The Gupta family read and analyzed our country’s fault lines. The
father sent his 3 sons to South Africa in 1993, just one year before the
ANC took over. He must have been aware that the ANC was a corrupt and
inept organization. He must have been mindful of the fact that all
liberation movements in Africa created corrupt dictatorships. He knew
that Madiba was already old and that the bad apples would soon take
over. The Guptas bided their time.
He must have known that there would be enormous corruption opportunity.
That family came here and cultivated Zuma783 since way before Zuma783
rose to power. They made Zuma783’s children directors of their
companies.
They ingratiated themselves so much with the Zuma family and the ZANC
that Zuma783 actually outsourced the running of the shadow state to the
Guptas. The Guptas were the brains of the criminal cartel that was
created to loot the resources of the state on an industrial scale.
In short Gupta- Zuma Inc now owned the State. They owned all of the
SOE’s. They owned Eskom, Denel, Transnet and the SABC through the
boards, the CEO’s and CFO’s and the ministers who were all on their
payroll. They started to loot the SOE’s in a systematic and orchestrated
way. Details of that were already revealed by amaBhungane, the SACC,
and the PARI academic research group.
I heard from someone that the Gupta family is involved from the
mother and father down. The mother drives her children. Not that they
need any motivation.
The Guptas became fabulously wealthy in the space of a few years.
They spirited billions out of the country. When the banks picked up
illegal activity from the Guptas, the Guptas relocated to Dubai but kept
on running South Africa by remote control, through their puppet, the
President.
The Guptas then turned to something very dark and evil when more and
more of the actual nature of what they did start to emerge. They began
to sow racial hate and division – the so-called WMC narrative – through
the white-owned British-based PR company Bell Pottinger, who also worked
for George Bush to generate worldwide support for the invasion of Iraq.
The racial division campaign was designed to take attention away from
state capture. No matter the blood that would inevitably be spilled as a
result of such a racial hate campaign.
Bell Pottinger went all the way to achieve their aims, social media
infiltration, paid twitter, disinformation campaigns, in particular
through their Gupta media like ANN7. They also hired the facists Andile
Mngxitama and Jimmy Manyi to assist them.
The Guptas really exploited the divisions of the past to their fullest.
The Guptas might wear fancy clothes and stay in fancy houses, but
they are worse than vultures.
Vultures have a useful and noble function
of getting rid of dead carcasses.
The Guptas are co-responsible for the junk status and collapse of the
State and the capture of SA’s criminal justice system. Millions will be
kept in poverty, so that one Indian foreign family, with a small
Zuma783 elite cabal, can be rich beyond their wildest dreams.
The Guptas are criminal human scum. They are the scum that floats on
top of a septic tank, the septic tank of all their criminal activities,
including mass looting and high treason.
The stereotype of the chess player is someone who is smart,
logical and good at maths. This is why so many parents around the world
are keen to get their children playing chess – in the hope that the game
might help to boost their son or daughter’s intelligence levels and
help them succeed in a wide variety of subjects.
But apart from chess being a great game, its history rooted in eastern India military, is there actually any evidence to show that playing chess can make you smarter?
In a previous article, we showed that chess players exhibit, on average, superior cognitive ability compared to non-chess players.
And the skills needed to play chess have also been shown to correlate with several measures of intelligence – such as fluid reasoning, memory, and processing speed.
But while the existence of a relationship between general cognitive
ability and chess-skill is clear, is this simply because intelligent
people are more likely to engage in the game of chess, or does engaging
in chess make people smarter?
Brain game
The notion that playing chess makes you smarter goes something like
this: chess requires concentration and intelligence, and as mathematics
and literacy require the same general skills, then practising chess must
also improve one’s academic achievement.
With this idea in mind, the Institute of Education
conducted a large investigation to test the effects of chess
instruction on the academic skills of nearly 4,000 British children. School chess club.Pexels.The recently released results were disappointing – it seemed chess played no effect on children’s attainment levels in mathematics, literacy, or science.
Promptly, the chess community questioned the reliability of the results, particularly given that other studies offer a more optimistic picture about the academic benefits of chess instruction.
Assessing the evidence
The chess community is probably right in criticising the recent study, as it suffers from several methodological shortcomings that probably invalidate the results.
Before the results were published, we carried out a review
of all the studies in the field. Our results showed some moderate
effects of chess instruction on cognitive ability and academic
achievement – especially mathematics. Does chess need intelligence?Shutterstock
And yet, we still need to be cautious in interpreting these results
as a positive indication of the power of chess on cognitive or academic
skills. This is because most of the reviewed studies compared the effect
of chess with groups doing no alternative activities.
This is a problem because research has shown that the excitement and fun induced by novel activities can cause a positive temporal effect on test scores – a placebo effect.
Crucially, when compared to an alternative activity – such as
checkers or sports – chess did not show any significant effect on
children’s skills. So, it could well just be that the observed positive
effects of chess instruction are merely due to placebo effects.
Chess notes
What all this shows is that it is unlikely chess has a significant
impact on overall cognitive ability. So while it might sound like a
quick win – that a game of chess can improve a broad range of skills –
unfortunately this is not the case.
The failure of generalisation of a particular skill, in fact, happens to occur in many other areas beyond chess – such as music training, which has been shown to have no effect on non-music cognitive or academic abilities. The same applies to video game training, brain training, and working memory training, among others. Ancient intelligence or just a good game?Pexels.
The fact that skills learned by training do not transfer across
different domains seems to be a universal in human cognition. In other
words, you get better, at best, at what you train in – which may just
sound just like good old fashioned common sense.
But although expecting chess to enhance children’s cognitive ability
and overall academic achievement is just wishful thinking, this doesn’t
mean it can’t still add value to a child’s education.
Clearly, playing chess involves some level of arithmetical and
geometrical skill, and designing mathematical games or exercises with
chess material can still be a simple and fun way to help children to
learn.
Published on The Conversation
Issued by: MOSIUOA LEKOTA The Congress of the People shares the utter outrage of all South Africans at:
The extent of brazen corruption on a grand scale never before witnessed; The capture of significant portions of our State; The setting up of a parallel shadow criminal state; The creation of a Mafia State - with the President of the Republic at its apex; and The disregard for our Constitutional Order and the Rule of Law that has been exposed by the South Africa Council of Churches in their ‘Unburdening Report’, the ‘Betrayal of the Promise: How South Africa is being Stolen’ Report by academics and the revelations contained in the Sunday press. It is imperative that this ‘silent coup’ is immediately halted in its tracks and that the ‘Zuma-centered power elite’ is dismantled. Jacob Zuma must go! Has betrayed his Country. His actions constitute treason! Should the ANC not recall the president this weekend, it will show all South Africans that the ANC itself is more than complicit in the grand theft of our state; and that it too has been captured and corrupted beyond redemption, with no chance of self-correction. Should the ANC fail to immediately remove the criminal-in-chief, Jacob Zuma, then it will be incumbent upon all South Africans to take up their collective responsibility to rid the Presidency of Jacob Zuma; to reclaim our state and to ensure that ‘government is based on the will of the people - and for the people’ The removal of Jacob Zuma represents but the first step in cleansing our systems and structures of governance, and the restoration of our Constitutional order and the rule of law.
It’s the largest freshwater fish in the world and, once upon a time, these fish swam the great lengths of the mighty Mekong River from southern China, through Burma, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, all the way to the river’s delta in Vietnam.
Now, there are maybe only a few hundred adult specimens still living, hidden in isolated deep pools in a few relatively undisturbed places along the river.
If you wish to catch a glimpse of one, the best bet is to cast your eyes about the murals of the Mekong’s resorts, restaurants and riverside temples, where they’re often painted in a serene satiny blue.
A painting of a Pla Beuk at a Thai temple. Xufanc/Wikimedia Commons
The traditional way to claim the life of a pla beuk was to go out in a wooden boat and throw a homemade spear or fibrous net laden with rocks at each corner. But now China wants to kill them another away – with bombs.
“Who would bomb a catfish?” I expect you’re asking.
China’s expanding trade routes
On May 14, the Chinese Government launched its Silk Road Project to develop trade routes across the lands of Central Asia to Europe as well as sea routes across Asian seas.
But China’s vision of Asian trade routes is not without its own bombs. The company charged with developing a trade route along the Mekong River (the state-owned Chinese Communications Construction Company) is set to dynamite river islands on a 900-kilometre section of the river that passes from the Chinese province of Yunnan through to the river port of Luang Prabang in Laos.
On the other side of the Indochinese peninsula, in the South China Sea, China is building islands, but in the Mekong it wants to demolish islands in order to make the river more navigable. Proponents talk about the process as a “river improvement project”; a “gentling-out” of the Mekong to make it smooth and easy to handle – like the pla beuk, it might be said.
This section of the river has been navigable for decades for cargo boats carrying about 60 tonnes or more. These can safely pass between the Mekong’s islands if an experienced navigator is on board.
They’re suggesting that a smoothed out Mekong would only increase trade between China and the Mekong nations by an insignificant amount. Many also suggest that the plan is mainly about China getting access to the fast-growing Southeast Asian market for Yunnan’s agricultural products.
Right now, it takes two weeks for Yunnan producers to get their goods to a Chinese seaport and another week to get them to big city markets in Indochina. The Mekong trade route is touted as being able to do all this within a few days.
Despite the bigger boats and the faster travel times, the economic impetus may be less important to China than political drivers. China will be lending money and providing credit lines – to the tune of US$10 billion – to the various Mekong nations. And it can leverage this debt to push forward with its own interests in the region.
If the river islands do get blasted away, a whole range of environmental consequences may cascade for hundreds of kilometres. The river may travel faster in parts, eroding riverside farms and conservation zones. It may also end up travelling slower in other parts; lowering water levels and changing the quantity and quality of sediment that will flow downstream.
The impact of this changing water flow on food and water security has not yet been calculated — if it ever could be — but the risks are enormous.
The Mekong, with its nutrient-rich sediment, is crucial for growing rice. It’s also home to hundreds of species of edible fish. For tens of millions of people in the Mekong basin, including millions of fisherfolk who live at near-subsistence level, fish and rice constitute their daily diet.
It may be shortsighted to gamble with this invaluable resource just to effect a slight increase in international trade figures. And this kind of threat to their livelihood recently pushed Mekong fishing communities to take to their riverboats in protest.
What’s more, business people in Burma, Laos and Thailand might look forward to increased trade between their nations but they may find themselves squeezed out of their local economy if they’re undercut by cheap goods flowing down the river from China.
Rock or an island?
Then, there’s the catfish. Those who seek to “smooth-out” the Mekong generally refer to the river islands as rocks. But these “rocks” are far from lifeless.
Many are vegetated, some with trees, and their presence in the river creates a range of pools, shoals, bars, shallows, and waterfalls, perfect for breeding countless varieties of fish, including pla beuk.
When pla beuk are young – and “ugly-cute” with prominent their whiskers – they hang around these sorts of places as they shelter from predators, feed on algae, and slowly grow. Destruction of these river islands and rocky outcrops would probably lead to the demise of juvenile fish.
At the moment, the Mekong River is known to be the most biodiverse river in the world — after the Amazon. But if the river islands are bombed away and if the riverscape is engineered into something more like a large artificial canal, then endangered species, including pla beuk, face extinction.
Alas, even if the river islands are left in peace, the fish of the Mekong face another attack from China: dams. Chinese dams have all but stopped fish migration in the upper reaches of the Mekong yet many more dams are being built every year.
If you are a fish, having your island birthplace blasted away with dynamite might seem pretty rough. But coming across a new dam is like a nuclear bomb going off.
The rise in nationalism. Brexit and Trump. Reactionary far-right parties wooing millions of voters around the world. The facts on the ground are clear: globalisation – and the international economic and political system that has underpinned it for the past half-century – is fracturing.
Globalisation Under Pressure is a new series from The Conversation Global that both analyses the old international order and surfaces local stories of finance, migration, jobs, education and culture that show the far-reaching impacts of the changes underway today.
While China has so far secured support from a number of governments for its Belt and Road Initiative, the recent forum in Beijing also highlighted some obstacles to its advancement.
Today’s ugly politics are not a backlash against global capitalism, they’re an open embrace of the racism and greed that has always underpinned so-called global governance.
The latest figures on the world wine market confirm that the industry is undergoing considerable change, with European countries finding their positions and strategies challenged by the new world.
War, Ford, fascism, Reaganomics, the pink tide, the EU, debt crises, rights-based activism, a fierce backlash… none of this is new. Wikimedia
We may think of current reactionary politics as radical and new, but unchecked mercantilism has always ended with a fierce backlash from both left and right. Here’s what history tells us about today.
An Angolan importer buying Havaianas in the market of Brás, São Paulo, Brazil. Léa Barreau Tran, Author provided, Author provided
Brazilian soap operas are wildly popular in Portuguese-speaking Angola, influencing style and creating a business opportunity for thousands of Angolan female entrepreneurs who travel the world to bring fashion back in their luggage.
