Category Archives: THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S . WE NOW HAVE TO MANY GOALS TO ACHIVE IN THE WORLD.

24 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Civilization., Climate Change., Earth, Environment, Green Bonds., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Imagination., Money in Politics., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., State of the world, Sustaniability, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Eighteen-minute read) THE LOGOTYPE

The Global Goals are a set of universal Goals, which set out a plan to tackle the issues that affect us all, no matter where we are in the world, from climate change to health, from gender equality to peace and justice.  

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set in 2000 are. 

Goal 1: End poverty in all its forms everywhere.

Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.

Goal 3: Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages.

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Goal 5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.

Goal 6: Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Goal 7: Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern energy for all.

Goal 8: Promote sustained, inclusive, and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work for all.

Goal 9: Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization, and foster innovation.

Goal 10: Reduce inequality within and among countries.

Goal 11: Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable.

Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts*

Goal 14: Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas, and marine resources for sustainable development.

Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.

Goal 16: Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all, and build effective, accountable, and inclusive institutions at all levels.

Goal 17: Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the global partnership for sustainable development.

They are intended to be universal in the sense of embodying a universally shared common global vision of progress towards a safe, just, and sustainable space for all human beings to thrive on the planet.

The different goals and targets however represent different degrees of challenge and ambition for different countries depending on their present state of development and other national circumstances. The balance between the social, economic, and political efforts needed to deliver the different objectives is also likely to be different in different countries.

There are all verbal Goals with no legal binding, interconnected to each other and so far we have failed to provide the support to turn any of the desired goals into reality.

The U.N. can’t compel any country to do any of the things required.

The rationale for any goal must increase everyone’s stake in the goals so that when they come into effect, countries will swiftly incorporate them into national policy decisions — in other words, take them off the page and into practice.

There’s a real danger they will end up sitting on a bookshelf, gathering dust as there’s still no clear consensus on where exactly the money will come from to achieve any of them.

In the end, we are one people living in one world and all Goals require financing.

So the goals are a waste of time and money and won’t matter unless we as individual and national governments take them seriously. 

                                ———————

The only way to combat the changes we are now witnessing in our plant is if we all start financing the changes required. 

One of the first things you would hear in economics class is that there is no free lunch, meaning that nothing in life is free. Everything exists in a limited supply. That means that everything has value.

 We also know that governments and countries can’t tackle anything that requires a long-term commitment.    

The bead eye has been promoting the following solution to creating a worldwide value that would afford an opportunity for all of us to invest in a just future. 

A perpetual funded Fund of trillions, totally transparent, with rewards to all investors that would transfer the UN verbal into positive actions. 

Here is the idea again.

Can you improve or find fault with it? (Comments below) 

It would give all of us an opportunity to invest in the sustainability of the plant.

It would give the United Nations clout not just worthless resolutions. 

The Solution:  

The United Nations-backed by world governments issues Non-tradable Green PRIZE Bonds,

These Bonds would pay interest dividends that move in line with inflation rates, guaranteeing a percentage yearly return depending on the value of the bond.

The interest is guaranteed by all world governments. 

Bought online like lotto tickets each bond carries an identification number that is entered into a weekly prize draw, and a yearly prize draws equivalent to 0.005% of the funds raised. 

Draws are fully funded by the players, through revenue made from ticket sales. 

Most of the biggest and most popular lotteries on the Lotter have some form of prize guarantee.

Take EuroMillions, for example. The EuroMillions jackpot starts at €17 million, which means that there is a €17 million guaranteed jackpot.

The pan-European EuroJackpot is similar, with a guaranteed minimum jackpot of €10 million.

The UN green Prize bond would be a  progressive jackpot one in which if the jackpot is not won, it will carry over and grow for the next drawing.

The distribution of the funds raised by the Bonds must also be transparent and distributed as non-repayable grants.

This would be undertaken by an executive non-departmental public body not attached to the UN to avoid any vetoing.  

It would vet all applications for funds to verify that they meet the values set by the UN, peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet.

Once accepted all projects would enter a draw for funding which would ensure that no lobbying and corruption with money going to community groups and health, education, and environmental projects. 

There is considerable work to be done to create a realistic, coherent approach to improving our divorce from reality.

You only have to look at what has happened to the climate change goals.

Just as leaders around the world were starting to think seriously about tackling global warming it is now derailed for a decade by the Ukrainian/Russia conflict.  

We’ll have to wait and see if that will really happen.

  

What if every child was aware of the key global challenges of our time?

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS : THE SOVEREIGHTY OF NATIONS ARE NO LONGER ABSOLUTE.

21 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Human Collective Stupidity., Humanity., Purchasing Power., Purpose of life., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Ukraine/ Russia., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World View.

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(Eighteen-minute read) 

As the current Ukrainian/Russian conflict demonstrates.  

There is no formal definition of sovereignty or a sovereign nation defined in international law or contained in a single treaty.

We are now supposed to be physically, politically, and economically one world with nations so interdependent that absolute national sovereignty of nations is no longer possible.

What is Sovereignty? - Definition & Meaning - Video ...

Which came first, the nation or the nation-state?

While some European nation-states emerged throughout the 19th century, the end of World War I meant the end of empires on the continent. They all broke down into a number of smaller states.

However, not until the tragedy of World War II and the post-war shifts of borders and population resettlement did many European states become more ethnically and culturally homogeneous and thus closer to the ideal nation-state.

                           ———————–

The concept of a nation-state is notoriously difficult to define and there is no better example of this than England.

Once called England it became Great Britain when Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales joined, then the whole nation became known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Now after Brexit, it is referred to by the media as the Four Nations. 

Theoretically, Sovereignty means the “absolute and indivisible” authority and power of the State and its government. Through Sovereignty, the government has complete control over what is going on within its territorial boundaries and internationally, it indicates certain equality between nations.

Sovereignty has for a really long time been considered the fundamental pillar of the international system. Of course, this no longer holds true as right now the problem with sovereign nations is that each time a country joins an international organization or signs a Treaty, it restricts its freedom of action and thus gives up a part of its sovereignty or independence, even if only a small part.

So the concept of sovereignty does not work out perfectly in real life, it is outmoded and a rather ambiguous conception in the present-day civilization.

Does this hold true?

This, of course, does not imply that a state can exert dominance over other states or its subjects but many states find themselves being under the economic, ideological, and cultural control of developed countries which poses a major challenge to the sovereignty of the states.

                               —————–

It is first important to understand what sovereignty actually is.

For me, there are two degrees of sovereignty; individual sovereignty & absolute sovereignty. 

Individual sovereignty is the right and the ability to govern one’s actions independently.

Absolute sovereignty is a state of being where all illusions have fallen away; where fear no longer exists…Absolute sovereignty cannot be taught, it can only be realized.

While National sovereignty which used to mean national independence has to be viewed against the background of modern states in a world governed more and more by Technology.

Boutros Ghali, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations very rightly remarked that: “The time of absolute sovereignty and exclusive sovereignty…has passed; its theory was never matched by reality”

So due to the emergence of globalized technology, the notion that the state’s decisions and laws can be sacrosanct has lost relevance in today’s world.

External, as well as Internal Sovereignty, cannot be viewed as final, since international law and sovereignty imply each other. However, sovereign nation-states will be with us for the foreseeable future, even if their influence over some areas of policy will be much less than in the past.

                       ———————-

Is national sovereignty an obligation as well as an entitlement?

A government that will not perform the role of a government forfeits the rights of a government. 

Unfortunately, this is the position of the Ukrainians in the Russian conflict.

Ukraine became an independent country in 1991 after the fall of the USSR. Independence was gained through a series of referendums with conflicting results.

On 17 March 1991, the Soviet Union held a referendum in all of the republics asking the people whether they were interested in remaining a part of the Soviet Union or gaining independence.

More than thirty-one million people or around 83.5 percent of the electorate in Ukraine participated in the referendum with ninety percent of voters supporting the preservation of the USSR.

Just nine months after the March referendum, another was held on 1 December 1991.

The question posed to the Ukrainian people was: “Do you support the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine?” Around 84.2 percent of the country participated with ninety-three percent voting in favor of Ukrainian independence from the USSR; in direct contradiction to what was decided earlier in the year.

Support for this measure was lowest in Crimea which in 2014 was re-taken by Russia, followed by Lugansk, and Donetsk which are the regions that President Putin has recognized as independent states this week.

However, the divides between citizens who have greater loyalty to Russia and Europe continue to cause conflict.

Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state, which provides some context to the ongoing issues being seen in the country. The majority, seventy-seven percent, of those who live in Ukraine identify as ethnically Ukrainian while seventeen percent identify as Russian.

So Ukraine’s government has been on a pendulum essentially since it gained its independence.

The people will elect a president closer to Russia, then one closer to Europe, and in between corruption in the government goes unchecked. The situation Ukraine currently finds itself seems to suggest that these issues will continue and could lead to greater internal violence as factions become increasingly polarized and armed by the West. 

Providing the war remains non-nuclear we may see another civil war taking place at the end of this war. This will be the long-term result of the Russian/ Ukraine war. 

Because we have designed a world around pay as you go for all aspects of life including our own funerals countries will best protect and further their interests by not hesitating to exercise some of their sovereignty collectively to achieve their aims. 

                            ————

In the meantime, the real war is being ignored. 

Humanity survived the cold war because no one pushed the button and it will survive the Russian Invasion of Ukraine but it will not survive Climate Change, the button has been pushed again and again.

With refugees arriving, governments are spending billions on emergency-level funding and infrastructure to meet what they view as a crisis of national security. But in the case of climate change, there’s no equivalent sense of immediacy, no sense of priority commensurate with the dangers it poses to our future ability to feed ourselves, defend our largely coastal settlements, insure our homes, and maintain national security and keep our children safe from harm.

Those who lead us and have power over our shared destiny are now ignoring global warming to the point of criminal negligence.

As a culture and a polity, when it comes to climate change, have we arrived at a point where we are now expected – even trained – to abandon hope and submit to the inevitable?

The need to fight issues such as environmental protection, security of human rights, eradicating terrorism, war, poverty, and hunger, are once more on the back burner. 

We’re making a pig’s breakfast of responding to what is now a crisis of clean energy. Reopening oil exploration, moving to new nuclear power stations, etc while the heat at both ends of the planet this week has scientists straining for adjectives. 40°C above normal in Antarctica, 30°C hotter than usual in the Arctic.

The prospect of inexorable loss, unstoppable chaos, certain doom is robbing people of hope, white-anting the promise of change.

Business as usual is not just delinquent, it’s unforgivable.

                         —————–

The Beady Eye voice is just a little twitter in a world of governments and corporations ensnared in a feedback loop of “common sense” and mutual self-preservation that is little more than a bespoke form of nihilism.

Ideology, prestige, assets, and territory are now tacitly understood to be worth more than all life, human or otherwise. And the four great capacities of humanity to solve a crisis – ingenuity, discipline, courage, and sacrifice – seem to be reserved for more important enterprises.

The future, by all accounts, can wait. Because there’s something bigger at stake here than culture, wars, and the mediocrity of so-called common sense.

It’s the soil under our feet, the water we drink, the air we breathe. 

( Nine out of ten people worldwide already breathe polluted air — according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Besides, the WHO attributes around seven million deaths a year to global environmental pollution.)

The time for action is limited: Because if the end of the world really is threatening us, there is still enough time to panic before we bomb ourselves back into a Stone Age climate.

So what can be done?

The smartphone has done more for poor countries than all the foreign aid packets.  Real power now resides with the people, the citizens of the state as is the theory of ‘Popular Sovereignty.

Let’s give our grief and fury some shape and purpose and reclaim our future together.

Enough cowardice. Enough bullshit. Time for action. 

Consumer sovereignty must take back the Monopoly Markets.

( One could argue that new innovations were not driven by consumer sovereignty because consumers cannot demand something that they do not know they want.)

If producers market a new product that does not catch on, then the consumer has exercised their influence by not purchasing. Equally, a new product or service with long market longevity is the result of consumer demand.

Our buying power is the last weapon left to demand change, to the sovereignty of unified world action. 

The problem is that the English word sovereignty does not mean control. 

The collapse of the world can only be prevented if nations like the USA and China stop devouring global resources before the quality of life drops to zero.


Crazy HD Photo.

Where is your data?   It is certainly not Sovereign.  

Its time to use your phones as weapons to effect change. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE HAVE ALL THE STATEMEN GONE?

17 Sunday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fake News., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Modern day life., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Political lying., Political Trust, Politics., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read ) 

  • Faith in the future is justified when investments succeed in improving the future. 

Every country is a work in progress but there are gaping holes where the leadership should be.

Politicians are hanging on to power instead of working for the construction of a better world. We are getting “selfish politicians and cynicism” instead of the statesmen needed to challenge the current crisis all over the world.

We now have a US President who does not know what the word genocide means and a Uk Prime Minister that lies to his Parlement and a Putin that has lost the plot.

The idea that the Prime Minister or president “runs a country” is just nonsense.

The lack of thought invested in the future is a real and pressing problem.

Today’s politicians play on our inherent, false phobia of the word fear; they milk it for every vote it’s worth.

This creates a natural void between the average citizen and the ruling class. 

The only difference perhaps is that nowadays we put a camera on them 24/7, and we expect them to give an answer to a problem mere minutes after some event occurred.

In the past, politicians probably had more time to think, and far less time to speak (or at least, fewer things they said were being recorded). As a result, modern politicians seem to make more mistakes.

I fear it will take a terrifying depth of crisis before there comes a point when this isn’t enough anymore and they will have to face their people with the big picture – which is to ask how much do we want to survive?

                                  ————————– 

Statesmanship is fleeting, and we don’t really appreciate it until it’s gone.

We desperately need a statesman—but, sadly, all I can hear are politicians.

If the world ever needed a Stateman it is now. 

Real statesmen rise above the tawdry political arguments of the day to the much higher realm of political strategy, what is right for the nation, right for everyone, and betters the human condition.

The statesman shuns media campaigns, opting for the power of the written and spoken word. He is an accomplished public speaker that looks over the horizon for future requirements.

Statesmanship and ethics are inseparable. We need a lot of both. We’ve already got a lot of politicians. We need a lot more statesmen. Making no private promises, granted no special favors, and received no personal gifts which would compromise his official integrity.

                                   _________________

What are the differences between a Statesman and a Politician? Winston Churchill, Franklin D Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta Conference, February 1945.

Not all politicians are statesmen. 

Statesmen spend the money, borrowing what’s necessary, to grow the country, restore confidence in the government and the future, and prevent devastating wars—even if the benefits of their actions are not immediate and measurable, but spread instead over many generations. 

Politicians, by contrast, “save money now” to “enhance today’s surplus” or “decrease today’s deficit”—even if “saving money” means leaving embassies unprotected from terrorist bombs, and our intelligence establishment less capable and integrated than it could have been.  

Statesmen see far into the future and know that good investments pay for themselves over and over again, for generations.  

Politicians tend to be penny wise and pound foolish—or perhaps more accurately, present-wise and future-foolish. They are in a “bubble” shuffling portfolios amongst themselves. They have no real-world experience. They go straight from education into politics via internships. They have no choice but to find a way to get people’s attention, in preparation for the next election and fear is one of the best attention-getters of all.

                                           —————

In this age of media coverage, the problem we have is twofold what to believe and what not to believe. 

The Underworld of the huge overarching media presence means that politics is not in control because no system is in control or in a position to lead society.

Take the war in Ukraine for example.

Can The West Stop Russia by Strangling its Economy?   No 

They only reflect liberal frustration over the West’s limited power to

prevent Russia’s war in Ukraine. 

Why?

Because in 2001, the incident of 9/11 changed the whole scenario of the world. US started its War against Terror and announced that it will target anyone, anywhere, who threats the US security and its citizens. Under this US invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya and attacked Daesh in Syria without facing any opposition from other countries at United Nation Security Council (UNSC).

After 30 years, of peace now Russia led by President Putin has challenged the new world order in Eastern Europe, by accepting two eastern regions of Ukraine (Donetsk and Lugansk) as independent regions and allowing its forces to invade Ukraine on Feb 24, 2022.

It’s clear that Russia is not dependent on the west as the west is dependent on Russia. So there is something amiss with a  black-and-white view of the situation in Ukraine.

Since the end of the Cold War, the West has refused to make any concessions to Russia’s security concerns. Neither NATO nor the Western powers, in general, have been willing or able ‘to empathize with the Russian perspective on this crisis’.

Moscow is repeating that it will withdraw its troops from Ukraine only if Ukraine recognizes Crimea as a part of Russia and two eastern regions, Donetsk and Lugansk as independent states, moreover Ukraine makes the constitutional amendment that it will not join NATO.

The truth is that after fighting alone and not getting ground or air support from the West ( because of the fear of a nuclear war) Ukraine has only one option left to compromise and accept the Russian demands for the sake of their and our survival.

Ukraine must learn from Afghanistan’s lessons, and not allow big powers to play a proxy war in its country.  

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine will lead to a new world order with an era of grinding compromise. The “new world order” is going to be dominated by Russia and China. Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi are writing their own rules.

The real danger is that the global balance of power is not just being recast, but gradually unraveling. History shows that changes to the balance of power rarely occur without serious conflict.

We must do what we can to contain Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine. But we also need to be clear-eyed about it and face the costs.

Economics can’t be separated from politics, and neither can be separated from history.Illustration on a new world order where Russia and China dominate by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times

One lasting story of this war could be the way that Europe uses it to launch its next stage of integration.

                                        ————-

 We cannot continue to fight each other in useless wars.

Take Climate Change.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, called the recent IPCC report on the climate crisis a “code red” for humanity. “We are on the verge of the abyss,” he said.

You might think those words would sound some kind of alarm in our society.

Since no one treats the crisis like a crisis, the existential warnings keep on drowning in a steady tide of greenwash and everyday media news flow.

The facts are crystal clear, but we just refuse to accept them. We refuse to acknowledge that we now have to choose between saving the living planet or saving our unsustainable way of life.

Because we want both. We demand both. But the undeniable truth is that we have left it too late for that.

And no matter how uncomfortable that reality may seem, this is exactly what our leaders have chosen for us with their decades of inaction. Their decades of blah, blah, blah. In short, we are totally failing to even reach targets that are completely insufficient in the first place.

Science doesn’t lie, nor does it tell us what to do.

But it does give us a picture of what needs to be done. We are of course free to ignore that picture and remain in denial. Or to go on hiding behind clever accounting, loopholes, and incomplete statistics. As if the atmosphere would care about our frameworks. As if we could argue with the laws of physics.

The climate and ecological emergency are, of course, only a symptom of a much larger sustainability crisis. A social crisis. A crisis of inequality that dates back to colonialism and beyond. A crisis is based on the idea that some people are worth more than others and, therefore have the right to exploit and steal other people’s land and resources.

It’s all interconnected.

It’s a sustainability crisis that everyone would benefit from tackling. But it’s naive to think that we could solve this crisis without confronting the roots of it.   Inequality. 

All it would really take is one – one world leader or one high-income nation or one major TV station or leading newspaper who decides, to be honest, to truly treat the climate crisis as the crisis that it is. One leader who counts all the numbers – and then takes brave action to reduce emissions at the pace and scale the science demands. Then everything could be set in motion towards action, hope, purpose, and meaning.

Who will that leader be?

Ask any hundred people to define a good leader and how many definitions do you think we’d hear?

The leaders of the free world just serve to reassure people that there is someone in charge, someone with a plan while high technology is creating the way we think and feel. 

We have to get used to living in a world without leaders.  

We must understand that global warming is a true threat.   

We have to become conscious of environmentally friendly measures of living.

                                       —————–

This is where we are at the moment.

I and you are going to see a lot of the long-term effects of what’s happening now with Climate change. 

Time will tell if great statemen will return to power and change the direction in which current politicians are leading the world.

Without leaders, there is little alignment and hardly any coordinated moving together towards common goals. Without leadership, there is hardly a chance for fair distribution of wealth nor for peace.

This doesn’t mean that leadership as such grants these values but without leadership, it’s probably impossible to enjoy them at all. 

Three-quarters of the world could not give a dame about the war in Ukraine, Syria, and Yemen, or any of the other wars. 

Only resistance from within Russia can shorten the conflict. 

Brussel is pretty much kowtowing to the gazillion of different demands of basically all European leaders and interest groups, resulting in policies that are confused, contradictory, and ultimately useless.

European leaders with the outbreak of war in Ukraine are reduced to the role of extras. 

Unfortunately, we lack business statesmanship in the advertising Industry promoting more and more consumption for short-term profits with the media whose role seems to be to stop the shaping of modern statesmen.

                                      ———————-

There is only one choice that is to declare war on Climate change. 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ALL KNOW THAT WAR IS ORGANIZED BARBARISM ON AN ENORMOUS SCALE.

12 Tuesday Apr 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., THE ISRAELI- PALESTINIAN PROBLEM., The Ukraine., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, War Crimes., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

No matter how much you know — or think you know — about any War, there are always more horrible things lurking in the shadows.Nazi military parade

Cast your eyes over any recent conflict, and you’ll see a litany of generals, politicians, and nations that have gotten away with stuff so horrific it defies comprehension.

This post is not an attempt to justify crimes of warfare. It is a feeble attempt to highlight the double standards went it comes to defining them.

                                      —————–

Our best hope of curbing humankind’s peculiar talent for superfluous
violence and extravagant self-destruction lies in the ideal of humanitarianism.

What is a war crime? 

War crimes are often associated with atrocities committed on a scale that defies credulity. I.E the number of victims did not pass some arbitrary threshold. At the most basic level, war crimes are [objectionable] acts committed by combatants, either against other combatants or against noncombatants—that is, civilians—during wartime.

Mass murder and genocide—crimes against humanity and atrocities committed on a large scale—have become the hallmarks of war crimes.

The question is who or what decides which acts are war crimes.

In an eerie echo of our own time, defining war crimes is not so much the issue anymore.

It’s prosecuting them actually, administering justice that is the primary obstacle.

The ICC is the product of a strand of idealistic thinking about justice between waring states stretching back at least to the first world war.

                                  —————-

In world war two was it a crime to kill 60,000 to 80,000 people in Hiroshima and another 75,000 in Nagasaki or 100,000 people in one night during the firebombing of Tokyo, an event barely talked about today.

In the American war in Vietnam, was it a crime to shower 45 million liters of the herbicide Agent Orange? In the process, it doomed up to 4.8 million Vietnamese residents.

Ask someone today to list war crimes of recent history and he or she may think of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or genocide in Rwanda, the Afghan war, the Syrian War, the Yemeni War, the Iraq war, the list is endless.

The overall theme is hard to miss but there is a vast gulf separating our indifference to war crimes. 

A few months after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (hereinafter referred to as “9/11”), the Bush Administration decided that the Geneva Conventions did not protect members of Al Qaeda.

The president (George W. Bush) thinks the ICC is fundamentally flawed because it puts American servicemen and women at fundamental risk of being tried by an entity that is beyond America’s reach, beyond America’s laws, and can subject American civilians and military to arbitrary standards of justice.

Another example is that there are clear parallels between Russian and Israeli violations of international law, including the committing of war crimes by Israeli military actions in the occupied Palestinian territories.

There are no sanctions against Israel that have so far desisted from joining nations including the US, Europe, the UK, Australia, and Japan in the imposition of an “unprecedented” number of sanctions on Russia, Belarus, and the two breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the wake of the invasion. 

According to Israel’s controversial Law of Return, “Jews, their children, grandchildren and spouses” are all eligible to visit Israel and claim Israeli citizenship. 

However, millions of Palestinian refugees are unable to return to the homes they and their forebears were expelled from in Israel and the occupied West Bank in 1948 and 1967.

Israel has granted citizenship to Russian mining oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, a figure linked to President Vladimir Putin and known to be one of the world’s richest men.

Last year, the two countries said the ICC should drop an investigation of Israel in part on the grounds that Palestine is not a sovereign country, although it is recognized as a state by the UN.

Netanyahu has accused the ICC of “pure anti-Semitism” for investigating attacks and has said Israel does not accept the ICC’s jurisdiction, however, it does not have to. 

Whatever the answer, it seems unlikely that President Bush or Benjamin Netanyahu, will ever be tried for war crimes but the question of whether they actually committed war crimes remains.

                                         ——————

Neither the US nor Russia nor China nor Ukraine are members of the ICC. 

If justice in general moves slowly, international justice barely moves at all.

Investigations at the ICC take many years. Only a handful of convictions have ever been won and by the time the Barbarian is locked up there is nationwide amnesia.

Court proceedings can be brought in one of two ways:
 
Either a national government or the UN Security Council can refer cases for investigation. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has veto power over council actions.
 

In all likelihood, there will never be a trial for either President Bush or Putin not to mention Benjamin Netanyahu,. 

Why?

I think it has a lot to do just with the power, the authority, of well-heeled countries, powerful countries, to shield their political and military members from prosecution by bodies like the ICC. 

Even if we were able to bring War Criminals to trial we just don’t have a true international police force that would arrest the offenders. 

                                   —————————

War is a place where young people who don’t know each other and don’t hate each other, kill each other, by the decision of older rulers who know each other and hate each other, but don’t kill each other. 

It’s a world in which if you have the power you also have the power not to be held accountable for your power.

image003.jpg
Where are we with the Russian Ukraine war?
 
Could Russian leaders be brought to justice under international law?
 
Yes.  Because they fall under the overarching crime of aggression, all uses of armed force by Russia on Ukrainian territory can be viewed as illegal.
 
But that doesn’t mean the country pointing the finger has always been in the right itself.
 
Are countries supplying arms prolonging the war? Yes  
 
The national interest is for this war to end. If we wish to stop war crimes then we need to stop the war. Prolonging it will only see more of the same.
 
We should not be blackmailed and guilt-tripped into feeding more weapons into the meat grinder. How about, just for once, we put our own interests first?                                            
 
On the other hand, understanding the twin meanings of ‘humanity’ means something universal and immensely important”. Recognising its worth is “the least we owe the dead.
 
Meanwhile, NATO is just itching to get further involved in the war. 

We live in a world in which making the wrong comment on social media can lead to people losing their jobs but where politicians and public officials, whose actions affect the lives of millions and whose failure can lead to deaths in the most unimaginable circumstances, can simply walk away and into their next lucrative assignment.

While our own media doubles down on warmongering. They seem not to care if further escalation will plunge all of Europe into economic hardship or risk wider conflict. For some reason, it’s news to Western pundits that war isn’t very nice.

In the end, this war is shining a light on just how useless our United Nations is and dark skin automatically made you less than human.

There was a day that the UN could muster Blue helmets to intervene in conflicts. Now, all it can do is pass worthless resolutions.

                                    —————– 

When it comes to war crimes, Ukraine’s hands are also blooded.

What’s bizarre about this is that these countries that are supplying millions in arms are the same people courting Ukrainian membership of the EU, as though Ukraine was some kind of liberal democracy.

As with all wars, they end with denials of involvement in killing the innocent which are called collateral damage or a mistake of identification by a rogue drone, or ballistic rocket.     

The issue of reparations doubtless will be raised in negotiations to resolve the conflict and as an international condition for resuming any normal relationship with Russia. If the sanctions are eventually lifted in stages, it could prove effective to include conditions requiring the surrender of indicted fugitives.

Perhaps if the United Nations were to tell Mr. Putin that it is going to place a few thousand Blue Helmets between the present front lines Russia would think twice about any further advancement. 

( It is however due to the presence of Nato on the Russian borders too late. As they would be labeled Nato, not UN) 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. HERE IS THE GOOD NEWS.

02 Wednesday Mar 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Our Common Values., Russia / Ukraine ., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations., World Politics

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

Up to now, we humans have tried everything to change the planet that we all live on – such as wipe out each other,  political systems,  cities,  religious beliefs, weapons of mass destruction, world organizations without any global clout, financial institutions manipulating power, money, elections, corruption, all enhancing inequality.

All are devoid of any asperation for peace and sharing. In fact, we have designed a world around the mantra  ” Pay as you go ” which includes all aspects of life even the privilege of paying for your own funeral. 

In the meantime, Earth is never stationary it spins at 1000 miles per hour. 

As Galileo Galilei said, “Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.” 

                                                  ————

 The “New Earth” that people envisioned never quite materialized as predicted. 

With the dramatic worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and now a new war in Ukraine, one could not be blamed for thinking what next rather than where next. 

I suppose that eventually, we will reach a tipping point, after which we will consider 4D/5D things “normal”.

Maybe in the distant future  “enlightenment”, will be more about knowing yourself as the consciousness that is witnessing reality.

Creating one’s reality for life and the planet that we truly love in which we are fully conscious and in full control over everything that we experience in our subconscious reality. Even so, we will still not be in full control of what happens to us and the environment we are in, because of our collective inability to agree that we are all the same.

So where are we? 

The most distinctive aspect of our approach is the lack of ‘long-term’ action.

Longterm is the idea that because such huge numbers of individuals might live in the long-run future, and because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact — over thousands, millions, or even billions of years.

In the 1950s, large-scale production of nuclear weapons meant that a few world leaders gained, for the first time, the ability to kill hundreds of millions of people.

This was a striking milestone in a robust trend: as technology improves and the world economy grows, it gets easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.

This is where we are.

                                        ——————

When we look at the history of the human race, we see many examples of major moral problems that most people were completely oblivious to. These include slavery, the deplorable treatment of foreigners, the subjugation of women, the persecution of people who aren’t heterosexual, and the gross mistreatment of animals.

New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future, but also pose catastrophic risks, and mitigating these risks is presently all but totally ignored.  Work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected — in some cases receiving attention from only a handful of researchers.

With machine learning, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own. This could lead to large, rapid improvements in human welfare, but there are good reasons to think that it could also lead to disastrous outcomes.

The problem of how one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood. You might think ‘why can’t we just turn it off?’, but of course, an intelligent system will give every indication of doing exactly what we want, until it is certain we won’t be able to turn it off.

Even if advanced machine intelligence does not get ‘out of control’, it is likely to be very socially disruptive and could be used as a destabilizing weapon of war.

There have been surprisingly few serious attempts to make such big-picture comparisons. 

There are many global issues we haven’t yet seen investigated much at all. These are not always the biggest problems in the world — rather they are the issues that receive little attention compared to how important they are and how much can be done about them.

Different problems could be bigger if there are problems that humanity hasn’t even thought of yet. And it seems likely that we haven’t discovered all the serious global problems which exist.

You might think by now that world politicians won’t be motivated to act on the results of global priorities.

I would say that if anyone is looking at the state of the world our focus should be more on oneness and unconditional love for all existence with a distinct set of rules about what you can and cannot do.

So here is the good news.

Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. 

The chance of great power conflict this century was around 45%, now it’s 100% and the chance of an extinction-level war was around 1% it is now with technology a lot more than doubters cannot dismiss. 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. 2022 WILL BE THE YEAR OF DIASTER CAPITALISM.

31 Friday Dec 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Digital age., Disaster Capitalism., Disasters., Environment, Extermination., Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Imagination., Inequality., Life., Money in Politics., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Privatization, Purpose of life., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Transition period or Implication period., Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid., World Economy., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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( Fifteen-minute read) 

When I first started looking at disaster capitalism, it was in the context of warfare and counter-terrorism, now it’s privatized exploitation of  Pandemics and Climate Change. 

During a major crisis, regular people are understandably focused on the everyday challenges of surviving. They rarely can also worry about private industries pushing local policy proposals that might negatively impact their lives never mind cashing in on Pandemics and Climate change.

Pandemics might be avoidable in the future but what is unavoidable is a Future Climate that stands to send more unprecedented emergencies, inconsistency, and destruction our way.

(Though it’s still feasible to prevent the planet from becoming completely uninhabitable, saying its crunch time is a massive understatement.)

They both provide the very conditions that give rise to disaster capitalism, which is developing more frequently with more companies and wealthy ‘Philanthropists’ seeing both as a growth sector, not to mention Sovernity Wealth Funds which are investing in everything from drinking water to you name it.

Why? 

Because they stand to make substantial financial returns for their beneficiaries and if managed properly could be contributing to sustainable development in a meaningful way. However, a deeper understanding of the drivers and influences of investor organizations is required to mobilize their capital effectively. 

Globally, sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) are a major source of capital that has the potential to invest for the long term in sectors that desperately need it. While Philanthropists donations usually only represent 0.05% of the billion accumulated.

(A fraction of the spoils of neoliberal tech capitalism, in the name of generosity, do not try to address the problems of wealth inequality which is created by a social and an economic system that allowed those spoils to accrue in the first place. They are small contributions to a large problem that were created by the success of the industry he or she is involved in.)

List of Top 8 World's biggest Philanthropists in 2021                                ————————-

Let’s put a magnifying Glass Philanthrocapitalism.

Philanthropy serves to legitimize capitalism, as well as to extend it further and further into all domains of social, cultural, and political activity.

Now don’t get me wrong.

Their donations are welcome, however, they are not the simple act of generosity they pretend to be. In this greedy world, it is good to see wealthy individuals repaying to help fix problems that their companies have often caused in the first place.

The risk of philanthrocapitalism is a takeover of charity by business interests, such that generosity to others is appropriated into the overarching dominance of the CEO model of society and its corporate institutions.

Today, large organizations can amass significant economic and political power, on a global scale, and essentially, what we are witnessing is the transfer of responsibility for public goods and services from democratic institutions to the wealthy, to be administered by an executive class.

When this happens what we witness is, on one hand, is exploitative of labor practices or corporate malpractice being swept under the carpet while the donator is accruing significant commercial, tax, free publicity, and political benefits.

Democracy is sacrificed on that altar of executive-style empowerment. 

The nature of this apparent charity should be openly questioned from the outset.

Because this reformulation of generosity – in which it is no longer considered incompatible with control and self-interest – is a hallmark of the “CEO society”: A society where the values associated with corporate leadership are applied to all dimensions of human endeavor.

What it does suggest, however, is that when it comes to giving, the CEO approach is one in which there is no apparent incompatibility between being generous, seeking to retain control over what is given, and the expectation of reaping benefits in return.

  What can be done?

As historian Mikkel Thorup explains, philanthrocapitalism rests on the claim that “capitalist mechanisms are superior to all others (especially the state) when it comes to not only creating economic but also human progress, and that the market and market actors are or should be made the prime creators of the good society”.

Now take Climate change which is going to take trillions to combat.

As global warming augments cycles of fire, flood, hurricanes, and viral mutations, we learn to live in anticipation, from emergency to emergency, sometimes even before the deaths have occurred.

Disaster capitalism and philanthrocapitalism will not work to revert the outcomes of Climate Change nor will technology, the unloving God. 

Why? 

Because Capitalism has turns everything including us into a product to be traded, resulting in most of the wealth in the world now owned by 1% of its population. 

Before ( not too long ago ) there were Markets now we have Market Societies thanks to the buying of shares and trading them, complements of the British Indian Company.  So a society that is organized around the principle that companies should not be prevented from making things that kill people must also accept as ‘normal’ that many people will die in large numbers from these things.

 But what makes something a disaster?

Certainly what makes a disaster is when the victim is humanly itself.

From epidemiological forecasters to genetic epidemiologists and computational and zoonosis biologists — are the new oracles upon whose prophecies financial markets rise and fall but the awaiting climate disaster will expose a world characterized by gross inequality that is getting worse and worse, year by year.

From the perspective of disaster capitalism, we might say that what makes COVID-19 a disaster is its arrival in woefully underinsured countries, unhealthy populations.

If we had a healthier population, would COVID-19 be considered a disaster? Possibly or perhaps not. To be sure, the virus is deadly, but like other disasters, the actual arrival of COVID-19 magnifies pre-existing vulnerability in ways that also figure in the calculus of disaster capitalism.

The uneven way the climate crisis will continue to impact certain countries. If private interests are already prepped to engage in disaster capitalism, those devoted to building a better world should be prepared with alternatives.

There is no such thing as a ‘natural disaster.’ There is also no such thing as a natural or certain response. But there is preparedness.

THE PROBLEM IS THAT WITH CAPITALISM IT IS UNABLE TO TACKLE SITUATIONS THAT ARE NOT TRADABLE.

As money materialized from fresh air the essentials for life will be traded – freshwater- energy- food- healthcare – education – data – etc. 

We must arm ourselves with knowledge, and laws that ensure transparency. 

What we have at the moment is the transfer of power to technology which we know sweet fuck all about with no regulations. 

Unrivaled power.

One only has to look at Jeff Bezos, the Bransons, the Mark Zuckerberg’s, Apple, Google, etc.

We all work for one or the other for free while they entertain themselves blasting off to space with friends and worthless actors in giant phallic symbols of power. 

However, the real story will unpack differently long before anyone lives on another planet. It will be how our mental well-being – is impacting every facet of our lives.

The total mortality from COVID-19 on a global scale is as yet unknown, but we have been thinking of it as a disaster for weeks now.

What exactly is the disaster, then?

Pandemics have become a dominant framework through which government and financial resources are mobilized in Global Health.

There’s been a lot of dithering about whether or not COVID-19 is a disaster, meanwhile, inequality is growing, and both corporations and the wealthy find ways to avoid the taxes that the rest of us pay.

There is the virus, and then there is the societal reaction of bringing our entire fiscal and economic infrastructure to a near-complete standstill.

Morbid diseases that persist as chronic forms for years but eventually kill more people to seem less like disasters.

It’s not a moment to sort of sit on the sidelines and hope for the best.

We all appreciate with the current pandemic that some are making hay while the sun shines, at our expense. Unfortunately, there is little point in getting the Jabs, to extend your time on earth if the earth itself is dying and what remains is been turned into trading products.

You’ve got to fight for your vision of for-profit corporate solutions that may succeed in creating company profits but ultimately fail in terms of democracy, fairness, and justice.

Conclusion:  

To address the problems with greed and power create, we must create equality and this can not be done in a Profit-seeking Capitalist way of trading our way out of the pending disasters.  Wall Street will never close.  

So here is an idea that might help.

Non-Trading Capitalism.  

Green non-tradable bonds to be issued online at a global scale, with guaranteed percentage returns, with a yearly prize draw.

Or

Place a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all tradable financial instruments. (see previous posts) 

Either of the above could be implemented with the click of a switch ensuring a perpetual source of disaster non-profitable funding. 

Both would create trillions and allow fairness and involvement of us all.

It is perhaps worth remembering that capitalism, like its alternatives, is an adaptation to circumstances. It is not a virtue, not a standard for judgment, not a measure of right or nobility. It’s just another ‘ism’

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

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THE ENVIORMENT MORE IMPORTAIN THAN THE ECONOMY?

09 Thursday Dec 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., A Constitution for the Earth., Algorithms., Capitalism, Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Economic Depression., Emergency powers., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Pandemic, Politics., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income ., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Five-minute read) 

With the continuation of the covid pandemic, this is going to become the big question because the two are intertwined.

If this pandemic drags on, which appears it will do with new variants, the degree of economic harm will become extreme, resulting in a different kind of “ailment” worse than the one we’re supposedly trying to “cure.”

Either way, the current shackling of the economy cannot be allowed to drag on much longer, or we will find ourselves in a full-blown global depression — and then more people will die.

However, if you combine the pandemic with the other major crises Climate Change the Environment wins hands down. 

Why? 

Because in the long run if the environment is not protected it will inevitably lead to the depletion of economic resources and the destruction of the earth and human life. 

In this world, humans are not here for only survival there are many other aspects that are necessary for the lives of humans. The economy is not, and never was intended as, “an end in itself”.

Everything that belonged to humans came from the environment but we can live without an economy, but not without our environment!

We’re all in this together.

There’s just enough truth to that to convince the average citizen — but the more insidious (and, I believe, likely intended) effect is to promote public docility;

To persuade us to go along with any and all directives issued by the authorities.

An economy is good only insofar as it satisfies our needs for freedom to enjoy the actuality of living, not valuing profit over life itself. On the physical level, human lives literally depend on the economy; not only for paying the bills and preparing for retirement but for healthcare itself.

With no economy, there is no point in having a good environment. everything in the history of the world created by humans came from the environment.

A “healthy” economy is an indicator of a “healthy” society. They live side by side.

If the goal of government policy is only “to slow the spread of infections”“

If you think the economy is more important than the environment, try holding your breath while counting your money.” — Guy McPherson.

The cure shouldn’t be worse than the disease. Government handling of any public emergency — if those in power are rational and just — will be balanced with their handling of the economy.

Pope Francis said on Sunday that people are more important than the economy, as countries decide how quickly to reopen their countries from coronavirus lockdowns.

What do you think the economy is? 

It is people but unfortunately, with our present system of capitalist economies, people do not benefit equally from its growth. Essential workers versus the unemployed, shareholders versus self-employed, foodbanks versus dialing a meal, the list is endless however without humans, how can we hope to repair anything?

To remove these inequalities is impossible but an economy based on universal basic income for all would allow people to look after themselves rather than state handouts.

Providing inflation was controlled it would go a long way to leveling up. 

Instead, the possibility of dictatorial governments using technology data is now on the cards. This fear is exacerbated by the average person’s lack of reflection on just what “the economy” is, and what it means to both individual freedom and the public good.

History has shown us we shouldn’t underestimate the threat to our liberty arising from the government’s response to Covid. There’s no reason to assume that after the pandemic — if there is an “after” — all democratic governments will voluntarily relinquish their newly acquired power.

Sure the government’s first obligation is to ensure people can survive both Climate change and the virus but without the means to change the way we live our lives it will be meanless.  

So it’s time for the media to make the cost of human life better understood.

It’s time for the advertising industry to stop promoting consumption for profit. 

It’s time to regulate Profit for-profit technology such as non-transparent Algorithms. 

Either we are really all in this together or we are not.

Of course, together will remain only words till we address the weakness which is at the heart of any nation-state project ( Like the current Vaccination program)

The vast majority are unable to participate because of a lack of compensation, by the capacity ( notably economic) of the capitalist system to ensure that everybody enjoys certain equality of access to material well-being. A Basis Universal income would rectify that.      

Modern societies can easily get by without cultural integration, tolerating a situation of competitive pluralism of values without automatically sinking into anarchy feared by the sociological tradition of inequality, if given the means to do so.  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY ARE WE SO BLIND TO WHAT IS HAPPING IN THE WORLD.

16 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence.,  Attention economy, Big Data., Communication., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., MISINFORMATION., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

What if you woke up tomorrow and everything you had thought was true was a deception?

A deception formed by people that stood to profit from your ignorance. Not just on one small area but every facet of your existence.

Would you want to know? Or, would you be content with the life you had before you discovered the truth? Could you close your eyes and act as if nothing ever happened?

What if you could see the ways that you have been deceived and the way that those that came before you were made to believe a lie? How valuable would the truth become? Would it make you change your habits? your routines? the way you talk or think or speak? Would it impact you or would you brush it off and carry on with business as usual?

What if after waking up you decided to respond to that truth?

What if you started studying history and world events and, like a string of pearls, events were no longer random but contained a sequence? What if that sequence was repeating? What if while studying these events they began to seem familiar?

None so Blind2.jpg

 

We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats with Covid. 

All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.

There is an entire media world around us, that we’re completely fine with THAT FEEDS US FOR THE MOST PART SHIT AS ENTERTAINMENT. 

There is an advertising industry that is turning climate change into products to sell.

Bio this Bio that. Shop to save the world.

Our lives are taken over by technology – smartphones, Ipads, Apps. This menace is seen in the increased addiction of internet users to social media and other internet products; and the exploitation of internet users by internet companies.

The internet and social media are like a two-faced coin; one side is good and the other is bad. These inventions are now abused and used against our existence and survival.

The internet and computers are daily changing our lives and improving efficiency, almost taking over our lives with some sectors where technology is taking over how we live and do business.

Emails and social media platforms have changed communication, both individually and business-wise.

Financial transactions and business deals are now completed in a matter of seconds.

The idea of constantly visiting a doctor for medical checks is almost becoming obsolete with the invention of the wearable.

Robots are increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes.

                                         ——————-

The Zombie Apocalypse May Not Be How You Originally Envisioned, it’s time to give ourselves a reality check. 

We are shells of who we may have been because instead of looking around and experiencing the life we are dependent upon a lit-up screen.

We are lacking socialization; instead of talking to and spending time with other people, we are getting all our information from the Internet.

The Internet is an amazing resource, but there are some things it cannot teach or give you.

It cannot teach you the value of spending time with friends and family, or how to live life to the fullest by being present in the current moment. You never know just how many opportunities and experiences pass you by because you are looking down at your screen.

Each generation is becoming more and more dependent, and no longer sustain skills that were once deemed necessary. We have lost social skills, manners, and expect everything to be delivered to us as fast as the Internet does

We are all so distracted by our phones that we have not fully noticed the zombie apocalypse that is happening right in front of us.

Technology is a beautiful thing, but if we cannot learn how to use it responsibly and in moderation, our future may not be as bright as the screens we are holding.

                                                ———–

The important thing people need to realize.

The chances are, you’re probably reading this on your phone right now.

Maybe you saw it while you were scrolling through Facebook, or maybe you came across it while making random Google searches. The point is, you used some sort of technology to be able to access this article.

Nowadays, people use technology as a filler.

Try to remember what life was like before you were attached to technology by the hip.

I bet you spent your time doing totally different things than you currently are doing.

Maybe you used to read actual books, go outside and enjoy the weather, spend quality time with your family or communicate with people through handwritten letters rather than emails and text messages.

The reality is that our lives have completely changed.

But is it for the better, or worse?

The basis of democracy is the idea that people of sound judgment, wisdom, and morality should be chosen to lead the government, make decisions for the masses, and direct the force of the state/government. 

“The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” Frederic Bastiat 

A divided people are easier to rule. 

Governments act in multiple ways to seduce us into their service.

For the masses, this is done through the illusion of welfare and public spending in which the state first robs us through taxation and then bribes us into supporting it by giving us a percentage of the stolen funds back in the forms of government welfare programs. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS THE WORLD SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL ?

10 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change.,  Attention economy, Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Olympic circus., OLYMPICS GAMES., Our Common Values., Poverty, Religion., Religious Beliefs., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, Unanswered Questions., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Twenty-minute read) 

 

To quote:

Stephen Hawking

“Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see

events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding

of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are

here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is

justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less

than a complete description of the universe we live in.”

                                               —————–

Humans have – over time – developed a vast global network of social structures which

collectively organize the functioning of the entire species. 

But we remain unable to live in harmony either with each other and with nature, so we

all understand that on some levels that the world is spinning out of control and there’s

nothing we can do about it.

Why?

Because we have created a living system of greed/profit/ inequality/ and religious

beliefs that are now all but un-reversible and that will follow us where ever we go.

It has been the way of the world ever since the dawn of man that he who dominates is the one who controls.

About 85 percent of the world’s population identifies with a religious group.

Religion and humankind have gone hand in hand ever since the concept of a being and still, the fight for supremacy goes on:

Christianity, Daoism, Confucianism, Judaism, Buddhis, ISLAM, Santería, Hinduism, Vodou, Yoruba Religion, Cambomblé.

“When religion ruled the world it was called the Dark Ages”. 

“If you think it doesn’t still rule the world you’re kidding yourself.”

From fundamentalist terrorists to gay civil rights it seems religion still dictates people’s beliefs and therefore the laws that are put into place the world over.

Religions create unity, yes but they also create Separatism which we are becoming painfully aware that.

Although our religions gave us a starting place for thinking about how our world functions, they no longer serve us in that process; and in fact, have left a trail of destruction in their historic path.

The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam. The goal of Christianity was and still is similar without the need for Jihads.   

People need to stop using religion as a crutch for their conscience.

                                              ————

Back to the world spinning out of control.

It is not that the world itself is all of suddenly spinning on its axis, it is us who are still unable to live with each other in a sustainable respectful manner that is spinning out of control.  

However, those of us who recently watched the Para Olympics and the closing ceremony in Japan surely realize that the world we live in is connected in more ways than one.

By now, we’re all familiar with the tech world circle-jerk about how we’re connecting the planet and the world is getting smaller and we’re all becoming one big kumbaya global community and how this is amazing because starving babies in Mozambique and Suriname can each have their own iPad, and blah, blah, blah, the internet is cool.

On the other hand, we have also witnessed the tragedies of current wars affecting the world and people in the future.

People will probably point to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as the inflection point where the US began its slow descent from global dominance.

That the American Dream is now essentially just another form of what psychologists call “The Just World Hypothesis.”American Dream Homeless Man

                                           ————————

Don’t get me wrong, the rise of the internet and social media has accelerated social progress in many ways.

By nearly every objective measure, the world is a better place than it has ever been in modern history.

So why doesn’t it feel that way?

Could it be that a transition of power is soon to happen?

It is an old saying that knowledge is power and if so our world is rapidly becoming a world driven by the power of data. 

Every two days now we create as much information as we did from the dawn of civilization up until  2021.  That’s something like five exabytes of data.

While technology is neutral, people are not ready for what’s coming.

Technology might be giving a chance for humans to maintain their presence but without education that imparts knowledge, it is inevitable, that those who indirectly or directly have the data will control power in the world. 

                                          ———————-

This is both good and bad.

Because outrageous news and information spread faster and further than any other form of information, dominating our daily attention. 

On the one hand, we become aware of some of the grossest injustices in our society as soon as they happen. On the other hand, all we hear about are the grossest injustices in our society as soon as they happen.

The sickest and most grotesque finds its way to the top of the nation’s consciousness, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps.

But the world isn’t worse.

It’s just that we’re more aware of all of the bad things than ever before.

Cameras, the internet, and most importantly, social media. This is what’s new.

                                         ———————-

In the attention economy, people are rewarded for extremism.

Thomas Davenport, a professor and former researcher at McKinsey and Accenture, wrote a book called Attention Economy in 2001.

In it, he wrote “As the theory of the economics of attention, user’s attention is a scarce resource that multiple information competes for. With the development of the Internet, especially the explosion of online social media, netizens (online citizens) receive redundant messages from various online channels such as Facebook, Twitter, and online forums, which results in extremely severe information overload problem”

So in the attention economy, anyone trying to connect with an audience must treat the user’s time as the ultimate resource.

For example: 

The idea is that many products work together so people never have to leave the ecosystem because it has everything you need.

Attention in technology is the currency in the double-sided marketplace of consumer products.

The seller gives access to technologies (apps, social media, digital products) in exchange for the buyer (users/people) spends their time and attention to access products.

Everyone online seems to solicit our attention, how do we decide who to give it to?

People have a limited amount of attention to spend and as attempts are made to control the spending of attention a person’s willpower diminishes.

So should we be asking  “Are products giving enough in return for the attention they take?” Should all tech companies be paying us for the data they collect and sell rather than we value your privacy or this site contains cookies. 

While social media platforms and TV stations are rewarded for indulging their worst biases and stoking other people’s worst fears. They are rewarded for portraying the world as a place that is burning to the ground, whether it’s because of the Taliban, or police violence, or Islamic terrorism, or low interest rates. 

And this constant awareness of every fault and flaw of our humanity, combined with an inundation of doomsayers and narcissistic nihilists commanding our attention space, is what is causing this constant feeling of a chaotic and insecure world that doesn’t actually exist. 

We are going crazy?

Each one of us, individually, capsized in the flood of negativity, we are ready to burn down the very structures on which the most successful civilizations in human history have been built. Exaggerating all that is wrong and minimizing all that is right.

It’s for this reason that I’ve started to remove myself from digesting news and information through social media. Nothing will replace face-to-face interaction.

Ever since the dawn of time; this has never been more true than today no!

                                       ————————

Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.

In a weird sense, true freedom doesn’t exist.

Because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.

A free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, that can tolerate dissatisfaction, that can be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.

In a culture where your worth as a human being is tied to your level of socioeconomic success, this can’t be achieved. 

By the time you reach adolescence, you are subjected to live’s first traumas and failures. You recognize that the world isn’t fair. Things go wrong sometimes. Bad things happen to good people and vice versa. And in many ways, you’re not as great as you had always thought or believed.

Other teenagers, particularly teenagers who are pampered and learn most of what they know about the world through TV or the internet, don’t handle it so well.

The world doesn’t conform to their small-minded belief system and instead of blaming the belief system, they blame the world. And that blaming doesn’t turn out well for anybody.

That things are not just. That we cannot fully control our destiny.

The question is how well we will adapt and mature to this new reality.

Will we accept it and modify our ethos to match the 21st century?

Or will we become petulant and angry and scapegoat the cognitive dissonance of our national consciousness away?

Viewing every opportunity in front of you as something you’re going to fail at before you even try. This is because you have low self-esteem and your attitude and beliefs are only going to perpetuate it.

It’s time to let go and rise above the outdated and cruel exploits of our past that we inherited from our ancestors, and realize that the early misinterpretations of our world do not have to define the future of humanity.

It has long ceased to amaze me what humans are capable of doing to each other, but working together makes anything possible. 

We have reached a time in our history where the misunderstandings of the past must be reconciled and the truth about the origins of our early beliefs must be revealed.

It’s time that our world’s religions face the tragic horrors of their past and make honest progression towards love and kindness for all of humanity.

Finally: 

The present state of the planet is not going to change because all of a sudden we are all beating our chests chanting Maya cupula May cupula. 

It is not going to change because we all agreed it has to be in a forthcoming Climate change conference. It is not going to change because we wish it to do so. 

Actions are the only way it has any hope of changing.  These are enormous and will take years if not decades to achieve.

But here is one action that could be achieved in your lifetime.   

As we witness in both the Para Olympics and the Olympics competition is a gift and as a gift, it is given unconditionally, with nothing expected in return.

Although the Olympics and the Para Olympics shine a light on what is best in humanity’s endeavors, it suffers from the backdrop of a world full of poverty, inequality, and the like. With countries spending millions to host the games or allocating funds to win gold medals when these funds could be used to alleviate foodbanks, social care, health care, etc.  

This unnecessary enormous cost of staging the games could be wiped out if the Olympic Games were permanently held in the country of their origins Greece.  

There is no reason that the countries of the world could not build a permanent Olympic stadium in Greece. 

Such a move would save 3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) = equal to the annual emissions from about a million cars.

Even setting aside the carbon footprint question it would scrap the bigger-is-better ethos that cities still cling to when they find themselves on the global stage. Which in most cases up to now leave behind multipurpose, venues that become useless eyesores after the games conclude.

We need a radical rethink of how the games are run if we want them to be compatible with our definition of sustainability. 

The green games for a blue planet could be established permanently In Greece.   

How do we get to net-zero emissions?

This question will define the global economy for the next century.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS; IS THIS OUR BRAVE NEW WORLD?

26 Monday Jul 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Disaster Capitalism., Earth, Enegery, Human Collective Stupidity., International solidarity., Modern day life., OLYMPICS GAMES., Our Common Values., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Ten-minute read) 

We are at a pivotal moment in human history not because we still don’t really know where we come from, or if we are alone in the Universe, or do we really matter. 

It is, of course, impossible to put into a sentence or a paragraph what is wrong with the world never mind the Universe.  

But it’s possible to describe our world in a word.  Beautiful and we humans occupy an extraordinary place in it. 

The strange fact is that in this age of information when data is our currency of communication, most of us have no idea how to picture the world never mind the universe. 

The last time the Western culture shared a coherent understanding of our world I would say, was away back in the middle ages, when Galileo discovered that we were not the center of the universe. 

Now with climate change and the current Pandemic, it is as if we have just started to see the world in color,  and that changes, not just what is far away, but what’s right here. 

This discovery of the state of our plant challenges us to reframe everything and there is little point in learning a lot of science unless you can do something valuable in life with that knowledge.

                                                       ——–

There is only one image of our world that shows us this.

The photo shows no countries on our planet, only landmass, oceans, and clouds. 

Our endless preoccupation with nations and racial or ethical groups is completely misleading our intuitions.

This image shows our glorious plant in its true state without language in all its forms, cultural identification, religious beliefs, all are just tools, to shepherding ourselves successfully through the coming state of the world 

This is going to require tremendous creativity, combined with more than a large dose of common sense, which unfortunately down the centuries and now is lacking in the collective management of our planet Earth.  

                                                          ————–     

However, we live in a world where all information is freely available at the click of a mouse, so what has changed?

We’re seeing a lazy entitlement wash over the world where everyone feels as though they deserve what they want from their government the second they want it, without thought of repercussions or the rest of the population.

It seems like people don’t actually want democracy anymore, they want a dictator who agrees with them.

The sickest and most grotesque NEWS TOPPING THE CHART, dominating our attention and the news cycle, dividing and recruiting us into its ever more polarized camps, giving us a skewed view of how other people in the world really think, act, and live.

It seems like our new brave world is JUGED by a group of people that represents 0.01%, who take refuge in their own precious identity politics with us buying more and more into a worldview that is disconnected from cold data and hard facts?

The impact of the pandemic is showing despite loud warnings that continuing economic growth is incompatible with sustainability.

                                      ——————–

So let’s take a look at the state of the world.

Even if we did stand on the moon it is a sad read and any solutions will not be found in religious beliefs or technology or in politics but in learning from history.  

There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved. Over 37 (or 42) million people have by killed by wars in the 20th century. Three times more people have been killed in wars in the last 90 years than in all the previous 500.

Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today.

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

Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.

Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined.

33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied.

 1/3rd of the world’s labor force is unemployed or underemployed.  

1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor.

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty.’

Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty.

800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 

1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. 

870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.

Over 100 million people live in slums.

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%.

The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid.

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

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years.

60% of the world’s coral reefs, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct.

Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

An estimated 40-80 million people will be forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands.

                                               —————-

The reality no matter how one looks at it, is that the old assumptions that provided the unifying ideas within our cultures are eroding because of our technological advancement, and although we are seeing what may prove to be the emergence of a new worldview consensus based on the Critical Theory it has not solidified its hold on society as yet.

With technology and Algorithms, our cultures have and are continuing to accept the idea that objective truth is inaccessible and that truth itself is, therefore, relative and personal, but how we conduct ourselves is just as important — even more important is how we do it sustainably and so far we have made a great job of it.

The world is now facing a collision of not just climate change but is colliding with finite resources in a much that the current economic growth could end or totally collapse in the not-so-distant future.  

                                              —————

But a free and functioning democracy demands a populace that can sustain discomfort, tolerate dissatisfaction, be charitable and forgiving of groups whose views stand in contrast to one’s own, and most importantly, that can remain unswayed in the face of some violent threat.

The words ” We Need” are only words.  They should be replaced the words ” Action Now” 

Why?

Because we also need to be clear in our own hearts and minds about the solution to the world’s problems. If we are to do anything we must break the alignment between theological advancement –  climate change and pollution. 

The world is at a crossroads as the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on the global economy have combined with increasing polarization and highly charged elections.  

                                                    —————

So what will we do? 

Probably have a conference.

But if you could change the world, what would you do?

We live our entire lives as aspiring presidents, aspiring movie producers, aspiring artists, aspiring authors, aspiring human rights activists, aspiring world-renowned scientists, and aspiring thought leaders while we sit in front of our TV screens, walk around glued to Smartphones, or Ipads that fed us pictures of climate change, wars, the covid pandemic, racism, political/economical collapse.

All Encouraging us on one hand, to think that the world is more violent than it really is while on the other hand promoting the glamorous life of people that believe that they are better off than we are;

What I fear is that we’re seeing now is a loss of that ability to handle discomfort and dissatisfaction.

What I would do is help people think for themselves.

Amazon Owner Jeff Bezos Travels Into Space  

While governments introduce more and more taxes to pay for inequality/economic growth charities competing to raise funds to save almost everything, from adopting everything from a child to a fish or animal to a plant, in the real world.

Taxes form a key ingredient in the social contract between citizens and the economy but How taxes are raised and spent can determine a government’s very legitimacy. 

Health programs:  Military: Social Security: Interest on the national debt: Education programs:  Food and agricultural benefits: Pensions. Government machinery.

                               —————————-

Our new world now needs solidarity more than ever to make the world a better place.

Presently in a year when the world is fighting a pandemic, the Olympics in Japan will once again show us what we are capable of in sport to bring our true authentic selves to every situation.  ( See:  Post –  The Olympics games show be permanently hosted in Greece.)  

It represents a true coming together not separation, in a true spirit of humanity.

Without this coming together there will be no new world but a world run by algorithms that will not treat us as equal.

But how can you take on the problems of the world when there’s so much to do already?

In science, we have been staggered by revelation after revelation that things are not what we previously thought them to be, and beneath each layer of reality we have unpeeled lies another.  It is not hard to piece together all this information to comprehensively picture what the end times will look like.

 If so, what are we to do about it?

The only way to beat the attention economy is to opt out of it.

As the growth models of countries cannot be sustained Countries need to overcome political hurdles to invest in infrastructure and human capital.

How?

One way is to publish the information about political capture so that the public can hold politicians to account for reforms.

Because the only way for human rights to persist is for everyone to collectively agree to accept that things don’t have to go their way 100% of the time.

Freedom can only exist when you are willing to tolerate views that oppose your own when you’re willing to give up some of your desires for the sake of a safe and healthy community when you’re willing to compromise and accept that sometimes things don’t go your way and that’s fine.

Finally, we must accept that world problems will always be with us.

The world has woken up to the need to curb emissions and invest in climate resilience.
But we all need to move faster down this path, we now have less than 100 days to go until the UN climate summit, Cop26 arrives in Glasgow.

Five years on from the Paris Agreement, and with countless evidence that the climate crisis is worsening, the negotiations will focus on nationally determined contributions to stop the world from warming above 1.5 degrees. But as the countries confer with each other, it will be the people of the world who have the most to say: we need action, need more of it, and need it now.

They will not address nature and climate as one. 

HOW CAN YOU GET INVOLVED? 

We know that the production of energy is the biggest contributor to global warming.

If we want action not promises to reduce carbon emissions in twenty years in thirty years there is no reason that non-repayable grants could be made available to everyone to convert to green energy by installing solar panels.

So why not use the tools that are available to demand our governments to do so on

Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Emails to  cop26@cabinetoffice.gov.uk.    

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