Monthly Archives: November 2015

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : Most violence remains unfathomable.

17 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Freedom, Paris terrorist attack., The world to day., War, Where's the Global Outrage.

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In light of the recent events in Paris this post is sure to touch on some

very raw nerves but if we are to honor those who lost their lives

we  must come to some understanding of the horrification or

glorification of killing other than the frenzy of fear now being created

by the media. 

Television is an energy drain and a large source of fear and negativity for many. Watching violence, diminishes the harshness and reality of these acts, by gradually numbing us. Along with Social media it is one of the fastest ways to disconnect yourself from the world.

Most people just want to live their lives in peace.

however this is completely undermined by modern day, which would make you think that most people are violent and destructive.

Violence on television is however part of our societal experience.

The number of murders seen on TV by the time an average child finishes elementary school: 8,000. The number of violent acts seen on TV by age 18: 200,000

 Most of us will never engage in an act of extreme brutality.

We will never shoot, stab, or beat someone to death. We will never rape another human being or set them on fire. We will never strap a bomb to our chests and detonate ourselves in a crowded café.

And so, when faced with these seemingly senseless acts, we find ourselves at a loss.

At the same time for most of us in the world we have become so use to killing it means little or nothing to us unless it directly affects us.

If you stop and ask yourself why are we so prone to kill this is a subject that has been intensely debated for centuries, probably because it says so much about who we are and whether we can justify war and other collective violence.

If we really want to solve the problem of violence, there is nothing for it but to risk a kind of understanding that threatens our own values, our own way of life. We have to gaze into an abyss.

People are violent because they feel they must be; because they feel that their violence is obligatory.

Usually when someone is murdered, people expect the murderer to feel culpable. This though, is not the case in war. When in war, a soldier is taught that the enemy deserves to die, for no other reason than that they are the nation’s enemy.  They know that they are harming fully human beings. Nonetheless, they believe they should.

Has warfare been handed down to us through millions of years of evolution?

Is it part of who we are as a species?

Is warfare is rooted in evolution?

At the heart of these question is whether humans have a natural capacity to kill other humans. Some social scientists have concluded that evolution has in fact left us with this unfortunate ability.

Luckily there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow-man.

Violence does not stem from a psychopathic lack of morality. Quite the reverse: it comes from the exercise of perceived moral rights and obligations.

Many people assume that soldiers in a firefight instinctively respond to enemy fire by shooting back, and that soldiers in a kill-or-be-killed situation will choose to kill. But informal interviews conducted with thousands of American combat soldiers during World War II by army historian S.L.A. Marshall revealed that as many as 75% of soldiers never fired their weapons during combat.

Very few people would seek out an opportunity to kill others.

At the same time, you may find it hard to believe that it is sometimes impossible for soldiers to kill others even when their own lives are at risk.

Throughout history and around the world people have come up with ways to overcome an aversion to killing, such as dehumanizing the victim, placing distance between the killer and the victim, and using drugs or loud music to induce a trance-like state in a killer. This trait would have been amplified and passed down through the generations until it was eventually inherited by modern humans, who presumably took this predisposition and ran with it, inventing more and more efficient ways to kill each other.

Aftermath of World War II, the U.S. military embarked on a campaign to more effectively prepare soldiers for combat by employing realistic training exercises. New recruits began to practice shooting at pop-up, human-shaped targets rather than the traditional, stationary bull’s-eyes. More and more elaborate and realistic combat simulation exercises and ’war games’ were implemented.

The point of this new training was to make killing an automatic response under combat conditions. And it worked. Combatants in institutional wars do not fight primarily because they are aggressive.  Humans excel at overcoming our biological limitations using technological innovation.

All terrorism and war co-evolved, promoting conflict between groups and greater harmony within them.

There is no morality in war.

The original founders of the religions were the human incarnations of the same God like Krishna, Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha etc.

Every religion says that their God only created this entire earth or this entire humanity. Unfortunately, there is only one earth and this proves that there is only one God mentioned by all the religions.

Along came those religions about 4000 years ago and endless war! in the name of religion (so they can not be religions or spiritual they can not be So new armies formed called Religion?.

Since God is one and the same, there cannot be contradicting concepts between the religions. But we find some contradictions and people are divided based on these contradictions. This division is leading to quarrels and finally killing each other. These contradictions cannot be from God because there is only one God as said above.

The Q`ran says that you should protect even the follower of other religion and convey the message of Allah to him. It is left to him to follow or not.

The same God exists in different forms in different religions.

Unfortunately we are the only living species that can reason and as a result, we realized that the only way to have things your way is by domination therefore, we divide and conquer. And as we become more powerful, we distort things. We twist the truth to fit our ulterior motive. And to convince the mass to adopt your belief in the name of God.

Unfortunately, it does not follow that every problem comes with its own prepackaged solution.

War is vague and illogical because it forces humans into extreme situations that have no obvious solutions. In a war, you kill someone and even if you win, you lose. The parts that are left out are the tragedies, and the permanent scars the war left.

And yet despite this apparent aversion to killing, we still manage to kill each other with alarming frequency.

Fortuitously this aversion to killing exists, and it reassures us that warfare is not an inescapable part of human life, and gives us hope that one day we might stop fighting wars.

Killing isn’t something that comes naturally to people.

Funny that people decry killing when it is because of their own demands that make it happen.

How can this be?“

Is that we’re simply too smart for our own good with propaganda to brainwash the masses into accepting this bloodshed day after day.

I’m interested how this applies to terrorists.

So would it be social engineering like “dehumanizing America, Israel, the West” or the cult of violence in many of those societies, plus enticements of financial rewards for the family of the suicide bombers in question that would help over come terrorists from their natural inclination not to kill. Most terrorists are paid mercenaries.

It isn’t easy to change a culture of violence.

You have to give people the structural, economic, technological and political means to regulate their relationships peacefully.

Legal sanctions are insufficient on their own.

Critically, the message has to come from respected people within the killer’s own community. Their own ideas about right and wrong matter most;

The ideas of those they care about and respect matter more.

Only when violence in any relationship is seen as a violation of every relationship will war diminish. Once everyone, everywhere, truly believes that violence is wrong, it will end.

The danger for Europe as a result of the horrific loss of life in Paris is not declaring war on terrorism but shutting down its borders.  Open Borders is a declaration of intent that countries share goods and wealth and if they don’t they should. If all countries helped each other I think there would be no need for war.

This would separate out those who wish for war due to some perversion. If dangerous people can be motivated by genuine moral beliefs, we face a troubling dimension to morality.

If Paris is to teach us anything it is that there is a cost to modern-day warfare, that people will kill each other quite deliberately not just with particularly technologically advanced, like drones.

Our ancestors would have carried out deadly attacks only when they severely outnumbered their victims and not with low-cost attacks on unsuspecting neighbors.

When you declare war like Mr Holland and before him Mr Bush with Mr Blair you create fear which leads to killing and loss of the very liberties that so many died for.

France’s military efforts against ISIS have developed gradually over the course of the last 15 months. France began airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq in September of 2014 so Mr Hollands declaration of war is somewhat retrospective.

Prior to the American invasion in 2003, which France pointedly refused to join.  Hollande insisted that France’s involvement would be strictly limited. “We will only intervene in Iraq,” he said.

Now he declaring a war ( rightly so) that France can not win it on its own. Nor will NATO who will have to get its arch-enemy Mr Putin on its side.

Unlike the wars created by 9/11 this time the drum beat is not a war against civilization as you could not describe ISIS as Civilized.

These days we have portable power.

This is a war to protect the West concept of Liberty which we will win by turning every Smart Phone into the eyes and ears of Freedom.

My message to ISIS is.

You may not tell us to kill.  The society that you insist on – Killing is living. This is not a society anyone other than a barbarian would want to live in.

This lesson has being with us from the creation of man. The danger is that we forget it.

Whatever drove the Paris attackers to commit their horrific acts is certainly more complex and varied than the French government’s conduct in the world. It is no secret that the world’s attention can only be split so many ways.

The lessons of Paris today provide our best chance to get to the bottom of the ‘peace versus justice’ debate, expose its fallacies, and move beyond it.

MAY ALL WHO LOST THEIR LIVES RIP.

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Below is a x terrorist worth listing to.

And here below is the sort of thing that stats a war,

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S RECENT EVENTS IN PARIS SHOWS ITS TIME TO FOCUS ON THE BIG PICTURE.

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Paris terrorist attack., Politics., The world to day., War, Where's the Global Outrage.

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We must focused on the “big picture” exploring all avenues for influencing humans everywhere.

How societies have developed through all of human history – from Neanderthals to i Phones.

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings.

The question is why a pretty small group of nations around the shores of the North Atlantic had come to dominate the planet in the last 200 years in a way that the world’s never really seen before is now rapidly becoming irrelevant.

Since no CLARITY is being provided by any of our World Organisations or Political leaders regarding a solution I will offer in this post the reasons why this is true and a solution that is achievable in our life time.

We have four primary issues that must be addressed for us to live in harmony with nature: Overpopulation, Over consumption, dependence on fossil fuels and our harmful and wasteful typical western consumerism.

We have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.”

They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

The urgency now is driven by the fact that we simply don’t have the necessary time to address the first three. They will take many decades (if not centuries) to resolve and we may be down to just a few years as the experts agree that we’re rapidly approaching or passing certain tipping points, beyond which there is no possibility of avoiding the worst effects of crossing all these planetary boundaries.

In the end of all of this mess amounts to simple massive transfers of wealth from the middle classes and the poor to the rich.

Because whatever you’re fighting for: Racism, Poverty, Feminism, Gay Rights, or any type of Equality. It won’t matter in the least, because if we don’t all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct.

It has brought us to a situation of the greatest schism between rich and poor in history. The utter breakdown of democratic government in favour of the new technological driven Feudalism.

As our social development continues to accelerate, we continue to change the meaning of the word poor.

We are not apart from nature, we are a part of nature.

I’m sorry that we paid so much attention to ISIS, and very little how fast the ice is melting in the arctic.

It is imperative now than ever that France in honor its recent unnecessary lost of innocent lives insures that the Climate Change Conference is not effected.

Unfortunately we must tried to see beyond the horrific events in Paris – into the misery beyond.

If we cannot see something, it is difficult to know how we can possibly begin to devise ways to avoid it.

It is time to attend to this generation’s apocalypse, and to do so we must recover both the fear and the hope of early ’80s politics.

There has to be another way, and this time it must include all of humanity, and all of our planet.

So far, few works have managed to put the unthinkable in front of our eyes –

The Internet, is the public face of globalization.  Corruption is not only thriving online, but winning. The digital revolution has degenerated into an underworld of organized crime, dirty tactics, black ops and terrorism.

There is no such thing as “national cyberspace.” International cooperation will be needed, but be warned that the Internet will not go away in any place it touches.

“Lets just say that today’s Internet is a dirty mess waiting to be cleaned up.”

I am sure that there is no need to give a history lesson but here is one that tells the truth and which I admire.

Written by Roberto Savio.

It out lines why we are in the current mess and if you want to understand why it is so it is compulsory reading.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News, offers ten explanations of how the current mess in which the world finds itself came about.

1)  ” The world, as it now exists, was largely shaped by the colonial powers, which divided the world among themselves, carving out states without any consideration for existing ethnic, religious or cultural realities. This was especially true of Africa and the Arab world, where the concept of state was imposed on systems of tribes and clans.

2)  After the end of the colonial era, it was inevitable that to keep these artificial countries alive, and avoid their disintegration, strong men would be needed to cover the void left by the colonial powers. The rules of democracy were used only to reach power, with very few exceptions. The Arab Spring did indeed get rid of dictators and autocrats, just to replace them with chaos and warring factions (as in Libya) or with a new autocrat, as in Egypt.

The case of Yugoslavia is instructive. After the Second World War, Marshal Tito dismantled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and created the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But we all know that Yugoslavia did not survive the death of its strongman.

The lesson is that without creating a really participatory and unifying process of citizens, with a strong civil society, local identities will always play the most decisive role. So it will take some before many of the new countries will be considered real countries devoid of internal conflicts.

3)  Since the Second World War, the meddling of the colonial and super powers in the process of consolidation of new countries has been a very good example of man-made disaster.

Take the case of Iraq. When the United States took over administration of the country in 2003 after its invasion, General Jay Garner was appointed and lasted just a month, because he was considered too open to local views.

Garner was replaced by a diplomat, Jan Bremmer, who took up his post after a two-hour briefing by the then Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice. Bremmer immediately proceeded to dissolve the army (creating 250,000 unemployed) and firing anyone in the administration who was a member of the Ba’ath party, the party of Saddam Hussein. This destabilised the country, and today’s mess is a direct result of this decision.

The current Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, whom Washington is trying to remove as the cause of polarisation between Shiites and Sunnis, was the preferred American candidate. So was the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who is now virulently anti-American. This is a tradition that goes back to the first U.S. intervention in Vietnam, where Washington put in place Ngo Dihn Dien, who turned against its views, until he was assassinated.

There is no space here to give example of similar mistakes (albeit less important) by other Western powers. The point is that all leaders installed from outside do not last long and bring instability.

4)  We are all witnessing religious fighting and Islam extremism as a growing and disturbing threat. Few make any effort to understand why thousands of young people are willing to blow themselves up. There is a striking correlation between lack of development/employment and religious unrest. In the Muslim countries of Asia (Arab Muslims account for less than 20 percent of the world’s Muslim populations), extremism hardly exists.

And few realise that the fight between Shiites and Sunnis is funded by countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran.

Those religions have been living side by side for centuries, and now they are fighting a proxy war, for example in Syria. Saudi Arabia has been funding Salafists (the puritan form of Islam) everywhere, and it has provided nearly two billion dollars to the new Egyptian autocrat, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, because he is fighting the Muslim Brotherhood, which predicates the end of kings and sheiks and power for the people. Iraq is also becoming a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, defender of the Sunnis, and Iran, defender of the Shiites.

So, when looking at these wars of religion, always look at who is behind them. Religions usually become belligerent only if they are used. Just look at European history, where wars of religion were invented by kings and fought by people. Of course, once the genie is out of the bottle, it will take a long time to put it back. So this issue will be with us for quite some time.

5)  The end of the Cold War unfroze the world, which had been kept in stability by the balance between the two superpowers.

Attempts to create regional or international alliances to bring stability have always been stymied by national interests. The best example is Europe. While everybody was talking about Crimea, Ukraine and Vladimir Putin (who had been made paranoiac about Western encirclement, from the George Bush Jr. administration onwards) and how to bring him to listen to the United States and Europe, European companies continued trade in spite of a much talked about embargo. And now, Austria has quietly signed an agreement with Russia to join the South Stream, a pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe – so much for the unity of a Europe which has been clamouring about the need to reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

A multipolar world is in the making, but it has to be seen how stable it will be.

In Asia, China and Japan are increasing their military investments, as are surrounding countries. And while local conflicts, like Syria, Iraq and Sudan, are not going to escalate into a larger conflict, this would certainly be the case in Asia.

6)  In a world more and more divided by a resurgence of national interests, the very idea of shared governance is losing its strength, and not only in Europe.

The United Nations has lost its significance as the arena in which to reach consensus and legitimacy. The two engines of globalisation – trade and finance – are not part of the United Nations, which is stuck with the themes of development, peace, human rights, environment, education and so on. While these issues are crucial for a viable world, they are not seen as such by those in power. Conclusion: the United Nations is sliding into irrelevance.

7)  At the same time, values and ideas which were considered universal, such as cooperation, mutual aid, international social justice and peace as an encompassing paradigm are also becoming irrelevant.

French President Francois Hollande meets U.S. President Barack Obama, not to discuss how to stop the genocide in Sudan, or the kidnapping of children in Nigeria, but to ask him to intervene with his Minister of Justice to reduce a giant fine on a French bank, the BNP-Parisbas, for fraudulent activities. The outstanding problem of climate control was largely absent in the last  G7 meeting, not to talk of nuclear disarmament … and yet these are the two main threats to the planet!

8)  After colonialism and totalitarian regimes, the key phrase after the Second World War was “implementation of democracy”. But after the end of the Cold War, democracy was taken for granted. In fact, in the last twenty years, the formula of representative democracy has been losing its glamour. Pragmatism has led to the loss of long-term vision, and politics have become more and more mere administration.

Citizens feel less and less related to parties, which have basically become self-centred and self-reliant.  International affairs are not considered tools of power by parties, and decisions are taken without participation. This leads to choices which often do not represent the feelings and priorities of citizens.

The way in which the bailout of Cyprus from its financial crisis a few years ago was treated in the European Commission was widely recognised as a blatant example of lack of transparency. Few people certainly make more mistakes than many …

9)  A very important element of the mess has been the growth of what its proponents, especially in the financial world, call the “new economy” – an economy that contemplates permanent unemployment, lack of social investments, reduced taxation for large capital, the marginalisation of trade unions, and a reduction of the role of the State as the regulator and guarantor of social justice.

Inequalities are reaching unprecedented levels. The world’s 85 richest individuals possess the same wealth as 2.5 billion people.

10)  All this brings its corollary. It is not by chance that all mainstream media worldwide have the same reading of the world.

Information today has basically eliminated analysis and process, to concentrate on events. Their ability to follow the world mess is minimal, and they just repeat what those in power say. It is very instructive to see media which are very analytical about national affairs and very superficial about international issues. The media depend largely on three international news agencies, which represent the Western world and its interests. Have you read anywhere about the gas agreement between Austria and Russia?

So, a final point: never be satisfied with what you read in the newspapers, always try to get additional and opposite viewpoints through the net. This will help you to look at the world with your eyes, and not with the eyes of somebody else who is probably part of the system which has created this mess. Do not go with the tide … search for the other face of the moon. And if they tell you that they know, well, just look at the results. So, be yourself and, if you make a mistake, at least it will be your mistake. “

I thank him and I could not agree more with his advise in his summing up. He states what I have being advocating in post after post.

Many factors influenced the civil war in Syria, including long-standing political, religious, and ideological disputes; economic dislocations from both global and regional factors; and the consequences of water shortages influenced by drought, ineffective watershed management, and the growing influence of climate variability and change.

Here is my solution. 

Greed is the real terrorist operating under the banner of Profit for Profit sake.

Make Profit for Profit Sake Pay;

By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new drilling and mining Licences.

A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development and resolving Climate Change.

This would create a perpetual Funded Fund to contributed to rectifying the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.   Greed. 

And as we look forward into a world increasingly dominated by technology, what will geography mean in the 21st century?
Dead Iraq children

A new report claiming the numbers killed by ‘the war on terror’ globally may be as high as 2 million has been met with almost total silence.

What will all the deaths achieve? Every death is a tragedy.

This is a good starting point for a wider debate about the justifications and rationalisations for the great swathe of global violence unleashed in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The under reporting by the media of this human toll attributable to ongoing Western interventions, whether deliberate, or through self-censorship, has been key to removing the “fingerprints” of responsibility.’

The new age of humanitarian war which suggests that war is not as bad as it used to be, or at least that it’s not so bad that the costs outweigh the gains. Is totally naive.

High-tech precision weapons, precision targeting enabled by lawyers, new ethical norms, population-centric counterinsurgency – all this has made it possible to vaporise the bad guys is not true as we all saw up close yesterday in Paris.

Mr Hollands declaration of war is understandable, as was Americas after 9/11. But it should not be the first choice rather than a last resort.

The first choice should be to convince their populations that war will not only be cost-free for them, but that its effects on the countries on the receiving end of it will also be minimal and ultimately beneficial.

This is what we have been told ever since the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War and throughout the last fourteen years of the ‘war on terror,’ whenever the US and its allies are considering who next to bomb or hit with a drone.

War used to be a way to learn Geography – Fool me once.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT ON LINE GAMBLING.

13 Friday Nov 2015

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It’s no secret the Internet has changed the way we do many things and that I have no problem with a flutter.

As with most of my posts I am not going to exam the pros and cons of the Gambling Industry but ask some questions that need to be addressed due to its growing presents on our Television screens on our Smart Phones and the like.

To express that portable gaming will never affect the internet’s gambling industry within the next six years is a massive understatement.

This market centers not upon the makers of these games, but upon the players themselves and attaches real, monetary values to their virtual accomplishments.

The main reason I am writing this post however is not to be labeled a spoil sport but to highlight that Online Gambling is now being promoted on our television screens ( As you will have observed during the recent Rugby World Cup)  – Bet now in play – responsible Gambling.

In my view this is non responsible gambling advertising which does not advertise gambling in a socially responsible manner and provide key information to consumers. 

Its bad enough to have the Lotto Draw taking up prime Television viewing with late night roulette channels ruling the roost till early morning.

One line betting is a major issue to be dealt with, which is spreading with little Many of these advertisements claim that they have free gambling or give away free money. Do you think they would really give you that money if they weren’t confident that you would get hooked and spend it all on there site or if they thought that they wouldn’t get it all back?

Welcome Bonus up to £88 free!

Internet gambling represents one of the fastest growing segments of online activity with more than seven hundred web sites now providing users the opportunity to wager everything from casino games to sporting events.

According to internet research firms, the industry will pull in $1.5 billion in world-wide revenues this year.  That figure is expected to hit $86.b by 2016.

All good source of revenue for Government if like France, where there is no gambling except state gambling.

Online gambling is particularly popular with around 6.8 million consumers in the EU and a wide variety of operators offering services.

The EU gambling market is estimated at around EUR 84.9 billion and grows at a yearly rate of around 3%. On a global basis, online gaming or i Gaming as it has been called has grown into a multi-billion dollar business, particularly in Europe.

With Some gambling sites report increasing shares of their total revenues stemming from mobile and gambling search words, which are increasingly originating from phones and tablets.

In the past online gaming used to mainly attract younger men, but that demographic group has expanded to include both women and older age groups. Smartphones and tablets, with help from social media apps and irresponsible TV advertising, are changing the demographics of gamers.

Four years ago, there was one online gambling site; today it’s estimated there are between 300 and 400.

To some, gambling on the net may just be an entertaining past time, but for many others it soon becomes a serious addiction.

In 2015, online poker alone yielded 329 million British pounds, up from roughly 290 million British pounds in 2O13.  You may rest assured that Mr Cameron is not wanting any changes to gambling laws in his renegotiation of EU membership.

So where is the problem?

Because consumers in Europe search beyond national borders for more competitive online gambling services, they can be exposed to risks such as fraud.

Some people believe that online casinos are good for the local economy because they provide jobs and tax revenue for a community. This may be true but the community isn’t local. Most online casinos are located overseas to avoid taxes.

Different kinds of gambling services often operate across borders and can also operate outside the control of individual EU countries’ national authorities.

The credit card is the oxygen of Internet gambling.

Games are at the forefront of creating a rich virtual world, but one could imagine other possibilities, such as virtual museums with electronic art or digital archives.

Not to be confused with e-commerce, virtual commerce, the buying and selling of virtual items on or off-line, is developing into something that cannot be ignored.

How will online communities value virtual goods? What will be the ethical nature of virtual commerce?

One has to ask, do all sports disciplines benefit from on-line gambling exploitation rights in a similar manner to horse-racing and, if so, are those rights exploited?

Despite the rapid growth of online gaming, land-based gambling still dwarfs the internet activity.

In 2014, the gambling industry made a total contribution of approximately 240 billion U.S. dollars to the U.S. economy, directly employing 734 thousand people. In a spring 2014 survey by Nielsen Scarborough, almost 80 million Americans admitted to having visited a casino in the past 12 months.

Across the UK, France and Spain, betting, in particular sports betting, was the largest segment of the online gambling market.

Online gaming includes such activities as poker, casinos (where people can play traditional casino games, like roulette or blackjack, but online), sports betting, bingo and lotteries. Of these, casino games and sports betting make up the largest share of the market.

What does gaming stand to lose or gain from its development as a financial enterprise, facilitated by its new-found popularity?

PayPal has started appearing on a few U.S. gambling sites including Caesars Interactive’s WSOP.com website.

Faced with information overload, consumers rely on labels such as Betway, Bet 365, Titan Bet, 1888 Casino, Europa Casino.

Should government somehow control how much one bets by setting limits on people?

Should advertising be allowed to suggest gambling is a rite of passage?Exploit the susceptibilities, aspirations, credulity, inexperience or lack of knowledge of under-18s or other vulnerable persons.

Is solitary gambling more preferable to social gambling?

There is  little doubt in regards to the future from mobile gaming.

While currently approximately 5% with the best positioned online are actually done on cellular devices, this number is likely to rocket to a lot more like 50% throughout the next 3 to 5 years.

If the government is serious about … [avoiding] the kids of today becoming the gambling addicts of tomorrow some sort of regulation is long over due.

These principles should include effective and efficient registration of players, age verification and identification controls – in particular in the context of money transactions, reality checks (account activity, warning signs, sign posting to help lines), no credit policy, protection of player funds, self-restriction possibilities (time/financial limits, exclusion) as well as customer support and efficient handling of complaints.

Online gambling promotes addiction and presents great potential for criminal abuse such as identity theft and other forms of cyber crime.

Credit card fraud and theft of banking credentials are reported to be the most common crime in relation to on-line gambling.

It wont be long before the Selling of lottery tickets will be persecuting us day in day out.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : WE HAVE NEVER HAD FREEDOM AND WHAT WE HAVE NOW IS AN ILLUSION.

07 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Freedom, Humanity., Life., Social Media., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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These days our Freedoms (which so many died for) are being eroded to the point where there is no such thing as Freedom in our Lifetime.In this post I am going to try to express what exactly personal Freedom is these days.

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I am not going to exam the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which has over 30 Articles, or what is left of free speech, or the Black freedom struggle, or woman’s struggle for freedom.  Or the idea of free speech which is a view of freedom that is inseparable from the
political arena, flawed in theory and politicised in practice.

⌈ Human rights are rights inherent to all human beings, whatever our nationality, place of residence, sex, national or ethnic origin, color, religion, language, or any other status. We are all equally entitled to our human rights without discrimination. These rights are all interrelated, interdependent and indivisible.

Universal human rights are often expressed and guaranteed by law, in the forms of treaties, customary international law, general principles and other sources of international law. International human rights law lays down obligations of Governments to act in certain ways or to refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms of individuals or groups.⌉

All of which are impossible to implement, and has never been implemented anywhere historically – not even today, in liberal societies.

The freedoms that we once had are now dissolving because of the Internet, and the need for blanket surveillance due to fear mongering politics over terrorists plots ever since 9/11.

Our every move is tracked, we are under surveillance around the clock, our buying habits are logged, our preferences are hacked, and most of us don’t raise an eyebrow.

It is a mistake to think of a search engine as an oracle for anonymous queries they can set off a chain reaction that can have troubling consequences both online and offline. All this is because being online increasingly means being put into categories based on a socioeconomic portrait of you that’s built over time by advertisers and search engines collecting your data—a portrait that data brokers buy and sell, but that you cannot control or even see.

Our background and our relationships are becoming inescapable features of our human existence.

So what is freedom.

In the modern sense freedom is achieved by one’s individual nature, or inner voice.  A sovereign self – a monological consciousness that fundamentally excludes the other.

However one can still be imprisoned by an oppressive internal forced liberation from an interior force.

So how can one reconcile two seemingly opposed senses of freedom?

One sense views freedom as bound and situated, while the other sense views freedom as liberation from such bonds.

What is required is a notion of self hood that recognizes and embraces both senses of freedom –  to see the self not as an isolated and detached entity from the social world, but one that is deeply enculturated and dialogical while simultaneously liberated.

These are the limits, the boundaries, of what allow us to be free and for things to be meaningful.

So instead of viewing boundaries as something that disables our freedom, we should recognize that boundaries are what might actually enable our freedom.

The received ideas of our present-day institutions are composed of the religious, philosophical, economic, and political status quo.

The goal for each of us is to break free of these ideologies and re describe our world as a whole. This sense of freedom, which I referred to earlier as freedom-within-boundaries, is what ultimately makes possible a freedom-from-oppression.

If men wish to be free, it is precisely sovereignty they must renounce.

As Charles Taylor puts it, this sovereign and self-determining freedom characteristic of the modern individual “demands that I break the hold of all such external impositions, and decide for myself alone.

In this view, individuals could exercise their gifts and powers only by
participating in the common life.

That is to say, our freedom is contingent upon the greater public world.

Modern thought (especially evident in the political philosophy of Rousseau) externalized the source of oppression onto authoritative forces such as society, church, law, and government.

This is no longer true due to the indebtedness of the world.

At the expense of eliminating fundamental characteristics that make us human we are now confronting a world with unlimited new possibilities but having no meaningful boundaries.

Modern Social media come to see others as a part of – Us/Selfies.

Unfortunately this unchecked freedom is leading us to a void in which nothing would be worth doing, nothing would deserve to count for anything.

Life is dialogical by its very nature.

To live means to engage in dialogue, to question, to listen, to answer, to agree, to return to your own position, enriched. We need to identify with others in order to open ourselves up to new ways of being without forgetting where we come from to achieve any freedom.

In the past our background was essential to our identity. These days one’s uniqueness is maintained through continuous exposure to novelty  in a consumer culture that thrives on the latest fad.

Is it this quantity of novelties that appears to take precedent over quality of relationships. So where do we turn for redescription of Freedom, to open us up to new and fresh ways of being human?

That can enable us to break free from our own pasts and increase our level of sensitivity and sympathy to those without freedom?

Is it severance from the status quo.

I fear that if you were to ignore you background, and try to break from your own past, “You would be crippled as a person, because you would be repudiating an essential part out of which you evaluate and determine the meanings of things. Our background, often times inarticulate and unformulated, carries the values and traditions that constitute who we are. This background is no longer not just our personal past and memories, but it may also be the lineage, tradition, and culture from which we have emerged.

Instead of dropping our historicity, we should be interested in owning up to the background and tradition that gives significance to our identity.

Meaningful freedom can only be achieved through enculturation.

Therefore, our freedom is bound in a sense, or situated in the environment that has shaped us, because that is likely to be the most meaningful environment to us.

Perhaps it is only in a bounded space that we can move about freely.

Fusion of horizons’ between ourselves and others..we must always have a horizon in order to be able to transpose ourselves into a situation.

Background is what initially provides persons with the possibility for understanding anything at all. Our background, or tacit knowledge of the world, is the horizon out of which things have meaning for us. It gives us our “referential context of significance.” A liberating freedom, which occurs when our world is enlarged not downloaded on to a data base.

Our identity is formed by the web of relationships that surround us.  Therefore, it is precisely ourselves, which implies our background, that we must bring into the other’s situation.

The fundamental significance of language and conversation, and its ability to bring us closer to understanding one another is now rapidly diluted by technology.

We are not born precocial and fully hard-wired creatures.

Instead, we are born as incomplete beings, needing enculturation and society for healthy maturation.

Our biological need for one another requires certain physiological signals, that are not possible on the Web. Through facial expressions, infants learn to not only replicate another’s face, but to empathically feel what the face exhibits.

Biologists consider this skill of emotional matching to have been “crucial for escape from predation, foraging, hunting, and mass migrations” before spoken language entered our evolutionary history.

In spite of the modern liberating sense of freedom which may encourage isolation and detachment, we should also note that it can promote a healthy release from oppressive external forces. These forces can manifest in a variety of forms, everything from an abusive relationship to a manipulative religious group.

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Emphasis on a socially dependent self can lead to passivity in daily life or submission to totalitarian regimes.

By being sympathetic we are capable of being liberated from ourselves.

On the other hand egocentrism shouldn’t be overcome at the expense of forgetting ourselves. So freedom is one that respects the boundaries of selfhood, instead of annihilating it.

Although we may be transported into the sandals of the Buddha, we still need to come back to our point of departure in order to be enriched.

Because in recognizing the necessity of one’s interpersonal relationships, social and moral commitments, culture, tradition, memories, and of course, biology as constitutive of one’s experience of liberation.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily mean fleeing to a new land. It can also mean discovering the oceanic depth of a single, bounded situation. And this entails having new eyes. Remember, “Life is immense!”

We are free to become authentic only after we accept our boundary, which is our finitude.

Death is the ultimate boundary of human existence, it is only by facing up to this limit that we are capable of becoming truly authentic Free.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening
thought and action–
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake.

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–Guru Rabindranath Tagore
National Poet, Freedom Fighter

Modern day freedom-is freedom within boundaries.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT FOOD WASTE IN THE WORLD.

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Humanity., Life., Politics., Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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Our routine practices, unfortunately, make it difficult for us to conceptualize the magnitude of global food waste.

Everyday we hear appeals and yet there are one billion starving people in the world.

40% of all the food produced in the United States is never eaten.

In Europe, we throw away 100 million tonnes of food every year.

These are shamefully shocking facts  in their own right. In a world full of hunger, volatile food prices , and social unrest, these statistics are more than just shocking when half the world’s population goes to sleep each night malnourished they are obscene.

They are environmentally, morally and economically outrageous.

Add to this that fact that obesity is rapidly growing in the western world, particularly among children, while 6 million children in the developing world die annually from undernourishment and it is a damning indictment of capitalism – the dominant ideology and economic system that has governed much of the world for the last two centuries.

The rampage of globalisation has given monopoly buying power to a few massive western multinational enterprises, who trample all over the globe sourcing farm supplies from the lowest bidders of impoverished nations.

Prices of farm produce are squeezed to such an extent that it’s more profitable to leave ‘inadequate’ quality crops in the ground to rot or to throw away than to pay the price for its air transport, storage and quality packaging to bring to western supermarkets with discerning consumers.

Today, we produce about four billion metric tonnes of food per annum. Yet due to poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage, it is estimated that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tonnes) of all food produced never reaches a human stomach.

Furthermore, this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts of land, energy, fertilisers and water have also been lost in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste. This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands.

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Here are some hard facts to swallow.

Wasting food means losing not only life-supporting nutrition but also precious resources, including land, water and energy. As a global society therefore, tackling food waste will help contribute towards addressing a number of key resource issues:

About one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons)

1.4 billion hectares of land – 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.

The direct economic consequences of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run to the tune of $750 billion annually.

The amount of food lost and wasted every year is equal to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crops (2.3 billion tons in 2009/10)

In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions.

In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month.

The Food wastage’s carbon footprint is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent of GHG released into the atmosphere per year.

Much of it ends up in landfills, and represents a large part of municipal solid waste.

The water used to irrigate wasted crops would be enough for the daily needs of nine million people.

Wasted production contributes 10% to the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries.

One hectare of land can, for example, produce rice or potatoes for 19–22 people per annum. The same area will produce enough lamb or beef for only one or two people.

The total volume of water used each year to produce food that is lost or wasted (250km3) is equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva.

Over the past century, fresh water abstraction for human use has increased at more than double the rate of population growth. Currently about 3.8 trillion m3 of water is used by humans per annum. About 70% of this is consumed by the global agriculture sector,

Indeed, depending on how food is produced and the validity of forecasts for demographic trends, the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion m3 annually by mid-century. This is 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the total human use of fresh water today.

Considerable tensions are likely to emerge, as the need for food competes with demands for ecosystem preservation and biomass production as a renewable energy source.

Agriculture is responsible for a majority of threats to at-risk plant and animal species.

A low percentage of all food wastage is composted:

What can be done about it?

Part of the problem is poor shopping habits, but the confusion many consumers have with “use by” and “best before” food labels is also a factor. “Use by” refers to food that becomes unsafe to eat after the date, while “best before” is less stringent and refers more to deteriorating quality.

Consumer households need to be informed and change the behavior which causes the current high levels of food waste. Instead of buying packets of vegetables buy loose veg.

Boycott Supermarkets that don’t accept imperfections and nicks. There’s nothing wrong with a deformed Veg. It’s fine to eat.

Support redistribution urban food programmes.

UK supermarket chain Waitrose is attacking food waste in all parts of its business. The upmarket grocery chain cuts prices in order to sell goods that are close to their “sell by” date, donates leftovers to charity and sends other food waste to bio-plants for electricity generation.

The idea is for Waitrose to earn “zero landfill” status.

Home composting can potentially divert up to 150 kg of food waste per household per year from local collection authorities.

Buy local produced food items not those produced, transformed and consumed in very different parts of the world.

Considering that food security is a major concern in large parts of the developing world. Conflicts around the world mean there is “donor fatigue.

Food crises don’t just affect the countries where people go hungry. It’s a global challenge. Recent data shows the number of hungry in the world has fallen but still stands at 842 million people.

World Food Programme WFP operations in and around Syria are costing around $31 million a week.

Hidden Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction.

Hidden hunger weakens the immune system, stunts physical and intellectual growth, and can lead to death. It wreaks economic havoc as well, locking countries into cycles of poor nutrition, lost productivity, poverty, and reduced economic growth.

Investing in nutrition is one of the smartest development investments we can make.

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