Most of us sit in front of our TV sets and watch the devastation of Fire’s, Hurricanes, Floods, Droughts, Heatwaves, Bleaching coral reefs, Ice Melting, Nature destruction, and forget about it in the morning.
THE SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE IS IN FACT JUST A CLICK OF A BUTTON AWAY.
You would think that by now we should all be waking up to climate change and instead of blaming everything, realise that the hard fact is that the chemistry of climate change cannot be changed no matter what action we or the world does.
What we have done and now do in life echos in climate changer. On a human scale, inequality and climate change are going to mess together so the blame games will achieve nothing.
Climate activists will achieve nothing except resentment.
The Paris Climate promises are achieving little or nothing.
As they turn climate change into profit, technological fixes or geoengineering will not stop it.
Unfortunately: IT TAKES YEARS FOR TREES TO GROW AND OVERALL HUMAN HISTORY WE ARE INCAPABLE OF ACTING AS ONE.
It’s becoming plain that not only are we affecting the other living things with which we share the planet, we’re also altering the physical systems of the planet itself.
In every respect, the world we inhabit will henceforth be the world we have made.
We can’t keep using the atmosphere as a free waste dump for carbon and expect to have a safe climate no matter what. Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are stopped.
When we insert ourselves so deeply into the workings of a planet, we are unlikely to be able to predict all of the consequences of our actions.
If you take seriously the amount of harm that unchecked global warming will cause, if you recognize that these harms will fall disproportionately on the global poor, if you acknowledge that these populations are not only the least equipped economically to cope with climate change but are also the least implicated in the rise of greenhouse gases in the first place, and if you concede the undeniable reality that conventional strategies for reducing the harms of climate change are not being implemented quickly enough, then there seems to be a strong moral case for doing something dramatic.
THE INEVITABLE REALITY IS AS NO ONE IS WILLING TO PAY AND THERE CAN BE NO SOLUTION WITHOUT TRILLIONS.
However, rest assured;
BY THE TIME WE HAVE MILLIONS OF CLIMATE REFUGEES LIFE AS WE KNOW IT WILL BE DISRUPTED BEYOND REPAIR.
It is already shaking up social, health and geopolitical balances in many parts of the world. The scarcity of resources like food and energy gives rise to new conflicts.
CLIMATE CHANGE CANNOT BE HALTED BY PUTTING SOLAR PANELS ON ONE HOUSE AT A TIME OR PLANTING A TREE, OR DRIVING ELECTRICAL CARS, OR EATING LESS MEAT, OR REDUCING OUR OVERCONSUMPTION/POPULATION OR BY US AS INDIVIDUALS- ONLY SLOWED.
SO HERE IS A SOLUTION TO CONSIDER. BEFORE WE ARE GENETICALLY ENGINEER INTO PRODUCTS.
WHY NOT MAKE PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE GENERATE A SELF PERPETUATING FUND OF TRILLIONS TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS WORLDWIDE.
THIS CAN BE ACHIEVED WITH THE CLICK OF A BUTTON BY APPLYING A 0.005% WORLD AID COMMISSION ON ALL HIGHT FREQUENCY TRADING, ON ALL SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS ACCUSATIONS, ON ALL FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS OVER $50,000, ON ALL WORLD LOTTOS AND GAMBLING WINS, ON ALL PROFITSEEKING ALGORITHMS, ON ALL PRODUCTS CONTAINING PALM OIL.
WITH THIS FINANCIAL CLOUT WE COULD TRANSFER WORLD ENERGY TO GREEN ENEGERY, CREATE MILLIONS OF JOBS WORLDWIDE REDUCING INEQUALITY, BOOST OUR ECONOMIES AND REVERS THE EFFECTS OF CLIMATE DAMAGE.
I believe that humans have the ability as a species to change this planet for the better I just hope we can achieve that before it is too late.
All human comments and suggestions appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As you read this, there are more than 40 conflicts unfolding in countries around the world. You could not be blamed for thinking that most of the world is in conflict.
They all seem to overflow into one great swam of human misery that occupy our News on a daily basis.
These days wars are more to do with identity based in historical, geographical, political, social, cultural and economic realities.
The EU endeavors to appease these differences, however the European Community needs to stop worry about protecting yesterday’s accomplishments rather than facing tomorrow’s challenges.
THIS IS HIGHLIGHTED BY ENGLAND PENDING DEPARTURE LEADING TO THE QUESTION:
DOES A DEFINABLE, IF NASCENT EUROPEAN IDENTITY EXIST OR IS IT LIKE ALL OTHERS.
It should come as no great surprise that most EU citizens regard themselves as belonging within a number of culturally defined groups and do not normally feel that these overlapping identities are incompatible.
As we are now witnessing with England’s departure and the divide between northern Europe and the Southern Europe.
The critical moments that lead to war are those when one or more identities take precedence over the others. So the objective of the EU must be to reach a stage at which regional, national, European and other identities are regarded as compatible rather than competitive.
This stage has not yet been reached and it may be argued that reaching this plateau is the major challenge which the Union faces in the next century.
It is extremely difficult to construct a European cultural project which embraces both the differences in European cultures and their common roots but in a world now driven more and more by technology that must be the objective, not isolation.
Europe is by far the most peaceful region in the world. Yet the continent is not immune to war – Britain, France, Belgium and others are heavily involved in external conflict in the Middle East, and face a growing threat to peace from international terrorism.
It is not inevitable that the logic of unity and interdependence will prevail and there is a consequent danger of a return to a dangerously fragmented Europe with potentially devastating consequences.
So given all the dire warnings from either side about the security of Europe if Britain leaves the EU, does the IEP foresee a change in the region’s fortunes in the event of Brexit?
In the short-term it’s unlikely to have an effect.
The longer-term ramifications, more for Britain than for [the rest of] Europe, would probably depend on what the economic outcome of a British exit would be. If there’s a further deterioration in the economy in England we may well witness an increase in violence.
This is a country that is full of places of worship that are thronged with glorification of war, saturated with historical blood, building two new aircraft carriers, while its people are on trolleys in hospitals.
Leaving the EU for all the wrong reasons, expecting to retain all the advantages of being in the EU but none of the responsibilities and costs.
A self-inflicted position.
At the moment they have the best trade deal possible – the best one imaginable – which is a customs union and access to the European Single Market and the European Economic Area.
We are now further away from world peace than at any time in the past 10 years – and it’s creating a global ‘peace inequality’ gap.
There are now just 10 countries which can be considered truly at peace – in other words, not engaged in any conflicts either internally or externally, completely free from conflict.
The lack of a solution to the refugee crisis and an increase in deaths from major terrorist incidents have all contributed to the world being less peaceful in 2016.
Many of the conflicts don’t get the media or policy attention of the wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan or Ukraine, and they may not have the same geopolitical or economic importance.
All wars need arms so who is supplying the arms:
Fueling the deadly conflicts for profit.
War kills. And war sells.
Where do nations from every corner of the planet look when they want to increase their arsenals?
Ten countries are responsible for the vast majority of all major arms exports, accounting for 90 percent of global sales with the United States, the world’s largest arms dealers.
The world’s top six major arms exporters are the United States, Britain, Russia, Germany, France and China. Together, they account for 74 percent of the total volume of exports.
Sales are in the region of $31.bn
If you don’t believe me here below is a link to interactive map.
The map is part of a series of articles from IRIN around the concept of forgotten wars.is an interactive map of the current conflicts in the world.
It examines the root causes, human cost and potential for peace of conflicts in Myanmar, Casamance, South Kordofan, southern Thailand, and Mindanao in the Philippines.
The map marks each conflict with a red dot.
It is sized to represent how long the battle has been going on, with the
larger dots representing those that have lasted the longest.
To see more about each conflict, click on the dot.
This brings up a fact box explaining the nature of the conflict, when it began and how many deaths have resulted from it.
Syria has been embroiled in civil war, that is also the biggest and most complex proxy war the world has witnessed.
Mexico’s drug war, fueled by 54 ruthless cartels lust for territory, cash, power and violence has slaughtered as many as 85,000 people since 2006.
Mali, AL-Qaeda took root in the country’s north. Around 4,000 people have been killed in Mali since 2012.
Afghanistan, Taliban and IS.
Iraq, the 2003 US-led Iraq war killed up to a million Iraqis, gave birth to Islamic State.
The conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq have been going for well over a decade, then it spilled into Syria in 2011, and afterwards into Libya and Yemen.
Yemen, AL-Qaeda and IS have fighters in Yemen, over 7,600 people have been killed in the past two years.
Pakistan, since the 9/11 outrage in 2001, war has been raging between the Taliban, IS.
Lebanon, Nearly a quarter of Lebanon’s population is made up of Syrian refugees and sectarian division has risen as IS battles with the Shia militant group Hezbollah.
Libya, 35,000 people have been killed since the Arab Spring uprising.
Democratic Republic Of Congo, more than 70 groups are fighting despite the presence of 20,000 UN troops.
Somalia, Al-Shabaab had 9,000 fighters in Somalia. IS has a foothold in Somalia and is trying to recruit Al-Shabaab fighters.
India,a fragile ceasefire since 2003 with Kashmir, but still exchange fire across the contested border.
South Sudan, over 50,000 people have been killed and more than 1.6 million displaced since war broke out in 2013. It has raged for more than 60 years.
Egypt, at war against Islamist militants in the Sinai.
Central African Republic, 6,000 people have been killed in the Central African Republic, with 25 per cent of the 4.6 million population displaced.
Ukraine, Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.
Nigeria, 50,000 people have died in the war between regime forces and Islamic State-affiliates Boko Haram.
Israel -Palestine, has forced tens of thousands of Arabs from homes in land grabs.
Turkey, fighting the Kurdish Workers Party the PKK, is hostile to the Kurdish Democratic Unity Party’s armed wing, the YPG, but has good relations with the Kurdish Peshmerga of Northern Iraq. The Turkish and Syrian Kurds are fighting IS and others in Syria but are against the Turkish government.
Potential Wars:
North Korea, technically, it has never stopped being at war with the South since 1953.
East China sea, South China Sea.
Will any end soon. Not likely.
This autocracy must stop.
The shelf-life of weapons is often longer than the governments and situations they were sold to.
Britain – is now the world’s second largest arms exporter after America – around 120,000 people are employed in weapons dealing.
Two-thirds of UK weapons have been sold to Middle Eastern countries.
If Europe is to escape the cauldron of fragmentation and national strife our shared bonds of European identity must be more broadly defined, given concrete expression and have the flexibility necessary to create an outward-looking and self-confident union of people’s.
The logic of global socio-economic interdependence that spells integration and the logic of ethnicity and nationality that demands separation both apply.
If England leaves the EU without a satisfactory solution to the Irish Border it could reignite one of the longest conflicts in the world going back 700 years.
To make the Irish less Irish backfired once and it will again.
With the coming Climate Change, doubts about the science are being replaced by doubts about the motives of scientists and their political supporters.
Once this kind of cynicism takes hold, is there any hope for the truth?
Climate change deniers argue they are only trying to discover the truth.
We should all be sceptical about that.
No Technology, No Artificial Intelligence, No inequality adjustment, No Frontiers, No Nuclear weapons, No alliances, not anything is going to stop migration.
Where will the next War be?
It will be between the countries relying on the Nile for power and water.
The toll of decades-long conflicts – from Colombia to the Ogaden, from Kashmir to Western Sahara – will be just as devastating for the people who do not live there.
All of the above presupposes that the development of Europe’s cultural identity is a worthy and attainable goal.
Europe, when you think about it, is a pretty small place. Jump on a plane in London and you can be all the way across the continent, in big old Russia, within just a few hours.
Europe stresses the importance of a continuing dialogue between the present and the past.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
They say we have free will, but there are many types of tyrannies in our world.
You could describe our hand-held devices which are keeping us connected to anything, anytime, anywhere as one.
We now use our hand-held devices for almost everything. More importantly, they use us for everything.
The extreme availability of information has not led to a more enlightened population, but to more confusion.
Connectivity is both a blessing and a curse.
It has become the pathway for almost all we do as we have become helpless without technology and the need for immediate data at our fingertips. But this is taking its toll.
The number of times we look at our phones daily would shock you: some studies say 50 times, others as many as 75 to 150 times. Most of our e mails are reactionary.
Information technology is all-pervasive in production and consumption.
Each time we look at the phone, we look away from what we should be or were focused on. Our collective ability to stay focused on anything is destroyed.
How does this connect to Growth.
It is too simplistic to attribute all of our economic problems to government: indeed, that sort of reasoning is counterproductive: it absolves everyone else responsibility.
Although part of the responsibility lies with forces that are outside a government, a significant share rests with the attitudes, preoccupations, we have to Artificial Intelligence that is now analyzing our every movement to the extent that advertising is becoming personalized.
I’m not saying that growth is bad but growth that destroys value just for profit is cancer that is driving inequality with a tendency to cluster around the short-term, issues while ignoring reality is going to bite us all.
I want to begin by touching on a crucial economy-wide factor
in the erosion of our economic strength which fosters short-term
thinking.
Advertising:
It is a major driver of unnecessary consumption.
This hasn’t always been the problem. Advertising use to inform you of the useful qualities of an object. Now it manipulates your emotions like anxiety and promises to improve social acceptance or class distinction.
It is now with a frenzy of social media advertising attaching its self to saving the world that is driving consumption to new dizzying heights.
Growth for growth’s sake, is an ugly word with even uglier connotations when it is using social media in the form of algorithms FOR PROFIT, regardless of the cost.
So what is driving it:
In the information age, time is compressed and events are squeezed into ever-decreasing periods.
We have governments encouraging a restless, fleeting mode of being, and a superficial, hurried culture, which is inimical to fundamental values.
They encourage growth programs, the benefits of which are available immediately, but the costs of which appear only at a later stage. They are less interested in public investments that have to be financed now but do not payoff adequately before the next election.
It’s as if human progress depends on economic progress.
At minimum, the kind of short-term oriented cycle in which we find ourselves behaves as though tomorrow is forever. And, in fact, a series of tomorrows will create a forever — a very predictable one — and not a very desirable or promising one.
Rewards which are heavily focused on short-term results, even if they make some financial sense, often do not deliver the economic promise or the synergy which is anticipated.
Perhaps it is true that the landmarks in human progress — in the arts, science, government, or elsewhere — have rarely been reached in societies in which the economy was unable to free most of its members from a daily obsession with subsistence needs.
On the contrary, wherever the economy is feeble or stagnant for
a prolonged period, where most people see their basic material
needs as unfulfilled and the prospects for improvement as
unlikely, the result is almost invariably either a dull fatalism
or political upheaval, neither of which is likely to be favorable
to liberty and freedom.
However we are now looking at a unremitting focus on economic growth. The drive to achieve growth at practically any cost and to the exclusion of all other measures of prosperity.
This focus on GDP growth as the prime measure of economic success is out of date. It’s not how big it is that counts, it’s what you do with it.
The distance to the future – is no longer the next election, it will be how much you are willing to pay the Cloud for information. The cumulative effects of almost five decades of constantly accelerating reliance on government regulation to address social inequities and problems is coming to an end.
The linkage between ownership and participation is changing.
Social Media is not just eroding the meaning of democracy but effecting our critical thinking skills. Polluted with consumption advertising it is adding to global inequality.
While there are hundreds of different marketing strategies, only one can bring in consistent sales from day one. Social media advertising. This is why global social ad spending doubled from $16 billion in 2014 to $31 billion in 2016 and is projected to increase another 26% in 2017.
One of the fascinating things about social advertising is that there is virtually no limit to your ability to scale.You don’t have to wait for someone to search for your targeted keywords. You don’t have to wait for someone to run your promotion or read your blog.
( For Instance:
With more than 2 billion monthly users, Facebook hosts over a quarter of the world’s population, providing advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to reach virtually anyone and everyone. It provides free lead magnet like:
Whitepapers
Ebooks
Product coupons
Sitewide discounts
Limited-time offers
Giveaways
Free shipping
These leads can then be nurtured with a targeted autoresponder. Offering free products, download-ables and predictable discounts and coupons for her audience. Doing so has earned Facebook more than $1,000,000 in annual sales in just 2 years. Facebook allows more advanced targeting than any other advertising platform on earth. Advertisers can target by location (within a 5-mile radius), job description, interests, past activity, and many other incredibly valuable criteria.
Instagram now boasts more than 500 million monthly active users and commands one of the highest audience engagement rates in social media, 58% higher than Facebook and 2000% higher than Twitter.
Twitter with 328 million monthly active users, it remains one of the most popular social media platforms. Brands don’t need to pay in order to reach their followers, which enhances the platform’s value even when running paid ads.
Pinterest: With 175 million monthly users is highly targeted toward women with an 81% female user base.
LinkedIn : Where you tend to find the highest average disposable income, has an estimated 227 million monthly active users.
Snapchat Advertising:310 million users.
All Social advertising is incredibly measurable.)
(You can, in fact, control when you choose to look at your hand-held device.)
In light of this one easy solution to over-consumption would be to ban advertising- at least in pubic places and on Social Media where Profit seeking Algorithms are used.
Much of’ the crippling of our economic systems can find its roots in Algorithms for profit. (see previous posts)
The consequences of elected government’s short-range perspective are not difficult to understand. They are seen as having succeeded in undermining the economy through overbearing regulation, tolerance of inflation, indifference to the cost of environmental and social programs, and a pervasive anti-business attitude.
Government thus diminishes the private sector’s sense of responsibility —
both in economic and ethical terms — for its own conduct and for its own performance.
While I appreciate that degrowth will not happen as quickly as we need it to do and it will take generations to move our collective consciousness on most issue, we don’t have that kind of time any longer.
Technology that ostensibly should help people save time, has instead led to a situation where time is scarcer than ever.
When an exponential growth curve becomes vertical, time has ceased to exist as duration.”life stands still at a tremendous speed”, with serious consequences for culture, intellectual life and the very fabric of society.
What we do not know today is what it will take to send us to
the pumps.
The struggle now concerns the right to be unavailable, the right to live and think more slowly.
Choosing to live according to one’s own self-made conception of reality, human nature, and happiness is a recipe for tyranny.
It is about time that we ask what wireless communications and the Internet are preconditions for. They are problems need to be understood well, in order to be dealt with the political upheaval that is around the corner.
Relying on averages generate by computers is worsening inequality
within countries, and the world as a whole.
So is there anything that can be done legitimately that will have a positive effect.
Becoming more grounded in ones own true feelings and perceptions is a primary indication that one has begun to free himself from the “tyranny of the should.”
Assuring that investment in future profitability is not sacrificed on
the altar of quarterly earnings growth. Refocusing our approach to economic decision-making, to benefit all not the few.
Willingness to pay the price today for the health and vitality of the country tomorrow is the ultimate test of stewardship. To live with a view to the regime should not be supposed to be slavery, but preservation.
Finally, it is as we all know easy to point the finger, however we are the will in any form or symbol and we are identifiable as water.
However if we are to address any of our world problems and stop the self-perpetuating downward cycle, with all the suction of a whirlpool, from which there will be no escape we cannot and should not rely on technology to bail us out.
There is only one solution. Make Greed pay a World Aid commission of 0.05% ( See previous post)
Technology, if it has not yet become the de fac~o
decision- — . . . maker in the production process, has
certainly become a participant who cannot be
ignored.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
“I am very honored and proud for this unique distinction,” she said. “This is historical to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with a citizenship.”
The recent PR stunt by Saudi Arabia pretending to give a robot
citizenship helps no one.
Sophia is essentially a cleverly built puppet designed to exploit our cultural expectations of what a robot looks and sounds like.
It is however opening a whole new box by exploiting the misconceptions about AI and robots (particularly how advanced they are) degrading the concept of rights for actual living, breathing humans, in order to sell an illusion.
What is this about?
It’s about having a supposed equal you can turn on and off.
Giving AI anything close to human rights will allow firms to “pass off both legal and tax liability to these completely synthetic entities.”
It’s a wake up call because we will have to have debates about robot/AI rights and citizenship, because at some point they will ask for them.
Avoiding the question altogether, though, may be difficult, what exactly does it mean to give a Robot Citizenship?
It’s complicated.
In reality, humans have no rights, just as chimps or wolves have no rights.
Cut open a human, and you won’t find there any rights.
The only place where human rights exist is in the stories we invent and tell one another.
Take for example our legal systems. Today, most legal systems are based on a belief in human rights. But human rights are a fiction.
However given the vast inequalities of the world, shouldn’t we at last ask the question?
Being a citizen in one place could mean being a legal person everywhere else.
For example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was proclaimed by the U.N. General Assembly in 1948, applies to “all peoples and all nations” and does not limit its effect to citizens.
Although U.N. resolutions are not enforceable, international law holds the declaration as an authoritative reference for human rights. Numerous subsequent human rights treaties, including the covenant, are based on it.
59 years later, the frontier of human rights is still being bloodily negotiated: our world is less global than we like to think. A generous reading of the declaration’s impact on Sophia is that she has all of the rights it identifies.
Then if you look at the US Constitution.
Under the US Constitution, citizens can vote, serve on juries, and get elected to public office; corporations cannot.
If Hanson—or any other forward-thinking A.I. developer—is thinking of the long-term consequences of citizenship for A.I. and robots, these are important rights that they gain controllable access to with an artificial citizen.
She’s arguably eligible for naturalization and U.S. citizenship:
What is undeniable is that the decision by Saudi Arabia has forced us to think harder about the future and our increasingly close relationship with robots.
To me, identity is a multidimensional construct.
It sits at the intersection of who we are biologically, cognitively, and as defined by every experience, culture, and environment we encountered.
It’s not clear where Sophia fits in this description.
In essence, it may not matter if Sophia isn’t conscious, or if the concept of identity for a robot is tricky to pin down, or that laws would have to change to accommodate synthetic person hood, because it may still be worth giving humanoid robots some form of legal protection because of the impact mistreating them can have on human psychology.
Where does it all stop?
How does it affect people if they think you can have a citizen that you can buy.
Everything in the universe might be conscious, or at least potentially conscious, or conscious when put into certain configurations. Anything at all could be conscious, providing that the information it contains is sufficiently interconnected and organised.
In principle the same might apply to the internet, or a smart phone, or a thermostat. The ethical implications are unsettling: might we owe the same care to conscience machines that we bestow on animals?
We don’t know how the brains of mammals create consciousness, we have no grounds for assuming it’s only the brains of mammals that do so – or even that consciousness requires a brain at all.
A smart phone could be conscious, could you ever know that it was true?
Surely only the smart phone itself could ever know that?
70,000 years ago humans were insignificant animals. The most important thing to know about prehistoric humans is that they were unimportant. Their impact on the world was very small, less than that of jellyfish, woodpeckers or bumblebees.
Today, however, humans control this planet.
How did we reach from there to here?
What was our secret of success, that turned us from insignificant apes minding their own business in a corner of Africa, into the rulers of the world?
Humans control the world because we are the only animal that can cooperate flexibly in large numbers.
Cooperation is not always nice, of course. All the terrible things humans have been doing throughout history are also the product of mass cooperation. Prisons, slaughterhouses and concentration camps are also systems of mass cooperation.
We can cooperate with numerous strangers because we can invent fictional stories, spread them around, and convince millions of strangers to believe in them.
As long as everybody believes in the same fictions, we all obey the same laws, and can thereby cooperate effectively. There are plenty of things that the vast majority of the world would agree on, if there was any suitable body that could act at that level.
If I am a chimp and I want to cooperate with you, I must know you personally: What kind of chimp are you? Are you a nice chimp? Are you an evil chimp? How can I cooperate with you if I don’t know you?
The more certain the science becomes, the less concern we find it.
The amount of sharing we’d need to do to genuinely solve the world’s biggest problems is still politically impossible. So if we want to see more sharing, our task is to broaden the realms of the politically possible, one step at a time.
Maybe we’re approaching a point where we can actually harness this knowledge, make radical progress in how we treat one another, and become a species worthy of the title Homo sapiens.
People are capable of exceeding expectations in ways that computers cannot.
I don’t believe human society is ready yet for citizen robots. To grant a robot citizenship is a declaration of trust in a technology that I believe is not yet trustworthy. It brings social and ethical concerns that we as humans are not yet ready to manage.
We have many challenges that we need to overcome before we can truly trust these systems. For example, we don’t yet have reliable mechanisms to assure us that these intelligent systems will always behave ethically and in accordance with our moral values, or to protect us against them taking a wrong action with catastrophic consequences.
The computer has not yet been invented that can invent another computer. Present-day computers do not possess creativity.
Today, the Internet enables sharing to take place at breakneck speeds. Sharing is at the heart of what makes us social. Unfortunately what we actually do every day conflicts with what we know we should do.
We need to find the right motivations for people to change their behavior.
Why because we humans now live in dual world. We are constructed a second layer of make-believe reality.
Up to now Non-conscious humanoids did not exist, of course.
It could be augured that Sophia up to a point has comparable awareness because of its program’s.
No spark of awareness inside.
The central tragedy of modern life.
One-on-one, humans are embarrassingly similar to chimpanzees, probable the reason why consciousness hasn’t been explained:
it’s that humans aren’t up to the job, consciousness is just brain states.
The human mind is incapable of comprehending is itself, but robots will.
And Just in case you think this is all a joke:
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ‘BOY’ SHIBUYA MIRAI HAS JUST BECOME WORLD’S FIRST AI BOT TO BE GRANTED RESIDENCY IN TOKYO.
As with all things in this world of ours money is probably the most successful fiction ever invented by humans.
Even thought we have an emerging ‘global public’, largely thanks to the internet. Money and profit will determining the outcome.
Take Estonia of instance.
Estonia’s economic ministry is considering granting AI and robots a legal status
This would make them ‘robot agents’ and not merely someone’s property
The legislation could help determine responsibility when AI-controlled machinery is involved in an accident
The status would sit somewhere between having a ‘separate legal personality’, like a corporation, and being an object that is someone else’s ‘personal property’.
Despite the behavior of those world leaders who yearn for the old days (hello, Mr Putin. Mr Trump. Mrs May.)the nation state idea isn’t as powerful as it was, but it’s still the organizing dynamic in international relations, and it’s still all about the national interest.
Scratch my back and I will scratch yours is waning.
Of course, these questions need to be addressed with all new technologies.’ If we don’t have the legal and ethical frameworks in place we can all kiss our rear-buts goodbye.
It is of utmost important to address these issues head-on and not put it on the long figure like climate change.
I can only hope the United nations has the balls to stand up and condemn this cultural vandalism.
The principle of sharing is ubiquitous in society so let Ireland be the first nation to set up a Tax Haven for Robots.
Of course, it does nothing to solve the underlying injustices.
Spot the Robot if you can.
What race is the robot?
Do they get to decide by the skin they put on?
Is it white?
I’m pretty sure it is not black.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
( Twelve minute read for all programmers, code writers.)
I think most people are worrying about the wrong things when they worry about Robots and AI.
However with AI and robotics positioned to impact all areas of society, we are remiss not to set things in motion now to prepare for a very different world in the future.
The danger is not AI itself but rather what people do with the AI. The repercussions of AI technology is going to be profound, limited by biological evolution we will be unable to keep up.
So we were all making a very basic mistake when it comes to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Like every advance in technology AI has the potential to do amazing things, on the other hand it also has the potential to do dangerous things and there is little that can be done to stop or rectify it once it’s unleashed. For example its use in weaponizing.
(Recently I read where it is now almost possible to physically create a computer made of DNA using DNA molecules. A computer that can be programmed to compute anything any other device can process.
Electronic computers are a form of UTM, but no quantum UTM has yet been built, if built it will outperform all standard computers on significant practical problems. This ‘magical’ property is possible because the computer’s processors are made of DNA rather than silicon chips. All electronic computers have a fixed number of chips.
So what?
As DNA molecules are very small a desktop computer could potentially utilize more processors than all the electronic computers in the world combined – and therefore outperform the world’s current fastest supercomputer, while consuming a tiny fraction of its energy.
It will definitely bring about moral and philosophical issues that we should be concerned about right now.)
Back to today:
It’s no longer what or when Artificial Intelligence will change our lives, but how or what and who is going to be help responsible.
We are at a crossroads. We need to make decisions. We must re-invent our future.
It is the role of AI in future, truly hybrid societies, or socio-cognitive-technical systems, that will be the real game changer.
The real potential of AI includes not only the development of intelligent machines and learning robots, but also how these systems influence our social and even biological habits, leading to new forms of organization, perception and interaction.
In other words, AI will extend and therefore change our minds.
Robots are things we build, and so we can pick their goals and behaviours. Both buyers and builders ought to pick those goals sensibly, but people who will use and buy AI should know what the risks really are.
Understanding human behaviour may be the greatest benefit of artificial intelligence if it helps us find ways to reduce conflict and live sustainably.
However, knowing fully well what an individual person is likely to do in a particular situation is obviously a very, very great power. Bad applications of this power include the deliberate addiction of customers to a product or service, skewing vote outcomes through disenfranchising some classes of voters by convincing them their votes don’t matter, and even just old-fashioned stalking.
Machines might learn to predict our every move or purchase, or governments might try to put the blame robots for their own unethical policy decisions.
It’s pretty easy to guess when someone will be somewhere these days.
Robots, Artificial Intelligence programs, machine learning, you name it, all seem to be responsible for themselves.
However increasingly our control of machines and devices is delegated, not direct. That fact needs to be at least sufficiently transparent that we can handle the cases when components of systems our lives depend on go wrong.
In fact, robots belong to us. People, governments and companies build, own and program robots. Whoever owns and operates a robot should be responsible for what it does.AI systems must do what we want them to do.
In humans consciousness and ethics are associated with our morality, but that is because of our evolutionary and cultural history. In artefacts, moral obligation is not tied by either logical or mechanical necessity to awareness or feelings. This is one of the reasons we shouldn’t make AI responsible: we can’t punish it in a meaningful way, because good AI systems are designed to be modular, so the “pain” of punishment could always be excised, unlike in nature.
We must get over our over-identification with AI systems and start demanding that all Technologies that is not designed for the betterment of humanity and the world we live in be verify AI safe andcompanies need to make the AI they are inserting in their products visible.
We need a world Organisation that is totally transparent and accountable to VET all technology to ensure that :
To minimise social disruption and maximise social utility.
Robots should notbe designed as weapons, except for national security reasons.
Robots should be designed and operated to comply with existing law, including privacy.
Robots are products: as with other products, they should be designed to be safe and secure.
Robots are manufactured artefacts: the illusion of emotions and intent should not be used to exploit vulnerable users.
It should be possible to find out who is responsible for any robot.
Robots should not be human-like because they will necessarily be owned.
Robots do not need to have a gender. We should consider how our technology reflects our expectations of gender. Who are the users, and who gets used?
Weshould not creating a legal status for robots that will dub them as “electronic persons,” implying that machines will have legal rights and obligations to fulfill. This means that robots will have to take responsibility for decisions they make, especially if they have autonomy.
We should insist on a kill switch for all robots that would shut down all functions if necessary.
We should have restrictions on robots to ensure they obey all commands unless those commands would force them to physically do harm to humans or themselves through action or inaction.
We should not use robots to reason about what it means to be human, calling them “human” dehumanize real people. Worse, it gives people the excuse to blame robots for their actions, when really anything a robot does is entirely our own responsibility.
There are also ethical issues with AI, but they are all the same issues we have with other artifacts we build and value or rely on, such as fine art or sewage plants.
Yesterday, the European Parliament’s legal affairs committee voted to pass a report urging the drafting of a set of regulations to govern the use and creation of robots and AI.
legal liability may need to be proportionate to its level of autonomy and “education,” with the owners of robots with longer training periods held more responsible for those robots’ actions.
A big part of the responsibility also rests on the designers behind these sophisticated machines, with the report suggesting more careful monitoring and transparency. This can be done by providing access to source codes and registration of machines. The forming an ethics committee, where creators might be required to present their designs before they build them.
We should have to have a league of programmers dedicated to opposing the misuse of AI technology to exploit people’s natural emotional empathy.
As AI gets better, these issues have gotten more serious.
So to wrap up this blog :
First, here are many reasons not to be worry. However it is not enough for experts to understand the role of AI in society it is also imperative to communicate this understanding to non-experts.
Secondly, we shouldn’t ever be seen as selling our own data, just leasing it for a particular purpose.
This is the model software companies already use for their products; we should just apply the same legal reasoning to we humans. Then if we have any reason to suspect our data has been used in a way we didn’t approve, we should be able to prosecute. That is, the applications of our data should be subject to regulations that protect ordinary citizens from the intrusions of governments, corporations and even friends.
These problems are so hard, they might actually be impossible to solve.
But building and using AI is one way we might figure out some answers. If we have tools to help us think, they might make us smarter. And if we have tools that help us understand how we think, that might help us find ways to be happier.
The idea that robots, being authored by us, will always be owned—is completely bonkers. It is the duty of all of us to make AI researchers ensure that the future impact is beneficial, not making robots into others, but accepting them as part of ourselves – as artefacts of our culture rather than as members of our in group.
Unfortunately, it’s easier to get famous and sell robots if you go around pretending that your robot really needs to be loved, or otherwise really is human – or superhuman!
Just because they are shaped like a human and they’d watched Star Wars, passers-by thought it deserved more ethical consideration than they gave homeless people, who were actually people.
Because we build and own robots, we shouldn’t ever want them to be persons.
I can hear you saying that our society faces many hard problems far more pressing than the advance of Artificial intelligence. AI is here now, and even without AI, our hyperconnected socio-technical culture already creates radically new dynamics and challenges for both human society and our environment.
AI and computer science, particularly machine learning but also HCI, are increasingly able to help out research in the social sciences. Fields that are benefiting include political science, economics, psychology, anthropology and business / marketing. All true but automation causes economic inequality.
Blaming robots is insane, and taxing the robots themselves is insane.
This is insane because no robot comes spontaneously into being. Robots are all constructed, and the ones that have impact on the economy are constructed by the rich which is creating a fundamental shift in the power and availability of artificial intelligence, and its impact on everyday lives. It creates a moral hazard to dump responsibility into a pit that you cannot sue or punish.
Some people really expected AI to replace humans. These people don’t have enough direct, personal experience of AI to really understand whether or not it was human in the first place.
There is no going back on this, but that isn’t to say society is doomed.
The word “robot” is derived from the Czech word for “slave.”
Lets keep it that way: I am all for Technological self-reproduction – Slaves.
Unless we can re calibrate our tendency to exploit each other, the question may not be whether the human race can survive the machine age – but whether it deserves to.
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.
The UN Development Program reports that the richest 20 percent of the world’s population consume 86 percent of the world’s resources while the poorest 80 percent consume just 14 percent.
The WTO began life on 1 January 1995, but its trading system is half a century older.
Since 1948, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) had provided the rules for the system. (The second WTO ministerial meeting, held in Geneva in May 1998, included a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the system.)
The last and largest GATT round, was the Uruguay Round which lasted from 1986 to 1994 and led to the WTO’s creation.
Whereas GATT had mainly dealt with trade in goods, the WTO and its agreements now cover trade in services, and in traded inventions, creations and designs (intellectual property).
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an international organization of 161 members that deals with the rules of trade between nations. With Russia’s accession in August 2012, the WTO encompasses all major trading economies.
The work of the IMF and the WTO is complementary.
The WTO Agreements require that it consult the IMF when it deals with issues concerning monetary reserves, balance of payments, and foreign exchange arrangement.
The policies of the WTO impact all aspects of society and the planet, but it is not a democratic, transparent institution.
The WTO rules are written by and for corporations with inside access to the negotiations. The WTO would like you to believe that creating a world of “free trade” will promote global understanding and peace. On the contrary, the domination of international trade by rich countries for the benefit of their individual interests fuels anger and resentment that make us less safe.
WTO rules put the “rights” of corporations to profit over human and labor rights.
It is time that trade was put firmly in its place, so that it is viewed not as a goal in itself but as a means to achieving broader social, environmental and development goals.
At the very least, the world’s richest countries must honour their commitment to tackling their own damaging practices, particularly subsidies that drive down prices and increase poverty for farmers across the world.
Multilateral trade negotiations need fundamental reform, to be based on fair negotiations, not power play, so that developing countries have an equal place at the table. Genuine consultation with civil society in both the global north and south would no doubt produce other proposals for improvement.
If agreement can’t be reached on a small package of measures to help developing countries, as part of development agenda, then the relevance of the WTO and the multilateral trading system must be questioned.
The sad reality is that very often it is not in a business’s financial interests to act ethically. And no amount of persuasion will change that.The point, then, is not so much to persuade businesses that it is in their interests to act ethically and sustainably – they will work that out for themselves – but to make sure that it is.
Which means two things in practice: raising the benefits of acting ethically and sustainably, and raising the costs of not doing so. There are two principal ways, in a democratic capitalist society, of ensuring that the right incentives are in place for a business to act ethically: via the consumer and via the regulator (indirectly influenced by the citizen).
When humans get into big organisations it can be hard to apply moral values, and the incentives of the business context tend to hold sway. Especially when the boardroom is often far from a particular initiative that may be many thousands of miles away.
The big problem is the lack of global level regulation to match our now thoroughly globalised financial system. Such an international regulatory system is very far from being a reality, but if it is needed to guide, enable and sometimes restrict the activities of the financial sector, it is equally needed in other international sectors, from the extractive industries to manufacturing to agricultural trade.
Attempts at getting companies to sign up to voluntary measures (such as the UN Global Compact) are fine, but they are regarded as quaint by the majority of business people.
For every CEO who has a damascene conversion and transforms or builds their business along ethical lines (think Anita Roddick of the Body Shop) there are thousands who don’t. Lip service is paid, the odd children’s playground is built, the business of business goes on.
The point is to change incentives, and voluntary measures don’t do that. Only legal sanction or consumer action is strong enough, and consumer action is too erratic to rely upon.
In a globalised world, national level laws are clearly inadequate. People say international law is impossible, but they say that about everything worth doing. It is not only possible, it is vital, and is the major project of the 21st century. Without it, the global public cannot expect a private sector that works for people, not just for profit.
If you wanted clear evidence of the above just look at the Two trade Agreements recently negotiated The TTIP and TTP.
The other day I came across the term Fourth Generation Warfare. A term used by military thinkers to describe conflict at the end of the 20th century.
Now I am no General but my first reaction to the term was ” Fourth Generation – Kill everyone up to and including Great Grand Dad.”
The problem is that our traditional definition of “war” is outdated, and so is our imagination of what war means.
How many wars have you witnessed since World war Two.
So how many the easy answer might just be: too many.
I was lucky like most of us these days as I was not around for either of the World Wars.
Some time ago I wrote a post ” We watch as a civilization thousands of years old goes to rack and ruin Nov 2014.
With 20 million soldiers worldwide and every conceivable weapon it’s no wonder we have a world that is incapable of living in respect of each other.
Right now in 2015, it’s hard not to get desensitized to death and violence.
The Syrian war is now in its fifth year.
Anyway back to the term Fourth Generation Warfare.
This term is used to describe the current growing inferno that is currently wreaking havoc in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen which will engulf the whole region and beyond and has the potential to push it over the threshold into a third world war.
What is needed is a concept which explains to blinkered military and political leaders why *they cannot win* unless they change what they are doing in *truly radical* ways. Why? Because what has changed is the near instantaneous nature of the cognitive and moral aspects of war, empowered through information technology.
What we are really seeing is that the increased “dispersion and democratization of technology, information, and finance” brought about by globalization has given terrorist groups greater mobility and access worldwide.
Isis ,Hamas and Hezbollah ( If you consider the latter two terrorist organisations) ,especially, have established themselves as organizations capable of addressing the everyday problems of their constituencies. They are integrating themselves into the social and political fabric of Muslim societies worldwide.
While we watch they are turning their constituencies into effective weapons by creating strong social, political, and religious ties with them; in short, they have become communal activists for their constituencies, which have, in turn, facilitated the construction and maintenance of substantial financial and logistical networks and safe houses. This support then aids in the regeneration of the terrorist groups.
We see that even in the so-called information age, the use of brute force remains an effective tactic in many parts of the world.
Terrorists, guerrillas, and similar actors generally aimed at eroding an opponent’s will to fight rather than destroying his means.
“Maybe those gangs of Islamist terrorists and Jihadists are doing a hell of a job destabilizing and fragmenting the Arab world. And surely the US/EU will continue to look from on high and make-believe they see no terrorism and hear no terrorism until the whole region is set for a greater Israel scenario.” To Quote (Hillary Clinton.) The next President more than likely of the USA.
No boots and uniforms on the ground has turn ISIS, contrary to Al Qaeda hoax, into the most dangerous international terrorist organization the world has ever come to witness.
If ISIS is allowed to grow bigger in the hope of fragmenting the Arab world and giving more space and influence for the Zionist entity then this whole thing will turn into an imminent world menace.
Unfortunately or perhaps fortuitously there is no stomach in the west to tackle ISIS head on. That option has long gone.
The main target behind ISIS is to ignite a Shiite/Sunni inferno that is drag Saudi Arabia and Iran into a dreadful conflict that will destabilize and weaken both states.
ISIS is already issuing passports and promotional publications for the new Caliphate and is now presenting itself as an ideologically a superior alternative to al-Qaida.
All three groups – Jabhat al-Nusra and Zawahiri’s al-Qaida on the one hand, and Isis on the other – share the same goals: the creation of an Islamic state in Syria (and Iraq.) Iraq is already a country of two distinct halves.
Everybody now seems to have some kind of involvement in this fight, which may have killed more than 200,000 people, and no one has a realistic idea of how to end it or for that matter to navigate the chaotic seeming tempest of our modern world.
One way other the other history never begins with a sudden event.
No matter what terminology we use ISIS definitely has its origins in the USA invasion of Iraq after 9/11. It is now shaped by the nature of conflict which is taking on an increasingly sectarian characteristic. As a Jihadist organization claiming to represent the true Islamic Khilafat, its project( for the lack of a better word) will not stop at the current borders and it will continue seeking to expand its territory. Building its own state and consolidating its power in the areas it manages to control.
So where do we stand to-day?
As the attention of the world focused on Ukraine and Gaza, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) captured a third of Syria in addition to the quarter of Iraq it had seized in June.
The frontiers of the new Caliphate declared by Isis on 29 June are expanding by the day and now cover an area larger than Great Britain and inhabited by at least six million people, a population larger than that of Denmark, Finland or Ireland.
It is believed to have some 30,000 fighters in its ranks, with about 10% of them from the West. ( 3,000 Westerners)
In a few weeks of fighting in Syria Isis established itself as the dominant force in the Syrian opposition, routing the official al-Qaida affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, in the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor and executing its local commander as he tried to flee.
In northern Syria some five thousand Isis fighters are using tanks and artillery captured from the Iraqi army in Mosul to besiege half a million Kurds in their enclave at Kobani on the Turkish border.
In central Syria, near Palmyra, Isis fought the Syrian army as it overran the al-Shaer gas field, one of the largest in the country, in a surprise assault that left an estimated three hundred soldiers and civilians dead. Repeated government counter-attacks finally retook the gas field but Isis still controls most of Syria’s oil and gas production.
Branches of ISIS have sprung up in Egypt and Libya, and in March 2015, the Nigerian-based Islamist sect Boko Haram pledged allegiance to ISIS.
ISIS is definitely not Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda distanced itself from ISIS as it grew increasingly violent and intolerant, even of Muslims.
It has no boundaries in regard to its savagery.
This inferno will not be controllable, and nobody will be immune from it, most of all the Jewish state of Israel (maybe only then the US/EU will regain some of their lost senses and start to see and hear the evil of their own doing.)
Our reluctance to act promptly and decisively with the present and imminent danger of ISIS might seems contradictory to their holy Gospel of war on terrorism, but a closer look will reveal the perfect harmony of the western passive stand with their newly adopted trend of 4th generation asymmetrical warfare.
What is the beauty of this new 4th generation warfare?
In brief, the theory holds that warfare has evolved through four generations:
1) The use of massed manpower, 2) firepower, 3) maneuver, and now 4) An evolved form of insurgency that employs all available networks—political, economic, social, military—to convince an opponent’s decision makers that their strategic goals are either unachievable or too costly.
This is laughable : The Caliphate may be poor and isolated but its oil wells and control of crucial roads provide a steady income in addition to the plunder of war.
When it comes to ISIS is a different story; it’s an obviously more organized, highly militarily trained to use US sophisticated weaponry and attracting evermore young recruits from the west. Who by the way through the Media are its biggest propaganda arm with on average 25 articles per day.
The group uses social media outlets such as Twitter, Whats App, and Facebook to promise new recruits material rewards, such as free housing and a steady salary.
Egypt
The most virulent militant organization in Egypt, pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Libya
At least three militant groups, one in each of Libya’s three regions, pledged allegiance to ISIS.
The group has also reportedly received funding from wealthy individuals in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, and Qatar and then used the money to buy arms on the black market. These nations support ISIS because both consider Iran and Syria a threat, share anti-Shiite sentiment, and want to protect fellow Sunnis from violence sanctioned by Assad and Maliki.
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar have passed legislation banning such aid, but the governments have done little to enforce the laws.
As we are unwilling to cut the head of the serpent we can only hope that ISIS might have its own internal disagreements about the future. (A slow burn, rather than complete eradication, may be the best possible outcome).
First, a dispute with local populations and the more indigenous groups that have their distinct concerns and priorities other than the strict interpretation of Sharia law, and this dispute is already in place in Syria and some parts of Iraq.
The second. A conflict within the organization between its Iraqi wing that might prioritize the “sectarian conflict” with Shias and issues related to communal identity, and the global wing that adopts the ideology of jihad and looks beyond Iraq.
So we are left with: Why do it yourself when your own enemies (infiltrated by covert operatives) could do it, even better, and change their own sovereign country into a failed state ready to be controlled and subjugated.
The price we might pay in a future conflict could be high indeed.
Life is not a solo act. It’s a huge collaboration.
So where does 4th Generation War come into the picture. War is war no matter what term you give.
It is a loose collection of ideas that does not hold up to close scrutiny.
4GW has reinvented itself several times, taking advantage of the latest developments in technology or tactics, and whatever ideas or theories happened to be in vogue is not working.
Victory in 4GW warfare is won in the moral sphere. The aim of 4GW is to destroy the moral bonds that allows the organic whole to exist — cohesion.
There does not seem to be anything Moral about ISIS or Drones.
Through the haze of horror and grief we all witness this war is becoming internationalized and we are running out of time to do anything about it.
Mr Bush wanted to leave Iraq divided up into three separate states along sectarian lines, Sunni, Shia, and Kurdish. He got his wish.
There is (or now it might be better to say there has always been) an ill-conceived policy ( promoted only by the rich) that if you put in place policies that help the wealth to become wealthier it will somehow benefit us all.
Down throughout THE AGES this has proven to be a fraud.
However Conventional rich or power wisdom’s seldom, collapse on their own.
They collapse only when challenged by advocates for change that trust forward initiatives that expose the bankruptcy of the conventionally wise.
The world needs NOW MORE THAN EVER to re- focus greed that is holding a lock-grip over our economies and democracies.
Just think what could be achieved with a 0.0O5% UP TO 0.5% WORLD AID COMMISSION IF APPLIED TO ALL STOCK EXCHANGE TRANSACTIONS IN THE WORLD.
Every day trillions of dollars change hands in currency exchange, share dealings and more complex financial
products like futures, derivatives and so on.
The market in these transactions has exploded over recent years and all the transactions together constitute an amazing 75 times global GDP.
Often, the trading is done by computers which react to small shifts in price, and money, shares and exotic financial products change hands many times an hour, all over the world. Most of the trading is speculative and serves little useful purpose –indeed it can harm companies, livelihoods and even whole national economies, as the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s did.
Such a tiny commission (0.005% to 0.5%) on each of the millions of financial transactions that take place every day would provide a new source of finance to pay for a range of desperately needed changes to our world of inequalities.
It would change the very face of capitalist Democracy.
Helping to deliver the Millennium Development Goals and tackling the challenge of climate change.
It would be far more progressive than other tax rises as it would ensure that those with the broadest shoulders contribute most to the cost of the economic recovery.
It would be easier to collect because all the financial transactions to be taxed are conducted
or registered electronically. A minor change to computer programs would deduct the commission at source and direct it straight to the Fund. This has been tested by supportive financial institutions, and already operates in many share transactions.
It would enable the establishment of Rapid Aid Centers around the world in case of Natural Disasters. Fully funded, fully equipped, fully maned, able react at the drop of a hat.
The daily volume of business deals on the Foreign exchange markets in 1998 was estimated to be over $2.5 trillion dollars. Now it well above $5 trillion. This is just Foreign Exchange.
Small currency transactions could be exempted from taxation (and at 0.005%, you’d pay £1 on every £20,000
you changed – some holiday money!
Add on small share transactions, although they’re already taxed at 0.5% – and pension funds would pay the tax, but they tend to hold shares for many years:
The people who would really pay the commission would be speculators like hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and merchant banks who buy and sell shares every hour.
Just Imagine.
How could this be achieved, who would managed the fund, how would we ensure transparency, avoid corruption, and political manipulation etc, I will address in my next blog.
It is my firm belief that this initiative is the only viable solution to present day world problems. If you agree or have some useful observations or comments let’s hear them.
AI systems must do what we want them to do.
