As riot police dismantle the camps of northern France, ‘forced relocation’ of people into shipping containers is brushing a humanitarian disaster under the carpet. The new accommodation on which the French have spent £20m is shipping containers, each kitted out with 12 bunk beds. There is heating and electricity BUT Humanity is bulldozed away.
The underlying political problem is never dealt with, except ironically by the refugees and migrants themselves, who have put up a sign saying “David Cameron Street” in the Jungle.
The focus of many EU governments now appears to have shifted decisively back to a default position—namely efforts aimed at preventing or discouraging people from attempting to reach EU territory, tackling smuggling networks, and rapidly deporting individuals who do not have a right to remain in the EU.
FOUR MILLION migrants expected to reach Europe by the end of 2017.
EU leadership is more important than ever to reach a Europe-wide deal on refugees.
An estimated 31,244 migrants have braved the deadly boat crossing over the Mediterranean Sea to Greece in the first 16 days of this year. This shocking statistic represents 21 times the number of migrants who crossed during the same period in January 2015, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Last year children accounted for a quarter of the one million migrants and refugees arriving across the Mediterranean in Europe.
God knows, these people need help. They are not obtruders. Every one of them is in need of protectionand entitled to the rights guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
At the same time, there are still millions caught in situations of conflict, displacement, poverty and underdevelopment – the main causes of the crisis.
UNICEF is appealing for US$14 million to support the needs of affected children and women through 2016.
The rising number of people entering Europe in search of safety and in search of a better life has captured the world’s attention with scenes of heartbreaking tragedy.
JUST IMAGINE IF IT WAS YOUR FAMILY.
Travelling hundreds and thousands of miles over land and over water, from Africa, the Middle East and Asia, people are risking everything in the hope of reaching their goal, and the danger does not end at a border crossing.
Here are a few Graphics to open your eyes.
In September, EU ministers voted by a majority to relocate 120,000 refugees EU-wide, but for now the plan will only apply to 66,000 who are in Italy and Greece.
Whenever people treats others as they treat each other, then we will have no more wars.
We have to see the world through issues and action.
It does not belong to me or you or any Generation, to any Religion, any Terrorist, any Government, any algorithms, any Holograms, any World Monopoly whether its called Google, Face Book or Twitter, or any Sovereign Wealth Fund ( see previous Posts)
It belongs to Wall Street.
Who was running Wall Street? Humans or machines?
If you thought “humans”, you were woefully out of date.“
Humans just found a new way of being greedy.”
But that not the subject of this post.
There’s a strange relationship between the city and the city dweller. We love it and still recognize that it’s a monster. All that emotion, all the combined suffering and indifference, glory and greatness, bypass the brain and go straight into the heart.
The city cuts straight to the core. Look into some people’s eyes, and their sadness, their pain, is almost palpable.
The city inspires us to see glory beneath the grime and wonder within the wasteland.
But the truth is, the world cannot be organized. To let the world in, you have to let in a world where nobody has the answers.
I think there’s a fundamentalism about technology. Technology itself isn’t going to save us. Technology is wonderful, but it’s a tool.
The world is complex and we all know what is wrong.
What is wrong comes in many forms, shapes, sizes, and it is effecting all of us.
There are a million things going on that are all signs that the people who are the most educated and capable of enlightened action are stunningly unengaged.
Its called Inequality. Created by us which is destroying the world we live in.
It is the root of most of the problems facing the world.
You might have read recently that Finland’s government is drawing up plans to give every one of its citizens a basic income of 800 euros (£576) a month and scrap benefits altogether, which according to Bloomberg, would cost the government 52.2 billion euros a year.
During the Banking Crisis I advocated that it would have been cheaper for Ireland to have given every voting citizen a Million. It could have been placed in a Government controlled account. Made available to the citizen over a period of 30 years to avoid inflation. Irish Citizens would have been required to cleared all his or hers debts, look after their own health, education, while scrapping all benefits.
It would have stimulated the economy in a controlled manner rather than bailing out worthless banks.
The National Audit Office in the UK said that the Uk spent £850 billion on the bank crises in 2009. That would equate to a £26,562 and fifty pence spend by every taxpayer in the UK.
THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK will begin its €1.1 trillion quantitative easing programme today, the last big weapon in its armoury to get the euro zone going and fend off deflation. None of the newly invented cash will actually be headed to the pockets of EU citizens.
The reality of how money is created today differs from the description found in some economics textbooks:
Quantitative Easing for the People’ is one of the cornerstones of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership platform in the UK.
The basic idea is simple: A hypothetical Corbyn government would instruct the Bank of England to create new electronic money (the modern equivalent of printing it) to fund public investment projects. The vehicle for doing this would be the ‘National Investment Bank’, which would be charged with funding public investment. The NIB would issue bonds that the BoE would be commanded to buy.
Compared this to the living wage an informal benchmark, set at £9.15 an hour in London and £7.85 an hour in the rest of the UK. It is not a legally enforceable minimum level of pay, like the national minimum wage. ( 48 hours a week on average = 439 euros.)
An ‘inner voice’ tells me that this idea is a step in the right direction to spread the wealth of a nation. Perhaps he should call it regional quantitative easing, but it wont address the bigger world problems.
Realistically we must think of some imaginative ways to create liquidity in the world economy other than secret Trade Deals.
Sometimes it takes just one human being to tip the scales and change the course of history.
In this series of posts we will look into its heart beat of Inequality.
My aim is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform the developing world. My ambition is to stimulate serious academic interest and to inform public debate on the essential issues. We can’t just wait for the tipping point to be reached so we see clarity as we stare into the abyss.
In no particular order let,s start our Journey to a better world.
The year 2016 I hope will mark a turning point in human history: Helped by climate change because Capitalism will start to be forces to pay for raping the world.
So let’s start Not with Climate Change but WHERE WE LIVE.
IT MATTERS:
The scale of environmental impact of meta cities and mega cities on their hinterlands is significant and is likely to be a cause for concern in coming decades.
The emerging human settlements of the 21st century are Slums also known as shantytowns, squatter cities, and informal settlements.
These places can teach us about where, for better or worse, urban life appears to be headed. “Squatters are the world’s dominant builders,”
They are the Emblems of profound inequality.
When one appreciates this fact one is forced to ponder whether these slums were designed to supplant, integrate or ignore human rights concerns of the world’s poor.
Are they maintained solely as a source of cheap labor or just transitory phenomenon characteristic of fast growing economies — it is impossible to mitigate the expansion of slums in the developing world.
Even if urban poverty is preferable to rural poverty life in the slum constitute a form of poverty trap for a majority of their residents.
In 2005, there were 998 million slum dwellers in the world. If current trends continue, the slum population will reach 1.4 billion by 2020.
It will for the first time equal the world’s rural population.
Although it is difficult to predict on which day or month this radical transformation will occur, what is certain is that this milestone will herald the advent of a new urban millennium: a time when one out of every two people on the planet will be a “city-zen”
At the moment more than 53 per cent of the world’s urban population lives in cities of fewer than 500,000 inhabitants. One out every three city dwellers – nearly one billion people – lives in a slum. Slums are emerging as a dominant and distinct type of settlement in cities of the developing world.
By 2020, all but 4 of the world’s largest cities will be in developing regions, 12 of them in Asia alone. While still few in number, these metacities point to new forms of urban planning and management, leading to the growth of city regions and “metropolitanization”.
Inequality has a direct bearing on patterns of urbanization.
The rich in most countries live a world apart from the poor, with homes in protected urban enclaves and access to the latest technology, the best services and the most comfort. The rest, especially slum dwellers, live in the most deprived neighborhoods, struggling to gain access to adequate shelter and basic services, such as water and sanitation. Many slum dwellers also live under the constant threat of eviction.
Such stark differences and divisions can be found among regions and countries, but also within countries and cities. Especially in the developing world, urban zones of poverty and despair commonly skirt modern cosmopolitan zones of plenty.
If current trends are not reversed, cities will become more and more spatially divided, with high and middle-income residents living in the better-serviced parts of the city
Cities are, and will continue to be, sites of extreme inequality.
China’s recent gains in economic growth and industrialization have in many cases exacerbated environmental problems in its cities. Economic growth has increased consumer purchasing power, with the result that Chinese cities, such as Beijing – once the bicycle capital of the world – are now teeming with motor vehicles, a leading cause of air pollution. There are 1.3 million private cars in Beijing alone, an increase of 140 per cent since 1997.
Since the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, cities of the developed world have become increasingly concerned about their vulnerability to acts of terrorism but this is not the reasons that cities are going to have to change.
Various dimensions of urban poverty is the main treat.
Inadequate and often unstable income, which impacts people’s ability to pay for non-food items, such as transport, housing and school fees. Poor quality, hazardous, overcrowded, and often insecure housing Inadequate provision of basic services (piped water, sanitation, drainage, roads, footpaths, etc.) which increases the health burden and often the work burden.
Inadequate, unstable or risky asset base (non-material and material) including lack of assets that can help low-income groups cope with fluctuating prices or incomes, such as lack of access to land or credit facilities. Inadequate public infrastructure, such as schools and hospitals.
Limited or no safety nets to ensure basic consumption can be maintained when incomes fall and which can be easily accessed when basic necessities are no longer affordable, such as public housing and free medical services.
Inadequate protection of rights through the operation of the law, including regulations and procedures regarding civil and political rights, occupational health and safety, pollution control, environmental health, protection from violence and forced evictions and, protection from discrimination and exploitation.
Voicelessness and powerlessness within non-responsive political systems and bureaucratic structures, leading to little or no possibility of receiving entitlements to goods and services; of organizing, making demands and getting a fair response; and of receiving support for developing initiatives. Also, no means of ensuring accountability from aid agencies, NGOs, public agencies and private utilities, and of being able to participate in the definition and implementation of urban poverty programmes.
In light of recent evidence, even if governments collectively manage to improve the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 – as per the Millennium Development Goals and targets – this achievement will be insignificant in relation to creating “cities without slums”, a stated objective of the Millennium Declaration.
Assuming that the leaders who developed the slum target were aiming to address a major development issue, policymakers should adjust the benchmark to reflect the reality of slums of today and tomorrow.
Viewed through a human rights prism, All fair-minded people, of course, would hope for improving the lives of slum dwellers. Unfortunately, looking closely as far as housing rights are concerned, any improvements far out-number their benefits.
These are a few things we can no longer afford to ignore.
Which practices and policies will steer us in the right direction?
How do we effect change within and beyond the halls of government?
Both formal and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth and informal systems of property rights may be necessary to curb the rapid growth of slum areas worldwide.
Slum dwellers should be given title deeds for their plots, in order to liberate the “dead capital” they are sitting on – to enable them to get loans from banks.
Overall, there has been very little theoretical and empirical economic research about how the public policy challenges posed by slums in low-income economies should be addressed.
It appears the United Nations Goals’ are flaws.
The question is how to address them.
Three shortcomings stand out as particularly.
The organisation is out of date, skint, and totally infiltrated by Capitalist values.
The United Nations have strong incentives to maintain the status quo. Unless radically brought up to date and reformed it has no alternative but to maintain the status quo.
Without changes to the United Nations or any other World Institutions the reversal of the lack of governance to represent the people of the world, it is unlikely that any attempts at any form of big push or coordinated investment will have the desired effects.
This is a hidden threats to sustainability.
All changes need financing.
Whether it be Climate Change or giving dignity of a respectful if not equitably life to all, there is little hope of addressing the world problems when so many look at so few. Inequality is incurable.
The only way to lessen its effects is to tap into Greed itself. (See previous Posts)
I believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world.
You can’t settle for drops in the bucket. It won’t do to wrap up your garbage, it won’t do to send the contribution. Those are all fine, but it’s not going to make a huge change. It’s just not. It’s going to take all you’ve got too really understand that the stakes are very high.
If you don’t believe me the Sunday Time this week in letters and e mails reported that an organised party of about 60 from the Uk visited the European Parliament in Strasbourg. At the end of the tour each visitor was handed an envelope containing 200 Euros. Apparently each EU MEP is allowed 110 visitors a year, which equates to 22,000 Euros per MEP. With 73 UK MEP,s that in turn adds up to 1.6 million euros.
More than 11m homes lie empty across Europe – enough to house all of the continent’s homeless twice over – hundreds of thousands of half-built homes have been bulldozed in an attempt to shore up the prices of existing properties. There are 4.1 million homeless across Europe, according to the European Union.
Its no wonder that millions turn to daft fantasy – turning the Star Wars films into digitally enchanted Manichaean belief systems. There is a sleazy materialistic, shallowness about it all. We hear much more from them all in 2016.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first.
Profit for the sake of profit has to pay whether its climate change, inequality of opportunity or terrorism.
Education plays a uniquely critical role in addressing the challenges we face.
What we’ve really lost sight of is an education system that teaches how to ethically, effectively and intelligently engage with the world which we will address in the next post.
Each of us, it seems, believe that we are above average. People want to believe the present is different than the past. But while we humans passionately believe that our own current circumstances are somehow unique, not much has really changed since the inarguably brilliant Isaac Newton lost a fortune in the South Sea Trading Company bubble of 1720.
“What ails the truth is that it is mainly uncomfortable, and often dull. The human mind seeks something more amusing, and more caressing.” ~H. L. Mencken
Because history suggests that we are going down for the count.
Mankind must learn how to appropriately respond to the crises and opportunities that await us, and grow cognizant of the fact that large-scale violence can be so dangerous to humanity so that we become “aware of the need for a radical change in attitude.
So the question is: Are humans fundamentally too flawed to be trusted with their own paradise? Should we scrap Politics as we know it? Is it the politician’s very humanity that we distrust?
HAPPY NEW YEAR.
Politicians aren’t popular in WORLD.Politics is rated as the least trustworthy profession and we all know Why.
Elected to represent the people they represent Inequality.
Politics in the Future: Will it be worse or better with the technologies of the Internet.
Let’s say you can no longer make it in society without using technology you don’t understand to buy things at a store, to talk to other people, to conduct business.
People are increasingly dependent, but they don’t have any idea how these things actually work.” In other words, people may fear technology, but does that fear even matter?
There’s no mass movement to completely scrap technological innovation.
But there is a movement operating at the other end of the spectrum composed of people who embrace even greater hybridity between humans and technology as something not just inevitable, but desirable.
They would love to see like Wall Street a truly altruistic entity running our governments.
Right now, all politicians, are motivated by self-interest. This is just how humans are.
So wouldn’t it be nice to have something like a super-intelligent AI running things and it be entirely after our best interest?”
Emerging Technologies, a human enhancement and techno progressive non-profit, the AI politician mostly hinges on the negative personality traits of “meat-bag” politicians, specifically: vanity, rage/revenge, and sex addiction.
Basically, the idea would be that an AI politician would have an ego (“if it has a drive for self-improvement … it will have an ego”), but would be programed to turn off negative impulses that would get in the way of implementing policy or following the law. It would be paideia in binary code.
The rule of reason over desires.
One can look to modern elected American officials—pick almost any name, Donald Trump —and lament their lack of self-knowledge, anemic rhetoric, paucity of wisdom, and wonder what they might have been had they been exposed to paideia.
So what would be wrong with a political system run by “altruistic” machine overlords.
Algorithms so completely permeate our day-to-day lives that it can be difficult for people to recognize when and how technology is helping them.
Consumer devices like phones and laptops are obvious, but there are less visible things like the network of satellites used for GPS, distribution software used by power companies, and high-end medical equipment.
On the other hand, abuses of cutting-edge technology have been prominent in the last decade: National Security Agency data collection, cyber warfare, hacks of financial information.
Christopher Bader, a co-author of the fear study and a professor in sociology at Chapman University, recently articulated our fear of technology: “People tend to express the highest level of fear for things they’re dependent on but that they don’t have any control over, and that’s almost a perfect definition of technology.”
But should we really outsource morality to machines?
Unfettered by personality, machines would be rulers without greed, fear, hate, or love, going about the drudgery of administering to human clients free of the disastrous trappings of the ego.
Back to Reality.
The Politics of the future will be connected to technological and data advances, campaigns will increasingly be personalized to the individual.
From the television to the smart phone to the doorstep, campaigns will target you.
Perhaps eventually as you walk through a store or through a subway station. Not you as a member of a voter cohort. But you, the individual.
Campaigns cannot have a million different messages, however; these personalized messages still must be connected to an overall message architecture.
The ability to deliver the right message to the right voter and measure its effectiveness will continue to take more of the guesswork out of politics.
We are entering the age of the billionaire political arms race. Like missiles soaring over the Earth in space, these big spenders will fire back and forth at one another, attempting to control more of our politics.
In some races, the candidates will be mere bystanders to the super PAC main event. But this inevitably will lead to positions being taken, votes being cast, and legislation being sponsored to please political benefactors—or to court them.
This super PAC era is in its infancy.
Strong candidates with a compelling message and the right timing will still matter more than anything else. But the campaigns around them will continue to change rapidly.
As we get deeper into the 21st century, new factors will impact, if not help shape, our politics, including: more concrete changes brought on by global warming, more sophisticated and frequent cyber warfare and cyber attacks, technology companies that claim to know more about you than you do (and the attendant privacy issues), baby boomers moving fully into retirement, increasing urbanization, and the rise and fall of competitor nations.
Data and its smart use will only improve campaigns’ understanding of the electorate.
Campaigns will increasingly be fought out on mobile devices as much as television and computers.
The there is the coming use of holograms. Politicians will use them throughout the country to extend his or hers reach. With advancements in artificial intelligence, you could soon have holograms of government candidates at your door, interacting with you and asking and answering questions.
Will it change anything? No other than “transhumans” will emerge from the ashes of mid-21st century planetary warfare is a bit hard to swallow.
Every time you press the like button you are voting. So go on press the button as you have no opinion worth while expressing. What you vote for is not what you get.
If we want Politics to represent us all decisions that affect us must be vote on by the people for the people. Lets have a Government Political Voting App. Then we will have true representation.
What does 2016 hold in store when we look at the new year.
HERE ARE A FEW OF MINE: IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER.
The United States and Russia have never seen eye to eye, especially with the conflict in Syria.
The Arab Spring will intensified civil wars in over 10 countries, including in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Somalia, Libya and Syria.
Mr Barack Obama will be THE LAST America’s non white president.
The fate of Israel will remain unclear.
The Paris Climate Change agreement will fall apart.
Global warming will increase.
The internet will have further restrictions.
2016’s economic growth rate won’t be much different than we’ve seen in recent years. The texture, however, will be different, with more gains in Europe and less in China and the commodity-dependent countries.
The biggest risk for Europe in the year? “It’s the refugee crisis,” it’s the biggest challenge to the European Union yet.
Sovereign wealth funds will continue to privatize the world.
The world’s populations are aging, and demand for cancer treatments will only increase.
Colorado, Washington and other legal-pot states will get more tourists than ever.
The people’s of the world will become more disconnected.
Television viewing will decrease due to Smart phones and I pads.
There will be more Natural Disasters.
Politics and how its delivered will have to change.
Inequality will rise.
Stocks will return just 3% in 2016.
Google will start fee charging.
World food prices will rise.
Drinking water i.e. fresh water will cause new conflicts.
Donald Trump will be assassinated.
The Olympic Games will be boycotted by Russia.
The first cloned human.
The Catholic church will begin the process to allow its priest marry.
Businesses will increasingly deploying artificial intelligence to improve their products and services.
Worlds created entirely of clouds. “Unicorns” racing through new landscapes. Data moving faster than the speed of light.
Private cloud computing.
We’ll witness the emergence of a new class of real-time applications in e-commerce and financial technology services powered by super-speedy data analytics.
Machine learning,” a field of computer science will be all the rage.
As mobile devices are ruling the world, having surpassed laptop and desktop searches in terms of paid clicks and traffic generation, it has become imperative for businesses to develop mobile-friendly websites and make their business decisions attuned to this new wave of mobile savvy clientele.
Mobile searches will exceeded desktop searches.
The boundary line between “social media” and “web” will get blurred further in 2016.
The truth will become impossible to find.
The greed of capitalism that is the root of most if not all our World problems will come under further pressure to pay.
The like button will get fewer hits.
PEDRO JADAUJI: PORTUGAL
Sporting CP will win the Portuguese league.
People will realise that face to face is better than Facebook.
Phone calls and mail letters will star to increase and sms (…) will start do decrease
Happiness indicators will start to replace GDP.
Nick Harrison: USA
Hilary Clinton will win, learn Spanish, rub Putin nose the wrong way, and cause a recession.
Asbad : Afghanistan
I predict that President Barack Obama will rethink his plan to have all operational U.S. combat forces out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016. The current reality is that, while the United States is fighting the al Qaeda-ist movement that grandiosely calls itself Islamic State using air strikes and aiding allies on the ground, more needs to be done to make sure its militants do not take over larger swaths of Iraq and Syria.
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