Tag Archives: Environment

Capitalism vs The Climate: This Changes Nothing;

19 Friday Sep 2014

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You hear these day cry’s from lots of different quarter for the need of an ideological change if we are to tackle the numerous problems the world currently faces.

In Naomi Klein new book titled – This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. She advocates exactly this.  http://youtu.be/WPQI1Lui42c

While I admire her efforts with every thing these days we are bombarded with so much information that the hard facts disappear in a haze of communication resulting in a quagmire of confusion as to what is true or what is not true.

The bare fact is that if Humanity was faced with a Meteorite that was going to hit the earth and extinguish all known life we would not be able even if it wanted to change our ideology to save ourselves because of GREED.

There can be no Ideology change without equality of opportunity.

To create a world of equal opportunity for all requires unfortunately more than just aspirations.

It requires Money lots of money.

With the unbridled Privatization/ Consumerism of the world natural resources forging ahead unopposed for the sake of profit for profit sake by Sovereign Wealth Funds it’s no wonder that it is impossible to have any Ideology change that will make a difference.

The disillusion that we have some privileged position on earth are challenged every day.

ISIS is already in Europe, Alibaba is on the New York Stock Exchange, Climate change is already effecting world poverty, world economics, migration, and YOU.

” We can’t see the wood from the trees,” as the saying goes.

What we have done in the past gives has given rise to what is happening now.

There is only one solution:  The people of the world must find a way of getting Greed to contribute to the planets survival without greed’s awareness. ( See previous posts)

The planet will have 11bn people by 2100 according to a new study.

Traditional methods for fighting for change have proved fruitless. We must put people before Capitalism and Politics.

In short, there are so many cars in the world today that the fuel burnt on the world’s roads by those many cars emits 1.73 billion metric tons (equivalent to 3.81 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. As of 2012, there are 1.1 billion automobiles on the earth. The 1.1 billion automobiles in 2012 already average a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.2 billion tires annually, and those 2.2 billion tires consume over half of the earth’s rubber production, which of course burns even more fuel.

The fight of our time has begun. The Scramble for Sustainability is still possible. Our immune systems need re-education. We need to heed the Language of Money.

If we want it we must pay for it.

There is no point in saving a Tiger, a forest, a river, or anything for that matter,even a child if they or it have no where to a full and sustainable live.

We must make the things we value more valuable than the things we don’t value by paying for them with money.

I agree with Naomi that Capitalism is on the way out but life exists in individual moments and it is up to us to make sure those moments are vital. Sharing wealth is the Mechanism. Cap Greed.

(See previous posts; 01/9/2014,23/08/2014.16/08/2014,14/08/2014, 22/07/2014, 03/07/2014)

Have a look at the below.

The universe can only be observed through a brain.

15 Monday Sep 2014

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Have you got one ?

You would be right to say that we are all endow with one, but fuck me, just look around the World at the moment and you would be lead to believe that we are all using some prototypes.

It is a no Brainer when it comes to understanding what the future will holds if we don’t cop on to ourselves soon.

Worldwide, some 827.6 million people live in urban slums.

By 2020, it is estimated the world slum population will reach almost 1 billion.

About 50 percent of the world’s population now live in urban areas. Every day millions of people world-wide call our streets their home.

Lack of clean water and sanitation claim the lives of more than 1.8 million young children every year.

In the United States, 48.5 million people are living in poverty. One third of Londoners using Food banks.

A child dies of poverty in the world every minute.

Now while I appreciate that with seven billion human beings in the world, it generate’s diverse problems in different social areas and that the entirety of the human populous does not express the same comprehension of morals. It is beyond me that we are all in the process of building a world worse than hell.

We might be perplexed and disoriented by the Higgs boson

and a life in the shadows of science and technology.

But let’s face the facts. If asked, 99.9% of us could not give a dogs bollix whether the Higgs boson matters or not.  An Inconvenient Truth.

At the current rate of births in fifty years ( most of you will be still living) there will be around 12 billion people. Hopefully Five billion more with brains asking where was our common sense and compassion when it was needed.

You think, humans are capable of heart-breaking compassion and, on rare occasion, will sacrifice their own sense of self to reach out to another in a time of need..selfish genes, tried to eliminate the “soul” from our professional vocabularies.

The mundaneness of our daily lives cause us take our existence for granted — but every once in a while we’re cajoled out of that complacency and enter into a profound state of existential awareness.

The media influences the public by broadcasting starving children, misrepresenting poverty showing us only the worst cases of poverty that have led to the formation of the “haves” and “have-nots”. “Those poor people! I need to call and donate.” Reluctantly, you never pick up the phone to pledge your money.

Instead we have come to accept that we are entering a world where all truth is relative. Where power struggles are assassins with an insatiable appetite for destruction, where beggar thy neighbor banking, misery merchants ruin lives for the sake of profit, where inequalities are creating terrorist groups such as ISIS, NATO, where greed is king, where making sense of humanity is a measure of madness.

So how do we find meaning? through experiential values, that is, by experiencing something – or someone – we value. To choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

Just look at Kashmir if you don’t believe what I am saying. 76000 people displaced by recent  flooding, 13 year after 9/11, 50 years after partition, thousands disappeared, mass graves, a scar on the conscious of Humanity.

Are we all insane?

Our world right now is being shaped by water not by the like of ISIS, not by ethnic or religious differences, not be the Higgs Boson, or anything else.

Game, set match is coming.

By not tackling Climate change, Inequality, and unadulterated greed, which those with brains are crying out to do so the coming Tragedy is our home Earth not the observable universe.( see previous postings)

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What Sovereign Wealth Funds Think Now: Its Land.

03 Wednesday Sep 2014

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From the beginning of capitalism the drive for profits has been the major force in dispossession peasant and small-scale farmers from the land and water.

While we are all consumed by our daily lives the armies of our greatest enemy Greed in the form of money never sleeps.

Now there are many ways to acquire land as Mr Putin see it and you might think that he is the greatest current threat with nuclear power.

You would be wrong in my opinion.

In more stressful times, expect these land deals to lead to unrest and lay the groundwork for wars and national boundary or ownership changes. Any nation faced with civil disobedience or unrest, for whatever reason, might be subject to regime changes which might quickly change foreign land ownership policy. Moreover, political instability elsewhere in the region is pushing oil prices up, thereby increasing and guaranteeing the main source of income of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states.

The greatest threat is the Privatization of our world resources for the sake of profit which is in the not so distant future is going to come back to haunt us all.

It is an existential struggle for the future of humanity.

Unless the resources of the earth can be utilized in an equitable and sustainable way, then civilization itself is under threat.

The main threat are called Sovereign Wealth Funds that are currently plundering the world. There are about 52 sovereign investors who collectively manage $5.7 trillion in assets

( I have addressed the problem in past posted if your are interested.)

Here I want to highlight two aspects of their current activities that we should all be made aware of.

The first is Land and water.

Land grabbing is directly intertwined with the growing scarcity of fresh water resources around the world.

More than 463 projects covering 116 million acres, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa were acquired in eight months during 2008-9.

Perhaps the most famous example of such privatization of water was the infamous purchase of Bolivia’s water supply by Bechtel and the Abengoa Corporation of Spain in the late 1990s

If one needed more evidence that financial and political elites were consolidating their ownership of global water resources, one needs look no further than the Guarani Aquifer in Paraguay.

One of the world’s largest fresh water aquifers, Guarani is estimated as being larger than the US states of Texas and California combined. Researchers have calculated that Guarani could provide fresh water for the world’s population for at least 200 years. It is precisely atop this aquifer that George Bush and the Bush family have purchased more than 100,000 acres, though many believe the purchase to in fact be much larger.

If ownership of water and the farmland of a nation doesn’t define a nation tell me what does.

It is difficult to obtain accurate figures for the amount of land in the global South that is under the control of foreign and local private capital as well as foreign sovereign wealth funds.

Sovereign wealth funds–charged with preserving the accumulated fortunes of their home nations–are well known for their opaque, tightly guarded investment decisions.

Sovereign wealth funds hold about $5 trillion in assets globally, and many, are food challenged, such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, South Korea, and China.

With Climate change the rush for agricultural and water gold is in fully flight. Water “the petroleum for the next century” Future agricultural production will be stressed by climate change and competition for remaining oil and water supplies while population numbers grow will become more intensive.  

A disturbing trend in the water sector is accelerating worldwide. The new “water barons”  — are buying up water all over the world at unprecedented pace. Not only are the mega-banks investing heavily in water, the multimillionaire tycoons are also buying water. 

Unfortunately, the global water and infrastructure-privatization fever is unstoppable:

Here are a few facts that might make you think twice.

There is currently a consolidation of land and resources in ever fewer hands, while the mass of workers and peasants are made dependent on corporations and governments.

Hedge funds, big banks, sovereign wealth funds, are gobbling up the most fertile land around the world, leading many to wonder what the future of food production and land distribution will look like.

By 2020 more that 50 million people will be pushed into poverty because of high food prices, and this speculation will be if not already one of the main causes.

”Today’s emerging new farm owners are private equity fund managers, specialized farmland fund operators, hedge funds, pension funds,big banks and Sovereignty Wealth Funds.”

In Australia more than 800,000ha of prime and fertile land, from Moree in the north to Deniliquin in the south, is foreign owned, with Korea’s Ho Myoung Farm company the largest stakeholder with 500,000ha.  Hassad Australian, a company wholly owned by the Arab state of Qatar, has acquired 730,000ha of farm land in Australia, including 25,245ha in NSW.

There has been more than $1.5 billion in direct investment in Australian agricultural land over the last three years by GLOBAL fund managers and some of the world’s largest pension funds and of course Sovereign Wealth Funds.

The sovereign state of Qatari are on track to acquire a larger area more than the entire Arab state with plans to spend over $350 million on acquisitions. The Qatari government has leased large amounts of land in Kenya. They also have or are working on deals in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Sudan, and the Ukraine.

They include: Two Swedish pension funds, Första AP-fonden and the Second Swedish National Pension Fund/AP2; the Dutch pension fund Algemene Pensioen Groep; Danish pension fund Danske; Swiss fund Adveq Real Assets Harvested Resources; Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund; and several from Canada including the British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, BNY Mellon, the Ontario Municipal Employee Retirement System, and Quebec’s CDPQ fund, Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.

As of May 2012, it was estimated that between 32 and 82 million hectares (between approximately 80 and 200 million acres) of global farmland had been brought under foreign control, with the amount constantly increasing.Table A6: Top foreign investors in primary production land in regional NSW

Top Ten Land Grab Targets and Investor Countries

Target Countries
(millions of hectares)

Investor Countries
(millions of hectares)

South Sudan

4.1

United States

8.0

Papua New Guinea

3.9

Malaysia

3.5

Indonesia

3.5

Arab Emirates

2.8

DRC

2.7

UK

2.1

Mozambique

2.2

Singapore

1.9

Sudan

2.0

China

1.6

Liberia

1.4

Saudi Arabia

1.5

Argentina

1.3

South Sudan

1.4

Sierra Leone

1.2

China, Hong Kong

1.3

Madagascar

1.1

India

1.3

It is estimated that the amount of global farmland that has been acquired by foreign entities equals about 198 million acres.

In July 2013 the Colombian ambassador to the United States resigned over his participation in a legally questionable effort to help the U.S. corporation Cargill use shell companies to amass 130,000 acres of land.

Sovereign funds loaded with new capital will continue to pour into real estate and are actively seeking out foreign farmland to purchase.

In this age of global uncertainty in the area of food-producing and wealth preservation, productive farmland around the world has been placed into the spotlight by “guru investors,” wealth management funds, growing mega agri-industries, wealthy sovereign wealth funds.

The Saudi Kingdom is behind a seven-year project of acquiring 1.7 million irrigated rice acres in Senegal and Mali, enough to produce 7 million tonnes of rice. Proposals would allow Saudi business groups to take control of 70% of the rice-growing area of Senegal.

Saudi Arabia has farming interests in Egypt, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Syria, Turkey and the Ukraine.

South Koreans want to produce rice, corn, sugar, fish, and livestock in the Philippines.

Japan is believed to hold three times the amount of its own farmable land outside of its borders.

Argentina and Brazil have acquired land in Uruguay.

South Korea and Russia agreed to create a $500 million joint fund with their sovereign wealth funds, aimed at increasing cross-border investments in various companies and projects.

Egypt leases land in Uganda to produce rice, wheat and beef.

Nigeria is appealing to the Gulf nations to utilize its land. It has 175 million acres and is only farming half of that. It desires investment in that land, it desires employment opportunities, and it claims that it could provide 100% of the Gulf’s food needs.

Chinese investment in Kazakhstan reached $5 billion by the end of last year, slightly less than 4 percent of the country’s total foreign direct investment. They are buying land in Brazil for soybean cultivation, as part of a $3.4 billion plan to build oilseed and rice production bases overseas including bases for rapeseed in Canada and Australia, palm oil in Malaysia and rice in Cambodia. China is by far the largest investor, buying or leasing twice as much as anyone else.

In January 2012, China Investment Corporation has bought 8.68% stakes in Thames Water, the largest water utility in England, which serves parts of the Greater London area, Thames Valley, and Surrey, among other areas.

Foreign firms have invested in dairies, meat processing, crops and others areas in Serbia and other non-European Union members of the Balkans.

67% of Mideast SWFs plan to allocate more funds to Latin America, while half will do the same to Africa and 60% to India.

In November 2012, One of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), also purchased 9.9% stake in Thames Water.

Food insecure nations such as the Gulf States, China, Japan, South Korea and Western Europe are all interested in increasing their farmland holdings.

Countries need to take control of their agriculture away from international and market forces and support the development of national food sovereignty based on family size farms.

And if all of that is not enough sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East expect to receive more funding this year, providing them with extra financial firepower to raise their investments into emerging markets and asset classes such as private equity and real estate. Slightly Ironically, with instability in the region, the oil prices go up and that gives the governments sometimes a little bit more room to maneuver,” 54% of Middle East SWFs expect an increase in new funding in 2014, higher than the 46% average for all funds.

As much as US$70 billion is up for grabs for global hedge funds looking to raise money in Asia over the next few years.

So the next time you walk into any Sainsbury’s across the UK, remember that Qatar is a major investor.

It owns 20 per cent of the London Stock Exchange and, at the other end of the scale, it owns  20 per cent of Camden market, the biggest grunge emporium in the country. Qatari LNG accounted for 85 per cent of Britain’s liquefied natural gas imports, providing power to homes across the land.

QATAR’S STAKE IN BRITAIN

The tiny Gulf state has snapped up a range of famous British assets, which include:

1. Harrods, the upmarket department store former owned by Mohamed al-Fayed.

2. The Shard, soon-to-be Europe’s tallest building.

3. No 1 Hyde Park, the world’s most expensive block of flats.

4. The London Stock Exchange, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

5. Camden Market, which they own a 20 per cent stake.

6. The Olympic Village, once the games are over.

7. Sainsbury’s and Barclays banks – major investors.

8. Liquefield Natural Gas, Britain’s biggest supplier.

It’s no wonder Scotland wants Independence before the Dragon comes.

ALT

The greater their investment, the greater our dependency. The greater the dependency, the greater the risks.

 

 

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LET ME ASK YOU A QUESTION THAT WE SHOULD ALL BE ASKING ?

14 Thursday Aug 2014

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Where do the problems of modern existence lie?

WHEN YOU LOOK AROUND THE WORLD CAN ANY OF US HONESTLY SAY WE HAVE WON THE BATTLE FOR LIBERTY ?

It seemed to me that these days the enemies of our collective flourishing are more likely to lie in the troubles of unrestrained corporate and individual appetites and the unlimited pressure to generate immediate profit without regard for human and earthly costs.

Another words the fundamental problem facing us all is Inequality of Education, Health, Wealth, combined with unequal control over assets. These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.

Things have reached such a pass that incremental measures are not likely to be enough: “trans-formative changes” are required, with the ultimate aim of zero discrimination.

So measures to reduce inequality have to be part of a wider economic and social policy framework to control financial activity and direct it towards socially desired goals. ( These include natural resources such as land, water, minerals and other fruits of nature, as well as produced productive and financial assets.)

Even business leaders in Davos recently identified Inequality as one of the biggest threats to the world.

But what have we got?  Sovereignty Wealth Funds buying up the lot.

For hundreds of years now, humans have tended to believe that the best sort of government is one which leaves its citizens maximally ‘free’.

We’ve all come to associate good government directly and complicatedly with the promotion of ‘freedom’: freedom to worship as one pleases, to publish what one wants, to dress as one likes, to love whomever one desires.

In the meantime, those who have opposed ‘freedom’ have been presented in horrifying terms: They have been the wicked priests, the murderous Communists, demented Nazis, and Terrorists.

The painful fact is that the pursuit of what matters to us in the long-term and collectively may at times be in sharp conflict with our short-term and individual pleasures.

Promoting freedom above all other values may now be turning out to be deeply unhelpful to the long-term and collective interests of a nation and the earth as a whole.

It has grown too easy for corrupt and venal organisations to operate under the banner of ‘freedom’ in order to get away with activities that covertly run sharply counter to the public good.

Freedom is evidently not a virtue when it involves the freedom of bankers to offload ruinous financial instruments on an uneducated public, just as censorship – that bogeyman of contemporary politics – is evidently far from a vice when it prevents corporations from pushing alcohol on children or denying affordable housing to the poor.

Freedom is not a baseless word, but it is in general simply too vague, ambiguous and emotive a term to guide policy or to be an ideal around which a nation or people can reasonably cohere.

Instead of being in favor of ever falling prices for consumer goods, government should promote the notion of a just price, a floor for prices reflecting the cost of humane and decent employment and production. To get all of us into the habit of paying the just price: a price that would allow high quality goods attuned to genuine needs to be put together by workers employed at an adequate wage.

Government is the institutionalization of our long-term and collective interests. It is not ultimately responsible just for freedom, but its highest calling is to act as the guardian of long-term collective prosperity of all its citizens.

The governments of the future will have to accept that two idiots cannot remove one genius. They will have to measured and in skillful ways constantly step in to say ‘no’ to certain vested interests, without this in any way meaning that it is systematically anti-capitalist.

So what am I saying here?

Although we bridle at folk memories of police states Governments of the future with greater intelligence and democratic accountability will have to often be interested in restricting freedom.

Freedom = good/restriction = bad, has blinded us to a vital nuance with a grave potential to derail and corrupt public life:

An others words there will have to be a more important and ambitious view of what government is for than merely freedom. We are all threatened by aggressive and uncontrolled commercial interests determined to quash our peace of mind and confuse us about our real needs and we’ve overlooked that there are better and worse kinds of freedom.

The first step in the right direction is to cap Greed. ( See Previous Postings)

 

 

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FOR CRYING OUT LOUD ARE WE ALL SLEEPING WALKING

25 Friday Jul 2014

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We have been around for 106 billion years and by 2050 there will be 9.2 billion of us.

Over the last Century, our world has experienced at times a ” wonderful age” with promises of peace and prosperity, but then some imposing forces changed the entire Landscape.

The current world disorder results in part from ignorance about civilizations – awareness or selective memory of the past, and lack of perspective for the future, and also from the economic misery, combined with political injustices ( domestic and /or International) experienced by the have-nots.

Globalization cannot be a practical concept if there are clashes of civilization.

What have we achieved.? What went Wrong then?

I won’t be the first to ask these questions and you can rest assured nor will i be the last. The future Generations will be asking the very same questions.

However let’s try to answer:  Why we are getting it so wrong?

The most important distinctions among people are not, Ideological, Political, or Economic, they are Cultural.

People still define themselves in terms of Ancestry, Religion, Language, History, Values, Customs and Institutions, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

We don’t have to look far to see the reasons why –

Great Powers were hunger to conquer lands and resources, to get control over raw materials, markets, and strategic positioning in the world, these were the driving forces that divided the world into eight major civilizations;

Western, Orthodox, Chines, Japanese, Muslim, Hindu, Latin American, and Africa.

Any Joe Soaps who was out side of these groups could only acquire a Western level of advancement by learning to think like Westerners and not forgetting the missionaries who defined civilization as a combination of Western Religion and Science.

Then came the Power gained by Industrialized nations gave them a thirst for the right to rule, and in some cases to oppress those who did not have power.

What happened next is that this lot formed Alliances while Europe was experiencing Nationalism causing the First World War, the rest is History.

So we arrive to to-day.

If you look around, the analogy above may be telling of the dynamics of our present World.

So what cased the present day disorder?

My answer is all of the above and September 11th 2001.

WHY September the 11th?

Because throughout the history of the USA, (a melting pot of cultures) the ruling force over world markets, the world military status, created the Axis of Evil without looking at the real sources that kindled terrorism –

THE HAVE – THE HAVE NOTS.

Another words: TO RECOGNIZE THAT POVERTY AND HOPELESSNESS ARE THE PRIMARY SOURCE OF TERRORISM AND THE DISRUPTION OF WORLD ORDER THAT WE SEE TODAY

You cannot have over 3 billion people living on $2 dollars a day with another 1.3 billion living on less than a dollar with no access to clean water. This difference by a factor of over 100 or so between the have and have-nots ultimately creates for the lack of a better word Dissatisfaction, which lead to violence , racial and ethic conflict the Arab spring the current Israel /Palestinian conflict.

So you might think that Globalization in principle is a hopeful ideal, but in its present form it is tailored to the strong serving a fraction of the World’s population. To get through the gates of Globalization one has to acquire computer and internet literacy, accessibility to sources of knowledge and information etc ect.

It is clear that the world order requires a new and comprehensive partnership between the developed world and the developing world.

Our environment is not ourselves. We must invest more in education, in science and technology but at the same time we must lower the bureaucratic political barriers.

If we are to stop wars we must redistribute wealth more evenly.

We live in a world where spending never stops. Trading on fear is the biggest seller of all and it is at the very heart of why we buy. Fear the primal Instinct.

There will be on Economy without the Environment, No anything.

We cannot continue moving forward in a form of  Human Lemming.

We the people of the Earth must demand that our out of date World Organisation The United Nations for once in its existence  passes a People’s Resolution to benefit all of us how live on this Planet now and in the future.

It will go a long way to resolving the Inequalities before its to late.  ( See previous Posts)

The people of the planet earth wish to table the following people s resolution to be adopted.  

” The Introduction of a World Aid Commission of 0.05% to be placed on all World stock Exchanges covering all Foreign Exchange Transactions over $ 20,0000, all High Frequency Trading and all Acquisitions by Sovereign Wealth Funds. 

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I Hate That. Where does hate come from?

20 Sunday Jul 2014

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Now I am no expert and could therefore get this very wrong.

When you contemplate the meaning of hate and look around the world we all live in you might wonder as to what causes hate it the first place.

We are not born with it.

It has to be acquired in order to dislike intensely or passionately some thing or person, to feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward something or someone.

The shock-waves from the missile that destroyed Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on Thursday are still reverberating around the world.

So it might be a good time to address the subject as it seems that I HATE THAT it is spreading thanks to our new digital era, of remote bombs, mobile phones, 24hr television, and verbal diarrhea by unknown experts on all sides

The paradox is that Islam historically was relatively tolerant… anti-semitism runs deep in some Muslim countries today, but, for most of history, Muslims were more tolerant of Jews than Christians were.

”The West has no moral high ground on the issue of religious intolerance?

Why do some people feel this way?  What is to be done about it?

I have no idea. I see connections between everything, past, present, and future all at once.

For the most part, people create the emotional world in which they live.

All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Extremists drive the groups apart.

Why don’t we allow our religious systems and rituals to shift and develop/evolve to suit the modern man and thinking?

All men are in a kind of “life lottery”, where we really don’t know how we will die.

The first, and most disturbing  fact, is that human beings, like few other species, are pervasively aggressive, violent and murderous to each other.

When we share common bonds of belief and value with others, we are less likely to be aggressive or violent to others in our world.

Hateful beliefs such as racism, Anti- semitism and misogyny allow whole groups to be dehumanized.

Too many of us have become desensitized to violent acts, not realizing the true effects of a bullet passing through a human body.

Without being connected to others, we care less for their welfare. The major predators of humans are other humans.

And I can only honestly offer the following answer:

The past does not exist, neither does the future hate in its pure form comes from present day cruelty and torture.

The inequalities of the world must be addressed. (See previous posts)

Let’s hear your opinions.

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READ THIS AND WEEP:

11 Friday Jul 2014

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The kings of capitalism think their privileged positions essentially as a natural right while our Economy, our Democracy and our societies are paying for gross inequities.

The deprivations of one generation are being visited upon the next.

Economic inequality translates into political inequality and political inequality leads to increasing economic inequality and wars. People have been shooting at each other since the 13th century.

The true test of an economy is not how much wealth its princes can accumulate in tax havens, but how well off the typical citizen is.

Is not the above the picture what we should have in Western Economies these days. A fair distribution of wealth befitted to all irrelevant to their circumstances or class.

Instead we have subsidies to rich farmers as our governments cut back on nutritional support for the needy.  Or, Drug companies get billions as health care is limited. Or, Banks that brought on the global financial crisis got billions while we lost out homes due to their predatory lending practices. Then of course we have Quantitative easing that is supposed to trickle down to us punter only to evaporate on the balance sheets of the banks.

So it no wonder that our divisions are deep.

We have soaring University fees and declining incomes resulting in larger debt burdens for the young and old along with Mass incarceration and Justice only affordable to a few. All served up by those suffering from dead behind the eyes disease.

All this is happening while High frequency trading, sovereign wealth funds and foreign exchange transactions continue to rip us all off.

What should we do?

WE MUST CHANGE THE RENT SEEKING SOCIETY WE HAVE GRAVITATED TOWARDS IN WHICH WEALTH PEOPLE OBTAIN PROFITS BY MANIPULATING THE SYSTEM.

If you don’t believe me just look at the trend that has developed over the past third century leading to violent extremes of wealth and income which has produced Slums Mortgages and the Shining city on the hill.

One third of the urban population of developing countries now live in SLUMS.

SOME FOR OVER THREE DECADES.

They that is Slums are the true testimonial to Inequality.

An impediment to advancement, A curse to Hygiene, a source of ill-health, rent havens for landlords, Cheap labor source, exploitation and crime depots, propagators of diseases, and poverty, recruiting camps for terrorists, Capitalistic warts, photos for tourists and coffee table books.

The dynamics of the imperial capitalism of the 19th century needn’t apply in the democracies of the 21st century.

Corporations interest argued for getting rid of regulations, even when those regulations did so much to protect and improve our environments, our health our safety our economy itself.

Long live Mrs Thatcher and her buddy Ronald  Reagan, the free market.

Also Bin Laden, Bush and Blair with the Axis of Evil. Their combined ideology was hypocritical because they all ensured that the rules of the game to keep wealth at the top of the political agenda through politics.

What have we ended up with?

Growth has gone to the very, very top while quarter of all American children under five live in poverty, with mass incarceration beginning to define America – a country with about 5% OF THE WORLDS POPULATION, but around a fourth of the world’s prisoners.

The time has come to end special privileges of speculators, corporations and the rich. The Politics of Greed must change. Just because you have heard it all before it does not mean it cannot be done. We all created the god dame problem and turned a blind eye to it creating Climate change. We all must now mend it before its to late.

Perfect competition should drive profit to zero.

We are not in a position to eradicated Slums and their living blemish on all of us, but we can come together to demand a World Aid Commission of 0.05% be placed on all High frequency trading, sovereign wealth funds and Foreign Exchange Transactions over $20,000.(see previous posts)

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The billions created by such a Commission would go a long way to re-balancing the Have’s and Have not’s.  

WE LIVE IN A WORLD STILL FUMBLING IN DARKNESS

26 Thursday Jun 2014

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Today “governments are everywhere embracing the free-market gospel, but should we leave the Capitalist free Market to handle Climate Change.

The answer is no.

History tells us so.  History Does Not Show that Business Forces Make Companies Efficient. Some claim free markets lead to greater prosperity than other economic policies.

I say that the selfish simply spend the extra money on themselves thereby setting an example for others that if you want a more affluent lifestyle you should be selfish. Left to regulate themselves in terms of climate change and the environment they are all ready turning both into products for Profit.

If we need pollution control, we don’t want it regulated by industrial companies.

We can choose to eat, drink and be merry today and die tomorrow; or we can choose to put limits on what we do today in order to live tomorrow. 

Consumer Choices Aren’t The Best Means For Citizens To Make Binding Group Decisions

There is more to life than merely increasing one’s money as fast as possible. A sense of security and dependability has some human value also.

Under American values any business with a conscience is at a disadvantage competing with companies without a conscience. These values are illustrated most dramatically by the wave of the future: telecommunications, the Internet, advanced computer technology, and the other wonders created by the exuberant American entrepreneurial spirit all unleashed by the market, by the huge transfer of public funds to private power, often under the traditional guise of “security.

We must put aside the intriguing contrast between doctrine and reality.

Meanwhile privatization proceeds apace elsewhere with Sovereign Wealth Funds taking control of the earth resources.

Control over food raises even more serious questions, in this case about survival.

Control over food supplies by foreign corporate giants is well under way, and with the agreement on telecommunications signed and delivered, financial services are next in line.

Just look at one important recent case, over considerable popular opposition the government of Brazil has decided to privatize the Vale Company, which controls vast uranium, iron, and other mineral resources and industrial and transport facilities, including sophisticated technology.

Also recently if you look a the Concentration of communications in any hands (particularly foreign hands) raises some rather serious questions about meaningful democracy.

Similar questions arise about concentration of finance, which undermines popular involvement in social and economic planning.

The free market gospel is preached (to the poor and defenseless) while protectionism through Sovereignty Wealth Funds is reaching unprecedented heights, and what are Administrations doing. Poured public funds into high-tech industry with unusual abandon.

Here we begin to reach the heart of the matter. Sovereign wealth funds activities must be caped if we want a free market and not Protectionism.

(See previous blogs)

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”

23 Monday Jun 2014

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Stupidity has been around since the dinosaurs.

As Albert Einstein said  “Surely there is no-show that can possibly equate to the amount of mental diarrhea that is presented in every single microsecond.”

YOU MIGHT WELL ASK   “Why does applied science, which saves work and makes life easier, bring us so little happiness? The simple answer runs: Because we have not yet learned to make sensible use of it.”

Here is an Idea that might make a difference.

These days we carry cool devices that let us carry the world in our pockets, so why not use them to spread wealth, health, food aid and the like.

Its time we set a price on nature.

The people of the world can be asked whether and how much they prize the two values of nature – use value and non-use value.

This can be done WITH AN UNITED NATIONS APP that rewards the user by issuing a United Nations Food voucher to the deprived.

We would soon know what is valued and what is not.

Nature provides ecosystem services, and we trash it at our peril.

Our activities have put and are putting priceless resources – fresh water, clean air, oceans, and our climate at risk.

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it.

This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientists do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way peace and security which he can not find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.  Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.

A critical landmark in the sage of global climate change is occurring right in front of our eyes. If you are a non believer try Googling the Carteret Islanders of Papua New Guinea. They have become the world’s first entire community to be displaced by climate change.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world so why not use it.

Not one statesman in a position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise of peace, the course of sharing wealth since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to political suicide. This is why we must cap greed. ( See previous blogs)

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while .

A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited
in time and space.

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ONE OF OUR CONCERN SHOULD BE ABOUT. SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUNDS

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

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Yes its back to one of my favorite hobbyhorse the future curse of Privatization upon the Worlds natural resources and ever thing else, it seems by Sovereign Wealth Funds. (SWFs)

Should you be concerned about their activities?

Sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) have been quietly accumulating, investing and spending excess reserves since the first SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, was established in 1953.

While none of these funds disclose the extent of their assets, they are widely perceived as ranking among the world’s richest institutional investors, not to mention the most secretive.

According to estimates from the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute, Saudi Arabia’s SAMA Foreign Holdings’ assets total $675.9bn, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority’s (ADIA) $627bn, Kuwait Investment Authority’s (KIA) $386bn and Qatar Investment Authority’s (QIA) $170bn.

Yes we should all be concerned.

The emerging map of the twenty-first century is that global capitalism favors the holders of financial assets over domestic institutions.

What is called the Microeconomics circumstances of the Western Countries is not helping.  It is causing foreign governments to expand their SWFs.

Sovereign Wealth Funds are replacing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as the lender of the last resort.

Recently in the financial crises they bailed out many a countries Banks.

Markets are supposed to be self-regulating. Their efficiency is built on a carefully designed institutional infrastructures which is being eroded or undercut by the financial clot of SWFs  (East Asia, China SWFs)

It is time to call their very purpose into question.

Why? Because they are managed by money people how are in the business of short-term investment, driven by speculative activities.

(When a quick kill for profit is at the forefront of investment, long-term values become blurred.)

They will if not caped become an ever increasing de-stabilizing factor in the global financial Systems.

They are nothing other than fully operational investment vehicles that are not contributing anything to solving any of the World Problems, such as climate change, poverty, inequality, wealth distribution, pollution, water deprivation.

Should they be allowed to invest willy-niley around the world without totally transparent? No. Poor countries natural resources are at their mercy.

Although SWFs must be cognizant of possible retaliatory actions, such as asset freezes and/or asset confiscations, that can be taken against their investments for things such as political disagreements or court rulings that hold SWFs responsible for the actions of their host country’s citizens. They have a narrow mission, to acquire Assets to generate funds for the countries with SWFs.

“We need to have a lot more control over what they do and how they do it.”

A whole lot of questions are ignored these days when it come to making Profit. Our concern should be about who is behaving in ways that have adverse effects on our societies.

If you don’t believe me why not ask Mr Cameron who recently had a chat with the Chines president Mr Xi Jinping. I am sure what ever business he managed to squeeze out of him in exchange for an Audience with the Queen will be financed by China Sovereign Funds. High speed rail to Peking.

A New Form of Capitalism that is shifting the balance of power globally.