Monthly Archives: August 2014

THERE IS GOING TO BE A NEW WORLD ORDER.

31 Sunday Aug 2014

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WHY?

Not because there are numerous nuttier’s or religions organizations that say so.

But because of power, which is a zero-sum game that takes no account of past or future history.

While the world is choking in the dust of Iraq International agreements are being robbed of their meaning by Russia takeover of Crimea while sitting on the Security Council of the United Nations vetoing all resolutions.

Throughout the twentieth century, the list of the world’s great powers was predictably short: the United States, the Soviet Union, Japan, and northwestern Europe.

Decades of unchallenged supremacy for the United States is now coming to an end. America now has no stomach to get involved in world policing.

China holds over a trillion dollars in hard currency reserves, India’s high-tech sector is growing by leaps and bounds, and both countries, already recognized nuclear powers, are developing blue-water navies.

While the European Union discusses new sanctions on Russia France is selling it Navy War ships, England is welcoming Russian oligarchs money which is permeating the upper reaches of society buying up London Property and football clubs, all before Russia turns off the gas to the European Economy.

You don’t have to look far to see other signs of change.

The Oceans of the world are in a critical state of health.

The death of the Aral Sea has become a never-ending nightmare.

The Arctic — a once pristine wilderness is under siege.

Google had 2,161,530,000 searches.

More than 3 trillion has being wiped off global share prices since the start of January.

Climate change is the biggest single threat.

More than two decades after the Cold War ended, the world’s combined inventory of nuclear warheads remains at a very high level: more than 16,000.

More than a billion people don’t have access to safe drinking water. 2.6 billion people, almost half the world’s population doesn’t have access to adequate sanitation services.

More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.

More than 130 million children who are under the age of five will still remain malnourished by 2020.

If current trends continue, by 2050 something on the order of a third or 40% of all species will either have become extinct or will be on the threshold of going extinct.

The Earth has been sending us distress signals and the distress signals have to do with the pressures of human population and the pressures of the human economy on the ecosystems.

Incredibly, the world’s population grew more in the past fifty years than in the preceding 4 million years .Today our numbers have surged to nearly six and half billion and our population is increasing by nearly 80 million people each year – 220,000 each day.

In the face of poverty people will tend to utilize whatever they can to survive.

The State of the World Finances is in disarray.

world debt infographic

In the mean time Sovereignty Wealth Funds blunder the earth for profit.

Disregarding the current conflicts there are I am sure hundreds of additional indicators that a New World Order is needed.

We can only hope that Social media is not turning us all into morons blindly asking Google for answers.

We need a new world order that has at its heart the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given;

That understands the requirement for there to be a re orientation of technology the key link between humans and nature.

That understands in broadest sense, the strategy for sustainable development.

That aims to promote harmony among human beings and between humanity and nature.

  • a political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision-making. Democracy as it stands is now a rhetorical device.
  • an economic system that is able to generate surpluses and technical knowledge on a self-reliant and sustained basis.
  • a social system that provides for solutions for the tensions arising from disharmonious development.
  • a production system that respects the obligation to preserve the ecological base for development.
  • a technological system that can search continuously for new solutions.
  • an international system that fosters sustainable patterns of trade and finance.
  • an administrative system that is flexible and has the capacity for self-correction.
  • a new United Nations with all participants on equal terms.
  • a Cap on Capitalist Greed.
  • a watertight ban on trading of arms.
  • a transitioning to clean energy.
  • a move away from the Production and consumer society which cannot be sustained by the planet.
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THE BEADY EYE: Was the Iraq war worth it? ( This is a post from unknown quest writer)

29 Friday Aug 2014

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I am sure you have noticed that the above question is making the rounds.

What a load of codswallop is being spouted and printed on the subject.

Firstly it’s the wrong question as the bullets are still flying.

Till they stop there is no answer, and we all know that history is written by the victors.

But here are some hard facts from Saddam Hussein coming of power to what we have today.

1979 – Saddam Hussein succeeds Al-Bakr as president.

1980-1988- Iran-Iraq war.

1988- Iraq attacks Kurdish town of Halabjah with poison gas.

1981- Israel attacks nuclear research centre near Baghdad.

1990- Iraq invades Kuwait, massive US-led military campaign forces Iraq to withdraw February 1991- The Gulf War.

1991- Iraq subject to weapons inspection program.

1991- Kurdish uprising brutal suppressed. UN safe-haven established in northern Iraq to protect Kurds.

1992 – No-fly zones for Iraqi planes.

1993 – US launch missile attack on Iraqi Headquarters.

1995. UNSC Resolution 986 allows the partial resumption of Iraq’s oil export to buy food and medicine.

1995  Saddam Hussein wins rig elections.

The War started long before the USA/British invasion.

They claimed that the war would be cheap, perhaps even profitable, thanks to lower oil prices.costs:

The costs are, alas, all too evident. Nearly 5,000 dead Americans, another 20,000 or more permanently disabled, and $1 trillion in expenses. At least 100,000 Iraqis dead.

The financial costs, including the cost to service the debt, will likely total nearly $4 trillion.

Estimates of the number of Iraqis killed in the sectarian bloodletting that occurred after the collapse of Saddam’s regime exceed 130,000.

The group that emerged in direct response to our occupation is resurgent, not just inside Iraq but as a regional movement, rebuilding its networks in Syria, Jordan, and Libya.

The Iraqi Christian community has been decimated.

By going to war in Iraq, we set the stage for the emergence of an entirely new branch of al-Qaida—al-Qaida in Iraq.

The imperfect and fragile government that has emerged in Iraq was hardly worth the costs incurred.

If the country has salvaged anything constructive from this war, it seems to be a greater appreciation for war’s unpredictability and the limits of American power. Remains an open question.

Iraq is also, right now, the only authentic democracy in the Arab world — is quite true.

Large portions of Iraq have fallen to the murderous Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.

Doesn’t matter whether Iraq stands on its own or collapses into a sea of blood and hate most people want to be masters of their own fate.

Goodwill towards America squandered throughout the world.

The benefits are fuzzy and fragile. Millions were displaced, many still have not returned to their homes.

A U.S. administration forever tarred by an unpopular war.

The burden of proof has shifted toward those making the case for war, in Iran, or Syria, or Yemen, or countless other places.

What will remain is that moment in history when a people who had been subjugated by a tyrant’s whims were no longer afraid of him.

GOD HELP THE ARCTIC.

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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You would be ever so wrong to think that with all the present problems we have in the world that there could not be another in the melting pot.

The worlds present problems seem all but unsolvable until we learn to share wealth and remove inequalities that plague the earth. ( see previous posts)

For more than 800,000 years, ice reigns over the Arctic Ocean. Forming a layer of reflective protection, sea ice is one of the main earths regulators of our climate and our livelihoods.

Now the melting ice of the Arctic which has the potential to transform global climate and ecosystems as well as global shipping, energy markets, and other commercial interests is at this very moment shaping up to be the next hot spot for conflict.

Arctic permafrost is also melting, changing tundra to wetlands and shrub lands. All of these changes have profound effects on wildlife, and the human communities.

The benefits and pitfalls of the Arctic will have a global impact.

High Arctic sea belongs to no one and should remain the common property of mankind.

Fat chance of this happening.

With oil and gas companies consistently pressure politicians to open the Arctic Refuge to drilling. She is in the cross-hairs of the industrialists who covet her basement rich in oil, one of the dirtiest fuels.

Retreating sea ice is not only restructuring Arctic ecosystems, it is also permitting new industrial access for commercial fishing, offshore energy and commercial shipping on a scale never seen before.

Five countries are already seeking to annex territory that until now were under the authority of any state.

If tomorrow they come to an end, there would be only 9% of open water across the Arctic!

In addition, riparian countries are mobilizing their military capabilities on site, which could threaten peace in the region.

In preserving the Arctic, it is ourselves that we preserve.

In September 2012, the Arctic Ocean ice pack shrank to its lowest extent on record—49 percent below the average over the past 35 years.

The problems to come can only be addressed through a deep horizontal and vertical effort, in order to preserve the sustainability of the Arctic.

We should all be seeking an Arctic region that is stable and free of conflict.

Where all nations act responsibly in a spirit of trust and cooperation, and where economic and energy resources which are going to be developed are done so in a sustainable manner that also respects the fragile environment and the interests and cultures of indigenous people.

It’s rather remorse that Bill Gates is investing millions in the doomsday seed vault in Svalbard. A barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty which is 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole in the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean.

Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT).

Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total.

Such control and power over the food chain has never existed before in the history of mankind existed. 

I diverse, back to the subject.

The EU’s primary interest in the region is economic, as 90% of its trade  happens via maritime routes.

Green Peace is currently looking for 6 million signatures to lobby the United Nations to pass a resolution to Declare Arctic international waters “preserved natural area. ( See Their Web Site)

As they say ” the common and immutable commitment to preserving the planet we leave to our children. This desire transcends all boundaries and makes us stronger than all the armies or petrodollars.” “We will send a clear message to world peace and respect for the planet depend on the preservation of the Arctic.”

“We will resound loudly our appeal to political leaders around the world and when we are millions to stand together, we will ask the UN to adopt a global treaty to protect the Arctic Nations”

“We want to create a” natural preservation zone “around the North Pole, and banning destructive industries in the Arctic.

THE PETITION now has more than 5 million signatures! 

BEFORE IT TOO LATE SIGN UP . I SUPPORT IT. 

FOR IT TO WORK IT MUST BE ADOPTED ALONGSIDE A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05%. ON ALL FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS OVER $20,000, ON ALL HIGH FREQUENCY  STOCK EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS AND ON ALL SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS ACQUISITIONS. ( see previous posts)  

NO FUNDS NO FREE ARCTIC.

THE DEATH OF THE SEA.

25 Monday Aug 2014

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This post is for my brother a fisherman.

The other day I was standing at a fish counter in the market, and I thought to myself I am not looking at a display of the ocean’s bounty, it’s a Museum – by the end of this century many of these animals may be history, due to man’s reckless abuse of the planet.

I counted ten types of bivalves – creatures like clams, oysters and mussels that use calcium carbonate to make their endlessly varied shells that will be in twenty years in some parts of the world, entirely gone.

Luckily prawns, shrimp, and crabs make their shell out of polymer called chitin, so the rapidly acidifying waters of our oceans won’t dissolve them as it does the bivalves. however the fastest change in the ocean chemistry in 300 million years will change them.

As my brother will tell you the Spaniards eat more fish than anyone else in Europe, monk-fish, hake,sardines,tuna, all of which are on the at-risk list, because of over-fishing or change in the food that supply them, or is it more likely that they will be replaced by the bigger threat of the changing ocean bio-geochemistry.

We now have dead zones that have being multiplying. The emptiest places on the planet. These places have little or no life other than bacteria.

They are caused by one of the worlds must pressing problems climate change.

Our oceans are gobbling up carbon dioxide that is reducing the Ph in their waters. In pre-industrial times the pH was in the region of 8.2 and it is now estimated by the year 2100 it will be as low as 7.7 the lowest in 55 million years.

You might think so what I won’t be around. You would be wrong.

This acidification of the Oceans is already effecting Coral reef which are vital to 25% of all marine life not to mention the 4,000 species of fish that start out from such reefs.

This February 10 million scallops were wiped out of the coast of British Columbia.

All forms of Plankton the base food for every animal living in the sea is already on the way out. Their death produces toxins that kill fish, creating dead zones with over 400 recorded around the world to date. For example the Mississippi Delta, and large sections of the Baltic Sea ( A third of the sea life is dead in the Baltic) is now like the Black Sea a hypoxic area.

If we don’t stop the pollution of our Oceans and Seas there will be only Jelly Fish that enjoy acidification on the tables of Fish Markets of the not so distant future.

Lets hope the Spaniards don’t like them.

ARE YOU A YOUNG OR OLD MUSLIM?

24 Sunday Aug 2014

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If you are reading this I firstly want you to know that I could not care whether you are young or old, a practicing Sunnis or Shias, a Jew, a Christian, or a Muslim from what ever Sect, my only concern is that you have an open mind.

I don’t propose to know much about the roots of pure forms of any religion especially Islam.

However the history of all religions that are based on books, (the texts of which are open to widely varying interpretations, process which often involves outbidding them in a contest for greater “authenticity” ) has led to conflicts and suppression of all other beliefs.

Why do I say this?

Because I am from a country that to this day after seven hundred years of struggle against an occupier and civil war, is still effected by interpretations, bigotry, suffering, and death, that has nothing to do with Muslim who you could count on one hand.

So in this post I am not going to lecture on past history, but suggest solutions to present day conflicts.

My purpose here is to highlight some of the reasons we find ourselves in such a mess with the Arab world.

We all have a right to our own opinions so please feel free to comment.

Religious extremism is a conduit for misery, not its fundamental cause.

The trouble with religious extremism or dictators is when it comes to politics both do not allow the give-and-take of parliamentary discourse. Nor do they protect minorities, allow a free press, create independent courts, universities, trade unions, and support woman emancipation.

Why Arab countries have so miserably failed their 350 million people is down to sharing of wealth.

Economic stagnation bred dissatisfaction, and unemployment, and electronic media allowed the young to see outside stirring up a revolution in attitudes that now cannot be un-invented.

We cannot now simply stamp out the Jihadist cause or impose prosperity and democracy.

We must appeal to the majority to make their voices heard to allow pluralism, education for all, and open markets to be re established, rather than being trapped either in stagnant repression or cycles of strife, that are interlinking.

No conflict since the Second World War has caused such widespread damage to the worlds cultural heritage, not to mention 300,000 dead.

The plantation of a Jewish state in Palestine drove a physical wedge between Arab countries and provided an excuse for the military dominance by Israel destabilizing the whole region.

There is no solution to this wedge other than one state for all.

However three-quarters of the world has suffered colonial rule and it should not now tolerate ISIS.

If necessary the free world( it will not be able to stand by like it did in Rwanda, or hide behind UN resolutions) must come to the aid of its fellow Arab Muslim citizens to stop any form of ethnic cleansing or Extermination.

In doing so we will uphold the sanctity of life, and the values of freedom, not democracy at the point of a gun.

It takes openness for societies to progress, to have closed minds and politics together is a recipe of disaster. War has many components, of which the battle is only one element.

Jihadists that declare an eventual global caliphate that knows no borders which is led by a former student theology and warlord that has given himself the title the successor to the PROPHET MUHAMMAD UNDERLINES THE SORROWFUL CONDITION INTO WHICH ARAB POLITICS HAS SUNK.

ALL I CAN SAY IS INSHALLAH TO US ALL.   History rarely sleep securely.

HERE IS ONE OF THE GREATEST QUESTIONS OF OUR TIME.

23 Saturday Aug 2014

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Some time ago I posted:

Big Data is leading us to Cultural De-Acceleration.

We are becoming increasingly “digitized.”

When you ask somebody from the industry, “What is Big Data?” they will usually reply that this describes the challenge that companies that collect and analyse the high volumes of Internet data face. This “big data” technically refers to the specialized tools required to store and analyse.

However, this response says very little about the significance of today’s digital revolution.

When the Sloan Digital Sky Survey started in 2000, its telescope collected more data in its first week than has been amasses in the entire history of astronomy.

Wall-Mart in the USA handles more than 1 million customers transactions every hour, feeding its databases with 2.5 petabytes- the equivalent of 167 times the books in the America’s Library of Congress.

Facebook has over 40 million photos and God only knows what Google is up to.

The point is that the world now contains an unimaginably vast amount of digital information which is growing bigger and more rapidly.

In recent years Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, and there like have spent $15 billion buying up software companies specializing in data management and analytics.

Data has become the new raw material of big business.

The trail of clicks is valuable and can be sold and you would indeed be an idiot to think that it is having no effect on your life.

The way that information is managed touches all areas of life.

What is true now is that more of our lives and activities are being stored digitally.

Like any technology, knowledge can be used for social good or to make things worse for people. Digital monopolies will wield considerable power.

There is likely to be a power imbalance if this kind of new capability of “knowing” is not well-handled by society.

There is no reason to think that the changes we are witnessing today will be any less disruptive than the Industrial Revolution.

We’re going to end up reinventing what it means to have a human society.

Who you actually are is now determined by where you spend time and which things you buy.

Big data is increasingly about real behavior and by analyzing this sort of data, scientists can tell an enormous amount about you. They can tell whether you are the sort of person who will pay back loans. They can tell you if you’re likely to get diabetes.

I am not a Edward Snowden.

If we handled Big data correctly it will bring massive benefits to us all – to our cities, to our environment, to our health, to almost everything.

Yet we also need a system that is flexible and adaptable enough to allow for bright ideas and social, business, and research entrepreneurship to build a better future, i.e. without getting tangled up in unthinkingly risk-averse bureaucracy and red tape. Without the rich getting richer and the poor living in a desert of ignorance.

We want to ensure that there is a high trust system for data sharing, not one that mitigates many of the risks.

We need to think of solutions that are sound and strong, but not brittle.

What kinds of principles and solutions are they?

There are many problems to be resolved. 

Who owns, controls, or has decision rights about data? Is it the collector of the data? Certainly they may have a financial interest.

The person who the data is about?

They certainly have an interest.

In order to reap the benefits of the data revolution, it is clear that existing databases will be re-used and new databases will be created.

But then, who owns the resulting data? The re-user?

Will they be owned by the entity disclosing or collecting the data, or will they be open by default?

What about collective ownership of data, such as IWI data?

How are intellectual property rights arrived at from the data managed?

Who has decision rights over data? The collector? Provider (if different)? The person or entity that the data is about? If there is a data commons, who makes decisions.

Who is the data custodian and what are their obligations?

Who will look after the (newly created) databases?

For instance, who is responsible for the processing and storage of the data?

Where and how will data be stored, and for how long?

Who will provide safeguards for data quality and data accuracy?

Who is accountable when data gets stolen?

Who will have the authority to decide on those data access rights?

What happens to data if the custodian gets liquidated or sold off (to another
business overseas)?

Can the liquidator on-sell the data to pay off creditors?

How do we protect the digital rights?.

We are living in a pluralistic society with differences in cultural backgrounds and value perspectives,which are spread all over the world and exposed to different cultures. These cultural differences influence our privacy perceptions and the types of data we are willing to share.

How could we maintain our cultural diversity and be an inclusive society in which the digital rights of ever one are protected?

What will be the social contract for a data-driven future?

The value of data no longer resides solely in its primary purpose. Value also resides in the re-use of data.

What do you give consent to when we cannot even imagine what possible future value that data may have?

Most data re-uses haven’t been imagined when the data is first shared, which raises the question of how individuals can give informed consent to an unknown.

Do individuals need to opt-in to an open-ended, multi-purpose arrangement?
Or are there perhaps other possible arrangements for informed consent we might be able to create?

Do children have digital rights to consent before a certain age?

What about you, and your family’s, rights when you die? Do we need digital wills?

Do we need the ability as individuals to opt out in the digital age, similar to how we can decide to opt out of target marketing campaigns of telemarketers?

Do we have a right to revoke our consent with the use of our personal data? How could this be arranged?

Will the digital footprints and breadcrumbs you have left earlier in your digital life, such as the public posting of sensitive pictures, haunt you for the rest of your life or even beyond?

How do we ensure the best outcome in a global environment where digital data crosses borders?

The Internet has, with a few notable exceptions, no borders and the digital world is truly global.

There are major questions, even on a domestic scale about the provenance and ownership of data, but these are amplified when global sharing is considered.

There are times when governments do not want your consent.

This is obvious in cases like policing and protecting children from child abuse.

There is no need to protect the privacy of some individuals.

But there are more challenging cases.

What if we could use personal health data to do research, to save lives?

What about when governments and insurance companies want to use shared data to manage their own interests?

Perhaps there is a life-threatening medical condition that a small number of people have. We want to profile them and compare them to others without the condition. But nobody wanted to opt in to share their data, though the risk to their privacy is small.

When do your interests in privacy outweigh other people’s interests or the collective interest? To track pandemic outbreaks. Who would give emergency consent to open all personal data to help stop the spread of this deadly disease?

Big data is big business for the criminal fraternity too who are adapting well to our digital future. Identity theft is increasingly common.

Like most things in this world the management of Big Data it is beyond control.

Along with Science and technology Big Data is out running our Morality.

There are a host of challenges and tensions for any society that wants
to play in this space; the sorts of challenges that we need to consider when people come asking to have and link up your data.

Challenges to safety from theft, bullying, or persecution; challenges to your autonomy and choice; challenges to freedom from interference from well-meaning (or otherwise) businesses and governments.

What can we do about it?                   You tell Me.

 

Both “good ” and “evil” are human creations.

21 Thursday Aug 2014

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Now before I start getting hate mail let me state I know little or nothing about Evil other than the greatest evils in the world are those inflicted by man upon man. 

For me the wrong that we do, though, the suffering that we cause, great though it may be, is a price worth paying for something that is profoundly valuable: genuine freedom.

I believe that much of the evil that we see around us is a consequence of the abuse of this freedom.

It is therefore impossible for us to know, with any degree of certainty, whether any given instance of suffering is unjustified, or whether it serves some greater purpose.

Each of us has tragedies in our lives, and it seems to us as though the world would have been a better place without those instances of suffering.

The problem of evil is that the existence of evil is a necessary condition for the existence of certain kinds of good.

Compassion, for instance, is of great value, but can only exist if there is suffering.

Bravery, too, is a virtue, but only if we sometimes face danger.

Self-sacrifice is another great good, but can only exist if there is inter-dependence.

The problem of evil, then, must be recast as the problem of unjustified evil.

It is only the existence of unjustified evil, evil that serves no greater purpose, that presents a problem. 

Today it is the nature of this change in evil that has become harder to ignore as circumstances turn more critical.

Everyone has a conscience even if he or she does not follow a sense of morality which comes from a source outside of individuals. Once acquired the belief systems function as a basis for the acquisition of additional beliefs.

When the nature of the Evil and its creation are properly understood the conflict between evil and good dissolves.

Morality itself cannot easily be proved to exist / morality is socially defined rules / laws/ developed to control people / morality is part of evolution / survival depends on cooperation with others

It is not possible to make a world without evil, for its creation depended on the free will. 

So it seems at the moment that if there is a God he did not choose the best in creating this world.

We all know that there are many forms of evil, and I have no intention of addressing them all here. These few written words on the subject only add to the billions written down through the centuries.

However if we as the current caretakers of earth want to address one of the main underlining causes of evil we must tackle Inequality.

The distribution of wealth, health, and education all the seed beds of Evil.

There is no point in being abhorred by what you are allowed to see on the media, or living your life in denial in the Cyber world.  As long as there is massive Inequality we will have acts of evil.

It does not have to be like this. We the people must table a motion in the United nations to pass a resolution of behalf of earth to place a 0.05% Aid commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereignty Wealth Funds Acquisitions and on all Foreign  Exchange transactions over$2,000.  ( See previous posts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS -Not a matter of minor concern.

20 Wednesday Aug 2014

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Its back to Sovereign Wealth Funds and what they have being up to recently.

Shining a light behind their closed doors isn’t easy. Seldom mentioned in any Political or economical discourse these Funds will be the Jihad of our times.

Although sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been around for decades, it was not until the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007 that they truly garnered recognition as major players in the investment market.

With vastly different political, economic, and investment philosophies States/Countries are starting using their populations’ collective wealth to do more than simply investing with hopes of compelling returns.

When they invest in the infrastructure or some other critical industry of another country, for example, people are left to wonder what the real motivation might be.

Guided by the interests of the state rather than those of international business community they are gobbling up what is left of the worlds assets/resources.

With a mind-boggling $6 trillion of assets, (Sovereign wealth funds–charged with preserving the accumulated fortunes of their home nations–are well known for their opaque, tightly guarded investment decisions) an amount on par with the collective economic output of Germany and the U.K. combined.

The 10 largest funds account for 80 percent of that wealth.

The value of global direct deals by sovereign-wealth funds hit $50.02 billion in the first half of 2014.

This was a 23.1% increase on comparable transactions in the first half of last year, and up from roughly $35 billion put to work in the first half of 2012.

The largest deal struck by a sovereign-wealth fund in the first half of 2014 was Singapore’s Temasek Holdings ‘ $5.7 billion purchase of a 25% stake in A.S. Watson Holdings, a health and beauty retailer.

The financial sector was the most attractive for sovereign-wealth funds. A total of $12.9 billion was put to work in direct deals in the sector.

The rise in direct deals by sovereign-wealth funds comes as large, sophisticated investors seek to bypass fees charged by fund managers.

In December, the former co-head of private equity at European firm Doughty Hanson joined the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In February, Pascal Heberling, a 12-year veteran of European private equity firm Cinven, joined the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to find direct investment opportunities.

Russia, for example, where tensions with the U.S. and European Union have continued to escalate. Political instability, exactly what sovereign investors like and don’t like, is affording more and more investment opportunities.

These funds’ potential influence is unquestionable.

Though countries all over the globe have sovereign investment funds, East Asian and the Middle Eastern funds make up 72 percent of total sovereign assets under active management.

As of 2012, Norway’s fund owned more than $4 billion worth of stock each in Apple, HSBC, Nestle, Royal Dutch Shell. That same year, China Investment Corp., – the world’s fourth largest fund – bought a 10 percent stake in Heathrow Airport Holdings. The $773 billion Abu Dhabi Investment Fund (world rank: #2), invested $7.5 billion in Citigroup in 2007, which helped the bank to recover from mortgage losses. Temasek Holdings’ assets are worth the equivalent of 10 percent of the Singaporean economy and include majority stakes in both the national telecommunications provider and Singapore Airlines. The Qatari Investment Authority is reportedly considering using some of its $170 billion to build infrastructure in India. International reserves have grown 1,300 percent in non-Japan Asia since 2000 and by 900 percent in the Middle East and Africa.

For a majority of those countries surpluses are due to commodity exports, such as oil in the Gulf states or copper in Chile. In other countries, such as China, high domestic savings rates and low levels of consumption created the surplus.

On the other hand countries like the United States have accumulated large fiscal deficits.

Is there any particular type of investment that these funds favor?

It’s true that most countries’ funds focus on foreign investments, but an increasing number do deploy their wealth primarily at home.

Among the large funds, domestic deals are especially pronounced in three countries: the UAE, Singapore, and Malaysia, where they make up well over 50 percent of total investments. In each case, the host country has established an investment vehicle whose principal purpose is to effectively oversee the management of state assets, including privatization, and to invest in strategic sectors of the domestic economy.

Roughly 40 new sovereign wealth funds that have emerged since 2000, almost 80 percent in emerging-market countries.

A growing proportion of investments are likely to be in real estate, infrastructure and private equity.

They tend to operate like holding companies and have greater access to international capital than the state-owned companies would on their own.

Many Westerners worry that SWF investments would permit foreign executives to sit on corporate boards — and advance their state objectives that as government-operated investment funds.

Much remains to be understood about their processes and activities.

One famous example is Dubai Ports World, which in 2006 wanted to invest in ports in the United States. There was tremendous concern that they could use their investments to influence shipping routes. Dubai Ports World eventually sold the American assets it had acquired to AIG.

As to the question of how will the funds be used in the future?

They are increasingly being tapped to provide financing for domestic investments, including to help close infrastructure gaps.

A large influx of money can strain domestic resources and create opportunities for official corruption.

This opens up some potential opportunities but also a number of serious risks, including undermining hard-earned efforts to sustain macroeconomic stability and becoming a vehicle for politically driven “investments” that fail to add to national wealth.

However, the global payment imbalances that have been a driving force for sovereign wealth funds are decreasing. In China, for example, the government is encouraging a shift from an export-driven economy to a consumer-driven one, which would tend to drive down the balance-of-payments surplus. At the same time, fiscal and external deficits are declining in the U.S.

So sovereign wealth funds will continue to grow, but at a slower pace than we have seen in the past decade, however these funds will continue to grow, and so will their influence. Sovereign wealth funds are in a position to invest in large infrastructure projects that are in great demand and face sizable financing needs.

While their investment goals and strategies vary widely, countries will have to be careful to account for this increased investment within their own budgetary framework to counter these pressures. Keep in mind, too,  Many of these countries do have great need for more domestic infrastructure investment. But there are limitations, such as domestic absorptive constraints. And frankly, there are sometimes governance issues that could result in the misuse of vast resources.

However, many of these countries are still developing their intellectual and legal infrastructure. When a fund chooses an overseas private equity fund to invest with, for example, they’ll obviously look at performance and risk metrics, but they’ll also look at how willing that private equity fund is to transfer its knowledge.

Before it’s too late and we all end up Privatized these funds must be regulated so they cannot own more than 20% of any Investment.  

If not, in the not so distant future we will find that everything our Taxes have paid to provide will end up in the hands of Profiteers.

 

 

 

 

 

TO UNDERSTAND SOMETHING IS TO BE LIBERATED FROM IT.

16 Saturday Aug 2014

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We have moved from basically a relative empty world to a relative world full of our stuff, full of man-made capital.

Our inability to grasp the new world is creating a vast vapidity and we are going to pay the price sooner than later.

With millions of people going to bed without food the age of decadence is coming to an end to be replaced hopefully by an age where money and wealth has to be shared.

The trickle down system does not work. Why! because by the time the money reaches the poor it is worth nothing.

Our so-called Capitalism of to-day that operates under a neoclassical school of economics rains supreme at the moment. Why! because it is backed by a legal system that legalizes it. However it will eventually fail because Greed is systemic within its core.

This is blatantly evident when we look at our Governments who are beholding onto corporate interests that will never serve the people. It is also evident went we look at our Banking systems, which create money from nothing and then lends it at interest. ( 97% of money is debt.) Debt is a form of slavery.

There can be also little argument that our Governments with the help of Milton Freeman, Ronald Regan, and hand bagging bashing Maggie Thatcher are now just clearing houses for the rich lobbyists that are concerns with the rich.

All three of them helped to created an Economic system that is based on what is not reality.

A dog eat dog society. Where Socially failure consumerism is now only to look good in other people eyes.

Where contrived wars on terror are promoting democracy at the point of a gun to be fought out in foreign countries and then presented to us by corporate owned media so that don’t have to experience the resulting destruction and death on our own door steps.

We have to change such veracious structure that has produced Institutions such as Goldman Sachs ( The biggest Bank robbers that pulled off the biggest hoist in the modern world: The big short with total impunity)

The more we grow the more poverty we create.

Our out dated competitive mentality will have devastating consequences.  We must move from globalization back to localization. It is our relations with other people is what make us really happy re humanism our lives. As Tyler Durden said ” The thinks that you own end up owing you.”

Making your own life does not work you must have attachment out side yourself.  

Internet enlightenment will play a big role in the future. The large cesspool of porn which debases us all on the internet will have to be removed. It is no wonder that Muslim fraternity consider the west full of unclean gentiles.

Passing the buck has to stop.

To improve things what we are being taught in university we will have to learn how to oppose in a constructive way, not on twitter or face book, or social media but by a collective world voice, that will have to be listen too.

Before the exhaustion of the world resources we would do well to return to Adam Smith economics to avoid morality socialism for the rich which is reflected by Scramble now the blood policy of Sovereign Wealth Funds.

The tax system is duking the world. We need a new form of capitalism where employer owned companies.

We must rise up and change the market.

What is created by human can be changed. Human beings go mad in crows and come to their senses as individuals.

Every drone kill produces five hundred so-called terrorists.

The monetary system to the world will have to be reformed.

Aid never goes to the people it goes to constructions companies and consultants on infrastructure, not the people.

So lets start by introducing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( Over $20,000) on all High frequency stock exchange transactions and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. Such a Commission would produce a perpetual fund of trillions to redistribute wealth around the world where needed. ( See previous postings)

 

LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION THAT WE SHOULD ALL BE ASKING ?

14 Thursday Aug 2014

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Where do the problems of modern existence lie?

WHEN YOU LOOK AROUND THE WORLD CAN ANY OF US HONESTLY SAY WE HAVE WON THE BATTLE FOR LIBERTY ?

It seemed to me that these days the enemies of our collective flourishing are more likely to lie in the troubles of unrestrained corporate and individual appetites and the unlimited pressure to generate immediate profit without regard for human and earthly costs.

Another words the fundamental problem facing us all is Inequality of Education, Health, Wealth, combined with unequal control over assets. These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.

Things have reached such a pass that incremental measures are not likely to be enough: “trans-formative changes” are required, with the ultimate aim of zero discrimination.

So measures to reduce inequality have to be part of a wider economic and social policy framework to control financial activity and direct it towards socially desired goals. ( These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.)

Even business leaders in Davos recently identified Inequality as one of the biggest threats to the world.

But what have we got?  Sovereignty Wealth Funds buying up the lot.

For hundreds of years now, humans have tended to believe that the best sort of government is one which leaves its citizens maximally ‘free’.

We’ve all come to associate good government directly and complicatedly with the promotion of ‘freedom’: freedom to worship as one pleases, to publish what one wants, to dress as one likes, to love whomever one desires.

In the meantime, those who have opposed ‘freedom’ have been presented in horrifying terms: They have been the wicked priests, the murderous Communists, demented Nazis, and Terrorists.

The painful fact is that the pursuit of what matters to us in the long-term and collectively may at times be in sharp conflict with our short-term and individual pleasures.

Promoting freedom above all other values may now be turning out to be deeply unhelpful to the long-term and collective interests of a nation and the earth as a whole.

It has grown too easy for corrupt and venal organisations to operate under the banner of ‘freedom’ in order to get away with activities that covertly run sharply counter to the public good.

Freedom is evidently not a virtue when it involves the freedom of bankers to offload ruinous financial instruments on an uneducated public, just as censorship – that bogeyman of contemporary politics – is evidently far from a vice when it prevents corporations from pushing alcohol on children or denying affordable housing to the poor.

Freedom is not a baseless word, but it is in general simply too vague, ambiguous and emotive a term to guide policy or to be an ideal around which a nation or people can reasonably cohere.

Instead of being in favor of ever falling prices for consumer goods, government should promote the notion of a just price, a floor for prices reflecting the cost of humane and decent employment and production. To get all of us into the habit of paying the just price: a price that would allow high quality goods attuned to genuine needs to be put together by workers employed at an adequate wage.

Government is the institutionalization of our long-term and collective interests. It is not ultimately responsible just for freedom, but its highest calling is to act as the guardian of long-term collective prosperity of all its citizens.

The governments of the future will have to accept that two idiots cannot remove one genius. They will have to measured and in skillful ways constantly step in to say ‘no’ to certain vested interests, without this in any way meaning that it is systematically anti-capitalist.

So what am I saying here?

Although we bridle at folk memories of police states Governments of the future with greater intelligence and democratic accountability will have to often be interested in restricting freedom.

Freedom = good/restriction = bad, has blinded us to a vital nuance with a grave potential to derail and corrupt public life:

An others words there will have to be a more important and ambitious view of what government is for than merely freedom. We are all threatened by aggressive and uncontrolled commercial interests determined to quash our peace of mind and confuse us about our real needs and we’ve overlooked that there are better and worse kinds of freedom.

The first step in the right direction is to cap Greed. ( See Previous Postings)

 

 

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