For 90 minutes to two hours or more each night, every single person on Earth dreams.
The best creative ideas occur while we’re sleeping.
Dreams can be a rich source of inner wisdom.
Most dreams operated on the level of stories, myths and archetypes — making them a wonderful source of ideas and inspiration.
No longer dismissed by psychologists as random neuron firings or meaningless fantasies, dreams are now considered an ongoing thought process that just happens to occur while we are asleep.
In 1816, the story of Frankenstein, often cited as the world’s first science fiction novel, was inspired by a vivid nightmare..
In 1845, Howe, invented the sewing machine based on a famous dream that helped him understand the mechanical penetration of the needle.
Niels Bohr, saw the nucleus of the atom, with electrons spinning around it, much as planets spin around their sun.
Einstein As it happens came to the extraordinary scientific achievement – discovering the principle of relativity – after having a vivid dream.
Ramanujan said that, throughout his life, he repeatedly dreamed of a Hindu goddess known as Namakkal. She presented him with complex mathematical formulas over and over, which he could then test and verify upon waking. Once such example was the infinite series for Pi:
In 1886, Stevenson, dreamed up three key sequences from the infamous fantasy thriller novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Otto Loewi, a German-born pharmacologist upon awakening went directly to his lab to prove the Noble Prize-winning theory of chemical transmission of the nervous impulse.
August Kekulé, insightful dreamed of the structure of the Benzene molecule
Frederick Banting, had a dream telling him to surgically ligate (tie up) the pancreas of a diabetic dog in order to stop the flow of nourishment. He did – and discovered a disproportionate balance between sugar and insulin.
John Lennon, wrote a best-selling song — one of his most iconic solo works — based on a dream he had.
Surrealist painter Salvador Dali, has called many of his works “hand-painted dream photographs,” and one of his most famous renderings was inspired by an actual dream. “Persistence of Memory,
Paul McCartney, composed the melody for “Yesterday” — the most-covered song in music history — in a dream one night in 1964.
Edgar Allan Poe, suffered from nightmares throughout his life, and they were said to sometimes inspire his poems and short stories.
Stephen King, dreams formed the basis of the 2001 novel turned film Dream Catcher.
James Cameron, had a fever dream — there was an explosion, and coming out of it was a robot, cut in half,after he awoke, and once back in the United States, he hammered out a draft of what would become The Terminator.
Carl Jung, “The Red Book,” is a massive collection of years of Jung’s dreams, fantasies, surrealist dialogues and psychedelic drawings.Like Nolan, director
Richard Linklater, used his dreams as inspiration for some of his greatest films, including the animated film “Waking Life,”
On Aug. 28, 1963, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
But dreams don’t always tell a simple story, and the field of dream research becomes even more fascinating when people from different cultures and backgrounds report having similar dreams.
“Dreams are a universal language, creating often elaborate images out of emotional concepts.”
What are dreams for?
No one really knows the precise function of dreams.
We’ve evolved to dream about scary situations more than positive ones.
Dreaming sleep starts late, and can erupt into consciousness.
“During rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, our muscles become paralyzed — a good thing, since that keeps our bodies from acting out jumping, running, punching, etc.
You may not always remember your dreams, but scientists say we all dream at some point during sleep.
You can try to control the content and stickiness of your dreams — if you believe the many new smart phone apps that are available.
App-influenced dreams are exactly like the movie “Inception” — not yet, anyway.
The fewer fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field (geomagnetic activity), the more dream-inducing sleep hormone the body produces.
The more you play video games, the more control and awareness you’ll have in your dreams — like playing your “character” in your sleep,
The prefrontal cortex, which usually keeps these things in check, goes offline as you dream.
The fantasies you deny or otherwise make taboo are also likelier to play out in your sleep.
Unfortunately most of our dreams are about >
Being Chased: The fear of actually being chased, but rather what we’re running from.
Water: Our emotions or our unconscious minds.
Vehicles: What direction we feel our life is taking.
People: Dreaming of a lover.
Paralysis: Lack control in our waking life.
Death: The end of one thing, in order to make room for something new.
Falling: Letting go.
Nudity: Vulnerability.
Food: Energy.
Sex: Outlet for sexual expression. Sex happens in only 4 percent of women’s dreams and 12 percent of men’s. Erotic and perverse dreams are more common among stomach sleepers than among those who favor other positions, found a Hongkongese study (face down in the pillow, privates pressed, you can imagine how).
House: The dreamer’s mind.
Baby: Represents something new.
Flying: Control we feel we have in our lives.
Money: Wining the Lotto. All problems solved or just beginning.
Are you desperate to wake up and be able to recount all your bizarre dreams to some poor friend or unsuspecting colleague?
If you want to be that person start taking Vitamin B-6.
Your dreams will be more vividly and it will help you to recall the dreams the following morning, according to a study. But hold back on those bananas as too much of the vitamin can mean you won’t get to sleep at all.
Ninety percent of us have had a nightmare in the past year.
Nightmares can be good for your mental health.
On a subconscious level, dreaming about conflicts helps to resolve inner turmoil at the times when we need to most. This is how we work through our emotions.
Oh, and incidentally, women have more nightmares than men.
Nightmares may actually result in a shorter labor, found researchers at the University of Messina in Italy. Eighty minutes, on average — that’s how much faster women with nightmares gave birth, compared to those who had pleasant dreams. (They also have a lower rate of postpartum depression.)
A day’s events often come back to us in dreams that night — but just as often, they show up a week later. It’s the “dream-lag effect.”
During REM, the hippocampus takes five to seven days to transfer select memories to long-term storage in the neocortex, found a study led by Mark Blagrove, director of the Sleep Lab at Swansea University.
This means that if you spot your ex today, next week’s dream will put him in a softer, kinder light than tonight’s.
It’s no secret the Internet has changed the way we do many things and that I have no problem with a flutter.
As with most of my posts I am not going to exam the pros and cons of the Gambling Industry but ask some questions that need to be addressed due to its growing presents on our Television screens on our Smart Phones and the like.
To express that portable gaming will never affect the internet’s gambling industry within the next six years is a massive understatement.
This market centers not upon the makers of these games, but upon the players themselves and attaches real, monetary values to their virtual accomplishments.
The main reason I am writing this post however is not to be labeled a spoil sport but to highlight that Online Gambling is now being promoted on our television screens ( As you will have observed during the recent Rugby World Cup) – Bet now in play – responsible Gambling.
In my view this is non responsible gambling advertising which does not advertise gambling in a socially responsible manner and provide key information to consumers.
Its bad enough to have the Lotto Draw taking up prime Television viewing with late night roulette channels ruling the roost till early morning.
One line betting is a major issue to be dealt with, which is spreading with little Many of these advertisements claim that they have free gambling or give away free money. Do you think they would really give you that money if they weren’t confident that you would get hooked and spend it all on there site or if they thought that they wouldn’t get it all back?
Welcome Bonus up to £88 free!
Internet gambling represents one of the fastest growing segments of online activity with more than seven hundred web sites now providing users the opportunity to wager everything from casino games to sporting events.
According to internet research firms, the industry will pull in $1.5 billion in world-wide revenues this year. That figure is expected to hit $86.b by 2016.
All good source of revenue for Government if like France, where there is no gambling except state gambling.
Online gambling is particularly popular with around 6.8 million consumers in the EU and a wide variety of operators offering services.
The EU gambling market is estimated at around EUR 84.9 billion and grows at a yearly rate of around 3%. On a global basis, online gaming or i Gaming as it has been called has grown into a multi-billion dollar business, particularly in Europe.
With Some gambling sites report increasing shares of their total revenues stemming from mobile and gambling search words, which are increasingly originating from phones and tablets.
In the past online gaming used to mainly attract younger men, but that demographic group has expanded to include both women and older age groups. Smartphones and tablets, with help from social media apps and irresponsible TV advertising, are changing the demographics of gamers.
Four years ago, there was one online gambling site; today it’s estimated there are between 300 and 400.
To some, gambling on the net may just be an entertaining past time, but for many others it soon becomes a serious addiction.
In 2015, online poker alone yielded 329 million British pounds, up from roughly 290 million British pounds in 2O13. You may rest assured that Mr Cameron is not wanting any changes to gambling laws in his renegotiation of EU membership.
So where is the problem?
Because consumers in Europe search beyond national borders for more competitive online gambling services, they can be exposed to risks such as fraud.
Some people believe that online casinos are good for the local economy because they provide jobs and tax revenue for a community. This may be true but the community isn’t local. Most online casinos are located overseas to avoid taxes.
Different kinds of gambling services often operate across borders and can also operate outside the control of individual EU countries’ national authorities.
The credit card is the oxygen of Internet gambling.
Games are at the forefront of creating a rich virtual world, but one could imagine other possibilities, such as virtual museums with electronic art or digital archives.
Not to be confused with e-commerce, virtual commerce, the buying and selling of virtual items on or off-line, is developing into something that cannot be ignored.
How will online communities value virtual goods? What will be the ethical nature of virtual commerce?
One has to ask, do all sports disciplines benefit from on-line gambling exploitation rights in a similar manner to horse-racing and, if so, are those rights exploited?
Despite the rapid growth of online gaming, land-based gambling still dwarfs the internet activity.
In 2014, the gambling industry made a total contribution of approximately 240 billion U.S. dollars to the U.S. economy, directly employing 734 thousand people. In a spring 2014 survey by Nielsen Scarborough, almost 80 million Americans admitted to having visited a casino in the past 12 months.
Across the UK, France and Spain, betting, in particular sports betting, was the largest segment of the online gambling market.
Online gaming includes such activities as poker, casinos (where people can play traditional casino games, like roulette or blackjack, but online), sports betting, bingo and lotteries. Of these, casino games and sports betting make up the largest share of the market.
What does gaming stand to lose or gain from its development as a financial enterprise, facilitated by its new-found popularity?
PayPal has started appearing on a few U.S. gambling sites including Caesars Interactive’s WSOP.com website.
Faced with information overload, consumers rely on labels such as Betway, Bet 365, Titan Bet, 1888 Casino, Europa Casino.
Should government somehow control how much one bets by setting limits on people?
Should advertising be allowed to suggest gambling is a rite of passage?Exploit the susceptibilities, aspirations, credulity, inexperience or lack of knowledge of under-18s or other vulnerable persons.
Is solitary gambling more preferable to social gambling?
There is little doubt in regards to the future from mobile gaming.
While currently approximately 5% with the best positioned online are actually done on cellular devices, this number is likely to rocket to a lot more like 50% throughout the next 3 to 5 years.
If the government is serious about … [avoiding] the kids of today becoming the gambling addicts of tomorrow some sort of regulation is long over due.
These principles should include effective and efficient registration of players, age verification and identification controls – in particular in the context of money transactions, reality checks (account activity, warning signs, sign posting to help lines), no credit policy, protection of player funds, self-restriction possibilities (time/financial limits, exclusion) as well as customer support and efficient handling of complaints.
Online gambling promotes addiction and presents great potential for criminal abuse such as identity theft and other forms of cyber crime.
Credit card fraud and theft of banking credentials are reported to be the most common crime in relation to on-line gambling.
It wont be long before the Selling of lottery tickets will be persecuting us day in day out.
Our routine practices, unfortunately, make it difficult for us to conceptualize the magnitude of global food waste.
Everyday we hear appeals and yet there are one billion starving people in the world.
40% of all the food produced in the United States is never eaten.
In Europe, we throw away 100 million tonnes of food every year.
These are shamefully shocking facts in their own right. In a world full of hunger, volatile food prices , and social unrest, these statistics are more than just shocking when half the world’s population goes to sleep each night malnourished they are obscene.
They are environmentally, morally and economically outrageous.
Add to this that fact that obesity is rapidly growing in the western world, particularly among children, while 6 million children in the developing world die annually from undernourishment and it is a damning indictment of capitalism – the dominant ideology and economic system that has governed much of the world for the last two centuries.
The rampage of globalisation has given monopoly buying power to a few massive western multinational enterprises, who trample all over the globe sourcing farm supplies from the lowest bidders of impoverished nations.
Prices of farm produce are squeezed to such an extent that it’s more profitable to leave ‘inadequate’ quality crops in the ground to rot or to throw away than to pay the price for its air transport, storage and quality packaging to bring to western supermarkets with discerning consumers.
Today, we produce about four billion metric tonnes of food per annum. Yet due to poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage, it is estimated that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tonnes) of all food produced never reaches a human stomach.
Furthermore, this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts of land, energy, fertilisers and water have also been lost in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste. This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands.
But the problem is bigger than we think.
Here are some hard facts to swallow.
Wasting food means losing not only life-supporting nutrition but also precious resources, including land, water and energy. As a global society therefore, tackling food waste will help contribute towards addressing a number of key resource issues:
About one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.
Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons)
1.4 billion hectares of land – 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.
The direct economic consequences of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run to the tune of $750 billion annually.
The amount of food lost and wasted every year is equal to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crops (2.3 billion tons in 2009/10)
In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions.
In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month.
The Food wastage’s carbon footprint is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent of GHG released into the atmosphere per year.
Much of it ends up in landfills, and represents a large part of municipal solid waste.
The water used to irrigate wasted crops would be enough for the daily needs of nine million people.
Wasted production contributes 10% to the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries.
One hectare of land can, for example, produce rice or potatoes for 19–22 people per annum. The same area will produce enough lamb or beef for only one or two people.
The total volume of water used each year to produce food that is lost or wasted (250km3) is equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva.
Over the past century, fresh water abstraction for human use has increased at more than double the rate of population growth. Currently about 3.8 trillion m3 of water is used by humans per annum. About 70% of this is consumed by the global agriculture sector,
Indeed, depending on how food is produced and the validity of forecasts for demographic trends, the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion m3 annually by mid-century. This is 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the total human use of fresh water today.
Considerable tensions are likely to emerge, as the need for food competes with demands for ecosystem preservation and biomass production as a renewable energy source.
Agriculture is responsible for a majority of threats to at-risk plant and animal species.
A low percentage of all food wastage is composted:
What can be done about it?
Part of the problem is poor shopping habits, but the confusion many consumers have with “use by” and “best before” food labels is also a factor. “Use by” refers to food that becomes unsafe to eat after the date, while “best before” is less stringent and refers more to deteriorating quality.
Consumer households need to be informed and change the behavior which causes the current high levels of food waste. Instead of buying packets of vegetables buy loose veg.
Boycott Supermarkets that don’t accept imperfections and nicks. There’s nothing wrong with a deformed Veg. It’s fine to eat.
Support redistribution urban food programmes.
UK supermarket chain Waitrose is attacking food waste in all parts of its business. The upmarket grocery chain cuts prices in order to sell goods that are close to their “sell by” date, donates leftovers to charity and sends other food waste to bio-plants for electricity generation.
The idea is for Waitrose to earn “zero landfill” status.
Home composting can potentially divert up to 150 kg of food waste per household per year from local collection authorities.
Buy local produced food items not those produced, transformed and consumed in very different parts of the world.
Considering that food security is a major concern in large parts of the developing world. Conflicts around the world mean there is “donor fatigue.
Food crises don’t just affect the countries where people go hungry. It’s a global challenge. Recent data shows the number of hungry in the world has fallen but still stands at 842 million people.
World Food Programme WFP operations in and around Syria are costing around $31 million a week.
Hidden Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction.
Hidden hunger weakens the immune system, stunts physical and intellectual growth, and can lead to death. It wreaks economic havoc as well, locking countries into cycles of poor nutrition, lost productivity, poverty, and reduced economic growth.
Investing in nutrition is one of the smartest development investments we can make.
The World Bank system was created as an integral element of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system of international and multilateral institutions. The Bank was designed to avoid future world wars by ensuring an open international trading system and global financial stability.
The same as the Nato and the United Nations it is another World Organisation that should be either shutdown, reinvented or amalgamated.
Like the IMF the World Bank is empowered by the governments which control it (led by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy — the “Group of 8,” which holds over 40% of the votes on their boards) with imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.”
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.
According to the World Bank Articles of Agreement, all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment. Here is a dated example.
The first country to receive a World Bank loan was France. The French loan was for US$250 million, half the amount requested, and it came with strict conditions.
France had to agree to produce a balanced budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. Before the loan was approved, the United States State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed. The French government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government. Within hours, the loan to France was approved.
When the Marshall Plan went into effect in 1947, many European countries began receiving aid from other sources. Faced with this competition, the World Bank shifted its focus to non-European countries.
The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors mostly for the personal interest of larger world nations ignoring the like Vietnam because they were communist who were fighting for their lives to reject democracy from running over their country.
To finance more loans, the Bank used the global bond market to increase the capital available to the bank.
One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt.
From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.
During the 1980s, the bank emphasized lending to service Third-World debt, and structural adjustment policies designed to streamline the economies of developing nations.
UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for “reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.”
And it left millions of families poor and children unprotected subject to Mason sponsored Child Sex trafficking.
Beginning in 1989, in response to harsh criticism from many groups, the bank began including environmental groups and NGOs in its loans to mitigate the past effects of its development policies that had prompted the criticism.
It also formed an implementing agency, in accordance with the Montreal Protocols to stop ozone-depletion damage to the Earth’s atmosphere by phasing out the use of 95% of ozone-depleting chemicals, with a target date of 2015.
Less recently, a project in Seychelles to promote local tourism by the name of project MAGIC was launched in 2010. Its successor project TIME was scheduled to be launched in 2012. Nothing more of it was heard of it since and was a project that at least to me makes no sense in its disclosure.
Traditionally, based on a tacit understanding between the United States and Europe, the president of the World Bank has always been selected from candidates nominated by the United States. In 2012, for the first time, two non-US citizens were nominated.
In 1991, the bank announced that to protect against intentional deforestation, especially in the Amazon, it would not finance any commercial logging or infrastructure projects that harm the environment.
About that time, in order to promote global public goods and free trade commercial market, the World Bank tried to control communicable disease created by laboratories in Intelligence agencies around the world, but could not stop the tragic effects of Ebola.
Since then, in accordance with its so-called “Six Strategic Themes,” the bank has put various additional policies into effect to preserve the environment while promoting development.
The World Bank is best known for financing big projects like dams, roads, and power plants, supposedly designed to assist in economic development, but which have often been associated with monumental environmental devastation and social dislocation.
In recent years, about half of its lending has gone to programs indistinguishable from the IMF’s: austerity plans that “reform” economic policies by suffocating the poor and inviting corporate exploitation.
The World Bank Group is the second largest public development institution in the world. Reform is long overdue. However, the most influential players are the finance ministers of the G8 countries, above all the US Treasury which sees no need for reform.
In 1992, an internal World bank review found that more than a third of all Bank loans did not meet the institution’s own lending criteria.
Unlike the United Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation’s financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-8) holding a total of 45%.
Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and societies.
The global rise in prosperity and personal freedoms over the past 65 years has been an immense human achievement despite a string of horrible regional conflicts and pockets of terrible suffering.
However we are now facing the latest “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — climate change, food security, infectious disease and urban youth unemployment — are rapidly approaching. It is hard to believe that the seven billion people living in 200 nations on earth today will be successful in holding them off without strong truly global institutions.
Its time to make our global institutions look and feel more global.
If we ask the question are these institutions ready to meet the challenge? The answer from most analysts is “No.”
While the WTO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, both the IMF and the World Bank are headquartered in Washington, D.C. The time has come to move at least one of them out of the United States.
The almost universal perception that there is no significant difference between the IMF and the World Bank. They work so closely together and have so many overlapping activities that they look like conjoined twins.
Their missions, however, are fundamentally different. Separation could make each one more effective.
Because the World Bank’s operations are overwhelmingly in developing countries, a case can be made for moving the World Bank to Africa, Asia or Latin America.
The biggest obstacle to moving the World Bank out of Washington is the veto power that only the United States wields. So re-locating the World Bank is a political non-starter.
By enhancing the Bank’s legitimacy, it would help to make the World Bank more effective in meeting the global challenges that are likely to become more difficult in the years to come.
The huge gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries remains one of the great moral dilemmas for the west. It also presents one of the greatest challenges for development economics. Do we really know how to help countries overcome poverty?
At least a billion people on the planet live in desperate circumstances resembling conditions that prevailed hundreds of years ago. Our failure to alleviate their plight is morally reprehensible. But where, exactly, are the greatest concentrations of poor people? Data is hard to come by and even harder to interpret. How can one compare cost-of-living indices in different periods when new goods are constantly upending traditional consumption models?
Consider the impact of cell phones in Africa, for example, or the internet in India.
The World Bank investment policy consolidates the position of the corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic regimes of many developing countries.
The Bank has evinced willingness to deal directly with almost any government without sensitivity to their human rights record.
Given that developing countries are both shareholders and clients in the Bank, the agencies are unlikely to admit that loans to a particular regime will not achieve any benefit until a reformed government achieves power.
The negotiation process between the Bank and the regime is invariably closed and the circulation of Bank reports restricted to the participants.
The poor are disenfranchised from the very institution supposed to support their development.
It is not necessary to deny that some of the infrastructure projects supported by the IBRD, from the road-building schemes in the 1980s to the dam construction programmes of the 1990s, failed to reduce poverty and caused a degree of environmental damage.
Only 3% of the Bank portfolio is set aside to protect against the loss of revenue from defaulting debtors.
Faced with mounting attacks from all sides, the IMF and World Bank are scrambling to assuage critics. On Apr. 10, the IMF set up an independent review board to evaluate its policies. The World Bank is pushing an initiative to combat the global scourge of AIDS. And both are working on a new strategy for fighting global poverty. But in the end, more radical reforms may be needed to get the demonstrators off the streets and the politicians off the two agencies’ backs.
The IMF — along with the WTO and the World Bank — has put the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction.
Over the past decade an estimated 3.4 million people have been displaced by bank-funded projects.
There’s always a price tag for development. But the question is: Who should pay the price?
Should poor people be the ones who sacrifice when the government tries to do a big project? Even the World Bank says the budget for a project should include money to cover people’s losses.
The World Bank’s role in the global climate change finance architecture has also caused much controversy. Civil society groups see the Bank as unfit for a role in climate finance because of the conditionalities and advisory services usually attached to its loans.
The Bank’s undemocratic governance structure – which is dominated by industrialised countries – its privileging of the private sector and the controversy over the performance of World Bank-housed Climate Investment Funds
The World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.
As an increasing shift from public to private funding in development finance has been observed recently, the Bank’s private sector lending arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has also been criticised for its business model, the increasing use of financial intermediaries such as private equity funds and funding of companies associated with tax havens.
As the World Bank and the IMF are regarded as experts in the field of financial regulation and economic development, their views and prescriptions may undermine or eliminate alternative perspectives on development.
There are also criticisms against the World Bank and IMF governance structures which are dominated by industrialised countries.
The World Bank hasn’t even adopted specific human rights policies, and doesn’t recognize that it has organizational responsibilities to abide by international human rights law.
Before I sign off on this post I should mention the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) established on 17 May 1930, is the world’s oldest international financial organisation. The BIS has 60 member central banks, representing countries from around the world that together make up about 95% of world GDP.
The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany – as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles – following World War I. The BIS was also the trustee for Dawes and Young Loans, which were internationally issued loans used to finance these reparations.
After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks.
The BIS has also emerged as an emergency “funder” to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.
The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.
Its head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and in Mexico City.
The mission of the BIS is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks.
Given the continuously changing global economic structure, the BIS has had to adapt to many different financial challenges. However, by focusing on providing traditional banking services to member central banks, the BIS essentially gives the “lender of last resort” a shoulder to lean on. In its aim to support global financial and monetary stability, the BIS is an integral part of the international economy.
The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change.
In the old days World Bank and maybe in the future will act as a lender of last resort to the banking sector during times of bank insolvency or financial crisis.
As the face of hunger has changed, so has its address.
The Wealth of Nations and the inheritance for humankind and all forms of life rest with World Organisation that are out of date – this should explain to many as to the disappearance of an equal World.
Money Talks as is evident with the latest Trade deal TTPI.
However, in today’s modern economy we are witnessing a rapidly expanding array of services with mobile technologies as their backbone, but what a World we are making. Our priorities are driving by growth at all costs, and a media owned by our Capitalist culture. We produces 1.3 billion metric tons of garbage each year, and that number is expected to double by 2025.
Is it not time that we the guardians of the Planet got together to shut some doors by tabling a peoples UN resolution to place a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions ( See previous posts)
The chances of this ever happening are minuscule as self-interest is deep rooted.
Last week, Donald Trump submitted his financial disclosure to the Federal Election Commission. In it, he lists his various properties and other holdings and totals them up for a net worth of more than “TEN BILLION DOLLARS.”
Trump World Tower Trump: Trump owns it.
Trump Towers Istanbul: Trump does not own it, but he licenses his name out to it, as he does with many properties. In the past, he has said that this arrangement “could be interpreted to be a form of ownership in the building.” The final word on the issue is probably the legal disclaimer on his website.
Miss USA Pageant: Trump owns it, but NBC refused to air it after his comments on immigration.
Central Park Carousel New York: Trump owns Trump Carousel LLC, the company that operates the Central Park Carousel in New York City. According to the financial disclosure he made to the Federal Election Commission, he made $589,000 from this icon of innocence.
Wollman Rink in Central Park: Trump owns it. Well, kind of. Trump built it and operates it. You can read the story of its construction in Donald’s own words.
Donald J. Trump State Park: Trump bought 436 acres of land 45 miles from Manhattan to build a private golf course, but nearby towns did not grant him approval, so he donated it to the state. Although New York closed the park in 2010, signs along the nearby highway still direct visitors there.
Trump Taj Mahal: Trump Taj Mahal is a property of Trump Entertainment Resorts, which Donald Trump no longer owns. He has sued to have his name removed from it.
A company that sells Trump-branded vodka and energy drinks in Israel: Trump owns it. Its name is a full sentence: Trump Drinks Israel LLC.
Trump mattresses: Trump owns a mattress brand. But Serta, the exclusive distributor,recently terminated its business relationship with him.
He’s licensed his name to no less than 17 different kinds of products, from clothing and perfume to vodka and mattresses, as well as glassy high-rise towers as far afield as Istanbul and the Philippines. He is paid for the use of his name, but does not invest any of his own capital. Trump sometimes manages these projects, as he did in the case of Trump Soho, and always takes a licensing fee of $5 to $10 million. He pocketed more than $3.2 million in royalties for his clothing line, which is sold at Macy’s, between 2005 and 2007.
He does not believe in global warming, for example, because he did not experience in everyday life:
“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non-competitive.”
He is convinced that there is a link between vaccination and autism. It communicates whenever he can about the dangers of combination vaccines, although there is no scientific evidence to that effect.
“I’m not contra vaccinations for your children, I’m in one massive contra em dose. Spread them out over a period of time autism Will & drop!”
During his nomination speech of June 16, he said want to build a wall 3 000 km along the border with Mexico.”Mexico brings us drugs, crime and rape. “”Blacks who count my money! I hate the idea. The only people I want to see my money count are small men wearing yarmulkes every day engage in hyperbole, shade the truth and deliver outright misstatements.
Women’s British Open golf tournament is set to open at Trump Turnberry Resort, owned by Donald Trump; successful staging of the tournament would increase Turnberry’s chances of being awarded the men’s event sometime after 2018.
Long time enmity between Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch has led to Murdoch’s leveraging his media empire to tear down Trump.
What has Trump done with his life to merit running the US?
He is a master of self-aggrandizement, but his companies have declared bankruptcy 4 times, most recently 2009. His only foray into politics was his blatantly racist, nativist attacks on President Obama.
His current wife, Melania Knauss, is a former model of Slovenian origin, who created a jewelry line to care, but spends most of his time waving at his side. He married her without being totally sure she loved him really – which shows where their priorities are.
Hundreds of pages of sworn testimony by Donald J Trump in lawsuits in past decade stemming from soured real estate deals shows his tendency to top the true 2016 Republican presidential nomination.
Does he own Hilary Clinton? Not yet.
He vowed: “Nobody would be tougher on ISIS than Donald Trump ”Politicians, “ later described as “stupid”, “do not lead us to the promised land” You might say who gives a crap? Certainly not ISIS.
You could not vote for better as he is not running for president he is simply doing what he always does: Promote the Donald. Generate headlines. Get people talking. Regardless of how many planes or buildings he has, Trump has made one thing clear over the years, which accounts for a significant portion of his wealth: he knows how to stay in the spotlight.
≈ Comments Off on The Beady eye looks at the Quantum Leap.
We are only at the beginning of this journey and if you are like me the very word Quantum Mechanics /Physics not to mention Quantum Computing, sends me in a dizzy.
I have little or no concept of quantum other than entanglement occurs when two particles become related such that they can coordinate their properties instantly even across a galaxy.
Think of wormholes in space or Star Trek transporters that beam atoms to distant locations.
Quantum mechanics posits other spooky things too: Particles with a mysterious property called superposition, which allows them to have a value of one and zero at the same time; and particles’ ability to tunnel through barriers as if they were walking through a wall.
All of this seems crazy, but it is how things operate at the atomic level: the laws of physics are different.
So or what it’s worth. Here is what I have learnt.
Quantum computing will lead to breakthroughs in science, engineering, modeling and simulation, financial analysis, optimization, logistics and national defense applications.
It is likely that building a quantum computer will lead to unforeseen technologies and transform our understanding of the possibilities and limits of computation.
Despite the incredible power of today’s supercomputers, there are many complex computing problems that can’t be addressed by conventional systems. The huge growth of data (“Big Data”) and our need to better understand everything from the universe to our own DNA leads us to seek new tools that can help provide answers.
If we really could build a magic computer capable of solving an NP-complete problem, a decision problemin a snap, the world would be a very different place: An NP problem contains problems for which a computer can quickly check a proposed solution.
Imagine a computer that can teach your mobile phone to recognize any object it sees, or that can trawl through millions of social media posts to identify a potential terrorist.
The spy world, in particular, is looked to quantum computing for its use in encryption and code breaking – a mainstay of the intelligence business.
The technology sounds like a science-fiction caricature. It is based on a novel type of superconducting processor that uses quantum mechanics to massively accelerate computation. A quantum computer taps directly into the fundamental fabric of reality so how about conducting virtual experiments.
The question is has it being done.
To my mind a computer without any limitations would get boring pretty quickly.
We could ask our magic computer to look for whatever patterns might exist in stock-market data or in recordings of the weather or brain activity. Unlike with today’s computers, finding these patterns would be completely routine and require no detailed understanding of the subject of the problem.
The magic computer could also automate mathematical creativity which would be a transformation in the ways computers are thought about.
So what might be the benefits.
Quantum computers could solve multiple problems at the same time.
We would have really accurate weather forecasting: Quantum computing could analyse all that data at once and give us a better idea of when and where bad weather will strike. We’d have advanced notice of major storms like hurricanes and the extra prep time could help save lives.
More efficient drugdiscovery:
A quantum computer would be able to map out trillions of molecular combinations and quickly identify the ones that would most likely work, significantly cutting down the cost and the time of drug development.
No more traffic nightmares:
Beefing up military and defence:
Satellites are constantly collecting tons of images and video. A quantum computer would sort through that mountain of data and direct your car.
Secure, encrypted communication:
If a third-party intercepts the key then, thanks to the weird magic of quantum mechanics, it becomes useless and no one can read the message.
Accelerating space exploration:
Astronomers have discovered nearly 2,000 confirmed planets outside our solar system using the Kepler space telescope. A quantum computer could tackle more data in any given telescope view, spot more exoplanets, and help quickly identify which ones have the most potential to harbour life.
It could even uncover exoplanets that Kepler missed during its first run through older images.
Quantum computing could streamline both air traffic and ground-based traffic control because they’re so good at quickly calculating the optimal route.
Machine learning and automation:
It sounds super creepy, but like humans, quantum computers can learn from experience. They can self correct. For example, a quantum computer could actually modify the code of a program that keeps messing up.
The security of every Internet transaction would be broken if a quantum computer were to be built.
Not much more is known about what could be done with a practical quantum computer.
Except: A classical computer would have to run for thousands of years to compute the quantum equations of motion for just 100 atoms. A quantum simulator could do it in less than a second. Problems that would take a state-of-the-art classical computer the age of our universe to solve, can, in theory, be solved by a universal quantum computer in hours.
The quest to harness the computational might of quantum weirdness continues to occupy hundreds of researchers around the world.
Physicist Richard Feynman once famously said: “If you think you understand quantum physics, you don’t understand quantum physics.”
As technology shrinks to nanoscale levels, quantum effects need to be dealt with whether we want them or not. It would be a revolution not unlike the early days of computing. A game changer for humanity.
If quantum computers promised such godlike mathematical powers, maybe we should expect them on store shelves at about the same time as warp-drive generators and anti gravity shields.
There is a long ways to go before any of the above are available.
Not so; In 2013 Google, NASA and USRA created the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab and installed a D-Wave Two™ quantum computer at the NASA Ames Research Center.
It is the most advanced quantum computer in the world but is not an universal quantum computer.
There you have it.
If you are any the wiser let me know as we need to be preparing for the spooky technology future we are rapidly heading into.
If you could go back in time say 150,000 years, your closest living relatives would be apes, with no imagination.
Returning to now.
It is our imagination that created the world we live in. The ability to create an imagined reality out of words enabled large numbers of strangers to cooperate effectively.
Without it we would all still be on all fours with no prospects, no desires, no communication, no history, no religion, no reality.
Why?
Because all myths, all stories, all technology, all capitalism or any other system, religion or organisation, would not have materialized without imagination.
All of it required imagination.
Our collective Imagination has being both our nemesis and friend since millennium. The immense diversity of imagined realities that we have invented are now our cultures, which are for ever-changing, turning into History.
It has put us on top of the food chain. It has created countries, google, human rights, limited companies, in fact our continuing existence and earth health depends on it.
The problem is imagination is driven by education and equal opportunity not just by DNA or Genes.
Coming climate could change all that. Ever event in history occurred against the background of some climate change.
Not a single thing in this world is eternal.
It exist in your imagination.
No one could have imagined the rapid changes we now see.
The big question is. Can we adapt our social behavior to the rapidly changing challenges.
Trade may seem a very pragmatic activity. There is no other animal other than ourselves that engage in trade. Trade cannot exist without trust and our trade is bases money, banks, all of which are figment of our imagination with little or no permanent value.
We are not exempt from biological laws and we are only held together by mythical glue.
It is this that has made us masters of creation.
To days affluent societies are in a plague of greed, which is rapidly spreading to the rest of the world. Our imaginations are being stunted by the internet of everything to the point of self-interest which is destroying the very reasons for having an imagination in the first place.
There is hardly an activity or emotion that is not mediated by a mind-blowing collection of objects or possibilities.
Our imaginations are being manipulated, commercialized, at the expense of generation to come.
Indeed if AI obtains imagination never mind intelligence we can kiss our species goodbye. Why ? Because it does not take much imagination what the world would be like without humans.
No Pollution, No Wars, No Greed, No Jealousy, No God, No Mohammad , No Corruption, No Murder, no Poverty, no Inequality. Imagine that. We should spend more time on the question.
What do we want to become?
Is it Humans that are sued by digital beings, subject to a superior consciousness yet to be invented.
You and I will never leave this earth other than in our imaginations and this earth would be sterile if imagination did not exist. Each of us explore only a tiny fraction of our horizon possibilities.
There will never be a single natural way of life, because of imagination.
Should Britain quit the European Union? Or should it stay?
What should the EU demand from the UK?
Voters will be asked “Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union?”
From now until the referendum there is going to be a lot of derisive media coverage, media hype, political clatter with mountains of disinformation to say the least.
Before it all gets into top gear here are what I consider to be the main arguments for and against.
At the moment Britain lives the status quo of EU membership.
Now that the empire really is gone and the UK is no longer a financial or military superpower, the question of decline has taken on a melancholic air.
Nostalgia grips the British imagination.
Like Tony Blair, Cameron is still in love with the idea of a globe bestriding, quasi-imperial Britain and it was this that fired British military involvement in Libya as well as his desire (wrecked by Labour) to take action in Syria.
Is it not time for Britain to acknowledge its history by becoming a nation with a responsibility to the Future of all.
On the European side.
It’s a tumultuous times for Europe. In the midst of its biggest ever financial crisis in the form of Greece’s potential default, battling an ongoing migrant catastrophe which has seen thousands of people drown trying to reach European shores.
The truth is that the world at large doesn’t just matter when it comes to international politics its all about TTIP and the TTP the workings of the global economy — in harness with the policies of successive governments — they are going to leave communities shorn of employment and identity.
So lets first put the case for England to say – Yes.
The business community will come out overwhelmingly in favor of continued membership. However unpopular some in business – notably the banks will induce fear of exit. So in reality it will be the economy that will decide the outcome of the Referendum.
The UK now accounts for less than 1 per cent of the world’s population and less than 3 per cent of global income (GDP). Each year that goes by, these numbers shrink a little.
The single market, gives British business access to the entire EU with its 500 million consumers. The EU accounts for nearly 20 per cent of world GDP. The EU, economy is six times the size of British economy.
There are one million Brits living in Spain, 330,000 living in France, and 65,000 in Cyprus. There are also 330,000 in Ireland. If Britain kicked EU citizens out of the UK, the EU would probably retaliate. That could be over a million returning immigrants.
Contrary to what the British think EU membership doesn’t cost much.
England’s annual budget contribution, after taking account of money transferred back to the UK, is £8.3bn. That’s around half a per cent of its GDP, or £130 per person.
The EU is England biggest trading partner, accounting for 52% of its trade a mire £400 bn per year, which far outstrips the estimated £12bn spent (net)on the EU each year.
The Center for Economics and Business Research found that in 2011, 4.2 million jobs in the UK were associated with exports to the EU. This is a massive 13.3% of the UK workforce, and it amounted to an estimated £3,500 per head of the population in 2011.
London, ( although it exists in another dimension to the rest of the country) needs the EU to remain one of the world’s financial centers.
The average age of the European immigrant population in Britain was 34 in 2011, compared with 41 for the native population which leave me at a lost to understand all the moaning about EU immigrants. They are cost-effective since they normally arrive after being educated. And, since most of them are of working age, England does not pay much for their pensions or healthcare, either.
British relationships with the US and the EU have always been separate from one another, especially in connection with the war against terrorism.
A yes vote will have an effect on the future direction of British foreign policy orientating it towards its European neighbors rather than America. It would also have a serious impact on British influence internationally.
Leaving could spell disaster, potentially costing millions in job losses and adverse trade impacts.
A yes vote could see the slow demise of Sterling. It certainly will see the demise UKIP.
Leaving would have a negative impact on foreign investment per person per consumers.
If the British left the EU they will have to pay more for visas, unless they created their own agreements with different countries.
Now the other Option. Out.
A desire to keep foreigners out of Britain is the main reason why the electorate may want to quit the EU entirely.
The free movement of EU member state citizens has resulted in out-of-control immigration into the UK, they claim, with people from poorer EU nations seeking to take advantage of the British health service and welfare payments.
Of course there is the option of out and staying in the single market.
That may be feasible.
After all, Norway has access to the single market without being in the EU.
But there is a big disadvantage:
Norway has to apply all the rules of the single market without any vote on what those rules are. If Britain was in the same position, it really would be subservient to Brussels. Quite apart from the blow to its sovereignty, the rules would be written without taking account of its interests and so could easily harm its citizens.
The two other main examples are Switzerland and Turkey. Unfortunately, they don’t have full access to the market and they still have to follow some of the rules, without a vote on them.
Out means it isn’t part of the CAP.
It will have to renegotiate all of its trade agreements.
Why would any other country feel the need to deal with England directly?
Faced with the rapid, ongoing expansion of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), among others, even with the USA special relationship it could kiss it ass goodbye. It would be like a feather weight getting into the ring with a heavy weight. Knocked out before the bell rang for round one.
In China the UK is not a big power. In the eyes of the Chinese it is just an old European country apt for travel and study.
It could rely on its membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to ensure access to markets. The snag is that, although the WTO has made progress in opening up trade, it has not secured anything like free trade in manufacturing – let alone services, which account for more than three-quarters of its GDP.
What will The EU Demand?
This is the question no one asking.
The growth of euroscepticism across Europe means the elites won’t be able to bamboozle the people into agreeing more transfers of power to Brussels, as they have done in the past.
Will Britain have to forsake its opt-outs from the Maastricht Treaty 1992
Currently, four states have such opt-outs: Denmark (four opt-outs), Ireland (two opt-outs), Poland (one opt-out) and the United Kingdom(four opt-outs).
If so could Sterling be phased out. Highly unlikely.
Conclusion:
The eurosceptic view can be summarised in three phrases:
Our plight is dire.
Attempting to reform the EU is futile.
The prospects outside are golden.
The single market is based on what are known as the “four freedoms”. These were contained in the Treaty of Rome that set up the forerunner to the EU in 1958: the free movement of goods, services, capital and people.
This is one of the most important charters for freedom the world has ever seen.
The eurozone probably won’t rush towards so-called political and fiscal union. Political union is also unnecessary because the main problem with the periphery is one of competitiveness.
Centralising power and giving hand-outs won’t solve that.
The solution, rather, is to restore competitiveness and boost productivity by freeing up markets. This is not a pleasant process, but it is beginning to happen in places such as Greece and Spain.
Will the EU allow a half-way houses that give some access to the single market but without following all the EU’s rules.
Peripheral countries have to solve their own problem.
This list leads to three further questions.
Can Britain win the unanimous agreement of other governments?
Do any of the changes require treaty amendment, which is hard for some other countries to do? And will they persuade British voters to stay in the EU?
The answer to the first is that most of the changes are quite modest, so they should not be too difficult to agree.
The second is harder, since at least three of the proposals—the benefits change, an opt-out from ever closer union and a mechanism to safeguard non-euro members—could require a new treaty to guarantee their effectiveness. There may be scope for a legal fudge that stops short of full treaty change, similar to protocols adopted in the past to satisfy Danish and Irish demands after their voters rejected previous treaties. Or there could be a “post-dated cheque”: a promise to incorporate changes into the EU treaties whenever they are next revised, for instance if a new country joins the club.
The third question is the biggest unknown. But Mr Cameron is gambling that, fresh from his unexpected election victory, he can persuade voters that it is better to have the devil they know than the devil they don’t. After all, a similar tactic favouring the status quo worked in the Scottish independence referendum last September—but it was a close-run thing.
England must look beyond vulgar economics and celebrate the EU as a zone of peace not just a lucrative market. It must lift the referendum debate beyond cost-benefit analysis to matters of principle. Exit need not be a disaster, true, but even the faint prospect of net economic loss will chill the blood of the undecided.
The EU represents not just an economic bloc but also offers multiple opportunities for study, research, culture and retirement. Moreover, it operates to secure peace within Europe and is a force for projecting a European view into the world polity.
If it end up option out a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the EU would be a joke. Plenty of bigger economies don’t have an FTA with the EU.
Anyway, it’s also the terms that matter: not all FTAs are the same. As regards time frames, the EU deals with Singapore and South Korea took several years to negotiate: these kinds of arrangements are incredibly complicated. What happens in the meantime? The out lobbyist don’t say because they don’t know.
I would place my stake on the public voting to remain in the club.
If the British people are to be asked to vote for EU exit they deserve to be given a proper explanation of what happens next.
It is high time for the Brits to realise that they aren’t alone and to accept the other 27 Member States into their reality, mentality, and allow them into their hearts.
Mr. Farage is not hitting the mark head-on, but is going around the issue, as most political remarks go. Such arguments as ‘wanting the country back’ and ‘immigrants are taking over’ are not interpreted correctly.
Migration, or better yet immigration, of people to other countries is no cause to throw a fit. Migrants, are the labor force behind some countries, and the UK is surely one of them.
In the end no matter what ice cream you lick we all belong to the one family. This banal fact used to be one of history’s most closely guarded secrets.
So for those of you who will have a vote.
Before you vote have a look at the world. Not the world of materialism created by Economics, Trade Packs and the like, rather the world you currently live in. Ask yourself what can you do to improve it. Live on a Isolated Island or Contribute.
As to whether marriage or divorce is on the agenda for the UK and EU, only time will tell. There is no concrete reason for the EU and the UK to part.
The World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.
We should spend more time on the question.
bobdillon33blog 