Tag Archives: Extreme poverty

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. HAVE WE BECOME DESENSITIZED ?

27 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Afghanistan, Civilization., Cry for help., Dehumanization., Desensitization., Disasters., Emotions., Foreign Aid., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Purpose of life., Reality., Refugees., Survival., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven-minute read) 

Just the other day I watched a news report on Afghanistan with shocking images of starving children.

It’s not as if this is the first time starving children grace our television screens.   

It was predicted that if the country does not get aid there will be a human disaster with the loss of millions of lives. 

We all could be forgiven for not remembering the Irish Potato famine that killed around a million, but not the Famine in Ethiopia 1983-85 that killed around the same number of people. 

Since then the world is now confronted with the realities of climate change – streams of migration while the covid pandemic has killed 4,984,325 people so far from the outbreak to October 27, 2021, which is a contributor to our desensitization of suffering a very complex topic.

However I believe the world rich countries, paints it as something almost good, necessary, and a part of life.

The more we are exposed to these things, or let children be taught it’s normal through movies, books, and so forth, the initial shock becomes less and the stark colors in which they were viewed, become duller.

This may raise in some readers’ minds the question of what we ourselves actually believe.

Take our belief in God.

He or she or it is becoming nothing less than the process of opening our lines of contact with the unknown potential of the universe. God represents the direction of our wonder – not the destination. 

Which leads to no easy answers, just more questions.

However, if we humans could come together in harmony with the real universe, our troubled species would have its best chance to enjoy this jewel of a planet, unique probably in all of the cosmos. 

The hope of this happing in a throwaway world is negotiable, leaving people feeling defeated and powerless.

Every daylight hour we are bombarded by pleas for help to save something, now including the planet. Suffering seems to abound and we see it so often on the news or in movies that we’ve become desensitized.

“I think if people see this footage they’ll say, ‘Oh my God that’s horrible,’ and then go on eating their dinners.”

It’s no secret that the world is falling apart as we know it,  people are becoming desensitized to the events that are shaping our society.  

Desensitizing is a tool, and the world uses it to change and shape our thinking, alter our perspective and mold us into the way they want, too emotionally exhausted to feel anything. 

Just because it’s “normal” in today’s age, should we be in less shock, disgust, or lessen the intensity of emotion towards it?

What’s the harm?

It is not something to just succumb to, we must choose what we allow it to impact because it takes us farther away from the rawness and reality 

It is how we use it and allow it to affect us that any understanding of this relationship can we hope to achieve behavioral change.

Indeed, the world is in a chaotic and cruel place but what happens to us that we lose the deep sense of caring – something that would have been abhorrent to us in the past is not despicable anymore. We accept the fact that this is what the world has become

But it is not about pictures or videos anymore.

We are simply desensitized to tragedies happening around us because they are becoming less like tragedies and more like everyday actions.

It is very easy to point fingers at platforms such as Facebook, & Twitter. But both of them are flexible and adaptable, they are not an omnipotent force governing what the people chose to say or think.

As far as it goes, Social Media platforms are objective viewers of the world.

They are merely tools used by the people.

The question is, what are we allowing ourselves to become desensitized to?

Being sensitive is first and foremost allowing oneself to feel in great depths.

We become lethargic and we cannot hope to change behavior without first implementing a re-sensitization effort.

As our world undergoes anthropogenic changes, it is critical to examine how these changes affect our well-being and our relationship with the natural world.

What do we do when all of the chaos, all of the destruction of the world is shoved in our faces day after day?

We wonder why there isn’t a better way to go about things?

We can’t let our sensitivity be the darkness that sits on our shoulders.

Sensitivity helps us acknowledge our own consciousness.

We need to remember that it is a tool and that we do have a lot of control over it, but without thought, it appears we don’t have much control over it at all.

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

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THE BEADY ASK’S: WHERE DO YOU THINK POVERTY CAME FROM AND WHERE IS IT GOING TO END UP.

19 Friday Jan 2018

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( A twenty-minute read if you want a world worth living in)

Most of us were taught that poverty started with the Industrial Revolution.

For the most part this is true but it did not happen in the isolation of the British Empire.

This story is powerful in its simplicity but if we rewind to about 1500 people living in South America, India, and Asia were much better off than Europeans. In fact Europe was just emerging from the dark ages.

China and India controlled most if not nearly all the world economy.

The Question is how did this change and why?

I put it down to Christopher Columbus and shoddy geographical calculations.

On his second outing in the Caribbean he was looking for gold and as a result the Spanish invasion killed must of the islands inhabitants. Then came a bloke named Cortes who ripped off the Aztec of Mexico,followed by Pizarro yet another Spanish conquistador with an unquenchable thirst for gold.

A total of over  185,000 kilograms of gold and 100 million kilograms of silver were pilfer from Latin America and pumped into Spain and then used to pay for Spanish war and debts.

(A 100 million kilograms of silver invested back then @ 5% would amount to $165 trillion to-day. More than double the world’s total GDP to-day)

This wealth allowed Europe to grow its economic wealth beyond the China or India.

The result was Europeans outsourced its labour into wars and colonization reducing the population of the rest of the world by slavery, epidemic diseases and massacres while enjoying the rich life.

(  Free Slavery labour benefited the USA Colonies by over 222.5 million hours)  Britain pay compensation of over £20m to slave owners equivalent to £300 million to-day which tell us nothing of the total value they produced.

The Silver was turned into cotton and sugar and spices. Cotton being the key raw material for the European Industrial Revolution.

The Surviving slaves got nothing.

Indeed without the slave colonies of the New world there would have being no market for the Industrial goods.

You could say that the above is rather a simplistic explanation but development in Africa and Latin America was effectively stolen by Europe.

So where are we to-day.

  • Almost half the world — over 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.
  • The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.
  • Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.
  • Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.
  • 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world). 640 million live without adequate shelter, 400 million have no access to safe water, 270 million have no access to health services. 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (or roughly 29,000 children per day).

Poverty is the state for the majority of the world’s people and nations. Why is this?

Behind the increasing interconnectedness promised by globalization and technology are global decisions, policies, and practices.

Formulated by the rich and powerful.

These can be leaders of rich countries or other global actors such as multinational corporations, institutions, and influential people.

As a result, in the global context, a few get wealthy while the majority struggle.

The poorest are also typically marginalized from society and have little representation or voice in public and political debates, making it even harder to escape poverty.

The amount the world spends on military, financial bailouts and other areas that benefit the wealthy, compared to the amount spent to address the daily crisis of poverty and related problems are often staggering.

To attract investment, poor countries enter a spiraling race to the bottom to see who can provide lower standards, reduced wages and cheaper resources.

This has increased poverty and inequality for most people. It also forms a backbone to what we today call globalization. As a result, it maintains the historic unequal rules of trade.

Now we are looking at a new form of Poverty currently being created by a few monopolies. I call it Algorithm Poverty.

Around the world, in rich or poor nations, poverty has always been present. In most nations today, inequality—the gap between the rich and the poor—is quite high and often widening.

The causes are numerous, including a lack of individual responsibility, bad government policy, exploitation by people and businesses with power and influence, or some combination of these and other factors.

Inequality will affect social cohesion and lead to problems such as increasing crime and violence. Almost half the world—over three billion people—live on less than $2.50 a day and at least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day:Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

And we wonder why the world is in a state of chaos.

Around 21,000 children die every day around the world. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty.

Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation.

Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe.

Poverty leads to hunger. There are many inter-related issues causing hunger. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc.

Solving world hunger in the conventional sense (of providing/growing more food etc) will not tackle poverty that leads to hunger in the first place.

Further, there is a risk of continuing the poverty and dependency without realizing it, because the act of attempting to provide more food etc can appear so altruistic in motive.

To solve world hunger in the long run, poverty alleviation is required.

For the first time in our history Technology offers us a chance to distribute the world’s wealth fairly.

Without Trade agreements, Aid, Repayment, Corruption, Power Brokering by NGOs, United Nations Begging, Bureaucratic interference, or any other hidden agendas.

It could be both implemented and funded by the very Algorithms that are going to spread poverty. ( See previous Posts)

It requires the large capitalist monopoly platforms to supply a free basic mobile phone to every person register as citizen of a country world-wide.

On registration the people would be allocated a pin number.

This pin would allow them to access a monthly Basic non repayable no strings attached Income payment.

There is no other way of ensuring that our world can fight poverty and climate change.

Most of the causes of hunger are found in global politics.

People are hungry not because the population is growing so fast that food is becoming scarce, but because people cannot afford it.

The number of people overweight or obese is now rivaling the number of people suffering from hunger around the world.

Its time to get off our fat asses and share our wealth not push it around to create more wealth.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of poverty in america 2016"

If you want a world worth something in the future now is the time to start creating it. Solve                                             World Poverty once and

For all.

It can be done with the press of a button.

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT FOOD WASTE IN THE WORLD.

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Humanity., Life., Politics., Sustaniability, The Future, The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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Our routine practices, unfortunately, make it difficult for us to conceptualize the magnitude of global food waste.

Everyday we hear appeals and yet there are one billion starving people in the world.

40% of all the food produced in the United States is never eaten.

In Europe, we throw away 100 million tonnes of food every year.

These are shamefully shocking facts  in their own right. In a world full of hunger, volatile food prices , and social unrest, these statistics are more than just shocking when half the world’s population goes to sleep each night malnourished they are obscene.

They are environmentally, morally and economically outrageous.

Add to this that fact that obesity is rapidly growing in the western world, particularly among children, while 6 million children in the developing world die annually from undernourishment and it is a damning indictment of capitalism – the dominant ideology and economic system that has governed much of the world for the last two centuries.

The rampage of globalisation has given monopoly buying power to a few massive western multinational enterprises, who trample all over the globe sourcing farm supplies from the lowest bidders of impoverished nations.

Prices of farm produce are squeezed to such an extent that it’s more profitable to leave ‘inadequate’ quality crops in the ground to rot or to throw away than to pay the price for its air transport, storage and quality packaging to bring to western supermarkets with discerning consumers.

Today, we produce about four billion metric tonnes of food per annum. Yet due to poor practices in harvesting, storage and transportation, as well as market and consumer wastage, it is estimated that 30–50% (or 1.2–2 billion tonnes) of all food produced never reaches a human stomach.

Furthermore, this figure does not reflect the fact that large amounts of land, energy, fertilisers and water have also been lost in the production of foodstuffs which simply end up as waste. This level of wastage is a tragedy that cannot continue if we are to succeed in the challenge of sustainably meeting our future food demands.

But the  problem is bigger than we think.Afficher l'image d'origine

Here are some hard facts to swallow.

Wasting food means losing not only life-supporting nutrition but also precious resources, including land, water and energy. As a global society therefore, tackling food waste will help contribute towards addressing a number of key resource issues:

About one-third of all food produced worldwide, worth around US$1 trillion, gets lost or wasted in food production and consumption systems.

Every year, consumers in industrialized countries waste almost as much food as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons)

1.4 billion hectares of land – 28 percent of the world’s agricultural area – is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.

The direct economic consequences of food wastage (excluding fish and seafood) run to the tune of $750 billion annually.

The amount of food lost and wasted every year is equal to more than half of the world’s annual cereals crops (2.3 billion tons in 2009/10)

In the USA, organic waste is the second highest component of landfills, which are the largest source of methane emissions.

In the USA, 30-40% of the food supply is wasted, equaling more than 20 pounds of food per person per month.

The Food wastage’s carbon footprint is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent of GHG released into the atmosphere per year.

Much of it ends up in landfills, and represents a large part of municipal solid waste.

The water used to irrigate wasted crops would be enough for the daily needs of nine million people.

Wasted production contributes 10% to the greenhouse gas emissions of developed countries.

One hectare of land can, for example, produce rice or potatoes for 19–22 people per annum. The same area will produce enough lamb or beef for only one or two people.

The total volume of water used each year to produce food that is lost or wasted (250km3) is equivalent to the annual flow of Russia’s Volga River, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva.

Over the past century, fresh water abstraction for human use has increased at more than double the rate of population growth. Currently about 3.8 trillion m3 of water is used by humans per annum. About 70% of this is consumed by the global agriculture sector,

Indeed, depending on how food is produced and the validity of forecasts for demographic trends, the demand for water in food production could reach 10–13 trillion m3 annually by mid-century. This is 2.5 to 3.5 times greater than the total human use of fresh water today.

Considerable tensions are likely to emerge, as the need for food competes with demands for ecosystem preservation and biomass production as a renewable energy source.

Agriculture is responsible for a majority of threats to at-risk plant and animal species.

A low percentage of all food wastage is composted:

What can be done about it?

Part of the problem is poor shopping habits, but the confusion many consumers have with “use by” and “best before” food labels is also a factor. “Use by” refers to food that becomes unsafe to eat after the date, while “best before” is less stringent and refers more to deteriorating quality.

Consumer households need to be informed and change the behavior which causes the current high levels of food waste. Instead of buying packets of vegetables buy loose veg.

Boycott Supermarkets that don’t accept imperfections and nicks. There’s nothing wrong with a deformed Veg. It’s fine to eat.

Support redistribution urban food programmes.

UK supermarket chain Waitrose is attacking food waste in all parts of its business. The upmarket grocery chain cuts prices in order to sell goods that are close to their “sell by” date, donates leftovers to charity and sends other food waste to bio-plants for electricity generation.

The idea is for Waitrose to earn “zero landfill” status.

Home composting can potentially divert up to 150 kg of food waste per household per year from local collection authorities.

Buy local produced food items not those produced, transformed and consumed in very different parts of the world.

Considering that food security is a major concern in large parts of the developing world. Conflicts around the world mean there is “donor fatigue.

Food crises don’t just affect the countries where people go hungry. It’s a global challenge. Recent data shows the number of hungry in the world has fallen but still stands at 842 million people.

World Food Programme WFP operations in and around Syria are costing around $31 million a week.

Hidden Hunger is a weapon of mass destruction.

Hidden hunger weakens the immune system, stunts physical and intellectual growth, and can lead to death. It wreaks economic havoc as well, locking countries into cycles of poor nutrition, lost productivity, poverty, and reduced economic growth.

Investing in nutrition is one of the smartest development investments we can make.

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Sovereign Wealth Funds. Alarm.

30 Sunday Nov 2014

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<img alt=”” src=”http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/04/79/29/e0/1728.jpg”/>
This photo of 1728 is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Its back to my hobby-horse the ongoing Privatization of the World.

It is of course is happening in a clever way, with very careful paperwork, so we have the option of pretending that it’s not actually happening, right up until the bitter end.

I often wonder is it just me. You barley hear a mummer about it from any other quarter. Other than Ireland where the population has woken up to the Privatization of water.

Perhaps it’s that no one gives a tosser.

That our Governments are systematically divesting themselves of bits and pieces of their own sovereignty, by transfer of assets and service functions from public to private hands.

It’s taking place all over the world without really anyone noticing it happening — often not even the people are asked to vote formerly on the issue.

It is my contention that it is the quality of the state rather than the fact that assets are owned by the state that matters more. In developing countries with extensive market and information failures the state should play an important role in promoting equitable development over the long run not sell of their assets to the highest buyers.

At the political level privatization has been challenged by workers affected by attendant retrenchments and the restructuring of internal and external labor markets consequent upon privatization that has resulted in increased worker vulnerability, and by consumers who have often been negatively affected by increased prices based on cost recovery pricing regimes instituted as a consequence of privatization, or by reduction in service provision arising from “efficiency enhancing” measures as a consequence of privatization.

No one knows precisely how much money is held by SWFs but it is estimated that they currently own $3.5 trillion in assets, and within one decade they could balloon to $10–15 trillion. (equivalent to America’s gross domestic product, an amount larger than the current global stock of foreign reserves of the USA which is about $5 trillion.)

Imagine the biggest and most aggressive hedge fund on Wall Street, then imagine that same fund is fifty or sixty times bigger and outside the reach of any other major regulatory authority, and you’ve got a pretty good idea of what an SWF is.

The rise of sovereign wealth funds (SWF) as new power brokers in the world economy can no longer be looked at as a singular phenomenon but rather as part of what can be defined a new economic world order.

This new order has been enabled by several mega trends which operate in a self-reinforcing manner, among them the meteoric rise of developing Asia, accelerated globalization, the rapid flow of information and the sharp increase in the price of oil by a delta of over $100 per barrel in just six years which is enabling Russia and OPEC members to accumulate unprecedented wealth and elevate themselves to the position of supreme economic powers.

It will not be long before transactions involving investment by sovereign wealth funds, as with other types of foreign investment, may raise legitimate national security concerns.

Concerns are growing that the purpose of the investments might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.

They on the other hand see themselves as passive, long-term investors, driven solely by the need to make a good return on their country’s surplus cash.

There is a degree of looking through the wrong end of the telescope to all this.

Sovereign wealth funds have with total assets estimated at $5.4tn as of October 2013. The funds have gained more than $750bn in additional assets since 2012 of which only $60 billion has gone to recent bank bailouts.

They are rapidly becoming owners of big chunks of American,the UK and Europe infrastructures.

Unlike the central banks of most Western countries, whose main function is to accumulate reserves in an attempt to stabilize the domestic currency, most SWFs have a mission to invest aggressively and generate huge long-term returns.

The origin of these SWFs is not even relevant, necessarily.

What is relevant is that these funds are foreign.

They are state-owned investment pools that thanks to a remarkable series of events in the middle part of the last decade they are buying up your governments services such as water treatment, parking meters, toll highways, rail links, ports, public infrastructure projects, commercial real estate all delivering a lot of cash into the coffers of sovereign wealth funds like the Qatar Investment Authority, the Libyan Investment Authority, Saudi Arabia’s SAMA Foreign Holdings, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Some recent activity:

(The first was the announcement that the Qatari royal family is planning a large investment in the controversial £50billion HS2 rail link, focused on a major new station and housing scheme in central Birmingham.

Qatar Investment Authority, one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, is soon to table a new bid to take over Songbird Estates which owns the iconic Canary Wharf tower in east London, one of the best-known modern symbols of British capitalism.  

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund is suing French bank Societe Generale in a British court for $1.5 billion for allegedly channeling bribes to allies of the son of slain dictator Muammar Qaddafi.  

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the country’s sovereign wealth fund could reach $55 billion by March next year if oil prices kept high.

Iran earned $100 billion in oil revenue in 2011. Iran is both the world leader in Shariah Compliant Finance and the world’s most active state sponsor of Jihadist terrorism.

Deutsche Bahn Seeks Sovereign Funds for the state-owned railway, is seeking to sell shares to sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia during the initial public offering. )

What is more to the point, is we’re being colonized/Privatized.

Industry today may not be regarded as such an industry tomorrow, and vice versa.  Just look at the explosion of energy prices — thanks to a bubble that Western banks and perhaps some foreign SWFs had a big hand in creating.

Out side any regulation these funds are free to plunder the earth in the form of Hedge Funds( (which they have a bunch) with out anyone knowing who the funds investors are.

The point here is if these funds.

Are not regulated by the relevant international bodies determining which kinds of information about their balance sheets, management structures, investment objectives, portfolio breakdowns, and so forth should be supplied by sovereign wealth funds. The European Union could then put curbs on funds failing to comply with the standards for the publication of such information.

One way or the other they should be Capped ( See previous posts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Both “good ” and “evil” are human creations.

21 Thursday Aug 2014

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Now before I start getting hate mail let me state I know little or nothing about Evil other than the greatest evils in the world are those inflicted by man upon man. 

For me the wrong that we do, though, the suffering that we cause, great though it may be, is a price worth paying for something that is profoundly valuable: genuine freedom.

I believe that much of the evil that we see around us is a consequence of the abuse of this freedom.

It is therefore impossible for us to know, with any degree of certainty, whether any given instance of suffering is unjustified, or whether it serves some greater purpose.

Each of us has tragedies in our lives, and it seems to us as though the world would have been a better place without those instances of suffering.

The problem of evil is that the existence of evil is a necessary condition for the existence of certain kinds of good.

Compassion, for instance, is of great value, but can only exist if there is suffering.

Bravery, too, is a virtue, but only if we sometimes face danger.

Self-sacrifice is another great good, but can only exist if there is inter-dependence.

The problem of evil, then, must be recast as the problem of unjustified evil.

It is only the existence of unjustified evil, evil that serves no greater purpose, that presents a problem. 

Today it is the nature of this change in evil that has become harder to ignore as circumstances turn more critical.

Everyone has a conscience even if he or she does not follow a sense of morality which comes from a source outside of individuals. Once acquired the belief systems function as a basis for the acquisition of additional beliefs.

When the nature of the Evil and its creation are properly understood the conflict between evil and good dissolves.

Morality itself cannot easily be proved to exist / morality is socially defined rules / laws/ developed to control people / morality is part of evolution / survival depends on cooperation with others

It is not possible to make a world without evil, for its creation depended on the free will. 

So it seems at the moment that if there is a God he did not choose the best in creating this world.

We all know that there are many forms of evil, and I have no intention of addressing them all here. These few written words on the subject only add to the billions written down through the centuries.

However if we as the current caretakers of earth want to address one of the main underlining causes of evil we must tackle Inequality.

The distribution of wealth, health, and education all the seed beds of Evil.

There is no point in being abhorred by what you are allowed to see on the media, or living your life in denial in the Cyber world.  As long as there is massive Inequality we will have acts of evil.

It does not have to be like this. We the people must table a motion in the United nations to pass a resolution of behalf of earth to place a 0.05% Aid commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Sovereignty Wealth Funds Acquisitions and on all Foreign  Exchange transactions over$2,000.  ( See previous posts)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.  

ON WE MARCH LEAVING FUTURE GENERATIONS THE PROBLEMS OF INEQUILITY

30 Monday Jun 2014

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This is a vast subject on which millions of knowledgeable words have been written down the centuries with little or no effect.

I am sure you will agree however no matter who was writing it is the people who are in pursuit of social change, and constantly bring attention to issues of equal rights and privileges, are often the people who do not have them. The ones who suffer daily from different levels of multidimensional inequality are the ones that see it is impossible to be politically equal.

The source of present day conflicts. 

The majorities at the bottom of the apex, with very limited power, are unable to make choices that would bring them to their ends. 

It is easy for us to say what should be done, but few of us can carry out what needs to be done.

ALL THOSE WORDS AND VOILA! WHERE ARE WE TO DAY?

With a Capitalist market which is earthly constructed that can only dole out earthly rewards.

If we continue to have so many social and economic inequalities our standard of living seems to be declining because we aren’t economically equal.

Some say in order to remove inequalities we must increase the minimum wage to a living wage. This will indeed save the middle classes and in doing so could reduce the need for food banks, social welfare benefits, and the like. In my view it would be a mistake to focus on growth and let inequality take care of itself, not only because inequality may be ethically undesirable but also because the resulting growth may be low and unsustainable.

Equality will not stop inequality of opportunity, education, health nor will it take people out of poverty. It will only move the reasons for inequality to a higher plane.

The drive to higher and more sustainable growth does not in itself support efforts to the redistribute of wealth.

There is an argument that a re-distributive system will slow innovation on quality of life improvements. Further, re distributive policies rely on the wisdom of the ‘redistributor.’ Freedom to choose those resources has been moved to the bureaucrat and politician and will ultimately lead us down the path of financial protectionism.

Now you might not agreed with the content of the above Paragraph but it is already in progress with more and more countries turning to Sovereign Wealth Funds’ (SWF) to protects their futures.  ( See Previous blogs)

These Funds have no outside beneficiaries or liabilities (beyond the government or the citizenry in abstract) they invest their assets, either in the short or long-term, according to the interests and objectives of the sovereign sponsor.

More and more Governments around the world see SWFs as an insurance policy for a potential future problem.

Political equality the most value of democratic theory. The idea that all have the capacity to make political and moral decisions and that we are equally qualified to rule is a long way off, if ever has long gone out the window.

What are the chances now that we have the start of Climate change that we can act as one. Fat chance of that coming about as the Climate is a salable product- CO2 carbon credits ( not worth the paper they are written on)

There is much work to be done Globally in a tight time frame if we don’t want mass immigration.

Development is about people: either poor people have ways to become richer where they are now, or they can become rich by moving somewhere else.

Rest assured that with CLIMATE CHANGE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN.

With this in mind, it seems that most of these theories about re distribution of wealth come from fairly elite class perspectives and, in turn, tend to be more pessimistic about bringing change to the inequalities they are evaluating.

When in fact what will happen is that these SWFs will reach out to each other taking advantage of the forthcoming crisis forming partners or in “clubs.”capital.

These funds that Sovereignty Wealth Funds bring to the table are committed to improving their investment capabilities not reducing income inequality. They have taken advantage of the financial crisis by acquiring valuable human resources which has nothing to do with improving the quality of living for the masses.

If not Capped they will along with Climate Change they will rewrite the map of global.

There is only one solution. Make Greed Contribute. ( See previous Blogs)

 

 

THE DOMINANT CAPITALIST SYSTEM – GREED MUST BE CAPPED.

05 Thursday Jun 2014

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We are coming up to the seventh commemoration of World War Two when hundred thousands of young souls gave their lives to stop the spread of Fascism in Europe which is now once more knocking on the door of Brussels. We all know the reasons why. The distribution of wealth remains in the hands of the rich.

At this point I could wax lyrical for pages and pages about what really makes one rich in our lives to no avail. So let’s look at one of the reasons why a tattooed individual is going to take his seat in the European Parliament with a swastika on his arm.

The euro zone unemployment rate has hit a record high at 11.8% with 18.8m people out of jobs.

 

A tiny elite are getting richer, the rest of us are getting poorer.

This is a familiar story in a world where greed and extreme wealth are central to the dominant capitalist system.

The annual Forbes billionaires list is an opportunity to test politicians promises that we are really

“All In It Together”.

The latest Forbes ranking, totalling a record 1,426 super rich (120 more than last year), globally represents a fortune of $5.4 trillion. That’s up from the $4.6 trillion a year earlier.

As you might expect, the United States continues to dominate the list, with 442 super-rich, followed by Asia-Pacific, with 386, and rest of the Americas producing 129 and the Middle East & Africa 103.

Although now the epicentre of austerity, the EU contributes heavily to the American business magazine’s hall of shame. And many of the richest among them have become even more filthy rich.

This at a time when most people on the Old Continent have been getting poorer, by 14%, to be exact, or one trillion dollars, according to a recent Credit Suisse study looking at household wealth.

The gap between rich and poor has grown even in the most traditionally egalitarian European countries, such as Germany, Denmark and Sweden, with the average income of the richest 10% compared to the poorest 10% rising from 5 to 1 in the 1980s to 6 to 1 today, according to a OECD reported published in December 2011.

Divided We Stand:  Why Inequality Keeps Rising” .

Our most urgent priority is to build Europe on the basis of equality, solidarity, and authentic democracy.

EU institutions and European governments now serve the interests of financial markets, with no respect for popular sovereignty. They must be brought under democratic control, just as the public interest must prevail and ecological and social needs be met. We base our demands for a democratic, social, ecological and feminist Europe on these principles, in solidarity with the people’s of the world.

Austerity policies attack economic and social rights and dismantle social protection. They lead to a drop in the standard of living and in many countries to acute humanitarian distress. The consequences are massive unemployment as well as a serious downgrading of working and living conditions. These, in turn, lead to unacceptable increases in poverty: today, 120 million people in the EU are poor.

For decades financial markets built and operated within a world economy in which they face no obstacles. The speculation they engaged in lies at the heart of most problems facing us today and still speculative traders continue to take money out of people’s pockets.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against a man getting rich or staying rich. The Capitalist system will ensure their existence, and long may they do so. No Wealth no Tax Mansion Tax or what ever tax will solve the problem of Greed.

However there is a way of getting Electronic Trading Platforms and Computer-driven algorithmic trading strategies and the like to contribute to the distribution of wealth worldwide.

The Foreign Exchange Market is known to be the largest financial market in the world, as measured by daily turnover. It is estimated to be anything from $3.2 trillion to $5 trillion a day. Six times larger than trading in US Treasury Bonds and thirty times larger than trading on the New york Stock Exchange.

A 0.05% AID COMMISSION ON ALL WORLD FOREIGN EXCHANGE TRADING WOULD DO THE TRICK.  SAVE THE WORLD FROM THE RICH.  ( SEE PREVIOUS BLOGS)