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[SIZE=7]Barrick’s bid for Acacia an “appropriate” and “elegant” solution to Tanzania woes — CEO[/SIZE]
Cecilia Jamasmie | May 27, 2019 | 6:25 am Base Metals Precious Metals Africa Canada Copper Gold
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Barrick Gold’s chief executive, Mark Bristow (Image: Screenshot fromBloomberg Markets Interview | YouTube.)
Barrick Gold’s (TSX:ABX)(NYSE:GOLD) chief executive, Mark Bristow, said the company’s bid for its 64%-owned Acacia Mining (LON:ACA) is an “appropriate” and “elegant” solution to the long-running row over outstanding tax claims that has hit the African miner’s bottom-line.

The $285-million offer, considered by some analysts and Acacia’s minority shareholders as low, would see the world’s second largest gold miner buying the remaining 35% of Acacia it does not already own, at a discount.
“We’re not trying to exploit any particular situation,” Bristow told [I]Bloomberg[/I]. “At the end of the day we do believe it’s a well-considered, fair and proper proposal that should be taken seriously.”
[INDENT]“WE’RE NOT TRYING TO EXPLOIT ANY PARTICULAR SITUATION,” CEO MARK BRISTOW SAID REFERRING TO BARRICK’S $285-MILLION OFFER FOR ACACIA MINING.[/INDENT]
The proposed takeover, said Barrick last week, was made after realizing that the government of Tanzania was not prepared to deal directly with Acacia to settle their differences.
Acacia, the African country’s No.1 gold producer, has been embroiled in a battle with Tanzania since 2017, when the government banned exports of unprocessed metal and slapped it with a $190 billion tax bill— equal to almost two centuries worth of revenue.
The company was also forced to cut output by a third from two of its three mines in the country — Bulyanhulu and Buzwag.
[SIZE=5]A “tragedy”[/SIZE]
Since then, the relationship between Barrick and Acacia has been strained and progress moving an agreement forward has been “almost impossible,” Bristow acknowledged earlier this month.
“It’s a tragedy,” he said. “We’re dealing with a complete breakdown of relationships.”
For about two years, Barrick has been leading negotiations with President John Magufuli’s administration, first under executive chairman John Thornton and, more recently, under Bristow.
The South African geologist, who spent decades finding and building his own mines in Africa, has been considered by many analysts as the only one who could effectively end the never-ending row.
[INDENT]ACACIA HAS SOUGHT TO RESOLVE SOME OF ITS ISSUES WITH TANZANIA THROUGH INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION.[/INDENT]
A framework deal reached in February proposed that Acacia would pay $300 million to settle the tax claims and agree to split returns from operations with the country going forward. But Acacia has maintained its position that before approving any agreement its board should review it first.
“In our opinion, the bid value reflects the $300 million tax payment that has been negotiated between Barrick and the government of Tanzania, which becomes payable once a resolution is ratified,” Jefferies’ analysts wrote last week.
Acacia, which has said that much of the tax dispute stems from the period when the Canadian mining giant fully owned it, has sought to resolve some of its issues with Tanzania through international arbitration.
According to sources close to the matter, Barrick may choose to postpone any decisions on the proposed takeover until then.
With files from Bloomberg
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[SIZE=7]Stupidity[/SIZE]

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For other uses, see Stupidity (disambiguation) and Stupid (disambiguation).
Learn more

This article’s lead section does not adequately summarize key points of its contents.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Quentin_Massys_030.jpg/220px-Quentin_Massys_030.jpg
An Allegory of Folly (early 16th century) by Quentin Matsys
Stupidity is a lack of intelligence, understanding, reason, or wit. It may be innate, assumed or reactive.
[SIZE=6]
Etymology
[/SIZE]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/07/Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder_-The_Ass_in_the_School-WGA03526.jpg/220px-Pieter_Bruegel_the_Elder-The_Ass_in_the_School-_WGA03526.jpg
Engraving after Pieter Breughel the Elder, 1556. caption: Al rijst den esele ter scholen om leeren, ist eenen esele hij en zal gheen peert weder keeren (“Even if the Ass travels to school to learn, as a horse he will not return”)
The root word stupid,[1] which can serve as an adjective or noun, comes from the Latin verb stupere, for being numb or astonished, and is related to stupor.[2] In Roman culture, the stupidus was the professional fall guy in the theatrical mimes.[3]
According to the online Merriam-Webster dictionary, the words “stupid” and “stupidity” entered the English language in 1541. Since then, stupidity has taken place along with “fool,” “idiot,” “dumb,” “moron,” and related concepts as a pejorative for misdeeds, whether purposeful or accidental, due to absence of mental capacity.
[SIZE=6]
Definition
[/SIZE]
Stupidity is a quality or state of being stupid, or an act or idea that exhibits properties of being stupid.[4] In a character study of “The Stupid Man” attributed to the Greek philosopher Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), stupidity was defined as “mental slowness in speech or action”. The modern English word “stupid” has a broad range of application, from being slow of mind (indicating a lack of intelligence, care or reason), dullness of feeling or sensation (torpidity, senseless, insensitivity), or lacking interest or point (vexing, exasperating). It can either imply a congenital lack of capacity for reasoning, or a temporary state of daze, or slow-mindedness.
In Understanding Stupidity, James F. Welles defines stupidity this way: “The term may be used to designate a mentality which is considered to be informed, deliberate and maladaptive.” Welles distinguishes stupidity from ignorance; one must know they are acting in their own worst interest. Secondly, it must be a choice, not a forced act or accident. Lastly, it requires the activity to be maladaptive, in that it is in the worst interest of the actor, and specifically done to prevent adaption to new data or existing circumstances."[5]
[SIZE=6]
Playing stupid
[/SIZE]
Eric Berne described the game of “Stupid” as having “the thesis…‘I laugh with you at my own clumsiness and stupidity.’”[6] He points out that the player has the advantage of lowering other people’s expectations, and so evading responsibility and work; but that he or she may still come through under pressure, like the proverbially stupid younger son.[7]
Wilfred Bion considered that psychological projection created a barrier against learning anything new, and thus its own form of pseudo-stupidity.[8]
[SIZE=6]
Intellectual stupidity
[/SIZE]
Otto Fenichel maintained that “quite a percentage of so-called feeble-mindedness turns out to be pseudo-debility, conditioned by inhibition … Every intellect begins to show weakness when affective motives are working against it”.[9] He suggests that “people become stupid ad hoc, that is, when they do not want to understand, where understanding would cause anxiety or guilt feeling, or would endanger an existing neurotic equilibrium.”[10]
In rather different fashion, Doris Lessing argued that “there is no fool like an intellectual … a kind of clever stupidity, bred out of a line of logic in the head, nothing to do with experience.”[11]
[SIZE=6]
Persisting in folly
[/SIZE]
In the Romantic reaction to Enlightenment wisdom, a valorisation of the irrational, the foolish, and the stupid emerged, as in William Blake’s dictum that “if the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise”;[12] or Jung’s belief that “it requires no art to become stupid; the whole art lies in extracting wisdom from stupidity. Stupidity is the mother of the wise, but cleverness never.”[13]
Similarly, Michel Foucault argued for the necessity of stupidity to re-connect with what our articulate categories exclude, to recapture the alterity of difference.[14]
[SIZE=6]
In culture
[/SIZE]
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/de/1941AlfredENeuman.jpg/220px-1941AlfredENeuman.jpg
A stereotyped image of American stupidity (later claimed by MAD Magazine to become Alfred E. Neuman), used in an editorial critical of abolishing the poll tax in the American South, with a caption showing the person wants to vote but is too ignorant to understand what voting means
[SIZE=5]In comedy[/SIZE]
The fool or buffoon has been a central character in much comedy. Alford and Alford found that humor based on stupidity was prevalent in “more complex” societies as compared to some other forms of humor.[15] Some analysis of Shakespeare’s comedy has found that his characters tend to hold mutually contradictory positions; because this implies a lack of careful analysis it indicates stupidity on their part.[16]
Today there is a wide array of television shows that showcase stupidity such as The Simpsons.[17] Goofball comedy is a class of naive, zany humour typified by actor Leslie Nielsen.[18][19]
[SIZE=5]In literature[/SIZE]
The first book in English on stupidity was A Short Introduction to the History of Stupidity by Walter B. Pitkin (1932):
[INDENT]Stupidity can easily be proved the supreme Social Evil. Three factors combine to establish it as such. First and foremost, the number of stupid people is legion. Secondly, most of the power in business, finance, diplomacy and politics is in the hands of more or less stupid individuals. Finally, high abilities are often linked with serious stupidity.[20][/INDENT]
According to In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters, (2003) by Merrill R. Chapman:
[INDENT]The claim that high-tech companies are constantly running into ‘new’ and ‘unique’ situations that they cannot possibly be expected to anticipate and intelligently resolve is demonstrably false … The truth is that technology companies are constantly repeating the same mistakes with wearying consistency … and many of the stupid things these companies do are completely avoidable.[/INDENT]
“While In Search of Excellence turned out to be a fraud, In Search of Stupidity is genuine, and no names have been changed to protect the guilty,” according to one reviewer.[21]
[SIZE=5]In film[/SIZE]
Stupidity was a 2003 movie directed by Albert Nerenberg.[22] It depicted examples and analyses of stupidity in modern society and media, and sought “to explore the prospect that willful ignorance has increasingly become a strategy for success in the realms of politics and entertainment.”[23]
Idiocracy, a Mike Judge film from 2006, explored a dystopian future America where a person of average IQ is cryogenically frozen and wakes up 500 years later to find that mankind, increasingly dependent on technology built by previous generations that it does not properly maintain or understand, has regressed in intelligence to the standards of current-era mental retardation, and that he has become the de facto smartest person on Earth. Americans have become so stupid that society faces famine and collapse, and according to Pete Vonder Haar of Film Threat, “…each laugh is tempered with the unsettling realization that [Judge’s] vision of mankind’s future might not be too far off the mark.”[24]
[SIZE=6]
See also
[/SIZE]
[ul]
[li]Anti-intellectualism[/li][li]Borderline intellectual functioning[/li][li]Bounded rationality[/li][li]Dumbing down[/li][li]The Dunciad[/li][li]Dunning–Kruger effect[/li][li]Dysrationalia[/li][li]Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds[/li][li]Genius[/li][li]Gullibility[/li][li]Hanlon’s razor[/li][li]Idiot (person)[/li][li]Ignorance[/li][li]Illusory superiority[/li][li]In Praise of Folly[/li][li]IQ[/li][li]Pigasus Award[/li][/ul]
[SIZE=6]
References
[/SIZE]
[ol]
[li]^ “stupid”. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2009-01-18.[/li][li]^ “stupor”. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 2009-01-18.[/li][li]^ Juvenal: The Sixteen Satires, translated by Peter Green, Penguin, 1982, p. 126[/li][li]^ “stupidity”. Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 18 January 2009.[/li][li]^ James F. Welles, Ph. D. “Understanding Stupidity”. Archived from the originalon August 24, 2011. Retrieved June 7,2011.[/li][li]^ Eric Berne, Games People Play (Penguin 1968) p. 138[/li][li]^ Berne, p. 138-9[/li][li]^ Salman Akhtar, Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis (2010) “Arrogance”[/li][li]^ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (London 1946) p. 180[/li][li]^ Fenichel, p. 181[/li][li]^ Doris Lessing, Under my Skin (London 1994) p. 122[/li][li]^ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (London 1927) p. 7[/li][li]^ C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (1978) p. 180[/li][li]^ Michel Foucault, Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (1980) p. 188–90[/li][li]^ Finnegan Alford; Richard Alford. A Holo-Cultural Study of Humor. Ethos 9(2), pg 149–164.[/li][li]^ N Frye. A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance. Columbia University Press, 1995.[/li][li]^ R Hobbs. The Simpsons Meet Mark Twain: Analyzing Popular Media Texts in the Classroom. The English Journal, 1998.[/li][li]^ Canadian Press (29 November 2010). “‘The Naked Gun’ actor Leslie Nielsen dies in Florida hospital at age 84”. CP24 – Toronto’s Breaking News. Bell Media. Retrieved 22 June 2012. Leslie’s huge heart and fierce intelligence defined goofball comedy and he was its undisputed master.[permanent dead link] – Paul Gross.[/li][li]^ Once More to the Well of Goofball Comedy, New York Times[/li][li]^ Pitkin, Walter B. A Short Introduction to the History of Stupidity (1932).[/li][li]^ “In Search of Stupidity, over 20 years of high-tech marketing disasters”. Insearchofstupidity.com. 2005-05-10. Retrieved 2012-11-07.[/li][li]^ “Stupidity”. IMDB.com. Retrieved June 17, 2011.[/li][li]^ “Stupidity (2003)”. rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved June 17,2011.[/li][li]^ “Idiocracy (2006)”. rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved July 24,2017.[/li][/ol]
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Further reading
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External links
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[SIZE=6]RELATED ARTICLES[/SIZE]
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[SIZE=5]Dumbing down[/SIZE]
deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content
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[SIZE=5]Stupidity (film)[/SIZE]
film directed by Albert Nerenberg
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[CENTER]
After several developments there is
a book in English
(as well as in Italian and Spanish)
[/CENTER]

[CENTER]http://web.mclink.it/MC8216/////stupid/img/kali2.gif
The Stupidity of Power

Part Three of “The Power of Stupidity”

(Part 1 and Part 2 are online)[/CENTER]

[CENTER]by Giancarlo Livraghi
[email protected]
April 2002

(partly updated in December 2006)
disponibile anche in italiano
disponible también en español[/CENTER]

[INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][INDENT][CENTER]I wrote the first draft of this paper in October, 1997. It remained unfinished for over four years. I was running into the same sort of problem that Walter Pitkin faced in 1934 when he published his “Introduction to the History of Human Stupidity” (see The power of Stupiditypart 1.)
Every time I went to work on it there were several examples of the Stupidity of Power. In the events of the day – or in some part of recent or remote history.
Concentrating on any of those examples meant getting into the awesome complications of serious and tragic events – or of circumstances that are very likely to lead to disaster and are not being effectively managed ahead of time. Too complex to be discussed effectively in what must be a short document. Too difficult to be explained without deep studies that would take years.
So – I decided to forget the examples and the facts, and to stay with the general theory. Which, I hope, is basically simple and clear – though unfortunately it doesn’t offer any easy solution.[/CENTER]
[/INDENT][/INDENT]
The essence of stupidology is an attempt to explain why things don’t work – and how much of that is due to human stupidity, which is the cause of most of our problems. And even when the cause is not stupidity we make the consequences much worse by being stupid in how we react or try to fix the problem.
Essentially, this analysis is diagnostic, not therapeutic. The idea is that, if we understand how stupidity works, we may be able to control its effects a little better. It’s impossible to defeat it altogether, because it’s part of human nature. But its effects can be significantly reduced by knowing it’s there, and understanding how it works – and thusnot being caught by total surprise.
I’ve discussed this, to a limited extent, in [I]The Power of Stupidity[/I]. (As all stupidologists know, the subject is so vast that such short comments can only scratch the surface; but if I’ve been able to prompt readers to think about it, that is the biggest achievement I could possibly imagine.)
The stupidity of every single human being is a large enough problem. But the picture changes when we consider the stupidity of people who have “power” – that is, control over the destiny of other people.
As in the first two parts, I shall continue to follow the concept of defining stupidity, intelligence etc. by the effects of human behavior. But there are substantial differences when the relationship is not of equals. One person, or a small group of people, can influence the life and wellbeing of many more. That changes the cause-and-effect relations in the system.

Power, large and small
Power is everywhere. We are all subject to someone else’s power and (except perhaps in the case of extreme slavery) we all exert power on others. Personally, I loathe the concept, but it’s part of life. Parents have (or are supposed to have) power over their children, but children have a great deal of power over their parents, which they often use quite ruthlessly. We may be “owners” of cats and dogs, horses or hamsters, elephants or camels, sailboats or cars, phones or computers, but quite often we are subject to their power.
It would be far too complicated, for the sake of this subject, to get into the intricacy of human relations. Therefore I shall concentrate on the most obvious cases of “power”: those situations where someone has a defined role of authority over a large (or small) number of people.
In theory, we all tend to agree that there should be as little power as possible, and that people in power should be subject to control by the rest of the people. We call that “democracy.” Or, in organizations, we call it leadership, motivation, distributed responsibility, sharing and personal empowerment – as opposed to authority, bureaucracy, centralization or formal discipline.
But there are relatively few people who want real freedom. Responsibility is a burden. It’s quite convenient to be “followers.” To let rulers, bosses, “opinion leaders”, gurus of all sorts, movie stars and television “personalities” set the pace and do the thinking – and put the blame on them if we’re unhappy.
On the other hand, there is a somewhat special breed of people who enjoy power. Because they are so dedicated to the substantial effort and sacrifice needed to gain large power, they prevail.
We must assume that the general concept applies: there are just as many stupid people in power as there are in the rest of humanity, and there are always more than we think. But two things are different: the relationship and the attitude.

The power of power
People in power are more powerful that other people. That isn’t as obvious as it sounds. One might argue that this is not always so. There are apparently powerful people with less real influence than some who are much less visible. But for the sake of this discussion we must stay away from that problem. Regardless of how and why actual power is held and used, this is about real power. The uneven relationship caused by the fact that some people have a stronger influence on circumstances than others – and in many situations a few people can do good or harm to many.
A basic, and quite obvious, criterion is that the effect of behavior must be measured not by the yardstick of whoever does something, but from the other end – the point of view of whoever is subject to the effects of that person’s acts (or lack of action.) The clear result of this basic concept is a drastic shift in the Cartesian coordinates (see Part One. The harm (or good) is much larger, depending on the number of people involved and the impact of actions and decisions.
If a person in an “equal” relationship gains as much personal advantage as the damage it causes to someone else, the system as a whole remains balanced (as observed in the first oif these articles). But it’s obviously not so when there is a difference in power.
In theory, we could assume that as the percentage of intelligent or stupid people is the same the effect of power will be balanced. But when power deals with large numbers of people the one-to-one relationship is lost. It is much more difficult to listen, to understand, to measure the effect and the perceptions. There is a “Doppler effect”, a shift, leading to an increase of the stupidity factor. All serious studies of power systems (while they are not necessarily based on the notion that power is stupid) point to the need for power separation, and for power conflicts to be formalized to that they don’t lead to violence, in order to avoid “absolute power” (i.e. extreme stupidity.) That’s a big enough problem to keep us all on constant alert against any exaggerated concentration of power – and to explain why so many things aren’t working as well as they should. But there is more.

The power syndrome
How do people gain power? Sometimes by not even trying. They are entrusted by other people, because other people trust them. They have natural leadership and a sense of responsibility. This process, more often than not, produces “intelligent” power. A situation in which the chosen leaders do good for themselves – and a lot more for others. Sometimes it can lead to deliberate sacrifice, when people do harm to themselves for the benefit of others (if that is done intentionally it doesn’t fall into the “hapless” category because of the moral good, including self perception and the approval of others, gained by the person who deliberately places common good over private interest.) But there are much fewer examples of such “intelligent power” than we would all like to see. Why?
The reason is that there is competition for power. People who don’t seek power per se, but are more concentrated on doing good for others, have less time and energy to spend on gaining more power – or even holding on to what they have. People who have a greed for power, regardless of its impact on society, concentrate on the struggle for power. Most individuals are placed somewhere between the two extremes of that spectrum, with many different shades and nuances. But the powermongering element is the most aggressive in the power game and therefore it gains more power.
Even people with the most generous initial motivation can be forced, over time, to dedicate more energy to maintaining or increasing power – to the point of losing sight of their original objectives.
Another element, that makes things worse, is megalomania. Power is an addictive drug. People in power are often led to believe that because they have power they are better, smarter, wiser, than ordinary people. They are also surrounded by sycophants, followers and exploiters enhancing that delusion.
Power is sexy. That isn’t just a manner of speech. There is an instinct in the nature of our species that makes powerful people (or people who appear to be powerful) sexually attractive. Though most people playing the power game are too busy with it to be able to have any decent sex – or to care about emotion, affection and love.
People who have or seek power are as just as stupid or intelligent as any average person. They are often quite clever, astute and mischievous. But if we follow the method of measuring intelligence and stupidity by the effect of behavior, not motive or technique, the result is a definite shift, as shown in this graph (“Cartesian coordinates”) where the red arrow is the “power” factor. There is a general deterioration in the system, with a shift from “intelligence” to “stupidity.”

[CENTER]http://web.mclink.it/MC8216/////stupid/img/asse3.gif
A careful reader may notice that the arrow is on a side.
This is to allow for the fact that a few people
(those in power and their entourage)
gain some advantages – and therefore the shift in the system
is not from the center of the “intelligent” area
to that of the “stupid”
but it leans on the lower right side
crossing the harmful fourth quadrant.
A few more graphs, showing
other possible developments,
are included in a
footnote
as a separate file.[/CENTER]

The pursuit of power increases the stupidity factor. The impact can be relatively large or small depending on the amount of power (the importance of matters influenced by power and the number of people subject to its effects) and on the intensity of the power struggle.
This is the most relevant, if not the only, exception to a general principle explained in the first part of The Power of Stupidity. It remains true that a person’stupidity “is independent of any other characteristic of that person.” But power, as a system, is much more stupid than any single “ordinary” person can be.
The problem it that power can be limited, controlled, scrutinized and conditioned – but not eliminated altogether. Humanity needs leaders. Organizations need people who take responsibilities, and those people must have some power to perform their role.
So we’ve got to live with power – and its stupidity. But that doesn’t mean that we must accept it, tolerate it or support it. Power should not be admired, trusted or even respected unless it shows practical intelligence in what it does to us and to the world. As far as I can see, there is no “universal” or standard solution to this problem. But we are half way there if we are aware of it – and if we never allow ourselves to be blinded or seduced by the treacherous glitter of power.[/INDENT][/INDENT][/INDENT]

[CENTER]
An effective antidote to the stupidity of power
is the ability of some people to make things work
without placing themselves in a “power role”.
As explained in a wonderful little story
written ninety years ago and called Brown’s Job.
[/CENTER]

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index[/CENTER]

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Hii kampuni hutumiwa na world leaders to rob third world countries off their minerals.

matako wewe

one sentence to describe you…wewe ni Kuma

Butt hurt are you??? Simp! Only a buffoon takes your path.

Kuma ni ya mamako iliyo kuzaa ama ulizaliwa kwa matako?

Rare pic of magufool akiwa uncircumcised little boy
[ATTACH=full]303154[/ATTACH]

[COLOR=rgb(40, 50, 78)]I like the TZ & Acacia row, hapa Kenya we’re busy hounding Keroche to create room for…