THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS THERE ANY SOLUTION TO THE SYRIAN WAR.

30 Friday Sep 2016

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( A four-minute read)

Is there hope for resolution or are we looking at another 10 years, or more, of conflict?

These days with hyper communication we have become desensitized to the suffering of others. We are moved only for a fleeting moment by pictures of children dying or starving but feel totally helpless to contribute to any resolutions.

What we call the “Syrian conflict” is today really the conglomeration of micro-conflicts for which solutions cannot be found in the halls of the General Assembly of the United Nations. Afficher l'image d'origine

As it stands, Putin has taken the initiative on Syria, with the West slowly coming to terms with the fact that Assad is the lesser of two evils compared with ISIL, and that he still has some role to play in the war against ISIL.

Assad’s future is Putin’s ace card in the game over Ukraine, and he will continue to support Assad until he is able to get some serious concessions over sanctions and Crimea.

The one thing that is probably working in Syria’s favour is the weariness of all its neighbours of the conflict and the negative impact it is having on them, including the endless flow of refugees. An estimate that 3.8 million refugees, half of them children, have crossed the border to find safety in other countries.

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In the long-term:

No one knows how Syria’s war will end. 

If it does end there is one thing for sure there will have to be transitional period and the guarantees that must be provided by the regionals to secure a buy-in from all components of the Syrian society.

What is clear is that international divisions over the greatest crisis of the 21st century is contributed to its severity and longevity.

There is no doubt that the posturing and face-saving exercises of the USA and Russia, including growing hostility in host countries and fortress Europe are slowing down the process of reaching any solution.

The United States and its Western allies seem to be trying to salvage whatever they can of their rapidly diminishing influence.

The latest Russian military initiative should have a very significant psychological effect. For the first time since the crisis started, military operations and arming of factions won’t be justified by the need to “push Assad to the negotiating table”.

Debates over whether or not Assad should be part of a transition process miss the point – the conflict is well beyond being solved by his removal.

This means thinking differently both about how we see the conflict and its solution.

Any solution that does not reflect the realities of life inside Syria today and the ecologies of violence that have taken root during the past four years cannot be taken seriously when moving forward.

Both US and Russia’s vision to end the conflict in Syria are divorced from realities.

Assad is not going to voluntarily give up power. Refugees in neighbouring countries will not return home as long as their country is in ruins.

The US and Russian approaches to dealing with the Syrian conflict are a study in contrasts.

The United States’ failed “train and equip” programme has become the butt of jokes in the Middle East.

Putin’s approach is to do all he can to protect the Assad regime. (Russia has vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting the Syrian government.)

Putin has invested in Assad’s survival, and it is naive to assume that he will be willing to abandon him unless the cost of propping him up dramatically increases.

It is equally unlikely that Russia, Iran and the Assad regime will devote resources to defeating ISIL.

The West looks at the Syrian conflict through three lenses:

First, the security threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); second, the influx of hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees into Europe; and third, there was little public support for another intervention in the Middle East and there is no clear Arab demand for intervention. In the end western countries are doing very little Diplomatic.  All Diplomatic efforts to end or contain the war have gone nowhere with Isis casting a long shadow over the future of Syria in recent months.

Western governments were still dazzled by the speed and drama of the early Arab spring and paralysing by the cold war-style battle lines that split the UN’s top table.

In western capitals counter-terrorism efforts have trumped all other aspects of the crisis.

Neither defeating the jihadis nor forcing Assad to come to the negotiating table now look like realistic prospects.Syria’s bloody stalemate thus seems destined to continue indefinitely“The violent grind is just going to go on and on,”

Talking with Assad will neither defeat ISIL nor achieve a political solution.

Instead, the US, Europe, and their regional allies should talk to his Russian and Iranian sponsors while increasing military pressure on the ground to deny them and Assad a military victory in Syria.

The UN’s possible role in the peace process in Syria is a joke.

Perhaps if we stopped selling arms the world would be a more peaceful place. Afficher l'image d'origine As I have said there is a need for a series of difficulties to be overcome before the necessary forces can be raised to end the war.

Any solutions or proposals welcome.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE TIME TO BE EMPATHETIC IS TO DAY. THIS MINUTE. NOW..

26 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Communication., Emotions., European Union., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Life., Modern Day Democracy., Natural World Disasters, Social Media., The Refugees, The world to day., What Needs to change in the World

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Our world is quickly becoming a desolate island, a screen that we hold six inches in front of our noses, and it’s a hard pill to swallow.

Because of this, we lose touch with nature, we lose touch with reality, we lose touch with each other. We seem to have forgotten the basic tenets of empathy.Afficher l'image d'origine

We have become such a technology-based society, that we have forgotten how to feel. We have forgotten how to relate. We have forgotten how to connect among other humans, let alone with other sentient animals.

We seem to have forgotten what it feels like to be in someone else’s, or some other animal’s, proverbial shoes.

Here in lies one of the major problems.

Some time ago, (some) humans stopped showing empathy, and started killing indiscriminately — people, and other animals. We kill each other over political differences, racial differences, religious differences, and resources. We kill animals for “research,” or for competition and sport, or for a token.

In a world where there is so much doom and gloom about the state of our environment it’s no surprising that the world has lost 10% of its wilderness areas in the past 20 years. The growth of our modern civilisation, spurred on by technological innovations, has been underpinned by the exploitation of the natural environment. Today, a large fraction of the Earth, once swathed in wilderness, is now monopolised by humans. Although the direct causes of wildlife loss are clear enough, what’s less obvious is why many people seemingly don’t care. Society’s ongoing destruction of the environment can be put down to the fact that not enough people value nature and wilderness any more.

Expanding human demands on land, sea and fresh water, along with the impacts of climate change, have made the conservation and management of wild areas and wild animals a top priority.

For some species, our time to see them is rapidly running out.

The richer we are and the more we consume, the more self-centred and careless of the lives of others we appear to become

Human attitudes towards wild nature and wildlife have, historically, been ambivalent.

It seems to me that there are currently two main approaches to wildlife management.

One: The wise use approach aims to accommodate humanity’s continuous use of wild nature as a resource for food, timber, and other raw materials, as well as for recreation.

Two: The preservationists, whose goal is to protect pristine nature, not to use it, carefully or otherwise. Wild places should be allowed to develop on their own with as little interference from humans as possible.

Neither work:

For years we’ve been told that people cannot afford to care about the natural world until they become rich; that only economic growth can save the biosphere, that civilisation marches towards enlightenment about our impacts on the living planet. The results suggest the opposite.

There is only one way to protect what is left.Afficher l'image d'origine

Protected areas, like national parks and wildlife refuges, are the cornerstones of global conservation efforts.

We must pay for it.  Either by buying the land or paying the locals to maintain it.

Why is it so difficult to persuade people to care about our wonderful planet, the world that gave rise to us and upon which we wholly depend?

Because we lack empathy. Empathy is defined as: the capacity to understand or feel what another being (a human or non-human animal) is experiencing from within the other being’s frame of reference, i.e., the capacity to place oneself in another’s position.

Without it we all have different values that give rise to conflicts or dilemmas.

The way in which these different values are prioritized will determine policy of conservation in the future.

For instance, there may be a conflict between sustaining certain human livelihoods and preserving a particular species, or there may be a dilemma between the protection of wild nature and animal welfare.

The question, then, is how we should address such dilemmas and disagreements. The first thing to note, in trying to answer this question, is that the rich anglophone countries are anomalous. The more we consume, the less we feel.

Our erroneous belief that we are more concerned about man-made climate change than the people of other nations informs the sentiment, often voiced by the press and politicians, that there’s no point in acting if the rest of the world won’t play its part.

Our refusal to stop pumping so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is pure selfishness. The more harm we do, the less concerned about it we become. And the more hyper consumerism destroys relationships, communities and the physical fabric of the Earth, the more we try to fill the void in our lives by buying more stuff.

In modern debates about wildlife, however, other values have become increasingly important. We don’t know exactly how ecosystems will respond to climate change but you may rest assured that with rising sea levels nature will be the last to be rescued.

Sustaining interest in this great but slow-burning crisis is a challenge no one seems to have mastered. Only when the crisis causes or exacerbates an acute disaster – such as the floods – is there a flicker of anxiety, but that quickly dies away.

So the perennially low-level of concern, which flickers upwards momentarily when disaster strikes, then slumps back into the customary stupor, is an almost inevitable result of a society that has become restructured around shopping, fashion, celebrity and an obsession with money.

It’s hard to understand how anyone could imagine that economic growth is a formula for protecting the planet.

How we break the circle and wake people out of this dream world is the question that all those who love the living planet should address.

Just look at the United Nations:

For the first time in UN history, candidates seeking to replace the organisation’s secretary-general have held a live debate, presenting the case for their candidacy and taking questions from UN member states on key global issues.

All previous secretary-generals were chosen behind closed doors by the UN’s permanent five members: the US, China, Russia, France and Britain.

This remains so:  The permanent five UN Security Council members still fix “who is going to be selected behind closed doors. Don’t think for a moment that the permanent members are going  give up powers they won after World War II readily. Hand-picking the UN secretary-general is still one of their trump cards.

The possibility of  the United Nations getting an energetic idealist to shake up the world body by streamline archaic UN systems, to stand up to the big powers and do more to end wars, and fight poverty is as remote as ever.  It will remain both bloated and overstretched with its staff more interested in winning promotions than fighting malaria, climate change and regulating poverty or stopping wars, not to mention protecting what’s left of nature.

So long as it has to beg for funds it will remain a worthless gossip shop.  ( See previous posts)

There will be no easy answers.

As Leonard Da Vinci said,

” Learn how to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.”

Empathy is about being we-focused rather than I-focused and understanding that, collectively, we are better off when we step outside of our silos. As a leader, you must emphasize value, not just transactions; people, not just processes.

Empathy brings the big picture into focus.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ARE ENTERING THE ERA OF MASS DISTRACTION.

22 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Communication., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Technology, The Future, The Internet., What Needs to change in the World, WiFi communication.

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An endless bombardment of news and gossip and images is rendering us manic information addicts.

Every single minute on the planet, YouTube users upload 400 hours of video and Tinder users swipe profiles over a million times.

Each day, there are literally billions of Facebook “likes.”

Online Social media outlets are now publish exponentially more material than they once did, churning out articles at a rapid-fire pace, adding new details to the news every few minutes.

Blogs, Facebook feeds, Tumblr accounts, tweets, and propaganda outlets repurpose, borrow, and add topspin to the same output.

We are guided to these info-nuggets by myriad little interruptions on social media, all cascading at us with individually tailored relevance and accuracy.Afficher l'image d'origine

We all distracted by a constant stream of things to annoy, enlighten, or infuriate; a niche in the nerve center of the exploding global conversation; and a way to measure success — in big and beautiful data — that was a constant dopamine bath for the writerly ego.

Do not flatter yourself in thinking that you have much control over which temptations you click on.  We are all close to helpless.

Silicon Valley’s technologists and their ever-perfecting algorithms have discovered the form of bait that will have you jumping like a witless minnow. No information technology ever had this depth of knowledge of its consumers — or greater capacity to tweak their synapses to keep them engaged.

The modest mastery of our practical lives is what fulfilled us for tens of thousands of years — until technology and capitalism decided it was entirely dispensable.

By rapidly substituting virtual reality for reality, we are diminishing the scope of interaction even as we multiply the number of people with whom we interact.

We have gone from looking up and around to constantly looking down.

GPS, for example, has led to our not even seeing, let alone remembering, the details of our environment, to our not developing the accumulated memories that give us a sense of place and control over what we once called ordinary life.

New technology has seized control of around one-third young adults’ waking hours.

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The result is yet to be seen and we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs, in wars, movement of people, erosion of democracy, surveillance and where to find the truth.

As we are  being methodically filled with more stimulus and noise and this new epidemic of distraction is our civilization’s specific weakness.

The amount of time we spend cruising vastly outweighs the time we may ever get to spend with the objects of our desire. Virtual living is creating a mental climate that will be maddeningly hard to manage.

Beyond mere doing, there is also being;

We are becoming each other’s “contacts,” efficient shadows of ourselves.

We hide our vulnerabilities, airbrushing our flaws and quirks; we project our fantasies onto the images before us.

Why is any of this important.

Take the smart phone for example.

When someone next to you answers the phone and starts talking loudly as if you didn’t exist, you realize that, in his or her private zone, you don’t.

They are robbing  us of a silence that was previously regarded as integral to the health of the human imagination.

The device went from unknown to indispensable in less than a decade.

Once you disappeared down a rabbit hole, but the smart phone then went and made the rabbit hole portable, inviting us to get lost in it anywhere, at any time, whatever else we might be doing.

Information soon penetrated every waking moment of our lives. All the hazards of real human interaction are being  banished.

Truly being with another person means being experientially with them, picking up countless tiny signals from the eyes and voice and body language and context, and reacting, often unconsciously, to every nuance.

These are our deepest social skills, which have been honed through the aeons. They are what make us distinctively human.

The smart phone revolution of the past decade can be seen in some ways simply as the final twist.

We are reducing our human contacts into a world that exists largely free of the sudden eruptions or encumbrances of actual human interaction.  A Facebook “friend,” an Instagram photo, a text message — in a controlled and sequestered way that makes integration of cultures impossible.  This, evolutionary psychologists will attest, is fatal. An entire universe of intimate responses is flattened to a single, distant swipe.

Walk down the street, and I’m the only person not plugged in. Or lunch where the first to person to use their phone pays the whole bill?

Here to the frazzled digital generation if they believe that $3 billion of Mark Zuckerberg Facebook profits will put an end to Disease.

Who does he think he is fooling.  Facebook is a Disease.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT DEAL CAN THE UK EXPECT FROM THE EU.

19 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by in Articular 50., England EU Referendum IN or Out., European Union.

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On March 25, 2017, European leaders will mark the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, the EU’s founding document.

It will be a fraught celebration. So what deal can the UK expect from the negotiations?. Can it have a special relationship.

At the moment the most likely option for the UK is to be unable to forge a deal better than it had when it was a member. ( No Shangaan Agreement or the Euro.)

At the moment there is a lot of verbal in the media fueled by Politicians on both sides.

Here is some clarity.

Negotiations  could lead to an orderly transition or a much more unpredictable process, buffeted by political pressure, volatile markets and the clash of national interests.

One way or the other. Britain will also have to renegotiate or reconform a web of EU-negotiated free trade deals with dozens of countries that anchor the UK in world commerce but are not automatically inherited if it leaves.

It means that the Uk Government would have to do three acts simultaneous: negotiate a new deal with Brussels, win a series of major bilateral trade deals around the world, and revise its own governance as EU law recedes.

EU-related law makes up at least a sixth of the UK statute book. That excludes 12,295 EU regulations with direct effect — hundreds of thousands of pages of law, on everything from bank and consumer rules to food standards, which cease to apply the moment Britain leaves.

Because Britain’s initial accession into the EU’s gives Brussels law supremacy over British law the UK will have to repeal the 1972 Act. So the negotiation would not just concern divorce, the technical parting of ways and the settling of old bills.

As a result it would also have to re-engineer the world’s biggest single market, setting new terms of access and legislating to “renationalise” volumes of law rooted in the EU.

The scrapping of EU law will result in an avalanche of new legislation in every corner of Whitehall.

On the EU side the UK will be negotiating with the commission, with 27 member states, with the European Parliament, national parliaments, with their electorates and each will have a veto over the conditions.Afficher l'image d'origine

There are a lot of veto players here.

They’ll be herding cats to get these actors to agree.

It is quite obvious while leaving the EU is Britain’s choice, the UK cannot dictate the exit terms.

If the European Union is to survive it will not be in a position to offer the Uk a deal that encourages other nations to follow suit with referendums of their own – or demand tailor-made deals of their own. It would trigger a domino effect as the bloc without Britain becomes less attractive to liberal, rich northern states such as Denmark and the Netherlands, where demands are growing for copy-cat plebiscites.

It would seem more than reasonable to say that any agreement that bestows favours that are not enjoyed by all the remaining EU members will result in the breakup of the European Union as a whole.

If the UK was able to achieve full, free access to the EU market, whilst not having to pay into the EU coffers, and not allowing free movement of people, it does beg the question – exactly what do you get for European Union membership?

So without violating the sacrosanct EU principle that free movement of people is essential for countries that want to join its common market the EU conditions will be brutal to discourage other states from following suit.

The idea of an ongoing relationship with the EU is therefore not acceptable.

The truth is if the UK leaves the EU it is basically cut off the continent.

BRITAIN could be sued for millions by disgruntled EU states if it begins negotiating trade deals with other countries before leaving the European Union.

On top of all this any negotiations will have to be conducted with an UK government that has a leader with a mandate from the people not appointed by 300 odd conservative Mps.

 “If the European Council or Parliament rejects the final agreement we’re back to square one.”  

The UK will find itself in exactly the same position we started out from. Wanting to leave but with no agreement with the EU.Afficher l'image d'origine

Extending any talks beyond two years requires unanimity.

The EU could offer Britain temporary curbs on immigration up to seven years in return for access to the single market. Britain would be expected to continue paying into the EU budget, although probably less than now, and would not have a say in single-market rules.

Predicting EU member countries’ reactions to any deal is premature.

If I was British I would stay and fight.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT ARE THE PRESENT GREATEST THREAT TO THE WORLD.

17 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Climate Change., Humanity., Life., Technology, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., USA Presidential Election, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Organisations.

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( A Six minute Read)

If you were to be asked this question the answer might not be as obvious as you think.

You might say for example: Climate Change, Wars /ISIS, Inequality, Fresh Water, Nuclear Weapons, Donald Trump, Drugs, the list is endless.

All of these are reversible if we applied an ounce of collective world intelligence.

If you were honest with ourselves you would have no option but to point the finger at us as the greatest threat to the world.

It’s difficult to think of a problem in today’s world that it doesn’t either cause or compound by humanity. This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment.

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Here are two of the greatest threats:

The Smartphone and AI. 

With more than 1 billion users worldwide and 2.5 million apps — and counting — available across Google and Apple’s digital marketplaces, smartphones are impacting day-to-day life in some surprising ways.

The smartphone’s role in shaping human interaction is far-reaching,whose functionality is constantly evolving and is now a pocket-size PC. The device seems to have limitless potential.  The majority of Internet traffic (60 percent) now comes from mobile devices.

Smartphones are affecting how the brain processes information. Google, fields more than 1 billion search queries per day — is changing how the brain catalogs knowledge. Smartphones have become a kind of “external memory source.”

We are becoming symbiotic with our computer tools, growing into interconnected systems that remember less by knowing information than by knowing where the information can be found.

Information is so rapid and up-to-the-minute. … Ten years ago, we’d all be crowding around a television to hear what’s happening, and now we have our phones.

There’s no longer an excuse for stupidity.

Future generations will have different priorities about what they choose to remember. Smartphones will become more than just a device in our pockets but something closer to a digital extension of ourselves.

The threat to the world is not that machines are taking over. It’s that they’re helping us to be more human, helping us to connect with each other regardless of geography.

60 percent of users don’t go more than an hour without checking their phone.

36 percent of smart phone users would rather give up their TV than their smart phone.

There are more than 125 million people in the Middle East region are online, and more than 53 million actively use social networks.

The widespread use of smartphones was a defining factor in the development of the spread of Arab Spring both in how protesters shared information with one another and how events were documented by legions of impromptu citizen journalists.

Now combine the Smartphone with the impotence of global governance combined with the lack of Inspirational leaders there is an ever growing pool of evidence that we are all becoming dependent on  AI-powered assistance intelligence (without a conscience or any long-term planning.)

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As AI advances, it will embed itself even deeper into our social fabric, shaping everything from how we do business to how we receive medical care.

It will become so commonplace that we will dependent on it. The technology may pit us against our own human nature:

What happens to risk, or the humanistic notion of what is true, when everything is based on everyone else? When our digitized advisors aggregate, average, and assuage, are we even autonomous beings anymore?

Political positions, financial decisions, attitudes toward social justice—our biggest decisions are often fueled by poor logic and misinformation. In the best circumstances, artificial intelligence could save us from ourselves, by helping us understand each other, see the world more clearly, and collectively make better decisions.

However if we do not acknowledge and take on board people’s valid concerns with AI we risk seeing the potential benefits of these technologies lost under a mountain of fear and negativity.

We need our out of date United Nations to have a mature, informed and inclusive world meeting about the future of automation and the potential impact of new technologies in order to ensure that this new power is used responsibly in the economic and moral sense.

At the moment there is no proper regulation around the use of AI.

Of course the UN is incapable of holding such a meeting so perhaps it is time for a new Institution called World Click (for example) to bring the whole of technology under a world umbrella.

If we care about the world we live in, we should think long and hard about the interfaces, rules, and policies that will govern artificial intelligence and our new way of life.

It would be easy enough for the people who design AI systems, motivated by greed, self-interest, or politics, to train computers to manipulate our lives in subtle and insidious ways, essentially lying to us through the algorithms that guide our thinking.

The coming tidal wave of decision support threatens to give very few people a phenomenal amount of suggestive power over a great many people—the kind of power that is hard to trace and almost impossible to stop.

Every day, Capitalism and the free market is moving into a digital age which is run more and more by algorithms that will only make those that own them richer while the world is about get poorer and poorer due to Climate change.

What is the alternative? Is there an alternative?

Global governance failure is the most interconnected of the global risks—it has a direct connection with 75% of the all the risks covered in this blog.

Of course the next threat Climate Change has the potential to wipe most of us of the face of the earth.  

Changes in climate and weather patterns worldwide are converging with social trends, shifting populations, land use change, and increasingly impaired water infrastructure to dramatically make life worse for those across the globe.

Climate change poses several challenges to water management strategies including extreme events, dwindling water supply, and the increasingly incorrect assumption that the past will accurately predict future conditions.

Simply put Climate change “is the greatest collective challenge we face as a human family.  It like AI has the capacity to change the way all of us live.

In much the same way great powers have fought wars over land and oil, we could see battles for the control of freshwater supplies.

Next Inequality.

The growing disparity in the wealth inside countries and among countries is a challenge the world has faced for centuries.

At the end of the 9/11 era, politics is driving the global economy, while economics drives geopolitics. All of this is playing out against a volatile G-Zero backdrop of global leadership in short supply.

Chronic fiscal imbalances are going to emerge as one of  the greatest global risk over the next decade.

Moving On. Fresh Water/ Food.

The potential for food crises in poor countries due to Climate change will  cause governments collapse. Sustaining growth will be one of the century’s big challenge.

An estimated 4bn to 5bn people in the world suffer from strained access to clean water, with the Middle East in particular likely to be a hotspot for struggles around water supply. Agriculture already accounts for on average 70pc of total water consumption and, according to the World Bank, we would need to ramp up food production by 50pc by 2030 to meet the needs of the world’s population.

Not forgetting Energy.

Satisfying ever-growing energy demand in a sustainable way has become the world’s biggest challenge.”

 

On top of all that we live today under the threat of global terrorism….Cyber is probably the threat least known, most ignored…and eventually…could be the most catastrophic….

Then we have, the spread of nuclear weapons, and selling of arms.

A potential Donald Trump presidency could be more dangerous to the world’s economy than the rising tide of global terrorism. The greatest risk to global stability over the next 20 years may be the nature of America itself.

If you have got this far I am sure like me you are saying so what.  We fucked no matter what we do.

Not so.

We are on the threshold of a new revolution maybe without a leader but thanks to Technology we have the Smartphone that if called upon could be turned into World people’s power to demand change.

To stop Profit for Profit’s sake, To stop arms trading, To stop CO2 emissions, To stop Wars, to create if not a fair world at least a transparent justice first world before we contaminate the rest of the universe.

The fact is if a million smartphones were to campaign on a daily basis change could be achieved.   Of all the threats to human society they have the silent power to unite the little consensus that there is left amongst us all.

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT WHAT IS BEHIND THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION ORDERED TO IRELAND TO CLAW BACK: Up to €13bn in tax from Apple?

01 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Apple. Inc, European Commission., European Union., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Wealth.

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( A four minute read)

Be Aware of Invisibility;Afficher l'image d'origine

One bad Apple leads to another.

This decision by the European Commission has implications far beyond Europe Union it opens the hornet’s nest of Capitalism.

The European Commission has launched an effort to rewrite Apple’s history in Europe, ignore Ireland’s tax laws and up-end the international tax system in the process. Every company in Ireland and across Europe is suddenly at risk of being subjected to taxes under laws that never existed.

The Unelected European Commission has ruled that two tax rulings issued by the Irish tax administration on the tax treatment of Apple’s corporate profits represent illegal state aid under EU law.

Brussels has no power over corporation tax rates, which member states have always been able to set themselves. The commissioner is trying to make sure the single market function is maintained and member states do not win business at the cost of others’ tax base.
In practice such rulings destroy fair market competition and undermine the tax sovereignty of democratic states.

So why should Ireland take any notice.

Other than it is a huge sum – more than the €12.9bn annual government spending on the Irish health service and nearly one-third of Ireland’s total government tax revenue in 2015, which was €45.6bn.

It is also the equivalent of €2,830 for every one of Ireland’s 4.6 million population.

It is a potential windfall – but one that the Government does not want.

Under EU rules it would mean that – as it is a once-off payment – it would have to be used to pay down debt, rather than used to fund extra Government spending.

There is little point in the EU enforcing Ireland to issue Apple with a tax bill in order to recoup EU financial Aid.

So are we looking at Cowboy Capitalism.

We all know that the world economy needs to be fundamentally reformed and if let alone it will not right it’s self.

In light of the technological revolution which is going to make most of us unemployable, structural changes are needed to the soul less of systems, one in which the fortune of one individual is most often possible at the expense of another.

The real question is:

How can the tendency of modern-day capitalism ( which is producing high levels of inequality and unsustainable uses of limited resources) be rethought.

Simply put Capitalism ultimate goal is profit. I got mine so fuck you! approach to life.

Trickle down economics is a joke. Capitalism has produced a society which no longer focuses on cooperation but on individual gain at any cost. We live in a society that now prides profit over prudence, compulsively over compassion, technology over tactility. And not too far away Trump over truth.

Global economic rules allow jobs to be offshore and capital to be reallocated in ways that do not benefit the vast majority of people.

Division and fear are sown by our world media . Compliance and desperation are reaped. And as always , there’s a profit.

Soon we will have a generation that does not know anything that does not come out of a smart phone, the God that will make or break presidents, popes, prime ministers, European Union’s, etc.

The most awesome goddamn propaganda force in the whole godless world. Owned by Apple.Afficher l'image d'origine

We all know that it cannot remain the same and the core responsibility of democratic nations is to provide the ground rules. But should these rules be about how should technology best be deployed to serve human needs.

European feudalism failed a long time ago and now it seems that the European Union is also on the verge of failure.

Free enterprise and the market have led to private capitalism’s accumulation.

Capitalism’s problems are so deep that they are almost intractable, and benefits of private enterprise and markets against those of public enterprises and government planning have become blurred.

Giving that the European Union now has the apparatus to play a central role in the economy of its member has this decision reinforced an excessive concentration of power in politics and culture moving the EU to a state form of Capitalism which England recently voted to leave.

Once England it is outside the EU, Britain would have even more leeway than Ireland or other European Countries to offer special deals to multinationals in the hope they would invest in the UK.

That said, such moves could leave Britain looking more and more like a tax haven, and could hamper the willingness of other countries to trade openly with the UK.

With the way the Technological Revolution is going I would say FUNDAMENTAL REFORM IS NEEDED.

The thought that technology is innately progressive and all-powerful so it can solve capitalism’s problems for us by leaving firms and wealthy investors alone to do as they wish will ultimately leads all of us to greater insecurity.

The sheer trickery of Apple’s tax arrangements renders their claims to corporate social responsibility risible, and the economic harm caused by these arrangements is also enormous.

The evidence points in one direction Capitalism is the wrong economic system for the material world that is emerging.

It’s time to redesign.

There is only one way of resetting the elite-driven international capitalism.

All profit for profit sake should be caped with a world aid commission of 0.05%. ( See previous posts)

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS YOUR SMART PHONE INTERFERING WITH YOUR LOVE LIFE.

27 Saturday Aug 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Emotions., Facebook, Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Social Media., Technology, Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World

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( A Beady eye though less than twenty-second read)

Technoference:

A smart phone is a modern-day distraction that is so common, it’s hardly noticed any more, demanding our attention multiple times a day.Afficher l'image d'origine

We are becoming irrevocably immersed in our digital lives, prioritizing the virtual world over anything else.

We are losing the personal touch, losing the art of conversation.

You can measure romance by the number of words you can type per minute.

Relationships only seem to be real once you make it Facebook official.

There Is no doubt that those dedicated to their smartphones put up a barrier between people. Compulsively carry our smartphones with you wherever you go can make you a very boring person.

You need to set some boundaries for your smart phone usage.

It is not some magic self-defense tool capable of protecting you from all that is evil in the world.

By allowing technology to interfere with or interrupt conversations, activities, and time with romantic partners – even when unintentional or for brief moments – individuals may be sending implicit messages about what they value most, leading to conflict and negative outcomes in personal life and relationships.’

We can let these devices overrule our entire lives if we allow it.

Social networking doesn’t count as socializing.

Anger can be too easily impulsively shot out in an email or text.

You don’t receive smiles, hugs, laughter or touch or the sound of voices. See each other, hear each other and touch each other. And that can never be conveyed over technology of any kind.

The mystery of getting to know someone is gone. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but the fact that it’s a forgotten practice is a little sad.

The percentage of phones dropped into toilets has risen dramatically over the years. That’s a scientific fact.

Put your damn phone down and look people in the eye. Have a conversation. Don’t worry about what you are missing on Twitter. It will still be there when you are done socializing with actual humans.

I do think we’re all kind of in this big, worldwide reality television game and it will seemed like terrible unlucky to be dead on Facebook.

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THE BEADY EYE: ANSWERS A READER’S CONCERN RE: Humanity is turning into an Algorithm

26 Friday Aug 2016

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( Five minute Read)

Following the theme of my last post  (Humanity is turning into an Algorithm) this question has been asked by one reader:

There must be a way out of this. Afficher l'image d'origine

Let’s look and see if there is a way.

We have set in motion a ‘runaway train’ of success.

The Internet/ the Web/ Wifi/ A world run by Algorithms.

All have and continue to be crucial in the spread of great innovations, the rise of world wealth, and even the dissemination of democratic concepts and ethical values and the defeat of oppressive regimes.

However in the world leadership terms it has led to an unrealistic evaluative process that consistently sets aside long-term problems and consequences in order to try to achieve some short-term successes, so as to survive reelection in two, four or six-year cycles.

With a knock effect on our other great strength : World Capitalism:

It might be the most successful economic system possible, but has also become one of shorter and shorter cycles of evaluation. CEOs, companies, stocks, profits and debits change at an ever more accelerated pace in response to the demands of stockholders and the market.

And hopefully on to our World Leaders that may recognize that they are not addressing the real problems, but they rationalize their actions with the argument that they must first politically survive in order to later address the hard problems and sacrifices. Of course, they usually don’t ever actually get around to addressing the fundamental problems later, either because they don’t make it through the initial crisis or because, even later, they are not willing to risk sacrificing their own position (or “career”) with needed measures that usually require tough sacrifices by the population.

As a result all our World Organisations are suffering from a similar disease, combined with being unable to act due to lack of financing.

The result is a growing burden of multiple long-term problems in the decades to come. I am sure I don’t have to list them. Afficher l'image d'origine

Thus, our brilliant communication, information, and transport systems, which will be remembered as the hallmark of our age, are also a point of great fragility.

It will be short-term thinking and decision-making that is the most universal factor leading to collapse of Society as a whole.

“It’s the economy stupid” and “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” have become the mantras of contemporary democracy. The latter is a sure recipe for collapse.

Today there are few, if any, refuges against international crises of any kind.

Any really helpful response will involved political change to redefine the very nature [of] leadership and its roles and institutions.

So imagine a world without the Internet.

A world without the World Wide Web, Facebook, Twitter or even e-mail. A YouTube that serves up over 100 million videos per day.

It’s almost impossible to imagine a set of circumstances that could cause the Internet to collapse. It would require destruction on such a widespread scale that the loss of the Internet would probably be the least of our worries.

It’s impossible to predict how each government would react; however, it’s not hard to imagine a series of events that could escalate into a conflict.

Rarely can societies in crisis conceive of such great structural changes (and often those might not be accepted by various interest groups). So, the situation just deteriorates at the same, or even at an accelerated, rate.

Much depends on the smooth functioning of the World Wide Web – banking, the financial markets, shopping, shipping, entertainment, medicine, along with so many other facets of the economy and daily life.

Assuming world leaders could maintain order and resist the urge to blow each other up, other problems would surface.

Unfortunately it is us that is driving the ever-shortening cycle of evaluation of political leaders, our explicit promotion of such short-term egocentric values.

We are losing sight of real values because they are being molded by Algorithms on our behalf by Facebook/ Google/ Microsoft/ Apple etc.

Our ability to think and make decisions for ourselves is being manipulated (as they have being and always will be) not by ourselves but by technology called AI that is leading us down the road to technology deserts. With personal data becoming the oil in the machine.

So is the Information Superhighway headed towards a dead-end?

Or is the Internet is destined to collapse under its own weight.

I can say, in general, that the answer to our problems—or at least the first steps—do not lie in the direction of specific economic or political actions.

Rather it must begin with ideology—with a change in general expectations.

What we can hope for is that with a somewhat more controlled level of growth, and with longer-term preparations for change, we can keep responding to the inevitable smaller crises, as they arise, and continue to postpone until later and later the (perhaps ultimately inevitable) end of our civilization.

We need to begin thinking in terms of longer periods, and slower processes, for judging success.

Such an ideology of long-term thinking and lower expectations — a change in world “attitude”— seems to me to be the only way out of the 21st century giant and precarious “bubble” that now is Western civilization.

No society can sustain unlimited growth – none ever has.

So my answer to my readers ( Humanity is turning into an Algorithm) question is yes there is a way out.

The Internet is not unbreakable:

Well apart from every teenager screaming because they can’t log on to Facebook, it all comes down to how much we personally use the Internet and what for.

We are living in an increasingly hyper connected world but if the next great social media shift truly is from centralized, profile-based social networks to decentralized feeds, distributed profiles, and private messaging perhaps we as consumers could start buying locally, enriching our local towns and shops.

We’d could look for local services and sustain local economies by trading within our immediate areas. The political fallout following the collapse of the Internet would not be so devastating.

On the other hand perhaps we would suffer a world-wide recession, stock markets would collapse, millions of businesses go bust and millions of people lose their jobs?

Life without the internet would force people to turn back to grass-roots and socialise and communicate on a very basic level.

A Facebook collapse would be less manageable: Experts estimate one-third of the world’s population will be affected by myopia – nearsightedness.

The eyes are useless when the mind is blind. Afficher l'image d'origineIn one year alone, its estimated that a minimum of €100 billion in VAT fraud are committed online in the European Union alone. Millions of personal data are stolen from everyday citizens, which are then used online to create fraudulent identities.

We need an Algorithm of TRUST.

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THE BEADY SAYS: HUMANITY IS TURNING INTO AN ALGORITHM.

24 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Facebook, Google it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Humanity., Technology, The Future, The Internet., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, WiFi communication.

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( One Minute read)

We are just an accident of creation an algorithm of evolution and technology is only created by our minds, with our imaginations.Afficher l'image d'origine

The Internet allows for our humanity in modern-day times to interconnect and promote globalization and information sharing.

Without imaginations, no technology would have been created and with the decoupling of intelligence and consciousness our time is coming to an end.

Soon we have an algorithm that will figure out.

“Why was God a Man?” “Why we have such a heartless world”. 

We  are just at the start of this process and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  Data- driven technologies are going to rule the roost. From your birth to your demise.

Smart phones and Social Media are eroding the very concept of individuality which is the start of disintegrating from within.

We will live for longer, but as Dataists, run by an unchallenged high priestly caste with all the knowledge,  Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft.

Technology, a word with Greek origins, is defined as, “the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area”. 
Technology to-day is a word used to collectively describe or portray the advancements abilities,creations, undertakings, views, and knowledge of a singular group of persons: we as human-kind.

We are being reduced to the mentality of Chickens.

Technology… is a queer thing.
“It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.”
C.P. Snow

“Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.” 

R. Buckminster Fuller

 However, the decision to use it proficiently in proper perspective is one’s
’own decision and choice. 
If technological advancements are put in the best uses, it further inspires the development in related and non-related areas but at the sametime its negative use can create havoc in the humanity or the world.
Technology has, and will, change the moral fabric of humanity; it is up to the present generation to heed this warning and not allow such societal travesties of immense proportions ever to occur.
Again Technological Advancements will continue to advance rapidly as we move into the next millennium. What is important is to ensure that these advances benefit humanity as a whole.
And what exactly is the “Singularity” supposed to be?
It’s a future mythological moment when machine (artificial) intelligence becomes more “intelligent” than human intelligence.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS:The true worth of an Olympic gold medal is the worth of the neck it hangs around but there are many necks that will never see one.

23 Tuesday Aug 2016

Posted by in OLYMPICS GAMES., SPORT., The world to day., What Needs to change in the World

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An open letter to all sports men and woman.  (Three minute read)

Now is the time to lobby The IOC to establish a permanent home for the Olympic Games. 

Don’t get me wrong I love sport and my congratulations goes to every competitor that competed in the Rio Olympics medal winner or not.Afficher l'image d'origine

When you realise the cost of the Games and the problems we all face in the world there is a stronger case now than ever before to have a permanent venue for the Games. ( See previous post)Olympics 2016 Gold Medal Cost: How Much Is The Gold Medal Worth?

A Summer Olympic Games now costs an average of $5.2bn (at 2015 levels), while the average Winter Olympics costs $3.1bn.

Long after the crowds vanish, it turns out that some host cities and countries ended up taking large net losses on their investments.

No Games since 1960 has come in under budget.

In fact, nearly half have cost overruns of more than 100%. Montreal 1976 had a cost overrun of 720%, Barcelona 1992 of 266% .

The most expensive is London 2012 at $15bn – nearly $10bn above average. London also sits far above second-placed Barcelona 1992 at $9.7bn.

For Rio, the preliminary cost is $4.6bn, with an overrun of 51% in real terms.

A Cost effective level playing field is required in more ways than one.

Never mind the cheats on drugs.

The individual or teams from less wealthy countries have an uphill struggle long before they even contemplate competing.

Take England’s recent success for example.

Second on the medal table.

The nation’s greatest Olympics haul in living memory is built on the ruthless efficiency of Team GB’s “medal machine” coaching team – and National Lottery Millions.

£274million of Lotto cash into our athletes’ programmes in the last four years.. Every aspect of training and preparation for Rio has been fine-tuned, with 900 support staff travelling to Brazil with our 366 athletes.

UK Sport, which determines how public funds raised via the national lottery and tax are allocated to elite-level sport, has pledged almost £350m to Olympic and Paralympic sports between 2013 and 2017, up 11% on the run-up to London 2012

Considering that this is a country where more than a quarter of the population is officially defined as inactive because they do less than 30 minutes of activity a week, including walking.

A country that recently could not support their fellow Europeans because it was costing a few million.. A country that for all intensive purposes has closed its borders to refugees.  A country that is slashing its support to the vulnerable citizens.

(Severe cuts to local authority budgets are also squeezing resources at the grassroots level. Councils across England have been forced to make cuts since 2010, when grant funding for local authorities was cut by a fifth, more than twice the level of cuts to the rest of the UK public sector.)

On average, each medal at the Rio Olympics has cost £5.5m.

27 Gold. 23 Silver. 17 Bronze.

Michael Phelps’ entire 23 gold medal haul would net him about $13,000.Mo Farah wins the gold medal in the men's 5,000 metre final 

In the U.S., gold medal winners get $25,000 ($15,000 for silver and $10,000 for bronze) from the U.S. Olympic Committee. (Italy pays $182,000 for gold medal winners, whereas Russia pays $135,000)

At a scrap-level value, the award is only worth about $501, since the medal is not entirely made out of gold.

The Olympics are about competition and heroics and national pride.

But they are also about big business and The “Olympic legacy” which might include improvements in infrastructure and increased trade, foreign investment, or tourism after the Games; and intangible benefits such as the “feel-good effect” or civic pride.

The IOC could better serve their constituents by diverting competition away from lavish provision of facilities towards goals that would raise participation in sports….

It is perfectly reasonable for the IOC or the FIFA to extract a surplus from the sale of TV and sponsorship rights to fund the global development of sport. However, the unjustified claim that these events produce substantial economic benefits can (a) mislead people into believing that their taxes are being productively spent on social regeneration rather than just funding mass entertainment, and (b) lead some private individuals to invest their own wealth in the expectation that an event will generate returns when it is unlikely to do so.

A gold medal is so much more than just a hunk of metal, so in that way, they’re irreplaceable.Britain's players celebrate their victory at the end of the women's Gold medal hockey Netherlands vs Britain match of the Rio 2016 Olympics Games at the Olympic Hockey Centre in Rio de Janeiro on August 19, 2016.

We can ask all the philosophical questions, which are valid.

What is the point of the Olympics?

The Olympics can be uplifting, entertaining, and distracting.  But what, exactly, is the point of watching a group of people get together to compete over running quickly or lifting big weights?

Answer:

We humans create it and we give meaning to it.

They are a way of bringing people together to get over their differences, focus on their commonality, and break down the boundaries not just between themselves, but also between gods and humans, past and present. It’s very hard to watch the Olympic Games and not be inspired by what humans are capable of and their ability to overcome their political differences.

Play or sport is the closest thing most human beings come to contemplation, to the highest of human activities.

Watching sports takes us out of ourselves.

Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.

The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.

The structure of sport, where everyone begins at the same starting line and abides by the same rules, means that competitors from every country become equal.

 

“Aim for excellence” means always doing and giving one’s best.

“In theory,” says Reid, ”everything the Games does is supposed to reflect that philosophy.”

Today, the world of sport is regularly confronted with issues of violence, corruption, discrimination, excessive nationalism, cheating, doping, etc. While these issues are still in a minority, they can be very damaging for athletes, sports institutions and the image of sport in general. By promoting a philosophy of life based on the values of excellence, respect and friendship.

Olympism seeks to correct these abuses and shows that sport can help to build a better world.  “Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement”.

“I remain convinced that sport is one of the most forceful elements of peace, and I am confident in its future action.” Pierre de Coubertin

The five rings on a white background make up the Olympic symbol. It was presented at the 17th IOC Session at the Sorbonne in 1914, and was flown for the first time at the 1920 Games in Antwerp. While the interlinked rings symbolise the five continents, the six colours (including the white background) were chosen because they are found in all the flags of the world, so that every country can find at least one of its national colours.

Contrary to popular belief, the colours of the rings do not refer to particular continents but signify their union through sport and the gathering of athletes from all over the world at the Olympic Games.

I believe that Sport in its purest form offers possibilities of dialogue, camaraderie and exchanges of ideas, in a spirit of mutual respect and fair play, which everyone can apply on a daily basis well beyond sports arenas, thus contributing to building a better world!

It is not the place for the Wiggins of this world to be able  to compete under the flag of a limited company Wiggins Rights Ltd.

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