Category Archives: Politics.

The Beady eye looks at what is needed to come out of the Paris Summit on Climate Change.

13 Monday Jul 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Environment, Humanity., Politics., Sustaniability, The Future, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Climate change is the ultimate global collective action problem, requiring cooperation from every government in the world.

It’s over twenty years since the first treaty, signed at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, when countries agreed to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases. 

Here is the reality:

We are the first generation to understand the consequences of a high carbon economy on the planet, on future prosperity and, in particular, on the most vulnerable around the world. Let us be the generation that stands up and takes the responsibility conveyed by that knowledge.” Christiana Figueres, executive secretary, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 2014.

So the question now is whether we will have the courage to act before it’s too late. And how we answer will have a profound impact on the world that we leave behind not just to you, but to your children and to your grandchildren.” US President Barack Obama, Georgetown Address, June 2013.

I was very struck by the fact that the impacts of climate change are undermining a whole range of human rights: rights to food, safe water and health and education. But it is also displacing people, which is very likely to cause not just human distress but potentially conflict. So for me it’s a very, very serious issue of human rights.” Mary Robinson, UN special envoy for climate change, 2013

Climate change will amplify existing social, political and resource stresses, shifting the tipping point at which conflict ignites, rather than directly causing it. Climate change is likely to increase the frequency, scale and duration of humanitarian crises. It is also likely to change patterns of migration, making border security an ongoing concern, especially in the developed world.” UK Ministry of Defence, Global strategic trends out to 2040.diesel global warming ny

We have just 5 months left until the Paris Summit. How likely is it that it will be meaningful and make a difference to climate.

What should be in it? 

A world Agreement; ( anything less is worthless.) 

The international agreement that has a clear legal basis that works for different national constitutions.  (All agreements are broken, so perhaps an agreement tied to World Trade/ and Arms deals might be enforceable.)

This agreement should be supported by a clear, shared accounting system and robust, transparent monitoring and reporting requirements.

It must be seen as fair for all. The agreement must allow for comparisons of national contributions, using appropriate indicators of national responsibilities and capabilities, to encourage ambition and ensure that climate action links with strategies for poverty alleviation and sustainable development.

The Agreement can not be seen as static. It should be for five-year cycle, with a ratchet mechanism over time built into the system and a clear, long-term goal.  Why? Because carbon targets will need to be revised in the light of emerging science. It should move towards a goal to phase out pollution from fossil fuels by 2050 and phase in clean energy technologies.

It will need financing to support actions on adaptation and mitigation.

The agreement should include commitments to scaled up public finance, to support adaptation and mitigation action, aligned with other public finance for development; and wider efforts should be made to secure private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.

Any new agreement covering forest protection, land use and agriculture should be properly financed, have clear rules for emissions accounting and involve local communities in decision-making. It should ensure better biodiversity, ecosystem protection and restoration, and include support for sustainable agriculture and increased climate resilience.

Here what at stake:

The uncompromising Math of Global Warming, Pollution will if we fail to act early will guarantee that we are leaving humanity with more dangerous climate change such as more frequent extreme weather, more droughts, heat waves, and floods.

Even in the face of planetary catastrophe, 195 governments in a room can be just incompetent. Amidst the thicket of complex policy talk, we need to define the red lines of the agreement and organise the press and politics around them.

Our top focus – a clear commitment to a world without carbon, powered by 100% clean energy.

That is what will put the fossil fuel industry on notice, and shift private investment massively into renewable energy. New power plants, buildings, city designs, and lifestyles are being formed as we speak. How these are built could lock us into decades of increasing climate pollution as many of these last for several decades at a minimum.

A prime example is in the electricity sector where the emissions of power plants that the International Energy Agency projects could be developed in the next two decades would be larger than the emissions of coal from the beginning of the industrial revolution and eat up a huge chunk of the amount of carbon that can be emitted by all sectors.

The current targets aren’t deep enough to address climate change and most countries only made commitments through 2020. So there is a need to deepen and extend the emissions reduction commitments.

The scale of this crisis demands action that goes beyond consistently “kicking the can down the road”. 

Once we have an agreement in hand then we can engage in serious ethical consideration over whether or not to act.

Will any of this happen?

Not a hope in a world that is driven by Capitalism.

The only way is as I have said in previous blogs is for Capitalism to contribute by placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading , on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000, and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions.

https://youtu.be/anfbjiShjP8

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The Beady Eye looks at Big Data.

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Big Data., Politics., Privatization, Technology, The Future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The information overload is real and causing problems.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Data gathering is not going away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Privacy here is a key issue to consider.

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

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

Credit card fraud detection system.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However enforcement may be difficult.

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

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

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

Data should be stored on the drones only temporarily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make no mistake about it:

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

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

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

I hope it die’s a miserable death.

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

20 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in Politics., Where's the Global Outrage.

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

Do I know anything about Racism.  NO.

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

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

Will there ever be parity?  NO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is little difference between racism and sexism.

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

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

Not until we arrived in Ghana.

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

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

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

None of these statistics give the whole picture.

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

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

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

Door of no return | Adam Jones

 

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

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

Why does racism still exist in today’s world?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Media;

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unequal powers and unequal ideologies are not alike.

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

13 Saturday Jun 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imagine an alternative where Capitalism and collectivism live together.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The suicide of capitalism.”

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

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

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

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

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

And so, what is to be done?

There is of course hope.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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This is where you Live.

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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

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

Where would one start.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HERE IS HOW I WOULD DESCRIBE IT;

It was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

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

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

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

It is orbited by one satellite, the Moon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It wobbles very slightly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Take a trip into the unknown.

https://youtu.be/YzMrNFd4oOk

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THE BEADY EYE: TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT CAPITALISM.

31 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Politics., The Future, Uncategorized

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An organization is only as strong as the humans within it.

The Current Capitalist global political economy which you can see all around you is on the point of no return.

Our world Organisations creak with overburden demands, lack of funds, and self -control, and taciturnity of action.

Capitalism  cannot expand as it did in the past as it has consolidated wealth into the hands of a tiny global elite. It is losing its hold on the imagination of large numbers of people who are not benefiting from this global system. The system is seizing up.

Yet the global capitalist system that I condemn has also produced incredible advances in life expectancy, raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and showered the world in technology innovation.

In all directions, the stage is set for a great planetary debate that will define the dawning Age of Technology – one that will inevitably be focused on how to implement the principle of sharing into world affairs.

If we truly believe in equality, we need to organise ourselves with a clear sense of equality.

The secrets of sustainability and well-being in society lies not in the Technology but in the imbalance in living standards and life opportunities between the global North and South – and between rich and poor within every country to varying degrees – is a crisis that lies at the heart of all world tensions.

Nothing will change unless our collective cognition’s change.1652331

Sustainability cannot be achieved by simply switching technologies. The future will happen anyway but just look at the tragic cost of human life, injury and exploitation we are witness to every day. Also, the cost to the planet from pollution and water use.

How can we keep ourselves and our organizations in tune with the exponentially expanding needs, problems, and opportunities posed by the world around us?

Business practices have worsened. Consumerism has reached a cruel momentum speed.

However if we collectively decide that we don’t accept what we and they are doing we can have a future for all.

It seems to me that Capitalism with its ideology of the trickle down effect has lost the plot and is being exposed as a lie.

With the Elite corrupted, the ordinary Joe soap doesn’t  seem to come into the equation until after it’s produced, if you get what I mean.

The Imbalances in our Capitalist Societies are forcing people to live with chronic debt a form of social and political control.

No one or any Organisation on its own can handle, Aging, diversity, intellectual capital, technology, generations, education, personalization, human ingenuity, continuous improvement, ethics, planetary security, polarization, interdependence, personal meaning, poverty, and careers, just to mention a few.

Our smartphones have become Swiss army knife–like appliances that include a dictionary, calculator, web browser, email, Game Boy, appointment calendar, voice recorder, guitar tuner, weather forecaster, GPS, texter, tweeter, Facebook updater, and flashlight. They’re more powerful and do more things than the most advanced computer at IBM corporate headquarters 30 years ago.

Clearly, our prevailing socio-economic structures in no way reflect the inner connectedness and equality of human beings across the world.

If we take Climate change; it might turnout to be our Savior.

It can only be tackled by an equitable “global” climate deal that can tackle the climate crisis effectively; a deal that clearly spells out the commitments of each and every player.

The possibilities of this happening  in a world where it is seldom mentioned that around 40,000 people are still dying in poverty each day from largely preventable causes – mainly due to lack of access to sufficient food, clean water, adequate shelter and health care, are Zero.

Although we live in a bounteous world that has more than enough wealth and resources available for everyone to meet their essential needs (a fact that can no longer be taken for granted), this wealth divided reality makes a mockery of ageless teachings on right human relations and our innate spiritual unity.

We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. This is the very reason that our World Organisations are far from embodying the spiritual impulse toward planetary synthesis, wholeness and union.

So let me state one hard fact; There will be no solution without Money.

Economic relationships between rich and poor countries remain predicated on the opposing objects of national self-interest, aggressive competition and materialistic acquisition.

International travel, trade and telecommunications may have led to a growing understanding that we are part of a global community, yet economic globalisation in its present form is failing to promote and safeguard the needs of humanity as a whole.

It does not seem realistic to think that certain specifics issues, such as environment and labour standards, should be considered as negotiating positions which are defended exclusively by developed countries. This reality is so out of touch with basic moral values, let alone spiritual law or divine principles.

Drastic changes are now needed to prevent increased turmoil and catastrophe in the years ahead.

The implications for our competitive, profit-driven institutions and outmoded ideologies are all-encompassing, yet nothing less will suffice to guarantee an end to poverty and the inauguration of a viably spiritual mode of global economic organisation.

The environmental crisis is waking us up to a new ethic based on the sacredness of nature and all living beings, and the need for simpler lifestyles that respect planetary boundaries and the rights of future generations.

These issues should be of common concern, protecting global interests, however difficult it has been to realise this obvious truth in our structures of international relationship: That a more equitable sharing of wealth, technology, skills and knowledge is the fundamental basis of a just and peaceful world order.

What have we got instead is a world full of many organizations that exist to make
 a profit.

Each organization exists for a purpose: to bring something to the world, make it available to people, and enable those people to capitalize upon it. Whether for profit or not, all organizations seek to sustain themselves, so they can continue bringing their things to the world.

Change is inevitable. Progress is optional.

The lavish lifestyles of the affluent nations are effectively financed by the poverty of the majority world, while a wholly inadequate overseas aid system and philanthropic activity masks the systemic injustices of the global economy. After centuries of colonialism and the exploitation of weaker populations by the more powerful, wealth and resources continue to be extracted from developing countries through illicit financial flows, profit repatriation, corporate tax abuses, unjust debt servicing and other means.

Governments have to acknowledge that the natural resources and produce of the world belongs to no one nation but must be shared by all, as embodied in the wise pooling and distribution of essential resources for the benefit of everybody.

Rich nations in particular have to understand that they cannot remain islands of prosperity in a sea of deprivation, and that a more equitable sharing of wealth, technology, skills and knowledge is the fundamental basis of a just and peaceful world order.

The major spiritual lesson for humanity in the twenty-first century could not be simpler or more urgent in this regard, however the difficult has been to realise this obvious truth in our structures of international relationship.

In an era of email, text messages, Facebook and Twitter, we’re all required to do several things at once. But this constant multitasking is taking its toll we are all become increasingly out of touch with our fast-changing world.

Many injustices have been spawned, from large-scale atrocities, to out-of-touch campaigns and services, no longer serving those they began operating in the names of.

Ensuring that all of those involved have an equal voice in shaping what we do is not just working as it ignored  the needs and demands of society to navigate through the one accelerating constant–change.

Organizations change directions repeatedly in order to sustain themselves.

One way to clarify what the intentions of man is to go back in history to the beginning of your existence.  What was written then about the purpose being pursued?  With long-lived organizations, this original purpose surely shifts.

Here is the wish of most of us.

I wish that we lived in a functioning democracy where real electoral and social reform is possible.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "free pictures of capitalism"

As long as corporate power has a stranglehold on our institutions and our government, including our mass media, it will do what it’s designed to do and that is to exploit until exhaustion or collapse.

In all my reading, one of the most simple, yet profound ideas I discovered was that principles (or certain natural laws or rules) govern how and why things happen in all of life.  This truth is well accepted in the fields of physical science, but unfortunately less so in other areas of study.

In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths or first principles upon which all subsequent reasonings must depend.

It boils down, in its essence, to the basic idea that all men are free to choose liberty and life, or captivity and death. Sadly, too many of us have been trained and conditioned to wait – perpetually – for someone else to rescue us.  We are being acted upon by the pressure of expectations outside ourselves. Too often, we fail to question our day-to-day assumptions.

We live at a time when the dominant social paradigm actually undermines the philosophical revolution that enabled us to become the most free, prosperous, and generous people in modern times.

dollarmembership

Right I can hear you saying. We have heard it all before. What is the solution. It’s not Communism, it’s not Socialism, it’s a mix of all three with God is a Capitalist.

So why does this matter to you or anyone else? Answer.  In a nutshell, it means everything if we as a planet of humans are to remain so.

There is only one solution we must make Capitalism contribute by placing a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Acquisitions and on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( Over $20,000).

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EU Agricultural Subsidies – The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)

22 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Environment, European Union., Politics., Sustaniability

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Its going to be a turbulent year for the EU with Greece going broke, the UK looking to opt out and immigrants arriving by the thousands.

The economic down turn of recent years exposed fundamental problems and unsustainable trends in many European countries. It also made clear just how interdependent the EU’s economies are.

Over the past decade, Member States have experienced divergent economic trends, which have, exacerbated competitiveness gaps and led to macro-economic imbalances within the EU.

The question now is are we looking at stronger political union or a repatriation of powers to National Sovereign Nations within the EU.  

One way or the other the EU needs to look beyond the current crisis.

The EU is already under pressure from competitors and demographic change.

Any reforms within the Members seems to take for ever to implement.

Take for instance the reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which was one of the original pillars of the European Community, comprising France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. In negotiations on the creation of a Common Market, France insisted on a system of agricultural subsidies as its price for agreeing to free trade in industrial goods.

The treaty of Rome set out its basic principle and objectives:

  1. To increase productivity, by promoting technical progress and ensuring the optimum use of the factors of production, in particular labour.
  2. To ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural Community.
  3. To stabilise markets.
  4. To secure availability of supplies.
  5. To provide consumers with food at reasonable prices.

Those objectives were written in 1958 and have never been amended.

The main purposes of EU agriculture should be:

• Provision of a safe, healthy choice of food, at transparent and affordable prices.

• Ensuring sustainable use of the land.

• Activities that sustain rural communities and the countryside.

So what is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)?

For more than twenty years, starting in 1992, the CAP has been through successive reforms. In June 2013 ministers reached a deal with Euro MPs and the European Commission, though the reform package has not yet been agreed in full.

The CAP began operating in 1962, with the Community intervening to buy farm output when the market price fell below an agreed target level. In 1970, when food production was heavily subsidised, it accounted for 87% of the budget.

The CAP has been steadily falling as a proportion of the total EU budget for many years.

The plan then was that total spending should peak in 2008/9 and then decline until 2013, when the next major revision was due. In 2013 the budget for direct farm payments (subsidies) and rural development – the twin “pillars” of the CAP – was 57.5bn euros (£49bn), out of a total EU budget of 132.8bn euros (that is 43% of the total).

Owing to the way in which the common agricultural policy has developed and to the use of ‘historical references’, the level of aid may vary considerably from one farm to another, from one member country to another or from one region to another.

Today’s CAP is more market-oriented.

Under the new CAP, farmers still receive direct income payments to maintain income stability, but the link to production has been severed. In addition, farmers have to respect environmental, food safety, phytosanitary and animal welfare standards.

For the EU’s new member states, in Central and Eastern Europe, direct payments to farmers are being phased in gradually.

France is – and always has been – the largest recipient of CAP funds (20% of the total in 2006), with Spain, Germany, Italy and the UK all also receiving significant amounts (two-thirds of the total between these five countries). Although getting smaller absolute amounts, Greece and Ireland receive the largest per capita payments.

France is the biggest agricultural producer, accounting for some 18% of EU farm output.

France receives around €11 billion each year from the EU in agricultural support, but very little of it actually goes to those who do the farming.

With over 500,000 recipients of EU farming subsidies in France, over 80% of the funds actually goes to large industrial food processing businesses and charitable organisations. The largest recipient is the chicken production conglomerate Doux, who received a whopping €62.8 million in aid between October 2007 and October 2008. In the year 2008 the group had a turnover of nearly €2 billion.

The average annual subsidy per farm is about 12,200 euros (£10,374). About 80% of farm aid goes to about a quarter of EU farmers – those with the largest holdings. Major beneficiaries include rich landowners such as the British royal family and European aristocrats with big inherited estates.

The CAP does not cover commercial forestry.

The Commission proposed to cap at 300,000 euros the total subsidy a large farm could receive – but that appears unlikely to get into the final deal.

Across the whole EU, it is the bigger farmers who are the greatest beneficiaries, with 20% of farmers estimated to receive 74% of funding.

The idea was to combat large payments going to aristocratic landowners and wealthy agri-businesses, but it ran up against powerful lobby groups.

To day the CAP costs each EU citizen around 30 euro cents a day. CAP expenditure actually makes up less than 1% of all public expenditure in all the EU’s member countries. In addition to the direct cost, it is estimated that European consumers pay approximately €50 bn more in higher food costs.

Over 77% of the EU’s territory is classified as rural (47% is farm land and 30% forest) and is home to around half its population (farming communities and other residents). Europe has 12 million farmers and an average farm size of about 15 hectares (by way of comparison, the US has 2 million farmers and an average farm size of 180 hectares). The eastward enlargement increased the EU’s agricultural land by 40% and added seven million farmers to the existing six million.

Agriculture is a sector which is supported almost exclusively at European level, unlike most other sectors, which are governed by national policies.

Supporting farmers’ incomes ensures that food continues to be produced throughout the EU and pays for the provision of public benefits which have no market value: environmental protection, animal welfare, safe, high-quality food, etc.

The EU already funds numerous programmes that can be channeled towards these goals. For example, between 2007 and 2013, over €50bn is available for R&D projects, over €3bn for competitiveness and innovation and nearly €7bn for lifelong learning. This is all in addition to €277bn worth of regional funding for the same period through the Structural Funds.

As climate change makes itself ever more felt, the cost of sustainable farming can only continue to rise.

The EU budget is in turn mainly financed out of its ‘own resources’: customs duties, levies, VAT and resources based on member countries’ gross national income (GNI). The CAP represents over 40% of EU budget expenditure and is the most expensive of EU policies.

Regional aid – known as “cohesion” funds – is the next biggest item in the EU budget, getting 47bn euros.

The CAP budget for Rural Development (which seeks to safeguard the vitality of the countryside) 2014-20 for all 28 member countries will total €95 billion (at current prices).

The last reform was implemented in 1994

Today, the Budget amounts to €150bn (£117bn), which is paid for by the 28 members of the EU, and is also used to pay administration costs incurred by Brussels, such as salaries.

Farm subsidies are expected to account for around 38pc of the EU budget between 2014 and 2020, or around €363bn of the €960bn total.

A total of €8.7bn was spent last year in administration costs alone, although the European Commission highlights in its Myths and Facts FAQ, that this amounts to less than 6pc of the total budget.

However, the CAP continues to face a number of challenges, particularly in addressing biodiversity decline, water pollution, soil degradation, accelerating climate change and the steady growth in demand for food, fuel and energy.

Here are the Challenges:

  • How to make the Single Payment Scheme more effective, efficient and simple by continuing the move to full decoupling..
  • How to adapt market support instruments originally designed for six, to a larger system of twenty-seven states in a more globalised world.
  • How to master challenges in areas such as climate change, biodiversity and water management and adapt to new risks and opportunities.

The questions are:

  • Why do we need a European Common Agricultural Policy?
  • What are society’s objectives for agriculture in all its diversity?
  • Why should we reform the CAP and how can we make it meet society’s expectations?
  • What tools do we need for tomorrow’s CAP?

The answers are:

The European Union needs a common EU policy to ensure a level playing field within the EU, guaranteeing fair competition conditions. To maintain diversified farming systems across Europe.

  • To insure that no GMOs or pesticides are used. To ensure EU agriculture respect the environment. Give greater importance to non-market items, such as environment, quality and health standards, sustainability.

•  To Respond to the effects of climate change. To Protect the environment and biodiversity, conserve the countryside, sustain the rural economy and preserve/create rural jobs, mitigate climate change. To decrease its impact on global warming and maintain biodiversity, water resources etc.

•  To take into account the various higher expectations from consumers, for example with regard to the origin of foodstuffs, guarantees of quality etc.

•  To Strengthen the competitiveness of European agriculture. To Transform market intervention into a modern risk- and crisis-management tool. To Recognize that the market cannot (or will not) pay for the provision of public goods and benefits. This is where public action has to offset market failure.

•  To Ensure better coordination with other EU policies applying to rural areas.To Bear in mind that the correct payment to farmers for the delivery of public goods and services will be a key element in a reformed CAP. To Rethink the structure of the two support pillars and clarify the relationship between them; make adequate resources available for successful rural development. To Create fair competition conditions between domestic and imported products.

  • To Provide employment in rural areas. To Implement a fairer CAP – fairer to small farmers, to less-favoured regions, to new member states.
  • To Avoid damaging the economies or food production capacities of developing countries; help in the fight against world hunger.
  •  To giving more importance to innovation and dissemination of research.
  •  To link agricultural production, and farmers’ compensation, more closely to the delivery of public goods such as environmental services.
    • To Introduce transparency along the food chain, with a greater say for producers.

Industrial agriculture should have little place in the CAP, its support being more appropriately directed to more deserving recipients.

Serious questions are being raised about the reasons for the current levels of spending, the efficiency and the extent to which it provides genuine EU added-value. In recent years, farms’ energy bills have increased by 223% and the price of fertilisers by 163%. Agricultural prices have increased by 50% on average.

It must take a strategic approach to CAP reform. Go for total, not partial, solutions taking account of CAP challenges on the one hand and the interplay between the CAP and other internal and external EU policies on the other hand.

Can any of this be done?

The EU has no shortage of crises on its borders and beyond.

It is hard to see that EU will succeed in galvanizing European governments into a more coherent policy. EU states will certainly not be willing to increase the overall size of the budget, it is clear that it will have to dedicate a much smaller share of the budget to the CAP. The budget cannot keep increasing in the midst of an economic crisis.

Keeping EU farm spending level until 2020 is impossible and there are suggesting that EU funding for issues such as research and development provide better EU added-value.

Believe it or not, the thing that could change farming isn’t the climate or a new piece of equipment. A microbe in the soil could be the key to helping farmers grow more crops.

Only 5.4% of EU’s population works on farms, and the farming sector is responsible for 1.6% of the GDP of the EU (2005). The number of European farmers is decreasing every year by 2%. Additionally, most Europeans live in cities, towns, and suburbs, not rural areas. However, their opponents argue that the subsidies are crucial to preserve the rural environment, and that some EU member states would have aided their farmers, anyway.

When many people saw the first stunning photos of the fragile Blue Marbel of Earth from space, it changed their outlook of humanity. It was a singular moment in time when people around the world were watching and looking toward the future.

When it comes to people like all of us the EU has a long way to go before we all see a common future.

There is no security on this earth: there is only opportunity.

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Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough.

20 Wednesday May 2015

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A society that holds out for the younger generation prospects that are worse than those held out to their parents and grandparents is a society that has ceased to progress and begun to regress—one that has lost any claim to historical legitimacy even if it is technologically advanced.

The common experience for millions of young people is permanent economic insecurity.

Youth unemployment in the European Union stands at more than 23 percent, while in Spain it is 56.1 percent and in Greece 62.9 percent. There are 26 million young people in the “developed world” who are classified as not in employment, education or training (NEETS). Poverty and homelessness have become mass phenomena.

While the world may not be one big village in terms of lifestyle, it shares an image of “the good life” that’s proffered in movies, TV, and the Internet. That’s what teenagers in Afghanistan have in common with teenagers in England; they’ve been fed the same image of success in the global community and they know it’s inaccessible. They are angry and, ultimately, their anger has the same target — multinational corporations (and the governments that support them).

The political implications of these social transformations are far-reaching – ISIS.

Capitalism as we know it today—is an amoral culture of short-term self-interest, profit maximization, emphasis on shareholder value, isolationist thinking, and profligate disregard of long-term consequences—is an unsustainable system. Only today five of the biggest banks are fined Billions for fixing the Foreign Exchange Market.

Capitalism must change itself, from the inside. This kind of change will require a radically new leadership ethic, one driven by a new set of motivations and a broader understanding of wealth.

With global population rapidly marching toward 11 billion and with it the demand for food, health services, energy and security, we need to reexamine the models that have gotten us to this point.

There are far better men than I to undertake this reexamination.

The word “capitalism” was coined by the socialists and has historically described a system of state-granted privilege and plutocracy.“

Free market capitalism may be viewed as a system in which individuals make voluntary arrangements involving the exchange of capital.

Free market” implies voluntary arrangements, whereas “capitalism” has become (rightly so)  known as a system in which business and coercive state forces collude to serve whatever arbitrary interests may be lobbied for by the businesses or championed for reasons of power by the politicians.

If it’s a free market, it’s not capitalism. And if it’s capitalism, it’s not a free market.

So why bother trying to apologize for “capitalism” when “free markets” are what you (and I) really wish to obtain?  That is, if you really do believe in “free markets”, then you should probably distance yourself from the word “capitalism”.

The modern world is ruled by multinational corporations and governed by a capitalistic ideology that believes:

Corporations are a special breed of people, motivated solely by self-interest.

Corporations seek: to maximize return on capital by leveraging productivity and paying the least possible amount for taxes and labor. Corporate executives pledge allegiance to their directors and shareholders. The dominant corporate perspective is short-term, the current financial quarter, and the dominant corporate ethic is greed, doing whatever it takes to maximize profit.

Capitalist society is guided by the play of the market mechanism.

There is no better evidence of this than- The “recovery” of 2009-10 ensured that “too big to fail” institutions would survive and the rich would continue to be rich. Meanwhile millions of good jobs were either eliminated or replaced by low-wage jobs with poor or no benefits.

We’re living in the age of corporate dinosaurs that take the path of least resistance to profit; they’ve swallowed up their competitors and created monopolies, which have produced humongous bureaucracies.

There achievements are far to numerous to list here, but here are a few in no particular order.

Climate Change. Inequality of Opportunity, Stock Exchanges, Poverty, Wars, Lack of Fresh Water, Sovereignty Wealth Funds plundering the finite Natural Resources for short-term profit, Corruption, Privatization, People Trafficking, Drugs, ect  You could say without fear of contradiction that conditions are far worse today than at any time since the 1930s.

The nearly universal opinion expressed these days is that the economic crisis of recent years marks the end of capitalism. Capitalism allegedly has failed, has proven itself incapable of solving economic problems, and so mankind has no alternative, if it is to survive, then to make the transition to a planned economy, to socialism.

Corporate executives don’t care about the success or failure of any particular country, only the growth and profitability of their global corporation.

Global corporations are ruining our natural capital.  Four of the top 10 multinational corporations are energy companies, with Exxon Mobil leading the list. Global corporations have ravished the world and citizens of every nation live with the consequences: dirty air, foul water, and pollution of every sort. The world GDP is $63 Trillion but multinational corporations garner a disproportionate share — with banks accounting for an estimated $4 trillion (bank assets are $100 trillion). Global black markets make $2 trillion — illegal drugs account for at least $300 billion.

The past five years have demonstrated the impossibility of changing anything within the existing political system. Inequality has grown enormously. The stock market is booming, the Forbes 400 are richer than ever, yet the conditions for youth and workers are disastrous. War continues without end.

However the historical bankruptcy of capitalism does not bring about its automatic collapse as it will if not already doing so turn Climate Change into profits.

 It is from the market that the capitalist economy receives its sense.

So what if anything is to be done.

At the start of this post I said that Capitalism must change itself, from the inside.

Is this possible. Yes but only by making it pay for our values. By putting humanity back into human.

We needed to make the private enterprise economy work better in a redistribution of wealth and income toward greater equality.

This can only be done by placing:

A World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Stock Exchange Transactions, on all Foreign Exchange transactions (over$20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. 

A capitalist economy is inherently unstable” It is one thing to recognize the instability of capitalism, but another to show that an alternative to it is possible.

Clearly no one has got a clue” about what might replace it.

What ever it is we can not going on tolerating a world … in which the needs of the many come before the greed of the few. It is time to recognize that “ Like what, exactly?” is an honest and profound question that demands straight and worked-out answers. And it is time to start working out those answers. I am not advocating abstract revolutionism here.

When questions about the future are bound up so intimately with day-to-day struggles, a new human society surely cannot emerge through spontaneous action alone. To transcend this impasse, people need to know not just what to be against, but what to be for, not just “ what is to be done,” but what is to be undone— what is it exactly that must be changed in order to have a viable and emancipatory socialism?

Unfortunately, this issue received almost no attention throughout most of the last century.

So it is only in recent years that any significant attention has been paid to whether another world is possible. But now, when the future of capitalism is a live issue, it seems to me that this issue needs to be understood as the central problem of revolutionary thought today.

The younger generation is “lost” not just in the sense that it has no future under capitalism, but also in the sense that it is increasingly “lost” to the ruling class and its political establishment. The forms through which the bourgeoisie seeks to maintain political control are losing their hold. Their conscious political experience has been dominated by unending economic crisis, war, the dismantling of democratic rights, political gangsterism and corruption.

And if that not bad enough The global economy is splintering with new and devastating trade agreements like the TTP.

If the function of the market as regulator of production is always thwarted by economic policies in so far as the latter try to determine prices, wages, and interest rates instead of letting the market determine them, then a crisis will surely develop.

It would be disastrous merely to call for socialism while ignoring the problems of mass unemployment. This brings me to the notion of developing socialism within capitalism, enlarging the space of the commons or whatever. Unfortunately, it cannot be done. It has been tried (for instance, in the Israeli kibbutzim ) and it does not succeed. The economic laws of the larger system will not allow it. If you buy from the capitalist world “ outside,” you also have to sell to it in order to get the money you need to buy from it, and you will not sell anything if your prices are high because your costs of production are high. And if you have debts, you have to repay them.

So it appears there is only the one option as I suggest : Make Global Capitalism contribute by a World Aid Commission.

We live in interesting times. The stakes are high. The time has come to face the future with sober senses. The good news is we’re witnessing the failure of global corporate capitalism. The bad news is we don’t know what will replace it.

Financial inequality in the 21st century is on the rise, and accelerating at a very dangerous pace turning into a conflict between billionaires.

Complete change will not happen overnight. It will not be built on the back of one investor or one innovative entrepreneur. It will be something that business owners, investors, political leaders, consumers and entrepreneurs must all work together toward.

Neither of these categories (Investor-Innovator) makes or produces anything but their wealth, which is really a super-wealth that has broken away from the everyday reality of the market, which determines how most ordinary people live.

Worse still, they are competing with each other to increase their wealth, and the worst of all case scenarios is how super-managers, whose income is based effectively on greed, keep driving up their salaries regardless of the reality of the market. This is what happened to the banks in 2008, for example.

So when you look at Climate change what you see is that it is true that it will take time to roll out the infrastructure and technologies to get off fossil fuels, and we will burn a lot of fossil fuel in the process.

What explains our collective failure on climate change? Why is it that instead of dealing with the problem, all we seem to do is make it worse?

Here’s is the inconvenient truth: when you tell people what it would actually take to radically reduce carbon emissions, they turn away.

What would it take to radically reduce global carbon emissions and to do so in a way that would alleviate inequality and poverty? The World Aid Commission.

Just building a clean tech innovation economy is not enough. We have to reinvent our economy from the ground up if we are to successfully address these challenges.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS GOING TO CHALLENGE EVERYTHING THAT CAPITALISM OR ANY SOCIAL SYSTEM STAND FOR.

What we need is “ethical capitalism,” Business leaders must become servant leaders, leaders who serve not just themselves and share holders, but leaders who serve employees, customers, the community, the planet, humanity, future generations, and life itself.

Science has made huge steps, society has not.

The sooner we fix Capitalism the sooner we move to the future we imagine.

If anyone has a better idea, I would be all ears. 

 

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Britain is soon to face an invidious choice: In or Out of the EU.

19 Tuesday May 2015

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The Conservative party has promised a referendum in 2017 on the UK’s membership of the EU.

A newly-released poll shows over four in ten British voters are in favor of their country leaving the European Union (EU), amid growing eurosceptic sentiments across the UK.

Between now and then there will be a lot of disinformation.

Here is the invidious choice:

Access to the single market, but less influence on the rules that govern it;

or

Freedom from the rules, but loss of access to the single market.

So here are some undeniable facts apart from the obvious – like Britain is an Small Island not an Empire. 

If it leaves the EU, the UK will have to negotiate terms.

It  is true that if the UK left it would be free to negotiate trade agreements with countries outside the EU.  But it would not inherit the EU’s existing bilateral trade agreements that are already in existence:  It would have to negotiate new ones.

So, upon exit, it would have less access to markets outside the EU, not more. And it is hard to believe that Britain would find it easy to forge new deals.

More than 4,000 UK institutions received EU funding last year, including engineering powerhouse Rolls-Royce, which received a number of grants. This included a €2.5m payment for research related to cleaner and quieter aviation technology. The Confederation of British Industry, a business lobby group, received €184,000 in EU funding last year.

The Confederation of British Industry, a business lobby group, received €184,000 in EU funding last year.

UK infrastructure projects have also benefited from EU funding, including the West Coast mainline.

At €29bn, Germany, the Europe’s largest and most powerful economy, put the most money into the EU pot last year. Poland was the biggest recipient. It received €16.2bn in EU funds in 2013.

Overall, Britain’s contribution to the EU pot amounted to €17bn in 2013, behind Germany, France, and Italy. However, on a net basis, Britain was the second largest contributor to the EU budget last year.

It put €10.8bn more into the EU pot last year than it took out. Only Germany paid more on a net basis.

Is Britain the only EU country that enjoys a rebate? No. Due to corrections and “rebates on the rebate” enjoyed by Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden, these countries pay less than their normal share. Denmark recently joined this club, and will receive a rebate of around €130m from next year.

The rebate is now equivalent to 66pc of the UK’s net contribution in the previous year. Such rebates are paid for by the other 27 EU members. The rebate for 2013 was €4.3bn.

This means France and Italy have been left to pick up the biggest share of the tab.

Last year, France contributed €1.2bn to Britain’s rebate, while Italy contributed €900m.

Most of the money Britain receives from the EU is used to subsidise farming (€3.1bn)

Here is another option.

Stay in the EU and abolish or put the Monarchy on a self financing tourist heritage standing.

At the moment you as a Taxpayers pay 56p each for upkeep of monarchy.

This is six per cent rise on last year – more than double the rate of inflation.

The Queen’s official expenditure from the Sovereign Grant, the amount released from the public purse each year to finance the monarch, increased to £35.7m – a rise of £1.9m on the previous year.

There was a 45 per cent increase in the amount spent on the upkeep of royal residences, including Buckingham Palace and the Kensington Palace apartments of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Public spending on refurbishing the 20-room central London living quarters of Prince George of Cambridge (George Alexander Louis; born 22 July 2013) is the oldest child and only son of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge. He is third in line to succeed his great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth 11, after his paternal grandfather and father.

The couple and Prince George has totalled £4.5m over the last two years. It is estimated that the total bill to secure the buildings stands at £50m. Last year, spending on property maintenance rose by £4.2m to £13.3m, including 133 projects costing £3,500 or more.

This is all at a time when Government departments were slashing budgets by up to a third, and millions of Britons have yet to feel the benefits of any economic recovery.

The Queen, personal wealth is estimated at £330m,

The Prince of Wales from the Duchy of Cornwall, which in 2012-13 stood at £19.1m. The Duchy, a sprawling collection of property, farmland and investments sectioned off to finance the heir to the throne 700 years ago, is classified as privately owned but campaigners have long argued its serves a public purpose by sustaining the monarchy.

Travel costs incurred by the Prince of Wales,included a £434,000 visit to India with the Duchess of Cornwall, and a charter flight to attend the funeral of Nelson Mandela which cost £246,160.

Other maintenance costs met from the Sovereign Grant included £800,000 to remove asbestos in the basement of Buckingham Palace and £900,000 to renew lead roofing the Royal Library at Windsor Castle,

There is no doubt that the time for Britain to unshackle its self from a hereditary Monarchy that is costing a fortune is not far off.

While membership of the EU is as much about broader, political questions as economics, the economic case for staying in the Union is strong. 

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“The Beady-Eye” : Francois Hollande

16 Saturday May 2015

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This is the first post under the heading  ” THE BEADY- EYE”

The Beady eye will take a look over the course of the year at the track record in presa form of the Worlds most Powerful. ( People/ Corporations/ Organisations.)

Where best to start than France where I reside.

So Let’s turn the Beady Eye on President François Hollande who celebrated on May 6 the third anniversary of his election to the highest office in France. He was the first candidate in 31 years to unseat an incumbent president after a single term.

This invites us to look at the record of the man and his policies.

In May 2012, François Holland became the seventh president of the Fifth Republic. Born August 12, 1954 in Rouen. François Hollande received a Catholic religious education which he considers “a good experience” but defines itself as “non-believer” with “no religious practice” and having his “own philosophy of life”

He was discharged from military service because of his myopia.

As President he is;

  • Grand Master  of the National Order of the Legion of Honour.
  • Grand Master of the Order of Merit.
  • Canon of honor of the Basilica of St John Lateran, the Cathedral Saint-Jean-de Maurinne, St Julian of Le Mans,and Saint-Etienne Chalons, churches of ST. Hilary of Poitiers, of Saint-Martin Tours and Saint-Martin d’Angers.
  • Proto canon of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Embrun and Our Lady of Clery .

and Official decorations.

Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit of law as grand master of the Order (15 May 2012).

Knight of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) on 16 November 2012.

Knight Grand Cross with Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic on 21 November 2012 .

Order of Wissam Mohammad El, exceptional class ( Morocco) on 3 April 2013 .

Grand Cross of the National Order of Mali (15 July 2013) .

Order of the White Double Cross, First Class (Slovakia) on 29 October 2013 .

Grand Cross of the Order of Saint Charles (Monaco ) on  14 November 2013 .

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Netherlands Lion ( 20 January 2014).

Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Bath (UK) 0n the (5 June 2014.

Mr Hollande UNICEF’s Felix Houphouet-Boigny Prize for his contribution to peace and stability in Mali.

François Hollande, was elected in 2012 to bring an end to austerity and to tax the rich, has turned into a liberal. Or at least a social-liberal.

The image of the President three years provided a much darker than the picture the candidate wanted to sell back in 2012. “Mister Little Jokes” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17675980, he seems to have strayed into the dark side of farce.

At the age of 59 years in true French style he was engulfed in a sex scandal just like the kind of private-public muddle that had damaged the early months of Nicolas Sarkozy’s term of office. He left his common law politician wife, Segolene Royal, the mother of his four children. Royal had political aspirations of her own and, in 2007, ran for the presidency against Hollande’s wishes.

For six years he lived with his girlfriend Valérie Trierweiler.

Valérie Trierweiler, had enjoyed the high-life luxuries of a presidential wife – costing taxpayers a fortune. The perks of her life as first lady include five staff, multiple homes across France, a stunning wardrobe, private jets and cars.

In Trierweiler’s former life, she was also a mistress to the president.

He progressed to another affair with a sex kitten actress Julie Gayet, 41 divorced with two children. The apartment where Hollande and Gayet had met was said to have connections to the Corsican mafia.French President Francois Hollande (L) s

He went from the President of Kisses’ to ‘President of Hisses.’

Politically Mr Hollande claimed that unemployment would drop by the end of 2013. When this looked absurdly unrealistic, he vowed instead to “invert the trend”, a semantic contortion by which he meant stopping the total rising, something that has yet to happen either.

A little less denial and a healthy dose of realism may thus be welcome.

At over 45% of GDP, France’s tax take stands with Belgium’s as the highest in the euro zone. Fewer than 20% of voters believe in his ability to turn the economy around. Frances largest export is Capital.

Mr Hollande famously promised during his election campaign to slap a 75% top income-tax rate on the rich—yet his government vowed that nine out of ten households would not be touched by tax increases. The 75% tax was thrown out by the Constitutional Council.  Not before the French actor Gerard Deparieu did a runner and is granted Russian citizenship by President Valdimir Putin. However most ordinary people have seen their tax bills rise.

The December Euro Plus Monitor from the Lisbon Council, a Brussels-based think-tank, notes that France is the only big European economy beset by serious problems not to have taken bold steps towards reform.

Beneath his bon homme exterior, he displays few declared convictions, always ready to compromise, Francois Hollande is now ideologue.

While French industry is waning, both by lack of demand, lack of competitiveness, and lack of funding.

He is imposing on France unending budgetary rigor, growing unemployment, rolling back the French political and social model, and introducing rules that deprive citizens of their sovereignty and freedom, and he does it all without qualms.

Even though France recently showed a 0.06% rise in it economy it is collapsing under the blows of foreign competition and non-economic pressures.

If he is serious about lowering charges on business, he also needs to make serious spending cuts. These are always harder than tax rises.

Therefore the inexorable rise in unemployment should come as no surprise.

Add to that an unthinking and largely unfair tax policies, and we can understand why demand is stagnating, but also the wrath of the middle and working classes, resulting in truly disastrous poll ratings for François Hollande.

Hollande has refused to acknowledge the structural dimension of unemployment in France, which he says is largely due to membership of the euro zone. It is the fact that today there are about 600 000 people suffering burnout while at the same time we have almost 4 million unemployed people without counting the severely underemployed.

He has buried his promise of tax reform. What’s more, Piketty said last year, the degree of improvisation in Hollande’s fiscal and economic policy “is actually quite appalling.” He is edging away from traditional Socialist policies and is chipping away at the generosity of the welfare state.

To employ anyone in France remains a nightmare to this very day.

Hollande is President, but of which country?

On January 8, 2015, he decreed a day of national mourning following the attack against Charlie Hebdo. In the wake of Charlie Hebdo attack the French government has approved new Surveillance laws giving massive and limitless surveillance of the population.

Francois Hollande likes to don the clothes of the defender of freedom and human rights, but one is forced to question his position in light of the new Surveillance laws recently passed.

Hollande’s campaign promises, to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption for same -sex couples it is now a matter of freedom of conscience for mayors of each city/town/village.

Over the last five years Islamic State is thought to have earned £75million ransoming more than 50 captives. Four French and three Spanish hostages have been released this year after money was delivered through an intermediary.

There is growing international anger that France is funding IS jihadists by paying ransoms to free hostages.

In the mean time he is selling arms.

Francois Hollande was the first foreign head of state to attend a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Here he signed a contract under which Qatar has agreed to buy 24 Dassault Aviation-built Rafale fighter jets in a deal worth $7 billion. The deal comes as most of the Gulf states look to boost their firepower amid regional instability.

The case of the two Mistral helicopter carriers is another prime example.

As a result of the Ukrainian crisis, Hollande took the decision to suspend delivery to Russia. But he travels in person for the signature of “Rafale” combat aircraft contracts with Qatar and probably with the United Arab Emirates.

It looks like that China will purchase two amphibious assault ships that were originally intended for Russia.

So where is the red line? Certainly not on the issue of democracy.

The attitude of Francois Hollande, and more precisely its different attitudes with respect to Russia and these countries could therefore translate well latent Eurocentrism, at best, and at worst a form of racism, hidden under the mask of condescending smile.

The question of the presence, or absence, of Francois Hollande at the May 9 victory day parade in Moscow, something that has nothing to do with disagreements he may have with Putin, but which is rich in the symbolism of these same principles, may confirm this.

Unless this cynicism hides something much more serious.

Last week Cuba unveiled new data it said confirmed there were billions of barrels of oil beneath its Gulf of Mexico waters.

On Monday Hollande said France “will be a faithful ally” to Cuba as the country reforms it’s centrally planned economy and tries to re-enter the global economic system. La visite de François Hollande à Fidel Castro, le 11 mai, à Cuba, est la première d'un chef d'État français au leader politique cubain.

Speaking at the University of Havana, Hollande said: “France will do everything it can to aid the process of opening Cuba and help get rid of measures that have so seriously damaged Cuba’s development.”

Hollande also met with Cardinal Jaime Ortega to award him the Legion of Honor, France’s highest honor, and inaugurate a new building for the Alliance Française cultural center.

In Cuba he was accompanied by five of his ministers and nearly two dozen French executives, including representatives of Pernod Ricard beverages, hotel company Accor, Air France, supermarket Carrefour and the telecommunications company Orange.

Cuba announced an oil exploration deal with France in the Gulf of Mexico.

French oil major Total signed an agreement on Monday to explore for offshore oil with Cuban state oil monopoly Cuba Petroleo (Cupet). Cuban state-run television reported the exploration agreement without giving further details.

France s bow to the dictator for oil.

This man ‘who made ​​history’ – as says François Hollande – seized power in 1959, shot, trapped, turned his tropical gulag island, hunted homosexuals and, in fifty-six, found neither the time nor the inclination to hold free elections. ”

( Picasso painting has sold a little over $ 142 million on Monday night in New York ” This sale reflects the fact that some in this world, do not know what to do with their money, preferring to inflate the bubble of the art market rather than invest in creative activities of wealth and employment. In this sense, the fate of the Women of Algiers demonstrates the disturbances of the world today. Fortunately, this has not much to do with art itself. There will always be men and women to take a sheet of paper and a pencil.)

To be fair top diplomats from Japan, the European Union, Italy, the Netherlands and Russia have visited the island in recent months in bids to stake out or maintain ties with an island that suddenly looks like a brighter economic prospect amid warming US-Cuba relations.

Other examples of Mr Hollands hyperventilation hand shakes.

France – an ally of the Rwandan government that ruled before the genocide – stayed away from last year’s 20-year commemoration after rebel-turned-President Paul Kagame renewed accusations of a direct French role in the killings.

To his credit Hollande seems to have taken on the role of regional gendarme in the enormous Sahel region.

The EU has no shortage of crises on its borders and beyond, it is hard to see that she will succeed in galvanizing European governments into a more coherent foreign policy.

During his tenure as President of the French Republic François Hollande is ex officio one of the two Heads of State of the Principality of Andorra , neighboring independent micro-state of France.

His recent reception in Haiti leaves a lot to desire.

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On Thursday he said he would not seek a second mandate if he fails to deliver on his pledges to expand national wealth and lower a long-running rise in joblessness.

“We have to go further with reforms concerning youth employment, integration of long-term unemployed people, improve the performance of our businesses, facilitate the financing of our economy,” he added.

What are his prospects for success in 2017? Zero.