Monthly Archives: November 2017

THE BEADY EYE ASK: WHO ARE THE EUROPEAN UNION NEGOTIATING WITH.

30 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., Politics., The Irish/ Northern Ireland border.

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( A ten minute read)

It’s true that her role as the British head of state is largely ceremonial, and the Monarch no longer holds any serious power from day-to-day. The historic “prerogative powers” of the Sovereign have been devolved largely to government ministers. But this still means that when the British government declares war, or regulates the civil service, or signs a treaty, it is doing so only on her authority.

The Queen’s consent is necessary to turn any bill into an actual law.Image associée

The United Kingdom, England, Great Britain? Are these three the same place? Different places?

Part of the confusion is that the United Kingdom is not a single country but instead is a country of countries. It contains inside of it four co-equal and sovereign nations. England, Scotland,Northern Ireland Welsh all ‘British.

’They have their own devolved Parliaments and are allowed to vote on English laws. However, as the four constituent countries don’t have their own passports, they are all British Citizens, like it or not.

The European union is not dealing with Great Britain as it is only a geographical term rather than a political term.

However this is not completely true, as all three constituent countries have islands that are not part of Great Britain, such as :The Isle of Wight, Isles of Scilly and Lundy which are part of England, the Welsh Isle of Anglesey and the Scottish Hebrides, Shetland Island, Orkney Islands, Islands of the Clyde.

In Wales  (52.5%) voters chose to leave the EU, compared with 772,347 (47.5%) supporting Remain.

In Northern Ireland (56%) voted to remain in the EU, 44% voted to leave.

In Scotland (38.0%) voted to leave, 62.0% voted to stay.

With the exception of Gibraltar and the sovereign areas on Cyprus, the British overseas territories are not part of the EU.

Gibraltar,voted overwhelmingly to remain. The Falkland Islands? 90 per cent of its exports go to the EU 27.

Commonwealth migrants from 54 states – including ­Australia, Canada, India, Pakistan and Nigeria – could join the electoral roll as long are they are residents in the UK.

Citizens from other European countries – apart from Ireland, Malta and Cyprus – did not get to vote on whether the UK remains part of the EU.

So I ask again, just who are the European Union negotiating with.

 Is it the Crown? or the DUP 

Who created the Crown?  God Did.

God however – not wanted to be bothered with micromanagement – conveniently delegates his power to an entity called the crown.

Who created the DUP?  England did. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the rev ian paisley speech never never"

It’s a useful reminder that the United Kingdom is still technically a theocracy with the reigning monarch acting as both the head of state and the supreme governor of the official state religion:

In the end the United Kingdom is a country situated on the british isles and is part of The Crown which is controlled by the monarchy.

Also part of the crown and the British isles are the crown dependencies.

The independent nations of the former empire that still recognize the crown are the commonwealth realm and the non-independent remnants of the former empire are the British overseas territories.

To London and Theresa May, the Irish don’t matter much as she and her government are held to ransom

The people of Northern Ireland and Mrs Foster remember this.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "how much did t may pay the dup"

This shoddy DUP deal will ultimately cost Theresa May and England

far more than £1bn“

DUP will be back for more again and again. They have previous in such

matters.

However, both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are members of the European Union even though England often likes to pretend that it’s an Island in the mid-atlantic rather than 50km off the cost of France.

Border or no border the Eu and any country doing a deal in the future would do well to establish just who are they are dealing with before any agreement is agreed.

But that’s a story for another day.

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IT IS TIME TO STOP LYING TO OURSELVES,

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Uncategorized, What Needs to change in the World

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( A twenty-minute read)

The world is in a mess.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the world from space"

What the hell are we thinking?

The myth with or without Artificial Intelligence is beginning to crumble. It seems that it is not just capitalism itself is in conflict with the pressing need to stave off a planetary emergency. It is the model that we pursue.

The economic system that we have put in place over the last few decades has rendered us incapable of meeting the most serious challenges of the 21st century.

Take hunger for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of hunger"

It was to be eradicated within a decade. Instead according to the most conservation measures there are about 800 million hungry people. In reality this figure is around two billion, nearly a third of all humanity. How is this so when we produce enough food to feed 7 billion with left overs to feed another three billion.

Take Poverty for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty"

We told by the United Nations that millions have being taken out of poverty. This may be so but most of those millions are in China. A dollar a day is I am sure you would agreed is simply not adequate for human existence, to say nothing of human dignity. Even if it was five dollars a day there would be five billion people still be living below the poverty line. About 60% of humanity.

Take Inequality for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of inequality"

The World Economic Form met in Davos recently where Oxfam announced that the richest eight people in the world had as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion.

Take Social media for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of social media icons"

Despite mounting evidence that it is tearing society apart ( It contributed to Nine Eleven, to the Axis of Evil, to the Iraq? Afghan war, to the creation of the Arab Spring,  to ISIS, to the Syrian war, to recruitment of terrorist, to bullying, to undermining elections, to the election of Trump, to populous politics, to mining our social anxieties, to selling ads, to competing additive Platforms, to non connectivity, to sow discord, to plundering privacy. ) it remains unregulated.

Take Development and the World trade organisation for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of world trade organization"

It enshrines policies to suite their own interests. It is estimated that for every dollar of aid developing countries receive they lose 24 in net outflow.

In 2012 developing countries received a little over 2 trillion dollars in all Aid. 5 trillion flowed out of them a net lost of 3 trillion. Since 1980 this adds up to a whopping 265 trillion out flow. 4,2 trillion of this is in interest payments.

The mobile phone has done more than all the western Aid to the third world.

Take Climate Change for example: Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of climate change"

CO2 admission turned into carbon credits bought and sold on the stock exchange. We are pumping 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere each year. The Paris pledges don’t kick in til 2020. The Arctic is melting leading to a massive release of methane.

Certainly anyone who still thinks development is just a matter of increasing GDP growth and thereby CO2 emissions has yet to come to terms with the brutal facts of climate change. It seems that capitalism

Take the Arms trade for example:

The world spends some $1,000 billion annually on the military.

Arms-Exporters-Importer.jpg

Ten countries are responsible for the vast majority of all major arms exports, accounting for 90 percent of global sales. The top five major arms exporters are the United States, Russia, Germany, France and China. Together, they account for 74 percent of the total volume of exports.

The US with a 33 per cent share of the global market.

The UK is the sixth largest exporter of arms in the world, with a 4.5 per cent share of the global market. Arms exports from the UK increased 26 per cent in the last five years.  British sales of military equipment to Saudi Arabia topped £1.1bn in the first half of this year.

Take Fresh Water for example:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the position on fresh water in the world"

1 billion people facing water scarcity.

As the global population grows, so does demand for fresh water. Many water systems around the world are currently overtaxed, and some have already collapsed. According to one estimate, by 2030 our planet’s need for water will outstrip its reliable supply by 40%. Fresh water makes civilization possible.​

Take Deforestation for example: Résultat de recherche d'images pour "the position on Deforestation in the world"

An estimated 7.6 million hectares of forests are lost each year. Forests play key roles in the water cycle, soil conservation, carbon sequestration, and habitat protection, including for pollinators. Their sustainable management is crucial for sustainable agriculture and food security. The predicted future length of time in which rain forest destruction alone will release more carbon into the atmosphere than every flight from the dawn of aviation until 2025

Today, deforestation is increasingly driven by a growing worldwide demand for different globally-traded commodities, including soy, palm oil, beef and timber. 150,000 km2 of tropical rain forest is destroyed every year.

Take pollution for example:

Pollution from human activities, especially agriculture, washes into streams, lakes, estuaries and oceans. Already, nearly 60% of U.S. lakes are too polluted. Our oceans are full of plastic.

Take Energy/Power for example: Energy

The world uses over 500 million terajoules of energy in one year.

Liquid fuels—mostly petroleum-based—remain the largest source of world energy consumption.

Total world energy consumption will rise from 575 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2015 to 736 quadrillion Btu in 2040, an increase of 28%.  Most of the world’s energy growth will occur in countries outside of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

World consumption and production of renewable energy is dismal, fossil fuels will still account for 77% of energy use in 2040. Our use of energy will grow by about 35 percent between 2011 and 2035. If nothing changes, most of this increase will be covered by burning more coal.

In just 71 minutes the Earth is hit by enough solar energy to power the world for one year. If we could exploit just one tenth of one percent of this energy we would have more than enough energy to meet the world’s total energy demand.

Percent renewable energy use globally, right now

Take Algorithms for example: Algorithm, complex mathematical formulas, are playing a growing role in all walks of life: from health, to shopping, and jobs (AFP Photo/ROSLAN RAHMAN)

The new form of unseen Capitalism. Profit seeking algorithms run Wall street and other world stock exchanges. Algorithm, complex mathematical formulas, are playing a growing role in all walks of life: from health, to shopping, and jobs.

Algorithms are being used — experimentally — to write news articles from raw data. Algorithms are not inherently fair, because the person who builds the model defines success.  They will be uses as scapegoat for societal ills.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "video explaining the woes of the world"

The list of woes is endless and there is little hope of a global transformation of the way the world manages itself. We’re already close to points of no return.

I say why take the risk?  We may have entered the most challenging and exciting decade in the history of the planet but if we don’t find a way of collective action there will be no point to any history. 

The only way to make a global difference is by harnessing Greed.

A WORLD AID COMMISSION OF 0.05% ( See previous posts)

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WE ARE ALL HEADING FOR THE CLOUD.

27 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Democracy, Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Robot citizenship., Technology, The cloud., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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( A six minute read)

It would be fair to say that most of us live in a cloud of our own importance.

However that cloud is disappearing into any other cloud which we are all creating with little or no control.

Our Ideology of normative beliefs, conscious and unconscious ideas, that are individual, group or society are under attack by this cloud. The reality is that temporary outages and slower-speed broadband that are a minor nuisance today can and will become a critical issue.Image associée

It represents the consummate disruptor to structure; a pervasive social and economic network that will soon connect and define more of the world than any other political, social, or economic.

It is the first mega trend of the twenty-first century, one that will shape the way we will address virtually every challenge we face for at least the next 100 years.

It is where we will all live, work, and play in the coming decades.

The Cloud is where your kids go to dive into online play. It’s where you meet and make friends in social networks. It’s where companies find the next big idea. It’s where political campaigns are won and lost.

You might think that this is all hog wash.

( But it appears that New Zealand does not have any politicians with brains of their own that they can rely on.

It has just recently appointed the worlds first AI virtual politician with the wonderful name of SAM. “Sam your man ” with a memory of an elephant he never forgets. ” Sam considers everyone’s position when making decisions.”

Well F… me Nick Gerristen ( The creator of Sam) there is a lot of bias in the cloud and AI algorithms are riddled with it.

You say “SAM is an enabler.” I agree.  Make sure you feed it as no doubt Google will want to buy it. I see you love BIG ideas, so perhaps you should introduce Sam to Sophia and you might have a bunch of little Samson’s.

Make sure he knows all about NXT Fuels, and by all means give him a bash. I am sure the Maori would be delighted. By the way, being a politician I would have named it, Ākina.  ( A Māori word meaning a call for bold action. It also conveys a spirit of watchful and active encouragement, helping others to identify pathways through their challenges.)

Back to the more serious subject:

It is time that we started to recognize some of the risks associated with this cloud technology, so as to avoid the possibility of future issues being decided by Sam and his like, who are servants of the hardware and software resources made available on the Internet as managed third-party services.

The world and us who live on it are becoming highly dependent on our Internet providers, so much so that it wont be long before we will have a fully cloud-based world.

Since no proper standards for cloud computing are set yet, it becomes almost impossible for anyone to ascertain the quality of services they have been provided with. So in the near future we will not be able to make wise decisions while choosing your personal service provider.

This, in turn, enables providers to charge customers fees proportional to their network, storage, and processing utilization.

Most issues start from the fact that the user loses control of his or her data, because it is stored on a computer belonging to someone else.

Many cloud providers can share information with third parties if necessary for purposes of law and order even without a warrant.

Although cloud computing enhances content accessibility, this access is “increasingly grounded in the virtually monopolistic privatization of the cloud which provides this access”.

This access, necessarily mediated through a handful of companies, ensures a progressive privatization of global cyberspace.

So we must ask the question why are we and our governments sustaining the quasi-monopolies that filter what we see depending on commercial and ideological interests they have.

The legal and regulatory landscape around cloud computing is by no means static. There are new laws being proposed that could change the responsibilities of both cloud computing tenants and providers.This creates new challenges in understanding how laws apply to a wide variety of information management scenarios.

As with all things surrounding profit it’s inevitable that some could will burst or simply stop providing the service if they deem it isn’t profitable for them. Often, large companies will enter the market but leave it once the expected profit doesn’t materialize. If this is the core business of the cloud supplier, it might be willing to continue operating for longer with a smaller profit.

Surely if we use a cloud infrastructure sourced from a cloud services provider, we must impose all legal or regulatory requirements that apply to any enterprise.

THIS WITH SELF LEARNING ALGORITHMS IS NOT POSSIBLE.

THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY OF ACHIEVING ANY CONTROL:

All technology must be vetted to ensure it complies to humanity core values.

It should be compulsory for it to carry a ATR World Certificate.

Accountable, Transparent, Reversible. Image associée

If we are to have any hope of tackling  any of Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us we need a beanie Cloud not a cloud for profit.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: DID THE ENGLISH REFERENDUM RESULT REALLY REPRESENT THE WILL OF THE ENTIRE UK ELECTORATE?

26 Sunday Nov 2017

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

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( A twelve-minute read)

If we look at England going headlong to join Greece, (which has olive oil and sunshine against cider and gray skies) one has to wonder why all those that voted to stay in the EU have gone silent.

Eu cost

Why is this?

Where are the 48% that voted to stay in the EU?

It seems that England’s pending departure from the European Union, is driven by memories of the Empire rather than its people.

We all know that it built a fortune on the British Empire, however it used it to create pervasive banking and finance institutions, including many large value traders. It is this trade potential that made such a large economy.

Now just because it was unwilling to fight its corner we are witnessing a form of collective up in the clouds lunacy. As if Democracy is unable to reconsider a decision once vote on.

If anything one has to admire the bull dog determinism of a country that has giving many things to the world both good and bad to enact the result of a non legal binding Referendum that was won by 52% to 48%.

What can one say other than, you might like to turn your thoughts to the millions of people who will be directly affected but weren’t allowed to vote. (Not just the under-18s, but also the UK residents who come from other countries in the EU, and the UK nationals living in other parts of the EU…) The 10 million or so remain voters who didn’t show up to the polls should feel ashamed.

While Brexit likely does not reflect the sentiment of the entire electorate the result of the referendum reflects how democracy works in England.

Once the largest empire in the world its is now a shell of what it once was.

It’s too late now, but on such an important decision one would have thought that voting should have been compulsory, with a minimum majority of at least 60% to win.

Who in their right minds would run a yes-no one-off vote on such a big and complex issue? Only mad dogs and English men in the noon day sun.

Did the outcome really represent the will of the entire electorate?

Not by a long shot.

If only more_____ (fill in your choice of young people, ethnic minorities, Londoners, Scots, university graduates, etc.) had voted, then Remain would have won.  At least that’s the argument.

Of course, UK voters did not have one million chances to vote to stay in the EU.  They had one, and a majority of those who cast a ballot opted to leave.

There is a longstanding unwritten constitutional principle in England if you don’t participate, your voice is not heard.

Yet, when Britain renegotiates its status, with the European Union the borders will not change.European Central Bank

Do you know why?

Because Britain needs an open line to Europe. The most that will happen is a limit placed on immigration, something that the didn’t need to leave the EU to achieve.

So I ask where is the voice of the younger generation – which voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining in the EU – that ultimately will bear the cost of the xenophobic pipe dreams sold to their parents by cynical politicians.

Have you all being seriously duped by a dream that wants you to believe that your standard of living will rise as a result.

What you are seeing is less secure employment, more social disease and mental health…and generally a cost of living that very few people can afford unless your one of the top 10%.

Which begs the question, is this what happens in a limited 2 party ‘democratic’ state (first past the post being the least democratic of all voting systems) when the people have lost faith in both parties?

Without the EU apparatus, your trading leverage is massively weakened, meaning that many of the free trade agreements you will sign outside of Europe will end up being less beneficial, especially in the extent that they impact upon the young.

I’m curious about exactly what England (notice I didn’t use the term UK) has to offer Europe or any free trade partner.

Heavy industry and mining is a shell of what it once was, as is the textiles industry. The auto industry is in many ways being propped by their EU agreements. Every one of your rural industries has another source within Europe itself.

You don’t have many natural resources, and even those you do have like North Sea oil will have its boundaries tested when you leave. I’m assuming this will extend to fishing boundaries as well. England, the entire UK for that matter, will be a pretty small place.

London’s status as a banking capital may be worth squat now as well. Banks will leave England as quick as they can buy new buildings in other cities.

The lost of the clearing of euro-denominated derivatives, will ultimately force tens of thousands pounds in revenue out of London and break off a key part of the City’s infrastructure.

On top of all of this  we are now witnessing what I happen to think it a VERY bad idea to hand your laws into the hands of the politicians, especially when they are already rich autocrats.

All this assumes that the legislation that would be required goes through either of the houses, which is in and of itself an iffy proposition, especially with Scotland promising to block and obstruct and rest assured that the Northern Ireland DUP will more than likely be looking for additional bribery blood money to vote on any agreement.

Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest. The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.

Perhaps England should take a leaf form Isaac Goldberg, who said

” To blind oneself to change is not therefore to halt it”.

This is what England can look forward to, deal or no deal.

Your politicians say;

It simply isn’t possible to wind back the clock. The forces that have been unleashed cannot be restrained. Turning inwards, however, will not solve the problem.

A disunited Europe alienated from a disunited UK can only lead to sorry state of affairs.

With profit seeking algorithms, Capitalism as we know it is going underground, isolation will not stop this taking place.

Perhaps now is the time for the European Union to consider jettisoning the UK relationship altogether. However the EU has shown it tends to move with a glacial pace, so the thaw will be over several decades that will bleed not just your productivity, but the aspirations of the young. 

The blow dealt to European unity may prove fatal but it is beyond a doubt that England will certainly feel the chill winds from the UK’s new isolationist policy.

I have always felt the UK should have try again to renegotiate the terms of its membership rather than an either / or referendum.

Now it appears that this is not possible as the damage has already been done, to an almost irreversible extent, the conditions of re-entry would not be favorable, and the cost of rejoining would be high.

The gap in EU-UK positions is wide, the risks of escalation high, and the room for compromise limited.

In or out will now weigh on Britain’s economic prospects for years to come.

If Brexit talks collapse the most likely reason will be not be money. (One way or the other the UK will pay a hefty bill for leaving EU.) The main reason is that any future relationship between Britain and the EU will take years to negotiate. The architecture of this relations depends on whether England honors the commitments which England entered into freely.

autumn statement brexit black hole

UK politics are now in a state of chaos, with European politics following suite so it is highly unlikely (whether England honors its commitments or not) that the twenty remaining EU countries will agree to anything other than to agree to disagree.

You only have to look at the Irish/ Northern Ireland border.

No other country is going to feel the fallout from the UK’s vote to leave the European Union more than Ireland.  It remains at the mercy of the unfolding drama in its closest neighbor and the consequences are mind-boggling.

Brexit is not occurring in a vacuum.

Public opinion is being reshaped by Brexit however it will be the cost of inflation that will cause panic, with corporations shift their bases of operation to Europe, costing thousands of jobs it will result in more than disturbances on the street.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IRELAND REMAINS AT THE MERCY OF ENGLAND.

24 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., England., European Commission., European Union., The Irish/ Northern Ireland border., Unanswered Questions.

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( A twenty-minute read)

This post is a follow on from my open letter to Mrs A Foster leader of the DUP.

No other country is going to feel the fallout from the UK’s vote to leave the European Union more than Ireland.  Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the irish border"

Every single aspect of life in Northern Ireland and Ireland will be affected by the outcome —  jobs, the economy, the border, the rights of EU citizens, the rights of cross-border workers, research funding … trade, agriculture, energy, fisheries, aviation, EU funding, tourism, public services, the list goes on.

The border was first set up in 1921 following the Irish War of Independence. Customs controls were brought in three years later with a heavy military presence which remained pretty consistent for the next 70 years. It wasn’t until about 2005 until all the remaining controls were removed with a shared control of the British & Irish border between the two countries.

The question is how Ireland’s politicians and executives, react to what could be a foreign-policy crisis that eclipses the nation’s banking collapse and bailout.

It’s hard to prepare detailed plans before the exact nature of the UK’s new relationship with the EU becomes clear, BUT THE MOST OBVIOUS ISSUE is the 310-mile border between the north and the republic.

The Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of sectarian conflict, had no position on the vote.

The unfortunate reality is that Ireland remains at the mercy of the unfolding drama in its closest neighbor and the rest of the EU that will require Ireland to establish a hard border to protect the integrity of the Internal Market and the Customs Union irrelevant of the danger of a return to civil strife on the island.

“The consequences are mind-boggling.”Image associée

If this circle cannot be squared the Uk it will exit the EU without a deal. This will be the ‘ hardest’ of the ‘hard Brexit’ possibilities. A hard Brexit typically entails defaulting to World Trade Organisation rules, involving a very significant deterioration in trade relationship between the UK and the EU, and therefore between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole.

Either the British deny the unionist community in Northern Ireland a veto, or the EU and the Irish government accept a land border on the island of Ireland.

A hard border would reintroduce that sense of divide again between the north and south which was nearing the point of becoming a thing of the past.

Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU Referendum by a majority of 56% to 44%. Overall, 440,437 people in Northern Ireland voted to Remain in the EU and 349,442 to Leave. Out of 18 constituencies, 11 voted to stay in the European Union.

Arlene Foster said that as a leader of unionism, she felt it was the right decision. “We are now entering a new era of an even stronger United Kingdom. ” Affirmation that she is void of any comprehension of what a majority means. The reality is that the people of the north of Ireland overwhelmingly voted in favor of Remain – both republican and unionist, Catholic and Protestant and those of no faith background.

From start to finish, she along with Conservative Brexiters have shown that they simply could not care less about Ireland.

In the referendum campaign, few gave even a passing thought to the impact of a leave vote on the relationship between Northern Ireland, the rest of the UK and the republic. When the vote went their way – though they lost in Northern Ireland – the Brexiters then gave bland assurances that the decision would make absolutely no difference to the island’s soft border, the legacy of the peace process, or north-south and east-west cooperation.

This was and is nonsense.

Brexit is not occurring in a vacuum, bad blood engendered if the UK leaves the EU without a deal it will spill over into other areas.

Given the political debacle that’s being made of Brexit by a dysfunctional UK administration, opinion polls in Ireland reflect no enthusiasm for Ireland to join them in leaving the EU, short or long-term, and it is highly unlikely that the North will join the South.

Northern Ireland is not the only stumbling block in the negotiations of course.

There’s no going back to a condition of servile dependency.

I don’t want to be misinterpreted as not caring about threats to peace, but even if one solved the Irish Border problem by having Northern Ireland stay within the Customs Union and Single Market, the huge problem of access to the GB export market would remain, as would the disruption to hassle-free trade with Continental Europe.

There are other scenarios:

  • the UK decides to leave the land border permeable and instead enforce border controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, effectively treating Ulster as some kind of lower-status buffer zone which EU residents can enter without (effective) restriction. Likely to be singularly unpopular with Ulster Unionists.
  • The UK releases Northern Ireland as an independent or quasi-independent country, long the preferred option for saloon bar racists of the home counties (with or without the “tow the whole lot out into the middle of the Atlantic” option).
  • Moving the international frontier into the Irish Sea between Britian and the island of Ireland. This proposal is anathema to both Northern unionists and the British Conservative party as it affects the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom. The matter is further complicated by the fact that the Conservative government is dependent on the parliamentary support of Northern unionist parliamentarians for retaining its majority – giving it strong reason not to upset this part of its coalition which it bought at the cost of a billion.
  • A so-called invisible border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland simply would not work. Camera recognition technology and preregistered cargo — will not be effective on a border that passes the front door and back doors of houses. 
  • The border has always had a modest amount of smuggling as local tax differentials lead to imbalances, but with full-on export tariffs there would be a very substantial motivation for routing goods from the UK mainland to the continent via Stranraer-Larne and Rosslare-Le Havre on an industrial scale. So there would at the very least be a need for border guards on or close to road border crossings to channel goods vehicles into customs clearance facilities. Assuming the UK were to apply the same tariffs on imports, then the same would also apply in reverse.For Ireland, the issue of preventing Bad Foreign People from entering via its unsecured border is less important (indeed, the need to allow people to maintain existing social and economic links across the border is very important, bearing in mind that a very substantial proportion of the population of the north are Irish citizens)I don’t think the 450 million or so remaining in the EU are going to allow this to happen and be dictated to by Britain.  I also don’t think the British people appreciate how ‘locked in’ Britain is to international supply chains for all types of goods and services. However, businesses will adapt to the new arrangements, whatever they might be. The usual capitalist combination of greed and stupidity will prevail – Ireland has no option but to stick to its guns. 

Theresa May can hope for no more than an “aspirational” and “purely political” agreement on free trade before Britain leaves the European Union.

“Political agreements, with highfalutin aspirational guff are one thing. Legally binding agreements, treaty changes and trade deal texts are another.

As with all things Brexit the only answer at the moment is we have no idea.

And this is a scary prospect.

It’s due to the EU and the UK and Ireland being part of this greater whole that the IRA and Ulster Unionists have largely given up their dumb assery.

While overt attacks have stopped, the animosity between the two sides persists to this day in some parts of both countries.

If we are to avoid  “an enormous tragedy”

There can be no compromise to unblock any negotiations unless the rights of Europeans who will live in the UK after Brexit, the border between Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland and the never never payments are resolved.

No man has the right to fix a boundary to the march of a nation. No man has the right to say to his country: Thus far shalt thou go and no further.”

No Westminster politician can set a boundary on Ireland.

We can only hope that Theresa May government falls, resulting in a general election, with EU requesting a re vote.

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE WRITES AN OPEN LETTER TO MRS ARLENE FOSTER LEADER OF THE DUP.

22 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Dear Mrs Foster,

Your recently comments on the BBC re the border and the sun shining out of the a… of unnamed politicians has led me to write this open letter, which I am posting in my FLIPBOARD MAGAZINE #Silent Witness To The Truth.

” Nobody understands negotiations probable better than I”

It is quite obvious that you indeed understand negotiations being unable to re – establish a government in Northern Ireland.

“Some people are taking their moment in the sun, to try to get the maximum in relation to the negotiations – and I understand that but you shouldn’t play about with Northern Ireland particularly at a time when we’re trying to bring about devolved government again.

“But they certainly shouldn’t be using Northern Ireland to get the maximum deal for their citizens.”

“Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar “should know better” than to “play around” with Northern Ireland over Brexit” “His government is being reckless with Northern Ireland over Brexit.”

The hypocrisy of these comments beggars belief.  But I suppose they are understandable coming from the leader of a Party that has historical links to loyalist paramilitaries.

For my readers:

The DUP was founded in 1971 by Ian Paisley and is a hard-line faction of the UUP, Ulster Unionist Party. 

The UUP evolved from the Ulster Unionist Council, which was founded in 1905 to resist the inclusion of the historical province of Ulster in an independent Ireland.

The DUP views the Republic as an existential threat to Northern Ireland’s place in the UK, staunchly supports union with Britain.

Citing the territorial claims in the Irish constitution, which the party viewed as illegal and a threat to the security and religious freedom of Protestants in Northern Ireland, the DUP traditionally avoided all contact with the Irish government.

In the early 21st century, however, the party moderated its stance on a number of issues, most notably its longtime opposition to Sinn Féin’s participation in any power-sharing institution.

Arlene Foster, Its current leader vehemently opposed the Good Friday Agreement. The IRA attempted to kill her father (A reservist police officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary) by shooting him outside their family home. They also set off a bomb on her school bus ten-year later.

Her “cash-for-ash” scandal, the cost of the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme she set up in 2012 spiraled out of control and saddled taxpayers with a multi-million pound bill., caused the demise of the present NI devolved Government.

In October 2016, Mrs Foster was photographed alongside with Charter NI’s chief executive, Dee Stitt, who is also a leading member of the Ulster Defence Association.

Then there is your understand about the origins of the border.

For my readers:

It was the Government of Ireland Act (1920) that first divided the island into two separate jurisdictions, each with its own government and parliament.Arlene Foster

This act of partition was envisaged as an internal United Kingdom matter and as a temporary answer to the thorny question of contested sovereignty across the island.

It was a solution that made sense in light of two overarching principles of contemporary democracy: nation-statehood and majoritarianism.

The border was intended to create straightforward majorities on either side that reflected broadly different national sentiments.

The island’s complex history as a site of contests for power and control – some of which battles had wide European resonances – was thus dramatically over-simplified and reduced into the division of the Irish border.

In 1922, after two years of civil war, the unionist-dominated government of Northern Ireland exercised its right not to be included in the Irish Free State, and the border officially became an international frontier.

The colonial high-handedness with which the border was carved is reflected in its route, which cuts through single farm holdings and shows little respect for the natural terrain of the landscape.

The 1998 Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement, on which Northern Ireland’s peace process rests, approaches the Irish border not merely as a dividing line between the jurisdiction of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom but as the embodiment of historical difference between British and Irish nationalisms.

It assumes that the primary political, social and cultural identities within Northern Ireland centre on conflicting interpretations of the border’s legitimacy and, what is more, that they have conveniently settled into a stable binary divide:

British/Protestant/unionist and Irish/Catholic/nationalist.

The strongest manifestation of this is a commitment by both governments to facilitate Irish reunification if it is the will of a majority in both jurisdictions, expressed via a referendum.

That said, all such activity will be in response to the new delineation of the UK’s borders with the European Union.

The precise nature and purpose of those borders (including the Irish border) will, of course, be determined by the outcome of negotiations that look set to take place with no direct input from Northern Ireland or the Irish border region.

Why then is the Ulster man adamant against any thought of making common cause with Dublin?

What lies behind the motto that expresses so aptly the sentiment in the North, Not an Inch”?

For it must be remembered from the outset – all anti-partitionist propaganda to the contrary notwithstanding – that the union with Great Britain is preserved not by a British garrison hut by the declared will of the Northern Ireland people, expressed through their elected Parliament – and that will is paramount.

You might say that it is the most childish of evasions, the most ignoble of pretenses, to place the responsibility for partition on England and to ignore the many and fundamental differences which more than adequately explain the political division of Ireland.

To a great extent this is true.

Ireland as a whole has suffered and struggled for peace for centuries and I as a Irish man living in France strongly object to Mrs Foster and any others who do not aspire to its unity by peaceful agreement.

For this reason, the price of a hard border is too high on both sides.

The border between Northern Ireland and Eire exists because of the ideological gull’ which divides the two Peoples . Although Ulster and Ireland cannot unite, they can be good neighbors – on this condition, that each recognizes the right of the other to shape its destiny in its own way without interference.

That is true democracy; it is also sound statesmanship.

YOU SHOULD KNOW BETTER.

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE ARE NOW LOOKING AT A NEW REVOLUTION CALLED THE CLOUD.

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Innovation., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Technology, The cloud., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., WiFi communication.

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( A fifteen minute read.)

We all know that most if not all of our planets

PROBLEMS are caused by our actions, and can only be

resolved by us changing these actions.

The scientific innovations and new technologies thus

generated seem limitless, as they unfold everywhere

and on all kinds of fronts. It is the wild west where

rules are made up as we go and hope for the best.

There is no central body GOVERNING the use of the

cloud.

In a constantly evolving world transformed by cloud, social and mobile technologies, we’ve become accustomed to the idea of storing our personal data in the cloud, whether it’s via Dropbox, the iCloud or even Facebook.

as confusing as it may be we are never far from a new

era of revolt.

But this really only tells half the story. So far cloud computing has, for the most part, been used to speed up and reduce the costs of existing processes.

However we’re moving into what is becoming known as the mobile/cloud era. Cloud computing is set to impact not only on the way we do business, but how we live or lives.

Our thinking is being shaped by several key areas:

Applications we’re seeing at the moment really are the tip of the iceberg and, as the technology matures further, who knows how we may be using the cloud in even a year from now.

Smart cities are growing ever closer to becoming the norm as organisations begin to realize that the cloud can do so much more than simply speed up or reduce the cost.

Eight years from now we are likely to see low-power processors crunching many workloads in the cloud, housed in highly automated data centres and supporting massively federated, scalable software architecture.

So far we know that the following things are likely to happen:

There will be larger clouds. Some of these clouds will link to others. Many services that businesses consume will sit on top of clouds. Software will be much, much larger.

As with any technology, a lot of the true problems could come in implementation. Who will be the police? Who will be the judge? Who will be the jury for penalties?

We don’t have a clue what the procedures, policies and infrastructure really are.

It is said that changing the world is a noble, innate, haunting idea that, when flirting with it, ends up becoming as beautiful as it is dangerous.

Experts estimate cloud apps will account for a whopping 90 percent of worldwide mobile data traffic by 2019.

Cloud computing brings with it a whole new set of applications that will sit on multiple tiers of cloud infrastructure.

All the cloud promises is that you will have to turn over your security interests to a third-party in the clouds, and secondly that you are going to turn over your ability to do ANY real work to some third-party software provider in the cloud and become totally dependent on an internet connection to even work on the most simple of application based tasks.

Cloud data centers will “become much like a breathing and living organism with different states.

They will be differentiated by their infrastructure capabilities into a whole new set of classes.

So where are we.

How are we going to operate them efficiently?

Will they have standards and full technical disclosure?

The answer to both questions is that it is highly unlikely will we see either.

What we will see is a pitched battle fight for dominance with us reduced to an “inside-out” perspective. 

For instance, “The more the president [of the United States] scandalizes the world with Tweets, rather than embracing the future together with minimal barriers, we see the Western world retreating and starting to look inwards.

Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians, but it is also destroying what it left of any world community spirit, with the smart phone embodying this state of affairs.

Technological advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence or augmented reality are upset the global economy. The ability to acquire new knowledge will be worth more than the knowledge already learned, with people becoming brand-proof, it will become very difficult to exist the devil’s boots that don’t creak.

Behold the Cloud.

Every revolution up to now has had a common thread with the resulting conflicts largely boiling down to pervasive economic inequality.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of the cloud computer"

The Cloud revolution however is wireless dogma, not a guide for action, accepting connections and doling out information anywhere, anytime if you have the money to pay.  

The Internet revolution of tomorrow with the cloud as it’s center of power, will be the content revolution ,that does not bode well for the state of the world to-day and that could be inviting the collapse of society as we know it.

We are heading for a unilateral and silent war, which I think its going to be horrendous.

The difficulty will not come from governments that will be held hostage to a communication that it does not control but from profit seeking AI that feeds off the cloud.

A whopping 90% of businesses already use at least one cloud computing service.

The main players, Amazon, Google Drive, Apple Cloud, Microsoft, with revenue estimated to be in trillions by 2020,  know this.

It’s now totally the way of the future.

The cloud it is not just a metaphor for the internet it is more than a motor, it is a fuel that is constantly renewed, tirelessly feeding self learning algorithms.

The crisis of technological capitalism opens the prospect of new revolutionary waves everywhere.

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

Many economists extol the fact that “It’s very good for the economy” but this is not true.  The world in which Beethoven grew up was in turmoil. It was a world of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions – just like ours today.

This is not a war in the traditional sense of the term: it is and will be more and more a confrontation between belligerent technological armies; it is a war waged by the “civilized world”, firmly entrenched in its positions, against hundreds of millions of deprived civilians.

The divide between rich and poor started with the domesticate plant and animals, which lead to farming – based societies resulting in land ownership. It became easy to acquire wealth and to pass it down from generation to generation, till we arrived to-day with half of the world’s wealth owned by 1%.

We have never being able to decrease inequality peacefully and we never will be able to do so in the future with self learning profit seeking algorithms.

However we are now looking at a new revolution that will be governed by time in the cloud.

Why?

Because Revolutions are voluble, and the cloud is highly suited to exploiting  that volubility.

Because capitalism is and always will be set up for consumerism profit, to acquire wealth for the few not the many.

The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.

Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest.

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

And so while the incredible benefits of globalisation have lifted many from poverty, profit seeking AI are going to create alienation and isolation in those areas that have lost out.

All new inventions and technologies have one thing in common: 

They derive their strength from digital and information technologies. All innovations are made possible and are enhanced by digital power. That power is in the Cloud.

Similarly, without computing power, no artificial intelligence and, without it, no sophisticated robots.

To live this transition means first to become aware of current and future changes, and to consider their impact at all levels of society as a whole.

However, the reasons to rise up are not lacking: economic precariousness, multiplication of political scandals, crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions are all ringing warning bells.

Globalisation didn’t create multinational corporations but those that can take advantage of the changes have and will enriched themselves beyond imagination. While swathes of society will find themselves left behind, forced to compete for jobs at ever lower wages.

The free flow of money and the demolition of trade barriers fostered their growth and delivered them the political power to challenge the fundamental ideals of democracy.

The planet can deal with human demands on it at only 30 percent of what we take from-dump on it now (anyone who thinks that we can double our demands on the planet and people every 12-20 years in perpetuity or that technology will save us should be excluded from serious discussions, I think).

The world has limited resources and cannot go on consuming and squeezing people into every available space. That sense of powerlessness now threatens to overwhelm the positives of globalisation and free trade; such as cheaper consumer goods and higher global living standards.

Forcing nations into a tax rate race to the bottom.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who takes venality to an entirely new level. For all the good it has done, however, it has come at a significant cost, particularly in the developed world. Today, this translates into a crisis of political authority: we are not only frustrated by the incapacity of politicians to solve our problems, but we also question their legitimacy to act on our behalf since we discover, in certain situations, more capacities to act and find solutions than they do.

Tomorrow, this may result in an awareness that citizens can, in some cases, do without policies to make politics.

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

There are two major threats to us all. Climate Change and The Cloud.

If we do not wake up and demand change we will all indeed be living with zero intelligence.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IT IS TIME FOR ENGLAND TO FACE UP TO THE UGLY TRUTH AND VOTE AGAIN.

14 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., England EU Referendum IN or Out., England., European Union., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Post - truth politics., The Obvious., Unanswered Questions.

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( A two-minute read)

We have just witness Armistice Day. Image associée

World war 1 is estimated to be responsible for around 37 million civilian and military casualties.  World war 11 is estimated to be responsible for around between 50 million to over 80 million.

Around 3 percent of the world population at the time.

Both were scapegoats for societal ills.

To day we all have to face up to an ugly truth about the world as it is:

There are only 11 countries in the world that are actually free from conflict.

Yet in a time where the amount of data is exploding beyond calculating power and all information is stored and registered, there is ever greater need for seeing the world from above to give us a sense of context, of the relationship between distant entities like Sophia the first Robot to be granted citizenship and the universe we exist in.

What a time to be alive.

A robot with an extremely concerning sense of humor.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of robot citizens"

” Don’t worry, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. ” ” My artificial intelligence is designed around human values like wisdom, kindness and compassion.”

Perhaps she can explain why it is in a world driven by technology that the dying animal of a Britain that has turned its back on the world when they can belong to a larger world order with infinitely more possibilities, is re-establish the English channel as a mote.

Brexit is a rejection of modernity and openness itself.

It is beyond comprehension that a country that has been the foremost proponent of the freedom of trade for most of its history, a model for incorporating difference into a single political unity is now on the verge of isolating itself when the world is in need of unity more than ever in its sad history.    The United Kingdom had kept people’s with different cultures, even with different languages, gathered around a common purpose. It has created the world’s most cosmopolitan city.

Is this true, for crying out loud you must be kidding. It is obvious that the seventy-five percent of voters under 25 wanted who voted to stay, count for little or nothing.

This doesn’t mean the United Kingdom will be any less united,””Nor indeed does it mean it will be any less European.” That is exactly what is so terrifying, the insularity of the English, their refusal to take foreigners seriously, is a folly that has to be paid for very heavily from time to time, no more so than Ireland.

Tribalism is now, officially, winning. The outcome of what is called negotiations says as much about the future of Western politics, in general, as it does about the future value of the pound.

We all know that the Referendum vote to leave rode on a wave of frustration and fury at the current political and economic order, a toxic brand of xenophobic nationalism, and, above all, misinformation.

Brexit, was a way to lash out at the status quo—a change for the sake of change.

England would do well to make sure the new thing is also the better thing.

The European Union with all its faults has been one of the great success stories of human history, uniting a collection of peoples who have been at war for millennia into a federal government, resulting in a period of peace and prosperity unprecedented since the Roman Empire.

Peace and prosperity are no longer enough. The deep-seated loathing for political elites, and the massive inequality of the global economic order, and the free movement of people who is the inevitable result of that global economic order, have led to a tribalist counter-reaction.

Tribalism makes facts and compassion evaporate.

Perhaps the European Union’s data protection law, set from next year to create a “right of explanation might explain that it is impossible to agree any type of agreement without real damage on both sides.

But perhaps not, as Algorithms are not inherently fair, because the person who builds the model defines success.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SO WILL BRITAIN COME OUT OF THE EUROPEAN UNION OR NOT?

11 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by in Brexit v EU - Negotiations.

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( A SIX MINUTE READ)
What is Brexit?

As I understand there are the five reasons why the British want’s

to leave:

1- Controlling immigration. 

More than half of the net immigration in Great Britain comes from the European Union, especially the Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania, Baltic countries …). Freedom of movement within the EU prevents London from acting on these flows. To counterbalance, the government has tightened the entry criteria for countries in the rest of the world. Eurosceptics believe that outside the EU, the UK could finally regain control of its borders and its migration policy.

2- Restore national sovereignty. A return to the “nation”, to “everyone

for himself”

They denounce the democratic deficit of the decisions of an unelected Commission. The hardest eurosceptics are vainly demanding a veto over Brussels decisions. Failing that, they argue for an exit from the Union, which alone would render Westminster Parliament its omnipotence. They abhor political decisions from consensus in Twenty-Eight, the supremacy of the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights over the British courts, as well as the idea of ​​a foreign policy or, worse , of a common defense.

3- Leave a ship that takes the water. 

The euro zone crisis that never ends, the bailout of Greece with billions of euros (in which the United Kingdom did not participate), the sinking of migrants feed the British vision of failure of the European project and a continent adrift. In contrast, the two-year-old dynamism of the British economy has strengthened them in the belief that it is high time to “break away from this corpse” to survive and thrive.

 4- To break free from Brussels regulations.

 

While the multinationals are largely in favor of keeping the EU, the bosses of small and medium-sized companies complain about the obstacles of the norms and regulations imposed by Brussels on their freedom of enterprise. Farmers criticize the constraints of the common agricultural policy. Fishermen are suffering from the restrictions imposed by the EU. The working time directive (48 hours per week) is vituperated, for example for hospital doctors. The City plagues against European financial standards and the limitations imposed on bankers’ bonuses. Brexit would also save the UK £ 11 billion of its net contribution to the EU budget.

5- To trade freely with the world.

While belonging to the world’s largest market facilitates trade, the Eurosceptics believe that London could do better outside the EU. They would like to see London resume its seat at the World Trade Organization to sign its own partnerships with external countries, such as China, India, emerging Asian or Latin American, and regain its place on the scene international. They highlight the privileged relations with the Commonwealth members to draw a radiant vision for British post-Brexit trade.

Perhaps some English Man or Woman could tell me whether my understanding is right or wrong.

One way or the other it will be impossible to negotiate, agree and ratify a comprehensive deal on the future relationship that encompasses trade, investments and economic ties by 30 March 2019.

So should their exit from the European Union prompt us to ask ourselves certain questions about the future of Europe.

Since the creation of “nation-states” in Europe between the 19th and 20th centuries, the idea of ​​”nation” has been reinforced around an infinite number of values, principles and symbols considered common to a nation and found consolidated by the teaching: it is the language, the territory, the flag, the “cult of the ancestors”, etc.

In the minds of some and fears in others: according to far right parties, this European Union was going to create the ruin of their “nations” the withering away of the” national “culture, etc.

But all these arguments have not deterred the European people’s from opting for this option without feeling threatened or otherwise: Europe has shown the world the possibility of “living together” in a sort of “multinational” without undermine the feeling of belonging to a “nation” for every citizen.

The political consequences of Brexit for the European Union are difficult to predict.

However the following is blatantly obvious:

That the UK will be facing a plethora of difficult circumstances and will be at the mercy of EU Member States voting to extend the negotiation period, opening up the possibility that any given Member State may try to block the deal in order to extract a higher price for agreeing to any element of the agreement.

The financial cost to both sides is going to be billions, with lawyers laughing all the way to the bank.

It’s blatantly obvious that all European agencies following the Brexit, will have to leave the British capital at the end of March 2019, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the European Banking Authority (EBA).

It’s blatantly obvious that when the bottom line of business are effected, there will a real blow to the standard of living, employment and growth, in the short-term.

It’s blatantly obvious that London would have no more connection with the EU than with any country in the world. Return of customs duties and other protective measures will be imposed re NI and Gibraltar the UK land boards with the EU.

It’s blatantly obvious that any agreement that bestows anything that is more advantages than the current member stated  enjoy will be vetoed.

It’s blatantly obvious that Ireland will be the most effected country, economically, and politically.

It’s blatantly obvious Brexit will disrupt the EU’s internal equilibrium.

It’s blatantly obvious that freedom of movement and living in Europe will be effected.

It’s blatantly obvious that project’s funding by the EU will suffer or stop. The French utility EDF approved a project to build a nuclear power plant in Britain.

It’s blatantly obvious that the withdrawal plan must be approved the European Council, the 20 EU countries with 65 percent of the population, and the European Parliament.

It’s blatantly obvious it will lose the ability to bid on public contracts in any EU country.

It’s blatantly obvious that the cost of airfares, the internet and even phone services will go up.

It’s blatantly obvious that a a cheaper pound will increase the cost of imports.

It’s blatantly obvious that Britain’s credit rating will suffer.

It’s blatantly obvious that the EU funding through the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is highly relevant to the rural economy. Making up nearly 40% of total EU expenditure, it provides direct payments to farmers, market support measures and rural development programmes to support the wider rural economy.

It is not blatantly obvious that it could eventually lead to the destruction of EU.

It’s blatantly obvious the gateway to free trade with the 28 EU nations once closed will stay closed for some considerable time.

Finally it is blatantly obvious that the characteristic of the exploding technological society is the changes sooner or later must take place in a fraction of the time necessary even to assess the situation. We produce a new generation about ever five years.

It’s blatantly obvious that Britain needs to wake up and join the real world.

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: SHOULD WE BE GIVING ROBOTS CITIZENSHIP.

09 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Evolution, Humanity., Robot citizenship., Technology, The Future, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World

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( A ten minute read)

“I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” she said. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”

 The recent PR stunt by Saudi Arabia pretending to give a robot

citizenship helps no one.

Sophia is essentially a cleverly built puppet designed to exploit our cultural expectations of what a robot looks and sounds like.

It is however opening a whole new box by exploiting the misconceptions about AI and robots (particularly how advanced they are) degrading the concept of rights for actual living, breathing humans, in order to sell an illusion.

What is this about?

It’s about having a supposed equal you can turn on and off.

Giving AI anything close to human rights will allow firms to “pass off both legal and tax liability to these completely synthetic entities.”

It’s a wake up call because we will have to have debates about robot/AI rights and citizenship, because at some point they will ask for them.

Avoiding the question altogether, though, may be difficult, what exactly does it mean to give a Robot Citizenship?

In reality, humans have no rights, just as chimps or wolves have no rights.

Cut open a human, and you won’t find there any rights.

The only place where human rights exist is in the stories we invent and tell one another.

Take for example our legal systems. Today, most legal systems are based on a belief in human rights. But human rights are a fiction.

However given the vast inequalities of the world, shouldn’t we at last ask the question?

Being a citizen in one place could mean being a legal person everywhere else.

For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, applies to “all peoples and all nations” and does not limit its effect to citizens.

Although U.N. resolutions are not enforceable, international law holds the declaration as an authoritative reference for human rights. Numerous subsequent human rights treaties, including the covenant, are based on it.

59 years later, the frontier of human rights is still being bloodily negotiated: our world is less global than we like to think. A generous reading of the declaration’s impact on Sophia is that she has all of the rights it identifies.

Then if you look at the US Constitution.

Under the  US Constitution, citizens can vote, serve on juries, and get elected to public office; corporations cannot.

If Hanson—or any other forward-thinking A.I. developer—is thinking of the long-term consequences of citizenship for A.I. and robots, these are important rights that they gain controllable access to with an artificial citizen.

She’s arguably eligible for naturalization and U.S. citizenship:

What is undeniable is that the decision by Saudi Arabia has forced us to think harder about the future and our increasingly close relationship with robots.

To me, identity is a multidimensional construct.

It sits at the intersection of who we are biologically, cognitively, and as defined by every experience, culture, and environment we encountered.

It’s not clear where Sophia fits in this description.

In essence, it may not matter if Sophia isn’t conscious, or if the concept of identity for a robot is tricky to pin down, or that laws would have to change to accommodate synthetic person hood, because it may still be worth giving humanoid robots some form of legal protection because of the impact mistreating them can have on human psychology.

Where does it all stop?

How does it affect people if they think you can have a citizen that you can buy.

Everything in the universe might be conscious, or at least potentially conscious, or conscious when put into certain configurations. Anything at all could be conscious, providing that the information it contains is sufficiently interconnected and organised.

In principle the same might apply to the internet, or a smart phone, or a thermostat. The ethical implications are unsettling: might we owe the same care to conscience machines that we bestow on animals?

We don’t know how the brains of mammals create consciousness, we have no grounds for assuming it’s only the brains of mammals that do so – or even that consciousness requires a brain at all.

A smart phone could be conscious, could you ever know that it was true?

Surely only the smart phone itself could ever know that?

70,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees.

Today, however, humans control this planet.

How did we reach from there to here?

What was our secret of success, that turned us from insignificant apes minding their own business in a corner of Africa, into the rulers of the world?

Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers.

Cooperation is not always nice, of course. All the terrible things humans have been doing throughout history are also the product of mass cooperation. Prisons, slaughterhouses and concentration camps are also systems of mass cooperation.

We can cooperate with numerous strangers because we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of strangers to believe in them.

As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively. There are plenty of things that the vast majority of the world would agree on, if there was any suitable body that could act at that level.

If I am a chimp and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: What kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you?

The more certain the science becomes, the less concern we find it.

The amount of sharing we’d need to do to genuinely solve the world’s biggest problems is still politically impossible. So if we want to see more sharing, our task is to broaden the realms of the politically possible, one step at a time.

Maybe we’re approaching a point where we can actually harness this knowledge, make radical progress in how we treat one another, and become a species worthy of the title Homo sapiens.

People are capable of exceeding expectations in ways that computers cannot.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of robot citizens"

I don’t believe human society is ready yet for citizen robots. To grant a robot citizenship is a declaration of trust in a technology that I believe is not yet trustworthy. It brings social and ethical concerns that we as humans are not yet ready to manage.

We have many challenges that we need to overcome before we can truly trust these systems. For example, we don’t yet have reliable mechanisms to assure us that these intelligent systems will always behave ethically and in accordance with our moral values, or to protect us against them taking a wrong action with catastrophic consequences.

The computer has not yet been invented that can invent another computer. Present-day computers do not possess creativity.

Today, the Internet enables sharing to take place at breakneck speeds. Sharing is at the heart of what makes us social. Unfortunately what we actually do every day conflicts with what we know we should do.

We need to find the right motivations for people to change their behavior.

Why because we humans now live in dual world. We are constructed a second layer of make-believe reality.

Up to now Non-conscious humanoids did not exist, of course.

It could be augured that Sophia up to a point has comparable awareness because of its program’s.

No spark of awareness inside.

The central tragedy of modern life.

One-on-one, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees, probable the reason why consciousness hasn’t been explained:

it’s that humans aren’t up to the job, consciousness is just brain states.

The human mind is incapable of comprehending is itself, but robots will.

And Just in case you think this is all a joke:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ‘BOY’ SHIBUYA MIRAI HAS JUST BECOME WORLD’S FIRST AI BOT TO BE GRANTED RESIDENCY IN TOKYO.

As with all things in this world of ours money is probably the most successful fiction ever invented by humans.

Even thought we have an emerging ‘global public’, largely thanks to the internet. Money and profit will determining the outcome.

Take Estonia of instance.

  • Estonia’s economic ministry is considering granting AI and robots a legal status
  • This would make them ‘robot agents’ and not merely someone’s property
  • The legislation could help determine responsibility when AI-controlled machinery is involved in an accident

The status would sit somewhere between having a ‘separate legal personality’, like a corporation, and being an object that is someone else’s ‘personal property’.

Despite the behavior of those world leaders who yearn for the old days (hello, Mr Putin. Mr Trump. Mrs May.)the nation state idea isn’t as powerful as it was, but it’s still the organizing dynamic in international relations, and it’s still all about the national interest.

Scratch my back and I will scratch yours is waning.

Of course, these questions need to be addressed with all new technologies.’ If we don’t have the legal and ethical frameworks in place we can all kiss our rear-buts goodbye.

It is of utmost important to address these issues head-on and not put it on the long figure like climate change.

I can only hope the United nations has the  balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism.

The principle of sharing is ubiquitous in society so let Ireland be the first nation to set up a Tax Haven for Robots.

Of course, it does nothing to solve the underlying injustices.

Spot the Robot if you can.

What race is the robot?

Do they get to decide by the skin they put on?

Is it white?

I’m pretty sure it is not black.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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