Toma nota.../Take note...

This brief article will explain why the world’s banking system is unsound and what differentiates a sound bank from an unsound one. I suspect not one person in 1,000 actually understands the difference. As a result, the world’s economy is now based upon unsound banks dealing in unsound currencies. Both have undergone considerable degeneration from their origins.

Modern banking emerged from the goldsmithing trade of the Middle Ages. Being a goldsmith required a working inventory of precious metals, and managing that inventory profitably required expertise in buying, selling, and storing them securely. Those capacities segued easily into the business of lending and borrowing gold, which is to say the business of lending and borrowing money.

Most people today are only dimly aware that until the early 1930s, gold coins were used in everyday commerce by the general public. In addition, gold backed most national currencies at a fixed rate of convertibility. Banks were just another business—nothing special. They were distinguished from other enterprises only by the fact that they stored, lent, and borrowed gold coins, not as a sideline but as a primary business. Bankers had become goldsmiths without the hammers.

Bank deposits, until quite recently, fell strictly into two classes, depending on the preference of the depositor and the terms offered by banks: time deposits and demand deposits. Although the distinction between them has been lost in recent years, respecting the difference is a critical element of sound banking practice.

Vladimir Putin espoused irredentist and imperialist views challenging Ukraine's legitimacy as a state, declared that Russia wanted to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine and made irrational claims that the Ukrainian government was a group of neo-Nazis who were conducting genocide against the Russian minority in the Donbas.  Transnistria in Moldova, Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, or the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics in Ukraine are examples of territories where the Kremlin has usually chosen to create "frozen" or "managed" war.  Russia has tended to maintain a military presence through territorial occupation or support for separatist states, acting as a self-proclaimed “peacekeeper” to advance its interests in the regions and often imposing puppet leadership, rather than completely invading nations like Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, or Tajikistan.

Russia's Ideological Construction in the Context of the War in Ukraine

See full text and footnotes here

by  Marlène Laruelle

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russian government has been proactive in the ideological realm to ensure the sustainability of the war for Russian society. Counter to the claims of many Western observers, this paper argues that the Russian regime does have an ideology, in the sense of a relatively consistent and coherent political project for Russia and aspirations to build a new world order. This ideology is based on a set of beliefs that has evolved over the years while remaining true to its core principles. However, it draws on an eclectic doctrinal stock and multiple (sometimes contradictory) repertoires, and sees content as situational and therefore malleable. 

With the war, proponents of the officialization of a state ideology—all from the hawkish part of the establishment—have been gaining weight: the Presidential Administration now mainly reproduces language and tropes that have long been present in the security and military realm and have become the official orthodoxy. Yet while new indoctrination methods and textbooks are introduced to the school system, the Kremlin has not so far recreated a Soviet-style ideological monolith: even in the context of war, it appears hesitant to engage in excessive “true teaching”, preferring a functional, technocratic understanding of ideology.

After briefly defining what ideology means for the Putin regime, this paper explores how the main set of beliefs, strategic narratives, and doctrines have stabilized and gained increased internal coherence, as well as how new textbooks and military-patriotic indoctrination mechanisms are developed, before delving into the social reception of this official ideology. 

Los Encuentros del Centro de Estudios Convivencia, con pensadores de la Isla y de la Diáspora, han cumplido diez años. El X Encuentro se ha realizado este fin de semana pasado en la Escuela de Leyes de la Universidad Internacional de la Florida (Florida International University).

Comparto la nota que los participantes en el evento han aprobado:

«Los días 17 y 18 de mayo de 2025 el Centro de Estudios Convivencia (CEC) celebró el Décimo Encuentro del Itinerario de Pensamiento y Propuestas para Cuba, en la Universidad Internacional de la Florida, con el apoyo del Instituto de Investigaciones Cubanas. Con la participación de más de 50 estudiosos provenientes de España, México, Nicaragua y Cuba, Isla y Diáspora, arribamos a este aniversario cerrado como laboratorio para crear pensamiento, visiones y propuestas a través del método de prospectiva estratégica.

El sábado 17 fue estudiado “El daño antropológico y cómo lograr su sanación en el futuro de Cuba”. Tras la bienvenida y la presentación de los participantes fueron dictadas dos conferencias motivadoras. La primera a cargo del Dr. Dagoberto Valdés Hernández con el título “El daño antropológico en Cuba y su sanación a partir de la obra de José Martí”. La segunda a cargo del Dr. Sergio Ángel Baquero, titulada “Los efectos de la opresión: sobre el daño antropológico y otros «demonios»”. En el horario de la tarde tuvo lugar el trabajo en equipos para responder entre todos, y a partir de los aportes personales, la guía de estudios recibida con anterioridad.

La virtud humana por excelencia es la sensatez, que nos hace saber estar ante la vida y el mundo. 
G.K.Chesterton 

El personaje más famoso del escritor británico G.K. Chesterton es el Padre Brown, un amable sacerdote católico, cuya astucia psicológica lo convierte en un formidable detective. Su filosofía es la de que, tanto en el mundo real o de ficción, ni la existencia personal ni la colectiva están resueltas. Son un conjunto de misterios que hay que desentrañar.

Esta es la clave de la literatura de GKC la cual se caracteriza por sus paradojas: comienza sus escritos con una afirmación en apariencia normal, pero luego hace ver que las cosas no son lo que parecen y con frecuencia se dicen sin pensar. El escritor se apoya en un argumento que en latín se conoce como reductio ad absurdum (reducción al absurdo).

Un ejemplo de ese absurdo cotidiano está ilustrado en su novela, El hombre que fue jueves (1908) una alegoría sobre el mal y el libre albedrío. En ella un investigador se infiltra en una sociedad anarquista para descubrir con sorpresa, que está enteramente formada por espías infiltrados, incluido su mismo presidente.