The extreme violence of the period marked by the rise of great empires in China, India, and the Mediterranean was, in this way, connected with the advent of large-scale slavery and the use of coins to pay soldiers. This was combined with obligations to pay taxes in currency: The obligation to pay taxes with money required people to engage in monetary transactions, often with very disadvantageous terms of trade. This typically increased debt and slavery. At this time, great religions also spread, and the general questions of philosophical inquiry emerged on world history. These included discussions of debt and its relation to ethics

PDF VERSION OF BOOK HERE 

Wiki-link HERE

Before there was money, there was debt

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

by David Graeber

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18



Every economics textbook says the same thing: Money was invented to replace onerous and complicated barter systems—to relieve ancient people from having to haul their goods to market. The problem with this version of history? There’s not a shred of evidence to support it.

Here anthropologist David Graeber presents a stunning reversal of conventional wisdom. He shows that for more than 5,000 years, since the beginnings of the first agrarian empires, humans have used elaborate credit systems to buy and sell goods—that is, long before the invention of coins or cash. It is in this era, Graeber argues, that we also first encounter a society divided into debtors and creditors.

Graeber shows that arguments about debt and debt forgiveness have been at the center of political debates from Italy to China, as well as sparking innumerable insurrections. He also brilliantly demonstrates that the language of the ancient works of law and religion (words like “guilt,” “sin,” and “redemption”) derive in large part from ancient debates about debt, and shape even our most basic ideas of right and wrong. We are still fighting these battles today without knowing it.

Debt: The First 5,000 Years is a fascinating chronicle of this little known history—as well as how it has defined human history, and what it means for the credit crisis of the present day and the future of our economy.

quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million, and the USA Holocaust which claimed, in conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.

The powerful and hard-hitting documentary, American Holocaust, is quite possibly the only film that reveals the link between the Nazi holocaust, which claimed at least 6 million Jews, and the American Holocaust which claimed, according to conservative estimates, 19 million Indigenous People.

It is seldom noted anywhere in fact, be it in textbooks or on the internet, that Hitler studied America’s “Indian policy”, and used it as a model for what he termed “the final solution.”

He wasn’t the only one either. It’s not explicitly mentioned in the film, but it’s well known that members of the National Party government in South Africa studied “the American approach” before they introduced the system of racial apartheid, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. Other fascist regimes, for instance, in South and Central America, studied the same policy.

Noted even less frequently, Canada’s “Aboriginal policy” was also closely examined for its psychological properties. America always took the more ‘wide-open’ approach, for example, by decimating the Buffalo to get rid of a primary food source, by introducing pox blankets, and by giving $1 rewards to settlers in return for scalps of Indigenous Men, women, and children, among many, many other horrendous acts. Canada, on the other hand, was more bureaucratic about it. They used what I like to call “the gentleman’s touch”, because instead of extinguishment, Canada sought to “remove the Indian from the Man” and the Women and the Child, through a long-term, and very specific program of internal breakdown and replacement - call it “assimilation”. America had it’s own assimilation program, but Canada was far more technical about it.

Perhaps these points would have been more closely examined in American Holocaust if the film had been completed. The film’s director, Joanelle Romero, says she’s been turned down from all sources of funding since she began putting it together in 1995.

Perhaps it’s just not “good business” to invest in something that tells so much truth? In any event, Romero produced a shortened, 29-minute version of the film in 2001, with the hope of encouraging new funders so she could complete American Holocaust. Eight years on, Romero is still looking for funds.

American Holocaust may never become the 90-minute documentary Romero hoped to create, to help expose the most substantial act of genocide that the world has ever seen… one that continues even as you read these words. - John Ahni Schertow

Link to original article  

 

We won Gaf detail

Won the Peace

GAF 15

 

 

USA thugs, W.W 2 >

Blonde redhead - 23

kurt vile

Navigate the Bias, - Abby Martin - Joe Rogan Experience #634

The Struggle, Greek + Tacky

Sophrosyne - willingness to recognize and see the truth of oneself as it is. The Government has no business telling me If I'm good or evil. Stop judging the quality of my soul.

why should woman (the 'other') have the same rights as men (the norm), why can't their's be better, and work to liberate everybody? Unitll I Stop seeing myself as the other and something else as the norm I can not free myself. Pursue own course.

The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society, Super Hitlers economic autobahns were financed by American capital investment and British Banks

Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way
Anything that may desert you
So it cannot hurt you

You only have to look behind you
At who's undermined you
Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way

Everything you touch you don't feel
Do not know what you steal
Shakes your hand
Takes your gun
Walks you out of the sun

What you touch you don't feel
Do not know what you steal
Destroy everything you touch today
Please destroy me this way

Destroy everything you touch today
Destroy me this way
Anything that may delay you
Might just save you

I wouldn't call myself an artist because its like admitting your some wonna be i%ers lap dog! Sola Agustsson nails, it I totally agree! - Jack Barton My thoughts exactly. - Wells Tao

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  Why the Contemporary Art World Is Insufferable, Corrupted by the Super-Rich

  I used to cover gallery openings, but those days are over.

  alternet.org

  Like · Comment · Share

  • Cameron Mckechnie, Rob Njósnavélin, Cath Cocker and 17 others like this.
  • 1 share
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• Roger Boyce What about the author's : "3. Conceptual art is a joke." I don't know what to think. Maybe you can shed some light here?

  Like · Reply · Yesterday at 11:54am
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• Wells Tao you mean actually read the article? I was just agreeing with the title

  Like · 3 · Yesterday at 1:12pm
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• Sam Hamilton I personally like a good joke myself.

  Like · 20 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton If you live in NYC and have to look at Jeff Koons works everywhere then this is the natural conclusion you might draw. I would hesitate to say that's a bit blinkered though. I think it's possible, if not pretty vital for artists to called themselves artists while not wanting to be lap dogs for the 1%. if we let them those fucks will gobble up everything they can at which point there'll be nothing left. I would suggest to the author that they move out of of New York cause there are still plenty of people making art, making communities, making friends and contributing to a mutually inclusive society rather than the horrors they're describing. it's like food... if your eating shit, don't blame food, blame your dietary choices.

  Like · Reply · 2 · 20 hrs
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• Wells Tao It's a nice metaphor, art as food but I guess for me that idea misses the reality I'm interested in. But to continue with the metaphor, organic food from NZ, ever bought that in NY? Good idea, great infrastructure, good for everyone, but who can afford it? Now move out of NY live say, Nelson NZ, who can afford local organic food? Me? Nope. (yes we grow our own, but did I make my point?) The sacrifice it takes for a non 1 percenter to 'eat well' has me asking why continue the delusion thinking you can compete with "those fucks will gobble up everything". Other wise aren't you just working to keep their franchise sign "art" / "organic food" above your labor?

  Like · 9 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton some expandable points for sure.

  Like · 8 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton not that I disagree with much of the article - there's alot of things wrong that desperately need addressing - school art programs, equal representation of woman in art museums; totally %100 with that of course.

  Like · Reply · 20 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton I was in NYC last november for work and was using the opportunity to figure out whether I wanted to move there and I quickly decided that that was a bad idea - for numerous reasons - but idea i developed from that time that I'd like to maybe think about more is the idea of artists boycotting entire cities.
  If you ask me, I think that city is totally dead. it's no longer actually generating any culture itself but imports it, relying on a steady stream of young enthusiastic kids from smaller towns who've got youthful drive to move to a bugger city in search of bigger opportunities who move there, work to hard to actually grow and develop and form any cultural social fabric, burn out and move away.

  Like · Reply · 3 · 20 hrs
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• Wells Tao yeah I think the reasons people moved to big cities have been nulled perhaps by the internet, but as factories, they continue to drag net fresh meat to feed to the surviving mechanisms. It's still a podium and while it may not have the grass roots it will always be able to sell the dream of it's existence... meanwhile, during that cycle of delusion small town life goes missing, leadership not developed exploitation given another layer of insulation.

  Like · 9 hrs
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  Write a reply...
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• Sam Hamilton eventually it'll become a dead, over priced museum of itself and young artists will no longer want to live there - but how could that be expedited? cities like NYC rely heavily on their cultural identity. the French of on occasion done it right by having mass strikes in the performing arts industry. It's a pipe dream, but I've love to see something similar happen in the US - god knows NYC needs it bad.

  Like · Reply · 1 · 20 hrs
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• Wells Tao I'm pretty sure post Guillani, and the great clean out, NY has been just that a museum. And yes museums our public institutions and what's left of them are the place to stage protests. Occupy was the flash of brilliance that is still growing. My instinct though is saying let it be called art, by others, but don't your self give your power back to that old deity. It's gone, the harness has materialised and is found wanting.

  Like · 1 · 8 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton p.s. are you following the socialist Occupy woman who's know rocking it in the Seattle council?. some great things are happening in Washington State at the moment - Seattle being the fasted growing city in the US today makes it an interesting hotbed of politics to - incredible new governance movements mixed with massive growing housing problems similar to Auckland.

  Unlike · 1 · 8 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton as for art; in the one hand I agree on just letting it go; if it becomes so heavy with excess baggage that its beginning to slow down our evolution into the future, then be rid of it. But theres another hand that's saying something else, that's more ready to put up a fight to protect what I think is important and truly valuable about it. I don't know. The art world is of course going to be full of shitty shitty shit, egos, money, bad politics and hierarchies; but then speaking as someone who's made art and engaged with communities around it for 15 years so, I can empirically say that that is only a part of it, and a part that it's actually not that hard to navigate around and avoid if you want to. If you want to interview dealers, look at Jeff Koons work or sit in Bentlies sitting champagne and soak up all the ugliness represented by arts sinister corners, the fine - but don't go fucking everyone elses buzz who - although might at points be forced to engage in capitalistic culture (which is pretty hard to avoid. just buying a simple banana entails a horrific footprint in terms of societal impact) but are otherwise not sitting in bentleys, not siting champagne, not making jeff koon works but who are - excuse the imperfections - working hard, figuring shit out, hanging out, thinking and living. Allthough I'd love to sell some art and make some money so that I don't have to deal with the ups and downs of being utterly broke, scared and worried; I've only actually sold a single art work in the last decade despite making alot of it. if I wanted to, i could have make more commercially viable works, or spent more time pimping myself in the scene, networking and commodifying my identity, but hey, that's not why I like art and make it and struggle with it and fight for it.

  Like · 8 hrs
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• Wells Tao i think if you'v only sold one art work in a decade but "make a lot of work" I think it would be a great idea to consider that what you've been doing has left art. I'm at a similar point in someways, 'engaged with communities around 'it' for 15 years' and my thinking at the mo is, well looking at art, I keep wanting to get paid for what I've been doing for free. By graduating from that master, I still make in many ways the same work but don't look for pay off in the same place. And that is significant. Shifts everything, capitalism or no capitalism.

  Like · 6 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton that does correlate not only the value but also meaning of art directly to money though.

  Like · 6 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton i'm a bit of the opposite mentality that having sold practically nothing but having made alot of work that has been appreciated by people is a stronger qualifier

  Like · 6 hrs
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• Wells Tao "Allthough I'd love to sell some art and make some money so that I don't have to deal with the ups and downs of being utterly broke," - quote Sam Hamilton

  Like · 6 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton yes, but not at the expense of making art that i want to make for the primary reason i want to make it

  Like · 6 hrs
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• Wells Tao Expecting, wanting or even thinking that these things go together is for me part of the art glamour you were so riding a few commnts back..

  Like · 1 · 6 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton perhaps what would have been better was to say I'd love to just get paid so i can freely make my art without monetary constraints. I'd rather get paid for simply being a breathing membe of society

  Unlike · 1 · 5 hrs
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• Wells Tao Sure, ,but you didn't and few do.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton actually I do say that alot in regards to conversations about potential future economic models. particularly those that investigate the potential for Basic Universal Wages

  Unlike · 1 · 5 hrs
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• Wells Tao I don't see how anyone gets to participate in art and not evoke the myths that are tied to priveledge and power of the historical and contemporary 1%. That will always continue and like capitalism is part of the air we breathe. However, there is the opportunity of dropping off the lanugage map, and creating new tangents. This doesn't happen when 'art' swallows all such activites under it's myth.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton thats cool but I would perhaps say it would be resourcefully pretty intense and monumentally adventurous to have to construct new languages every time there is an attack on our existing one. saying that you cant see how anyone can participate in art without evoking the myths that are tied to the %1 etc sounds crazy if not super unfair - try telling some kid that while their drawing a picture, or someone enjoying a sunset.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton I agree that some new stratagies for disenfranchising the ability of the super rich to exclusivise art is needed though.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton i'm not sure I totally get your meaning though.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton what do you mean by new tangents too?. like new tangents of creative thought paths? cultural and societal trajectories?

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton I agree language can be a force of conservative restriction upon any form of growth that requires constant struggle - and definitely needs people stepping beyond the boundaries of it's mapped terrain - but i see that as expanding the map in order to obtain a wider, and more thorough and knowledgeable picture of that language, not a denial of it. jin the same way we record history, that map is not fixed but pliable - fix it rather than discard it.

  Like · 5 hrs
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• Sam Hamilton I'm not entirely certain, but I do believe we're somewhere on the same page together here - just perhaps on different sentences.

  Unlike · 1 · 5 hrs
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• Wells Tao I think art is unfair. It is brutal hierarchical, selfish etc.. and full of beauty, the beautiful etc.. there's no fixing art, in my opinion, it's not broke. Working better than ever. I love the hugeness and popularity of the art world it is changing things. There is also a huge return of the medievil like guilds and class divisions that unsurprisingly are positioned to cap and drain potential. It is this capture that I am attempting to articulate when I desire to remove art from the top of the evolutionary triangle, and see it more of in the middle, a pupae, neither a live or dead, it's very transformation process caught determined by a system that as Greenberg once famously put it, "repudiate(s) revolutionary as well as bourgeois politics". There's no reason that 'art' can't be put to work for other uses, as it sounds like you've been doing. Only I feel it is time that this be called what it is, it is the art of something and no longer, just art. Be it the art of propaganda as I identify with, under my new title as a community conceptualist or some other invention, The point is invention.

  Like · 4 hrs
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• 
Wells Tao leaving art is a lot like leaving NY. The reality wakes me up to the creative task at hand. It's certainly not about fulfilling the outlines already set
Like · Reply · 1 · 8 hrs