Monthly Archives: July 2014

Absolutism is innovation’s mortal enemy.

27 Sunday Jul 2014

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I recently posted a few posts under the banners,

” For Crying out loud are we all sleeping walking,”

“Where does hate come from.”?

“What are our Values.”?

I am no politician, and I am sure if I were either Israeli or Palestinian at the moment I would want to Kill Kill. First three Jewish young people kidnapped and slain, then an Arab youth burned alive in revenge.

The present outbreak of conflict like all the others is heading to a dead-end.

It is obvious that the peace process to resolve the Israel and Palestine conflicts is dead and will remain so while death and suffering prevails.

It’s time to start thinking outside the Zionist box, and the Muslim halo and look for solutions that secure the human rights and equality of all involved, and not simply the political demands of the stronger party.

The first step is recognizing that we have a “one-state problem” is the key to peace.

The two state solution is a fantasy because the two-state solution is dead.

The solution is not to establish another ethnic state but to disestablish the ones that exist now.

Israel, as well as states that are just for Muslims or any other ethnic group, must cease to exist as states based on apartheid and ethnic domination.

It is time to stop grieving and find an alternative that allows all to live in freedom and dignity in the land of their forefathers.

Israel and Palestine must be replaced by a secular democracy with equal rights for all, regardless of their ethnic background, and with equal tolerance for all religions, with a written charter of human rights.

There’s no reason why Israel and Palestine shouldn’t be able to offer citizenship to their respective diasporas.

Every year, resolutions addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict are tabled in the United Nations, such as at the United Nations General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.  The meanings attributed by Israel to ‘‘self-defense’’ or ‘‘proportionate’’ are increasingly exposed as questionable or false while the international community is divided between those who are in denial and those who are torturing the corpse.

The one-state solution is an old idea that was often found morally attractive but remains to date politically unfeasible.

Perhaps I am dreaming  to envisage the above becoming feasible, but what a role model it would be for the rest of the Arab World.

If Israel learned anything from the Holocaust surely it is that survival comes at a cost.

From what I understand Judaism focuses on relationships:

However it is creating a relationship that is isolating it as a people hiding behind walls that will crumble in time.

Although Jews have certainly considered the nature of God, man, the universe, life and the afterlife at great length there is no mandated, official, definitive belief on these subjects, outside of the very general concepts.

The relationship between God and mankind, between God and the Jewish people, between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, and between human beings: some say they are absolute, unchanging laws from God (Orthodox);

Some say they are laws from God that change and evolve over time (Conservative);

Some say that they are guidelines that you can choose whether or not to follow (Reform, Reform, Reconstructionist )

I say a religion that is not all-encompassing, that does values every life is a religion not worth living.

Because Judaism is more concerned about actions than beliefs here is substantial room for personal opinion on all of these matters, but the future holds no opinions. It is only tarnished by the opinions of the dead.  May they rest in Peace.

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD ARE WE ALL SLEEPING WALKING

25 Friday Jul 2014

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We have been around for 106 billion years and by 2050 there will be 9.2 billion of us.

Over the last Century, our world has experienced at times a ” wonderful age” with promises of peace and prosperity, but then some imposing forces changed the entire Landscape.

The current world disorder results in part from ignorance about civilizations – awareness or selective memory of the past, and lack of perspective for the future, and also from the economic misery, combined with political injustices ( domestic and /or International) experienced by the have-nots.

Globalization cannot be a practical concept if there are clashes of civilization.

What have we achieved.? What went Wrong then?

I won’t be the first to ask these questions and you can rest assured nor will i be the last. The future Generations will be asking the very same questions.

However let’s try to answer:  Why we are getting it so wrong?

The most important distinctions among people are not, Ideological, Political, or Economic, they are Cultural.

People still define themselves in terms of Ancestry, Religion, Language, History, Values, Customs and Institutions, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

We don’t have to look far to see the reasons why –

Great Powers were hunger to conquer lands and resources, to get control over raw materials, markets, and strategic positioning in the world, these were the driving forces that divided the world into eight major civilizations;

Western, Orthodox, Chines, Japanese, Muslim, Hindu, Latin American, and Africa.

Any Joe Soaps who was out side of these groups could only acquire a Western level of advancement by learning to think like Westerners and not forgetting the missionaries who defined civilization as a combination of Western Religion and Science.

Then came the Power gained by Industrialized nations gave them a thirst for the right to rule, and in some cases to oppress those who did not have power.

What happened next is that this lot formed Alliances while Europe was experiencing Nationalism causing the First World War, the rest is History.

So we arrive to to-day.

If you look around, the analogy above may be telling of the dynamics of our present World.

So what cased the present day disorder?

My answer is all of the above and September 11th 2001.

WHY September the 11th?

Because throughout the history of the USA, (a melting pot of cultures) the ruling force over world markets, the world military status, created the Axis of Evil without looking at the real sources that kindled terrorism –

THE HAVE – THE HAVE NOTS.

Another words: TO RECOGNIZE THAT POVERTY AND HOPELESSNESS ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF TERRORISM AND THE DISRUPTION OF WORLD ORDER THAT WE SEE TODAY

You cannot have over 3 billion people living on $2 dollars a day with another 1.3 billion living on less than a dollar with no access to clean water. This difference by a factor of over 100 or so between the have and have-nots ultimately creates for the lack of a better word Dissatisfaction, which lead to violence , racial and ethic conflict the Arab spring the current Israel /Palestinian conflict.

So you might think that Globalization in principle is a hopeful ideal, but in its present form it is tailored to the strong serving a fraction of the World’s population. To get through the gates of Globalization one has to acquire computer and internet literacy, accessibility to sources of knowledge and information etc ect.

It is clear that the world order requires a new and comprehensive partnership between the developed world and the developing world.

Our environment is not ourselves. We must invest more in education, in science and technology but at the same time we must lower the bureaucratic political barriers.

If we are to stop wars we must redistribute wealth more evenly.

We live in a world where spending never stops. Trading on fear is the biggest seller of all and it is at the very heart of why we buy. Fear the primal Instinct.

There will be on Economy without the Environment, No anything.

We cannot continue moving forward in a form of  Human Lemming.

We the people of the Earth must demand that our out of date World Organisation The United Nations for once in its existence  passes a People’s Resolution to benefit all of us how live on this Planet now and in the future.

It will go a long way to resolving the Inequalities before its to late.  ( See previous Posts)

The people of the planet earth wish to table the following people s resolution to be adopted.  

” The Introduction of a World Aid Commission of 0.05% to be placed on all World stock Exchanges covering all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,0000, all High Frequency Trading and all Acquisitions by Sovereign Wealth Funds. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WHAT ARE OUR VALUES?

22 Tuesday Jul 2014

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Each person’s definition of values differs so maybe I am biting of rather a big subject to address in one go, but here goes.  

Look around, do you feel safe, happy and encouraged by what you see? 

What would be said if someone randomly came up to you and asked your opinion of the modern-day society.

Have human values become meaningless?  Or is it that rich, having purchased the human mind with their money. 

Our world inexorably and inevitably changes, from decade to decade, from generation to generation; no doubt about it, our values are disappearing down Smart phones, I Pads. How many friends on Face book with photos of friends that mean nothing to you, do you have?   Valueless. 

Gone are the old days;

 We all know that Big business is to be blamed for “FUELING inequality and CONSUMERISM >  the values of 21st Century. 

“Values were invaluable and principles were once priceless”  

Modern day Communication has made people more aware and more keen of their rights, and of the rights of others but it is also eroding our values and somehow or other making all of us increasingly detached from nature.

In other words, our cultures are literally being turned upside down, and the “values” that our national leaders speak of today are far different from the “values” that our grandparents grew up with.  

Sanctions are the value of the Hippocratic’s United Nations Security Council especially went you look at countries on the Council that are selling arms sanctions or not.   

We used to have ‘life’. Today we have only ‘existence’.

Today, nobody knows the value of anything but everybody knows the price of everything. 

When you have a sense of the past it is a light that illuminates the present and directs attention toward the possibilities of the future.

Many of the things that used to be considered “evil” are now considered to be “good”, and many of the things that used to be considered “good” are now considered to be “evil”.

No matter which side of the “culture war” that you are on, you have to admit that our culture is being fundamentally transformed.

In fact, if you look at the world  there has been a colossal shift in moral values just since 2001. Over the past 13 years, we have become a dramatically different world.

Take Porn for instance. It is without doubt the most powerful form of sex education today, with studies showing that the average age of first viewing porn is between 11 and 14.  Porn sites get more visitors per month than Netflix, Amazon and Twitter combined, a third of all downloads contain porn and the Internet now hosts 4.2 million porn websites.

There are 20 million new cases of sexually transmitted disease in the United States every single year, and Americans in the 15 to 24-year-old age range account for about 50 percent of those new cases.  America has just about reached a new milestone – it currently have close to three-quarters of a million registered sex offenders.

The World is becoming a place where “anything goes”, and most of us are okay with that it seems.

So is this loss of values a good thing or a bad thing?

Now I realize that Life has no rewind button or fast forward button.

But ” what is in it for me now” is no replacement for the vanishing word Values.

So do we need to thank technology for all the wonders it has done to our health, transportation, communication and energy needs?  Yes.

Or should we realize that in doing so we are also selling all of our values to big data

We have less time for each other and we seem to doubt the knowledge of our ancestors all the time.

All of us are equally responsible for what society is today, we cannot disown our consumerism that is causing the erosion of the very things that make life livable as human being, as we are called. 

The future is surely for better but at the same time we can never bury the past and forget the bygones. 

There is commerce in every thing we do today. Forget the past, someone said. Why should one?

There is an attitude of ‘I don’t care, as it does not affect me now’ which is tragically leading us towards animal behavior and slowly we will reach it if are not careful.  Today, everything is about instant gratification and pleasure.

May be it can all be put down to that the present is unbearable. Drugs and alcohol, immigration and responses to it, crime and violence, poverty and inequality as the things people are most worried about.

That the mind should not be tortured with the glory of the past? Now we no time for family members to greet each other; all in own routine with cell phone, tablet and PC glued for all time.

Maybe we should make time to teach values. Wouldn’t society be better if our youth did not have conflicting values?

There is a decreasing sense of wonder among the kids and no one seems to talk about the future. Children are not taught moral values which is most important in life.

“Morality is the base, spiritual effort is the means, and life divine is the goal.”

It is customary to give preference to social value over human value.

 Humanity is superior to the state. 

At present life is valued on the basis of money.

If a nation does not feel respect for other nations, then one cannot mention freedom of thought, criticism and exchange of ideas, and expect good things done for the sake of humanity. If you want an example turn your biased Telly on – Israel or Palestine, not to mention Syria,  

Today we need a new approach, which uncompromisingly affirms neo-Humanism. This emphasizes individual freedom, human rights, a new morality, the empathetic imperative, and the realization of human dignity, lives of joyful creativity and exuberance for all persons on the planet.

 Laws which do not apply to everyone eventually apply to no one.

But I am not that pessimist to believe we have nothing to be happy about.

Not for nothing “present is called present”.

“Those were the days,when the

moon was a flawless beauty

now are the days when moon is a flawed beauty.

Those were the days, when the sun was a warmth
now are the days, when the sun is a scorching hearth.

Lust has replaced love, rust has replaced trust
grins have taken for smile, comments for compliment”.

THESE ARE THE DAYS WHEN WE MUST CAP GREED FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE WORLD.

YESTERDAY WHILE ONE CHILD DIES EVERY FIVE SECONDS THE FOREIGN EXCHANGE MARKET WORTH THREE TRILLION A DAY WAS CAUGHT MANIPULATION THE EXCHANGE RATES.

The suggestion is that dealers at several banks colluded over a number of years by using instant messaging systems and online chat rooms to discuss where it would be most favorable to set the day’s benchmarks.

( SEE MY POSTS ON PLACING A 0.05% WORLD AID COMMISSION ON ALL FX DEALINGS OVER $ 20,000 AND ON ALL SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS ACQUISITIONS AND HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING.)

THERE IS NO ARGUMENT THAT IT WOULD DO A LOT FOR OUR VALUES:   

 

 

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I Hate That. Where does hate come from?

20 Sunday Jul 2014

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Now I am no expert and could therefore get this very wrong.

When you contemplate the meaning of hate and look around the world we all live in you might wonder as to what causes hate it the first place.

We are not born with it.

It has to be acquired in order to dislike intensely or passionately some thing or person, to feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward something or someone.

The shock-waves from the missile that destroyed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on Thursday are still reverberating around the world.

So it might be a good time to address the subject as it seems that I HATE THAT it is spreading thanks to our new digital era, of remote bombs, mobile phones, 24hr television, and verbal diarrhea by unknown experts on all sides

The paradox is that Islam historically was relatively tolerant… anti-semitism runs deep in some Muslim countries today, but, for most of history, Muslims were more tolerant of Jews than Christians were.

”The West has no moral high ground on the issue of religious intolerance?

Why do some people feel this way?  What is to be done about it?

I have no idea. I see connections between everything, past, present, and future all at once.

For the most part, people create the emotional world in which they live.

All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Extremists drive the groups apart.

Why don’t we allow our religious systems and rituals to shift and develop/evolve to suit the modern man and thinking?

All men are in a kind of “life lottery”, where we really don’t know how we will die.

The first, and most disturbing  fact, is that human beings, like few other species, are pervasively aggressive, violent and murderous to each other.

When we share common bonds of belief and value with others, we are less likely to be aggressive or violent to others in our world.

Hateful beliefs such as racism, Anti- semitism and misogyny allow whole groups to be dehumanized.

Too many of us have become desensitized to violent acts, not realizing the true effects of a bullet passing through a human body.

Without being connected to others, we care less for their welfare. The major predators of humans are other humans.

And I can only honestly offer the following answer:

The past does not exist, neither does the future hate in its pure form comes from present day cruelty and torture.

The inequalities of the world must be addressed. (See previous posts)

Let’s hear your opinions.

A Personal Question.

18 Friday Jul 2014

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Right.  If you were asked ?

How is the Quality of your life. What would you say?

Would you say, its great because your having great sex, or you have found God, or your are loaded and could not give a shit.

Or if your were a Refugee or one of the Poverty Stricken, or about to have your hands cut off for nicking an apple you would probably mutter – Inchallah how gives a fuck.

There can be no real quality to your life when you see what is happening in the world that we all share.

So when you hear Politicians waffling on about how well off you are they are talking cod wallop.

Why, Because to measure the quality of life on behalf of someone else requires proxies to put themselves in another person’s shoes, to imagine what it feels like to be them, and to speculate about the impact of their health and health care on their experience of life.

How many Politicians do you know that have lived in a Slum, or watched a child die from Malnutrition.

The main difference between standard of living and quality of life is that the former is more objective, while the latter is more subjective.

Standard of living factors such as gross domestic product, poverty rate and environmental quality, can all be measured and defined with numbers, while quality of life factors like equal protection of the law, freedom from discrimination and freedom of religion, are more difficult to measure and are particularly qualitative to the gap between expectations and experience.

The point here is that people see different possibilities for themselves when they evaluate different factors that have an impact on their quality of life and off course there are no quality of life measurement that reliably identify people who feel that life is not worth living.

All indicators are flawed. Quality of life is more subjective and intangible than any measurement.

Do you calculate it by evaluating how many of the describing quality of life factors a country guarantees for its citizens.

freedom from slavery and torture
equal protection of the law
freedom from discrimination
freedom of movement
freedom of residence within one’s home country
presumption of innocence unless proved guilty
right to marry
right to have a family
right to be treated equally without regard to gender, race, language, religion, political beliefs, nationality, socioeconomic status and more
right to privacy
freedom of thought
freedom of religion
free choice of employment
right to fair pay
equal pay for equal work
right to vote
right to rest and leisure
right to education
right to human dignity

The above can only help us get a general picture of what life is like in a particular location at a particular time.

Greater understanding is needed of how expectations and adaptation by people influence people’s assessment of their quality of life.

There is one thing for certain that I have found in my life, that giving rather than receiving enhances ones life whether you have quality or not.

This is why we the living must remove Inequality by placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all Foreign Exchange Transactions of over $20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions , on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Trading.  ( see Previous Blogs)

Foot note :

Although the moral, social, and political reasons for wanting to maintain a prohibition on ending someone’s life are powerful, it is important to acknowledge that these deny individuals the right to make the full range of choices that logically follow from a decision that life is not worth living.

In particular, In the meantime, clinicians would do well to remember that when their assessment of quality of life is at odds with that of the patient, it is the patient who should have the final word.  He has little power other than to support a decision not to treat a patient and so will prevent a life from being prolonged or saved.

 

. What elements need to be considered in setting conservation objectives?

17 Thursday Jul 2014

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It is vital to all of us that we fully understand the complex relationship between the atmosphere and the earth.

The water you drink, the food you eat, the land you live on, and the air you pollute were all obtained at the expense of other creatures.

So what is your understanding of the term Conservation?

These days the consumer conservation ethic is sometimes expressed by the four R’s: ” Reduce, Recycle, Reuse, Rethink.”

This social ethic primarily relates to local purchasing, moral purchasing, the sustained and efficient use of renewable resources, the moderation of destructive use of finite resources, and the prevention of harm to common resources such as air and water quality, the natural functions of a living earth, and cultural values in a built environment.

This is admiral Social Ethic, however it is my contention that most people these days have not got a bulls notion what is meant by Conservation.

They think it has something to do with recycling.

Ultimately, people want to help the planet survive naturally and with no negative impact from the human race.

Helping keep the planet safe and healthy is called “conservation.”

The historic environment is constantly changing, but each significant part of it represents a finite resource.

The question is, – is the historic environment a social and economic asset and a cultural resource for learning and enjoyment?

If it is not sustained, not only are its heritage values eroded or lost, but so is its potential to give distinctiveness, meaning and quality to the places in which people live, and provide people with a sense of continuity and a source of identity.

We need a clear, over-arching philosophical framework of what conservation means for the 21st century. 

Does it mean giving up all the things that make life comfortable and being taxed for that pleasure.. No.

Environmental conservation is the broad term for anything that furthers the goal of making life more sustainable for the planet. It is the sustainable use and management of natural resources including wildlife, water, air, and earth deposits.

Conservation agreements are voluntary agreements and this is why (in my view  even with all the good work they do) they are banging their heads up against a brick wall.

Two months ago or so I posted two blogs under the headings : The Scrabble has begun. Is sustainability still possible and If we want it we must pay for it.

The current form of globalization has been criticized for ignoring sustainable development and environmental concerns.

For many years, critics, NGOs, activists and affected people s have been accusing large corporations for being major sources of environmental problems.

In some respects, many corporations are also victims of the ideologies that are prevalent in current mainstream economics that treat the environment in certain regards. Some corporations might wish to be more environmentally friendly but are unable to do so due to fears that their competitors will get away with it (sort of seen in the fiasco of the politics behind global warming issues). Corporations are major entities in the world and thus have an enormous impact (negative and positive) on all our lives.

Concerns of overly corporate-led globalization contributing to environmental problems are increasing, as reported and documented by countless environmental and social justice groups around the world.

The earth is getting warmer. the changes are small, so far, but they are expected to grow and speed up.

Then we have Preservation, in contrast to conservation, attempts to maintain in their present condition areas of the Earth that are so far untouched by humans. The distinction between the terms “preservation” and “conservation” is somewhat unclear, as the use of these terms (along with “restoration”) has varied over time, depending in part on the context of their use.

The two views (conservation and preservation) have been at the center of many historical environmental debates.

  • Preservation—The protection of cultural property through activities that minimize chemical and physical deterioration and damage and that prevent loss of informational content. The primary goal of preservation is to prolong the existence of cultural property.
  • Conservation—The profession devoted to the preservation of cultural property for the future. Conservation activities include examination, documentation, treatment, and preventive care, supported by research and education.
  • Restoration—Treatment procedures intended to return cultural property to a known or assumed state, often through the addition of non-original material.

If you have a look at how many Conservation Organisation are in the world to-day you would wonder what is left to Conserve.

Everything from Polar Bears to you name it has a conservation Organisation.

Now I am not saying that they are all not needed but are they taking the decisions how we are going to share the world resources and determine which species will inhabit Earth for the indefinite future.

No they are not.

It is money and profit that is determining those values for present and future generations. Not Any Conservationist.

Global Warming-  Human kind has entered a brand new relationship with the earth. They the conservationist cannot get out-of-the-way of human “progress” and will be beaten to extinction unless we actively protect them with funds.

This is why we should place a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, on all High Frequency Trading and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. (See previous postings) 

Along with the integration of social and environmental factors into business decisions might also help.

Greed has no boundaries, no limitations, no moral obligations, no self – esteem, no conscious, it is concave.

Around 300,000 tonnes of chemical warfare agents were dumped in oceans from 1946 to 1965.

Upwards of 400,000 gas filled-bombs and rockets float in U.S. waters. 40,000 tonnes of Conventional Weapons (CW) are in the Baltic Sea.

21,000 tonnes of CW agents float in Australian waters, and more than 6,600 tonnes off the coast of Japan.

Its time to get real. If we want it we must all pay for it.

If you have any opinions on the subject I would like to hear them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ALL WE ARE IS OUR MEMORIES.

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

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OK!

Before we all become just a memory in 6.5 billion years from now it might be a good idea ( assuming we haven’t destroyed the planet and ourselves along before its demise) to put our collective memories somewhere other than on Face Book as our collective memories will be our cosmic tombstone.

Everyone we know, and everyone that anyone we know will ever know, will be dead. So it will take a special, lonely kind of madness to consider,and plan for, a future thousands of years beyond the boundaries of our own graves.

The question is will our collective memories be a fitting legacy for a civilization both unfailingly aspirational and perpetually self-sabotaging.

None of us have to go to far back to remember – Two World Wars, (the technological developments of the century are directly connected to these wars, mobile phones and internet, for example) the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Slavery , Apartheid, Rwanda.

Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, who detailed their century’s technological innovations along with their socioeconomic repercussions, concluding,

“I trust that posterity will read these statements with a feeling of proud and justified superiority.

It’s impossible to know what future iterations of the human race—living, if we have survived, in a radically different world—might find interesting.

At some point there will be no evidence of human civilization on Earth’s surface, but there will be a collection of dead spacecraft from an ancient civilization in Earth’s orbit . For alien archaeologists that might come along before our sun turns into a red giant, these dead spacecraft will be like the Pyramids of Giza, the slabs of Stonehenge: monolithic records of the distant human past.

But who are we to get to speak for Earth?

I would say everyone.

The human capacity for abstract thought and symbolic expression knows no bounds.  A time capsule is an object with one foot in the present and the other in the reaches of the distant future.

Its makers must judiciously cull from the artistic, literary, industrial, technological, and scientific output of the world, selecting only the most salient and representative elements.

So who will select – Google, Face Book, Twitter, or the Cloud.

Would you trust any of them.

There, this bobbin, this seed, this magazine, this list of world leaders—this is who we are. This of course would be a folly to allow any of them represent us.  Archaeologists, after all, learn a great deal from garbage, from things ancient civilizations didn’t think important enough to preserve.

An orbiting space-time capsule, built with enough storage capacity to contain an uncensored “Fresco of Messages” from every living man, woman, and child on Earth would be the solution. Not that it particularly matters.

Half the joy of a time capsule is the idea, the sheer hubris of conquering time. Like packing a suitcase before a long journey, building a time capsule is a way to parse the horrific randomness of the world and repackage it, sensible and self-contained, to oneself.

So how would we pack this last century of murders by states and non-state actors—death squads, party paramilitaries, guerrillas, terrorists—but mainly by states. 

One scholar, R. J. Rummel, has estimated that purposeful state killings of civilians, which he calls democide, have taken the lives of 169 million people in this century. Almost one-fourth of them (38.6 million or 22.8%) were victims of genocide. Others were victims of politicize, mass killing of political groups, indiscriminate state massacres, forced labor and concentration camps, of bombing of civilians, and of starvation imposed and reinforced by the state. The number of victims in this century surpasses the population of all but the five largest states in the world today.

So on a political level, we would have to wrestle with doctrines of realpolitik—the notion that the state is merely a self-interested organization to preserve its political and economic resources—and realize that our most lasting resource is our values.

Material resources, such as oil, are depleted by drawing on them.

But values can be replenished by drawing on them.

If all of this is potentially incomprehensible—gift from ancestors as distant from us as we are from Neolithic cave-painters have changed all of our lives.

While we need an affirmation of hope, what we do not need is empty rhetoric of poverty, inequality, corruption, religion,

It is too late to say “Never again” again. For it has happened again and again and again.

DEMOCRACY IS GOING THROUGH TOUGH TIMES.

12 Saturday Jul 2014

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Many people are and have become disillusioned with the present day political system-when over the last few year they have seen their Governments bail out Bankers with their hard-earned money, only to see financiers continue to pay themselves huge bonuses.

But this is only one reason not the main reason why Democracy is in the shit.

The main reason is that Democracy is for sale, with money talking louder than ever, with the rich becoming more powerful and the poor becoming poorer.

Why so?

Because:  Thousand of Lobbyist hiding behind free speech for large fees are insisting that political expenditure is needed when it only complicate simple things and allows certain sweet- talking politicians to mislead the people like silver-tongued Mr Blair did over the Iraq war.

Because:  It is also suffering from serious structural problems as it is under attack, from inherited entitlements and future investment.

Because:  Combined with globalization and the digital revolution has made many institutions look out of date.

Because:  We all know that it is culturally rooted, a powerful but imperfect mechanism that endeavors to harness human creativity while on the other hand put the brakes on human perversity.

Because:  It is surrendering even more powers over trade and global markets to International Monetary Funds, the European Union, Independent Central Banks.

Because:  It is constantly oiled and adjusted by elections that are concerned with the party faithful which in fact disenfranchises large number of voters which encourages extremism.

Because:  It puts  too much emphasis on elections and too little on the other essentials features of democracy, like individual rights, freedom of speech which should be guaranteed and avoiding Majoritarianism.

Because:  The internet is making it easier to organize and agitate. Where elections take place only ever few years people are living from day-to-day indulging the pleasures of the moment.

Because:  Hyperdemocrarcy is voting endlessly on-line.

Because Internationally:

America is paralyzed by institionalises gridlock and fear that democracy is producing rogue regimes, empowering Jihadists.

China is a world power.

The Arab spring is creating war not peace. Egypt, Middle East, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq,

Europe:

Italy, Greece replaced democratically leaders with technocrats. The EU with vast youth unemployment, and exploitation of a decent living wage has become a breeding ground for National Front, the Golden Dawn both political parties with Nazi tendencies.

There is no end to the Because’s.

So instead it is reducing liberty, and handing even more powers to special interests to appease the Economy by privatizing its responsibilities democracy is far more than holding elections. It has to be for all of the people all of the time both the born and unborn, not profit for profit sake.

We know that we all cannot live the same lives, but we can all be given a helping hand and the same opportunities that are under our control.

But what is actually happening?

More and more countries are setting up Sovereign Wealth Funds.

E-Democracy is becoming more and more powerful signaling the possible misuse of Big data in the future.

Our world is in turmoil,with inequality, lack of resources, pollution,economic migration, and not forgetting conflicts.

What is Democracy?

Here are a few Quotations.  Make up your own mind.

“Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal’s alike.”

Plato (428? BC–347 BC), Greek philosopher.
The Republic (370? BC).

“Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organisation cannot live a full-blooded life.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931– ), Russian statesman.

“Democracy means government by discussion but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967), British politician.
Speech at Oxford (June 14, 1957).

“Democracy is the accursed power which stands on Privilege”
Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953), French-born British writer.

” Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), English writer and poet.
The New York Times (February 1, 1931).

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish playwright.

“A democracy—that is a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government of the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness’ sake I will call it the idea of Freedom.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860), U.S. Unitarian clergyman.

What ever it is many have die for it and will continue doing so. May they rest in peace.

Robert de Mayo Dillon. ( 1947-   ) Irish Man.

READ THIS AND WEEP:

11 Friday Jul 2014

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The kings of capitalism think their privileged positions essentially as a natural right while our Economy, our Democracy and our societies are paying for gross inequities.

The deprivations of one generation are being visited upon the next.

Economic inequality translates into political inequality and political inequality leads to increasing economic inequality and wars. People have been shooting at each other since the 13th century.

The true test of an economy is not how much wealth its princes can accumulate in tax havens, but how well off the typical citizen is.

Is not the above the picture what we should have in Western Economies these days. A fair distribution of wealth befitted to all irrelevant to their circumstances or class.

Instead we have subsidies to rich farmers as our governments cut back on nutritional support for the needy.  Or, Drug companies get billions as health care is limited. Or, Banks that brought on the global financial crisis got billions while we lost out homes due to their predatory lending practices. Then of course we have Quantitative easing that is supposed to trickle down to us punter only to evaporate on the balance sheets of the banks.

So it no wonder that our divisions are deep.

We have soaring University fees and declining incomes resulting in larger debt burdens for the young and old along with Mass incarceration and Justice only affordable to a few. All served up by those suffering from dead behind the eyes disease.

All this is happening while High frequency trading, sovereign wealth funds and foreign exchange transactions continue to rip us all off.

What should we do?

WE MUST CHANGE THE RENT SEEKING SOCIETY WE HAVE GRAVITATED TOWARDS IN WHICH WEALTH PEOPLE OBTAIN PROFITS BY MANIPULATING THE SYSTEM.

If you don’t believe me just look at the trend that has developed over the past third century leading to violent extremes of wealth and income which has produced Slums Mortgages and the Shining city on the hill.

One third of the urban population of developing countries now live in SLUMS.

SOME FOR OVER THREE DECADES.

They that is Slums are the true testimonial to Inequality.

An impediment to advancement, A curse to Hygiene, a source of ill-health, rent havens for landlords, Cheap labor source, exploitation and crime depots, propagators of diseases, and poverty, recruiting camps for terrorists, Capitalistic warts, photos for tourists and coffee table books.

The dynamics of the imperial capitalism of the 19th century needn’t apply in the democracies of the 21st century.

Corporations interest argued for getting rid of regulations, even when those regulations did so much to protect and improve our environments, our health our safety our economy itself.

Long live Mrs Thatcher and her buddy Ronald  Reagan, the free market.

Also Bin Laden, Bush and Blair with the Axis of Evil. Their combined ideology was hypocritical because they all ensured that the rules of the game to keep wealth at the top of the political agenda through politics.

What have we ended up with?

Growth has gone to the very, very top while quarter of all American children under five live in poverty, with mass incarceration beginning to define America – a country with about 5% OF THE WORLDS POPULATION, but around a fourth of the world’s prisoners.

The time has come to end special privileges of speculators, corporations and the rich. The Politics of Greed must change. Just because you have heard it all before it does not mean it cannot be done. We all created the god dame problem and turned a blind eye to it creating Climate change. We all must now mend it before its to late.

Perfect competition should drive profit to zero.

We are not in a position to eradicated Slums and their living blemish on all of us, but we can come together to demand a World Aid Commission of 0.05% be placed on all High frequency trading, sovereign wealth funds and Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000.(see previous posts)

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The billions created by such a Commission would go a long way to re-balancing the Have’s and Have not’s.  

What can you do in thirteen-thousandths of a second?

08 Tuesday Jul 2014

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A few days ago I posted a blog describing Dark Pools in which High-Frequency traders exploit the stock markets.

If you have read any of my blogs you will see that I have bleated on about Capping Greed as the only solution to tackle our world problems.

It is this type of exploitation of making money out of money without contributing a farthing to making the world a better place that has to be undone, not just greed.

I advocate that this can be done within our Capitalist System with little or no cost without causing any major ripples in World trade or World Markets and the like. Sixty five people become $ millionaires each day.

This can be done without trying to change the system for better, or worse.

How?  By applying A World Aid Commission of 0.05% at source on all Foreign Exchange Transactions of over $20,000, on all Sovereign Wealth funds Acquisitions and on all High-Frequency traders on the stock markets.

The result would be a Perpetual World Aid Fund of billions to address all our current day problems of Poverty, Inequality, Education, Health, Aid, Development, Climate change, Drug research, to name just a few.

Since capitalism is inherently a system of exploitation, theft, and since capitalists, as a class, do regularly and systematically resort to lying, brutality, torture, oppression, murder, and war to defend their scam, capitalists are not merely greedy, they are in a lot of our minds outright criminals, especially when looking at sweatshops, unsafe mines, and toxic workplaces.

We should not limit our criticisms to the cruelty and greed of capitalists, but direct it to the system itself (although obviously such capitalists have to be able to at least stomach what they are doing, which is already a strong indictment of their characters). Being able to externalize (fob off onto the public) many of the costs of production is almost a definition of capitalism, as a system of competing, profit-based, corporations, supported by nation-states.

You could say that Capitalism is condemned because it is based on the exploitation of one class by another, so that the exploiting class can enrich itself, or simply remain in power. A few get rich, while most remain poor. In fact, the few are rich precisely because the many are poor, because the wealth of the few is stolen wealth, taken from the labors of the many. It is not just that someone is getting rich, it is their getting rich at the expense of others that is the problem.

There is no way of stopping exploitation other than exposing it in all it’s forms. We are yet to have a conscience at all about the exploitation of human cultures. If it is, in reality, capitalism that is the motor force behind the destructive forms of globalization, then it must be in their capacity to neutralize or transform this particular mode of exploitation that one can best test these various forms of resistance to the problems.

A common danger tends to concord.

Communism is no better as it the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In Communism, inequality comes from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence.

It is only by portraying and exposing capitalists as the criminals they are that we can begin to break through their ideological defenses and destroy their credibility. If we were all getting rich together, and if this were accomplished without destroying the earth, it would be another thing entirely. It would either be paradise or hell on earth.

Under capitalism, just as under all previous social orders based on hierarchy and class, everyone does not get rich. The normal way is profit-making, by exploiting wage-slaves, and defending all the institutions needed to perpetuate this exploitation, through murder and war if need be.

I come now to a case that I finally have to admit is nothing but pure, unadulterated greed — the salaries of today’s crop of corporate executives. The millions they are raking in is preposterous when you look at Food banks, people sleeping on the streets, charities begging, people struggling left right and center, while politicians bend and privatize or lives.

Globally the Greens have arisen like a spontaneous combustion, a reaction to the narrow-minded state-backed exploitation of resources and wealth for a few at the expense of the many.

So what can we achieve in a blink of an eye. Remembering that we share  one-third of our DNA with lettuce we can only hope that the other two-thirds can see the light.

We can unite into one voice to demand a 0. 05% World Aid Commission by Sponsoring a world Peoples mandate to be passed by the United nations on behalf of all of us and the earth we all live on of put in place such a Commission.