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Monthly Archives: June 2015

The Beady Eye looks at Big Data.

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Big Data., Politics., Privatization, Technology, The Future

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Artificial Intelligence., Big Brother., Big Data, Distribution of wealth, Drones., Globalization, Inequility, Technological revolution

Is our world along with humanity disappearing into the Cloud.?

We as individuals are turning into “walking data generators”  ” App Material”

The Beady eye is only going to look a the most contentious realms of Big Data. Technologies that drive the explosion of growth of digital information such as the information collected.

Big Data is disseminated from trillions of devices such as smartphones and embedded sensors.

Huge quantities of digital trace data are collected through digitized devices (captured, for example, via social networks, online shopping, blogs, Apps, ATM withdrawals and the like) and through in-built sensors. The latter technologies include those that are equipped with GPS systems (e.g., smartphones and other surveillance and monitoring devices) and thus have the ability to identify a user’s location.

Ever since the dawn of life with language man has been collecting information. Not until written letters or symbols arrived was this information stored for future generations.

It is now being collected to replace us all with AI.

Knowledge was and still is the power that split the world into cultures- the rich in information and the poor with illiteracy – Slave or Master.

To day data is money and it is re splintering the world into the have and have not’s.

A next-generation retailer will be able to track the behavior of individual customers from Internet click streams, update their preferences, and model their likely behavior in real-time. Traditional advertising is shifting rapidly into the realm of personalized and highly targeted online and mobile ads—the realm of data driven marketing. Big Data and Advertising Case Study

Across all industries, including government, healthcare, media, energy, among others, data is becoming central to business operations. Every business is a digital company; and, every customer or employee is a content producer.

Today’s organizations use a plethora of information systems to support their business processes.

Advances in technologies and the increasing amount of information are transforming how business is conducted in many industries, including government.

Every business sector now collects data of one form or another, and the future marketplace will have even more computing power at their fingertips to mine customer behavior. Someone from every major industry is looking at the impact of being able to glean data from multiple data sources, structured and unstructured, from Healthcare to agriculture and more.

Businesses are using the power of insights provided by big data to instantaneously establish who did what, when and where.

The world’s volume of data doubles every 18 month.

In all forms it will grow 650 percent over the next five years.

Despite feeling overwhelmed, there’s an insatiable desire for more data.

The information overload is real and causing problems.

There is little or no regulations governing every time you click on a website, post on social media, use a mobile app and comment via email or to call centers, your data is collected for future use.

In my opinion, the world needs proper regulations about how and what kind of data should be collected.

My bigger concerns are related to unsanctioned organizations using my data and inferences about my interests, passions, affiliations and associations for borderline uses about my political, religious, sexual, etc. preferences. Just because a company can collect all kinds of personal information on consumers, it doesn’t mean they should use it willy nilly.

The more is better” philosophy.  There in lies the trouble.

Tracking customer preferences and purchases can reveal all kinds of private information, like illnesses, financial problems, even pregnancy.

For example a father recently discovered that his daughter was expecting a baby only because of Target’s TGT – 0.5% customer advertising technology. It analyzing his daughter shopping patterns so the store started to send her coupons for baby products which alerted the father.

Data gathering is not going away.

This should have us concerned, not just about targeted marketing but about what can be inferred about all of us every time we “like” something on FACEBOOK or post a snarky tweet on TWITTER.

From what I can tell, what Big Data does best is spy on individuals and collect useless data that helps people develop false and inaccurate assumptions.

Big Data may have wonderful potential, but we’re still going to have to get better at data exchange and integration before it’s going to have its biggest impact. We’ve spent decades digitizing everything, we should be able to analyze it. The problem is, that’s really hard – and it always has been.

THE BIG QUESTION REMAINS: Who does it belong to, and who should have access to it?
Human Face of Big Data

Big Data will let us watch flu outbreaks bloom and direct scarce vaccines to the most critical area’s. Schools are collecting more data than ever on how children are doing. Companies and nonprofits, meanwhile, are racing to put that data to use in the classroom.

Today, we’re at the convergence of these innovations—biotechnology, the ability to remote monitor and sensor, and now Big Data—which puts an augmented reality at our disposal.

However there is an undercurrent of concern about who owns big data and who has the right to access it.

Big Data technologies are at the heart of the intelligent economy and the solutions that enable it.

Big Data technologies are analyzing massive data sets, in science and research as well as mine data to prevent bad actors from committing acts of terror and/or to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Government data generation and digital archiving rates are on the rise due to the rapid growth of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals.

As digital information expands and becomes more complex, information management, processing, storage, security, and disposition become more complex.

Information is a strategic asset, and government needs to protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve and meet mission requirements.

New technology brings new challenges, and they should be properly educated to use it wisely and critically. It is used to study employee performance and retention.

The younger generations are not always aware of the challenges and dangers that come with big data.

Privacy here is a key issue to consider.

I sometimes get frightened to see what younger generations publish on their social media, without being aware how they expose themselves to the outside world. Just think about recommender systems.

When you want to buy a product or service from an online retailer, you are often frustrated because of the many choices and configurations possible. Thanks to an intelligent, analytical recommender system, purchases (and their customer feedback) are continuously monitored to better tailor future recommendations to customers.

Credit card fraud detection system.

In fact, thanks to credit risk analytics, our savings money is now efficiently safeguarded since every bank is obliged (via the Basel III capital accord) to analytically estimate credit losses and make sure it has enough provisions or equity buffers for worst-case scenarios.

Big Data is being used to detect social security fraud, to detect tax evasion fraud, to employ and fire people.

New data stores have emerged increasing the distribution of data and the complexity of securing and protecting that data along with it. It is now harder to protect sensitive data as it may move around between different transactional and analytical data stores as companies create new analytical workloads.

While there is more to do to wrestle big data to the ground. Defense (DOD) is investing approximately $60 million annually for new projects that will harness and utilize massive data in new ways and bring together sensing, perception, and decision support to make truly autonomous systems that can learn from experience, maneuver and make decisions on their own, and understand the limits of their knowledge.

Governments are facing more and more challenges in managing the life cycle of Big Data as government’s traditional silo approach hinders sharing knowledge and working across organizational boundaries.

While emails, instant messages, data files, document files, and scanned images are all driving the growth of Big Data, managing and storing this information — and its growth — are not trivial tasks. It has raised red flags about privacy, which remain unresolved.

The only way to make data totally safe is to not ever use it or keep it. Big Data Discriminates.

Our currents Laws cannot adequately handle the issues raised by Big data.

Just look at the legal complications created by systems using data and algorithms to include and exclude people from various programs.

What we have are porous laws on how this new technology changes previous understandings of civil liberties, not to mention data analysis, machine learning and the work scientists have been doing on non-discriminatory data mining models.

Individuals should be granted meaningful opportunities to challenge adverse decisions based on scores miscategorizing them.

Where data goes in and a decision comes out it’s unclear, or certainly opaque, just how that decision was arrived at. There is no way to trace why a decision was made.

With programmers doing real-life damage without even knowing it. The question is:  How do we update our understanding of due process for the 21st century?

These black box issues such as credit-scoring systems should be legal required to make their Systems Transparent.

If you take Google’s search algorithms for instance no one knows how it chooses the direction of its search. Perhaps it directs your search only to its profit.  It’s not  just about the quality of the user experience.HUNGARY–DPA Requesting a Flyby

Drones are becoming more widespread globally, the non military use of drones will add a further deluge of big data:

Cameras, heat and motion sensors, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi signals, facial recognition and bio metric scanners allow for the growing use of drones in the industrial, agricultural, transportation and retail areas.

The use of drones—theoretically—should only be possible upon individual permit irrespective of the drone’s starting point and final destination.

However enforcement may be difficult.

The only way is a world license that creates an official record of the individuals operating/using drones for a commercial purpose.

In practice, the widespread use of drones for private purposes may result in unreasonable administration in connection with the above, drone users and operators may also be reluctant to provide so detailed information on their activities for confidentiality reasons.

If the drone records flight details for aviation safety considerations, personal data captured but not relevant for this purpose should be anonymised and stored separately or should be made unidentifiable, unrecognizable and inaccessible by the controller immediately after the drone finished flying.

Data should be stored on the drones only temporarily.

For example, during the security surveillance of a property, the drone may record pedestrians’ faces, movements, body-temperature etc., and the devices should be configured in a way which prevents them from this kind of processing. Drones should solely be able to signal the location and fact of an allegedly unauthorized attempt at entry onto the premises.

In practice, this principle should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as the actual use of the drone may require more extended data processing than envisaged at the beginning. The drone may locate a trespasser who needs to be identified (to ensure to security surveillance purpose), and, in such a case, privacy-by-default settings should not prevent the enforcement of the drone operator’s legitimate interests.

For example, a recording of an agricultural land cannot be used for the surveillance of agricultural workers.

Given the amount of data governments store on citizens and the sensitivity of some of that data, it makes sense for state budgets to carve out funds for someone to shepherd how that data is collected, treated and stored.

Should there be a meaningful data life cycle amidst the sea of data.

In fact , big data may ultimately be a key factor in how nations, not just companies , compete and prosper . Algorithmic decision-making:

In a nutshell, the problem with ‘datification’ is that somebody else may … use the data thus produced – often with purposes different from those originally intended.

Make no mistake about it:

Our future, the future of humanity and the planet hangs in the balance.

Do we have what it takes to disrupt what is…in order to create what can be?

Big data as a high concept will never fully define itself it’s just a big scam. Surveillance programs. High Frequency Stock Trading. Electronic Currency Trading. Dooming us all down to rely on Google.

I hope it die’s a miserable death.

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The Beady Eye looks at history’s greatest Frauds

28 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Corruption., Privatization, Technology, The Future

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Cons., Economic Inequality, Fraud., Global economy, Scams.

We think we know it all.

We all know there are Political Frauds, Military Frauds, Cover-ups & Conspiracies.

Other than mentioning some of them here I will leave it to you to look and make up your own minds.

John F. Kennedy, Aliens & UFOs, Pearl Harbor, CIA Drug Testing On Civilians, Catholic Church — 3 Secrets Of Fatima, James Earl Ray & Martin Luther King, Big Tobacco’s Big Denial, Jimmy Hoffa, The Philadelphia Experiment, Celebrity Deaths, Watergate, and Iraq War.

Then we have the others.

The below list unfortunately leaves out the greatest: Cons Scams Frauds (what ever you want to call them) of all.

The Sale of the Roman Empire (193 A.D.)

The Mississippi Scheme (1719)

The Diamond Necklace Hoax (1785)

The Wright Panic (1900)

The Original Ponzi Scheme (1920)

The Eiffel Tower Sale (1925)

The Match King Hoax (1929)

The Baker Estate Swindle (1936)

ZZZZ Best Cleaners (1986)

The Great Insider Trading Scam (1986)

The Savings & Loan Scandal (1989)

Tyco International (1996)

CEO Dennis Kozlowski (pictured)and CFO Mark Swartz soaked Tyco for more than $150 million in unearned bonuses and loans from 1996 until 2002.

Cendant (1997)

Shortly after the company was created by the merger of CUC International and HFS in 1997, a massive, decade long accounting fraud at CUC was uncovered.

Fannie Mae (1998)

Fannie Mae paid the SEC $400 million in 2006 to settle charges of misstating financial statements from 1998 through 2004.

Qwest Communications (2000)

Qwest’s stock traded as high as $64 in 2000 before plummeting in 2002 to less than $1 because of a multiyear accounting fraud.

Enron (2001)

The energy company’s bankruptcy in 2001 after allegations of massive accounting fraud wiped out $78 billion in stock market value.

World Com (2002)

The 2002 fraud-induced bankruptcy of the telecom company wiped out a firm that once had $103.9 billion in assets on its books.

Health South (2003)

In March of 2003, the SEC accused CEO Richard M. Scrushy of overstating earnings by at least $1.4 billion over four years.

Bernard Madoff (2008)

New York money manager Bernard Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest fraud ever by an individual.

Lehman Brothers (2008)

Investment bank Lehman, with $600 billion in assets, failed in late 2008. It was the largest bankruptcy in history and a spark to the worldwide financial crisis.

MF Global (2008)

The brokerage firm, led by former Goldman Sachs Chairman and former New Jersey Senator then Governor Jon Corzine, had $41 billion in assets.

The Great Wall Street Rip-Off (Ongoing)

Zhang Shuguang, a former railway-ministry official, admitted to having spent nearly half of $7.8m in bribes that he had collected trying to get himself elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Bell Labs.  Jan Hendrik Schön (born 1970 ) is a physicist German, who enjoyed a brief fame after a series of advanced scientific apparent that eventually turn out to be fraud.

HSBC. (2014) ongoing.  Helped customers to hide millions from taxman.

La Cour.  The VAT fraud costs 10 billion euros per year.


Sadly, it seems that corruption/fraud is to be found wherever there are human beings.

THE GREATEST OF ALL:  

The Agricultural Revolution was history’s biggest Fraud.   

 A sweeping statement. Not on your nanny.

Now you might think it cannot get any worse.  Read and learn.

Wheat: 

Manipulated us to its advantage, not the other way around. (Which by the way was a wild grass)

We became enslaved by its master plan.

With in a few short millennia it was growing all over the world.  World wise it covers 2.25 million square kilometers of the globe’s surface.

It demanded a lot of attention from Mankind. It did not like sharing its space with others so we spend every hour of our waking day weeding. It got sick so we spend billions on fighting its enemies worms and blight. It was attacked by locust and rabbits so we build fences and stood guard. It has an unquenchable thirst so we built irrigation canals and dams. It even has us collecting animal faeces to feed the ground it grew in. We did not domesticate wheat it domesticated us.

How did it convince us to exchange a rather good life for a miserable life of existence.?  What did it offer in return?.

Not a better diet. Hard to digest it is bad for our gums and teeth. It did not give economic security. When it was hit by a drought or a swarm of locusts we died by the thousands or fought each other because we could not move.

It did nothing for us as individuals but it allowed us as a species to grow exponentially.

It created armies.  It created Political Systems. Being the most successful plant in the history of the Earth it created Capitalism.

Capitalism:

Which we are now beginning to see its true colors. One of the biggest Scams, Con jobs, or Fraud what ever label you like to attach en flicked on mankind.

It has allowed a few elitist to become wealth on the promise that some of the wealth might rub off on all of us.

It sure did.

It has turned us all into trading commodities in order to acquire more wealth for the greedy few.

It has produced Poverty, Inequality, Migration, Wars, Terrorist Groups, Corruption, Disease, Racism, Climate Change, treating the very existence of Our Common Planet. You name it and you can be sure that the free Global Greed Market it created will exploit it to create more short-term Profit.

It has and it is robbing all of our common resources to create profits for Corporations that now want Legal Rights to sue Nations. (See Previous post: The TTP and TTIP TRADING AGREEMENTS.)

It has promoted Massive theft of government (i.e., taxpayer) funds and property, which is going on and is tolerated decade after decade.

It has produced Sovereign Wealth Funds currently plundering the World.

Not forgetting the Stock Markets, where Capital greed has no bounds. 

And where are we to-day in the Technology Age (A product of Capitalism) that has little or no regulation using our vanity to pilfer all knowledge which will be sold back to us or others to make profit. Google, Facebook, Twitter. Amazon, Apple. The Cloud.

Google has already changed the world by altering the way we interact with technology.

As it enters its second decade as a public company, Google wants to repeat the trick.

Fuse man and machine. Drive Your Cars. Bring the Internet to everyone, everywhere.  Solve Death.

How exactly does Google plan to pull this off?

Apart from announcing some high-profile hires, Google hasn’t shared much about its vision.  Last month Google announced a new medical company called Calico, whose explicit aim is to take on aging itself.

In the absence of any real information, many commentators have speculated that Calico will pursue a “big-data approach to health: gathering massive amounts of information from patients and ‘crunching it’ to help speed the way to health care discoveries. Some have suggested that Calico’s new CEO will take the view that the best way to tackle aging is to focus on preventing diseases.

All pretty bright for a plant don’t you think.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of wheat plants"

 

Corruption, Fraud, Scams, whatever you want to call it cannot be tackled in isolation, but only in the context of efforts to reduce world poverty.

If we are not vigilant we are all going to end up Slave of the Wheat of Technology. Call Data.

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The Beady eye cast it’s sight on what is whiteness; what is non-whiteness;

20 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Politics., Where's the Global Outrage.

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Eliminating Racism., Racism.

Some years ago in a white-skin privilege I crisscrossing  the  Africa Continent with my better half and daughter on a two-year over land adventure of 85,000 miles.

Do I know anything about Racism.  NO.

As far as I am concerned if we are good enough for God, we ought to be good enough for each other.

Ever since the European restructuring of the world from the 16th century on, racism has become affirmative action for whites.

Will there ever be parity?  NO

It is the wrong assumption that the problem is color of skin.

There is nothing wrong with the color black, brown or yellow. It is not skin color that forms the basis for discrimination, but the negative meaning given to the color of skin. “Color is neutral;

It is not our gender or skin color that we have to change, but systems of oppression that benefit some groups at the expense of others.

None of us sees the world exactly as it is, for the reality that we see is literally an invention of the brain, actively constructed from a constantly changing flood of information we take into our minds, which is then interpreted through our experiences.

Though the image is in the eye, perception is in the mind.

What people actually “see” is not the reality of the image, but the reality of the perception. Thus, American writer, Anais Nin (1903-1977) is correct when she says: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”

Perception is reality! And however one defines the world, that is how it will be.

There is little difference between racism and sexism.

“All social reality is defined, [and] power comes from the ability to control the definition of situations.”

So was I conscious of my race. No I was not.

Not until we arrived in Ghana.

Here the forts and castles which started as European trading posts later becoming dungeons and slave auction areas are doted along the coast and are still there today.

It is estimated that from 1451 to 1870 between 10 and 12 million slaves were exported from Africa. Between 1620 and 1870, over half a million slaves from Africa  were sent to the mainland of America.

From 1733 to 1807, the Gold coast supplied 13.3% of slaves needed by South Carolina. Between 1710 and 1769, 16% of  what was needed for Virginia. In the total English trade, Ghana supplied 18.4% between 1690 and 1807. For the whole of the 18th Century, the Gold Coast  supplied 12.1% of total Atlantic trade (Perbi 1995).

None of these statistics give the whole picture.

Race was created mainly by Anglo-Europeans, especially English, societies in the 16th and 19th centuries.  “Race” is based on socially constructed, but socially, and certainly scientifically, outmoded beliefs about the inherent superiority and inferiority of groups based on racial distinctions (Montagu 1952, 1963; Gossett 1963; Bernal 1987; Bennett 1988).

The problem however was driven home by an American Black Tourist for lack of a better description.

Having just visited the Gate of No Return I white was standing outside to be confronted by this tourist who spat at me. Ignorance personified. This type of prejudice or “pre-judgment” is based on ignorance. We prejudge others on the basis of limited knowledge. The other factor is fear, and this one goes much deeper than ignorance, for its strikes at the root of prejudice, the issue of privilege and power.

Door of no return | Adam Jones

 

Racism and prejudice has been present in almost every civilization and society throughout history.

Racism is a case of ‘misplaced hate’ and ignorance. It is based on the belief that one’s culture is superior to that of others. In prejudice people are basically defending privilege of position and thus stand to gain emotionally, culturally, socially and economically from an attitude of prejudice towards others.

Why does racism still exist in today’s world?

In its essence, racism is culturally sanctioned strategies that defend the advantages of power, privilege and prestige which whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities.

The fact that it still exists in today’s modern and so-called advanced world is because of inequality of opportunity.

As the 21st century nears, racism is one of the most important and persistent social problem in America and in the world today.

“[T]he word ‘race’ no longer corresponds to anything definite” (1995:569).

Durkheim further suggested that “race” was destined to disappear from modern society. However, here we are, 113 years after the first publication of The Division of Labor, and “race” remains very much a part of the organization of contemporary society.  Catholics prefer to marry Catholics, the wealthy prefer to marry the wealthy, whites marry whites, and blacks marry blacks. Thus, norms of endogamy become a primary mechanism for the perpetuation of “races.”

It is on the rise in increasing ways. Even though biologically, there are no ‘races’, the social construction of race as a category is alive and well today.Racism thus refers to a systemic phenomenon. It permeates the values, beliefs, norms, attitudes and behaviours of members of the dominant society. It is a group phenomenon which translates into everyday reality through the actions of individuals. But it is not confined to individuals. It is present in the institutional and cultural matrix of a society.

White Americans currently hold at least 19 times the wealth of African-Americans. Yet, 61% of white Americans believe that blacks have already achieved equality, and an additional 22% believe that racial equality will be reached “soon” In other words, 83% of whites believe that we are living in a post racial era. Only 17% of blacks believe that equality has been reached. The United States is not only a multicultural nation, but also a nation in conflict with its values, values of freedom, equality, liberty and justice for all.

Whether we are talking about ethnic cleansings, group hatred or retraction of equity laws under the guise that these are unfair, the underlying issue is the same. One group, threatened by the perceived loss of power, exercises social, economic and political muscle against the other to retain privilege by restructuring for social advantage.

All of us tend to have prejudicial attitudes towards others. If you don’t believe me just look at the reaction in Europe to thousands of refugees fleeing Syria, and economic disasters in North Africa and else where, caused in large by us whites.

Most Whites have almost no conceptual idea nor first-hand experience of life in the African-American and Latino communities.

What is racism? What does whiteness have to do with either “race” or racism?

How are these ascription’s linked to the social and political significance of “race”and whiteness?

We must concern ourselves with the social construction of reality. This is because racial prejudice is the refusal to change one’s attitude even after evidence to the contrary. “Race” and whiteness are socially defined notions that have socially significant consequences for all of us no matter what the color.

“In the midst of profound demographic changes, it is time to question whether the Black/White binary paradigm of race fits our highly variegated current and future population.

We are guided not so much by any biological foundation as by the social meanings that are ascribed to them.

Whiteness and their social significance are intimately linked to the history of social organization in American society. “Race” is a social fact in which the social and political significance of whiteness plays a critical role. Interaction between the “races” is generally perceived in terms of hierarchical relations between blacks and whites.

Keeping the labor cost low allowed for the creation of wealth based on capital investment, the ownership of real estate, and the ownership of human beings categorized as property. The latent consequences of such an arrangement continue to be prominent in the year 2015 It manifests as low self-worth and low self-esteem for the descendants of those who were enslaved, while the descendants of the masters and overseers continue to enjoy, in general, the benefits of white-skin privilege.

While the rich get richer, poor and uneducated whites and blacks compete for the limited opportunities that exist in the new, information economy. Further, and equally damaging, is that among most descendants of the formerly enslaved, there continues to exist a social hierarchy based on skin color . . . the myth of light-complected people implying something better than, or above, dark-complected people

We must stop seeking to mold people after distorted human images and allow them the right to be born into the beauty of the World.

Racism is painful. It hurts our identity, suppresses our talents, and can lead to injury. Can We Have Capitalism Without Racism? No. The invisible chains of debt, a parallel practice of “colorblindness” arose that produces the invisibility of race?

The Media;

Plays a critical role. Mediated racism functions in several ways. The most obvious is the association of particular groups of people with specific actions.

They provide us with definitions about who we are as a nation; they reinforce our values and norms; they give us concrete examples of what happens to those who transgress these norms; and most importantly, they perpetuate certain ways of seeing the world and people’s within that world. It promotes a notion of consensus – that there is a core group of which we are a part, a core that defines the social order, and that it is in our interest to maintain. That there is a common value system binding us, obscures the hierarchies that are present in society.

The mythical notion that all individuals are equal in society’s eyes, and that all possess equal access to institutions is and has not being addressed by Governments.

The barriers of racism, sexism, homophobia and class are all translated into individual actions. Social institutions that perpetuate these barriers are presented as being innocent of these actions. In fact, they are often represented as being too liberal in their intent. The media does not stand in isolation from the society on which they report. In fact, they are an integral part of society. They utilize the same stock of knowledge that is part of that pool of “common sense” which informs all of our lives.

This pool of common sense knowledge is a reservoir of all our unstated, taken-for-granted assumptions about the world we live in. It is filled with historical traces of previous systems of thought and belief structures.

The way in which the media positioned and represented Peoples who are different; different from what was considered acceptable in society. That difference covered the entire span of people’s – Aboriginal peoples, people of color, Jews, Ukrainians, etc. is bias to white culture.

People of color continued to be portrayed in negative terms. They are most often associated with crime, deviance and the threat of invasion.

The depicting of the Third World suffering in a manner which casually jettisons the historical, political and economic context that has produced such suffering.

Yet another commonly used technique on the part of the media is the labeling of whole groups of people as illegal immigrants and bogus refugees, as we see in the Mediterranean.

Racism is often presented in a personalized form, as emanating from the actions of a few extremists.

Rather than assume a moral tone in coverage of issues of racism, the media have to take an active stance against racism.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part of our legacy of colonialism and now imperialism, is that we tend to swallow the whole notion of white superiority.

In closing this litany of observations.  It is impossible if not incredible to try to equate North-South relations, predicated on colonialism and neocolonialism, to the historical battle between communism and capitalism.

Unequal powers and unequal ideologies are not alike.

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The Beady Eye: Looks at Imagination.

19 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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Imagination., Rapid changes.

If you could go back in time say 150,000 years, your closest living relatives would be apes, with no imagination.

Returning to now.

It is our imagination that created the world we live in. The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively.

Without it we would all still be on all fours with no prospects, no desires, no communication, no history, no religion, no reality.

Why?

Because all myths, all stories, all technology, all capitalism or any other system, religion or organisation, would not have materialized without imagination.

All of it required imagination.

Our collective Imagination has being both our nemesis and friend since millennium. The immense diversity of imagined realities that we have invented are now our cultures, which are for ever-changing, turning into History.

It has put us on top of the food chain. It has created countries, google, human rights, limited companies, in fact our continuing existence and earth health depends on it.

The problem is imagination is driven by education and equal opportunity not just by DNA or Genes.

Coming climate could change all that. Ever event in history occurred against the background of some climate change.

Not a single thing in this world is eternal.  

It exist in your imagination. 

No one could have imagined the rapid changes we now see.

The big question is. Can we adapt our social behavior to the rapidly changing challenges.

Trade may seem a very pragmatic activity. There is no other animal other than ourselves that engage in trade. Trade cannot exist without trust and our trade is bases money, banks, all of which are figment of our imagination with little or no permanent value.

We are not exempt from biological laws and we are only held together by mythical glue.

It is this that has made us masters of creation.

To days affluent societies are in a plague of greed, which is rapidly spreading to the rest of the world. Our imaginations are being stunted by the internet of everything to the point of self-interest which is destroying the very reasons for having an imagination in the first place.

There is hardly an activity or emotion that is not mediated by a mind-blowing collection of objects or possibilities.

Our imaginations are being manipulated, commercialized, at the expense of generation to come.

Indeed if AI obtains imagination never mind intelligence we can kiss our species goodbye.  Why ? Because it does not take much imagination what the world would be like without humans.

No Pollution, No Wars, No Greed, No Jealousy, No God, No Mohammad  , No Corruption, No Murder, no Poverty, no Inequality.  Imagine that.        We should spend more time on the question.

What do we want to become?

Is it Humans that are sued by digital beings, subject to a superior consciousness yet to be invented. 

You and I will never leave this earth other than in our imaginations and this earth would be sterile if imagination did not exist.  Each of us explore only a tiny fraction of our horizon possibilities. 

There will never be a single natural way of life, because of imagination. 

The world does not revolve around humans.   

 

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The UK In/Out Question:

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

Should Britain quit the European Union? Or should it stay?

 

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of British"

What should the EU demand from the UK?

Voters will be asked “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”

From now until the referendum there is going to be a lot of derisive media coverage, media hype, political clatter with mountains of disinformation to say the least.

Before it all gets into top gear here are what I consider to be the main arguments for and against.

At the moment Britain lives the status quo of EU membership.

Now that the empire really is gone and the UK is no longer a financial or military superpower, the question of decline has taken on a melancholic air.

Nostalgia grips the British imagination.

Like Tony Blair, Cameron is still in love with the idea of a globe bestriding, quasi-imperial Britain and it was this that fired British military involvement in Libya as well as his desire (wrecked by Labour) to take action in Syria.

Is it not time for Britain to acknowledge its history by becoming a nation with a responsibility to the Future of all.

On the European side.

It’s a tumultuous times for Europe. In the midst of its biggest ever financial crisis in the form of Greece’s potential default, battling an ongoing migrant catastrophe which has seen thousands of people drown trying to reach European shores.

The truth is that the world at large doesn’t just matter when it comes to international politics its all about TTIP and the TTP the workings of the global economy — in harness with the policies of successive governments — they are going to leave communities shorn of employment and identity.

So lets first put the case for England to say –  Yes.

The business community will come out overwhelmingly in favor of continued membership. However unpopular some in business – notably the banks will induce fear of exit. So in reality it will be the economy that will decide the outcome of the Referendum.

The UK now accounts for less than 1 per cent of the world’s population and less than 3 per cent of global income (GDP). Each year that goes by, these numbers shrink a little.

The single market, gives British business access to the entire EU with its 500 million consumers. The EU accounts for nearly 20 per cent of world GDP. The EU, economy is six times the size of British economy.

There are one million Brits living in Spain, 330,000 living in France, and 65,000 in Cyprus. There are also 330,000 in Ireland. If Britain kicked EU citizens out of the UK, the EU would probably retaliate. That could be over a million returning immigrants.

Contrary to what the British think EU membership doesn’t cost much.

England’s annual budget contribution, after taking account of money transferred back to the UK, is £8.3bn. That’s around half a per cent of its GDP, or £130 per person.

The EU is England biggest trading partner, accounting for 52% of its trade a mire £400 bn per year, which far outstrips the estimated £12bn spent (net)on the EU each year.

The Center for Economics and Business Research found that in 2011, 4.2 million jobs in the UK were associated with exports to the EU. This is a massive 13.3% of the UK workforce, and it amounted to an estimated £3,500 per head of the population in 2011.

London, ( although it exists in another dimension to the rest of the country) needs the EU to remain one of the world’s financial centers.

The average age of the European immigrant population in Britain was 34 in 2011, compared with 41 for the native population which leave me at a lost to understand all the moaning about EU immigrants. They are cost-effective since they normally arrive after being educated. And, since most of them are of working age, England does not pay much for their pensions or healthcare, either.

British relationships with the US and the EU have always been separate from one another, especially in connection with the war against terrorism.

A yes vote will have an effect on the future direction of British foreign policy orientating it towards its European neighbors rather than America. It would also have a serious impact on British influence internationally.

Leaving could spell disaster, potentially costing millions in job losses and adverse trade impacts.

A yes vote could see the slow demise of Sterling. It certainly will see the demise UKIP.

Leaving would have a negative impact on foreign investment per person per consumers.

If the British left the EU they will have to pay more for visas, unless they created their own agreements with different countries.

Now the other Option. Out.

A desire to keep foreigners out of Britain is the main reason why the electorate may want to quit the EU entirely.

The free movement of EU member state citizens has resulted in out-of-control immigration into the UK, they claim, with people from poorer EU nations seeking to take advantage of the British health service and welfare payments.

Of course there is the option of out and staying in the single market.

That may be feasible.

After all, Norway has access to the single market without being in the EU.

But there is a big disadvantage:

Norway has to apply all the rules of the single market without any vote on what those rules are. If Britain was in the same position, it really would be subservient to Brussels. Quite apart from the blow to its sovereignty, the rules would be written without taking account of its interests and so could easily harm its citizens.

The two other main examples are Switzerland and Turkey. Unfortunately, they don’t have full access to the market and they still have to follow some of the rules, without a vote on them.

Out means it isn’t part of the CAP.

It will have to renegotiate all of its trade agreements.

Why would any other country feel the need to deal with England directly?

Faced with the rapid, ongoing expansion of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), among others, even with the USA special relationship it could kiss it ass goodbye. It would be like a feather weight getting into the ring with a heavy weight. Knocked out before the bell rang for round one.

In China the UK is not a big power.  In the eyes of the Chinese it is just an old European country apt for travel and study.

It could rely on its membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ensure access to markets. The snag is that, although the WTO has made progress in opening up trade, it has not secured anything like free trade in manufacturing – let alone services, which account for more than three-quarters of its GDP.

What will The EU Demand?  

This is the question no one asking.

The growth of euroscepticism across Europe means the elites won’t be able to bamboozle the people into agreeing more transfers of power to Brussels, as they have done in the past.

Will Britain have to forsake its opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty 1992

Currently, four states have such opt-outs: Denmark (four opt-outs), Ireland (two opt-outs), Poland (one opt-out) and the United Kingdom(four opt-outs).

If so could Sterling be phased out. Highly unlikely.

Conclusion:

The eurosceptic view can be summarised in three phrases:

Our plight is dire.

Attempting to reform the EU is futile.

The prospects outside are golden.

The single market is based on what are known as the “four freedoms”. These were contained in the Treaty of Rome that set up the forerunner to the EU in 1958: the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.

This is one of the most important charters for freedom the world has ever seen.

The eurozone probably won’t rush towards so-called political and fiscal union. Political union is also unnecessary because the main problem with the periphery is one of competitiveness.

Centralising power and giving hand-outs won’t solve that.

The solution, rather, is to restore competitiveness and boost productivity by freeing up markets. This is not a pleasant process, but it is beginning to happen in places such as Greece and Spain.

Will the EU allow a half-way houses that give some access to the single market but without following all the EU’s rules.

Peripheral countries have to solve their own problem.

This list leads to three further questions.

Can Britain win the unanimous agreement of other governments?

Do any of the changes require treaty amendment, which is hard for some other countries to do? And will they persuade British voters to stay in the EU?

The answer to the first is that most of the changes are quite modest, so they should not be too difficult to agree.

The second is harder, since at least three of the proposals—the benefits change, an opt-out from ever closer union and a mechanism to safeguard non-euro members—could require a new treaty to guarantee their effectiveness. There may be scope for a legal fudge that stops short of full treaty change, similar to protocols adopted in the past to satisfy Danish and Irish demands after their voters rejected previous treaties. Or there could be a “post-dated cheque”: a promise to incorporate changes into the EU treaties whenever they are next revised, for instance if a new country joins the club.

The third question is the biggest unknown. But Mr Cameron is gambling that, fresh from his unexpected election victory, he can persuade voters that it is better to have the devil they know than the devil they don’t. After all, a similar tactic favouring the status quo worked in the Scottish independence referendum last September—but it was a close-run thing.

England must look beyond vulgar economics and celebrate the EU as a zone of peace not just a lucrative market. It must lift the referendum debate beyond cost-benefit analysis to matters of principle. Exit need not be a disaster, true, but even the faint prospect of net economic loss will chill the blood of the undecided.

The EU represents not just an economic bloc but also offers multiple opportunities for study, research, culture and retirement. Moreover, it operates to secure peace within Europe and is a force for projecting a European view into the world polity.

If it end up option out a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU would be a joke. Plenty of bigger economies don’t have an FTA with the EU.

Anyway, it’s also the terms that matter: not all FTAs are the same.  As regards time frames, the EU deals with Singapore and South Korea took several years to negotiate: these kinds of arrangements are incredibly complicated. What happens in the meantime?  The out lobbyist don’t say because they don’t know.

I would place my stake on the public voting to remain in the club.

If the British people are to be asked to vote for EU exit they deserve to be given a proper explanation of what happens next.

It is high time for the Brits to realise that they aren’t alone and to accept the other 27 Member States into their reality, mentality, and allow them into their hearts. 
Mr. Farage is not hitting the mark head-on, but is going around the issue, as most political remarks go. Such arguments as ‘wanting the country back’ and ‘immigrants are taking over’ are not interpreted correctly.
Migration, or better yet immigration, of people to other countries is no cause to throw a fit. Migrants, are the labor force behind some countries, and the UK is surely one of them.
In the end no matter what ice cream you lick we all belong to the one family. This banal fact used to be one of history’s most closely guarded secrets.
So for those of you who will have a vote.
Before you vote have a look at the world.  Not the world of materialism created by Economics, Trade Packs and the like, rather the world you currently live in.  Ask yourself what can you do to improve it. Live on a Isolated Island or Contribute.
As to whether marriage or divorce is on the agenda for the UK and EU, only time will tell.  There is no concrete reason for the EU and the UK to part.

 

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Your World is being stolen right in front of your eyes.

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Climate Change., Environment, Natural World Disasters, Politics., Privatization, Sustaniability, The Future

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Capitalism, Capitalism and Greed, Capitalism isn't working, Capitalism vs. the Climate., Global capitalism

If your eyes could speak, this is what they would say.

Unfortunately for us technology is blurring our global vision of what humanity means or can achieve.

The question is how long are we going to keep our eyes shut to a world run by Private Corporations, and out of date World Organisations, and Elected Corrupt Governments that are signing trade deals that put Corporate power above people power called TTIP ( The Transatlantic Trade Deal or tee-tip for short) that none of us have a say in.   https://youtu.be/YVrDF0nSIAU

Now I know that Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Exxon Mobil,  Express Scripts Holdings, Wal-Mart Stores, Google and World Fuel Services by the year 2025 will have made vast profits in the trillions.  But they are likely to take our species to the brink of extinction. Why because if we continue to allow Capitalism to serve the bottom line of the Balance Sheet and not to contribute to resolving global problems we are all insane. ( See Previous Post:  ) 0.05% WORLD AID COMMISSION)

How long are we going to allow all of our values along with the Earth just to become products to fuel the Stock Exchanges and Balance sheets of Privatization and Greed.

There is one thing sure about life. It makes no promises.

But I make you a promise THAT our eyes are going to be opened by Climate Change.

If we do not reduce emissions ( Don’t tell me with the mountain of data dealing with global warming that you  STILL believe it will resolve itself or that teleology will be your Savior. ) they will not only threaten Society as a whole with food shortages, refugee crises, flooding, wars, and mass extinction of plants and animals, but make us all realize to late that Capitalism is the ultimate cause of global warming and climate change.

Our City bit living and greed along with our Social Media interconnected world has not only blinded us to the crises it is also eroding our understanding of what it means to live a fulfilled life.

The must have materialism that is dumped within months irrelevant of where it comes from other than it is affordable must stop.

Imagine an alternative where Capitalism and collectivism live together.

Open your eyes and take a look at our world in 2015. (see previous post)

The Planet currently seems on the cusp of a decidedly unharmonic convergence.

The world is rife with crime, corruption, growing inequality and militarism.

The USA was once about the little guy– the rights of individual — the success of small business– it has gone big in the worst possible way.

The International community ( what ever that is) is now facing an unholy trinity of authoritarian politics, cutthroat economics and big brother surveillance, and far-right party anti-immigrant.

Indeed even if you were to take a squint through those eyes of yours. No matter whether we live under Capitalism or Communism they are both struggling to adapt to the same environmental factors.

You would think that the forces of modernity — of technological development, of growing bureaucratization would push both systems in the same evolutionary direction.  Not on your nanny. Just look at their feeble reactions to ISIS.

If you cant rely on visual clues, listen to the sound waves rippling around the Globe.

Currently 2.5 degrees centigrade warming by 2100 is cited as the tipping point for catastrophe.  However by 2050 at the current levels of Co2 emissions never mind the methane we will be at twice the pre-industrial level.

(The permafrost in the Arctic is melting pumping Methane into the atmosphere adding to the Co2. The Greenland ice sheet will be totally melted causing a sea level rise of 39″ and so forth and so forth.)

If no MAJOR POLICY CHANGES ARE ACHIEVED Now to curtail the greed of Capitalism which exist on the rampant, uncontrolled use of natural resources the human race can kiss its ass goodbye.

Capitalism depends upon the exploitation of natural resources at the highest possible level. And we are, of course, not talking just about fossil fuels. With no thought to conservation, recycling and what will happen when the sources, from iron ore to copper, to say nothing of the fossil fuels themselves, run out.

But capitalism can exist only if the rampant, uncontrolled use of natural resources continues unabated, for that is within the very nature of the system.

But when the natural resources go, so will capitalism and by that time it will be too late to replace it with anything else.

“The suicide of capitalism.”

By it’s very nature, operating to the greatest degree possible with no thought to anything other than the accumulation of profit, capitalism is leading to this possible outcome.

When the critical resources are gone, or at least the supply is reduced to such an extent that their cost makes making profit from their exploitation increasingly difficult, capitalism will die, even without workers’ revolution.

Indeed, by its very nature of focusing exclusively on profit-making, it will eventually kill itself, as well as taking many humans and many other species along with it.

According to a recent report in Nature, 41 percent of amphibians, 26 percent of mammals and 13% of birds are threatened with extinction, if nothing is done about global warming.

But the point here is that even without global warming, with no controls on the utilization of natural resources other than fossil fuels, capitalism is essentially killing itself.

And so, what is to be done?

There is of course hope.

While it may be too late to slow carbon emissions down enough to prevent reaching the “tipping point,” as some scientists think, it may very well be possible to develop a series of environmentally safe methods for capturing carbon and methane, shielding the earth from the increasing heat levels, and so on and so forth.

It is definitely possible to institute economic planning on a massive scale to conserve and re-use natural resources that will otherwise run out.

But that will require the replacement of capitalism with some form of socialism.

What form that system might take and how we will get there are matters for further consideration.

But given historical experience and an analysis of how capitalism has dealt with the socialist experiments that have come along so far (see, e.g., The 75 Years War Against the Soviet Union), we will not get there spontaneously, we will not get there without the formation of a series of leading parties and universal world organisations with clout, around the world to promote Humanity other than religions dominance.

If that series of events does not occur, then indeed capitalism will commit involuntary suicide with disastrous results for ours and many other species. It will indeed vault us into a full-blown “Sixth Extinction.”

The burning question: Can any of this be achieved other than Extinction.

A world where one is for all and all are for one.  History tells us highly unlikely.

So I will leave you with another promises.  That is–  You and I will be long departed.  So why bother?  Because we and earth are worth It.

 

 

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The Beady Eye: Has gone all Corrupt.

11 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Corruption.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Corruption., FIFA., Political corruption.

Let’s take a look.

A Cancer at the heart of so many of the problems we face around the world.

Across a great deal of the modern world corruption continue to ­prevail.

We have all resorted to it in one form or the other: The Dash, The Sweetener, The Kickback, The Backhander, Hush Money, Payola, Soap, Fix, Graff, Look Money, The Brown Envelope, The Political Party Donation and the Tip all bribes.

Think of Putin’s Russia, Zardari’s Pakistan, Karzai’s Afghanistan, or modern Saudi Arabia. In all cases government has been converted into a form of pillage by a ruling family, individual or ruling elite.

Why? Because human nature is venal.

There is little point in trying to categorize or to list all the forms of corruptions.

World wide, corruption that has being going on long before the arrival of Capitalism.

It is sufficient to say that, a world-wide contemporary malaise which we could call the revolving doors has been around and will continue to exist as long as we and the planet we live on are turned into consumer products.

These days it is treated with the same taboo (over pointing a finger and stirring up concerns) since time memorial.

For years we have all knew that FIFA lined the pockets of those on the inside. However no one lifted a figure.  It was met with a reluctant sigh.
Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on world corruption"

We see our world leaders gathering at International meeting after International meeting to addressing World Poverty and Inequality only to be undermined by Corruption.

The World Economic Forum recently estimated that Corruption adds about 10% to business costs globally. While the World Bank says that $1 trillion dollars are paid in bribes every year, about 3 % of world GDP.

It costs the EU £120 million a year.

The question as to how to get good governance in corrupt countries when they see themselves surrounded by corruption in sport, business, banking, religion, and power.

Scandals in the corporate world, whether centered around corruption, bribery, fraud, or other greed tend to have a significant impact on the economy.

Take your pick from a few of the most recent.

The Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme. $65 billion.

Health South. $1.4 billion.

The Stanford Financial Fallout. $8 billion.

Tyco Ltd.$600 million.

Lance Armstrong and the Livestrong Foundation.

Enron Corp.

Arthur Andersen.

Bearn Stearns Companies Inc. government bailout

Swiss air.

Parmalat. €14 billion.

BANINTE. $2.2 billion deficit.

Adelphia Communications Corp.$2.3 billion.

Global Crossing Ltd. $22.4 billion with debts amounting to $12.4 billion.

HIH Insurance $5.3 billion.

Martha Stewart’s Mess.

Deutsche Bank Spying Scandal.

Urban Bank.

Jerome Kerviel and the Société Générale Banking Scandal.€4.9 billion.

Barclays.$450 million.

Bre-X.

Barings Bank.$1.3 billion.

Hewlett-Packard Spying Scandal.

Siemens.bribes may have been up to 100 million Euros.

Volkswagen.

World Com.$11 billion with $3.8 billion in fraudulent accounts.

Political USA.

Woodrow Wilson’s Engagement, Grover Cleveland’s Illegitimate Son, The Petticoat Affair, The Credit Mobilier Scandal, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings, The Whiskey Ring, Iran-Contra, Teapot Dome, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky,Watergate. US financial imperialism in Latin America, or Washington’s refusal to confront Israel over its maltreatment of the Palestinian population.

India:

62% of Indians had first hand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to get jobs done in public offices successfully.

Indian Coal Allocation Scam – 2012 – Size 1.86 L Crore.

2G Spectrum Scam – 2008 – 1.76 L Crore.

Wakf Board Land Scam – 2012 – 1.5-2 L Crore.

Commonwealth Games Scam – 2010 – 70,000 Crore.

Telgi Scam – 2002 – 20,000 Crore.

Satyam Scam – 2009 – 14,000 Crore.

Bofors Scam – 1980s & 90s – 100 to 200 Crore.

The Fodder Scam – 1990s – 1,000 Crore.

The Hawala Scandal – 1990-91 – 100 Crore.

Harshad Mehta & Ketan Parekh Stock Market Scam –1992 – 5000 Crore Combined.

Brazil’s biggest ever corruption scandal.

Court approves inquiry into dozens of senior leaders, including former president Fernando Collor, over kickbacks from the state-owned oil company, Petrobras. In total, 54 people are to be investigated by the attorney general, including 21 federal deputies and 12 senators.

China:

Chinese authorities have seized assets worth at least 90 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) from family members and associates of retired domestic security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who is at the center of China’s biggest corruption scandal in more than six decades.

Near Home.

The UK:

You got phone-hacking, the LIBOR banking scandals, child abuse allegations, the manipulation of evidence by police over the Hillsborough disaster, the 2013 horse meat labelling scandal, British involvement in torture,and so forth.

Corruption, you could say is “a central mode of power-mongering in contemporary Britain”. Theft of public assets.

  • Barclays and HSBC have been named in legal papers filed in the US 
  • Documents have also named London-based Standard Chartered Bank 

It could be said that Britain is as corrupt as klepto-states such as Afghanistan or Russia, and that only residual racism prevents us from perceiving this.

The last prime minister to make a fortune out of public office was Lloyd George.

Tony Blair is admittedly an exception but he has acquired his wealth since leaving office. No one has ever suggested that he took (or takes) bribes.

Nigeria:

Nigeria is not quite the most corrupt country on earth.

Nigeria’s 170 million-strong population should be prospering in a country that in recent years has launched four satellites into space and now has a burgeoning space programme.

Nigeria is sitting on crude oil reserves estimated at 35 billion barrels (enough to fuel the entire world for more than a year), not to mention 100 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The resource curse.

70 per cent of Nigerians live below the poverty line of £1.29 a day. It is estimated that since 1960, about $380 billion  (£245 billion) of government money has been stolen — almost the total sum Nigeria has received in foreign aid.

Whether the country is ruled by civilians or soldiers, who invariably proclaim their burning desire to eradicate civilian corruption, it makes absolutely no difference.

Frankly, we might as well flush our cash away or burn it for all the good it’s doing for ordinary Nigerians.

And you wonder why ship loads of people are arriving in Europe.

Poverty: Millions of Nigerians are living in poverty, despite the country earning huge profits from its oil depositsHaiti or the Congo are more corrupt than Nigeria..

Corruption and poverty unfortunately go hand-in-hand. 

Corruption leaves children without mothers, families without healthcare, people without food, the elderly without security, and businesses without capital.

What can be done?

The general consensus is,

We need to increase the participation of people in decision-making, making public spending and budgets more transparent, and making law enforcers and public services answerable to ordinary people.

We need to make governments publish key data on spending. Simply getting the information out there would be a good first step.

Today only a fifth of the 49 lesser developed countries have access to information laws.

2.5 billion people still live in poverty. This is not sustainable.

By 2030 the population will reach 8.5 billion.

In the latest Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index that measures how corrupt the public sector is perceived to be, two-thirds of the 177 countries ranked scored less than 50 on a scale where 100 is considered clean.

The average score of the world’s least developed countries is 28.

My belief is that the Smart Phone is already getting rid of low-level corruption, by reducing opportunities and incentives to engage in corrupt practices.

The world needs sustainable, equitable, and clean development before large-scale corruption can be tackled.

This can only be achieved by making Capitalism contribute, IE placing a 0.05% Aid Commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisition and on all Foreign Exchange Currency transactions over ($20,000) : see previous posts.  

 

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Ours is an excessively age. We know so much, we feel so little.

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Sustaniability

≈ Leave a comment

Sustainability:

One image speaks a thousand words.

 

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This is where you Live.

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Climate Change., Education, Environment, Natural World Disasters, Politics., Sustaniability, The Future

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Capitalism vs. the Climate., Describe Earth., Earth, Earth’s biological wealth, Earths Nightmare, Extinction, global climate change, People of the Earth

The other day I was wondering how one would describe Earth to an alien or a classroom of our modern-day interconnects kids.

Where would one start.

Is it round?  Not quite it is an oblate spheroid instead of a perfect sphere. It takes the Earth on solar day to rotate upon its axis.

An alien might come to earth and attempt to understand the planet by reading the literature of the planet, or just the dictionary. Looking up the word “earth” the alien may be surprised to see the this term has multiple meanings, referring to a planet and to a substance (soil/dirt).

May be the best place to start is to give an perspective of where we are in space.

As you look outward into space, you’re actually looking backwards in time. The light you see from your computer is nanoseconds old. The light reflected from the surface of the Moon takes only a second to reach Earth. The Sun is more than 8 light-minutes away. And so, if the light from the nearest star (Alpha Centauri) takes more than 4 years to reach us, we’re seeing that star 4 years in the past. There are galaxies millions of light-years away, which means the light we’re seeing left the surface of those stars millions of years ago. For example, the galaxy M109 is located about 83.5 million light-years away.

A radio signal to travel once around Earth in 1/7 of a second.  To get to the moon from Earth, so the round-trip time is twice this or 2.46.

From the sun to earth at the speed of light  seconds.https://youtu.be/Bw-I9JimhOM

If aliens lived in those galaxies, and had strong enough telescopes, they would see the Earth as it looked in the past. They might even see dinosaurs walking on the surface.

Only a few of us have ever seen Earth from afar.  It’s mankind’s rarest view of all.

To see it without borders, see it without any differences in race or religion, we would all have a completely different perspective. Because when you see it from space you cannot think of your home or your country. All you can see is one Earth….”Earth, our home planet.

It is a beautiful blue and white ball when seen from space.  the only planet in our solar system known to harbor life.

All of the things we need to survive are provided under a thin layer of atmosphere that separates us from the uninhabitable void of space.

HERE IS HOW I WOULD DESCRIBE IT;

It was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Earth is made up of complex, interactive systems that are often unpredictable. Air, water, land, and life—including humans—combine forces to create a constantly changing world that we are striving to understand.

It is the third planet from the sun and the fifth largest in the solar system.

About 71% of its surface is covered by water; the rest by land.

It is orbited by one satellite, the Moon.

Earth’s total surface area is 196,950,000 sq. mi. The area covered by the oceans is 139,480,000 sq. mi. Total land area is 57,470,000 sq. mi.

Earth’s diameter is just a few hundred kilometers larger than that of Venus.

The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents.

Our planet’s rapid spin and molten nickel-iron core give rise to a magnetic field, which the solar wind distorts into a teardrop shape. The magnetic field does not fade off into space, but has definite boundaries.

Our planet completes its elliptical orbit around the sun in an average solar year, 365.24219 days. Its average distance from the sun is 80,777,537.8 n.mi.

The Earth’s axis is tilted 23.45 deg away from the perpendicular to its orbital plane.

It wobbles very slightly.

The Moon orbits the Earth about once a month (every 29 days, 12 hours, 44 minutes, 2.9 seconds) The average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,857 mi., about 30 times Earth’s diameter.

The Earth’s crust is about 6.5 miles thick beneath the oceans, and about 25 miles thick under the continents. The surface layer is made of rock. This outer layer formed a hard, rocky crust as lava at the surface cooled 4.5 billion years ago.The crust is broken into many large plates that move slowly relative to each other. Mountain ranges form when two plates collide. The plates move about one inch per year. About 250 million years ago, most of the land was connected together, and over time has separated into seven continents. So millions of years ago the continents and the oceans were in different positions.

Scientists had previously concluded that the Earth was slightly older than 4.5 billion years old, but had not found a piece of the Earth’s primitive mantle.

The solid shell that is between the Earth’s crust and the outer core makes up about 84 percent of the Earth’s volume. Until recently, researchers generally thought that the Earth and the other planets of the solar system were chondritic. This means that the mantle’s chemistry was thought to be similar to that of chondrites, some of the oldest, most primitive objects in the solar system. Chondrites contain certain isotope ratios of the chemical elements of helium, lead and neodymium.

Sixty-five million years ago it looked quite different than it does to-day.

There are about 300,000 plant species and about 1,400,000 animal species on Earth.

In the next 6.4 billions of years it will be eating by it nearest star the Sun which is 149,597,891 kilometers away.  It will take a little more than 8 minutes before we realized it is time to put on a sweater. It takes Sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth.

It weighs 5.9736×1024kg.  That is about 13,170,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (or 5,974,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms).

80% of its fresh water is in its polar ice caps. Fresh water exists in the liquid phase only within a narrow temperature span (32 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit/ 0 to 100 degrees Celsius). The surface is unique from the other planets because it is the only one which has liquid water in such large quantities.

Its greatest present day threats come from humanity which is at a crossroads now, where we have to make an active choice.

Evolution, the Big Bang, and climate change are all things that were first proposed as hypotheses long ago.

Climate change is not. What are we doing about it. The same as always. Turn it into a product for profit.

One choice is to acknowledge these issues and potential consequences and try to guide the future (in a way we want to). The other choice is just to throw up our hands and say, ‘Let’s just go on as usual and see what happens.’ My guess is, if we take that latter choice, yes, humanity is going to survive, but we are going to see some effects that will seriously degrade the quality of life for our children and grandchildren.

The ongoing wars, the distortions of truth we have witnessed, the widening gaps between rich and poor disturb us more than we can say; but we have had so many reminders of powerlessness that we have retreated before the challenge of bringing such issues into our classrooms of our brains.

The best effort so far is the creation of an Earth Day this year.  One day!

Population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation. No one knows how close Earth is to a global tipping point, or if it is inevitable.

Life on Earth is constantly changing and only the fittest organisms survive.

Every few of us appreciate how thin our little atmosphere is that supports all life here on Earth. So if we foul it up, there’s no coming back from something like that. The dictionary offers a firm set of definitions for this term, but no single definition, which leads to a sense of complexity. The complexities of perception are, in part, what post-modernism is all about.  I describe it as pure insanity.

The Earth system now includes human society, Our social and economic systems are now embedded within the Earth system. In many cases, the human systems are now the main drivers of change in the Earth system. Earth system changes, natural or driven by humans, can have significant consequences without involving changes in climate. Global change should  not be confused with climate change; it is significantly more. indeed, climate change is part of this much larger challenge.

Throughout history human societies have had to confront and adjust to climatic and environmental hazards. A long-term perspective that draws on such experiences must inform today’s climate policies. I argue that climate policies aimed at mitigating and adapting to hazards should be informed by our knowledge of past human experience.

In today’s globalised world our food tends to take a long route from farm to table, relying on international trade routes that pass through several bottlenecks. Sudden disruption of such delivery systems – via climate change or political volatility – can severely affect the food security of particular regions.

Large-scale governance is unavoidable in today’s world where hazards are regional and often transcend political boundaries, unfortunately at the moment we are relying on out of date World Organisations that are incapable of putting the  Earth First!

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/32001208″>EARTH</a&gt; from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/michaelkoenig”>Michael K&ouml;nig</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

<p><a href=”https://vimeo.com/79771046″>Climate Change &mdash; The state of the science</a> from <a href=”https://vimeo.com/anthropocene”>WelcomeAnthropocene</a&gt; on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 

Take a trip into the unknown.

https://youtu.be/YzMrNFd4oOk

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The Beady Eye, Looks at Our Common Future Under Climate Change.

01 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Climate Change., Environment, The Future

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Capitalism vs. the Climate., Climate change, global climate change

The hope of the twentieth century rests on its recognition that war and depression are man-made and needless as is so with Climate Change.

Over the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel.

All can be avoided in the future by turning from … nineteenth-century characteristics … and going back to other characteristics that our Western society has always regarded as virtues: generosity, compassion, cooperation, rationality, and foresight, and finding an increased role in human life for love, spirituality, charity, and self-discipline.

We now know fairly well how to control the increase in population, how to produce wealth and reduce poverty or disease. We may, in the near future, know how to postpone senility and death but to what avail if we continue to deny Climate Change.

It certainly should be clear to those who have their eyes open that violence, extermination, and despotism do not solve problems for anyone and that victory and conquest are delusions, as long as they are merely physical and materialistic.

Our problem is that capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest.

Money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact.

Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt.

You would think that policymakers with the dark future of Climate Change ahead would be addressing a new set of existential questions.

Such as: Should Economics that grew wealth bear more of the burden to stop climate change.  Another words developed countries should take the lead allowing less developed countries to maintain emissions.

As we all know to date no international mitigation and abatement efforts have taken place on a large enough scale to freeze emissions. We don’t see any intense geopolitical cooperation. Countries will not do anything on behalf of other that requires them to sacrifice their own interests.

Off course when you introduce future generations into the question democracy as it stands is not equipped to represent the interests of future generations never mind the here and now. Humans that don’t exist have no say as to what will it mean to live a meaningful life in a world that has eliminated all wildness, and forms of life from the planet.

So here we are poised to become agent of the greatest catastrophic events ever to hit our planet which could have to support over 10 billion people by 2050.

We are currently on a trajectory to warm the planet 4°C. In such a 4ºC world most of us will not be able to adapt never mind our natural systems.

As we move beyond the stable state we are already well beyond the zone of uncertainty.  The risk for all species – including ours- grow and grow.

planetary boundaries

We need to start thinking in terms that we are just not used to thinking of as a human species.

Will it be left to the market to decide.  With businesses as hubs for democratic engagement this could unfairly shift costs onto either consumers or taxpayers.

I’m not convinced.. that we’ve ended up with a society that’s really able to harness the innovation potential of business.

Climate change challenges democracy. But climate change also needs democracy.

We live in a carbon dependent world. And for the most part, we are loath to forego this somewhat cosy arrangement. Carbon dependency is promoted in part by technology which gives us many good things on the cheap: electricity, personal mobility, affordable consumer goods, cooling and warmth. It is also encouraged by governments which promise easy options to low-carbon outcomes, without delivering these options. And for the most part, we do not seem to care, as the goodies continue to arrive.

We all know in our hearts that this is a cop out: we are duped but we connive in the deceit. Democracy is not a system that forces us to face up to these contradictions. We want to live in a sustainable society but the political system does not reward or support the innovators and entrepreneurs who would guide us to it.

Political institutions manipulate us, as do the power brokers who shape political opinion and guide policy.  Democracy shuns the long-term.

The goal of equipping democracy to mitigate and adapt to climate change is not a one-time endeavor but a continuous process.

Today, the formerly contented European middle classes, sitting in the gap between the rich minority and the poor majority, for the first time in living memory cannot be sure their children will be better off than they are. Confronted by this austere prospect, this group – the natural allies of climate stability – will become unsettled.

The world’s nations are desperately looking for guaranteed techno-fixes to climate change. Democracy around the world has suffered as governments seek to lean on eco-technocrats to cut back on investment in education and health and invest instead in technology for climate mitigation and adaptation.

I really do believe that people can provide the answers – if only we could unleash the real power of that creative potential. Environmental innovation has to be about much more than technology. I’ve realized that, and I’m going to make it my business to ensure that as many other people as possible do too.

So where best to start than requesting your Television Stations to highlight Climate Change in their Weather Forecast.   Join me. This is a war against no enemy other than ourselves.

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