. For many years De Beers had been in denial that conflict diamonds were a problem. Then pressure from NGOs persuaded the company that denial was not going to work: if the image of conflict diamonds became entrenched in the mind of consumers, diamonds could go the way of fur. To their considerable credit, De Beers radically changed tack. They came up with a plan for certification, and they are still pressing ahead to make this process more effective.

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., 74–75, 110, 188 Capacity building, 112 Capital bypassing bottom billion, 88–91 globalization providing, 87 inflow of bottom billion, 87–91, 95 outflow of bottom billion, 91–93 scarcity in Africa, 87 traps depressing return on, 92 Capital flight, 120–21, 123 Central African Republic, 4, 53, 55, 58 Central Asia, 3 Centre for Economic Policy Research, 158 Chad, 65–66, 119, 149 Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline, 119 Change(s), 12 law, 185 military intervention, 184 postconflict potential for, 94 in societies, xi support for, 192 trade policy, 187 Charter for budget transparency, 149–51, 180 for democracy, 146–49, 180 for investment, 153–56, 183 for natural resource revenue, 140–46 for postconflict situations, 151–53, 178, 186 Chaudhry, Mahendra, 24 Chauvet, Lisa, 67, 73, 75, 111, 112–13, 118 Chávez, Hugo, 65 Checks and balances, 147–48 in Nigeria, 48 rents eroding, 46–47 China, 49, 66, 86, 120, 186 Christian Aid, 155, 157–59, 162, 163 Civil war, x in bottom billion, 17–18 causes of, 18–26 consequences of, 126 costs of, 27–32 emergence from, 70–72 end of, 27 ethnic dominance relating to, 25 geography contributing to, 26 low income causing, 19–20 natural resources, 21–22 persistence of, 26–27 prediction of, 19 slow growth causing, 20–22 as trap, 17–18, 32 Clinton, Bill, 187 Coastal access, 59–60 Cold War, 124, 191 Commission for Africa, 7, 188 Commitment technologies, 155 Commonwealth Development Corporation, 24 Competition, 160–63 Conditionality, 67, 109–11 Conflict costs, 31 postconflict military spending deterring, 132 prevention, 178 probability of, 128 risk of reversion to, 153 Conflict diamonds, 21 Conflict oil, 144 Conflict trap, x, 32–36 aid relating to, 104–7 G8 policy relating to, 37 points of intervention for, 177–78 Construction sector, 137–38 Consumer pressure, 146 Convergence, 80, 84, 164–65 Coordination, 187–89 Copenhagen Social Summit, 189 Corruption in construction sector, 137–38 epicenters of, 137–38 in money, 136, 138 Cost-benefit analysis, 32 Cost-competitiveness, 83 Costs administrative, 118 of civil war, 27–32 of failing states, 73–74, 114 of military intervention, 74–75 postwar, 28 transport, for landlocked countries, 55 Côte d’Ivoire, 113, 129, 131 Country ownership, 108 Country Policy and Institutional Assessment, 67 Coups Africa as epicenter of, 36 aid encouraging, 105, 180 bottom billion problem with, 131 causes of, 35 in Central African Republic, 58 military budget increased by, 133 protection against, 129 Credibility, 90–91 Cross-border trade, 58 Cuba, 12 De Beers, 21, 136, 144 Debt relief, 102 Delocalization, 83 Democracy.

The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth by Tom Burgis

Airbus A320, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, BRICs, British Empire, central bank independence, clean water, colonial rule, corporate social responsibility, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, financial engineering, flag carrier, Gini coefficient, Global Witness, Livingstone, I presume, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, purchasing power parity, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, structural adjustment programs, trade route, transfer pricing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, zero-sum game

The porters’ haste was a matter of economics: they were paid 1,000 Congolese francs per trip (about $1) and had to wash and sift their cargo in the stream at the bottom before it began the long trip toward the border or the buying houses of Goma. Most of the incipient certification schemes for Congolese minerals work by tagging sacks of ore as they emerge from the mine to certify their provenance, imitating the Kimberley Process, which was designed to stem the flow of ‘blood diamonds’. The idea is to prevent belligerents getting around embargoes by passing off their minerals as originating from another mine or smuggling them across borders to allow Congolese coltan to be branded as Rwandan or Angolan diamonds as Zambian. But on this hillside there was not a tag in sight. One local, a peace campaigner who had come along for the climb and who kept his distance from the mining bosses leading the ascent, told me that some of the coltan extracted here was crossing the nearby border into Uganda clandestinely.

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From there they would flow to Antwerp or other centres of the rough diamond trade and were again sold on, chiefly to De Beers, then still a cartel that controlled 80 per cent of the world trade in rough diamonds.12 Cut, polished and mounted, the diamonds would end their journey on the earlobes and ring fingers of the wealthy and the amorous. The notion of a ‘blood diamond’ strengthened as consumers came to realize that beautifying their hands came at the cost of African limbs. In Sierra Leone rebels under the tutelage of Charles Taylor, a warlord in neighbouring Liberia, severed hands and feet as they waged a campaign devoid of any cause beyond amassing power and wealth.

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The same year, the public tarnishing of the resource industry’s most illustrious commodity gave rise to the first international mechanism designed to break the link between natural wealth and bloodshed. Campaigners from Global Witness generated such outrage with their investigations of the links between diamonds and war that De Beers’s claims that it had ceased to buy blood diamonds were insufficient to prevent more concerted action. The Kimberley Process, named after the South African mining town that was the scene of the first mining rush in the 1870s, was designed to stop rebel movements like Unita and the RUF from selling diamonds into the world market, either directly or via neighbouring states, by ensuring that every rough stone carried a certificate of origin.

Fodor's Essential Belgium by Fodor's Travel Guides

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, augmented reality, bike sharing, blood diamond, car-free, carbon footprint, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, coronavirus, COVID-19, Easter island, Ford Model T, gentrification, haute cuisine, index card, Kickstarter, low cost airline, New Urbanism, out of africa, QR code, retail therapy, rewilding, ride hailing / ride sharing, starchitect, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, urban renewal, urban sprawl, young professional

Each day, the council checks 1,000 diamonds with strict anonymity and objectivity, confirming their authenticity based on the characteristics of each stone using the 4Cs (carat, color, clarity, cut). The global trade in diamonds has come under a great deal of scrutiny in recent years, particularly in the wake of the Hollywood movie Blood Diamond, which drew attention to so-called conflict diamonds. Dealers in Antwerp are understandably keen to distance themselves from this tarnished image, and the strict checks carried out by the HRD are there to ensure that all gems passing through the city are ethically correct. HChocolate Nation OTHER ATTRACTION | FAMILY | Taking its cue more from Willy Wonka than any museum, this carnivalesque look at the humble cocoa bean is one of the city’s biggest crowd-pleasers.

Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations by Raymond Fisman, Edward Miguel

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, blood diamond, clean water, colonial rule, congestion charging, crossover SUV, Donald Davies, European colonialism, failed state, feminist movement, George Akerlof, Great Leap Forward, income inequality, income per capita, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, mass immigration, megacity, oil rush, prediction markets, random walk, Scramble for Africa, selection bias, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, unemployed young men

Millions of civilians have died over the past two decades. The seemingly endless list of wars—in Angola, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Burundi, Chad, both Congos (Democratic Republic of Congo and Republic of Congo), Ethiopia, Eritrea, Cote d’Ivoire, Niger, Uganda—evokes nightmarish images of massacres, blood diamonds, gang rapes, and heavily armed and drugged-up child soldiers tormenting motorists at checkpoints. It’s a gruesome but essential exercise to go through the 114 N O WATER, N O PEA CE numbers to grasp the urgency of putting an end to Africa’s wars. Over 50,000 people died in Sierra Leone’s civil war between 1991 and 2002, and millions were displaced from their homes by the ruthless Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.

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The cost of protecting one mine alone could run as high as $500,000 a month, as the Angola Peace Monitor reported in 2001.19 And to keep mines safe from government meddling, paying bribes was the norm. Not every CEO or shareholder is willing to set up a private army, or partner with a real-life Danny Archer, the mercenary played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the film Blood Diamond about Sierra Leone. But some know how to turn wartime adversity to their advantage. Firms like Mano River Resources, DiamondWorks, and Rex Diamond have operated mines in multiple African war zones over the years, despite the costs and hurdles that drive out everyone else. That is, war acted as a “barrier to entry” that kept other companies out and insiders’ profits high.

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See specific countries and issues Agnelli, Giovanni, 49 Amassalik Inuit, 138 Amazon (company), 25 Angola, 96, 120b, 175; diamond mining and, 181b–85b; economic revival of, 184b antiparasitic drugs, school attendance and, 193–95 armed conflict, 148–55; Africa and, 114–16, 174–78; civil versus foreign, 173–74; disarmament and, 175–76; economic factors and, 116–17, 120–22; GDP and, 124; government stability and, 176–78; infrastructure investment and, 162–63, 170–71; OECD and, 120–21; political transformation and, 163–64; rainfall and, 122–27, 149; reconciliation and, 179–81; selection bias and, 174; technological inno- vation and, 164; tribal hatreds and, 116–17 Bakrie, Aburizal, 34, 38 behavioral economics, 96–97, 222n8 Bellow, Adam: In Praise of Nepotism, 30 Bimantara Citra, 33–40 Blood Diamond, 183b Bloomberg, Michael, 104 Bono, 9 Borsuk, Rick, 37–38 Botswana, 20–21; Drought Relief Program, 152–53, 199–200 bribery, commerce and, 66–67 Bush, George W., 32, 73–74, 174, 217n4 Busia (Kenya), 193–95, 232n9 Canada: corruption in, 95; United States and, 94–95 Capone, Al, 5–7 Chad, 17–18; corruption and, 156; economic decline of, 111–12; I N DEX Chad (continued) global warming and, 131; Lake Chad, 111–12; paperwork delays in, 66–67; petroleum deposits in, 155–58; political turmoil in, 112–13; rainfall and, 114; violence in, 175; World Bank and, 156–58 cheap talk, 18–20; violence and, 118b–19b Cheney, Dick, 29, 51–52 China: 1998 anticorruption campaign and, 70–73; global warming and, 127–29; smuggling and, 55–57; tariffs and, 60–64, 221n4, 221n6 China National Petroleum Company (CNPC), 185b Clodfelter, Michael, 160–61 coffee, 117–18, 149–50 Collier, Paul, 215n9, 228n20, 230n13 Colombia, 76–78, 102–3, 142 commodity prices, 117–18, 149–50, 227n15 conflict traps, Chad and, 113–14 containerization, 56–57 corruption: bottom line on, 102–3; cheap talk and, 18–20; culture and, 80–81, 87, 102–3; definition of, 18, 83, 216n12; economic growth and, 41–46; income level and, 91–92; mea sur ing, stock markets and, 24–29; national pride and, 100–102; outsiders and, 41–43; poverty and, 15–17; “Scramble for Africa” and, 101–2; stock markets and, 24–27; wages and, 189, 230n3.

Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible by Stephen Braun, Douglas Farah

air freight, airport security, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Donald Trump, en.wikipedia.org, failed state, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, out of africa, plutocrats, private military company, Timothy McVeigh

Fortified with enough drink to last the night, the revelers sprawled across a secured hilltop as lights twinkled from the fishing boats on the lake below.1 Bemba could afford Bout’s services because Bemba controlled access to something Bout very much wanted: a rich diamond field that netted the rebel leader $1 million to $3 million a month in sales. These “blood diamonds”—illicit gems that were mined in rebel-held territory and shipped abroad despite international embargoes against their sales—were mostly moved illegally through the neighboring Central African Republic, where both Bemba and Bout had friends and protectors in high places.2 When Bout finally bedded down, he slept, as he often did, with some of his crew near one of the helicopters.

…

Like Milo Minderbinder, the cheerily infernal war profiteer in Joseph Heller’s World War II novel Catch-22, who filled returning bomber planes with shipments of fresh eggs and Egyptian cotton, Bout often scheduled lucrative cargo pickups wherever his planes dropped off weapons shipments. The practice ensured that his Russian freighters always carried a moneymaking load when they were airborne. If an Ilyushin Il-76 was bringing helicopter gunship parts into Goma, it might leave with a consignment of coltan, mining equipment, or blood diamonds. On a run of Kalashnikovs and MiG fighter jet tires into Kandahar, a load of lumber or carpets might be waiting for a flight out. RPGs or gladiolas, diamonds or frozen chickens, it made little difference as long as there was a profit to be made from one destination to the next. In that manner, Bout’s air fleet flew the world in endless circuits.

…

From there, the planes would rumble back toward Sharjah or other friendly airports. Sometimes their cargo holds brimmed with ordinary shipments of refrigerators and appliances bound for Afghan merchants. But more often the cargoes were spoils that warlords and dictators preferred to turn over to Bout’s crews as payments for their weapons deliveries—blood diamonds, coltan, gold, any natural resource that Bout’s network would then convert to cash. Eventually the planes would return to Sharjah or Ostend, poised for their next circuit. Bout has said that his business took off exponentially in 1993 when he began flying his aircraft out of the UAE, overrun at the time by nouveau riche Russian vacationers and business hustlers.

Poisoned Wells: The Dirty Politics of African Oil by Nicholas Shaxson

Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business climate, clean water, colonial rule, energy security, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, income per capita, inflation targeting, Kickstarter, low interest rates, Martin Wolf, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil-for-food scandal, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, Tragedy of the Commons, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

Why did nobody pose the question, How was UNITA’s illegal army supplied on a large scale, and who financed it? Why? Strange!” he said, before hinting darkly that it was, once again, French interests. I reminded him that UNITA’s diamondfueled arms trade was also excoriated and was even tackled with a western campaign against “blood diamonds,” but he waved this away. “The legal government of Angola, through the Angolan ministry of defense, bought arms from the very legal Russian government, respecting all international legislation. . . . I was an oil trader,” he went on. “Then I convinced international banks to advance the money—around $500 or $600 million—mortgaged against Angolan oil, and this money was paid to the Russian government to supply the arms.

…

“These big ships and vessels, where do they come from? The Nigerian navy did not see them. The Nigerian air force did not see them. They are so tiny!”43 The deep involvement of Nigerian political parties and prominent politicians may be why the bunkerers—whose tankers are rather easier to spot and catch than, say, Angolan rebels’ blood diamonds, which have been cracked down on—are almost never caught, and perhaps why oil companies have not seriously impeded the problem. Western policy makers may feel that they need not care much about bunkering; they are just thankful that the stolen oil still flows into world markets, albeit via different routes.

…

Diamond industry officials I spoke to were furious. Global Witness was crazy; they were naive; they were left-wing sandal-wearing idiots; they had no right. “Global Witness,” said one, “is just a bunch of wellintentioned hooligans.” A Rough Trade was one of the founding documents for the now-famous international campaign against “blood diamonds,” which upended the global diamond industry, and brought governments together in search of solutions. I have chosen to write about Global Witness partly because I don’t want to give anyone an impression that I have been alone in delving into 210 Global Witness this queer world, and partly because their story presents a chance to appraise current western approaches to tackling problems associated with Africa’s oil.

Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide by Joshua S. Goldstein

Albert Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, blood diamond, business cycle, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, death from overwork, Doomsday Clock, failed state, immigration reform, income inequality, invention of writing, invisible hand, land reform, long peace, microcredit, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Oklahoma City bombing, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, selection bias, Steven Pinker, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, Tobin tax, unemployed young men, Winter of Discontent, work culture , Y2K

Two regional organizations also participated in this process, the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which had begun using Nigerian troops for peacekeeping in nearby Liberia in 1990. In 1996, elections took place, and Ahmed Tejan Kabbah—the man in the car with tinted glass—became president. The RUF did not participate in the elections, however, and the war continued. Conflict Diamonds “Conflict diamonds” played an important role in the war. By controlling diamond-producing territory, the RUF was able to export diamonds illegally through Liberia and fund its rebellion on the proceeds. The RUF revenues from diamonds in the 1990s may have been $25–$125 million per year. Over a number of years, first NGOs and then international organizations took up the issue of sanctioning this war-producing diamond trade.

…

THE PEACEKEEPING TOOLBOX Various missions use different pieces of the peacekeeping toolbox, and can be grouped roughly along a spectrum from maximum to minimal use of force. At the maximal end is “peace enforcement,” meaning the use of military force to compel parties to abide by terms of political agreements such as cease-fires or disarmament. Enforcement of sanctions, such as by preventing smuggling of weapons or conflict diamonds, also involves a high likelihood of the use of force. Slightly lower on the scale are the protection of delivery of humanitarian assistance. Then come supervision of cease-fires, assistance in maintaining law and order, and helping restore civil society such as by assisting political parties and citizen groups.

…

Over a number of years, first NGOs and then international organizations took up the issue of sanctioning this war-producing diamond trade. In 2000, the UN Security Council put an embargo on all imports of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone, then allowed only diamonds certified under a monitoring system (excluding RUF diamonds). Eventually certification procedures known as the Kimberley Process were developed to weed out conflict diamonds in other war zones as well. Foreign Forces Foreign armies and mercenaries also played important roles in the Sierra Leone war. Foreign mercenaries hired by the government of Sierra Leone were paid by foreign mining interests to attack the RUF rebels in the mid-1990s, including during the time Ishmael Beah was a child soldier.

McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld by Misha Glenny

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, BRICs, colonial rule, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Firefox, forensic accounting, friendly fire, glass ceiling, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, joint-stock company, low interest rates, market bubble, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Nick Leeson, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, Pearl River Delta, place-making, rising living standards, Ronald Reagan, Shenzhen special economic zone , Skype, special economic zone, Stephen Hawking, trade liberalization, trade route, Transnistria, unemployed young men, upwardly mobile

Nonetheless, the Iraqi interlude is instructive as it demonstrates how major criminal figures such as Bout can continue to function by existing in that peculiarly opaque netherworld where money, criminals, crises, and security services mix so thoroughly that only the most trained analyst can separate the individual parts. Viktor Bout is one of the few contemporary criminals who enjoy the distinction of having inspired not one but two Hollywood movies (with a third under consideration), the most recent being the underrated Blood Diamond, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as an especially convincing South African mercenary. Andrew Niccol, the New Zealand–born director and writer of the movie Lord of War, has said that the lead character, Yuri Orlov, played with real style by Nicolas Cage, was based on about five people, but he admits that one of them was Viktor Bout.

…

By 1999, conservative estimates put UNITA’s revenue from its diamond operations at $4 billion in less than a decade. The value of the stones when they reach the market is roughly ten times that figure. And during that same period, there was nobody in the diamond industry through whose hands conflict or “blood” diamonds (so called because of the deaths that their passage to market caused) did not pass: from de Beers, the immensely powerful South African conglomerate, through to the workshops of India, where 80 percent of the world’s diamonds are polished, and on to the many dealers in Antwerp, Tel Aviv, London, and New York.

…

Until the turn of the century, there was little evidence that the voluminous trade in African blood minerals would be noticed, still less interrupted, notwithstanding the public concern in the Western world about organized crime. But then something rather unlikely happened. A merrily shabby office in a respectable West London suburb seems an unlikely venue for the throbbing hub of resistance to the trade in blood diamonds. Charmian Gooch was not yet thirty when, in 1995, she and two friends formed an NGO called Global Witness. “We were monitoring the work of a lot of organizations dealing with the environment, and another lot dealing with human rights. And we just kept seeing the bits in between which connected the two areas but which nobody was investigating.

Seriously Curious: The Facts and Figures That Turn Our World Upside Down by Tom Standage

"World Economic Forum" Davos, agricultural Revolution, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, Big Tech, blood diamond, business logic, corporate governance, CRISPR, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, Elon Musk, failed state, financial independence, gender pay gap, gig economy, Gini coefficient, high net worth, high-speed rail, income inequality, index fund, industrial robot, Internet of things, invisible hand, it's over 9,000, job-hopping, Julian Assange, life extension, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, mega-rich, megacity, Minecraft, mobile money, natural language processing, Nelson Mandela, plutocrats, post-truth, price mechanism, private spaceflight, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, ransomware, reshoring, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Coase, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, South China Sea, speech recognition, stem cell, supply-chain management, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, undersea cable, US Airways Flight 1549, WikiLeaks, zoonotic diseases

Brides continue to want diamond engagement rings: in America, De Beers reports, a quarter of young brides dreamed of their rings years before beginning a relationship. But there are signs that demand might falter. Those in the millennial generation earn less than their parents did at their age and are less interested in material luxury. They grew up as awareness of “blood diamonds”, which are mined to fund conflict and are illegal, entered popular culture. Brides who want a diamond now have alternatives in the form of synthetic diamonds, which have improved in quality and become less costly to produce. De Beers and other miners are working to boost demand, with new advertising campaigns and slogans.

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In business-school jargon, commoditisation, of everything from silicon chips to Christmas cards, is associated with dull, repetitive products, however useful, that generate low margins. The extraction of physical commodities such as oil or iron ore, meanwhile, has an unseemly air to it. People talk of the “resource curse” (the impact of cyclical ups and downs in prices on poor countries), “Dutch disease” (the impact of high prices on exchange rates), and “blood oil” and “blood diamonds” (the use of proceeds from extractive industries to fund conflict). Some worry that even love has been commoditised by dating apps and websites. In economic terms, commodities are vital components of commerce that are standardised and hence easy to exchange for goods of the same type, have a fairly uniform price around the world (excluding transport costs and taxes) and are used to make other products.

The Panama Papers: Breaking the Story of How the Rich and Powerful Hide Their Money by Frederik Obermaier

air gap, banking crisis, blood diamond, book value, credit crunch, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, Edward Snowden, family office, Global Witness, high net worth, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, Laura Poitras, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, mega-rich, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mortgage debt, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, optical character recognition, out of africa, race to the bottom, vertical integration, We are the 99%, WikiLeaks

In plain English: while many of its clients are doing nothing illegal, some of the world’s biggest scumbags have used Mossack Fonseca’s anonymous offshore companies to disguise their business dealings. During the Offshore Secrets and HSBC Files investigations we came across convicted drug kingpins and suspected traders of blood diamonds who had used companies established by Mossack Fonseca for camouflage purposes. Search the Internet for Mossack Fonseca’s clients and you will also find accomplices of Gaddafi, Assad and Mugabe allegedly working hand in glove with the Panamanian law firm. Please note that I say allegedly, as Mossack Fonseca denies any association with these people and its client list is confidential.

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It will also mark the beginning of the largest international investigative journalism project of all time. Ultimately, around 400 journalists from over eighty countries will be investigating stories originating from this data. Stories that report on the secret offshore companies of dozens of heads of state and dictators; stories explaining how billions are earned from arms, drug and blood-diamond trafficking and other illegal business; and stories that bring home to readers the scale of tax evasion by the wealthy and super-rich of this world. And all those stories begin with Mossack Fonseca on that first night. 1 Start The Russian president’s best friend. Businessmen close to the Argentinian president and her late husband and predecessor as head of state.

…

According to the UN, around thirty-two so-called low-intensity conflicts are currently raging around the world; these are conflicts that claim fewer than 10,000 lives each year. These are taking place in the Philippines, as well as Darfur, the Central African Republic, etc. etc. Each year, hundreds of thousands of people all over the world lose their lives in these conflicts. By enabling the purchase of weapons or the sale of blood diamonds, for example, offshore centres play an instrumental role in these conflicts. Politicians in the Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and the Caymans would probably say that they aren’t doing anything apart from allowing shell companies to set up there. That isn’t true. So-called tax havens and their service providers like Mossack Fonseca are nothing short of enemies of humanity.

Fewer, Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects by Glenn Adamson

big-box store, Biosphere 2, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Buckminster Fuller, carbon footprint, Charles Babbage, crowdsourcing, dematerialisation, dumpster diving, fake news, Ford Model T, haute couture, informal economy, Jacquard loom, Joseph-Marie Jacquard, Kintsugi, Mason jar, post-truth, race to the bottom, tacit knowledge, TED Talk, trade route, VTOL, white flight

When consumers claim that they are immune to the sentiments peddled by marketing departments, one’s alarm bells should certainly go off; and certainly, there is much to dislike about the contemporary diamond industry. Though fitful attempts have been made to address the problems of sourcing, for decades precious stones have been mined in Africa in terrible circumstances, including slavery enforced by violence. Awareness of these so-called blood diamonds is obscured not only by the lack of transparency that one finds in almost all commodity chains, but also by the dazzling sight of the stones themselves. Here, we arrive at the special quality of diamonds, which sets their paradoxes in train. Each stone is rated according to a rigorous grading system, codified by the Gemological Institute of America.

…

., here, here, here, here, here, here Adamson, Peter, here, here, here Adamson parents, here Admirable Discourses (Palissy), here aesthetics, here, here agency vs. materiality, here AIDS, here airbrush, here alchemy, here Aldersey-Williams, Hugh, here altruism, here aluminum, here, here, here, here, here Analytical Engine, here animals, stuffed, here, here, here antimaterialism, here antiques market, here Apple, here architecture, here, here, here archives and archivists, here Aristotle, here, here art, interaction with, here Art and Craft (documentary film), here artifacts, here, here Art Institute of Chicago, here artisanal knowledge, here Arts and Crafts movement, here atomic theory, here attention hammer example, here of longing, here, here paying, here, here, here, here, here automotive industry design, here awareness, here, here awnings, here Babbage, Charles, here backstrap loom, here Bacon, Roger, here Baekeland, Leo, here balance, here, here Barnes, Dorothy Gill, here Barthes, Roland, here Basilica of St. Josaphat, here basketry, here Beach, Alfred, here Beckerdite, Luke, here Beckmann, Max, here, here Bennett, Tony, here bespoke, here the blind, here, here blood diamonds, here Bodenner, Scott, here, here The Body of the Artisan (Smith), here book of secrets, here books collecting, here digitizing, here, here Boulle (Buhl) saw, here Boulle, André Charles, here Bowling, Mimi, here, here Breward, Christopher, here Brooklyn, here Bryant, Janie, here Buchwald, Art, here carving coconut, here, here stone, here Casdagli, Alexis, here cast iron, here cast objects, here Center for Wood Anatomy Research, here ceramics Chinese, here fingerprints on, here pottery, Japanese, here, here, here, here, here terra-cotta, here touching, here Chair Question, here chanoyu (tea ceremony), here chess, here children stuffed animals of, here, here, here technology and, here, here Chinese ceramics, here chisel, here Clark, Kenneth, here Clarke, David, here class condescension, here class distinction, here claw, here clay foot of teabowls, here clay models, here, here cleverness, here climate change, here Clunas, Craig, here coconut carving, here, here Coffeyville (KS) children, abilities of, here, here pig anecdote, here Pumpkin Creek Farm, life on, here shared enterprise, feeling of, here collection, the, here communities of respect, here community awareness of, here creating, here history of the Warsaw Jewish, here the homeless and, here identity, here Jerry Walsh and the, here completeness, attaining, here computers, here, here Confessions of a Professional Makeup Artist (Mailfert), here confinement, here connections, objects in creating, here, here, here, here contact zone, here, here, here, here control, here, here, here Cooke, Ned, here Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, here copies, here, here The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas), here craft.

Damsel in Distressed: My Life in the Golden Age of Hedge Funds by Dominique Mielle

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airline deregulation, Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, capital asset pricing model, Carl Icahn, centre right, collateralized debt obligation, Cornelius Vanderbilt, coronavirus, COVID-19, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, diversification, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, family office, fear of failure, financial innovation, fixed income, full employment, glass ceiling, high net worth, hockey-stick growth, index fund, intangible asset, interest rate swap, John Meriwether, junk bonds, Larry Ellison, lateral thinking, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, managed futures, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Myron Scholes, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, profit maximization, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, risk free rate, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, satellite internet, Savings and loan crisis, Sharpe ratio, Sheryl Sandberg, SoftBank, survivorship bias, Tesla Model S, too big to fail, tulip mania, union organizing

I proudly wore it as I boarded a flight to a meeting in New York. On the plane, I watched the excellent new release Blood Diamond. I stared at the ring. I looked around me. Had anyone spotted my finger and then logically and accurately connected me with the revolting child-soldier creators, civil-war perpetrators, African country-abusers from the movie? I drove right back to the store and asked Martin himself if he could legally trace the diamond. He assured me that he could, going on to note that he had seen Blood Diamond and was a friend of Leonardo DiCaprio. Was the latter information supposed to comfort me in the morality of the purchase?

Chasing the Devil: On Foot Through Africa's Killing Fields by Tim Butcher

barriers to entry, blood diamond, centre right, clean water, colonial rule, Etonian, Google Earth, Kickstarter, Nelson Mandela, pre–internet, Scramble for Africa, trade route, upwardly mobile

Money earned from the sales would be spent on more weapons used by the rebels to secure yet more territory and enslave yet more people to search for yet more stones. It was a self-sustaining cycle of violence. The term ‘blood diamonds’ feels an entirely appropriate name for gems mined, smuggled and traded to sustain the conflict. Hollywood took on the subject convincingly with the 2006 film Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It is a wartime story of a white diamond smuggler joining forces with a desperate black Sierra Leonean villager to snaffle a priceless stone from under the noses of rebels and mercenaries out in the country’s chaotic hinterland.

…

Nervousness started to take hold of me, weak to begin with but welling so forcefully it overwhelmed all sense of physical discomfort. I was walking across Liberia, one of the most lawless and unstable countries in Africa, a nation left in ruins by a cycle of coup and counter-coup, rebellion and invasion, that had festered for decades. Its conflict helped spawn many of modern Africa’s most troubling icons – child soldiers, blood diamonds, fetishistic killers – and although the war had officially ended, its jungle hinterland was still regarded by many as off limits. The crisis came four days into the trek when my local guide and trusted friend, Johnson Boie, could walk no further. Hobbled by blisters, he reluctantly agreed to take a lift on a motorbike to the village of Duogomai where I was determined to spend the night.

Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff by Fred Pearce

additive manufacturing, air freight, Berlin Wall, biodiversity loss, blood diamond, British Empire, car-free, carbon footprint, clean water, congestion charging, corporate social responsibility, credit crunch, demographic transition, export processing zone, Fall of the Berlin Wall, food miles, ghettoisation, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Kibera, Kickstarter, mass immigration, megacity, Nelson Mandela, new economy, oil shale / tar sands, out of africa, peak oil, Pearl River Delta, profit motive, race to the bottom, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, the built environment, urban planning, urban sprawl, women in the workforce

On the back of the film Blood Diamond, the ethical-jewellery business is set to take off. His model is the Body Shop ethical franchise chain established by the late Anita Roddick just down the road in Littlehampton. And he is as ambitious. ‘We want three hundred outlets by 2009,’ he said. ‘But all this depends on being able to get sufficient certified supplies.’ He is lining up more gold miners’ groups from Bolivia, Peru and several African countries, along with silver miners from the Philippines and diamond prospectors from Tanzania – and who knows, one day from the cauldron of blood diamonds, Sierra Leone, too.

…

China has 60 per cent of our antimony, which is widely used in the ubiquitous electrical conducting devices known as semiconductors, and in flame retardants. There may be only thirty years’ supply of antimony left. China also has 30 per cent of our tin and 20 per cent of our zinc. All this makes resource politics interesting. We know all about oil politics. And the world of blood diamonds has become notorious. But what about phosphate politics? Phosphates are an essential nutrient in soils. Plants need phosphate to grow as much as they need water. It takes a tonne of phosphate to produce every 130 tonnes of grain. There are no substitutes. If natural phosphate is in short supply in their soils, as it often is, farmers must add phosphate rock.

How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance by Parag Khanna

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, bank run, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, borderless world, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, clean water, cloud computing, commoditize, congestion pricing, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, double entry bookkeeping, energy security, European colonialism, export processing zone, facts on the ground, failed state, financial engineering, friendly fire, global village, Global Witness, Google Earth, high net worth, high-speed rail, index fund, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, laissez-faire capitalism, Live Aid, Masdar, mass immigration, megacity, Michael Shellenberger, microcredit, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, New Urbanism, no-fly zone, off grid, offshore financial centre, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, private military company, Productivity paradox, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Salesforce, Silicon Valley, smart grid, South China Sea, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, sustainable-tourism, Ted Nordhaus, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, X Prize

If Western donors and multilaterals can coach on environmental standards, while China continues investing in raw materials but hires more local labor under pressure from African governments, then the renewed great power interest in Africa can finally mean a race to the top, rather than to the bottom. Reversing the Resource Curse Were it not for De Beers, Botswana could very well have wound up like Sierra Leone. Like other postcolonial African states, Botswana is landlocked and suffered turbulent governance during its early independence years. But rather than engaging in a “blood diamond”–fueled civil war, Botswana’s government auctioned off resource rights to get the best price for them, taxes corporate revenues rather than accepting personal bribes, and invests some of its profits in worthwhile national development projects. De Beers has been essential to Botswana’s strategy of controlling diamond-export volumes to maintain a high price (which they split fifty-fifty with the government) and has also supported a domestic distribution plan for diamond wealth.

…

Alien Tort Claims Act, the International Labor Rights Fund sued Unocal in the 1990s on behalf of impoverished Burmese villagers for abuses committed by the ruling junta during the construction of the $1.2 billion Yadana pipeline, where villagers were paid little or nothing, and shot if they moved too slowly. While legal tactics have evoked reflex benevolence from companies, NGOs also actively lobby the same corporations to reshape their policies on the ground prior to getting sued. Rather than continuously publishing damning reports on blood diamonds, Global Witness decided to sit down with De Beers to forge what became known as the Kimberly Process for monitoring and certifying the origin of diamonds being sold worldwide. Now more than one hundred diamond companies, monitoring groups, and regional organizations are involved. The worldwide governance of natural-resource wealth is now emerging through such public-private networks.

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy by Frank Vogl

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Alan Greenspan, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bear Stearns, Bernie Sanders, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, corporate governance, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cryptocurrency, Donald Trump, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, Global Witness, Greensill Capital, income inequality, information security, joint-stock company, London Interbank Offered Rate, Londongrad, low interest rates, market clearing, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, profit maximization, quantitative easing, Renaissance Technologies, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, stock buybacks, too big to fail, WikiLeaks

It is marketable, sales are secret, and the assets can easily be kept safe. In other words, jewels meet the key kleptocrat principles of investing. Moreover, the jewelry business has its attractions for the corrupt. Illicit sales of diamonds have long been used as currency in the purchases of arms, as was highlighted some years ago in the movie Blood Diamonds, which was based on an extensive investigation by the UK-based Global Witness organization.19 Then, for example, in early 2020, the Geneva-based luxury jeweler de Grisogono filed for bankruptcy. It was jointly owned by the state-owned Angolan mining company’s trading arm, called Sodiam, and by Sindika Dokolo, the husband of Isabel dos Santos, daughter of the former dictator of Angola.

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In the secretive art market, new anti-money laundering legislation has landed like a bomb.” 18. Guardian, November 6, 2018, headline: “Twist in Alleged $1bn Art Fraud as Russian Tycoon Detained in Monaco.” 19. Global Witness has been tracking illicit commerce in diamonds for more than a decade. Its investigations were the basis for a major movie: Blood Diamonds. It continues to see a failure by governments and the industry to adequately police the trade, as noted, for example, in its statement on November 12, 2018, headed: “Diamond Industry Fails to Clean Up Its Act.” 20. ICIJ, January 2020. “How Africa’s richest woman exploited family ties, shell companies and inside deals to build an empire.

This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth

4chan, active measures, activist lawyer, air gap, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, barriers to entry, Benchmark Capital, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boeing 737 MAX, Brexit referendum, Brian Krebs, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, commoditize, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark matter, David Vincenzetti, defense in depth, digital rights, disinformation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, end-to-end encryption, failed state, fake news, false flag, Ferguson, Missouri, Firefox, gender pay gap, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Hacker News, index card, information security, Internet of things, invisible hand, Jacob Appelbaum, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Ken Thompson, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, lockdown, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, Menlo Park, MITM: man-in-the-middle, moral hazard, Morris worm, move fast and break things, mutually assured destruction, natural language processing, NSO Group, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, open borders, operational security, Parler "social media", pirate software, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, ransomware, Reflections on Trusting Trust, rolodex, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Sand Hill Road, Seymour Hersh, Sheryl Sandberg, side project, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, Steve Ballmer, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, TED Talk, the long tail, the scientific method, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, web application, WikiLeaks, zero day, Zimmermann PGP

For decades, as Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and others introduced more encryption to their data centers and customers’ communications, the only way to intercept unencrypted data was to break into someone’s device before its contents had been scrambled. In the process, “zero-day exploits” became the blood diamonds of the security trade, pursued by nation-states, defense contractors, and cybercriminals on one side, and security defenders on the other. Depending where the vulnerability is discovered, a zero-day exploit can grant the ability to invisibly spy on iPhone users the world over, dismantle the safety controls at a chemical plant, or send a spacecraft hurtling into earth.

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If they described their zero-day or handed it over for evaluation, a buyer might simply feign disinterest and use it anyway. The time lag between a hacker’s zero-day demo and when he got paid was brutally long. Zero-days took weeks, if not months, to vet—all the more time for the vulnerability to be found and patched. Six-figure zero-days could turn to dust in seconds, leaving sellers up a creek. And just as with blood diamonds, there was the fairly significant issue of one’s conscience. As more buyers made their way into the market—foreign governments, front companies, shady middlemen, cybercriminals—it was becoming impossible for hackers to know how zero-days would be used. Would their code be used for traditional state-to-state espionage, or to track down dissidents and activists and make their lives a living hell?

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They were here to recruit, perhaps, or broker the latest and greatest in Argentine spy code. I had timed my visit for Latin America’s largest hacking conference. Ekoparty was a mecca for hackers all over South America, and more recently zero-day brokers who came from all over the world in search of digital blood diamonds. This was my best chance of glimpsing the world’s new exploit labor market. The agenda listed hacks of encrypted medical devices to e-voting systems, cars, app stores, Androids, PCs, and the Cisco and SAP business apps that could enable attackers to take remote control of computers at the world’s biggest multinationals and government agencies.

Masters of Management: How the Business Gurus and Their Ideas Have Changed the World—for Better and for Worse by Adrian Wooldridge

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Black Swan, blood diamond, borderless world, business climate, business cycle, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cloud computing, collaborative consumption, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, company town, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crowdsourcing, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Edward Glaeser, Exxon Valdez, financial deregulation, Ford Model T, Frederick Winslow Taylor, future of work, George Gilder, global supply chain, Golden arches theory, hobby farmer, industrial cluster, intangible asset, It's morning again in America, job satisfaction, job-hopping, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, lake wobegon effect, Long Term Capital Management, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, McMansion, means of production, Menlo Park, meritocracy, Michael Milken, military-industrial complex, mobile money, Naomi Klein, Netflix Prize, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Norman Macrae, open immigration, patent troll, Ponzi scheme, popular capitalism, post-industrial society, profit motive, purchasing power parity, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, recommendation engine, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, science of happiness, scientific management, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, technoutopianism, the long tail, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Davenport, Tony Hsieh, too big to fail, vertical integration, wealth creators, women in the workforce, young professional, Zipcar

A survey by McKinsey in 2007 discovered that 95 percent of companies felt that “society” had higher expectations than it did five years ago.9 Academics, whistle-blowers, journalists, NGOs, professional malcontents—all delight in exposing the malefactors of great wealth. Hollywood has produced a stream of corporate-bashing films: The Constant Gardener (pharmaceuticals), Sicko (healthcare), Blood Diamond (precious stones), Supersize Me (fast food), Syriana (big oil), Michael Clayton (corporate law), and Capitalism, a Love Story (business in general, courtesy of the man who made the best business-bashing film of all, Roger and Me, Michael Moore). CSR is a way of fighting back, a way of managing your reputation in a reputation-shredding age.

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Companies have been forming some surprising alliances in the name of CSR—and blurring the line between for-profit and nonprofit organizations in the process. Companies have taken to striking deals with governments to slay various monsters such as corruption (a particularly common practice in the mining industry) or blood diamonds (the Kimberley process). Limited Brands, a clothing company, has even lobbied the government of Alberta, Canada, over threatened caribou habitats. But the bread and butter in CSR deal-making is provided by NGOs. Coca-Cola has formed an alliance with the World Wild Life Fund to conserve freshwater river basins and with Greenpeace to eliminate carbon emissions from its coolers and vending machines.

You're a Horrible Person, but I Like You: The Believer Book of Advice by The Believer

blood diamond, Burning Man, haute cuisine, Kickstarter, Mahatma Gandhi, McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit, nuclear winter, Saturday Night Live

Leah Dawson Sarasota, FL Dear Leah: I’m freaked for you. I’m so freaked I don’t even have any jokes. I was trying to think of a kind of jokey answer and then I just felt like a horrible person and I deleted it. I am really scared for you. Seriously scared. You are in serious trouble. I hope you’ve been hoarding conflict diamonds and Cipro, because you are about to enter the s-h-i-t, the Heart of Darkness. Take everything you ever thought you knew about investing and do the exact opposite. The currency of the future will be heirloom seeds, so good luck with that one. Panic. Learn how to field dress a wild pig and distill your urine into potable water.

Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child by Bert Kreischer

airport security, blood diamond, pre–internet, Saturday Night Live

I felt like telling him he should write that down and work it out, because there was definitely something there that people could relate to, but I got the feeling he wasn’t about to slow down and pull out a pen and a notebook. He was on a roll. Everything he said that night was a diamond, but a blood diamond, because as the night continued, a small fortune of alcohol accrued on that table. At the end of the night, when the only energy left in the club was Tracy’s, the white waitress appeared through the crowd of brothers with a smile and a bill. She quickly scanned the crowd—landing her sights on me, the lone white guy.

Does Capitalism Have a Future? by Immanuel Wallerstein, Randall Collins, Michael Mann, Georgi Derluguian, Craig Calhoun, Stephen Hoye, Audible Studios

affirmative action, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, butterfly effect, company town, creative destruction, deindustrialization, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, discovery of the americas, distributed generation, Dr. Strangelove, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, full employment, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global village, hydraulic fracturing, income inequality, Isaac Newton, job automation, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, land tenure, liberal capitalism, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, loose coupling, low skilled workers, market bubble, market fundamentalism, mass immigration, means of production, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, offshore financial centre, oil shale / tar sands, Ponzi scheme, postindustrial economy, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, too big to fail, transaction costs, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks

It also has a large-scale dimension of transnational capitalist structures that operate at least partially outside state institutions and laws. The latter include money-laundering, banking, and investments backed up by force as well as contracts. They include tax-evasion, trafficking, and a range of illicit flows—from minerals (blood diamonds or coltan), to weapons (small arms mostly, but also tanks, aircraft, and missiles), to drugs, to people. This often illicit capitalism is often more formally organized than the name “informal sector” suggests, and it has revenues and investments running into many trillions of dollars (though not surprisingly hard to calculate precisely).

Straight to Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, and Billion-Dollar Deals by John Lefevre

airport security, Bear Stearns, blood diamond, buy and hold, colonial rule, credit crunch, fixed income, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, high net worth, income inequality, jitney, junk bonds, lateral thinking, market clearing, Occupy movement, Sloane Ranger, the market place

Might as well—they’re already paid for, and altruistically speaking, they’ll be safer with us. By the exit, we see Varun, having not bothered to search for a dark corner, with a wide grin on his face. He’s got a drink in each hand, a girl under each arm, and another on his lap. “T.I.A., baby. T.I.A.” The acronym from the movie Blood Diamond—“This Is Africa”—had long since been appropriated as “This Is Asia.” As I knew it would be, the casino is disgusting. “Sorry, chaps. It’s not Monte Carlo, but tonight, it’ll have to do.” I can tell that they don’t really want to be there, but I just want to gamble. We start off together at the baccarat table and then gradually jump around in search of blackjack, more drinks, and better luck.

Yes Please by Amy Poehler

airport security, Albert Einstein, blood diamond, carbon footprint, David Sedaris, do what you love, Donald Trump, East Village, gentrification, Google Hangouts, Pepto Bismol, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Skype, the medium is the message

I think The Wire is the best-written show in recent memory. I have watched each episode of all five seasons twice. For Mother’s Day one year, Aziz Ansari got me a signed and framed picture of Omar Little with the inscription “Amy, You come at the King You Best Not Miss. Omar.” Next to my children and my blood diamonds this is the only thing I would grab in a fire. A nice young person stood up at the panel and asked David and me how we found the “courage” to do what we do. We both bristled a bit at the idea of our work being “courageous.” We both admitted that we often think about how if everything went away tomorrow we would still have a trade and a skill to depend on.

Independent Diplomat: Dispatches From an Unaccountable Elite by Carne Ross

Abraham Maslow, barriers to entry, blood diamond, carbon tax, cuban missile crisis, Doha Development Round, energy security, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Global Witness, income inequality, information security, iterative process, meta-analysis, oil-for-food scandal, one-China policy, Peace of Westphalia, Pearl River Delta, stakhanovite, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Tragedy of the Commons, zero-sum game

Effective foreign policy, whether in promoting labour rights or environmental standards, now requires coalitions of actors — the private sector, civil society and government — acting in concert to be effective.11 If foreign ministries are to be effective, even relevant, in the future, as propagators of policy and change they must consider how to organise such coalitions, and how to encompass, direct and inform these many different strands and effectors of policy. The NGO Global Witness has been tracking how wars are fuelled by the exploitation of natural resources — timber, diamonds — by unscrupulous governments and traders. Global Witness popularised the notion of “conflict diamonds”, whose extraction (often in conditions of dreadful cruelty) was controlled by warlords in West Africa (Liberia’s Charles Taylor being the most infamous example) but bought by international diamond trading companies and sold on the high street. The proceeds went to buy AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades which were then used in the vicious and destructive wars in Liberia, Sierra Leone and elsewhere.

Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up by Philip N. Howard

Aaron Swartz, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brian Krebs, British Empire, butter production in bangladesh, call centre, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, digital map, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, feminist movement, Filter Bubble, Firefox, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Google Earth, Hacker News, Howard Rheingold, income inequality, informal economy, information security, Internet of things, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Kibera, Kickstarter, land reform, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, mobile money, Mohammed Bouazizi, national security letter, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, obamacare, Occupy movement, off-the-grid, packet switching, pension reform, prediction markets, sentiment analysis, Silicon Valley, Skype, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stuxnet, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, trade route, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day

Tax evaders, terrorists, drug cartels, and corrupt politicians don’t want to keep their dirty money under their own names. So one of the most important anticorruption campaigns is against anonymous companies that are able to hide their owner ship structure in layers of easily created shell companies.29 The cruel industry behind blood diamonds, in particular, has been able to bury the identity of company owners and beneficiaries. Unfortunately, only the most experienced data sleuths can track down their personal data and see who is using it. Given the large volumes of compromised personal records—on average each U.S. adult has had nine such records compromised—it would be impossible to fully understand who has access to data about us.30 National-security organizations may have better digital archives of our communications than we have on our own devices.

The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder by Sean McFate

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, Boeing 747, Brexit referendum, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, computer vision, corporate governance, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, double helix, drone strike, escalation ladder, European colonialism, failed state, fake news, false flag, hive mind, index fund, invisible hand, John Markoff, joint-stock company, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, nuclear taboo, offshore financial centre, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, plutocrats, private military company, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Stuxnet, Suez crisis 1956, technoutopianism, vertical integration, Washington Consensus, Westphalian system, yellow journalism, Yom Kippur War, zero day, zero-sum game

But it was all perversion. Taylor, like the warlords before him, saw the country as a prize to be pillaged. And pillage he did. He looted $100 million from the treasury and lived lavishly as Liberians starved. He had a small army of child soldiers who revered him as a father-god, and he traded so many “blood diamonds” (gems harvested in the gore of war), that the phrase became a household term around the world. Taylor also liked war bling, and he had a chromed AK-47, which I held years later. If he saw a woman he wanted, he would send men to take her. After he was done, she may or may not have lived. His son Chucky was worse.

The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies by Graham Elwood, Chris Mancini

blood diamond, Bob Geldof, Dr. Strangelove, financial engineering, Marshall McLuhan, Menlo Park, nuclear winter, Wall-E

Is it a bunch of dumb whores in a stupid town yelling about why they are the best wife in the lot? Or maybe a cooking competition with fancy suit wearing shitheads judging a bunch of nonsense that would never influence anyone’s decision on if a restaurant is good or not? Perhaps it is some family of rich, vapid dummies whose only talent is how to correctly wear blood diamonds. Oh wait, I’m talking about the reason I canceled my cable. Reality TV has nothing to do with documentaries. A good doc (the hipster shorthand in film-land) is when the audience is taken into a world that most of us know little about, and we learn by going along on the experience with the subjects.

Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer by Alan Huffman

blood diamond, British Empire, friendly fire, illegal immigration, no-fly zone, satellite internet, Skype

An oft-repeated mantra during Taylor’s campaign was “You killed my ma, you killed my pa, I will vote for you.” To make up for funds deprived him by the sanctions, Taylor tapped Liberia’s ship registry program, the largest in the world, as well as the Sierra Leonean diamond industry, which extracted so-called blood diamonds using child and slave labor. LURD, which formed in 1999, was one of several Liberian rebel groups bent on overthrowing Taylor. By the summer of 2003, when Hetherington and Brabazon arrived, LURD was the preeminent rebel group, directly supported by Guinea. Hetherington had done his homework on this complicated dynamic before traveling to Liberia during his previous trip in 1999.

How to Speak Money: What the Money People Say--And What It Really Means by John Lanchester

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, asset allocation, Basel III, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, bitcoin, Black Swan, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Celtic Tiger, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collective bargaining, commoditize, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crony capitalism, Dava Sobel, David Graeber, disintermediation, double entry bookkeeping, en.wikipedia.org, estate planning, fear index, financial engineering, financial innovation, Flash crash, forward guidance, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, high net worth, High speed trading, hindsight bias, hype cycle, income inequality, inflation targeting, interest rate swap, inverted yield curve, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, John Perry Barlow, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, junk bonds, Kodak vs Instagram, Kondratiev cycle, Large Hadron Collider, liquidity trap, London Interbank Offered Rate, London Whale, loss aversion, low interest rates, margin call, McJob, means of production, microcredit, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, negative equity, neoliberal agenda, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, Nikolai Kondratiev, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, oil shock, open economy, paradox of thrift, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precautionary principle, proprietary trading, purchasing power parity, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, random walk, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Right to Buy, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Satoshi Nakamoto, security theater, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Jobs, survivorship bias, The Chicago School, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, Two Sigma, Tyler Cowen, Washington Consensus, wealth creators, working poor, yield curve

The main cause of the boom has been the growth of China, whose industrial output increased by 22 percent every year on average in the first decade of this century. Making more stuff means you need more stuff to make it with—hence, a commodity boom.27 The quest to find and extract commodities from troubled places is one of the darkest aspects of the contemporary economic system: “blood diamonds” are the best known of these products, but there are many more and many whose stories go untold. Much of the world’s computer equipment functions by means of tantalum capacitors, which are made with an ore called coltan, much of which comes from the Congo, where it’s extracted from mines run by warlords using slave labor.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener

autonomous vehicles, back-to-the-land, basic income, behavioural economics, Blitzscaling, blockchain, blood diamond, Burning Man, call centre, charter city, cloud computing, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, dark triade / dark tetrad, data science, digital divide, digital nomad, digital rights, end-to-end encryption, Extropian, functional programming, future of work, gentrification, Golden Gate Park, growth hacking, guns versus butter model, housing crisis, Jane Jacobs, job automation, knowledge worker, Lean Startup, means of production, medical residency, microaggression, microapartment, microdosing, new economy, New Urbanism, Overton Window, passive income, Plato's cave, pull request, rent control, ride hailing / ride sharing, San Francisco homelessness, Sand Hill Road, self-driving car, sharing economy, Shenzhen special economic zone , side project, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Social Justice Warrior, social web, South of Market, San Francisco, special economic zone, subprime mortgage crisis, systems thinking, tech bro, tech worker, technoutopianism, telepresence, telepresence robot, union organizing, universal basic income, unpaid internship, urban planning, urban renewal, warehouse robotics, women in the workforce, work culture , Y2K, young professional

In the ex-employee chat room, people compared secondhand information about the share price; they posted celebratory photographs of themselves in octopus-cat T-shirts. TFW you wake up retired, wrote one of the early employees. Another expressed her ambivalence about the windfall. It’s like having a conflict diamond, she wrote. It’s valuable, but it came at an unforgivable human cost. Not just a diamond, a mine. A significant fraction of my former coworkers became millionaires and multimillionaires; the founders became billionaires. The venture capitalists refueled. I was happy for friends, especially lower-level employees who had worked incredibly hard, and I was excited for their families, for whom a low-six-figure exit would be life-changing.

Crossing the Heart of Africa: An Odyssey of Love and Adventure by Julian Smith

Beryl Markham, blood diamond, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, James Watt: steam engine, Livingstone, I presume, Pepto Bismol, Scramble for Africa, trade route

I’d always teased her about how bourgeois diamond engagement rings were: the “tradition” invented in the 1930s by the De Beers cartel—Cecil Rhodes again—after a glut of South African diamonds threatened to send prices crashing; the ad exec who picked the two months’ salary figure out of thin air; the profits from “blood diamonds” mined in war zones that fueled vicious conflicts across Africa, including the DRC. She didn’t deny any of it. But she still wanted one. I owed her that much. I told her I was going to give her a diamond ring that had belonged to my grandmother. I’d just underestimated how long it would take to have it cleaned and resized and FedExed here.

Wait: The Art and Science of Delay by Frank Partnoy

algorithmic trading, Atul Gawande, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, blood diamond, Cass Sunstein, Checklist Manifesto, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computerized trading, corporate governance, cotton gin, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, Flash crash, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, Google Earth, Hernando de Soto, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Long Term Capital Management, Menlo Park, mental accounting, meta-analysis, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nick Leeson, paper trading, Paul Graham, payday loans, Pershing Square Capital Management, Ralph Nader, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, scientific management, six sigma, social discount rate, Spread Networks laid a new fibre optics cable between New York and Chicago, Stanford marshmallow experiment, statistical model, Steve Jobs, systems thinking, The Market for Lemons, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, upwardly mobile, Walter Mischel, work culture

But Kroft persuaded Obama to give him a few more minutes on camera later, after a ceremony for firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11, and that gave 60 Minutes just enough material to fill all three of the show’s segments. Francesco Guerrera was born in Milan and has a first-class degree from City University in London. He has won numerous awards, including a Foreign Press Association Award for his investigation of “blood diamonds,” an Overseas Press Award for his scoop on CNOOC’s takeover bid for Unocal, and a SABEW Award for a video series on the collapse of Lehman Brothers.23 He is widely considered one of the world’s leading business reporters and is editor of the Wall Street Journal’s respected “Money and Investing” section.

Power, for All: How It Really Works and Why It's Everyone's Business by Julie Battilana, Tiziana Casciaro

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, Andy Rubin, Asperger Syndrome, benefit corporation, Big Tech, BIPOC, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, British Empire, call centre, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, deep learning, different worldview, digital rights, disinformation, Elon Musk, Erik Brynjolfsson, fake news, feminist movement, fundamental attribution error, future of work, George Floyd, gig economy, Greta Thunberg, hiring and firing, impact investing, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of movable type, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, Joshua Gans and Andrew Leigh, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mega-rich, meritocracy, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, moral hazard, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, principal–agent problem, profit maximization, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ride hailing / ride sharing, Salesforce, School Strike for Climate, Second Machine Age, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, social distancing, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, Steven Pinker, surveillance capitalism, tacit knowledge, tech worker, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, zero-sum game

This is the challenge that De Beers and other diamond sellers started to face at the turn of the twenty-first century, as some consumers turned their backs on diamonds. The number of marriages has been shrinking, with evolving gender norms challenging traditional marriage rituals. In the past decades, competition for luxury goods, from travel to handbags and electronics, has also been exploding.18 Blood diamonds—gems mined in war zones and sold to finance military insurgencies—have further tarnished diamonds’ once-pristine reputation as the symbol of eternal love. These social trends have lessened De Beers’s and, more generally, the diamond industry’s power, with some analysts calculating a drop in sales growth by as much as 60 percent between 2000 and 2019.19 But De Beers had been losing power in the industry even before these trends began to play out, so much so that by 2019, its share of the global rough diamond market had fallen to roughly 30 percent.20 De Beers’s change of fortune resulted partly from strategic moves by its suppliers and competitors: The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 weakened De Beers’s partnership with Russian diamond producers, while new mines opened in Canada, and start-ups began to use new technology to grow synthetic diamonds in their labs.

A Swamp Full of Dollars: Pipelines and Paramilitaries at Nigeria's Oil Frontier by Michael Peel

banking crisis, blood diamond, British Empire, colonial rule, energy security, Golden arches theory, informal economy, Kickstarter, megacity, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, race to the bottom, Scramble for Africa, trade route, UNCLOS, wage slave

After I leave, the Dallas will carry out an exercise simulating the defence of an Equatorial Guinea offshore oil platform operated by Marathon, the US multinational. Oil theft is one of the problems the US Africa Partnership Station mission explicitly says it is trying to tackle. Washington’s call to action has been echoed by Nigeria’s president, Umaru Yar’Adua, who has compared the trade to the so-called ‘conflict diamond’ dealings that have fuelled brutal wars in countries such as Sierra Leone. He found a sympathetic ear in the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, who offered in July 2008 to provide military assistance to help stop the illicit trade. That largesse achieved the unusual feat of dismaying both British army chiefs and human rights campaigners in the Delta.

Anything to Declare?: The Searching Tales of an HM Customs Officer by Jon Frost

airport security, blood diamond, British Empire, friendly fire, Great Leap Forward, haute cuisine, IFF: identification friend or foe, Louis Blériot

In my time as a uniformed officer I seized many weird and wonderful things: passengers, aircraft, presidential aircraft, a working tank, cars, lorries, boats and coffins; and I uncovered wild animals, killer snakes, bush meat, animal porn, poisonous vodka, dodgy medicine, bootleg prescriptions, pirated pills, toxic alcohol, firearms, sidearms, swords, explosives, stolen gold, dirty money, blood diamonds, child pornography, dead parrots and every drug known to man (and a few as yet unknown). And that was all just from searching the living. The dead? Well, we searched them, too. We had to. It’s amazing what you can hide in a coffin. There were many aspects of the job that made you think twice about ever again putting your fingers anywhere near your mouth.

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World by Craig Kielburger, Holly Branson, Marc Kielburger, Sir Richard Branson, Sheryl Sandberg

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, blood diamond, Boeing 747, business intelligence, business process, carbon footprint, clean tech, clean water, Colonization of Mars, content marketing, corporate social responsibility, Downton Abbey, Elon Musk, energy transition, family office, food desert, future of work, global village, impact investing, inventory management, James Dyson, job satisfaction, Kickstarter, market design, meta-analysis, microcredit, Nelson Mandela, Occupy movement, pre–internet, retail therapy, Salesforce, shareholder value, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Snapchat, Steve Jobs, TED Talk, telemarketer, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, Virgin Galactic, working poor, Y Combinator

Enterprising for Good At law school across the pond in Oxford, it was easier for me to travel to the expanding WE Charity projects in Africa, which I visited frequently. No place struck me more than Sierra Leone, which is the most damaged country we've ever worked in. An 11-year civil war fueled by blood diamonds brought terror to every corner of the tiny West African nation. Thousands of boys, some as young as seven and eight, were forcibly recruited to the rebel ranks. Those who refused had a hand chopped off to stop them from fighting for the enemy. Young girls were taken as war brides. As the civil war approached its end, our organization began to build and repair schools, but reading and writing took a back seat to more remedial lessons.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart by Tim Butcher

airport security, blood diamond, clean water, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, discovery of the americas, European colonialism, failed state, Live Aid, Livingstone, I presume, Scramble for Africa, transatlantic slave trade

They were galvanised by the issue, launching unprecedented campaigns, both in Europe and America, to highlight the cruelty committed in the Congo Free State in the name of Leopold, focusing on the rubber industry and the violence unleashed by colonial agents to harvest it in the Congo. Just as campaigners today use the term Blood Diamonds to discredit gems produced in Africa's war zones, so their predecessors from a hundred years ago spoke of Red Rubber, publishing dramatic accounts of villagers being murdered or having their hands cut off to terrify their neighbours into harvesting more rubber. Leopold's representatives tried to suppress the flow of information emerging from the Congo and produced their own propaganda about the benign nature of the colony, but slowly and steadily, as information leaked out of the Congo over the years, smuggled out mainly by missionaries, they lost the public-relations battle.

Reset by Ronald J. Deibert

23andMe, active measures, air gap, Airbnb, Amazon Web Services, Anthropocene, augmented reality, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Bellingcat, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Brexit referendum, Buckminster Fuller, business intelligence, Cal Newport, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, carbon footprint, cashless society, Citizen Lab, clean water, cloud computing, computer vision, confounding variable, contact tracing, contact tracing app, content marketing, coronavirus, corporate social responsibility, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, data acquisition, data is the new oil, decarbonisation, deep learning, deepfake, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, Evgeny Morozov, failed state, fake news, Future Shock, game design, gig economy, global pandemic, global supply chain, global village, Google Hangouts, Great Leap Forward, high-speed rail, income inequality, information retrieval, information security, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, Lewis Mumford, liberal capitalism, license plate recognition, lockdown, longitudinal study, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, megastructure, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, move fast and break things, Naomi Klein, natural language processing, New Journalism, NSO Group, off-the-grid, Peter Thiel, planetary scale, planned obsolescence, post-truth, proprietary trading, QAnon, ransomware, Robert Mercer, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, single source of truth, Skype, Snapchat, social distancing, sorting algorithm, source of truth, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, speech recognition, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, surveillance capitalism, techlash, technological solutionism, the long tail, the medium is the message, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, TikTok, TSMC, undersea cable, unit 8200, Vannevar Bush, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

In Chile’s Atacama and Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto regions, where lithium mining operations are located, local communities complain about water-related shortages and conflicts related to them, as well as contaminated water supplies.317 By far the most concerning mining operations are those in and around zones of conflict. Thanks to films like Blood Diamond and campaigns to regulate and eradicate trade in so-called “conflict minerals,” most people have a general appreciation that mining operations in places like Central Africa are bound up with warfare, organized crime, poor labour practices, smuggling, and kidnapping. But what may be overlooked is how the elements that are mined in these regions, such as cobalt, copper, tantalum, tin, and gold, are integral to the components that make up our electronic devices.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas

accounting loophole / creative accounting, An Inconvenient Truth, Anthropocene, biodiversity loss, Biosphere 2, blood diamond, Climatic Research Unit, Deng Xiaoping, failed state, Garrett Hardin, hindcast, ice-free Arctic, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Live Aid, Medieval Warm Period, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, price stability, South China Sea, supervolcano, Tragedy of the Commons

., 1996: ‘Greater drought intensity and frequency before AD 1200 in the Northern Great Plains, USA’, Nature, 384, 552-4 p. 5 flash floods: Meyer, G., and Pierce, J., 2003: ‘Climatic controls on fire-induced sediment pulses in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho: a long-term perspective’, Forest Ecology and Management, 178, 1-2, 89-104 p. 6 violent conflict: Diamond, J., 2005: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Allen Lane p. 6 warming and then cooling: Jones, P., and Mann, M., 2004: ‘Climate over past millennia’, Reviews of Geophysics, 42, RG2002 p. 6 medieval flows: Meko, D., et al., 2007: ‘Medieval drought in the upper Colorado River Basin’, Geophysical Research Letters, 34, L10705 p. 8 drought… over decades: Mangan, J., et al., 2004: ‘Response of Nebraska Sand Hills natural vegetation to drought, fire, grazing, and plant functional type shifts as simulated by the century model’, Climatic Change, 63,49-90 p. 10 cooling also occurred: Committee on Abrupt Climate Change, 2002: Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises, chapter 2-Evidence of Abrupt Climate Change p. 10 surge of water: Burroughs, W., 2005: Climate Change in Prehistory: The End of the Reign of Chaos, Cambridge University Press, p. 61 p. 11 circulation had dropped: Bryden, H., et al., 2005: ‘Slowing of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation at 25°N’, Nature, 438, 655-7 p. 12 winters… of 1962-63: ‘Great weather events: the winter of 1962/63’, UK Met Office, http://www.metoffice.com/corporate/pressoffice/anniversary/winter1962-63.html p. 12 50 per cent drop: Jacob, D., et al., 2005: ‘Slowdown of the thermohaline circulation causes enhanced maritime climate influence and snow cover over Europe’, Geophysical Research Letters. 3?

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom by Rebecca MacKinnon

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Bay Area Rapid Transit, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business cycle, business intelligence, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, corporate social responsibility, Deng Xiaoping, digital divide, digital Maoism, don't be evil, Eben Moglen, Evgeny Morozov, Filter Bubble, Firefox, future of journalism, Global Witness, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joi Ito, Julian Assange, Mark Zuckerberg, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, national security letter, online collectivism, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Parag Khanna, pre–internet, race to the bottom, real-name policy, Richard Stallman, Ronald Reagan, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, Steve Crocker, Steven Levy, Tactical Technology Collective, technological determinism, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler

The Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, launched in 2000, is a set of guidelines for oil, gas, and mining companies—which often operate in conflict zones and countries where the military and police act with impunity—to balance their necessary security arrangements with human rights safeguards to prevent complicity in violence against civilians. The Kimberley Process, established in 2003, is a certification scheme for diamonds and part of an effort to stem the flow of “conflict diamonds” from war-torn parts of the world. The Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, launched in 2003, is another multi-stakeholder initiative through which more than fifty oil, gas, and mining companies from around the world have committed to full public disclosure and verification of revenue payments made to governments in the countries in which they operate.

The Pirate's Dilemma by Matt Mason

Albert Einstein, augmented reality, barriers to entry, blood diamond, citizen journalism, creative destruction, digital divide, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, East Village, Firefox, Free Software Foundation, future of work, glass ceiling, global village, Hacker Ethic, haute couture, Howard Rheingold, Internet of things, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, jimmy wales, job satisfaction, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Lao Tzu, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, Naomi Klein, new economy, New Urbanism, patent troll, peer-to-peer, prisoner's dilemma, public intellectual, RAND corporation, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Stallman, SETI@home, side hustle, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, the long tail, Tim Cook: Apple, urban sprawl, Whole Earth Catalog

Russell Simmons has long looked at hip-hop’s influence in this way. Among his more recent projects, he launched the Rush Card—a Visa debit card aimed at the forty-five million Americans whose credit situations mean they can’t qualify for a credit card, as well as a range of conflict-free diamonds.* “The African American community chooses *Conflict diamonds are defined by the United Nations as diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council. 192 | THE PIRATE’S DILEMMA what cool jewelry happens in the world,” he said to me in 2004 before the launch, “but none of us are in the bling bling business.

Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back by Oliver Bullough

Alan Greenspan, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, BRICs, British Empire, capital controls, central bank independence, corporate governance, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, diversification, Donald Trump, energy security, failed state, financial engineering, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Global Witness, high net worth, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, income inequality, joint-stock company, land bank, liberal capitalism, liberal world order, mass immigration, medical malpractice, Navinder Sarao, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Sloane Ranger, sovereign wealth fund, Suez crisis 1956, WikiLeaks

In 2002, the governor of the central bank tried to transfer $50 million of the government’s money to his own account in the United States. When the request was blocked by Western bankers, he tried again. Angola is, in short, an almost perfect case study of modern transnational kleptocracy. Some of Global Witness’ earliest reports detailed the link between corruption and conflict in Angola, with UNITA profiting from ‘blood diamonds’, and MPLA dominating the oil industry. The NGO’s 1999 investigation – entitled A Crude Awakening – described how international energy companies were paying off the government, thereby colluding in the despoliation of the country and the immiseration of its people. ‘Corruption starts with the head of state, surrounded by a clique of politicians and business cronies,’ the report stated.

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth by Fred Pearce

activist lawyer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, big-box store, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, blood diamond, British Empire, Buy land – they’re not making it any more, Cape to Cairo, carbon credits, carbon footprint, clean water, company town, corporate raider, credit crunch, Deng Xiaoping, Elliott wave, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, farmers can use mobile phones to check market prices, Garrett Hardin, Global Witness, index fund, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Kondratiev cycle, land reform, land tenure, Mahatma Gandhi, market fundamentalism, megacity, megaproject, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nelson Mandela, Nikolai Kondratiev, offshore financial centre, out of africa, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, Ronald Reagan, smart cities, structural adjustment programs, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, undersea cable, urban planning, urban sprawl, vertical integration, WikiLeaks

Sun Biofuels has joined a growing list of companies that tried and failed to make it big from the world’s sudden enthusiasm for biofuels in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Some might have succeeded. Others always looked like buccaneering bad boys. Energem was a Canadian company owned by a South African, Tony Teixeira. Previously known as DiamondWorks, it had a well-documented involvement with people who were trading “blood diamonds” from Angola and Sierra Leone. It had links to London mercenaries, and at one point employed Simon Mann, a former SAS officer who was later convicted in Equatorial Guinea for trying to organize a coup there. Allegations that Teixeira was aiding gun runners supplying South Africa–backed UNITA fighters in Angola led to his being dubbed a “merchant of death” by British foreign minister Peter Hain in 2000.

The Future Is Faster Than You Think: How Converging Technologies Are Transforming Business, Industries, and Our Lives by Peter H. Diamandis, Steven Kotler

Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, Airbnb, Albert Einstein, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Robotics, augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, biodiversity loss, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, Boston Dynamics, Burning Man, call centre, cashless society, Charles Babbage, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, Colonization of Mars, computer vision, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, dematerialisation, digital twin, disruptive innovation, Donald Shoup, driverless car, Easter island, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, experimental economics, fake news, food miles, Ford Model T, fulfillment center, game design, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, gig economy, gigafactory, Google X / Alphabet X, gravity well, hive mind, housing crisis, Hyperloop, impact investing, indoor plumbing, industrial robot, informal economy, initial coin offering, intentional community, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, late fees, Law of Accelerating Returns, life extension, lifelogging, loss aversion, Lyft, M-Pesa, Mary Lou Jepsen, Masayoshi Son, mass immigration, megacity, meta-analysis, microbiome, microdosing, mobile money, multiplanetary species, Narrative Science, natural language processing, Neal Stephenson, Neil Armstrong, Network effects, new economy, New Urbanism, Nick Bostrom, Oculus Rift, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), out of africa, packet switching, peer-to-peer lending, Peter H. Diamandis: Planetary Resources, Peter Thiel, planned obsolescence, QR code, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, robo advisor, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Sidewalk Labs, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart cities, smart contracts, smart grid, Snapchat, SoftBank, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, stealth mode startup, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, Steve Jurvetson, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supercomputer in your pocket, supply-chain management, tech billionaire, technoutopianism, TED Talk, Tesla Model S, Tim Cook: Apple, transaction costs, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, unbanked and underbanked, underbanked, urban planning, Vision Fund, VTOL, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, X Prize

Lastly, if your identity can be established, then a reputation score can easily be attached. This score allows for things like peer-to-peer ridesharing, which today require trusted third parties named “Uber” and “Lyft.” In the same way that blockchain can validate identity, it can also validate any asset—for example, ensuring that your engagement ring isn’t a blood diamond. Land titles are another opportunity, especially since a considerable portion of the planet lives on land they don’t own, or not officially. Consider Haiti. The combination of earthquakes, dictatorships, and forced evacuations makes determining who actually owns which bits of property a giant quagmire.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism by Harsha Walia

anti-communist, antiwork, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, borderless world, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, California gold rush, clean water, climate change refugee, collective bargaining, colonial rule, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crack epidemic, dark matter, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, drone strike, Elon Musk, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, export processing zone, extractivism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Food sovereignty, G4S, gentrification, George Floyd, global pandemic, global supply chain, Global Witness, green new deal, guest worker program, illegal immigration, immigration reform, income inequality, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, joint-stock company, land reform, late capitalism, lockdown, mandatory minimum, mass immigration, mass incarceration, means of production, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, Naomi Klein, neoliberal agenda, Occupy movement, ocean acidification, oil shale / tar sands, open borders, pension reform, Rana Plaza, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, Shoshana Zuboff, social distancing, special economic zone, Steve Bannon, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, urban planning, W. E. B. Du Bois, wages for housework, Washington Consensus, women in the workforce

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is home to one of the world’s largest displacement crises, with over four million internally displaced people. Major drivers of Congolese displacement are mining-related invasions and conflicts over diamonds, cobalt, copper, coltan, and gold, placing the country at the epicenter of violence and forced child labor related to “blood diamonds” and “blood batteries,” which implicates corporate criminals like Apple, De Beers, Google, Microsoft, and Tesla. To top it off, EU arms giants like Finmecannica and Airbus sell billions of euros worth of weapons fueling conflicts, while raking in billions of euros worth of contracts in the business of militarizing Fortress Europe.112 Europe is also pushing free trade agreements across the continent, promoting policies of capitalist investment and neoliberal liberalization at the expense of local producers.

The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain? by Polly Toynbee, David Walker

Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, banking crisis, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, blood diamond, Bob Geldof, Boris Johnson, call centre, central bank independence, congestion charging, Corn Laws, Credit Default Swap, Crossrail, decarbonisation, deglobalization, deindustrialization, Etonian, failed state, first-past-the-post, Frank Gehry, gender pay gap, Gini coefficient, high net worth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, income inequality, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, labour market flexibility, market bubble, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, millennium bug, moral panic, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, pension reform, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, Right to Buy, shareholder value, Skype, smart meter, social distancing, stem cell, The Spirit Level, too big to fail, University of East Anglia, working-age population, Y2K

., 1, 2, 3, 4 business, 1 company governance, 1 competition policy, 1 see also manufacturing Business Links, 1, 2 Cable, Vince, 1 Cadbury, 1 Caine, Judy, 1 Callaghan, James, 1 Cameron, David, 1, 2, 3, 4 Campaign for Real Ale, 1 Campbell, Alastair, 1, 2 Campbell, Naomi, 1 Canada, 1 cancer research, 1 cannabis, 1, 2 Cannock Chase Hospital, 1 Capel Manor College, 1 Carbon Trust, 1 Cardiff, 1, 2 Millennium Stadium, 1 see also Welsh assembly Care Quality Commission, 1, 2, 3 carers, 1 Carousel children’s centre, 1 Casey, Louise, 1, 2 casinos, 1 Castle, Barbara, 1 cataracts, 1, 2 Cator Park School, 1 CCTV, 1, 2, 3 celebrity culture, 1 Central Office of Information, 1 Ceuta, 1 Charity Commission, 1 Charleroi, 1 Chase Farm Hospital, 1, 2, 3 Cheltenham, 1 Cheney, Dick, 1 Chicago, 1 Chilcot inquiry, 1, 2, 3, 4 Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission, 1 child poverty, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Child Support Agency, 1 child trafficking, 1 Child Trust Funds, 1, 2 childcare, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 children, 1 in care, 1 and crime, 1, 2 and pre-school education, 1 and reading, 1, 2 and safety, 1 and targets, 1 children’s centres, 1, 2, 3 Chile, 1 China, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and foreign policy, 1, 2, 3, 4 Chinese cockle pickers, 1 Christian Voice, 1 Chumbawamba, 1 Church of England, 1 Churchill, Winston, 1 cigarette smoking, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 see also smoking ban citizenship curriculum, 1 City of London, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 City of London police, 1 civil partnerships, 1 civil service, 1 Clapham Common, 1 Clapham Park estate, 1, 2 Clarke, Charles, 1 Clarke, Ken, 1, 2 Clarke, Michael, 1 Clarkson, Jeremy, 1, 2 ‘clean technologies’, 1 Cleveland Way, 1 climate change, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and transport and energy policies, 1 Climbié, Victoria, 1 Clinton, Bill, 1, 2, 3 Clitheroe, 1 cloning, 1 coal, 1 coalition government, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Cockermouth, 1 Cohen, Sir Ronnie, 1 Cole, Vanessa, 1 Collins, Colonel Tim, 1 Comer, Beryl, 1, 2, 3, 4 Common Agricultural Policy, 1, 2 community sentences, 1 Confederation of British Industry (CBI), 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 conflict diamonds, 1 Congo, 1 Connelly, Peter (Baby P), 1 Connexions, 1, 2 Contactpoint database, 1 Cook, Robin, 1, 2 Cool Britannia, 1, 2 Cooper, Robert, 1 Cooper, Yvette, 1 Copenhagen summit, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Corby, 1, 2 Corn Laws, repeal of, 1 Cornwall, 1, 2 Coronation Street, 1 coroners, 1 Corus, 1 Countryside Alliance, 1, 2 County Durham, 1 Coventry, 1, 2, 3 Cowley, Philip, 1 Cox, Brian, 1 Crawford, Texas, 1 creative industries, 1, 2 credit card debt, 1 Crewe and Nantwich by-election, 1 Crick, Bernard, 1 cricket, 1 Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships, 1 crime, 1 car crime, 1 cyber-crime, 1 and demography, 1, 2 and drugs, 1 gun crime, 1, 2 juvenile crime, 1, 2, 3 knife crime, 1, 2 organized crime, 1, 2, 3 street crime, 1 Criminal Records Bureau, 1 Cruddas, Jon, 1 Cullen, Janet, 1, 2, 3, 4 Cumner-Price, George, 1 cycling, 1, 2, 3 Cyprus, 1, 2 Daily Mail, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Daily Telegraph, 1 Darfur, 1 Darling, Alistair, 1, 2, 3 Darwen, 1, 2 Darzi, Lord (Ara), 1 Data Protection Act, 1, 2 Davies, Norman, 1 Davies, Ron, 1 Davis, David, 1 Dearlove, Sir Richard, 1 defence policy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Delhi, 1 dementia, 1 demonstrations, policing of, 1 Demos, 1 Denham, John, 1 Denison, Steve, 1 Denmark, 1, 2 dentistry, 1 depression, 1 Derby, 1 devolution, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Dewar, Donald, 1, 2 diabetes, 1 Diana, Princess of Wales, 1, 2, 3 Dilnot, Andrew, 1 disabilities, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 disarmament, 1 divorce rate, 1 DNA database, 1 Dobson, Frank, 1, 2 doctors consultants, 1 GPs, 1, 2, 3 night and weekend cover, 1 pay, 1, 2, 3 working hours, 1 domestic violence, 1, 2, 3, 4 Doncaster, 1, 2, 3 Dongworth, Averil, 1 Dorling, Professor Danny, 1, 2, 3 Drayson, Paul, 1 drones, 1 drug dealers, 1, 2 drugs, 1, 2, 3 Dublin, 1 Duffy, Bobby, 1 Dundee, 1 Dunn, John, 1 Dunwoody, Gwyneth, 1 EastEnders, 1 Ecclestone, Bernie, 1 ‘eco towns’, 1 ecstasy, 1 Edinburgh, 1, 2, 3 see also Scottish parliament Edlington, 1 education, 1 further education and training, 1, 2, 3, 4 higher education, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 nursery education, 1 productivity in, 1 pre-school education, 1 and selection, 1, 2 and social class, 1, 2 spending on, 1, 2 and targets, 1, 2, 3 Welsh Assembly and, 1 see also schools education action zones, 1 Education Maintenance Allowance, 1, 2, 3 e-government, 1, 2 Egypt, 1 electoral reform, 1, 2, 3 electricity generation, 1, 2 Elgar, Edward, 1 Elgin marbles, 1 Elizabeth, Queen, the Queen Mother, 1 Elizabeth II, Queen, 1, 2, 3 employee buy-outs, 1 employment, 1 flexible, and migration, 1 part-time, 1, 2 state and ‘parastate’, 1, 2 women and, 1, 2 working hours, 1, 2 energy policies, 1 English for Speakers of Other Languages, 1 English Heritage, 1 Enron, 1 Environment Agency, 1, 2 equalities legislation, 1, 2, 3 Equality and Human Rights Commission, 1, 2, 3 Ericsson, 1 ethnic minorities, 1 euro, 1, 2 Eurofighter, 1 European Court of Human Rights, 1 European Union, 1, 2 European Union Emission Trading Scheme, 1 Eurostar, 1 Exeter, 1 Fairtrade products, 1 Falconer, Charlie, 1 Falklands War, 1 Family Intervention Projects (FIPs), 1 Farlow, Andrew, 1 farmers, 1, 2 fashion, 1 Feinstein, Professor Leon, 1, 2 Financial Services Authority, 1 financial services, 1, 2, 3 Financial Times, 1 Finland, 1 fire and rescue service, 1 fiscal stimulus, 1 floods, 1, 2, 3, 4 Florence, 1 flu, 1, 2 swine flu, 1, 2 Folkestone, 1 food and drink, 1, 2 foot-and-mouth disease, 1, 2 football, 1, 2, 3 Football Association, 1 forced marriages, 1 foreign policy, 1, 2, 3 France, 1, 2, 3, 4 economy and business, 1, 2 and education, 1, 2 and health, 1, 2, 3 Frankfurt am Main, 1 Franklin, Tom, 1 Frears, Stephen, 1 free speech, 1, 2 freedom of information, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Freud, Lord, 1 Full Monty, The, 1 Future Jobs Fund, 1 G20 summit, 1, 2, 3 Gainsborough, 1 Galbraith, J.K., 1 Gallagher, Liam, 1 Gallagher, Noel, 1 gambling, 1 gangmasters, 1, 2 gas, 1 Gates, Bill, 1 Gateshead, 1 Gaza, 1 GCHQ, 1 GCSEs, 1, 2, 3, 4 Gehry, Frank, 1 Geldof, Bob, 1 gender reassignment, 1 General Teaching Council, 1 genetically modified crops, 1 Germany, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 economy and business, 1, 2, 3, 4 and education, 1, 2 and health, 1, 2 Ghana, 1 Ghandi’s curry house, 1 Ghent, 1 Gladstone, William Ewart, 1, 2 Glaister, Professor Stephen, 1 Glasgow, 1, 2, 3, 4 Gleneagles summit, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 globalization, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and crime, 1 and foreign policy, 1, 2, 3 and inequality, 1 and migration, 1, 2 Gloucester, 1 Goldacre, Ben, 1 Good Friday agreement, 1 Goodwin, Sir Fred, 1 Goody, Jade, 1 Gormley, Antony, 1 Gould, Philip, 1 grandparents, and childcare, 1 Gray, Simon, 1 Great Yarmouth, 1 Greater London Authority, 1, 2 Greater London Council, 1 green spaces, 1 Greenberg, Stan, 1 Greengrass, Paul, 1 Greenspan, Alan, 1, 2 Greenwich, 1 Gregg, Paul, 1 Guardian, 1, 2, 3 Guizot, François, 1 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, 1 Gummer, John, 1 Gurkhas, 1 Guthrie of Craigiebank, Lord, 1 Guy’s and St Thomas’s Hospital, 1 habeas corpus, suspension of, 1 Hacienda Club, 1 Hackney, 1 Hale, Baroness Brenda, 1 Hallé Orchestra, 1 Ham, Professor Chris, 1 Hamilton, Lewis, 1 Hammersmith Hospital, 1 Hammond, Richard, 1 Hardie, Keir, 1 Hardy, Thea, 1 Haringey, 1, 2 Harman, Harriet, 1 Harris of Peckham, Lord, 1 Harrison, PC Dawn, 1, 2 Harrow School, 1 Hartlepool, 1, 2 Hastings, 1, 2 Hatfield rail crash, 1 Hatt family, 1, 2, 3, 4 health, 1 and private sector, 1, 2 and social class, 1 spending on, 1, 2 Health Action Zones, 1 Health and Safety Executive, 1 Heathcote, Paul, 1 Heathrow airport, 1, 2, 3, 4 Hellawell, Keith, 1 Hennessy, Professor Peter, 1 Henry, Donna Charmaine, 1, 2, 3 heroin, 1 Hewitt, Patricia, 1, 2 Higgs, Sir Derek, 1 Hills, Professor John, 1, 2, 3 Hirst, Damien, 1 HMRC, 1, 2, 3 Hogg, John, 1, 2, 3 Hoggart, Richard, 1 Holly, Graham, 1 homelessness, 1, 2 Homerton Hospital, 1 homosexuality, 1, 2, 3 ‘honour’ killings, 1 Hoon, Geoff, 1 hospital-acquired infections, 1 hospitals and clinics, 1, 2, 3, 4 A&E units, 1, 2 closures, 1, 2, 3 foundation trusts, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and PFI, 1 House of Commons reforms, 1, 2 House of Lords reforms, 1, 2, 3, 4 housing market, 1, 2, 3 housing policies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Howe, Elspeth, 1 Hoxton, 1 Huddersfield, 1 Hudson, Joseph, 1 Hull, 1, 2, 3 Human Rights Act, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 Humber Bridge, 1 hunting ban, 1 Hussein, Saddam, 1, 2, 3, 4 Hutton, John, 1 Hutton, Will, 1, 2 identity cards, 1, 2 If (Kipling), 1 Imperial War Museum North, 1 income inequalities, 1, 2, 3 gender pay gap, 1, 2 and high earners, 1 and social class, 1 Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), 1 Independent Safeguarding Authority, 1 independent-sector treatment centres (ISTCs), 1 Index of Multiple Deprivation, 1 India, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 individual learning accounts, 1 inflation, 1 and housing market, 1, 2 International Criminal Court, 1 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 1, 2, 3 internet, 1, 2, 3 and crime, 1 and cyber-bullying, 1 file sharing, 1 gambling, 1 and sex crimes, 1 Iran, 1, 2, 3 Iraq, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 arms supplies, 1 Chilcot inquiry, 1, 2, 3, 4 and Territorial Army, 1 and WMD, 1 Ireland, 1, 2, 3 Irish famine, 1 Irvine of Lairg, Lord, 1, 2 Ishaq, Khyra, 1 Islamabad, 1 Isle of Man, 1 Isle of Wight, 1, 2 Israel, 1 Italy, 1, 2, 3 and football, 1 Ivory Coast, 1 Japan, 1, 2, 3, 4 Jenkins, Roy, 1, 2 Jerry Springer: The Opera, 1 Jobcentre Plus, 1, 2 John Lewis Partnership, 1, 2 Johnson, Alan, 1, 2, 3, 4 Johnson, Boris, 1, 2 Judge, Lord (Igor), 1 Judge, Professor Ken, 1 Julius, DeAnne, 1 jury trials, 1, 2 Kabul, 1 Kapoor, Anish, 1, 2 Karachi, 1 Karadžic, Radovan, 1 Kashmir, 1 Kaufman, Gerald, 1 Keegan, William, 1 Keep Britain Tidy, 1 Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, 1 Kensit, Patsy, 1 Keynes, John Maynard, 1 Keys, Kenton, 1 Kidderminster Hospital, 1 King, Sir David, 1, 2 King, Mervyn, 1 King Edward VI School, 1 King’s College Hospital, 1 Kingsnorth power station, 1 Kirklees, 1 Knight, Jim, 1 knighthoods, 1 knowledge economy, 1 Kosovo, 1, 2, 3, 4 Kynaston, David, 1 Kyoto summit and protocols, 1, 2, 3 Labour Party membership, 1 Lacey, David, 1 Ladbroke Grove rail crash, 1 Lamb, General Sir Graeme, 1 Lambert, Richard, 1 landmines, 1 Lansley, Andrew, 1 lapdancing, 1 Las Vegas, 1 Lawrence, Stephen, 1 Lawson, Mark, 1 Layard, Professor Richard, 1 Le Grand, Professor Julian, 1 Lea, Ruth, 1 Lea Valley High School, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Leahy, Sir Terry, 1, 2 learndirect, 1 Learning and Skills Council, 1 learning difficulties, 1, 2 learning mentors, 1 Leeds, 1, 2, 3, 4 legal reforms, 1 Leigh, Mike, 1 Lenon, Barnaby, 1 Lewes, 1 Lewisham, 1 Liberty, 1 licensing laws, 1, 2 life expectancy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Life on Mars, 1 Lincoln, 1 Lindsell, Tracy, 1, 2 Lindsey oil refinery, 1 Lisbon Treaty, 1 Liverpool, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Liverpool FC, 1 living standards, 1, 2 living wage campaign, 1, 2 Livingstone, Ken, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Livni, Tzipi, 1 Loaded magazine, 1 local government, 1, 2, 3 and elected mayors, 1 Lockerbie bomber, 1 London, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 bombings, 1, 2 congestion charge, 1, 2 detention of foreign leaders, 1 G20 protests, 1 Iraq war protests, 1, 2 mayoral election, 1, 2 and transport policy, 1, 2, 3 London Array wind farm, 1 Longannet, 1 Longfield, Anne, 1 Lord-Marchionne, Sacha, 1 Lorenzetti, Ambrogio, 1 lorry protests, 1, 2 Lowry Museum, 1 Lumley, Joanna, 1 Luton, 1, 2, 3, 4 Lyons, Sir Michael, 1 Macfadden, Julia, 1 Machin, Professor Stephen, 1, 2 Maclean, David, 1 Macmillan, Harold, 1 Macmillan, James, 1 McNulty, Tony, 1 Macpherson, Sir Nick, 1 Macpherson, Sir William, 1 McQueen, Alexander, 1 Madrid, 1, 2, 3 Major, John, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Malaya, 1 Malloch Brown, Mark, 1 Manchester, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 club scene, 1, 2 and crime, 1, 2 Gorton, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and local government, 1 and transport policy, 1, 2, 3 Manchester Academy, 1 Manchester United FC, 1, 2 Manchester University, 1 Mandelson, Peter, 1, 2 Manpower Services Commission, 1 manufacturing, 1, 2, 3 Margate, 1 ‘market for talent’ myth, 1 marriage rate, 1 Martin, Michael, 1 maternity and paternity leave, 1, 2 Mayfield, Charlie, 1 Medical Research Council, 1 mental health, 1, 2, 3, 4 mephedrone, 1 Metcalf, Professor David, 1 Metropolitan Police, 1, 2, 3 Mexico, 1, 2 MG Rover, 1 Michael, Alun, 1 Middlesbrough College, 1, 2 migration, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Milburn, Alan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Miliband, David, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Miliband, Ed, 1, 2, 3 Millennium Cohort Study, 1, 2 Millennium Dome, 1, 2, 3 Miloševic, Slobodan, 1 Milton Keynes, 1 minimum wage, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Mitchell, Senator George, 1 modern art, 1 Mohamed, Binyam, 1 Monbiot, George, 1 Moray, 1 Morecambe, 1, 2 Morecambe Bay cockle pickers, 1 Morgan, Piers, 1 Morgan, Rhodri, 1 mortgage interest relief, 1 Mosley, Max, 1 motor racing, 1 Mowlam, Mo, 1 Mozambique, 1 MPs’ expenses, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 MRSA, 1 Mugabe, Robert, 1 Muijen, Matt, 1 Mulgan, Geoff, 1 Mullin, Chris, 1 Murdoch, Rupert, 1, 2, 3 Murphy, Richard, 1 museums and galleries, 1, 2, 3 music licensing, 1 Muslims, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 mutualism, 1 Myners, Paul, 1 nanotechnology, 1, 2, 3 National Air Traffic Control System, 1 National Care Service, 1 national curriculum, 1 national debt, 1 National Forest, 1 National Health Service (NHS) cancer plan, 1 drugs teams, 1 and employment, 1, 2 internal market, 1 IT system, 1 league tables, 1 managers, 1, 2 NHS direct, 1 primary care, 1 productivity, 1, 2 and public satisfaction, 1 staff numbers and pay, 1 and targets, 1, 2, 3 waiting times, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 National Heart Forum, 1 National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), 1, 2 National Insurance, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 National Lottery, 1, 2, 3 National Offender Management Service, 1 National Savings, 1 National Theatre, 1 Natural England, 1, 2 Nazio, Tiziana, 1 Neighbourhood Watch, 1 Netherlands, 1, 2 neurosurgery, 1 New Deal, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 New Deal for Communities, 1, 2 New Forest, 1 Newcastle upon Tyne, 1, 2 Newham, 1, 2 newspapers, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Nigeria, 1 Nightingale, Florence, 1 non-doms, 1 North Korea, 1 North Middlesex Hospital, 1 North Sea oil and gas, 1 Northern Ireland, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Northern Rock, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Norway, 1 Nottingham, 1, 2 NSPCC, 1 nuclear power, 1 Number Ten Delivery Unit, 1 nurses, 1, 2, 3, 4 Nutt, Professor David, 1 NVQs, 1 O2 arena, 1 Oakthorpe primary school, 1, 2 Oates, Tim, 1 Obama, Barack, 1, 2 obesity, 1, 2 Octagon consortium, 1 Office for National Statistics, 1, 2 Office of Security and Counter Terrorism, 1 Ofsted, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Ofwat, 1 Oldham, 1, 2, 3, 4 O’Leary, Michael, 1 Oliver, Jamie, 1, 2 Olympic Games, 1, 2, 3 Open University, 1 O’Reilly, Damien, 1, 2 orthopaedics, 1 Orwell, George, 1, 2 outsourcing, 1, 2, 3, 4 overseas aid, 1, 2 Oxford University, 1 paedophiles, 1, 2, 3 Page, Ben, 1, 2 Pakistan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Palestine, 1, 2 parenting, 1 absent parents, 1 lone parents, 1, 2 teenage parents, 1 Paris, 1, 2 Park Lane, 1 Parkinson, Professor Michael, 1 particle physics, 1 party funding, 1, 2, 3 passport fraud, 1 Passport Office, 1 Patch, Harry, 1 Payne, Sarah, 1, 2 Peach, Blair, 1 Pearce, Nick, 1 Peckham, 1, 2 Aylesbury estate, 1 Peel, Sir Robert, 1 pensioner poverty, 1, 2 pensions, 1, 2 occupational pensions, 1, 2 pension funds, 1, 2 private pensions, 1 public-sector pensions, 1 state pension, 1, 2 Persian Gulf, 1 personal, social and health education, 1 Peterborough, 1 Peugeot, 1 Philips, Helen, 1 Phillips, Lord (Nicholas), 1, 2 Phillips, Trevor, 1 Pilkington, Fiona, 1 Pimlico, 1 Pinochet, Augusto, 1 Plymouth, 1, 2 Poland, 1, 2 police, 1 and demonstrations, 1 numbers, 1, 2, 3 in schools, 1, 2, 3 pornography, 1 Portsmouth FC, 1, 2 Portugal, 1 post offices, 1 Postlethwaite, Pete, 1 poverty, 1, 2, 3 see also child poverty; pensioner poverty Premier League, 1 Prescott, John, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 press officers, 1 Preston, 1 Prevent strategy, 1 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), 1, 2 prisons, 1, 2 Private Finance Initiative (PFI), 1, 2 probation, 1, 2 property ownership, 1 prostitution, 1, 2, 3 Public Accounts Committee, 1 public sector reform, 1, 2 public service agreements, 1 public spending, 1, 2, 3 and the arts, 1 and science, 1 Pugh, Martin, 1 Pullman, Philip, 1 QinetiQ, 1 Quality and Outcomes Framework, 1 quangos, 1, 2 Queen, The, 1 Quentin, Lieutenant Pete, 1, 2 race relations legislation, 1 racism, 1, 2 RAF, 1, 2, 3 RAF Brize Norton, 1 railways, 1 Rand, Ayn, 1 Rawmarsh School, 1 Raynsford, Nick, 1 Reckitt Benckiser, 1 recycling, 1 Redcar, 1 regional assemblies, 1, 2 regional development agencies (RDAs), 1, 2, 3 regional policy, 1 Reid, John, 1 Reid, Richard, 1 religion, 1, 2 retirement age, 1, 2 right to roam, 1 Rimington, Stella, 1 Rio Earth summit, 1 road transport, 1 Rochdale, 1, 2 Roche, Barbara, 1 Rogers, Richard, 1 Romania, 1, 2 Rome, 1 Rooney, Wayne, 1 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 1 Rosetta Stone, 1 Rosyth, 1 Rotherham, 1, 2, 3 Royal Opera House, 1 Royal Shakespeare Company, 1 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, 1 Rugby, 1 rugby union, 1 Rumsfeld, Donald, 1 rural affairs, 1, 2 Rushdie, Salman, 1 Russia, 1, 2 Rwanda, 1 Ryanair, 1, 2 Sainsbury, Lord David, 1 St Austell, 1 St Bartholomew’s Hospital, 1, 2 St Pancras International station, 1 Salford, 1, 2, 3, 4 Sanchez, Tia, 1 Sandwell, 1 Sarkozy, Nicolas, 1, 2 Savill, Superintendent Paul, 1 Saville, Lord, 1 savings ratio, 1 Scandinavia, 1, 2, 3 Scholar, Sir Michael, 1 school meals, 1, 2 school uniforms, 1 school-leaving age, 1 schools academies, 1, 2, 3, 4 building, 1 class sizes, 1 comprehensive schools, 1, 2 faith schools, 1, 2, 3, 4 grammar schools, 1, 2, 3 and inequality, 1 nursery schools, 1 and PFI, 1, 2, 3 police in, 1, 2, 3 primary schools, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 private schools, 1, 2 secondary schools, 1, 2, 3 in special measures, 1 special schools, 1 specialist schools, 1 and sport, 1 science, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Scotland, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and children, 1 devolution, 1 electricity generation, 1 and health, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Scottish parliament, 1, 2 Section 1, 2 security services, 1 MI5, 1, 2, 3 Sedley, Stephen, 1 segregation, 1 self-employment, 1 Sellafield, 1 Serious Organized Crime Agency, 1 sex crimes, 1 Sex Discrimination Act, 1 Shankly, Bill, 1 Sharkey, Feargal, 1 Shaw, Liz, 1 Sheen, Michael, 1 Sheffield, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Sheringham, 1 Shetty, Shilpa, 1 Shipman, Harold, 1 shopping, 1 Short, Clare, 1 Siemens, 1 Siena, 1 Sierra Leone, 1, 2 Skeet, Mavis, 1 skills councils, 1 slavery, 1 Slough, 1 Smith, Adam, 1 Smith, Chris, 1 Smith, Jacqui, 1, 2 Smith, John, 1, 2 Smithers, Professor Alan, 1, 2 smoking ban, 1, 2 Snowden, Philip, 1 social care, 1, 2, 3 Social Chapter opt-out, 1 social exclusion, 1, 2 Social Fund, 1 social mobility, 1, 2 social sciences, 1 social workers, 1 Soham murders, 1, 2, 3, 4 Solihull, 1, 2 Somalia, 1, 2 Souter, Brian, 1 South Africa, 1 South Downs, 1 Spain, 1, 2, 3 special advisers, 1 speed cameras, 1 Speenhamland, 1 Spelman, Caroline, 1 Spence, Laura, 1 sport, 1, 2 see also football; Olympic Games Sri Lanka, 1, 2 Stafford Hospital, 1 Staffordshire University, 1 Standard Assessment Tests (Sats), 1, 2, 3 Standards Board for England, 1 statins, 1, 2, 3 stem cell research, 1 STEM subjects, 1 Stephenson, Sir Paul, 1 Stern, Sir Nicholas, 1, 2 Stevenson, Lord (Dennis), 1 Stevenson, Wilf, 1 Steyn, Lord, 1 Stiglitz, Joseph, 1 Stockport, 1 Stonehenge, 1 Stoppard, Tom, 1 Straw, Jack, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 student fees, 1 Stuff Happens, 1 Sudan, 1, 2 Sugar, Alan, 1 suicide bombing, 1 suicides, 1 Sun, 1, 2 Sunday Times, 1, 2 Sunderland, 1, 2 supermarkets, 1, 2 Supreme Court, 1, 2 Sure Start, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 surveillance, 1, 2 Sutherland, Lord (Stewart), 1 Swansea, 1 Sweden, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Swindon, 1 Taliban, 1, 2 Tallinn, 1 Tanzania, 1 Tate Modern, 1 Taunton, 1 tax avoidance, 1, 2, 3 tax credits, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 council tax credit, 1 pension credit, 1, 2, 3 R&D credits, 1 taxation, 1, 2 10p tax rate, 1 capital gains tax, 1, 2 corporation tax, 1, 2, 3, 4 council tax, 1, 2 fuel duty, 1, 2, 3 green taxes, 1, 2 and income inequalities, 1 income tax, 1, 2, 3, 4 inheritance tax, 1, 2 poll tax, 1 stamp duty, 1, 2, 3 vehicle excise duty, 1 windfall tax, 1, 2, 3 see also National Insurance; VAT Taylor, Damilola, 1 Taylor, Robert, 1 teachers, 1, 2, 3 head teachers, 1, 2 salaries, 1, 2 teaching assistants, 1, 2 teenage pregnancy, 1, 2, 3 Teesside University, 1 television and crime, 1 and gambling, 1 talent shows, 1 television licence, 1, 2, 3 Territorial Army, 1 terrorism, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Terry, John, 1 Tesco, 1, 2, 3, 4 Tewkesbury, 1 Thames Gateway, 1 Thameswey, 1 Thatcher, Margaret, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 Thatcherism, 1, 2, 3 theatre, 1 Thornhill, Dorothy, 1 Thorp, John, 1 Tibet, 1 Tilbury, 1 Times, The, 1 Times Educational Supplement, 1, 2 Timmins, Nick, 1 Titanic, 1 Tomlinson, Mike, 1 Topman, Simon, 1, 2 torture, 1, 2 trade unions, 1, 2, 3 Trades Union Congress (TUC), 1, 2, 3 tramways, 1 transport policies, 1, 2 Trident missiles, 1, 2, 3 Triesman, Lord, 1 Turkey, 1, 2 Turnbull, Lord (Andrew), 1 Turner, Lord (Adair), 1, 2, 3 Tweedy, Colin, 1 Tyneside Metro, 1 Uganda, 1 UK Film Council, 1 UK Sport, 1 UK Statistics Authority, 1 unemployment, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 United Nations, 1, 2, 3 United States of America, 1, 2 Anglo-American relationship, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and child poverty, 1 and clean technologies, 1 economy and business, 1, 2, 3 and education, 1, 2, 3 and healthcare, 1, 2 and income inequalities, 1 and internet gambling, 1 and minimum wage, 1 universities, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and migration, 1 and terrorism, 1 tuition fees, 1 University College London Hospitals, 1 University for Industry, 1 University of East Anglia, 1 University of Lincoln, 1 Urban Splash, 1, 2 Vanity Fair, 1 VAT, 1, 2, 3 Vauxhall, 1 Venables, Jon, 1 Vestas wind turbines, 1 Victoria and Albert Museum, 1 Waitrose, 1 Waldfogel, Jane, 1 Wales, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and children, 1 devolution, 1 Walker, Sir David, 1 walking, 1, 2 Walsall, 1 Wanless, Sir Derek, 1 Wanstead, 1 Warm Front scheme, 1 Warner, Lord Norman, 1 Warsaw, 1 Warwick accord, 1 water utilities, 1 Watford, 1 welfare benefits child benefit, 1, 2 Employment Support Allowance, 1 and fraud, 1, 2, 3, 4 housing benefit, 1 incapacity benefit, 1, 2 Income Support, 1 Jobseeker’s Allowance, 1, 2, 3 and work, 1, 2 Welsh assembly, 1, 2 Wembley Stadium, 1 Westfield shopping mall, 1 Wetherspoons, 1 White, Marco Pierre, 1 Whittington Hospital, 1 Wiles, Paul, 1 Wilkinson, Richard, and Kate Pickett, 1 Williams, Professor Karel, 1 Williams, Raymond, 1 Williams, Rowan, 1 Wilson, Harold, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 Wilson, Sir Richard, 1 wind turbines, 1, 2 Winslet, Kate, 1 winter fuel payments, 1 Wire, The, 1 Woking, 1, 2 Wolverhampton, 1 Woolf, Lord, 1 Wootton Bassett, 1, 2 working-class culture, 1 working hours, 1, 2 World Bank, 1 Wrexham, 1 Wright Robinson School, 1, 2, 3 xenophobia, 1 Y2K millennium bug, 1 Yarlswood detention centre, 1 Yeovil, 1 Yiewsley, 1 York, 1, 2, 3, 4 Young Person’s Guarantee, 1 Youth Justice Board, 1 Zimbabwe, 1, 2 About the Author Polly Toynbee is the Guardian’s social and political commentator.

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology by Kentaro Toyama

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, blood diamond, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, computer vision, conceptual framework, delayed gratification, digital divide, do well by doing good, Edward Glaeser, Edward Jenner, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, epigenetics, Erik Brynjolfsson, Evgeny Morozov, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gamification, germ theory of disease, global village, Hans Rosling, happiness index / gross national happiness, income inequality, invention of the printing press, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Khan Academy, Kibera, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, liberation theology, libertarian paternalism, longitudinal study, M-Pesa, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, means of production, microcredit, mobile money, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nicholas Carr, North Sea oil, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, pattern recognition, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-industrial society, Powell Memorandum, randomized controlled trial, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, school vouchers, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, technological determinism, technological solutionism, technoutopianism, TED Talk, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, the long tail, Twitter Arab Spring, Upton Sinclair, Walter Mischel, War on Poverty, winner-take-all economy, World Values Survey, Y2K

Paying families to send their children to school through conditional cash transfers and imposing sin taxes on unhealthy goods are types of manipulation.15 Charity, in the form of handouts without attempts to nurture people’s capacity, can be helpful in emergency situations, but, when provided without reflection, it can become a crutch that stunts growth. And trade is often considered an unqualified good, but it easily devolves to exploitation when exchanges happen between parties of unequal power or wealth. Think blood diamonds and Nigerian oil. Mentorship is most studied in the business world, where it is sometimes contrasted with coaching and managing, both of which share mentorship’s acceptance of status disparity but differ from mentorship in important ways.16 In certain definitions of coaching, coaches are content-free sounding walls and program managers: They introduce no technical knowledge to the relationship.17 Unlike a coach, a mentor often brings relevant expertise and resources.

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know by P. W. Singer, Allan Friedman

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, air gap, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business continuity plan, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, do-ocracy, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, energy security, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fault tolerance, Free Software Foundation, global supply chain, Google Earth, information security, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, M-Pesa, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, packet switching, Peace of Westphalia, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, Twitter Arab Spring, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day, zero-sum game

Companies like PayPal, Bank of America, MasterCard, and Visa were targeted because they stopped processing payments to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, following its controversial publication of US diplomatic cables. The Zimbabwe government’s websites were targeted after its president’s wife sued a newspaper for US$15 million for publishing a WikiLeaks cable that linked her to the blood diamond trade. The Tunisian government was targeted for censoring the WikiLeaks documents as well as news about uprisings in the country (in a poignant twist, a noted local blogger, Slim Amamou, who had supported Anonymous in the effort, was arrested by the old regime and then became a minister in the new regime that the effort helped put into power).

Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield by Jeremy Scahill

active measures, air freight, Andy Carvin, anti-communist, blood diamond, business climate, citizen journalism, colonial rule, crowdsourcing, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, failed state, false flag, friendly fire, Google Hangouts, independent contractor, indoor plumbing, information security, Islamic Golden Age, Kickstarter, land reform, Mohammed Bouazizi, Naomi Klein, operational security, private military company, Project for a New American Century, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Seymour Hersh, Strategic Defense Initiative, WikiLeaks

After the Nairobi bombings, the United States aggressively tried to freeze the assets of bin Laden and al Qaeda. In response, bin Laden sought new revenue streams and put Fazul in charge of an ambitious operation to penetrate the blood diamond market. From 1999 to 2001, Fazul would largely operate out of Liberia under the protection of its dictator, Charles Taylor. In all, al Qaeda took in an estimated $20 million in untraceable blood diamond money, much of it from the killing fields of Sierra Leone. By that point, Fazul was a wanted man, actively hunted by the US authorities, and al Qaeda spent huge sums of money to keep him safe.

Iron Sunrise by Stross, Charles

blood diamond, disinformation, dumpster diving, Future Shock, gravity well, hiring and firing, industrial robot, life extension, loose coupling, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, phenotype, planetary scale, postindustrial economy, quantum entanglement, RFID, side project, speech recognition, technological singularity, trade route, urban sprawl, zero-sum game

A name for something to hate. The loop path branched, and her lightbug darted off to one side. Wednesday followed it tiredly. It was past midnight by her local time, and she badly needed something to keep her going. Here, the concourse took a turn for the more conventional. The vegetation thinned out, replaced by tiled blood diamond panes the size of her feet. Large structures bumped up from the floor and walls, freight lifts and baggage handlers and stairwells leading down into the docking tunnels that led out to the berthed starships. Some ships maintained their own gravity, didn’t they? Wednesday wasn’t sure what to expect of this one — wasn’t it from Old Earth?

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 2021 United States Capitol attack, 3D printing, anti-communist, anti-globalists, autism spectrum disorder, benefit corporation, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blood diamond, Boris Johnson, Boycotts of Israel, Cambridge Analytica, capitalist realism, ChatGPT, citizen journalism, Climategate, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID-19, crisis actor, critical race theory, dark matter, deep learning, deepfake, deplatforming, disinformation, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, fake news, false flag, feminist movement, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, global supply chain, green new deal, Greta Thunberg, hive mind, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet Archive, Jeffrey Epstein, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, lab leak, Lewis Mumford, lockdown, Mark Zuckerberg, mass immigration, mass incarceration, medical residency, military-industrial complex, moral panic, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, neurotypical, new economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Parler "social media", pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, phenotype, profit motive, QAnon, QR code, Ralph Waldo Emerson, randomized controlled trial, Rosa Parks, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, shared worldview, sharing economy, Sheryl Sandberg, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Slavoj Žižek, smart cities, social distancing, Steve Bannon, surveillance capitalism, tech billionaire, tech bro, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, TikTok, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, trickle-down economics, union organizing, W. E. B. Du Bois, Wayback Machine, women in the workforce

Some were baffled that the appointed head of a corrupt oil emirate would have expected a call from Campbell in the first place. I had no inside knowledge, but it’s slightly less weird when you consider that Campbell testified as a witness at the international war crimes trial of the former Liberian president Charles Taylor, over allegations that the notorious butcher had gifted Campbell a pouch of blood diamonds after they met at a dinner party hosted by Nelson Mandela. From which we can only conclude that once you reach a certain level of fame, wealth, and/or power, everyone takes one another’s calls. (It’s this intuitive awareness that elites occupy an interconnected world of their own, one where the laws governing the rest of us are shrugged off, that is the wellspring of today’s conspiracy singularity.)

Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future by Andrew McAfee, Erik Brynjolfsson

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, additive manufacturing, AI winter, Airbnb, airline deregulation, airport security, Albert Einstein, algorithmic bias, AlphaGo, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Amazon Web Services, Andy Rubin, AOL-Time Warner, artificial general intelligence, asset light, augmented reality, autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, backtesting, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, bitcoin, blockchain, blood diamond, British Empire, business cycle, business process, carbon footprint, Cass Sunstein, centralized clearinghouse, Chris Urmson, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, complexity theory, computer age, creative destruction, CRISPR, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, Dean Kamen, deep learning, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, disintermediation, disruptive innovation, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ethereum, ethereum blockchain, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, family office, fiat currency, financial innovation, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, George Akerlof, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Gregor Mendel, Hernando de Soto, hive mind, independent contractor, information asymmetry, Internet of things, inventory management, iterative process, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, jimmy wales, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, law of one price, longitudinal study, low interest rates, Lyft, Machine translation of "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." to Russian and back, Marc Andreessen, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, Mitch Kapor, moral hazard, multi-sided market, Mustafa Suleyman, Myron Scholes, natural language processing, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, Oculus Rift, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, performance metric, plutocrats, precision agriculture, prediction markets, pre–internet, price stability, principal–agent problem, Project Xanadu, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, Renaissance Technologies, Richard Stallman, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Salesforce, Satoshi Nakamoto, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Skype, slashdot, smart contracts, Snapchat, speech recognition, statistical model, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, supply-chain management, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, Ted Nelson, TED Talk, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Davenport, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, transaction costs, transportation-network company, traveling salesman, Travis Kalanick, Two Sigma, two-sided market, Tyler Cowen, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, ubercab, Vitalik Buterin, warehouse robotics, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, winner-take-all economy, yield management, zero day

The University of Nicosia in Cyprus and the Holberton School of Software Engineering in San Francisco were early examples of academic institutions using the blockchain to share certified student transcripts. The Kimberley Process is the UN-supported organization that manages a certification intended to reduce the number of conflict diamonds entering the market. It has traditionally relied on paper-based certificates of provenance, but in 2016 the body’s chairman reported that they were working on a blockchain pilot to understand how the immutable ledger can improve their existing system. A London-based startup, Everledger, is using similar technology to certify precious stones for consumer insurance purposes.

Making Globalization Work by Joseph E. Stiglitz

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, barriers to entry, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, business process, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, full employment, Garrett Hardin, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, Global Witness, Great Leap Forward, Gunnar Myrdal, happiness index / gross national happiness, illegal immigration, income inequality, income per capita, incomplete markets, Indoor air pollution, informal economy, information asymmetry, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), inventory management, invisible hand, John Markoff, Jones Act, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, microcredit, moral hazard, negative emissions, new economy, North Sea oil, offshore financial centre, oil rush, open borders, open economy, price stability, profit maximization, purchasing power parity, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, special drawing rights, statistical model, the market place, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, trade liberalization, Tragedy of the Commons, trickle-down economics, union organizing, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

We have a responsibility to choke off supply at the source—the manufacturers of arms who profit from this nasty business—or at least impose a heavy tax on the sale of arms and to check the source of the money which pays for them.22 3. Certification On July 5, 2000, the United Nations Security Council imposed a ban on the import (direct or indirect) of rough diamonds from Sierra Leone not accompanied by a certificate of origin from the Sierra Leone government. Uncertified Sierra Leone diamonds are now known as “conflict diamonds” this public recognition of the role of resources in financing a conflict, and the acknowledgment that it must be curtailed, is a move in the right direction. Amnesty International, Partnership Africa Canada, and Global Witness, along with other NGOs, are spearheading the effort to enforce the ban.23 A similar certification system should be established for tropical hardwood.

Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry by Peter Warren Singer

Apollo 13, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, borderless world, British Empire, colonial rule, conceptual framework, disinformation, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, full employment, Global Witness, Jean Tirole, joint-stock company, Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman, market friction, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, no-fly zone, offshore financial centre, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, private military company, profit maximization, profit motive, RAND corporation, risk/return, rolodex, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, South China Sea, supply-chain management, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, vertical integration

Kammerer award, among the finalists in international affairs books of the year by the Gelber Prize, and a "top ten summer read" by Businessioeek The work was featured in the History Channel documentary postscript: the lfssons of iraq Soldiers for Hire and provided background for plotlines in the TV drama The West Wing and the movie Blood Diamonds. Even more exciting for an academic like me was the positive response from the folks working in the field, from being invited to lecture on the topic at military bases to being emailed by a contractor I had originally interviewed for the book that he had just picked up a copv at Bagdad International Airport (BIAP, one of the early hubs for the industry in Iraq).

The Rough Guide to Cape Town, Winelands & Garden Route by Rough Guides, James Bembridge, Barbara McCrea

affirmative action, Airbnb, blood diamond, British Empire, Cape to Cairo, carbon footprint, colonial rule, F. W. de Klerk, gentrification, ghettoisation, haute cuisine, Maui Hawaii, Murano, Venice glass, Nelson Mandela, off-the-grid, out of africa, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Gordon, Skype, sustainable-tourism, trade route, transfer pricing, young professional

Cape Town was subsequently able to stand in for 35 diverse locations for the 2005 Nicolas Cage movie Lord of War, including Bolivia, Beirut, Berlin, the Caribbean, Sierra Leone, Indonesia, Odessa and New York City. Nowadays, Capetonians are increasingly spotting major Hollywood names in bars along the Atlantic seaboard beaches, as 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Connelly, and Clint Eastwood-directed Invictus, starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman, have been shot in the city. Following the arrival of the world-class R350m Cape Town Film Studios in 2010, the city has hosted the filming of major Hollywood productions, including Dredd and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, while scenes from the fourth season of TV drama Homeland were shot in the Mother City in 2014.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu, James Robinson

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Andrei Shleifer, Atahualpa, banking crisis, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, bread and circuses, BRICs, British Empire, central bank independence, clean water, collective bargaining, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Corn Laws, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crony capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, discovery of the americas, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, financial independence, financial innovation, financial intermediation, flying shuttle, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Great Leap Forward, household responsibility system, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, income per capita, indoor plumbing, invention of movable type, invisible hand, James Hargreaves, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, land reform, low interest rates, mass immigration, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, Mohammed Bouazizi, Paul Samuelson, price stability, profit motive, Robert Solow, Rosa Parks, Scramble for Africa, seminal paper, Simon Kuznets, spice trade, spinning jenny, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, trade liberalization, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, upwardly mobile, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, working poor

It also gave further impetus to the process of state centralization as diamond revenues could now be used for building a state bureaucracy and infrastructure and for investing in education. In Sierra Leone and many other sub-Saharan African nations, diamonds fueled conflict between different groups and helped to sustain civil wars, earning the label Blood Diamonds for the carnage brought about by the wars fought over their control. In Botswana, diamond revenues were managed for the good of the nation. The change in subsoil mineral rights was not the only policy of state building that Seretse Khama’s government implemented. Ultimately, the Chieftaincy Act of 1965 passed by the legislative assembly prior to independence, and the Chieftaincy Amendment Act of 1970 would continue the process of political centralization, enshrining the power of the state and the elected president by removing from chiefs the right to allocate land and enabling the president to remove a chief from office if necessary.

Aerotropolis by John D. Kasarda, Greg Lindsay

3D printing, air freight, airline deregulation, airport security, Akira Okazaki, Alvin Toffler, An Inconvenient Truth, Asian financial crisis, back-to-the-land, barriers to entry, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, big-box store, blood diamond, Boeing 747, book value, borderless world, Boris Johnson, British Empire, business cycle, call centre, carbon footprint, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Charles Lindbergh, Clayton Christensen, clean tech, cognitive dissonance, commoditize, company town, conceptual framework, credit crunch, David Brooks, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, digital map, disruptive innovation, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Easter island, edge city, Edward Glaeser, Eyjafjallajökull, failed state, financial engineering, flag carrier, flying shuttle, food miles, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, Frank Gehry, fudge factor, fulfillment center, full employment, future of work, Future Shock, General Motors Futurama, gentleman farmer, gentrification, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, George Gilder, global supply chain, global village, gravity well, Great Leap Forward, Haber-Bosch Process, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, hive mind, if you build it, they will come, illegal immigration, inflight wifi, intangible asset, interchangeable parts, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), intermodal, invention of the telephone, inventory management, invisible hand, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Jevons paradox, Joan Didion, Kangaroo Route, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, kremlinology, land bank, Lewis Mumford, low cost airline, Marchetti’s constant, Marshall McLuhan, Masdar, mass immigration, McMansion, megacity, megaproject, Menlo Park, microcredit, military-industrial complex, Network effects, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, One Laptop per Child (OLPC), peak oil, Pearl River Delta, Peter Calthorpe, Peter Thiel, pets.com, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, pre–internet, RFID, Richard Florida, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, savings glut, Seaside, Florida, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, SimCity, Skype, smart cities, smart grid, South China Sea, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, spinning jenny, starchitect, stem cell, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, sunk-cost fallacy, supply-chain management, sustainable-tourism, tech worker, telepresence, the built environment, The Chicago School, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the long tail, The Nature of the Firm, thinkpad, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, Tony Hsieh, trade route, transcontinental railway, transit-oriented development, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban renewal, urban sprawl, vertical integration, Virgin Galactic, walkable city, warehouse robotics, white flight, white picket fence, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Dubai also trafficks in sex and death. An estimated ten thousand kid-napped girls move through here, while the weapons dealer Viktor Bout reputedly armed both Hezbollah and the Iraqi insurgency from the emirates. His fleet of fifty aircraft is the black market FedEx, exchanging assault rifles and ammunition for oil money and blood diamonds. Defying all sanctions, his planes supplied more or less every warlord in Africa, including both sides of Angola’s civil war. Al Qaeda and the U.S. military were also his customers, as was the United Nations, which unwittingly relied on him to deliver aid to Darfur. (Bout was extradited to the United States in the fall of 2010.)

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World by Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams

"World Economic Forum" Davos, accounting loophole / creative accounting, airport security, Andrew Keen, augmented reality, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Ben Horowitz, bioinformatics, blood diamond, Bretton Woods, business climate, business process, buy and hold, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charles Lindbergh, citizen journalism, Clayton Christensen, clean water, Climategate, Climatic Research Unit, cloud computing, collaborative editing, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, colonial rule, commoditize, corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, death of newspapers, demographic transition, digital capitalism, digital divide, disruptive innovation, distributed generation, do well by doing good, don't be evil, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, energy transition, Evgeny Morozov, Exxon Valdez, failed state, fault tolerance, financial innovation, Galaxy Zoo, game design, global village, Google Earth, Hans Rosling, hive mind, Home mortgage interest deduction, information asymmetry, interchangeable parts, Internet of things, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Jaron Lanier, jimmy wales, Joseph Schumpeter, Julian Assange, Kevin Kelly, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, machine readable, Marc Andreessen, Marshall McLuhan, mass immigration, medical bankruptcy, megacity, military-industrial complex, mortgage tax deduction, Netflix Prize, new economy, Nicholas Carr, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, oil shock, old-boy network, online collectivism, open borders, open economy, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer lending, personalized medicine, radical decentralization, Ray Kurzweil, RFID, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, scientific mainstream, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, smart meter, social graph, social web, software patent, Steve Jobs, synthetic biology, systems thinking, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, The Wisdom of Crowds, transaction costs, transfer pricing, University of East Anglia, urban sprawl, value at risk, WikiLeaks, X Prize, Yochai Benkler, young professional, Zipcar

Unilever, the world’s largest producer of packaged fish, partnered with the World Wildlife Foundation to launch the Marine Stewardship Council to certify that a growing percentage of their supply is harvested from sustainable fisheries. Meanwhile, new industry-led initiatives have also emerged to address diverse issues such as climate change (the Carbon Disclosure Project), conflict diamonds (the Kimberley Process), corruption (the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative), and slavery in the cocoa supply chain (the Cocoa Initiative and the Harkin-Engel Protocol). Beyond industry-level codes of conduct, supply-chain audits, and product certification schemes lies an even more extensive set of firm-level practices that were virtually unheard of only two decades ago.

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right by George R. Tyler

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 8-hour work day, active measures, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Black Swan, blood diamond, blue-collar work, Bolshevik threat, bonus culture, British Empire, business cycle, business process, buy and hold, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, cognitive dissonance, collateralized debt obligation, collective bargaining, commoditize, company town, compensation consultant, corporate governance, corporate personhood, corporate raider, corporate social responsibility, creative destruction, credit crunch, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, currency manipulation / currency intervention, David Brooks, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, declining real wages, deindustrialization, Diane Coyle, disruptive innovation, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, eurozone crisis, financial deregulation, financial engineering, financial innovation, fixed income, Ford Model T, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, George Akerlof, George Gilder, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Gordon Gekko, Greenspan put, hiring and firing, Ida Tarbell, income inequality, independent contractor, invisible hand, job satisfaction, John Markoff, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, labor-force participation, laissez-faire capitalism, lake wobegon effect, light touch regulation, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, manufacturing employment, market clearing, market fundamentalism, Martin Wolf, minimum wage unemployment, mittelstand, Money creation, moral hazard, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, Northern Rock, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Samuelson, Paul Volcker talking about ATMs, pension reform, performance metric, Pershing Square Capital Management, pirate software, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, precariat, price stability, profit maximization, profit motive, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, rent-seeking, reshoring, Richard Thaler, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Sand Hill Road, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, subprime mortgage crisis, The Chicago School, The Spirit Level, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, trickle-down economics, tulip mania, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, women in the workforce, working poor, zero-sum game

And most are multinationals exploiting tax havens abroad, small rogue nations, such as Switzerland or the Cayman Islands, which parasitically pirate their neighbors’ taxes. Tax havens are state-sponsored thieves that have created an enormous industry serving drug and arms dealers, despots, American multinationals, blood diamond warlords, and African elephant killers (tusk smugglers)—along with your ordinary wealthy tax dodger. Experts such as the economist Martin Sullivan, formerly with the US Treasury Department and now at Washington-based Tax Analysts, have found that havens enable many profitable American multinationals to pay little or no tax.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama

Admiral Zheng, agricultural Revolution, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, California gold rush, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, conceptual framework, correlation does not imply causation, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Day of the Dead, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, endogenous growth, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Garrett Hardin, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, invention of agriculture, invention of the printing press, John Perry Barlow, Khyber Pass, land reform, land tenure, means of production, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Right to Buy, Scramble for Africa, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), spice trade, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Whereupon the prince hastened to order that silver spoons be provided “remarking that with silver and gold he could not secure a retinue, but that with a retinue he was in a position to secure silver and gold.”37 During the 1990s, Sierra Leone and Liberia collapsed into warlordism as a result of Foday Sankoh and Charles Taylor building retinues of retainers, which they then used to acquire not silver spoons but blood diamonds. But war is not motivated by the acquisitive impulse alone. Although warriors may be greedy for silver and gold, they also display courage in battle not so much for the sake of resources, but for honor.38 Honor has to do with the willingness to risk one’s life for a cause, and for the recognition of other warriors.

Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, Atahualpa, banking crisis, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, blood diamond, British Empire, centre right, classic study, clean water, collapse of Lehman Brothers, colonial rule, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cotton gin, crony capitalism, Day of the Dead, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edward Snowden, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Francisco Pizarro, Frederick Winslow Taylor, full employment, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, high-speed rail, Home mortgage interest deduction, household responsibility system, income inequality, information asymmetry, invention of the printing press, iterative process, Kickstarter, knowledge worker, labour management system, land reform, land tenure, life extension, low interest rates, low skilled workers, manufacturing employment, means of production, Menlo Park, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, Nelson Mandela, new economy, open economy, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, Port of Oakland, post-industrial society, post-materialism, price discrimination, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, Scramble for Africa, Second Machine Age, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, stem cell, subprime mortgage crisis, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, too big to fail, trade route, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Vilfredo Pareto, women in the workforce, work culture , World Values Survey, zero-sum game

In 1999, the RUF launched an assault on Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, known as “Operation No Living Thing,” in which entire neighborhoods were looted and their inhabitants indiscriminately raped and killed.1 How does one explain this level of human degradation? One answer, usually not articulated too openly but often tacitly assumed, is that things were somehow always like this in Africa. The Sierra Leone conflict, portrayed in the popular film Blood Diamond, as well as others like the insurgency of the Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, or the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, have reinforced Western notions that Africa is a place of brutality and barbarism. Robert D. Kaplan and others have suggested that in West Africa the veneer of civilization had broken down, and these societies were returning to an older, primordial form of tribalism, only fought with modern weapons.2 This answer reflects a great deal of ignorance about historical Africa, and about tribalism more broadly.

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst by Robert M. Sapolsky

autism spectrum disorder, autonomous vehicles, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, biofilm, blood diamond, British Empire, Broken windows theory, Brownian motion, car-free, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, corporate personhood, corporate social responsibility, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, delayed gratification, desegregation, different worldview, domesticated silver fox, double helix, Drosophila, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, Flynn Effect, framing effect, fudge factor, George Santayana, global pandemic, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, impulse control, income inequality, intentional community, John von Neumann, Loma Prieta earthquake, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, meta-analysis, microaggression, mirror neurons, Mohammed Bouazizi, Monkeys Reject Unequal Pay, mouse model, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, nocebo, out of africa, Peter Singer: altruism, phenotype, Philippa Foot, placebo effect, publication bias, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Skinner box, social contagion, social distancing, social intelligence, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, theory of mind, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, traveling salesman, trickle-down economics, trolley problem, twin studies, ultimatum game, Walter Mischel, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game, zoonotic diseases

Illiteracy, death in infancy, death in childbirth, death from preventable disease. Capital punishment. Here are things invented in the last century: Bans on the use of certain types of weapons. The World Court and the concept of crimes against humanity. The UN and the dispatching of multinational peacekeeping forces. International agreements to hinder trafficking of blood diamonds, elephant tusks, rhino horns, leopard skins, and humans. Agencies that collect money to aid disaster victims anywhere on the planet, that facilitate intercontinental adoption of orphans, that battle global pandemics and send medical personnel to any place of conflict. Yes, I know, I’m an utter naïf if I think laws are universally enforced.