blood diamond

Very Bad People: The Inside Story of the Fight Against the World’s Network of Corruption
by Patrick Alley
Published 17 Mar 2022

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
Published 22 Feb 2011

-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
Published 4 Nov 2014

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
Published 30 Apr 2012

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 and Michael J. Casey
Published 27 Feb 2018

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
Published 14 Oct 2019

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.

The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
by Paul Collier
Published 26 Apr 2007

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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See African Growth Opportunity Act Aid absorption of, 101 attracting, 62 bottom billion receiving capital as, 87 capital flight reduced by, 123 concentration of, 122 conflict trap relating to, 104–7 coups encouraged by, 105, 180 critique of, 40 for development, 100, 134 economic policies relating to, 102–3, 109 economic reform after, 117–20 effective provision of, 179 export sector benefiting from, 121 extortion v., 134 G8 summit doubling, 100, 138 governance/policies relating to, 102–3, 108–11 as incentive, 108–11 landlocked countries receiving, 107–8 marginalization relating to, 120–22 natural resource trap relating to, 107 policy changes for, 183–84 political disagreements over, 99–100 postconflict societies receiving, 177 prior to reform, 117–20 providing, xi raising growth, 102 as reinforcement, 115–17 requirements for receiving, 67 as skills, 111–15 timing of, 106 trade barriers relating to, 162–63 World Bank disbursing, 109 Aid agencies, 4, 103–4 bottom billion as focus of, 136–37 concentration of, 184 development assigned to, 12–13 in failing states, 118 fiefdoms of, 122 opportunities for, 114–15 risk in operations of, 117 AIDS, 31 Air transport, 60–61 Amin, Idi, 89, 155 Angola, 26, 28, 86–88 oil companies, 141–42, 144–45 Annan, Kofi., 158 Asia, 167–70 Autocracy, 43, 47, 49–50 Banda, Hastings, 69 Bangladesh, 65, 68 Banks, 136 Bhagwati, Jagdish, 158 bin Laden, Osama, 31 Blair, Tony, 7, 138 Bono, 188 Boom-and-bust phenomenon, 40 Bosnia, 127 Botchwey, Kwesi, 181 Botswana, 50 Bottom billion, 11–12 achieving/sustaining change, 139 aid agencies focusing on, 136–37 capital bypassing, 88–91 capital inflow of, 87–91, 95 capital outflow of, 91–93 civil war in, 17–18 coastal economy of, 121 coups as problem for, 131 democracy in, 71 diverging from rest of world economy, 4 economic policy in, 179, 191 economic reform in, 143 electoral competition in, 146 export diversification as answer for, 166–67 failing states in, 69 global economy integrating, 93 global market integrating, 86 globalization consequences for, 81, 95 governance in, 136, 179, 185 governments of, 4–5, 190 growth rates, 9–12, 35, 100 improvement in, 9–10 income in, 8–9 life expectancy of, 7 long-term malnutrition in, 8 marginalization of, 79–96 migration relating to, 93–95 military spending in, 133 moving toward change, 12 new export markets of, 170 oil revenue in, 101 politicians in, 66–67 raising growth in, 12 reality of, 3 risk of investment in, 88–89 safe haven for, 135 struggle within societies of, 192 trade barriers in, 160–63 trade relating to, 81–87 traps v. limbo in, 96 traps within, 37 voting in, 45 in WTO, 170–72 Brent Spar, 145 Bribery, 137, 148–49 British Commonwealth, 186 British Department of Trade and Industry, 12 Budget coups increasing, 133 global aid, 32 support, 101, 112 transparency, 149–51, 180 Budget support, 101, 112 Burkina Faso, 53, 63 Bush, George W., 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.

Gateway
by Frederik Pohl
Published 15 Dec 1977

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 Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth
by Tom Burgis
Published 24 Mar 2015

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
Published 23 Aug 2022

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 and Edward Miguel
Published 14 Apr 2008

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 and Douglas Farah
Published 1 Apr 2008

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.

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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.

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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
Published 20 Mar 2007

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
Published 15 Sep 2011

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
Published 7 Apr 2008

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
Published 27 Nov 2018

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.

…

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
Published 17 Jun 2016

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.

…

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
Published 6 Aug 2018

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.

…

INDEX Ackerman, Diane, here acquisitiveness, here Adams, Constance, here, here Adams, Douglas, here Adamson, Arthur P., 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
Published 6 Sep 2021

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
Published 1 Apr 2011

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
Published 30 Sep 2009

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
Published 11 Jan 2011

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.

Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets
by Brett Scott
Published 4 Jul 2022

Soon almost every major NGO was taking an interest, with climate change groups running blockchain hackathons while aid groups wondered whether the technology could be used for the distribution of food vouchers. The proposed uses ranged from tracking the movements of goods through supply chains to combatting blood diamonds and recording carbon credits. These types of groups were not interested in the fringe political philosophies that circulated in the core crypto circles. They were practical political centrists looking for new ways to do their jobs. The horseshoe was going full circle. The finance vending machine By 2016 the Ethereum community was split between those who held and speculated in its idle tokens, and those entrepreneurial techies or researchers who tinkered with hypothetical projects that those tokens might be used for.

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Aadhar system, 44, 97, 169 abacuses, 159 ‘Abracadabra’, 50 accelerators, 17 active choice, 125 Acxiom, 109 Adventures of a Banknote, The (Bridges), 65 Aesop, 45–6 AirBnB, 150 Alameda, California, 102 alcohol, 102, 118, 170 Alexa, 147, 150 Alibaba, 2, 7, 114, 150, 178 Alipay, 114 Alphabet, see Google alt-coins, 13, 217–18 Althusser, Louis, 86 Amazon, 1, 2, 7, 133, 147, 149, 150, 174, 177, 249–50 Alexa, 147, 150 anti-cash lobbying, 41–2, 254 CBDCs and, 243, 244 Coin, 236 Pay, 150 Amazon region, 130, 176, 247, 249 American Revolutionary War (1775–83), 60 Ames Research Center, 153 Amnesty International, 222 Amsterdam, Netherlands, 128–9 Amy, 147 anarchism, 7, 14, 106, 183, 191, 193, 215 anarcho-capitalism, 14, 184 Andes, 96, 129 anthropology, 124 anti-feminism, 226 anti-Semitism, 225, 262 anti-statism, 42, 184, 215–16 antidotes, 52–4 Apollo 11 mission (1969), 153 Apple, 7, 125 apps and, 141 Card, 150 data, 108 Pay, 78, 125, 130 Super Bowl advert (1984), 8 apps, 1, 2, 7, 17, 27, 40, 125, 139–51, 232 data collection, 165–6 interfaces, 139–51 ArcelorMittal, 24 Aria, 169 Armer, Paul, 105–6 Art of Not Being Governed, The (Scott), 228 artificial intelligence (AI), 8, 11, 17, 108, 114, 147, 153–72, 175, 252 biases, 167 credit-scoring, 17, 160, 162–3, 167, 168, 170 data analysis, 108, 153–72 interfaces, 146–8 Asimov, Isaac, 161, 170 Assange, Julian, 183 Assemblage, New York City, 226 Astana, Kazakhstan, 227–9 Athens, Greece, 131 ATMs (automatic teller machines), 32, 34, 35, 36, 39, 48, 61, 62, 248 CIT industry, 62 closure of, 32, 39, 48, 83, 84, 85, 132 crises and, 36, 244 note denominations, 62 profitability, 39 Atwood, Margaret, 117 austerity, 193 Australia, 118 Austria, 7, 109 authoritarianism, 111, 118, 168 automatic payments, 149 automation, 9, 10, 33, 41–2, 99, 123, 126, 133, 137, 142–3, 232 apps, 139–51, 232 artificial intelligence, 153–72 automation of, 153–4 surveillance, 112, 114, 153–72 aviaries, 171 Azure cloud, 233 Back to the Future (1985 film), 198 Baidu, 7, 178 Bangladesh, 32 Bank for International Settlements, 79 Bank Identification Codes (BIC), 76 Bank of America, 38, 75, 147 Bank of England, 40, 242, 243 banking sector, 38–9, 65–82 accounts, 31, 35, 46, 66, 132, 205–6 artificial intelligence, 153–72 ATMs, see ATMs bailouts, 113 centralisation of power, 15, 180–83 closures of ATMs/branches, 32, 39, 48, 83, 84, 85, 132 cloudmoney, 64, 66–82 data, 108–9, 156–7 deposits, 66–7, 69 electronic trading platforms, 158 exiting, 39, 48, 61, 63, 68, 83 federated frontline, 136–8, 147 high-street banks, 39–40, 158 interbank markets, 138, 231 interfaces, 138–51 international transfers, 74–6, 108, 179 Internet banking, 76–7, 139 investment banks, 6, 17, 22–3, 26, 113, 157–8 loans, 70–71, 107, 159 money creation, 59–63, 67–72, 202 operating system, 141–2 secondary system, 50, 63–4 sub-currencies, 72–3 transfers, 72–8 banknotes, 59–63 cash-in-transit companies, 62 counterfeiting of, 60–61 denominations, 62 polymer, 65 Bannon, Steve, 225, 234 Barclays, 38, 72–3, 116 base money, 69 beggars, 115 Better Than Cash Alliance, 34–5, 37, 45, 93, 96, 131 biases, 167 bicycles, 89, 90 Big Bouncers, 114, 170 Big Brother, 113–15 Big Butlers, 114, 170–71 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 44–5 biometrics, 44, 150, 169 biotechnology, 10, 11 Bitcoin, 13–15, 16, 184–5, 187–210, 211–18 blockchain technology, 13–15, 185, 189–90, 195, 197–202 Cash fork (2017), 214, 217 climate change and, 226 as commodity, 206–10, 213–14, 217, 246, 256 countertradability, 209–10, 213, 256–7 decentralisation, 14, 15, 189–94, 196, 258 fixed supply, 191–3, 206 gold comparison, 192–3, 207, 214 millenarianism and, 212, 213 mining, 203–4, 212–13 politics and, 191–3, 211–12, 215–17 proof-of-work, 203–4 public addresses, 194–5 speculation on, 213 syncing, 195–7, 200–202, 231 techno-clerks, 194–5, 196–7, 202–4, 212–13 wallets, 194–5 White Paper (2008), 13, 184–5, 187, 191 Bitcoin Cash, 214–15, 217, 226 Bitcoin Gospel, The (2015 film), 211 Blade Runner 2049 (2017 film), 10 blockchain, 13–15, 185, 189–90, 195, 197–202, 219–26, 258–60 decentralisation, 14, 15, 189–94, 196, 230, 234, 255, 258–60 distributed ledger technology (DLT), 229–46, 258 mutual credit systems and, 260 blood diamonds, 222 Bloomberg, 109 Body of Glass (Piercy), 150 BP, 24, 26, 28 bread-making machine, 164 Bridges, Thomas, 65 British Airways, 29–30 British Bankers Association, 83 Brixton Market, London, 177 Bulgaria, 13 Bundesbank, 35, 47 bureaucracy, 179 Burning Man, 101 busking, 90–91 Buterin, Vitalik, 221, 223 California Ideology, 180 Camberwell, London, 128 Cambridge Symposium on Economic Crime, 111 Cambridge University, 97 Canada, 35 Canary Wharf, London, 17–18, 20, 41, 62, 211 cannabis, 101–3 capitalism, 2, 10, 47, 65, 98–9, 173–4 blockchain and, 15–16, 231–46, 256, 258 charging up, 22–5 core vs. periphery, 28, 248 giant parable, 54–5, 63–4, 188 growth, 123, 126–7, 249 surveillance, 33, 114, 180, 250 carbon credits, 222 CARE, 131 cargo cults, 255–6 Caritas, 131 carnivals, 257 cars, 87–90 cash, 22, 29–48 banking sector and, see banking sector banknotes, 59–63 central banks and, 42–5, 254 crime and, 36, 42–3, 45, 81, 112 crises and, 36, 61 cycle, 63, 68 demonetisations, 43 fintech industry and, 41–2 hoarding, 36 issuance of, 59–63 libertarians and, 215 payments companies and, 39–41 refusal of, 29–30, 40, 41, 43, 84, 128, 133 social class and, 91–9 tax evasion and, 42, 43, 45, 46 thresholds, 42 transactional usage, 36 cash-in-transit companies, 62 ‘cash or card?’

The Enablers: How the West Supports Kleptocrats and Corruption - Endangering Our Democracy
by Frank Vogl
Published 14 Jul 2021

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.

…

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
Published 9 Feb 2021

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.

…

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?

…

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
Published 29 Nov 2011

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.

…

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
Published 15 Mar 2010

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
Published 26 May 2014

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 and Audible Studios
Published 15 Nov 2013

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
Published 4 Nov 2014

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

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
Published 25 Apr 2007

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
Published 27 Apr 2015

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.

Here I Am: The Story of Tim Hetherington, War Photographer
by Alan Huffman
Published 12 Mar 2013

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
Published 5 Oct 2014

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.

The Comedy Film Nerds Guide to Movies
by Graham Elwood and Chris Mancini
Published 31 May 2012

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.

The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder
by Sean McFate
Published 22 Jan 2019

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.

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir
by Anna Wiener
Published 14 Jan 2020

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
Published 7 Dec 2010

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
Published 15 Jan 2012

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 and Tiziana Casciaro
Published 30 Aug 2021

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
Published 1 Jan 2009

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.

WEconomy: You Can Find Meaning, Make a Living, and Change the World
by Craig Kielburger , Holly Branson , Marc Kielburger , Sir Richard Branson and Sheryl Sandberg
Published 7 Mar 2018

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.

Anything to Declare?: The Searching Tales of an HM Customs Officer
by Jon Frost
Published 8 Apr 2015

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.

The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
by Matt Mason

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. [FN: 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.]

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart
by Tim Butcher
Published 2 Jul 2007

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
Published 14 Aug 2020

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.

Number Go Up: Inside Crypto's Wild Rise and Staggering Fall
by Zeke Faux
Published 11 Sep 2023

Volpicelli, “To Get Rich in Crypto You Just Need an Idea, and a Coin,” Wired, February 3, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT As one New York Times headline put: Nellie Bowles, “Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not,” New York Times, January 13, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT diamonds: Olga Kharif, “IBM Is Tackling Blood Diamonds with Blockchain,” Bloomberg, April 26, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT heads of lettuce: Camila Russo, “Walmart Is Getting Suppliers to Put Food on the Blockchain,” Bloomberg, April 23, 2018. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT “The more confusion the better”: Edward Chancellor, Devil Take the Hindmost: A History of Financial Speculation (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 67.

Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom
by Rebecca MacKinnon
Published 31 Jan 2012

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.

Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet
by Mark Lynas
Published 1 Apr 2008

p. 4 tinder-dry: Swetnam, T, 1993: ‘Fire history and climate change in giant sequoia groves’, Science, 262, 885-9 p. 5 epic droughts: Laird, K., et al., 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?

The Land Grabbers: The New Fight Over Who Owns the Earth
by Fred Pearce
Published 28 May 2012

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 and Steven Kotler
Published 28 Jan 2020

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.

Moneyland: Why Thieves and Crooks Now Rule the World and How to Take It Back
by Oliver Bullough
Published 5 Sep 2018

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.

Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
by Harsha Walia
Published 9 Feb 2021

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 and David Walker
Published 6 Oct 2011

Index 9/11 attacks, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 A levels, 1 Aberdeen, 1 abortion, 1, 2, 3 Abuhamza, Junaid, 1 AC Milan, 1 Acme Whistles, 1 Action for Children, 1 Adams, Douglas, 1 Adonis, Andrew, 1 Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service, 1 Afghanistan, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Helmand province, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 Africa, 1, 2, 3 after-school clubs, 1, 2, 3 Age of Stupid, 1, 2 Ahern, Bertie, 1 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 1 Ainsworth, Bob, 1 aircraft-carriers, 1 Al Qaeda, 1, 2, 3, 4 Albania, 1 alcohol consumption, 1, 2 and crime, 1, 2, 3 Alexander, Professor Robin, 1 Alzheimer’s disease, 1 Amritsar massacre, 1 Amsterdam summit, 1, 2 Anderson, Lance Corporal George, 1 animal welfare, 1, 2 anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), 1, 2, 3 apprenticeships, 1, 2 Arafat, Yasser, 1 archaeological artefacts, 1 Arctic Monkeys, 1 Armistice Day, 1 arms trade, 1, 2 Armstrong, Franny, 1 arts budget, 1 Ashmolean Museum, 1 asthma, 1, 2 asylum seekers, 1, 2, 3, 4 Attenborough, Richard, 1 Attlee, Clement, 1 August, Kathy, 1 Austin, Richard, 1 Australia, 1, 2, 3 Austria, 1 autism, 1 aviation, 1 Aylesbury, 1 Baghdad, 1 Baker, Mike, 1 Bakewell, Joan, 1 Bali, 1 Balls, Ed, 1, 2, 3 Bank of England, 1, 2 Barber, Sir Michael, 1 Barker, Kate, 1 Barnardo’s, 1 Barnet Hospital, 1 Barton, Geoff, 1 Basildon and Thurrock Hospital, 1 Basra, 1, 2, 3 Bean, Richard, 1 Beattie, Captain Doug, 1 Beckham, David, 1 Belarus, 1 Belfast, 1, 2, 3 Belgium, 1 Belize, 1 Benn, Hilary, 1, 2 Bennett, Alan, 1 Berlusconi, Silvio, 1 Beveridge, William, 1 Bichard, Sir Michael, 1 Big Brother, 1, 2 Bilbao, 1 Billington, Michael, 1 bin Laden, Osama, 1, 2 Bingham, Lord, 1 Birk, Andy, 1, 2, 3 Birmingham, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Aston, 1, 2, 3 Longbridge car plant, 1 and transport policy, 1, 2 birth rate, 1 Black Wednesday, 1 Blackburn, 1, 2 Blackpool, 1 Blair, Cherie, 1 Blair, Tony, 1, 2 and asylum seekers, 1, 2 and child poverty, 1, 2, 3, 4 and climate change, 1, 2 and constitutional reform, 1, 2 and crime, 1, 2, 3 and cultural policies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and economic policies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and education, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Europe, 1 and fairness, 1, 2, 3 foreign policy and Iraq war, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and health, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and Northern Ireland, 1 and Princess Diana, 1, 2 public apologies, 1 and public sector reform, 1, 2 and religion, 1 and ‘respect’ agenda, 1 style of government, 1 technophobia, 1, 2 and transport, 1, 2 Blears, Hazel, 1, 2 Bloody Sunday inquiry, 1 Bloomberg, Michael, 1 Bloxham, Tom, 1 Blunkett, David, 1, 2 and crime, 1, 2, 3, 4 and education, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and migration, 1 BMW, 1 Bobbitt, Philip, 1 Boddingtons’ brewery, 1 Bolton, 1 Boothroyd, Betty, 1 Bosnia, 1 Boston, Lincolnshire, 1, 2, 3, 4 Bowman, Philip, 1 Boyle, Danny, 1 Bradford, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bradford and Bingley, 1 Bradshaw, Ben, 1 Branson, Richard, 1 Brassed Off, 1 Brazil, 1 breastfeeding, 1, 2 Brent, 1 Brighton, 1, 2 Brindle, David, 1 Bristol, 1 Bristol Royal Infirmary, 1 Britain’s Got Talent, 1 British Airways strikes, 1 British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, 1 British Energy, 1 British Film Institute, 1 British Medical Association, 1, 2 British Museum, 1 British National Party (BNP), 1, 2, 3 Brixton, 1 broadband services, 1 Brown, Gordon, 1, 2, 3, 4 and climate change, 1, 2, 3 and constitutional reform, 1 and crime, 1, 2, 3 and cultural policies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and defence policy, 1 and economic policies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and education, 1, 2 and Europe, 1 and fairness, 1 and foreign policy, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and G20 summit, 1, 2 and health, 1 and pensions, 1, 2 and PFI, 1 and public sector reform, 1 style of government, 1, 2 and tax credits, 1, 2 and transport, 1 Bruges, 1 Brussels, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Bryant, Chris, 1 BSE (mad cow disease), 1, 2 Buffini, Damon, 1 Bulgaria, 1 Bulger, Jamie, 1 Buncefield explosion, 1 Burgess, Graham, 1 Burma, 1, 2 Burnham, Andy, 1 buses, 1, 2 Bush, George W., 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.

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know
by P. W. Singer and Allan Friedman
Published 3 Jan 2014

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).

Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change From the Cult of Technology
by Kentaro Toyama
Published 25 May 2015

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.

Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield
by Jeremy Scahill
Published 22 Apr 2013

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
Published 28 Oct 2004

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
Published 11 Sep 2023

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 and Erik Brynjolfsson
Published 26 Jun 2017

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
Published 16 Sep 2006

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
Published 1 Jan 2003

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 and Barbara McCrea
Published 4 Jan 2018

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.

Material World: A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future
by Ed Conway
Published 15 Jun 2023

As the countdown continued on the walkie-talkie beside me, I thumbed the ring and pondered. The chances were it was probably extracted from the ground through precisely the same techniques I was now witnessing. Why hadn’t I checked where it came from? I made a point of checking the diamonds in my wife’s engagement ring weren’t conflict diamonds, so why didn’t I find out what was sacrificed, by man and land, for the gold? Later I would learn that while it might once have taken about 0.3 tonnes of ore, extracted via more traditional mining methods, to obtain enough gold for a typical wedding ring, these days it might take between 4 and 20 tonnes of rock.

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty
by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Published 20 Mar 2012

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.

MacroWikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World
by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams
Published 28 Sep 2010

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.

Aerotropolis
by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay
Published 2 Jan 2009

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.)

What Went Wrong: How the 1% Hijacked the American Middle Class . . . And What Other Countries Got Right
by George R. Tyler
Published 15 Jul 2013

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
Published 11 Apr 2011

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
Published 29 Sep 2014

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
Published 1 May 2017

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.