Monthly Archives: October 2014

When a robot dies you don’t have to write a letter to its Mother.

08 Wednesday Oct 2014

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An Observation:

The BARBARIC ACT OF ISIS terrorism is rightly standing at the forefront of national and international agendas.

We all know that terrorism has taking on many forms, covering a wide variety of groups and motivations making it especially difficult to define, or defeat.

It has led to a revolution in WAR.

Because life and death decisions are becoming more and more robotic.

The 5000 years of men fighting Wars is coming to an end and is causing wrinkles in the Geneva Convention Laws of WAR AND WAR CRIMES.

You don’t have to convince a Robotic or a drone or ID that there are 72 virgins awaiting in heave. You can build one in the morning put it on a web site and some lunatic sitting at home can remotely detonate from his armchair., without any declaration of war.

This Robotic Unmanned Slaughter is presenting a new human dilemma because it is imparting a message of Cowardliness, which I am sure is the very reason that we see ISIS waving their black flags, Saying come and fight us on the ground.

The disconnectedness of engagement is leading to what I call WAR PORN on U tube. Videos for entertainment set to music that are reshaping the public views on war.

The Future of war is not going to set by the USA.

The how and who we are fighting and with what is it going to be the future force that determine’s Wars. It will be a bloke who controls remotely the more powerful killing machines and then goes home after a 12 hour shift for his dinner, turns on the Telly to view the results of his joy stick.

A Drone see 0000, or  1111 whether it’s a eight year old granny holding a child or a tank. If it makes a mistake in identity.  The product can be recalled and modified, with the unmanned killing put down to a software glitch.

The Drive to destroy, to create, and build more and more inventive machines to participate in Watch wars requires the rules of engagement to be updated. Now.

The consequences of not doing so could be dramatic considering that nearly everyone agrees on the abhorrent moral character of terrorism,while simultaneously disagreeing on how to define and identify it

Because these drones and robotic leave a  perceptual effects that may occur largely unconsciously, a wide range of people may end up associating American enemies with terrorism, even if the factual basis for this connection is quite tenuous.

The following words were used to project terrorism as verminous:

1. Attack
2. Kill
3. Enemy
4. Danger
5. Tragedy

Should we be adding Unmanned Killing and Guantanamo Bay.

We read and hear daily a Global war on terror.  Is this terminology, mis-characterizing the nature of the War?

You might say if you are killed by a charging elephant or robotic drone it makes little difference you dead, AND YOU WOULD BE RIGHT DEAD IS DEAD.

So is there need for the Geneva Convention to take a look at the use of Weapons and Robotic programmers which have become highly securitized and politicized as a weapon for the realization of the goals of war on terror after 9/11.

                    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQIMGV5vtd4

It seems to me incredibly stupid that human mankind that has the ability to build an International space station, a marvel of human collective engineering, of knowledge passed down from the first carved flint arrow-head to the written word is so bent on self-destruction.

Why?

The answer is staring us all in the face. If you have anything there is nothing to lose.

Inequality is the source of most of to days worlds woes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Will emerging technology save us or destroy us all.

07 Tuesday Oct 2014

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A thought!

It has being a summer of bad news.

Geopolitical turmoil, Carbon spewing into the atmosphere, Ebola spreading, Global warming, Species and Forests disappearing, Ice melting, Inequality rampant, while Sovereign Wealth Funds privatize the world resources for profit.

All of this pales in comparison to what could be inflicted by high-tech nightmares that are awaiting in the long grass.

Bio-engineered pandemic, nanotechnology or Nano biotechnology gone haywire, AI run amok all could kill far quicker than ISIS or Capitalism.

Accidental self-destruction by any of the above is more than possible.

When you realize that there are people out there experimenting in their garden sheds. Recently Professor Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the university of Wisconsin engineered a strain of the deadly virus Swine flu than could evade the immune system. At least he did it in a proper Laboratory.

Nanotech is endeavoring to engineer microscopic factories of self-replicating bots with the power to make anything out of common materials.

If this was to happen we could have omnivorous bacteria that would wipe out real bacteria that could spread like pollen reducing the biosphere to dust.

AI on the other had if we get it right could be the best thing to happen in the universe, but get it wrong we wont be colonizing anywhere.

At the moment we spend more on lipstick than making sure our species survives.

Maybe its time we created another one of those useless World organisations to monitor emerging technology just in case it comes back to bit us all.

           

 

Lets Call a Spade a Spade. ISIS are maniacs in foreign lands that want war.

05 Sunday Oct 2014

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They say that the beginning of wisdom lies in recognizing the facts.

Let me start by saying that the title of this piece does not reflect my personal opinion. I believe no matter what you call them, ISIS, ISIL, or the Islamic State, that these barbaric maniacs are everyone’s problem.

It is easy to write and express one’s opinion but it is a totally different kettle of fish if you were the person that had to send young men and woman into war.

Most wars are started by nations look to their own self-interest in the final analysis. Greed – the desire for more power and more territory.

* Religious idealism * Corrupt governments * Discontent and poverty * starts wars.

This war has all the ingredients combined into one.

If you don’t believe me watch one of the beheadings they perform on video for the entertainment of the masses.  If you don’t think ISIS is our enemy TODAY, you are seriously misguided and potentially delusional.

The question is how do we stop them from driving around flying black flags and saying, ‘Hey, come blow us up’…

Is it too late, and will more violence only embed the current positions? ( Leaving a cesspool of frustrated terrorist armed to the teeth to fight it out between themselves.)

Should we say we’ve done enough damage and all that can be done now is bomb them.

Is it naive, the obtuse or the dishonest to believe (or profess to believe) that trying harder will have the slightest chance of producing a different and more favorable outcome?

Twenty-three years after Operation Desert Storm laid the basis for George H.W. Bush’s ‘new world order’ and 11 years after George W. Bush went his father one better by capturing Baghdad itself — ‘Mission Accomplished’ —

The Iraq war has resumed in the form of a small-scale but apparently open-ended air campaign.

As the United States and its Coalition partners moves into the eighth week of its bombing campaign against the Islamic State, we still have little info about the scope, duration and cost both in human terms and financial, or what will be in place when ISIS is destroyed?

Is there or should there be any strategic objective? Other than U.S. weapons being used on both sides.

Libya is an example of the disasters that U.S. wars leave behind them — a war, by the way, with U.S. weapons used on both sides, and a war launched on the pretext of a claim well documented to have been false that Gaddafi was threatening to massacre civilians.

The answer is that there is no long-term strategy. 

The present military of bombing is just a substitute for strategy, indeed, for acknowledging the fact that nearly a quarter-century of military involvement in Iraq and in the Middle East more generally has produced next to nothing of value.

Regardless of how well we do the job it is quite obvious that the Iraqi government isn’t going to be able to hold up. With another x amount of years of war and it is certain that any little hope of forging any durable political order will be destroyed.

Together with its neighbor Syria ( supported by Moscow who suspects Washington’s ulterior motive is removal of its ally, Syria’s President Bashar Al Assad) like Syria it will end up as waste land of religious fractions fighting it out over what ever oil is left.

So where are we to-day. 

Today, ISIS and al-Qaeda compete for influence over Islamist extremist groups around the world. Some experts believe ISIS may overtake al-Qaeda as the most influential group in this area globally.

Isis now controls territory the size of the UK, it is making £600,000 a day from oil and has a fighting force of 10,000 militants, according to a leading expert.

Isis offers fighters more money than any group in the region – $400 (£243) a month – and offers more military equipment, to boot. Isis is trading of antiquities, some up to 8,000 years old, from which they are thought to have made around $36 million (£21.8 million) from just one region of Syria. ISIS is selling oil by the barrel on the black market for between $25 and $65 (£15 and £40), the terror group is thought to be raking in around $2 million (£1.2 million) a day.

From Syria they could be making double or even triple that.

There is no doubt the ‘Islamic State’ poses a danger of sorts to USA and Europe but the danger is negligible.

The United States plans to train and arm an initial 5,000 Syrian rebels, but this would not be a sufficient number to retake territory seized by the Islamic State.

The longer we wait to annihilate these barbaric monsters, the heavier the cost will be.

To have any chance the U.S. would need to train between 12,000 and 15,000, the costs would likely run between $200 and $320 million per month, This adds up to $2.4 to $3.8 billion per year. The deployment of 25,000 U.S. troops on the ground, as some have recommended, costs would likely reach $1.1 to $1.8 billion per month, and $13 to $22 billion annually.

All wonderful for the arms industry.

Even if this was to happen and ISIS were wiped off the face of the earth there will be a need to leave troops and supporting structure in place for decades to avoid repeating the mistakes of unleashes responses beyond the control of the actors as now is all too evident.

This is exactly how ISIS came into existence in the first place.

The U.S. and its junior partners destroyed Iraq, left a sectarian division, poverty, desperation, and an illegitimate government in Baghdad that did not represent Sunnis or other groups.

While the Syrian government declared war on its own people.  Almost 200,000 people had already died in this conflict, and 3 million made homeless it is no wonder that we have given birth to a monster called ISIS.

President Obama, recently said, “We don’t have a strategy yet for fighting ISIS.” He acknowledged that a group like ISIS “is beyond the pale; that they have no vision or ideology beyond violence and chaos and the slaughter of innocent people. And as a consequence, we got to all join together – even if we have differences on a range of political issues – to make sure that they’re rooted out.

I would respectively point out that ISIS is in possession of U.S. weaponry provided directly to it in Syria and seized from the Iraqi government.

The U.S. armed and  trained ISIS and allied groups in Syria, while continuing to prop up the Baghdad government, providing Hellfire missiles with which to attack Iraqis in Fallujah and elsewhere.

At last count by the U.S. government, 79% of weapons transferred to Middle Eastern governments come from the United States, not counting transfers to groups like ISIS, and not counting weapons in the possession of the United States.

You don’t have to be a General or Military expert to see that unless the world mounts a massive ground offensive ISIS will not be defeated. They will melt into what is left of the civilian population and the vast territorial lands they now hold.

The sooner they feel the full force of the world led by American (who has the largest obligation to retake the arms they brought or gave to the region) the sooner we can move to a peaceful solution and an eventual victory over radical Islamic terror that wants to control the world.

It entails destroying the Syria’s Assad regime, and shoring up the Afghanistan’s new President Ashraf Ghani who recently took office in the country’s first democratic transfer of power, making a pledge to stamp out corruption and calling for peace with the Taliban insurgents who marked the day with a fresh attack in Kabul.

After all blood and treasure spent in Afghanistan US delegation to Ghani inauguration will not include any cabinet members.”

My suggestion is grow-up and face the reality.

Washington refuses to consider working with Russia as long as Moscow insists that U.S. strikes need Syrian and U.N. approval.

Our, and the USA  only choice is to kill them before they kill us. If not the United States would be better served simply to butt out and leave it to the Regional powers such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iran who are more directly threatened and in a far better positioned to deal with it. What a blood bath that would be.

The Big question as always is what will we leave in place if and when ISIS is destroyed. What are the desired end state in both Iraq and Syria, not to mention Afghanistan?

Bombing nations into ruins, and shipping more arms that will eventual turn up on our door steps is no solution.

Removing Inequality/poverty, with education, healthy and fair trade, is the long-term resolution to the worlds sorry state.

As I said at the start of this post God forbid any of us had to order young lives into a war. I like all of us can only hope and offer our sincere sympathy with those that have already losses their liver and love ones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should Immigration be Legalized ?

02 Thursday Oct 2014

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The immigration debate is a timeless one, and will continue to be so.

It is fundamentally the story of the human race from its origins to the present.

Migration is an integral aspect of life on this planet. People move to survive. It can be divisive, or it can unite a country or a region. Refugees and seekers of sanctuary should be treated humanely, kept from destitution, and should be allowed to work if we take a long time to determine their claims – indeed, they should be expected to in the same way any of us is expected to.

At the moment we are only seeing the tip of the Iceberg.  Wait till climate change starts to move people.

Global warming and resource depletion have no boundaries.

Indeed, given the massive migrations to come, due among others to climate change and economic opportunities, it’s a question that needs some proper thinking.

As a reminder, let me quote a 2009 United Nations Populations Fund report:

“Estimating future climate change-related population flows presents [a great] challenge, with figures ranging wildly from 50 million to 1 billion people by the middle of the century, either within their countries or across borders, on a permanent or temporary basis. The most widely used estimate of people to be displaced by environmental factors by 2050 is 200 million” – compared to the current 25 million.

Some feel that these environmental issues cannot be addressed by nations acting individually. Thus, they might argue that the movement of people around the globe becomes the province of the world, not that of individual nations.

” There go I but for the grace of God”

So where to start? “Let’s start with the obvious:

Most of us are nations of immigrants.  The death toll is increasing as more people are attempting to illegally enter countries. We still have to confront the reality of Migration.

“What can happen will happen but we can’t let it happen.”

It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just that I was better-off before you came
will have no place in future thinking.

So let me propose a possible solution to what is presently happening.

I cannot see for the life of me if we ignore for the moment the myriad of ethical issues and questions, why in this age of ( no where to hide)  technology, it is not possible to get all Immigrants at the point on entry to fully understand and sign a legal document of review. The document commits the Immigrant to returning to his or hers country of origin once the war/conflict is over. It could allow entry like a visa to stay for a period of five years.

Would this not be better than the tragedies we witness every day.

A person enters a country with a proper Legalized non transferable, non replicated, free, world recognizable Card with a personal pin Id number (other than a passport)  They would not have to live in constant fear of being detained and deported. ( Immigrants must endure intolerance and suspicion, while navigating the complexities of assimilating to a language and a culture foreign to their own.)

The difficulties occur when it is time to find them, (without a tracking bracelet) when the review comes due.

So this solution seems to simplify and objectify the issues and does not serve any useful purpose, because unless it is know-en where they came from in the first place they cannot be returned.

One way or the other it might help stop Trafficking and also stop illegal immigrants causing unemployment.

It would make it more difficult to create a cover for terrorists and criminal.

Undocumented immigrants may have to accept jobs far below their skill level, and endure blatant discrimination but at least they would have some legal dignity.

Who are the migrants of today?

Refugees of war-torn countries, Economic of poverty ridden countries, Natural disasters, or illegal traffic people, drought, plagues, floods, or other natural disasters have triggered migration. Modern Slavery, escape from slavery, invasions, and exile have created forced migration.

The human condition is complex, as are the reasons for migration.

  • What are the costs of migration? What is the cost in terms of lives lost?
  • What are the financial costs both to the migrant and to the countries involved?
  • How does society measure the risks and benefits of migration?
  • Can these risks and benefits be measured?
  • Do nations have an ethical obligation to do the least harm to migrants when establishing and enforcing immigration laws?
  • How should discussions about migration be conducted?
  • Whose voices should be included in such discussions?

So how do we understand the needs and rights of those who migrate?

Can countries to close their borders at all costs, or do they have some obligation to minimize the harm to persons crossing their borders an obligation beyond those they owe their citizens? If not, then what entity has the power and will to protect migrants? Are migration issues best served when addressed nationally, regionally, or internationally through orderly processes and clear laws? Or are there times that individual citizens or communities can and should address migration issues outside of national laws and legal processes?

Yesterday the total of Syrian Refugees surpassed 3.5 million.almost all in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, with smaller numbers in Iraq and Egypt.

To put this into perspective, Europe has a population of 670 million people.

Contrast that to Lebanon, which has a population of 4.4 million people and has received 1.1 million refugees.”Syria could potentially produce millions more refugees, since more than 6.5 million people are displaced within the country and there is no end in sight to the war.

So far 17 European countries have offered to resettle 31,800 of the most needy refugees. Russia an ally of President Bashar al-Assad – has not granted refugee status to a single Syrian, although it granted 1,193 temporary asylum requests in 2013.

There have been 123,600 asylum requests, mostly in Sweden and Germany, but that figure includes double counting, since some have asked for asylum in several countries. Europe must open its doors to more Syrian refugees, having welcomed only a “minuscule” number.  In more than 3 years of war, very few Syrians have made it to continental Europe.

What responsibilities do countries have to migrants?

Who decides what those limits are?

The UNHCR wants the continent to host 100,000 such cases, an average of about 3,000 per country.

Human beings have migrated since their origin. This migration has ranged from journeys of a few miles to epic travels across oceans and continents.  Adventurers have sought new land, fame, fortune, or power. Formation of empires, colonies, and nation states have taken people across Asia, Africa, Europe, Russia, the Americas, New Zealand, Australia, and Iceland.

Globalization these days is frequently viewed in economic and environmental terms. Goods and services move easily across regions and national boundaries. With this growing economic interdependence, some would argue that it is only natural that people (labor) follow the capital, wherever that might take them. Similarly, some argue that people should not have to move for jobs, but instead governments should encourage capital to remain in the nation and should protect jobs for citizens.

The growing interdependence of economies regionally and globally is a good predictor that migration will not be stagnant and that it will follow increasingly more complex patterns.

As the population of receiving countries age, how do nations best address the need for a young labor force and a need for care providers for an older population?

How has out-sourcing and re-location of businesses affected migration?

Others believe that in order for countries to protect their environment they need to restrict immigration. What are the limits on the power of countries to control or affect migration? How are the needs and rights of migrants to be balanced against those of the people from the sending, transit, and receiving countries?

 

Restrictive and selective immigration has been promoted by proponents as a way to preserve the cultural roots of the host country.

Many citizens and illegal aliens are competing for jobs, but because the undocumented immigrants are available for tougher jobs with lower wages, the companies are hiring them causing the citizens to lose their opportunities.

All of this raises many questions and no answers.

How can nations balance businesses’ need for additional labor with concerns about departure or arrival of large numbers of migrants?

  • Do businesses prefer to hire and train immigrant workers because it creates a labor force beholden to the employers?
  • Is it ethical to deny safe haven or opportunities for a better life to migrants in order to protect the environment of a particular country?
  • How should policy makers balance the concerns of environmentalists with the need for a growing supply of labor?
  • Does it matter that while demand for labor fluctuates, the environment is less able to change or recover?
  • Does increasing the labor force through immigration to care for an aging population create an exponential need for future immigrants to care for this labor force as it ages?
  • Is it necessary to prepared to periodically re-assess our assumptions and theories in order for policy to keep pace with shifting migration patterns?
  • Can policy change at the speed that migration can now occur?
  • What investments must nations make to keep pace with the technology, the speed, and the changing methods of migration?
  • Some might argue that this trend is a positive one. Others might disagree and would urge the use of national resources to stem the tide of globalization in order to protect the integrity of nation states, their boundaries, and their economies. Some might posit that globalization is occurring in spite of nation-states, while others would argue that globalization is the product of decisions and actions taken by nation-states.
  • If changes in the movement of goods and services mean the movement of people will also change, are leaders and policy makers.

When discussing ethics in the context of migration, it is important to remember first and foremost that migration is about the movement of people. Because the ethics of migration hi-lite the tension between individuals and nations, these discussions should always begin and end with the acknowledgement of the humanity of those who are moving and those who do not move.

Is migration systematic or is it organic?

The UK and Europeans states exploited overseas countries and therefore should be obligated to help these countries by allowing their entry. The USA was founded by Immigrants.

When I started writing this post I had no idea of the complexity of the subject. It cause tremendous tremors on our social conscious, with more questions than answers.

But I have learned something I will be one of the the lucky ones to have immigrated to the land of permanent nod as it will be worse than a nuclear war.  

A ship load of hope against hope.