Monthly Archives: October 2017

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHY DOES CATALONIA WANT TO BREAK AWAY FROM SPAIN.

28 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Catalonia.

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( A one minute read)

These days it seems that everything hear or read is an opinion, not a fact, everything we see is a perspective not a truth.

What is fueling the drive for independence?

Is it symbolic recognition or does it stem from divisions within Catalonia.

From outside it looks like the Urban population are pro Independence, while the country population is not.

Secession would cost Spain almost 20 per cent of its economic output, and trigger a row about how Catalonia would return 52.5 billion euros of debt it owes to the country’s central administration.

The truth, however, is far more nuanced.

In 2010, the constitutional court of Spain watered down the Catalan statue and other autonomous regions in Spain, such as the Basque Country, doesn’t have to pay the taxes it collects into central government.

Historical Catalonia was an independent region of the Iberian Peninsula – modern day Spain and Portugal – with its own language, laws and customs. Its and culture and autonomy were suppressed under the dictator Francisco Franco from 1939 to 1975.

In 1979 the Catalan statute of autonomy restored the Catalan parliament.

There may well be dark memories of repression under dictator Francisco Franco who brutally suppressed Catalonia’s culture and autonomy but as in many countries these memories though genuine are in the Past.

Spanish MPs and Catalonia’s parliament and people all gave the green light to a 2005 statute that would have granted the region more autonomy, improved its financial clout and protected its language.

Hopefully it will do so again by the General Election now called by Spain in December the only a true democratic way to resolve the present standoff.

Independence for the Catalan region is not a new idea and the region made a similar trip to the polls on November 9, 2014, and voted 80% in favor of becoming an independent state.

That vote was blocked by the Spanish government and was a sort of referendum to decide which direction Catalonia was headed instead of an all-out independence vote.

This time the Constitutional Court of Spain will have to accept the result.

‘There’s No Going Back’as it will destabilizing the whole of Spain.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: JUST WHAT IS THE DAMAGE FAKE NEWS IS DOING TO SOCIETY.

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Fake News.

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( A seven minute non fake read)

The idea of “fake news” came to prominence during the 2016 US Election.

However fake news can be traced far back as the 1930s. Actually, the world has suffered from it since gossip has ever existed.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of fake news"

The problem is gossip has being turned by technology ( Social Media/Smart Phones)  into written pieces and recorded segments promoting false information or perpetuating conspiracy theories.

Little is known, however, about the dynamics of the life cycle of a social media rumor. Users appear to be less capable of distinguishing true from false rumors when their veracity remains in question. Citizens are frequently misinformed about political issues and candidates but the circumstances under which inaccurate beliefs emerge are not fully understood.

Social media makes it very difficult to correct misinformation. Facts mingle with half-truths as we have all seen resulted in England seeking to leave the European Union to the dethronement  of its economy, its political power, its self image.

One could argue that the majority has been tipped towards the Leave camp by exaggerated promises made by the Leave campaign, for example on redirecting money to the National Health Service that so far flows into EU budgets.

Is this a purposeful use of fake news?

Whether it did or did not is not the point.

In today’s world, online social media plays a vital role during real world events, especially crisis events.

Why? Because we share knowingly or unknowingly, with friends and others unverifiable information.

However at this point, claims that fake news is a serious threat to democracy are highly speculative and exaggerated, and claims that extremely invasive political measures are necessary to protect democracy are not supported by empirical evidence.

It is also doubtful whether restrictions of free speech enacted as government-sanctioned deletion of fake news will actually be an effective remedy for biases in individual political decision-making.

On the other hand should we be demanding Digital trust in a platform’s ability to protect and promote the interests of its users.

I would say, Yes we should be.

Algorithms are becoming more and more powerful at persuasion, creating hyperbolic articles around a major political events:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “post-truth” as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

Algorithms are shaping the world of Technology, changing the ways news information is being accessed, and in doing so creating new attitudes about what it means to be informed.

Resulting in Social Media  pandering to youth preference for opinionated rather than objective news.

70% of Facebook users read only the headline of science stories before commenting.

So the question remains: are medias best equipped to debunk false news?

I don’t think so. “Fake news” is a term that can mean different things, depending on the context.

It can be used by authorities for effective disaster management or by malicious entities to spread rumors and fake news.

There are both positive and negative effects of social media coverage of events. For me it is the fake imagery that has the potential to do the most damage.

Because the imagery becomes the substance while fake news causes confusion about current issues and events.

For instance Catalonia fake images are fostering turning a political situation into something much more serious creating feelings of inefficacy, alienation, and cynicism.

We play around with our new internet toy with no thought of the consequences.

Our brains should be the decisive tool to fight fake news and hoaxes. That tool need to be trained, optimized through promotion of critical thinking as early as primary school.

The main problem resulting from fake news will not be persuasion, but confirmation.

Individuals may demand fake news in order to confirm settled beliefs that they already hold.

Predicting that social media will pose a threat to the functioning of democracy by allowing the creation of tight filter bubbles, and thus the self selected segregation of citizens into distinct groups that find it difficult to identify common ground.

Open debate, and persuasion in a positive sense – in the sense that individuals concede to better arguments – would then be threatened.

Think before you share. Analyse before you speak.

Fabricated stories are not likely to go away as they have become a means for some writers to make money and potentially influence public opinion.

The term has now been co-opted by politicians and commentators to mean anything they disagree with – making the term essentially meaningless and more of a stick to beat the mainstream press with than a phenomenon in itself.

Donald Trump’s has been calling out major media outlets several times a week for being ‘FAKE NEWS’ via his Twitter feed.

Perhaps all communication platforms should labeling suspicious stories as such.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of fake news"

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social media giant is under increasing pressure to tackle the problem

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE FUTURE OF FRESH WATER.

26 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Environment, Fresh Water., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Politics., Sustaniability, Technology, The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations.

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( Seven minute read)

Fresh water is emerging as the most critical resource issue facing humanity.

No technology can double the flow of any River, or enhance other surface and ground water resources. It would indeed be a wonderful achievement to see these technologists produce crops without water!

At first glance, human health seems unrelated to natural resources.

Historically, decisions to protect the environment have been based on isolated crises and are usually made only when catastrophes strike. By 2050 almost 40 per cent of the world population will live in areas of high water stress.

The human carrying capacity of the world will not be addressed until the situation becomes intolerable or, possibly, irreversible.

There is no need for me to remind you that water is a finite resource, that is essential to human existence. “There’s not an infinite supply of water nor will there be.

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

Our climate — whether you want to call it global warming or climate change — is different from it was 50 years ago.

New NASA data show how the world is running out of water. 

The world’s largest underground aquifers – a source of fresh water for hundreds of millions of people — are being depleted at alarming rates, according to NASA satellite data.

Twenty-one of the world’s 37 largest aquifers have passed their sustainability tipping points, meaning more water was removed than replaced during the decade-long study period. Water demand will outstrip supply by 2030.

Water scarcity will become such an issue that it will hinder economic growth, spurs migration and sparks conflict, creating large and uneven consequences across the globe.

What’s at stake

Water shortages will be the catalyst of future conflicts.

There are 276 transboundary lake and river basins in the world, fewer than half of which are covered by treaties. Some 148 countries include territory within such basins, which account for an estimated 60 per cent of global freshwater flow.

Combine water scarcity with political instability, increasing resource demands and climate change, and the ‘perfect storm’ for conflict can be created.

What if anything can be done? 

There is no global government in relation to the environmental agenda.

All of our basic resources, such as land, water, energy, and biota, are inherently limited. The biological resources determine the current and future status of the support services for human life.

The chances of reorienting globalization to the aims of a sustainable society is all but impossible

Because consumerism collides with ecological issues over environmental ones.

Because of the transnational character of environmental degradation.

Because the current world order is not suited do dealing with global environmental problems.

Because there is an absence of responsibility of political leaders ( Mr Trump) towards adverse effects on the environment.

Because the importance of water to life means that providing for water needs and demands will never be free of politics.

There is no easy answer. 

Along with increased urbanization, world population  — and economic growth, all of which demand and consume larger and larger amounts of water.

Other than we must avoid letting humans numbers continue to increase to the limit of the Earth’s natural resources and forcing natural forces to control our numbers by disease, malnutrition, and violent conflicts over resources.

The water problem is daunting.

With more than 99% of human food coming from the terrestrial environment -One of the biggest competitors for water is agriculture. Some 70 percent of global water use is tied to the industry.

As the supply becomes more erratic with climate change that continues unabated. Food price will spike caused by droughts inflaming latent conflicts and driving migration.

We can no longer avoided the effects of a world water shortage it will have life-threatening and global economic consequences.

It’s almost taken for granted that we will have water, but we can’t do that anymore. Global warming has already begun to show how it can impact the world’s water.

( The picture below depicts the amount of freshwater on the globe.)

Earth's water

Here are a few ideas that might help.

We need major education about the use of water.

We need to get our heads together on how we manage groundwater.

We need to putting a sensible price on water to invite investment and encourage conservation, increasing the availability of information and doubling down on innovation can go a long way toward solving the problem.

We need to install smart meters nation WIDE TO ALLOW a restructure of the price of consuming fresh water.

So that the first few gallons per person per day are cheap or free, with escalating costs beyond that. Water for necessities such as drinking, cooking and hygiene should be affordable.

Beyond that, water for lawns, filling swimming pools, washing cars and other uses should be more expensive.

We need to decide as a society whether green lawns and landscaping, golf courses, swimming pools and unnecessary agriculture (like tobacco and coffee) are worth the use of water.”

While our planet as a whole may never run out of water, it’s important to remember that clean freshwater is not always available where and when humans need it.

By the year 2025, 48 countries will be affected by water stress or scarcity – affecting around 35% of the projected global population in that year. Population growth alone will push an estimated  a further 17 countries, with a projected population of 2.1 billion, into water-short categories within the next 30 years.

Only 64 of the world’s 177 large rivers (1,000km and longer) remain free-flowing, unimpeded by dams or other barriers.

There are more than 45,000 large dams in over 150 countries with about 1,500 more currently under construction.

At the moment 780 million people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack adequate sanitation services; most of these people live in the poorest countries.

The world needs nothing less than a Blue Revolution if not Fresh Water will ultimately affect everyone and everything on this blue planet.

Once we realize that we live in an interdependent world, we will hopefully refrain from making decisions that are short-sighted. Instead, we will look at the long-term gains of peaceful cooperation.

Unfortunately with the Technological Revolution decoupling us from the environment there is little chance of any peaceful cooperation.

There is only on solution – make profit for profit sake pay a World Aid Commission of 0.001%. ( see previous posts)

Saogal fada cugat.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE HIDDEN COST OF TECHNOLOGY.

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Facebook, Google, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Our Common Values., Privatization, Sustaniability, Technology, The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Twenty minute read)

There is no denying that the benefits of technology are needed but what are the downsides costs.

As the demand for up-to-date technology increases, we need to reevaluate how we measure the hidden cost of the TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION.

It will not be us picking up the tap, but the yet to be born that will have to pay, living in a world that is detached from what makes it all possible The Earth.

Technology is now deeply embedded within society, so not planning for the future of technology is by far one of the most costly mistakes we will ever make, in more ways than one.

At this point it is impossible to say with any authority what exactly the cost will be.

Some technologies are unfolding now; others will take a decade or more to develop, but you should know about all of them right now. In the not-too-distant future, we will be able to print human organs, but not the brain.

According to Stephen Hawking, “Humans are entering a stage of self-designed evolution.”Image associée

That may be so, but technology is more than just fusing the physical and digital worlds.

Marked by emerging technology breakthroughs in a number of fields, including robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the Internet of Things, 3D printing, autonomous vehicles, face and voice recognition and algorithms learning from other algorithms.

With wireless connecting brain-reading technology directly to electrical stimulators on your body it has the potential with more items moving from physical to virtual to decouple us from reality. Wireless communications is already dominating our everyday lives

It is already impacting all disciplines, economies, and industries, our politics, improving medicine, influencing our culture.

Apart from the obvious technology is also in the process of changing democracy, moving capitalism underground, assisting conflicts, packaging natural resources, destabilizing society, disrupt the way governments deliver services to citizens, just to mention the tip of the ice berg.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of future earth"

.It will not be long before we will all have DNA maps from birth.

However with the arrival of Quantum computers the way we use technology will be reshape, along with the societies we live in.

As soon as two to five years from now, such systems or time on such systems are likely to be for sale.

There are probably plenty more uses for quantum computers that nobody has thought up yet.

However you may rest assured that the ordinary citizens (or even governments) won’t be able to own their own quantum computers for a long time, if ever, but I can imagine large companies renting time (measured in fractions of seconds) to whoever needs their services.

With this in mind the race has well started to create monopolies of knowledge Google, of Social Media Society – Facebook, consumerism E Bay, Amazon, Alibaba, of Finance – Pay Pal, of Communication – Apple, of Biotech Thermo Fisher Scientific, of cloud business – Microsoft -IBM, Oracle,  of computer microchips to data center-makers-Intel, to name just a few.

Here are a few of their Mission statements:

Facebook: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.”

Amazon: “To be Earth’s most customer-centric company, where customers can find and discover anything they might want to buy online, and endeavors to offer its customers the lowest possible prices.”

Pay Pal: “To build the Web’s most convenient, secure, cost-effective payment solution.”

Alibaba: “To make it easy to do business anywhere.”

Google: “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Microsoft:  “To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.”

United Nations: “The maintenance of international peace and security.”

Medecins Sans Frontieres:   “To help people worldwide where the need is greatest, delivering emergency medical aid to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disasters or exclusion from health care.”

Non mention the health of the EARTH?

Disruptive technology is, by its very nature, unpredictable but we’ll see more intelligence built into communication. With always-on connectivity, social networking has the power to change cultures, as we saw with the Egyptian Revolution, which led to the Arab Spring.

The results of changing the world are often complicated and unpredictable.

With the technology of smart phones social influences will continue to move rapidly between cultures.

In the broadest sense, technology extends our abilities to change the world: to cut, shape, or put together materials; to move things from one place to another; to reach farther with our hands, voices, and senses. We use technology to try to change the world to suit us better. The changes may relate to survival needs such as food, shelter, or defense, or they may relate to human aspirations such as knowledge, art, or control.

As computational power rises exponentially, not linearly, so does the rate of change — and that means the next 10 years should pack in far more technological change than the last 10.

It is my prediction that all of it will end up in the cloud.

Why?

Because it is the dumb, novelty-seeking portion of our brains  (driving the limbic system that induces this feeling of pleasure, not the planning, scheduling, higher-level thought centers in the prefrontal cortex) that is driving technology to tap into our personal sensors.

Make no mistake: emails, Facebook and Twitter-checking constitute a neural addiction.

Already, the cloud is powerful enough to help us communicate through real-time language translation.

When is a profit not a profit? When it turns into a monopoly exploiting all around it.

Just like Capitalism technology it is unable to regulate itself and with the arrival of Quantum computers it will make everything and everybody beholden to technology, endangering  much of the openness that we now enjoy online.

So I one again ask the question:

Is it time to regulate Algorithms that have profit as their end targets and is it time that we demanded an open data website that would allow anyone to find information on a host of county government programs, from budget information to welfare data to crime statistics.

This would be linked to two powerful benefits.

First, it makes government more transparent and understandable at a time when trust in the public sector has plummeted.

Second, it has the potential to generate significant economic benefits impacting budget issues, public safety and education, transparency and economic value for tax payers money.

The bottom line is that government data can be extremely valuable for public consumption, but only if the policies behind the data are well thought out and the related costs are affordable. For instance, would a map of society reveal awkward disparities in how rich and poor neighborhoods receive public funding?

Many governments are running on old, outdated systems, making them vulnerable to cyber attacks.

I believe that such an open based  data website would benefit from the collective wisdom of the community, simplify how citizens and businesses interact with the state.

However IT WOULD HAVE THE unexpected startup costs if data is kept in a legacy computer system that requires reformatting; quality-related costs to keep open data fresh and up-to-date; legal costs to comply with open data legislation; liability costs in case something goes wrong, such as publication of nonpublic information; and public relations costs that can occur when a jurisdiction generates bad press from open data about poor performance metrics or workforce diversity problems.

That apart present technological advances and information overlays will change how we live in significant ways.

We will have a so-called “smart grid” where all of our appliances are linked directly to energy distribution systems, allowing for real-time pricing based on supply and demand. Such a universal method for identifying someone energy requirements becomes much harder when you no longer have a central authority to figure out how to link together the different systems.

It will not be like self-driving trucks with lidar system guidance run by algorithms or self-driving cars.

Who is responsible when the self drive truck or car kills someone. Try bringing a self thought Algorithm to court.

Try suing an Face-detecting systems for wrong identification or payment.

Then we have:  Gene-therapy.

Biology’s next mega-project will find out what we’re really made of.

Three technologies are coming together to make this new type of mapping possible.

The first is known as “cellular microfluidics.” Individual cells are separated, tagged with tiny beads, and manipulated in droplets of oil that are shunted like cars down the narrow, one-way streets of artificial capillaries etched into a tiny chip, so they can be corralled, cracked open, and studied one by one.

The second is the ability to identify the genes active in single cells by decoding them in superfast and efficient sequencing machines at a cost of just a few cents per cell. One scientist can now process 10,000 cells in a single day.

The third technology uses novel labeling and staining techniques that can locate each type of cell—on the basis of its gene activity—at a specific zip code in a human organ or tissue.

Then we have, the relentless push to add connectivity to home gadgets is creating dangerous side effects that figure to get even worse.

Then we have, Botnets are used to commit click fraud.

Google ads pay a site owner according to the number of people who click on them. The attacker instructs all the computers on his botnet to repeatedly visit the Web page and click on the ad. Dot, dot, dot, PROFIT! If the botnet makers figure out more effective ways to siphon revenue from big companies online, we could see the whole advertising model of the Internet crumble.

Then we have, hackers breaking into computers over the Internet and controlling them en masse from centralized systems. The problem is getting worse, thanks to a flood of cheap webcams, digital video recorders, and other gadgets in the “Internet of things.”

Then we have, reinforcement learning.  Reinforcement learning may soon inject greater intelligence into much more than games.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of future earth"

SO WHAT NOW?

What are the implications to human development and the diversity of life on earth? What opportunities are there to reduce risks and vulnerabilities, enhance resilience, and create transformations to prosperous and equitable futures?

Science can provide only some answers; it is not a panacea for all problems. We need to also make personal, economic, social, and political changes, whatever the cost will be.

Reinforcement-learning algorithm can learn from collated data and experiment in simulation to suggest, say, how and when to operate the cooling systems.

Algorithms don’t know the Meaning of Environment.

They have however so concept of the  “The term ‘environment’  it refers to all external conditions and factors that affect living organisms. Here external factors mean all the things around us such as air, water, light, animals, humans etc.

Algorithms are shadow boxers of yesterday all because technology trends can affect the bottom line of business. 

Although big data algorithms hold great promise, they should still be approached with caution and skepticism.

For instance Algorithms should not be relied upon to ration medical care until the technology has substantially matured.

If we ignore what is happening there will be more riots, and increasing divisions along economic, religious and ethnic lines with Robots completely replacing humans in the workforce.

IT IS TIME FOR THE OWNERS ALL PROFIT SEEKING ALGORITHMS TO BE REGISTERED WITH A COPY OF THE WORKING CODE.  NO PROFIT EARNING ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE GRANTED A PATIENT.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HUNGRY MONEY INVESTMENT.

19 Thursday Oct 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change., Environment, Humanity., Life., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Post - truth politics., Privatization, Sustaniability, The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Politics

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( Five minute read)

A FOLLOW UP POST TO THE BEADY EYE SAYS:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE REGULATED.

Up to now man has exploited almost every opportunity that has come his way to make profit.

In theory you could lay the blame for all our present day troubles on a plant that exploited man – Wheat – in which man invested, time, labor, energy,   power and money.

The next exploitation will not be a plant that we are all biological connected to. It will be an innate object called a micro chip turned into Algorithms.

In recent years we are just beginning to release that there is going to be a fundamental change to the ways we will be living our lives in the future.

Our modern global economy struggles with the challenge of using limited natural resources without exhausting them and we are just beginning to value lower life forms, perhaps because we are going to become one.

If and when computer programs attain super human intelligence with unprecedented power should we begin to value these microchip programs more than we value humans?

Would it be acceptable for artificial intelligence in the form of unsupervised Algorithms to exploit us and the earth?

If it is ethical for humans to exploit so must it be for AI.

This is what is taking place with Capitalist Algorithms that are designed to exploit greed.

Giant Tech like Google and Baidu are spending billions on the race for patents and intellectual property rights, combined with external funds (also in the billions) they are on a mission to privatizing the future.

In 2016, the AI market was worth just $644 million. This year (2017) that amount nearly double. Growing exponentially from there, AI is expanding its reach outside of the technology sector, nature and what it provides us all with is a risk of exploitation. 

It is now or never if we are to avoid dismal subjugation to continuing exploitation. There’s no turning back now.

Apple has become an icon of American capitalism, technological innovation, and shareholder wealth creation.

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact path that AI will take, but there is one thing for sure – It’s Time to Take AI Seriously.

A small, lucky handful of early movers will ride it to untold riches in the Cloud with Quantum Computing, which will result in the ultimate decoupling of humanity from individualism and nature, turning existence itself into mathematical patterns.

In the next five years artificial intelligence will exist as a layer of capability atop every business process, from customer service and marketing to product development and sales, across every industry.

This can be seen already with hungry money putting a monetary values on nature, as it commences to aid and abet, (failing to convey “real” ecological value or reasons for conservation) the packaging of fresh water, scarce resources, energy, etc.

Rest assured Google with biochemical algorithms will know you from the day you are born. Google was not born yesterday, nor was Twitter/Facebook, there  comments or like algorithms can already predict your opinions and desires and will perhaps make important life decision on your behalf such as electing the next D Trump.

By the time the rest of us find out about the phenomenon, it’s too late.

It’s already hard to design regulations that ensure we don’t over farm the land, don’t over fish the seas, don’t over cut the forests and don’t take too much water from our rivers and aquifers.

It is not hard to subject all emerging AI to examination.  To hold a copy of their software, before they degrade our humanity further. (See previous posts) 

Technology is arranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of investment money"

While there are numerous natural resources that are being capitalized upon all across the world we are all so preoccupied committing communal suicide on our smart phones, that we are now unintentionally buying into technology that is not going to save the planet but rape it.

Hungry investment money sole purpose is profit.

If you were expecting some kind of warning when computers finally get smarter than us, then think again.

Our electronic overlords are already taking control, and they are doing it in a far more subtle way than science fiction would have us believe.

Invisible computations that increasingly control how we interact with our electronic world are now acquiring the very essence of what makes the world tick. To the extent we’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world we’ve made.

Online trading algorithms that are increasingly controlling markets, stock exchanges, feeding on data to exploit any weakness, while Google’s data-crunching algorithm harvesting our personal data and shape the web we see accordingly. Changing the way humans think. As its code gets ever more sophisticated it is reaching its tentacles into all aspects of our lives, including our cultural preferences.

We have to challenge investments which are driven by AI algorithms if they are based on Profit.

Why?

Because they are packing nature into investment portfolios, which are going to cause more and more conflict in the world.

Take the Paris Climate Change agreement to limit Co2.  Worthless!

Because Hungry Money is undermining true conservation investment, and climate change incentives, turning them into emissions trading, commonly referred to as cap-and-trade, embodies commodification of nature in that it allows for the trade of pollution and emissions within a given limit for a specific environment.

Rather than simply outright prohibiting or allowing pollution and other various negative externalities, cap-and-trade essentially permits members of an industry to buy and sell units of emission with a maximum set for the industry as a whole.Image associée

Isn’t there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale?

In recent decades, market values have crowded out non market norms in almost every aspect of life-medicine, education, government, law, art, sports, even family life and personal relations.

Without quite realizing it, we are drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. Technology and AI are undermining current economic systems with profits that do not contributing to any conservation or sustainability.

Tourist paradises have sprung up in places of high biodiversity, offering exclusivity to their owners and clients while violating agrarian rights, creating social conflict, and destroying ecosystems.

Gigantic cruse Ships bring hordes of App driven city slickers to UNESCO Sites destroying them like Venice, to the Antarctic, to African natural protected areas (in zones of predominantly private property), giving them exclusive rights and increasing real estate values and investments in tourism.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of hard core tourism"

While good governance can be an end in itself, the link between good
governance and poverty reduction is much more complex, and can be obscured by the intrusion of political agendas.

Absentee owners rarely have the same sense of stewardship and restraint as local owners.

What we don’t seem to be able to grasp is that we, every one of us is the Universe.  It flows through all of us, not through AI, or platforms driven by profit seeking Algorithms.

They will never be connected like us to it, with or without a conscious.   

As algorithms spread their influence beyond machines to shape the raw landscape around them, it might be time to work out exactly how much they know and whether we still have time to tame them.

The parameters used to define “money.”

Who believe money refers only to currencies such as bank notes, coins, and money deposited in savings or checking accounts, digital currency bitcoin, above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in various financial products.

The world isn’t that simple anymore, what Money Can’t Buy is now out of control thanks to AI.  

If we are to make this new World of technology work we must apply a World Aid commission on all Algorithms that are designed for profit. ( See previous posts)

There will be little use in walking around a world with Smart phones, Ipads, if we cannot unite before we all vanish into the cloud of exploitation.

You be the :

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of what money cant buy"

 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS; ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENC AND ITS ALGORITHMS SHOULD BE REGULATED

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Freedom, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Our Common Values., Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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( THREE MINUTE READ) Image associée

Can it be regulated?

I have addressed this subject in several previous posts.

You would think that we should learn from previous regulations, like those on the food, pharmaceutical, automobile etc all typically applied after something bad had happened, not in anticipation.

WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGIES THAT HAVE THE CAPABILITY TO LEARN FROM THEIR OWN ACTIVITIES, with the –  possible of impacting on the full spectrum of benefits and risks to humanity ― from the possible development of a more utopic society to the potential extinction of human civilization.

IT IS IMPERATIVE THAT WE HAVE SOME FORM OF CONTROL.

Without unnecessary constraints on AI researchers and developers, fundamental research fields or technologies should not be regulated.

Aspirational principles alone are not enough, if they are not put into practice, and a question remains: is government regulation and oversight necessary to guarantee that AI scientists and companies follow these principles and others like them?

Even today, we’re seeing signs of narrow AI exacerbating problems of discrimination and job loss, and if we don’t take proper precautions, we can expect problems to worsen, affecting more people as AI grows smarter and more complex.

The recently founded Partnership on AI  founding document states that:

“Where AI tools are used to supplement or replace human decision-making, we must be sure that they are safe, trustworthy and aligned with the ethics and preferences of people who are influenced by their actions.”

Because these problems threaten society as a whole, they can’t be left to a small group of researchers to address. At the very least, government officials need to learn about and understand how AI could impact us all.

YOU WOULD WONDER WHY, the topic rarely comes up in political discussion.

Let’s ask ourselves: how can we ensure that AI remains beneficial for all, and who needs to be involved in that effort?

THE PROBLEM IS TO DAY THAT WE DON’T KNOW WHAT TO REGULATE, OR AT WHAT LEVEL WOULD WE DO THIS?

This question to me is pointless.

We will never get enough international support lay the foundations for constructive regulation.

CONTROL SHOULD BE IMPLEMENTED LIKE AN LEGALLY REQUIRED  MOT.

EVERY ALGORITHM THAT IS INVASIVE OR PROFIT PRODUCING SHOULD BE REQUIRED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW TO LOGE A COPY ITS SOFTWARE PROGRAM OR PROGRAM’S IN A AI BANK.

WHERE IT IS HELD JUST IN CASE OF MALFUNCTION.

THIS NEEDS TO START- soon to have any chance of keeping up with innovation in the field.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of computer algorithms"

WHY?

Because:  Algorithms will dominate the coming centuries.

Because:  Ascribing human qualities to non-human entities is a minefield.

Because: Algorithms are becoming the single most important concept in our world.

Because: Algorithms are connected to our emotions.

Because: Algorithms are not just particular calculation, but a method followed when making the calculation.

Because: What we call sensations and emotions are all algorithms.

Because: Electronic Algorithms will out perform biochemical Algorithms.

Because: Humans can no longer cope with the immense flows of data.

Because: Algorithms will completely transform the very nature of life transforming the world beyond recognition.

Because: Free –market capitalism and controlled communism are competing data-processing systems.

Because:  The Stock Exchange, the economy of the world  is already run by high frequency algorithms for profit only.

Because: Algorithms structures will run hospitals. then your faith will be in the hands of the system. What is true of hospitals will be true of armies, wars, prisons, schools, and corporations.

Because: We will need to decide which is a computer and which is the human.

Because: It follows that external algorithms will know you better than yourself. 

I am sure you can add to the list.

Algorithms are decoupling us for shared values, with life becoming just data processing.

If this is the sort of world you want to live in stay silent and your wish will come true.

If you can think it, there’s most likely an algorithm for it.

While computer scientists may not be specifically finding better ways to manage your love life, you’d be surprised at how math can play a role as matchmaker. Let’s keep in mind that, during a search, you reach a point when you’ve gathered enough data and a continued search can be seen as both redundant as well as confirming what you know.

Well, how about when finding a parking space?

All human comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin of data.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: ALGORITHMS AND SOCIAL MEDIA ARE PUTTING PAY TO SHARED VALUES.

14 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Our Common Values., Social Media., Technology, The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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( A twenty-minute read, before we are all raped by Algorithms)

Strength from cultural diversity is being eroded by Algorithms.

At the moment while we’ll be striving to understand the impact of “information flows” — shared value is going out the window.

You could say that 99.4 percent of physical objects are still unconnected but algorithms but they are already transforming the world around us — in education, healthcare, manufacturing, commerce, transportation and other sectors.

In the coming years, the Internet of Everything Economy will be run by Algorithms that control smart grid, smart buildings, connected healthcare and patient monitoring, smart factories, connected private education, connected commercial (ground) vehicles, connected marketing and advertising, and connected gaming and entertainment, among others, will rule the world.

If we are honest, we have been living with the ambiguity created by SHARED VALUE for a long time.

The United nations being the prime example.

Its shared ideology values are ignored daily because they do not possess any legal or constitutional power. (They have however attained limited success in generating greater ideological consensus, whether it is the impact on the environment, on society, or in terms of how it governs itself) Now unfortunately it is trying to operate in a world that is in the middle of a technological revolution which is exposing its limits to the point of being relevance.

Technology trends (including cloud and mobile computing, Big Data, increased processing power, and many others) and business economics (such as Metcalfe’s law) are driving the IoE (The Internet of Everything economy.)

The Internet of Everything (IoE) brings together people, process, data, and things to make networked connections more relevant and valuable than ever before — turning information into actions that create new capabilities, richer experiences, and unprecedented economic opportunity for businesses, individuals, and countries.

On the other hand in my opinion it is and will be a mistake to greet every invention with applause and just let it go its way.

There are many aspect to the Technological Revolution that are desirable and needed, but at what sacrifice, and where to draw red lines is not being addressed. You could say its evolution and can not be changed or stopped.

However Artificial intelligence which is run by Algorithms is void of emotional intelligence.

The future will no doubt push for higher level automated capabilities by integrating human spoken and linguistic capabilities with other human skills such as vision, motor skills, and emotions.

This future will bring about a society of human and machine experts, that collaborate together for improved outcomes in complex processes such as decision-making.

These decisions which will be based on vast quantities of data rather than share values. They will be driven by our old friend capitalist profit, managed by platforms that are totally unregulated, unaccountable.

In a world where we are all supposed to be accountable, Artificial Intelligence must also be accountable not just to its algorithms. It must be totally transparent and regulated by an independent Organisation that ensure it enhances our shared values. As we explore all the possibilities these technologies present,  it will be critical to place us at the forefront.

The conversations around these technologies, I suppose in the future will reach an equilibrium and we will understand as a society how to use them responsibly or will it be too late. 

I think the more interesting thing that’s happening is we’re evolving into a kind of meta organism, which is the whole species on the planet connected through the Web, sharing information, sharing thoughts, sharing ideas.

We are not sharing empathy and sharing emotions, exploring and expanding the boundaries of what it means to be human, today and far into the future.

People will end up having no sense of control over their changing environments other than what their Virtual Personal Assistant lets them know.

The world we live in has and always will have problems because it is impossible of humans to act as one for the general good of all.

Rest assured that Algorithms will also suffer from the same flaw.

If left to their own devices they will destroy any sense of collaboration, reducing us to smart phone workers with no shared values or jobs for life.

We are more and more desensitized by social media platforms that are run by algorithms to ensure we remain so, we are all too busy checking our smart phones to take any notice. Most of us can not recognize our self.

HUMANIZING TECHNOLOGIES: Are smile that fits the lock of everybody’s heart.Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling

Robots are learning how to detect your personality and even your gender with just a handshake, so giving robots a personality is the only way our relationship with artificial intelligence will survive.

We have all experienced “dehumanizing” technology – software or hardware that seems to diminish our ability to communicate with others or to function effectively in the world.

Technology such as Algorithms for profit are creating new boundaries between people rather than erasing old ones, with Touchy-feely robots becoming the false face of the Algorithms, that run them. Capitalize on our unique strengths and weakness, new technologies are and will further integrate themselves seamlessly into our lives.

We are already accustomed to Amazon’s anticipatory shipping practices, where the company identifies items we may want to buy before we even begin our search. Artificial Intelligence is making technology more personal and purposeful than ever before.

I don’t know about you. Just because I bought something, viewed something, commented on something, or sent an email to someone, I don’t want Watson, Google, Facebook or any other platform invading my Privacy with annoying suggestions, as I have no shared values with any of their Algorithms.

If we don’t get a grip of what I call Algorithms for Profit connecting the unconnected: people, process, data, and things we are going to be looking at a very sad world.

Since the industrial revolution, concerns have been raised about the negative effect of development on human exploitation, inequality, the environment, and by extension, greater society.

Of all the concerns that development brings, environmental damage has a high-profile due to its long, and sometimes cruel, history from business self-interest, to a sense of responsibility, or a combination of both.

Now it is the time to make capitalism more responsive to social challenges, as corporations are directly facing the trade-offs between private costs and social benefits.

The pursuit of profit and increasing shareholder value are the only responsibilities of business.

The inclusion of non-financial issues into investment decision-making must be a priority.

Why?

Because in terms of corporate social responsibility, the long-term risk of damage to the economic system and long-term value creation, and therefore investment returns, is a palpable threat to asset owners.

National identity and nationhood are not principles that can be “mandated and managed from the top”. Instead, the nation is an “imagined reality” that transcends institutions such as government and civil society. Consequently, the citizen creates the nation.

It is the responsibility of the investor to protect an economy’s ability to create long-term value.

Given long-term horizons, diversification, and long duration liabilities, it is beneficial to work together to reduce Artificial Intelligence future risk. To verify if shared value strategies can be found in practice.

This is so that today’s efforts to create value do not impair the ability of future generations to do the same.

Driven by advances in mobile technology the United nations is total out of date.

The importance of the family as a “basic unit of society”, no longer fully address family related issues.

In today’s investment world, there is no Algorithm that is going pre-empt social change and direct it in “suitable” directions.

Artificial Intelligence is making technology more personal and purposeful than ever before. We are trying to leverage data science with natural interfaces to provide solutions tailored to human behavior, attitudes and comprehension, also known as cognitive systems.

So the Question is:

Are these profit Algorithms degrading our humanity.

Today, the most successful technology goes beyond the technical specs and is all about the user experience. The best use of technology is the one people barely notice.

Our emotions influence every aspect of our lives, from our health and well-being, to the way we learn, the decisions we make and how we communicate with one another.

Try telling that to a Digital banking Algorithm.  The only point of contact between banks and their customers.

Now we can have a whole new social class system.

Since people can be judged by their emotions, and since a persons emotional state has legal consequences in a court of law, and since corporations would love nothing more than to know how we feel so that they can control our behavior by controlling what information we receive when we are connected, and since we are always connected. ….
Well that couldn’t possibly be a problem, or could it?

We are handing over our privacy and our lively mental freedom, step by step, to the lifeless and emotionless domain of machines. We are becoming more and more dependent upon mechanistic mimicking of human qualities, and call it Machine Intelligence.

“The biggest privacy-invasive is no the way with face recognition applications”.

Why? Because the majority of how people experience each other is through screens.

this will bring a new leveraged on degrees of freedom for smart life.

Just because you want to believe it is true doesn’t mean it is true.

The goal should be making people to become aware of the trends and processes they are being involved by their own deeds and making them to ask important questions

In short:

Predictions are hard, but TRYING to fore see and not being blind to what is already happening is immensely important.

I wouldn’t want “devices” to sense anything. Anything.

Constantly arguing with your device about how you really feel.

What a sick world that is going to be.

Ask google why do people die before their time.

You get many answers: How can we know these things?….We can’t, unless we ask and who do we ask in order to get the correct answer.. not a Algorithm.  The basic recipes for Capitalist slavery.

How much messiness should we accept? What balance of the new and familiar is the most fulfilling? These may seem like uniquely human quandaries, but they are not. Computers, like us, confront limited space and time with no shared values.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of computer algorithms"

All human comments ( Not that I will know if they are generated by Algo) appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS; NO DEAL IS A GOOD DEAL FOR EUROPEAN UNION.

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit.

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( Two minute wake up call)Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of brexit"

It’s clear that Great Britain is now set on a seemingly intractable path towards leaving the European Union (EU). Even as the divorce is being finalized, questions remain in the minds of citizens and government leaders alike. Why Brexit? And why now?

Economics is not the answer. Britain has a strong and undisputed interest in an open economy with global connections through trade and finance. The EU has a strong and undisputed interest in preserving its trade and financial connections to Great Britain. Britain has a sweetheart deal that enables it to opt out of monetary union, keep the pound sterling and use its independent monetary policy to offset any disadvantages arising from Germany’s dominance of the European economy.

The dream of Brexit isn’t getting a brighter new energetic tomorrow.

Its more to do with old codgers infected with Bisto nostalgia wanting to look inwards.

I know that there is nobody in the UK that can remember the last thousand years.

England is saturated in European gravy from the Renaissance to Surrealism, from a souffle  to fish and chips. There is no such thing a Sovereignty in a world run by social media. What matter is that we have laws on the side of personal freedom.

“The onus” is on the UK to propose a solution, not the other way around.  After all it’s not the EU that want to leave Britain. There will be no Trade deals with an England offering sweet fanny Adam.

Europe is not gagging for England to stay and England will not wake up in the morning having to hand back their European library ticket.

Northern Ireland and Ireland have pledge to maintain protections from discrimination currently enshrined in EU law after Brexit. They also say Northern Irish citizens should be able to continue to choose whether they identify as British or Irish, and by default an EU citizen.

Whatever quarrels might arise within the European family, Britain’s privileged position is now under threat.

As the saying goes rats leave a sinking ship.  This is a basic fact when it comes to economics, as the Japanese proverb goes ” Money has no ears, but it hears and the louder it talks. ”

You can’t deal openly with the rest of the world — but only on your own terms.

The Brussels-based EU bureaucracy is an object of scorn everywhere, but nowhere else as much as in Britain. If economics alone were the deciding influence, these issues could be readily resolved.

The full and free movement of EU citizens, including to Britain, is a defining characteristic of the EU and of paramount importance to it.

If Brussels were to offer new privileges to Britain that are not available to its own members, the unity of the union would be threatened far more than it has been up to now.

If the Brexit negotiations fail to reach a conclusion that preserves the close association between the island and the continent, the costs will be felt more widely.

It will ushered in worrisome challenges to economic progress — and even to democracy — throughout England, Europe and the United States.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the ttip"

The TTPI is a lose -lose scenario for the US never mind the UK.

ISDS or Investor-State Dispute Settlements are likely to be introduced through TTIP. They allow companies to sue governments for lost profits supposedly caused by policies of the government.

Corporate America would love to sue what is left of the broken UK special relationship.

America first America First.

There is no doubt that the US would rather deal with an England in the EU not out.

Its time to stop playing tennis. Love all is a long way off.

Then there is the question could a British exit open up a Pandora’s Box of other EU countries exiting or spark other regional independence movements, like  Catalonia?

Of course this could happen but only if England is seen to benefit with a deal that is better than what it has at the moment without all the EU member agreeing to such a deal. The likelihood of that is 27 to 1.

All comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE: LOOKS AT THE TREATMENT OF REFUGEES.

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Humanity., Refugees., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations.

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( A shameful read of twenty minutes)

One of this century’s greatest tragedies.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

This is an issue that is long on rhetoric, as newspaper and TV news reports testify. The number of people forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict and war continues to increase at a staggering rate and will soon be overshadow by Global warming climate change migration.

This post attempts to look at where we have been, and where we are likely to go, in coping with this worlds endless stream of refugees. The refugee problems and crises are far from over and will continue to require urgent international cooperative treatment.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

Half of all current refugees have been displaced for over ten years.

At the moment most displaced people stay in their own country this will not be so with climate change.

We all know what causes refugee displacements and asylum flows, but the effects of conflict, political upheaval and economic incentives to migrate, are going to be dwarfed by climate migration.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly resolution 217A (III), on the 10 December 1948 will be out of date. 

“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”

This may well represents the first global international expression of rights to which all human beings are inherently entitled but Artificial Intelligence, and technology combined with global warming is going to create a different kind of refugee or migrant.

The right to life is humanity’s most fundamental value.   Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

More than 65 million people are today, asylum seekers, internally displaced persons (IDPs) or refugees, illegal immigrants, to put a label on them.

The distinction between an economic migrant and a refugee is simple:

Are you running from or to? all are escaping.

Half of the world’s refugees are children under 18 years of age. The average length of time a refugee spends in exile is about 20 years, which is more than an entire childhood, and represents a significant portion of a person’s productive working years.

So let’s try to comprehend ( not that it is possible to do so with written or spoken words)  what refugees have to face.

What is a camp?  What characterizes a camp and how camps affect the lives of those who are placed in them.

On a global scale, millions of refugees are contained in camps of one sort or another.

Life goes on in camps—albeit a life that is affected by the camp.

They are places where the depoliticization of life takes place, due to humanitarian government, paradoxically they also produces a hyper-politicized space where nothing is taken for granted and everything is contested.

They are places of social dissolution, of new beginnings where sociability is remolded in new ways.

They are places with little or no human rights, dignity strippers, with no education, they are terrorist recruitment centers.

Camps are defined along two dimensions: spatially and temporally.

Temporally, refugee camps are meant to be temporary, while in practice this temporariness are becoming permanent.

Temporary are legal anomalies, in which the administration of justice is virtually in the hands of the humanitarian agencies that exercise this function either directly, or by delegating it to community leaders.

In reality temporary camp are exceptional space put in place to deal with populations that disturb the national order of things, while spatially, camps always have boundaries the fact is that in despite of ubiquitous images of sprawling refugee camps the majority of refugees are no longer confined to camps they now live in cities or towns.

So try to imagine yourself in Zaatari a Jordanian Camp set on a lump of desert.A Syrian refugee woman walks in Zattari Syrian refugee camp, Mafraq city, Jordan

It has a current population of over 100,000 souls,( Equivalent to the population of Exeter Uk or  Reykjavík  Iceland.) of which 70% are woman and children.

People are reduced to ants in this dystopian, chronically parched science – fiction setting in Jordan.

A population that is utterly poverty-stricken and powerless, reduced to de facto prisoners with no hope no food no running water, imagine the toilets. Anger blooms, mothers sell their daughters, gangs roam, children go feral:

(Non of this can be blamed on Jordan who have contributed over £500 million against contributions from other countries of around £150 million. With 14,000 new arrivals a week a half a million will only keep the camp open for a few months.)

Or

Imagine you are on a disposable barque approaching Lampedusa with 500 passenger packed like sardines having paid traffickers $ 1000 to $1600. ( Newspapers headlines constantly refer to these people as illegal immigrants. They’er not, they’er refugees. ) You have survived crossing of the Sahara, the violence in Libya and all told your family have raised $6000 for you to make the journey in the likelihood that they will never see you again.

Anyway lets say you don’t drown, now add the screaming and crying ringing in your ears as you scramble the shore to be warped in a tinfoil, and bused to a reception camp, fingerprinted though you are not a criminal.

Your only option is to vanish to continue your journey in the hands of traffickers and gangs who exploit, enslave, rape and bully.

The EU Dublin convention stipulates that people political asylum must remain in the first safe country you land in. There is no picking and choosing.

According to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, European countries have the obligation to provide asylum to those who seek it. This is not the matter of politics and economy, but of basic human rights. There is no person that should live in fear for their life and the lives of their close ones.

Its only by not looking, by turning or backs that we can sail away and think that this is sad, but it is not our sadness.

Refugees are not spread evenly across the world.

Seven countries – Syria, Iran, Pakistan, Lebanon, Turkey, Palestine and Jordan – host more than 50% of all refugees. Many countries, including some of the richest and most developed countries like the US, UK and Australia, are not fully living up to their responsibility under the Refugee Convention.

At the moment, there are over 9 million refugees seeking asylum.

If all refugees were distributed evenly across all the countries in the world, each country would host 100,000 refugees.

By mid-2015, the World Bank’s estimated cost of the Syrian war for the Middle Eastern countries is $35 billion.

Current funding models for displacement are no sustainable.

Whether greater international coordination could produce better outcomes for refugee-receiving countries and for the refugees themselves is of course governed by funds.

The United Nations’ annual appeal for international aid has risen 500% in 10 years due to the “new norm” of multiple humanitarian crises. Only 26% of the money needed has been committed, to enable the UN to provide assistance to 78.9 million people in 37 countries.

To quote António Guterres: The UN high commissioner for refugees. “Today’s needs are at unprecedented levels and without more support there simply is no way to respond to the humanitarian situations we’re seeing in region after region and in conflict after conflict.”

It has been widely suggested that more resources should be devoted to providing aid to refugees closer to home. “80% of our emergency response is to man-made crises which are now “apocalyptic” with displacement of people the highest since the second world war and multiple crises being the “new norm”.

On average, around 100 million people are affected by natural disasters per year and disasters now cost more than $100bn in economic damages. The number of displaced people has also increased, with 65 million people displaced at the close of 2015 compared with 33.3 million in 2013.

While donors give more generously every year, the gap between funds needed and funds provided continues to widen.

This raises questions about our ability to continue to meet affected people’s needs.

Then there is the question whether to devote resources directly to repatriation and reintegration programs, or simply to provide some form of economic incentive to return.

Neither will stem the flow of long-distance illegal migrants, once such flows have become established.

The best option by far is to find ways of preventing civil wars or to stop them recurring. Civil wars suggest that the causes are chiefly economic rather than political.

To really help displaced people, aid agencies must better understand how people are helping themselves, to figure out how to support these initiatives and advocate on behalf of refugees to overcome the barriers.

Education is to be seen as key to contributing to long-term solutions for refugees, ensuring that displaced generations are equipped to rebuild their lives and communities − either in the country of asylum or upon
their return home.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "papers on refugees"

We need to fix the system – not for today, but to be ready for what the situation will be like five years from now never mind 20 or 30 years in the future.

It’s no wonder that we are living in disturbed times.

It is now time to unite and provide a new home for those who need it the most. What is needed, therefore, is a comprehensive, fully funded global program.

The world can’t keep pretending the refugee catastrophe is a European problem. The brunt of the crisis has fallen on the Turks, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Iraqis and the Lebanese.

All the goodwill, all the technology, all the appeals, all the solutions will not stop people fleeing wars, or climate change.

A smart phone can be a lifeline if you’ve had to leave everything else behind, because when you take to the roads, to the boats and to the trains, all our political leaders can think of is fences, barbed wire and more police.

There is only one way to help:

And that is to get Profit for Profit sake to contribute.

By placing a world Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $50,000, on all Sovereign Wealth funds Acquisitions. Combined this with a 0.00005% charge on all tweets, and all online purchases, on all google inquires, on all Facebook postings, etc.

Will create a permanent self funding resource of funds doing away with begging for resources.

Mr António Guterres should call a world summit of all Industrial world leaders not countries with a view to passing a people resolution to implement such a World Aid commission.

Then we might have some hope of a more peacefully world for all.

All suggestions and comments appreciate. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IT IS TIME TO CUT THROUGH THE RHETORIC SURROUNDING SUSTAINABILITY.

06 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Sustaniability

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( A Ten minute read:  That could change the world and all of us that live on it.)

For millions, 2017 is a year of unrelenting misery and fear, as governments and armed groups abused human rights in a multitude of ways.

Large numbers of people continued to flee conflict and repression in many regions of the world.

While billions of dollars are spent every year by the world’s space agencies, but does this money bring us any benefit, or should we pull the plug and spend it elsewhere?

Canada: $488 million, India: $1.1 billion, China: $1.3 billion, Italy: $1.8 billion, Germany: $2 billion, Japan: $2.4 billion, France: $2.5 billion, Europe: $5.5 billion Russia: over $7.7 billion, United States: $18 billion.Countries Who Spend The Most On Space Exploration

Some of these figures may seem mind-blowing when you take a pragmatic look at the current state of the global.

The standard list of threats/factors affecting the globe is getting bigger and bigger not smaller and smaller. 

Why?

I suppose the simple answer is that us humans are incapable of acting as one, and if we do manage to do so its only in small groups in the short-term. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Combine this with conflicting interests and you have a concoction of good doers all competing for limited funds to address what ever.

The problem is man is said to have evolved from monkeys and apes…but we still have monkeys and apes.

Take for instance Climate change which is now emerged as one of the most serious threats impacting on universal values.

With global environmental changes locked into our future you would think as intelligent humans we would act as one to avoid the obvious consequences.

Our best efforts to do us fall by the way side because of, not because what is obvious, but because of the costs to profit.

Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse.

We are left with a world that is represented by what we call The United Nations.

Country names and little flags of identity rather than one unified group called humans. Perhaps if they we removed prior to passing any resolution’s that effect the Glob we might see humans acting as one.

But this will achieve nothing unless we get Capitalism to do the right thing when nobody’s watching.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of earth from space probes"

So here is a solution:

Why not impose an International legal world aid commission on all activities that produce profit for profit sake. (See previous posts)

AND.

While we are at it why not impose a 0.0005% commission on all tweets, on all smart phone inquirers, on all internet purchases, on all social media posts.

Either of the above would produce a perpetual fund of billions to tackle the coming natural disasters, the coming technology inequality, the malnutrition that is now the underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 deaths worldwide. The list is endless.

There is no simple solution to creating a more equitable world.

The world community has accepted the need to limit the increase in the earth’s temperature to 2°C and initiate changes to achieve this objective.

This will require the world to move away from burning fossil fuels and effectively reach a stage of zero carbon emissions. This will require a radical change in the way humanity lives as we move forward.

The earth has limited resources. Also, there are limits on the renewability of some of its renewable resources. Humanity is using substantially more resources than the earth can renew. We all need to change the way we live to achieve a proper balance.

In order to face the challenges posed by these dual issues, the world has to act in unison.

TAKE TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE. ( See previous posts)

There are a number of disparities to be addressed. There is a very wide range of per-capita emissions—generally, the wealthy countries having higher per-capita emissions.

There is a perception among the emerging economies that the world has reached the current situation due to the past emissions by high emitters and that they should be willing to share a higher cost of moving to low-carbon economy.

Further, different regions will be affected differently—some may not feel the consequences; at least immediately. Such countries may not want to join the worldwide efforts in a meaningful way. Getting all countries to follow a common path will be the biggest challenge in the years to come.

Doing nothing will not be an option.

Sustainability is defined as a requirement of our generation to manage the resource base such that the average quality of life that we ensure ourselves can potentially be shared by all future generations. … Development is sustainable if it involves a non-decreasing average quality of life.

For all our sake’s we need to get a grip.

We must deal with problems on Earth first, before we can leave it.

Sustainability is not “about” the integration of ecological, social and economic issues, nor is it “about” widespread consultation nor is it “about” improving quality of life.

It’s about maintaining or sustaining something called Earth.

Sustainability must be a destination, not just a journey. 

It is worth noting that treating a sustainable state as a destination doesn’t mean that society cannot revise or refine its idea of what sustainability is at a future date.

Even with everyday destinations an initial intention to go to the fruit and veg shop doesn’t preclude a later decision to go to the bank as well or to go to the supermarket instead!

Space and the Higgs-Boson can wait, when every day, 17,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday.

A future with no fresh water, clean air, energy and food, you can rest assured no one will remember the Internet, or artificial Intelligence.

So what price are we willing to pay for knowing that in the future, humanity can be saved because there are other planets out there capable of sustaining life?

Our priority surely is to take care of our planet before we go roaming around others.

For things that don’t matter we can please ourselves how we approach the sustainability effort (ie. as a destination, journey or both, or an issue of total disinterest!).

O! By the way if we did create a World Aid Commission there would be no need to stop any exploration. Today, both Voyager 1 and 2 are the farthest man-made objects in space.

Our message in a bottle was in the form of a gold-plated sonograph record containing compilations of music, images and greetings best representing Planet Earth, affixed on the outer surfaces of both the Voyager spacecrafts, if we are careful long before, “A billion years from now, when everything on Earth we’ve ever made has crumbled into dust, when continents have changed beyond recognition and our species is unimaginably altered or extinct, the Voyager record will speak for us.”

Carl Sagan’s declaration above without a doubt holds true, not just on the frailty of the ‘pale blue dot’ we call home, but also on the life it sustains. 

 

All human generated comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the Bin