Monthly Archives: August 2022

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS IT NOW TIME FOR THE WORLD TO SHOW COMPASSION TO THE TALIBAN?

16 Tuesday Aug 2022

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( Seven minute read)

Afghanistan is a beautiful country with a long history and rich culture, but for decades it has been torn apart by war.

Since returning to power in Afghanistan the Taliban government has reintroduced a draconian interpretation of Islamic law such as public executions of convicted murderers and adulterers, as well as amputations for those found guilty of theft.

Men were required to grow beards and women had to wear the all-covering burka, girls are banned from  secondary education. (The only gender-based ban on studying in the world.)

In the year since they returned to power no country has recognised the Taliban government.  Meaning that desperately needed foreign-held funds are unlikely to be released any time soon.

Who are the Taliban?

In 1973, a coup deposed Afghanistan’s King Mohammad Zahir Shah. After the coup, the monarchy was abolished and the Republic of Afghanistan was formed, establishing close ties with the then-Soviet Union.

Six years later, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to support the pro-Soviet government, which was facing attacks from armed groups. The decade long war forced millions of Afghans to flee and attracted foreign fighters, including Osama bin Laden, who joined the battle against the Soviets.

In 1989, the Soviets withdrew after agreeing to a peace deal.

The Taliban, or “students” in the Pashto language, emerged in the early 1990s in northern Pakistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan.

By 1998, the Taliban were in control of almost 90% of Afghanistan.

In the wake of the 11 September 2001 World Trade Centre attacks in New York the attention of the world was drawn to the Taliban in Afghanistan.  The Taliban were accused of providing a sanctuary for the prime suspects, Osama Bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement

In October 2001, the U.S. and its allies invaded Afghanistan after the Taliban refused to hand over the Al Qaeda leader and author of 9/11. By December, the Taliban had surrendered control of the country, but already in 2006, Taliban attacks were intensifying in the form of raids, ambushes, rocket attacks, kidnappings and assassinations.

Osama bin Laden, the founder and first leader of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011.

In February 2020, then-President Donald Trump signed a peace deal with the Taliban that included the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Afghanistan by May 2021.

The agreement was upheld by President Joe Biden, who extended the deadline to Aug. 31, two decades to the day since the felling of the World Trade Centre.

US President Joe Biden announced in April 2021 that all American forces would leave the country by 11 September.

By 15 August, the Taliban were at the gates of Kabul and we all know what happened then.

Departing American forces along with the Brits abandoned millions of dollars worth of weapons, vehicles and other military equipment, which was immediately seized by the Taliban after they returned to power.

Now years later, militant Islamic extremism has hardly recede, with his replacement, Ayman al-Zawahiri, killed on July 31, 2022, in a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan.

The withdrawal was criticized for being rushed, disorganized and chaotic with millions are now struggling to survive.

More than 40% of the population is living on less than one meal a day and 97% are expected to be living under the poverty line by the end of the year.

Afghan Taliban fighters and villagers attend a gathering as they celebrate the peace deal signed between US and Taliban in Laghman Province, Alingar district on March 2, 2020.

The war in Afghanistan was America’s longest conflict, lasting almost two decades. In that time, 2,248 U.S. soldiers lost their lives and 47,245 Afghan civilians were killed.

The death toll for members of the Afghan National Army and police is 66,000, while the number of Taliban fighters and other insurgents killed during the war is 51,191.

The U.S. government spent more than $2 trillion funding the war.

For the most of the last 20 years, the US have supported the government in Afghanistan that was put in place following the war. As global leaders sought to economically isolate the Taliban, their policy approaches have crippled the economy, destroyed the banking sector and plunged the country into a humanitarian catastrophe that has left more than 24 million without enough food to eat each day.

In one short year, the economy is now on the brink of collapse, millions are unemployed and close to starvation with anyone opposed to the Taliban rule risking being tortured.

Is there a difference between al-Qaeda ISIS  and the Taliban?

Al-Qaeda grew out of battlefield bonds forged in the Afghan insurgency against the Soviet Union its primarily targets being the United States and Europe as their far enemy. Its propaganda tries to convince Muslims over time to follow Al-Qaeda’s vision of “global jihad.”

ISIS prioritizes the creation of an Islamic state in the Muslim world but its military losses has undermine its appeal and ultimately discredit jihadist groups in general. They have  metastasized into Boko Haram and Al-Shabaab. And so continues to be very much a threat that the world have to focus on.

However one does not have to be a military, political or a Taliban to know that the magnets for jihadi recruitment is the continuing killing, whether its by legalizer violence in the form of war or not.

If the world now stands by an allows the children of a nation die by starvation as a form of revenge it will be committing the very things it has fought against since world war two.

We can rest assured that those who survive will be looking for revenge.

You only have to look at the number of young people fleeing high levels of violence, crime, natural disasters, food insecurity, and poverty to realize this.

It is naïve to demand that Taliban give up terrorism — the very method that has given them some significance for more than a quarter of a century. Terror is the very raison d’etre of this outfit.

Why should the group listen to Western powers when they have neither a coherent policy nor the hard power needed to back any of their policies other than the gun.

In the final analysis, however, a regime that treats its own people with utter contempt is unlikely to offer foreigners, especially the “infidel,” a better deal.

But the choice is not limited to another full scale invasion or abject surrender or to recognize the gun-toting “religious students” as the legitimate government of that long-suffering land.

The conditions set by the Defeated are about giving up terrorism, respecting human rights, allowing Afghans who wish to leave the country to do so, and stop oppressing women.

Isn’t that all a bit premature?  As the Taliban actually do not control Afghanistan in any meaningful way.

The key concern right now is the disarray in the so-called democratic camp, thanks to  the war in the Ukraine

Right now, the Talban need the outside world more than the outside world needs them.

Confront the reality of the situation” in Afghanistan.

In other words, while admitting that they are there, we have two options.

The Taliban have won, militarily, however there wasn’t really a healthy democracy bringing widespread freedom, there was a corrupt client government siphoning off cash in return for doing the occupying powers’ bidding, and this came at the cost of brutal war which caught up entirely innocent Afghans.

Without Aid and the realise foreign-held funds Afghanistan even with food aid cannot pay hospital workers or the people who maintain urban water supply or deliver the food aid.

One way or the other we have a very short window of opportunity now to make it happen through our decisions we make in terms of international aid and the relations we form with the current Taliban.

If we ignore Afghanistan, denying the aid we will drive a fissure between the moderate wing of the Taliban, the Kandahari Taliban and the hardliners, the Haqannis, and there is every like hood  we will have created a civil war upon Afghanistan, inflicting  upon Afghanistan a catastrophe that follows this disaster.

We must swallow our pride and support the moderate wing of the Taliban, who are not committed to international terrorism and want a conservative country which will not be in line with Western values but will be better than the extremism of the Taliban.

At the same time one must ask where are the liberal Afghanistan opposition voices, over 100,000-plus Afghans left.

The media, which focused instead on claims of “betrayal” by the United States in order to avoid discussing the depth of the defeat and deep failures of the Afghan occupation, avoiding the question how long before the west recognises  a humanitarian crisis or even a civil war in Afghanistan.

I just don’t think there is a political will in the West to avoid a disaster of biblical proportions that will spill over and destabilize the rest of this part of the world.

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

Contact:  bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: WITH CLIMATE CHANGE WE HAVE NOT SEEN ANYTHING YET! WHAT’S COMING WILL DEWARF OUR WOREST NIGHTMARES AND FEARS.

13 Saturday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change.

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( Seven minute read) 

Playing down the potential worst effects of global heating and climate breakdown is nothing less than climate appeasement.

It does nothing to help spur the urgent action that is required, and by underplaying the climate threat, works – intentionally or not – to encourage a grudging and cautionary approach to emissions cuts that we simply can no longer afford.

If we can encourage the green shoots and return to vigorous growth or leaders assume everything will be honky dory.   This is utter bollox.  As it is nature that will decide the outcome. It’s up to the planet to handle what we have created.

International negotiations on climate change have been going on for over 20 years. The vast majority of governments now agree that urgent steps are needed to reduce our impact on global warming.

So far, they have failed to sign up to a universal plan of action.

It is now more than obvious that we humans are only capable of acting on a limited scale as individual countries and it is now already too late to prevent terrible damage and the resulting consequence’s.

So we can only use our ingenuity to manage the consequence’s. 

                                   ——————————- 

Climate is sometimes mistaken for weather.  It is not weather it is everything that makes weather.

So far, during this decade, we have seen no sign whatsoever that real climate action is coming and that has to change.  Instead while the earth fries we are more interested in growth, the cost of living, and we need now more than ever to be told the whole story – warts and all because the human influence which is happening now is changing at a much faster rate then we think. 

 But is that the truth too bleak for general consumption?

If drastic, life-changing, action is being mooted, people need to know – have a right to know.

Why?

Because people simply don’t place their daily behaviours in an environmental context. 

Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth’s remaining wilderness in the last 25 years.

Whether we like it or not here is what to come.

Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over.

We are approaching a critical tipping point that could spin global warming completely out of control with no possibility of reversing developments.

The pace and degree of climate change are about more than just anthropogenic emissions. It is now about tipping points and feedback loops.

Suddenly, climate change has ceases to be something vaguely inconvenient that we can leave future generations to deal with. Instead, it becomes far more of an immediate threat capable of tearing our world apart.

Wildfires are devastating hundred  of thousand of acres, even happing where you might least expect them – the boreal forests that encircle the globe in the Arctic North, for example, have in recent years “experienced wildfires at a rate and scale not seen in at least 10,000 years.” 

Sudden changes in the behaviour of ice sheets, carbon sources and sinks, and ocean currents, are accelerate warming and its consequences go way beyond the expected.

Extreme heat and heatwaves have happened since the beginning of time, but across the board.  Climate change is making heatwaves more common, severe, and long-lasting. As seas get warmer, they add more water vapor and heat energy into the atmosphere. This extra heat and water, just happens to be the perfect fuel for hurricanes and in the right conditions, can make dangerous storms even more powerful.

In 2007, for example, water scarcity, crop failures and livestock deaths stemming in part from climate-related drought drove an estimated 1.5 million people to the cities from rural areas in Syria, helping spark the horrifying civil war that displaced millions more.

It is beginning to look as though a climate-changed jet stream is driving conditions that lead to episodes of extreme weather being ‘locked in’, so that both their intensity and duration are elevated. 

Nearly 20,000 species of plants and animals are at a high risk of extinction and if trends continue, Earth could see another mass extinction event within a few centuries.

Viruses love hot dry conditions to thrive and climate change will ideal conditions for waterborne pathogens like bacteria, viruses, and protozoa, which flourish in warmer waters.

Oceans are warming and becoming more acidic, and sea level is rising.

Changes in the patterns and amount of rainfall, as well as changes in the timing and amount of stream flow, can affect water supplies and water quality and the production of hydroelectricity.

The homes of 200 million people will be below sea level in 70 years.

At least 155 million people were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather.

What’s clear is that the climate we are accustomed to is no longer a reliable guide for what to expect in the future.

Change Is Not Merely An Environmental Problem.

Anyone still convinced that climate change is purely an environmental problem should open there eyes.  

Migration on an unprecedented scale in areas of already high tension; drought and crop-failure, leading to intensified competition for food, water and energy in regions where resources are already stretched to the limit.  (And economic disruption on the scale predicted in the 2006 Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, and not seen since the end of the Second World War.)

 “This will not be the first time people have fought over land, water and resources, but this time it will be on a scale that dwarfs the conflicts of the past”, an unstable climate will create the very kind of tensions and conflicts for this to happen.

For too long, we have been waging a senseless and suicidal war on nature. 

    Wildfire

Notwithstanding the unlikelihood of achieving net zero global emissions in a little more than three decades “climate change is a threat that can bring us together if we are wise enough to stop it from driving us apart”.,

If we don’t take collective action and protect our Mother Earth, the forthcoming generation might not be able to see it. The earth is precious and we need to save it from destruction.

Unfortunately the solutions have become perceived as a problem by the moneyman!

They tend to try to make us believe that the solutions will bring down the economy! 

Let me tell them, it is coming for your wine, your coffee beans, and your ill founded gains … as well as for your health and safety. The cost of inaction on climate change is predicted to reach a staggering $44 trillion. There will be no economy by 2060.The dry, salt-crusted Lake Poopo. Poorly irrigated land, logging or evaporation can cause desertification. The amount ...

WHAT CAN BE DONE?

Science speaks for itself as to whether it is convincing or not, but what climate change will mean is not determined by the science but our relationship with the larger reality of climate change.

The real problem is that our relationship is presently putting humanity at the centre rather then a common consensus on what reality is and how it all came about. 

The Egyptian in the days of Pharaohs tied our existence to the stars. the Hebrews had god already on the scene while the Greeks philosophers invented the founding idea of science and by the middle ages the nature of the Universe was no longer a topic of debate.    

This relationship is now unfortunately driven by inequality and technology, resulting in a complete upheaval of reality on a mental and social transformations, as one picture is replaced by another. 

Are our societies primed to re-envision our planet?   Not yet!

There is one thing that is certain all organisms must bend to the forces of nature.

We will unable replant a new ecosystem returning to a primeval slug. 

So the overriding question is to figure out how we humans might fit into the story. 

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

 

Contact;  bobdillon33@gmail.com 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: FINDING IT HARD TO SLEEP IN THIS HEAT,WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SLEEP?

11 Thursday Aug 2022

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Evolution endowed us, like other creatures, with sleep that is malleable in its timing and readily interruptible, so it can be subordinated to higher priorities.

Around 350 B.C., Aristotle wrote an essay, “On Sleep and Sleeplessness,” wondering just what we were doing and why. For the next 2,300 years no one had a good answer.

Most of what we know about sleep has only been discovered in the last 25 years.

Maybe, we’ve been asking the wrong question about sleep, ever since Aristotle.

The real wonder isn’t why we sleep. It’s why, with such an incredible alternative available, do we bother to stay awake?

Sleep is ancient, its original and universal function, is not about organizing memories or promoting learning but more about the preservation of life itself.

The problem is that in the modern world, our ancient, innate wake-up call is constantly triggered by non–life-threatening situations.

Every animal, without exception, exhibits at least a primitive form of sleep.

Giraffes sleep less than five. Horses typically sleep part of the night standing up and part lying down. Dolphins sleep one hemisphere at a time—half the brain sleeps while the other half is awake, allowing them to swim continuously. Great frigate birds can nap while gliding, and other birds may do the same. Nurse sharks rest in a pile on the ocean floor. Cockroaches lower their antennae while napping, and they’re also sensitive to caffeine.

While we humans nod off into a surreal descent of sleep, into an alternative world, our heart rate slows and our core temperature drops. Any remaining awareness of the external environment disappears.

Our sleep-wake pattern is a central feature of human biology—an adaptation to life on a spinning planet.

The average human today sleeps less than seven hours a night, about two hours less than a century ago.

The floodlit chaos of our waking life of mobile screens are now overworking our neurons, (some 86 billion of them, the cells that form the World Wide Web of the brain, communicating with each other via electrical and chemical signals) and has made sleep deprivation a lifestyle, overloading the sleeping brain to be able to consolidate the information that’s been collected during our awaking hours.  

What makes us sleepy?

Everyone needs sleep, but its biological purpose remains a mystery.

Sleep affects almost every type of tissue and system in the body – from the brain, heart, and lungs to metabolism, immune function, mood, and disease resistance. 

Many mysteries remain about the association between sleep and  health problems.  Does the lack of sleep lead to certain disorders, or do certain diseases cause a lack of sleep?  These, and many other questions about sleep, represent the frontier of sleep research, like what effect do different foods have on sleep. 

The strength of one’s nightly spindles, some experts have suggested, might even be a predictor of general intelligence.

Sleep literally makes connections you might never have consciously formed, an idea we’ve all intuitively realized that it may be more essential to us than food. 

We have yet to find a truly sleepless creature however there’s is only one species that has been called ‘biologically immortal.  Jellyfish do not breath and there are plenty of other unusually long-lived species that seem to defy the passing of time.

We all love life and we wish to live as long as possible, but in spite of this we sacrifice about 1/4 of more of our lives to sleeping.  

James Webb can see the origins of the universe – something our minds can hardly begin to grasp as we sleep into the future.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. EVERY RESEARCH HAS ITS LIMATIONS AND SO IT WILL BE WHEN IT COMES TO HUMANITY PENDING DEMISE.

09 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Earth, Evolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Purchasing Power., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Five minute read) 

All animals must learn to do some things.

This is true even of those animals that function almost entirely by instinct. But exactly what that means – whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex – when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to satisfy those goals before acting remains a matter of scientific dispute.

Apes and Monkeys  Matriarchal Elephants, Parrots, Octopuses, Pigs, Dolphins, Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Dogs, Ravens, Pigeons, Raccoons, Foxes, Crows,  Ants,  Whales, are all able to reason to a certain extent, to name a few.

In the true sense of learning, is by making mistakes and remembering to avoid them in the future.

We are also animals, so how do we  determine exactly what sets humans apart from other animals.

By learning from our mistakes had sharing our finds through language that we all understand and then taking correction action after reasoning that not to do so is more than dangerous. 

( Reasoning can best be defined as the basic action of thinking in a sensible and rational way about something. Sounds easy, right? Most of the time, reasoning happens automatically, but there are many types of  reasoning,  deductive, inductive, abductive, cause and effect, analogical, critical thinking, and de- compositional.

Reasoning is the ability to assess things rationally by applying logic based on new or existing information when making a decision or solving a problem and all reasoning begins with a set of reductionist assumptions that may not be challenged.

According to the Google Dictionary:

The meaning of reasoning is “thinking about something in a logical, sensible way”.
The meaning of logic is “reasoning done according to strict principles of validity”
The meaning of sensible is “… in accordance with wisdom or prudence”
Validity means to be “factually sound.”)

                                              —————————-

However all research has its limitations so it’s important to give an explanation of how your research limitations can affect the conclusions and thoughts drawn from your research.

The first thing needed is to take the new or given information and combine it with existing information, this allows for examination of all information before starting to make a decision.

Humans possess the power of reasoning but where is it when it comes to facing climate change?

“Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact.”

Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:

  • The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.
  • Five key greenhouse gases are CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
  • While the Sun has played a role in past climate changes, the evidence shows the current warming cannot be explained by the Sun.

The dry, salt-crusted Lake Poopo. Poorly irrigated land, logging or evaporation can cause desertification. The amount ...

Here a few facts to put in your pipe to reason on.

People around the world are witnessing first-hand how climate change can wreak havoc on the planet.

200 million people in the world, more than three times the UK population, will live below the tideline by the end of this century.

Wildfires, from Australia to California and Greece, are raging for longer and spreading farther than ever before. Blistering temperatures are proving fatal.

A chilling number of Earth’s other denizens, including 40 percent of all amphibians known to science (about 3,200 species) is under threat due to human impact,

Plastic production and use is forecast to double over the next 20 years, and quadruple by the early 2050s,

At least 155 million people, 2.3 times as many as live in the UK, were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather, as well as conflict and economic shocks.

Climate change is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.

Nowhere on the planet is spared the impact of climate change.

Climate change both reduces the amount of food that’s available and makes it less nutritious.

It’s no good just having cold winters to replenish ice levels.

“The science is unequivocal.”

Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over it therefore stands beyond all reasoning, “If we don’t do anything, that would be cataclysmic.”

Unfortunately we are too occupied with ourselves, killing each other, making unsustainable profits looking at our selves on smartphones, and all the rest of the shit promoted by growth at all costs widening the inequalities in the world,  to acknowledge that the earth we live on is in crises and if no globally action is undertaken now, (not in thirty years or any time tomorrow.) there will be no growth put a race to the bottom.   

So the consequences of either ignorant of or in denial about physical alterations that climate change is going to bring cannot be left to people alone. 

Clarity about the danger is in some sense is our only possible atonement for leaving  not just a nuclear poison world behind but a world destroyed by climate change is another kettle of fish.

Why are we unable to see this? 

Many of humanity’s most dangerous problems arise from our antiquate way of looking at the Universe, which is at odds with the principals of science that we blithely use in countless technologies. 

Our cultures over the centuries downgraded the importance of having a home. To day ” the Universe” in the popular mind has become little more than a shapeless space or a fantasy setting for science fiction.

No atonement will suffice the generation to come. 

Were the generation that needs to make the big jump to sustainability. 

Get your finger out of where the sun does not shine and use your buying power to demand change.

Perhaps you will have noticed that taking the knee has disappeared from football ( Racism is cured)  if so let sport take up the mantle of promoting sustainability by holding aloft (for a minute) a piece of the earth they are playing on. 

Not until we stop focusing on or differences, classifying others into them and us will we realize the pearl we all live on. 

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

 

Contact:

bobdillon33@bobdillon33

THE BEADY ASKS : WHERE IS THE WORLD GOING ?

07 Sunday Aug 2022

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To answer that, we have to think about how we got here.

With the power of the gun, greed, colonization, religion, exploitation, wars, to name just a few.

There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.  More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world.

There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today.

Current global military spending is more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Between 54 and 80 million people have been killed in genocides in the the last century. Between 170 and 360 million people have been killed, in total, by governments (democide) in the 20th century, apart from war.

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labour.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

 Based on current trends, an estimated 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species – including one in eight of the world’s bird species – face extinction.  Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.

There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

And all of this is just scratching the top of the iceberg.  

At the present time we have the added darkness of  – climate change – pandemics – social media tearing what left of dotmocracy asunder, out of date world organisations, politicians now middle men to the internet, and governments trying to buy there way to economic success.

How people who are already struggling will deal with it is unclear never mind  where is it leading us?

On top of this we have technology and political trends aligning against mega power like Russia- China – the USA.

 

10 Things Going On In The World Right Now That You Need To Know About

It is however clear that globalization is on its last legs and it replacement probably wont go well.

We all want to know the future, and unfortunately the future is coming like it or not.

Accordance with Moore’s Law, we’ll see an acceleration in the rate of change as we move closer to a world of true abundance or true disaster. There will be will 100 billion connected devices, each with a dozen or more sensors collecting data.

This will lead to a trillion-sensor economy driving a data revolution beyond our imagination .

With a trillion sensors gathering data everywhere (autonomous cars, satellite systems, drones, wearables, cameras), you’ll be able to know anything you want, anytime, anywhere, and query that data for answers and insights.

Biometric sensing (wearables) and AI will make each of us the CEOs of our own health.

The screen as we know it — on your phone, your computer and your TV — will disappear and be replaced by eyewear.

The result will be a massive disruption to the fundamental ways we operate as humans.

In a decade, it will be normal for you to give your AI access to listen to all of your conversations, read your emails and scan your biometric data because the upside and convenience will be so immense.

As well as processing lots of data on us, they must gradually grind down our distinctiveness, our individuality, our eccentricities so that we become a series of archetypes. Then, our emotions – our fears, insecurities, desires, cravings – can be more easily gauged, exploited and plundered by advertisers.

With it, our ability to empathise and compromise is eroded.

We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.

WITH DATA COLLECTION our rulers are better positioned than ever to manipulate our thinking and control what we do. They can dictate the political discourse more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than ever before.

If so, what are we to do about it?

It is hard to piece together all this information in a way that gives a comprehensive picture of what the end times will look like.

Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on.

We are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse.

Why?

Because we are unable to enact long term thinking against short-term thinking based on religion of profit at all costs.

As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilisation as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale.

We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.

Our attention is being mined by worthless platforms, as our world is falling apart the biggest wipe-out of wealth in history is coming.

Humanity is greater than the rules of a state, or Wall street.

There is now digital transfers of value and assets.

Earth can sometimes feel like the last place you’d want to be.

It’s important to realize that no combination of renewable energy sources can power the modern industrial world at current levels of consumption.

“Progress has nowhere to go, without a unliveable earth and it is going there in a hurry.”

What Are We Going to Do about It?

Evolution doesn’t run backward.

We face an unliveable future, yet we can’t go back. We are stuck with knowledge, and knowledge is dangerous in the hands of humans. There’s no solution to that problem, and all we can do is be more aware of our weaknesses.

Climate change will eventually force us to do,  “whatever is conducive to sustainable participation in Earth’s ecosystems

When we better understand the world and our place in it perhaps we come to an understanding that we have to live together to survive together .

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

https://bobdillon33blog.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE HAD TWELVE TO SAVE THE PLANET.

03 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change.

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(Four minute read) 

Now it seems, there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis, among other environmental challenges.

Right now, we are losing the fight against climate change AND THERE IS A GOOD CHANCE SOCIETY COULD COLLAPSE AS SOON AS 2050 IF SERIOUS MITIGATION ACTIONS ARENT TAKEN IN THE NEXT DECADE.

Right now we will have to alter our trajectory very quickly if we wish to have a good chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to less than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Right now there’s nothing like enough understanding of, or commitment to REDUCING CARBON EMMISSIONS.

Right now the risks the world runs if this limit is ignored is life will survive, but not life as we know it.

Right now we have barely started to think about how to apply sufficient pressure on our governments 

Right now emissions reductions by efficiency improvement — vital though that is, are and will be inadequate.

Right now, we are heading towards 3C of heating by 2100 not 1.5.

Right now current plans are nowhere near strong enough to keep temperatures below the so-called safe limit.

We need to shift the world on to a different investment and green growth path right now.

                         ———————————-

The natural tendencies are either to do nothing, while insisting there is no problem, or to agree there is a problem, while merely pretending to act.

It is not clear which form of obfuscation is worse.

Above all, climate change involves huge distributional issues — between rich countries and poor ones, between countries that caused the problem and those that did not, between countries that matter for the solution and those that do not and, not least, between people today, who make the decisions, and people tomorrow, who suffer the results.

Without question, 2020 is a hard deadline for that leadership to finally manifest itself.

But if there’s ongoing political turmoil around climate change then the government may not have the bandwidth to unpick the multiple global challenges that climate change presents.

The sense that the end of next year is the last chance saloon for climate change is becoming clearer all the time. Decisions taken on climate change in the next year or so will be critical, up to one million species could be lost in coming decades.

Political steps to enable the cuts in carbon to take place will have to happen before the end of next year.

The profound urgency for ambitious climate action is still patchy even though we are now witness to a collective convergence of public mobilisation, worsening climatic impacts and dire scientific warnings that compel decisive climate leadership.

If we don’t see that don’t hold your breath!

Consider what the future could be, picking up the mantle against climate change may not seem so bad after all.

 Its up to us to start using our buy power to force change. ( See previous post) 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. JUST WHAT IS PELOSI DOING AND WHY?

03 Wednesday Aug 2022

Posted by in Nancy Pelosi., Taiwan.

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( Four minute read) 

Nancy Pelosi, née Nancy Patricia D’Alesandro, (born March 26, 1940)Image shows Nancy Pelosi
Pelosi, a long-time critic of the Chinese government, heightened tensions between the U.S. and China, which considers the self-ruling island to be its territory and viewed the presence of a U.S. official of the speaker’s stature as provocatively enhancing the international standing of Taiwan’s government.

She has denounced its human rights record, met with pro-democracy dissidents, and also visited Tiananmen Square to commemorate victims of the 1989 massacre.

If you are a small island state with few allies, not recognised by the United Nations, and threatened with invasion by a much larger and more powerful neighbour, then getting a visit by the second most powerful politician in the United States should be something you welcome. Right?

Ms Pelosi is now 82 and expected to retire in the autumn.

Is she in Taiwan, with a clear intent to offer real support, or is it a political stunt? It’s all very unclear.

Taiwan, which considers itself a sovereign nation, has long been claimed by China. But Taiwan also counts the US as its biggest ally, and Washington has a law which requires it to help the island defend itself.

It’s like a giant game of pretend which is becoming harder to maintain.

China pretends that Taiwan is currently part of its territory, even though the island collects its own taxes, votes in its own government, issues its own passports and has its own military.

The US pretends it is not treating Taiwan as an independent country, even though it sells it high-tech weapons and, occasionally, a high-ranking politician visits on what looks very much like an official trip.

Due to Ms Pelosi visit it is apparent that it would take nothing for this flimsy show, designed to guarantee the status quo, to fall apart.

The idea of a war to reclaim it never felt any closer. Every day we move a step closer to that and a step further away from peace.

That would be disastrous. We can only hope that smart minds in the USA and China know it.

A disaster for the world and the required war on climate change.  

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: GOVERNMENTS MUST GO BEYOND GROWTH (GDP) AND FOCUS INSTEAD ON A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT.

02 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Purpose of life., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twelve minute read) 

This is an easy thing to say but to implement is another kettle of fish because it requires a paradigm shift in the way developed countries approach economic policy.

Changing the world seems like one of these huge, impossible things that no man can possibly achieve.

It requires a rethink how we define and measure economic success.

In order to find new ways to transform the world we live in goals will have to be built into the structures of the economy from the outset, rather than hoped for as a by-product, or added after the event.

Everything that goes around, comes around.

People always wish for change because it’s the constant thing in this world, and they always have this deep, inner desire to improve things even if there’s nothing to improve.

Every people I know wants change, but for what purpose exactly?

Why do we crave change?   And how exactly to change? 

How exactly can you change without making mistakes?

How to actually know you’re making a change if you don’t know your objective?

What if there’s nothing to be changed?

Where do we start?

Change comes in learning from the mistakes of our past.

Realising that it’s a mistake.

When things stay the same and your life is getting worse and worse, then it’s time for a change.

                                   ————————-

Broadly speaking an economy is an interrelated system  of human labour, exchange, and consumption. 

Economic policy should prioritise environmental sustainability, economic resilience, reducing inequality and improving wellbeing economic growth in OECD countries have generated ‘significant harms’ over recent decades – including rising inequality and catastrophic environmental degradation.

Instead of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), now is the time to  prioritise environmental sustainability, improving wellbeing, reducing inequality and strengthening economic resilience. 

A return to the status quo would be disastrous so governments that are spending unprecedented sums to rebuild their economies after the Covid pandemic, must look beyond growth alone to prioritise the needs of people and planet.

It argues that this will require a new role for the state, with governments becoming more entrepreneurial, seeking to shape markets and steer the process of economic change, not simply correcting market failures.

                                    ———————-

So where are we?

Various layers of inequality have being exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; the digital divide, environmental degradation. the energy sources we count on are limited, just like water.

In fact, most wars and political conflicts in the world start because of lack and/or need for energy resources. In America alone, the consumption of energy rises every year, and it doubles every 20 years. 

The climate crises is showing that computers and software will not be able to replicate human creativity.

This “new kind of social contract” is required to transform the relationship between the state, business, civil society and citizens.Industryweek 34572 Understanding 5g 5g 623431736

5G as on par with the printing press, electricity and the steam engine –

Self-driving cars, remote robotic surgery, autonomous weapons — all that and much more is set to be delivered via the 5G wireless network, which promises to transform our lives and add trillions of dollars to the global economy every year.

This leap forward in connectivity will be key to the spread of artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling massive amounts of data to be collected from remote and mobile sensors and analysed in real time.

Drive everything from home appliances that order groceries to autonomous vehicles to smart cities.

Given the power of 5G technology, it is no surprise that it has also become a proxy for the broader power struggles. 

However Technology alone will not change the core problems in the world. 

Why?

  • The Fourth Industrial Revolution can’t be a panacea for the problems caused by our obsession with unchecked economic growth. Over the past couple of decades, the world has become enamoured with the transformative power of technology.
  •  In spite of all the hype, digital technology could not prevent nor control the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Technology won’t solve the climate crisis, prevent the recurring wildfires.

                     ———————————————-

The last thing the world needs is another ‘revolution’ that ignores the external cost to society of our unchecked obsession with economic growth at all cost.

We all think time and money is so important, but are our health, peace and happiness not more important?

We’re in this together and it can only be solve together. 

We can protest, till we are blue in the face, demand change till the cows come home, hold world conferences till we run out of air.  There is however one weapon if we all of us were to use it collectively that would bring change – that is  Buying power.

Doing the right thing for the environment, pro-actively using it to effect change.

In this uphill battle, the good news is that solutions are out there.  

Business would  be held accountable for addressing local and
global societal needs.

Industry players that suffer would not helplessly standing by as their revenues and profits dwindled, they would act intensified competition.

But is this inevitable? Can companies learn to adapt and react to ensure their continued success and prosperity? The answer is yes.

Since buyer power is dynamic, just visualize this scenario.

What would happen if we all refused to pay our energy bills till the Government put in place non repayable grants to install solar panels or insulation. 

There is no right answer here but it would be impossible to either jail or fine everybody.

It is therefore important to understand what choices we have available to us to determine what type of buyer we will be, and therefore where our strengths lie.

That strength would be a campaign conducted on our mobile phones. 

Once a month campaign targeting profit for profit sake, demanding change.

Your choices would impact their bottom line.

Resilience – not technology – is the answer to our biggest

challenges.

It’s either an entirely environmentally-friendly existence. 

Or are we just going to except a burning world with wars and mass migration till there is nothing left to live for. 

 

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