The international community is a phrase used in geopolitics and international relations to refer to a broad group of people and governments of the world. It slips off the tongue of BBC correspondents and newsreaders as if it is just good old plain common sense.
The international society thinks this … believes that … is concerned about.
HOW OFTEN HAVE WE HEARD COUNTRIES APPEALING TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY.
Are they wasting their breath?
If you were to asked me I would say that activists, politicians and commentators often use the term in calling for action to be taken in order to deflect their own countries dismal response.
We all know what is meant by the term ‘international community’, don’t we?
It’s the west, of course, nothing more, nothing less.
Just look at the global issue of climate change which could not be more International which urgently requires a common strategy with binding targets that must be defined on a planetary scale. The central driver of climate change risk is mainstream economic (development) models which aspire to carbon-intensive industrialization.
It is speculated that our global interconnectedness, instead of (only) making us more resilient, makes us more vulnerable to global catastrophe.
Solving climate change will take a global effort not an international effort.
Take Aviation pollution alone it is forecasted to triple by 2050 if there are no global policy measures are agreed.
The Earth can not appeal to an International community but our world in whichno individual, and no country, exists in isolation, is now facing perhaps its final disaster.
The involvement of Muslim countries – and from contrasting traditions to those of the Arab world – would be most valuable.
It would also represent a most welcome redefinition of the “international community.
Take China for example:
In fact, the Chinese have their own definition of “international community” to counter what they see as a western-dominated and defined international community.
Take Lebanon, for example:
What did the beloved “international community” think:
Take War-torn Syria, for example:
It is one country where there are sharply divided views between the West on the one side and China and Russia on the other.
Take India, or Latin America, or Africa, or South East Asia?
What do they think?
We are never told. Nobody bothered to find out.
Take Brexit.
Everyone seems to have someone, perhaps some group of people, on whom he or she looks down or whom he or she considers inferior. That is why, for example, the west finds it almost impossible to win votes on many issues in the UN general assembly.
If we are brutally honest with yourself it comes from sheer ignorance.
There is no international community. There is merely a group of states motivated by self-interest.
The international community is a mythical joke.
There will never be one that is worthy of respect rather than a cheap joke.
What we got is a digital dictatorship in its infancy. A world run by Algorithms mostly for profit.
What is needed is an global awaking.
All Human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
By not be able to coordinate any universal action we now pose the greatest threat to our own survival.
Future civilisation might well create a world without need or want, and make mindblowing intellectual and artistic achievements but in this new age, what should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
We could build a far more just and virtuous society but if we let civilisation end, then none of this can ever happen.
An overwhelming amount of political attention goes on concrete issues that help the present generation in the short-term since that’s what gets votes but at the cost of future generations that have no way to stand up for their interests, whether economically or politically.
You might be surprised if you ask the above question using AI.
Climate change comes some way down the list.
Natural risks are still quite small in absolute terms.
The risks from nuclear weapons are greater than all the natural risks put together. So, it seems like the chance of a massive climate disaster created by CO2 is perhaps similar to the chance of a nuclear war.
Since these risks are caused by humanity, they can be prevented by humanity, but what stops us is the difficulty of coordinate action.
Take Artificial Intelligence.
(There is a 50% chance we will develop high-level machine intelligence in 45 years, and 75% by the end of the century.)
It is difficult to predict what something smarter than us would do. A sufficiently powerful system might be difficult to control, and so be hard to reverse once implemented.
What’s less appreciated is that new technologies will present further catastrophic risks.
Like genetically engineer a virus that’s as contagious as the Spanish Flu, but also deadlier, and which could spread for years undetected. That would be a weapon with the destructive power of nuclear weapons, but far harder to prevent from being used.
So, let’s ask the question again.
What should be our biggest priority as a civilisation be?
(The flippant answer is we first have continued to exist so that we’ll have the chance to solve all our other problems.)
Improving technology? Helping the poor? Changing the political system? Free Education? Geo-engineering?- to mention a few.
Most of the best ways to tackle these risks are not easily taken by for-profit entities because the beneficiaries live in the future and can’t pay you.
For instance, a better-educated population would probably elect more enlightened leaders (cough). Improve the decision-making ability of people and institutions, this would help to make society, in general, more resilient, and solve many other problems.
However, in order for education to achieve anything, it would have to be on a very large scale to have any noticeable effect.
Improving technology holds the possibility of enormous gains, but also enormous risks.
Avoid accidents from AI systems are the most neglected of all risks.
More to the point, no matter what you think has happened in the past, if we look forward, improving technology, political organisation and freedom gives our descendants the potential to solve our current problems, and have vastly better lives.
Then, among the catastrophic risks, climate change gets the most attention, while issues like pandemics and AI are the most neglected.
An issue can be big but comparatively well-known and crowded, like climate change, or it can be small but neglected, like land use zoning reform.
In most countries, there is no government agency that naturally has mitigation of these risks in its remit.
So, even if we only focus on the impact on the present generation, these
catastrophic risks are one of the most serious issues facing humanity.
Probably part of the reason most people aren’t immediately ready to jump into action is that there appear to be so many problems and no simple solution presents itself for any of them.
One approach is to address each risk directly. Or rather than try to reduce each risk individually, we can try to make civilisation generally better at managing them – if we could all coordinate — if every nation agreed to contribute its fair share to reducing climate change, then all nations would benefit by avoiding its worst effects.
Unfortunately, such an approach in our capitalist consuming world is pie in the sky.
The truth is we only do so out of self-interest.
As we are witnessing with the Paris Climate Agreement made on 12 December 2015 when it comes down to the nitty gritty no one wants to pay either in the short term or long term.
It would be great if we could make the government have more concern for future generations.
To enable a universal action it has to be unseen and paid for by all without knowing.
You only have to look at the reaction of the yellow jackets movement spontaneous calls to protest against the increase of the internal consumption tax on energy products. A rebellion of the provincial under-classes that typifies the 21st century (web-populism, fake news and a visceral, exaggerated hatred of both media and political elites).
Like the 5Star Movement in Italy, they started as an internet rebellion against representative democracy.
We all live in an apocalyptic bubble of social media- SO IF WE ARE TO GENUINELY TACKLE ANY OF THE WORLD PROBLEMS IT REQUIRES A PERPETUAL FUND THAT GENERATES ITS FUNDS FROM PROFIT FOR PROFIT SAKE NOT INCREASED TAXES.
(SEE PREVIOUS POSTS)
Such a fund would turn the United Nations from a begging organisation into a world organisation with clout.
AI CALCULATES 19% chance of extinction before 2100.
It’s possible to grow the capacity of a community faster than you can grow your individual wealth or career capital. WE NEED TO USE OUR BUYING POWER TO EFFECTS CHANGE.
Why?
Because we will need to change our way of thinking and the extent of how we consume resources.
To achieve food and water security. To stop HABITAT AND BIODIVERSITY LOSS AND OCEAN DESTRUCTION – TO CREATE A MORE MODERN AND EFFECTIVE UN.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Looking at the world right in front of our eyes it would be fair to say that it is currently falling asunder while we all turn inwards in the fourth technological revolution that is not just undermining world institutions but creating social inequality that is linked to racial inequality, gender inequality, and wealth inequality, not to mention world conflicts.
This is a ringing indictment of our global economic system and there is no justifying it.
So the question is as it has been for the last couple of decades is there enough being done to bring about a more equitable distribution of income on a global scale.
The answer is a resounding No. To the extent that it is now hard to imagine any kind of economic miracle that could shrink the worldwide income gap.
Where is global inequality going?
By 2030 the richest 1% will own two-thirds of global wealth.
World lottos, created new billionaire every two days.
The world’s 10 richest billionaires, according to Forbes, own $745 billion in combined wealth, a sum greater than the total goods and services most nations produce on an annual basis.
Between 2009 and 2017, the number of billionaires it took to equal the wealth of the world’s poorest 50 per cent fell from 380 to 42.
But more than 65 per cent of the world’s millionaires continue to reside in Europe or North America.
WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE ABOUT THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH – OR RATHER THE LACK OF IT.
It’s true that wealth inequality has always existed, no matter what the design of the society. Whether capitalist or communist, democratic, autocratic, or plutocratic, it will exist.
Yet many of the extremes we see today are avoidable.
Income disparities have become so pronounced poor health and poverty go hand-in-hand.
It is tempting to see the rising concentration of incomes as some sort of unstoppable force of nature, an economic inevitability driven by globalization and technology.
There is nothing inevitable about untrammelled inequality.
It is the result of an unlevel playing field, the direct consequence of certain government policies.
There is no longer any simple solution.
Nowhere has the distribution of the pie become more equitable.
Increasing the incomes of low-wage workers produces stronger beneficial economic ripple effects than boosting bonuses for the rich.
Excluding Quantitative easing, 97% of money has been created through lending. When somebody borrows money – even just by spending on a credit card – new money is created. No wonder our economy is so geared around finance.
Yet we penalise labour and subsidise both debt and the ownership of assets.
The question is, how fast can developing countries grow in the future? The answer, unfortunately, is not fast enough.
The richest 1 per cent of humanity reaped 27 per cent of the world’s income between 1980 and 2016. The bottom 50 per cent, by contrast, got only 12 per cent.
If you ever wanted to understand where climate change came from, why there are so many wars and the unrest we are witnessing the above figures say it all.
This will only get worse in the near future with the most powerful force driving the distribution of income on a worldwide scale will be raw economic growth:
Will poor countries make sufficient progress relative to their rich peers to bring more balance to the distribution of global income?
Or will rising inequality within countries dominate?
It depends on three forces: countries’ economic and population growth, as well as the evolution of inequality within them.
This is no longer true. The forth Industrial technological revolution is going to require more aggressive redistribution through taxes and transfers.
Why because social inequality is now very different from economic inequality, though the two are linked.
Areas of social inequality include access to voting rights, freedom of speech and assembly, the extent of property rights and access to education, health care, quality housing, travelling, transportation, vacationing and other social goods and services. In the quality of family and neighbourhood life, occupation, job satisfaction, and access to credit.
All of these areas are now been data mined for profit by you know who with us supplying the data scot free.
We all know that more inequality means less wealth for everyone. .. but are we seeing countries deciding to push vigorously back against inequality. No
Ballooning wealth inequality is a threat to society.
globalization has also upended the agricultural and manufacturing sectors in many countries.
“In every country, just about, the disproportionate economic clout of those at the top has provided these individuals with wildly disproportionate influence on their countries’ political life and on its media; on what policies are pursued and whose interests end up being ignored,” Obama said.
He is right!
Wealthy must contribute or be forced to the larger benefits of society.
Inequality is not inevitable – it is a political choice.
It represents social and political issues that no party or government can afford to neglect.
Foot Note: To us Europeans.
Europe, unfortunately, has not been at the forefront of this battle, at least not EU institutions.
On the contrary, it has for long remained complacent, as EU treaties require unanimity on tax matters and as the bloc includes countries such as Luxembourg that have benefitted massively from corporate and individual tax avoidance.
For decades, the EU was dominated by an unholy alliance among three types of governments: those that rejected the very principle of international tax coordination as an infringement on sovereignty; those that benefitted from tax competition; and those that used it as a way to overcome domestic reluctance to the reduction of redistribution.
For an institution that is supposed to be based on values and that hails the European social model, this is humbling, and the EU is now paying a political price for its long inertia.
Social inequality can also be established through discriminatory legislation.
Things have started to change.
Thanks to Yellow Jacks and Brexit we may witness only if we truly want it some improvements.
In the battle for fairer globalisation, with more and more Foodbanks and homeless people, it is far too early to claim victory.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
Putting religious beliefs aside ask yourself or Google a question :
WHAT IS WRONG IN THE WORLD?
There is no shortage of people who know what is wrong.
The most frequently cited reason is probably the decline of religion, specifically the religion of the person writing it.
The list is endless.
Lack of respect for elders, unregulated capitalism, greed, alcohol, the economy, the rich, attachment, premarital sex, liberals, the unemployed, pride, lawyers, apathy, Starbucks.
The planet itself is fine and does what it does best which is to exist, orbit, and rotate.
The real question is what is wrong with our civilization?
We live in a world where text messages surpass face to face conversations.
We live in a world where if you didn’t snapshot it or post it to Facebook, “it didn’t happen”.
We live in a world where our self-esteem is managed by the amount of “likes” on our selfies and statuses.
We live in a world where our tv’s and cell phones get thinner and our bodies get thicker.
What happened to the world where everyone minded their own damn business?
What happened to the world where people actually knew their neighbors and didn’t fear them?
What happened to the world where people got together and lost track of time because they didn’t have their phone attached to their hip?
What happened to the world where people could voice their opinion without getting hate mail?
What happened to the world as one nation under God?
The answer I suppose depends on seeing the world within framed views of rich and poor.
What is clear is that people’s desires are contradictory, so it becomes a matter of democracy.
The problem is that most people fail to see things from other peoples perspectives. There’s no right or wrong. Just different point of views. People have become greedy and have forgotten their own truth but what happens when people stop caring.
I’m going to assume almost everyone knows that poverty is a huge problem in so many countries across the world, you’re not starving right now but you know there are hundreds of thousands of people that are.
I thought by the end of writing this, I would know what was wrong with humanity, but I don’t and I would be most grateful to anyone that can offer an explanation.
I think it was Einstein who said that ” we seem to have found the way but lost the destination”. We all seek understanding and sympathy if not empathy.
Industrial Civilization leaves us slaves to nothingness and our last days are spent in a hospital where machines are our mothers.
The only thing that is certain in life is the depravity of mankind.
As a species, we generally are self-destructive, greedy, and overpopulated.
We are the only species that hunts on a full stomach, enact genocide, and create wars by selling arms.
Unfortunately, the current technological advances are not going change the fundamental problem of what we call civilization.
Ever since the dawn of our species through no fault of our own, we have been unable to act as one : (FOR THE COMMON GOOD).
EVER POLITICAL IDEOLOGY HAS BEING BASED ON GROWTH.
We now enter a new age of TECHNOLOGY where data is feeding artificial intelligence that is, in turn, fanning advances in the world of scientific research, that is and will have far-reaching consequences on all aspect of living.
However, despite thousands of academic papers on the subject, our current civilization relies on trial and error.
The core of our present-day technology is flawed in as much as it is going to created greater inequality. While we are busy focusing on computer intelligence artificial intelligence might arrive in a living form first and bring with it unprecedented ethical challenges.
THE CORE OF SCIENCE SHOULD BE TO GENERATE KNOWLEDGE THAT OTHER PEOPLE CAN TAKE AND BUILD ON.
We need to push the frontiers of our knowledge with deep knowledge far beyond cool social apps, and neural networks that are presently trampling over moral boundaries.
We need more minds thinking about where it’s all going to end up and not allow computers to figure out for itself.
OUR CIVILIZATION NEEDS TO WIN THE RACE BETWEEN THE GROWING POWER OF TECHNOLOGY AND THE GROWING WISDOM WHICH WE WILL MANAGE IT.
EVEN IF THERE IS AN AMAZING OPPORTUNITY TO HELP HUMANITY FLOURISH THERE MUST BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERE.
As always it is our complacency that is the real threat to the world.
So I leave you with these questions.
How can we ensure that artificial intelligence is developed in ways that benefit all parts of society, and serves the public interest?
How can we design meaningful public engagement around the future impact of AI technologies?
FINALLY, ANY AI THAT GAINS CONTROL OVER IMPORTANT SYSTEMS WITH UNSUPERVISED INTELLIGENCE IS GOING TO POSE AN EXISTENTIAL RISK NOT JUST TO THE PLANET BUT TO HUMANITY AS A WHOLE. SO EMPOWERED IT WILL BECOME UNQUESTIONABLE.
The more AI advances into a general purpose technology that permeates every corner of life, the less sense it makes to allow it to remain in the hands that serve a few instead of the many.
Most of today’s and past world problems have their roots in Inequality.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
In a world where nearly 20 people are forcibly displaced every minute by violence, war and persecution ARE WE KIDDING OURSELVES TO THINK THAT TECHNOLOGY WILL SOLVE THE WORLD PROBLEMS.
One in every 113 people on the planet is now a refugee AND THAT IS WITHOUT CLIMATE CHANGE THAT IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST MOTIVE TO BECOME ONE.
At the moment ( According to the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR) it might be true to say that out of the 65.6 million 40.3 million – are people displaced within their own country.
Here are below are four UNHCR videos that should be shown on World TV, across Social Media, in every school to every man woman and child.
I have posted on this subject before with little reaction.
There is often an implicit connection between discourses of the future and notions of technology, so that if we see a television programme with a title such as Click or Tomorrow’s World we expect that the topic will be technology.
The single most astonishing point about technologies is that they can move from being emblematic of an almost unreachable future to becoming so taken for granted that it feels like a personal slight when they do not work.
In this way technology in and of itself becomes a symbol of being modern is one of the reasons it becomes expressive of, rather than distinct from, cultural values.
Perhaps this is the reason that the relationship between social media and the conceptualisation of the future is still blurred and will remain so.
New technology does not just change the manner in which people go about their everyday lives: It also facilitates our imagination of the future.
All the above speak to a new, imagined future that strives towards idealism. However within the vast field of technology the consequences of AI there are a few devices and algorithms that will battle it out over the next twenty odd years for supremacy.
Will it be Smartphones, or Smart Wearable or Cryptocurrency that will augment reality.
All need software in the form of algorithms to run.
AI algorithms will make the physical and digital world interchangeable.
Practically every non- iPhone smartphone relies on an Android operating system?
One way or the other we are entering an age where life stops giving us things and starts taking them away.
Not surprising.
So it’s not Social media technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter and the others ( that talks a lot about connectivity but not accountability) that will change the world but the power of ever where at once.
That requires total knowledge on all aspects of life.
Google or should I say the Google Cloud is trying to achieve this.
Which is possibly both the best and the worst thing that could happen.
So let’s look at a few of the top combats in the world of technology in no particular order.
( Obviously it would take page after page to give a comprehensive insight so I am only going to give a few lines to each.)
Microsoft Corporation:(LinkedIn -Skype – Mojang – Yammer- Hotmail)
It operates through the following segments:
Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing.
Market Cap As of May 2017
$507.5 Billion
Microsoft could be worth $1 trillion by 2020 — if not sooner. It is moving further and further into a digital landscape for everything from movies, music, books, games and software.
Twitter: Owned mostly by Venture Capitalist:
An online breaking news and social networking service. Using Twitter bots, (live streaming video.) With 450 million monthly active users it is ranked the eleventh most visited website. It has mobile apps for iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows 10, Windows Phone,BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
Capable of influencing public opinion about culture, products and political agendas by automatically generating mass amounts of tweets through imitating human communication. World leaders and their diplomats have taken note of Twitter’s rapid expansion and have been increasingly utilizing Twitter diplomacy. Television programs use it to amplify their programs.
It could become the emergency communication system for track epidemics or sensor for automatic response to natural disasters.
Amazon:
The largest Internet retailer in the world. The company is now worth more than $560 billion. Electronic commerce and cloud computing company.
Amazon announced that it would acquire Whole Foods, a high-end supermarket chain with over 400 stores, for $13.4 billion.
eBay Inc: (PayPal)
There are now literally millions of items bought and sold every day on eBay, all over the world. For every $100 spent online worldwide, it is estimated that $14 is spent on eBay. What’s more, eBay doesn’t care who you are, where you live, or what you look like:
The race is on to control mobile payments and the upside remains enormous:
Apple:(Shazam – Emagic- Siri – Beats Electronics – Next Inc.- Novauris-PrimeSense -The Bottom Line – Invest in Yourself.)
Quarterly revenue of $52.6 billion 2017.
Today, Apple leads the world in innovation with iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple TV. Apple’s four software platforms — iOS, macOS, watchOS and tvOS.
Facebook:(Whats App and Instagram Oculus VR.)
A publicly traded company worth more than $500 billion.
More than two billion monthly users. It is developing a new social platform in virtual reality called Facebook Spaces, which it believes will form the foundation for the future of communication.
Tencent and Alibaba: aren’t far from the half-trillion dollar mark either.
These are the main contenders as we know them to-day
—————————————————————————————
So the Question is:
Which one if any of the above will be the top dog by 2025.
Will it be : ( All knowledge, All Gossip, All purchases, All Apps/ Software)
At this point you will have noticed that I have left out the company mentioned in Title of this posting.
While in the future devices may be more ubiquitous in all corners
of the globe, inequality will therefore remain in terms of the services
available in certain locations and the lack of attention paid to the needs
and desires of certain populations.
Companies like Amazon and Google will be fighting to lock you into one voice ecosystem. You may have to declare your allegiance for Alexa, Siri, Cortana or Google Assistant.
One could say that:
Amazon represents de-socialising of commerce. Face book represents self ego. Twitter represents myths and gossip. Apple represents profit. E bay represents selling and buying of stuff, Google represents doming down.
All are represented on Social Media which is being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more.
Social media applications such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have increasingly been adopted by politicians, political activists and social movements as a means to engage, organize and communicate with citizens.
So is the power and the winner going to be Social Media which is owned by the Internet.
I think Not.
In short, one consequence of this prediction is that the very idea of ‘social media’ might gradually disappear; instead we simply have an increasingly diverse set of media and increasingly sophisticated exploitation of the possibilities these media have created, including other trends such as obtaining information, sharing information or making communication more visual.
Social media is slowly killing real activism and replacing it with ‘slacktivism, and we all know where that might lead us. Awareness is not translating into real change. Support is limited to pressing the ‘Like’ button or sharing content which absolve them from responsibility to act.
The role of social media as symbolic of the future may already be in decline.
“The election of Donald J. Trump is perhaps the starkest illustration yet that across the planet, social networks are helping to fundamentally rewire human society.”
The one I left out, with 65% of all online searches – is Google.
Google has expanded far beyond its original claim to fame as a search engine.
Google and their competitor platforms are programming the world for profit. The reach of this technology giant is so vast it is hard to imagine an area of modern life it has not touched.
Alphabet owns Google, as well as many other companies. However, Google itself owns companies.
Google has reorganized itself into multiple companies, separating its core Internet business from several of its most ambitious projects while continuing to run all of these operations under a new umbrella company called Alphabet.
Google owns more than 200 companies, including those involved in robotics, mapping, video broadcasting, telecommunications and advertising.
Simply put, the company has been visionary in recognizing the income potential for information products.
Their profit seeking algorithms ensuring that every recommendation, from whether you should buy this or that, stay here or there, fly or drive, connect to this or that, live or die, will earn them a few cents.
By 2025 all will be connected to the Cloud. With one winner.
The Google Monopoly.
Once a Google client always a Google client.
How do you stop using Google?
Already impossible.
Move and your G Mail becomes blocked mail.
Say anything on you website that smacks about google, you site gets flooded with google ads.
It is becoming more and more difficult for anyone to extricate themselves from the clutches of any of its platforms as deactivating means little or nothing.
Social media apps ensure you are still engaged and if they don’t work your friends and family smartphones are searching for you nonstop supplying little hits of dopamine. ( Someone likes you photo or you are mentioned in their contact. It’s a social validation feedback loop..exploiting a vulnerability in humans psychology.)
Will Social Media destroy or rain back Google dominance?
The whole Social media thing is turning into an addictive cancer effecting our brains and tearing our emotions and attentiveness a sunder which in turn is encouraging self-segregation and exacerbating social divides.
Every facet of our life is touched or being integrated by the social media today.
In this sense social media has become an instrument of democratic renewal.
On the other hand it is evident that this uncensored and unmonitored medium of communication is exposing us all to a gradual breakdown of social cohesion and the destruction of our traditional value systems.
Though the advantages of social media are emphasized quite often, as opposed to its negative aspects which are very rarely discussed.
I feel that this will change in the coming years.
All said, social media is here to stay. The power of social media is exponential. Numbers tell the story.
Just as difficult as forecasting the future is knowing the present.
After all not everything moves over time to become more functional
or efficient.
It is obviously going to be hard to predict the future for something as
dynamic as social media. How can we know what social media has already become for oil workers in Alaska, tribal people in Amazonia and the nouveau riche of Moscow?
Unless we take responsibility to ensure that our understanding of social media and its impacts are constantly evaluated with what’s happening in the world. Once we appreciate that knowing social media is not an exercise in delineating the properties of a set of platforms, but rather of acknowledging what the world has already turned these into, by way of content, the immensity of the problem is revealed.
So it will be important to continue monitoring and exploring the extent to which collective action is individualised through social media use.
= Can the use of social media for campaigning help to bring about genuine and lasting empowerment; or does it serve largely to re-inforce pre-existing relationships?
= Is social media a means of building dialogue and consensus in diverse communities or does its use encourage increased fragmentation or, alternatively, a homogeneity of interests?
= Can meaningful impact measures be developed that can be used by small, under-resourced organisations at local level (or indeed within larger voluntary organisations)?
Social media is seen in much of the literature as a means of promoting dialogue beyond the mainstream media. Voluntary and community groups have been criticized, however, for using social media as little more than a means of broadcasting.
Why might this be the case – and does it matter?
Social media expands our capacity but, it does not change our
essential humanity.
It is used to repair the rupture sustained by separated transnational families or for overcoming previously frustrated desires to share photographs more easily.
It allows couples living in different countries who ‘sort of’ live together online;
Soon, however, things move on to new realms.
Should a clear relationship be expected between the (apparently empowering) use of social media in mobilizing large national and global movements, and its use at the micro-political neighborhood level.
An increasing number of social media platforms can be aligned with the diversity of the social groups to which we might want to relate.
Social media however has little impact on the overall outcomes in terms of empowerment, equalities or social justice.
However powerful and important the advent of social media has become, it would be hard to place it ahead of the impact and significance of smartphones, within which social media platforms may often be seen as just another kind of app.
It is smartphones that facilitate social media’s importance as a mix of polymedia, making clear the range of media possibilities as they lie side by side within one easily accessible device.
It is the Smartphone that drives social media input and out put.
Will that will be the One Winner, changing our sense of collective memory, creating a new form or combination of internal and external faculties for retaining information.
As Smartphones become smarter, they may well accelerate the dissolving of social media into this wider array of communicative possibilities.
The increasing ubiquity of the smart phone is the catalyst for more general usage of social media. Recognizing that this may not necessarily impact on any other aspect of inequality should not prevent us from recognizing that there is in one aspect an increasing and significant equality:
The more individuals live within culturally imposed constraints on communication, the more a new technology may mean that what was previously forbidden now becomes possible.
This fluid mix of communicative forms suits the way users flow between activities such as talking, gaming, texting, masturbating, learning and purchasing. The social connection is more important than how well a platform meets their needs.
Comparative anthropology creates particular varieties of knowledge of both breadth and depth. What makes these essential within the context of our complex modern world, however, is that these are forms of understanding based on empathy.
Merely having a smart phone provides a significant change with respect to the capacities of its owner.
——
What happens to our online materials at death.
Finally: Capitalism can never be ethical.
There are no laws requiring Google to be fair.
If we don’t open our eyes soon technology ( whether it’s Google, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon Inc or some equivalent service) is going to F—k us all from some Cloud or other that is just over the horizon.
Just look at the annual release of new smartphones.
Of course there are other things in the long tall grass waiting to caught us by the short and hairy and most have being around for yonks. War, Natural Disasters, Greed, Inequality and the like.
My advice is to beware of the man with a smartphone. Because knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.
Google it.
All human comments much appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
” Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist” I would add technology in the form of profit seeking Algorithms.
Infinite growth might have seemed possible when Captain Cook was around, unfortunately it no longer holds.
However we are all still lead to believe that GDP marks human progress.
Our world is rapidly changing. Markedly defined by the Internet.
We are now standing on the threshold of divorce between Money and State with natural systems under enormous pressure which I am sure I don’t have to high light here.
With the planet groaning, ever trade deal is a new frontier of accumulation a form of World GDP exploitation that was and still is promoted by the help of the World Bank, and the IMF.
We are now at a stage where GDP growth is beginning to create more poverty, and inequality than it eliminates.
Unfortunately the resources of the world have been exploited both for debt and profit rather than sustainability, and as long as GDP growth remains the main objective of Globalization we will see more and more countries going into irreversible debt, and war over freshwater, air, and energy.
These profound changes are emboldened by the evident failures on both levels of political control: Technological Regulations/ Laws and the growing power of monopoly platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, the Cloud etc.
Don’t worry say’s technology we can decouple sustainability and material throughput.
A beguiling vision of a future lightweight economy.
Facebook and the Cloud are gathering an unprecedented amount of power and allowing their business practices to be a disruptive force for democracy.
All pointers signaling the widespread decay of the economic and political frameworks in which our institutions operate.
With profit seeking algorithms rich countries are in fact increasing consumption, still producing stuff and by 2030 it will be in the 100 billion tons.
There is also a growing belief as we convert to renewable energies and begin to use negative – emissions technologies that we can change the damage to the climate.
However if we continue to ignore that energy use is only part of the problem.
It is what we are doing with it is the problem.
Polluting our sea, chopping down our forests, producing cement, creating land fills with waste, eroding our land, all contributing more and more greenhouse gases. Switching to clean energy will do nothing to slow this down.
The problem is much deeper than we are willing to admit.
We need a new consciousness for a different world.
Our crucial first step would be to get rid of GDP as a measure of economic growth/progress and well-being.
We need to have an open discussion about what we really value.
We are all aware of the individual problems, but the main problem remains the same – Inequality due to the distribution and exploitation of the world’s wealth.
Any rich country that has food banks, people sleeping on the street, is for me a failed state.
I have written many a post with a solution that to date has fallen on deaf ears.
it is my conviction that at this point and time its impossible to correct the imbalances of Capitalism. We can only ensure that Capitalism pays for the damage by introducing a World Aid Commission.
0.05%
On all High Frequency trading, on all Sovereign Wealth Fund Accusations,on all Foreign exchange transactions over $50,000, on all Social Media platforms postings, on all Bitcoin’s, and other digital currency transactions.
This fund would be a perpetual source of money.
It could replace the begging Organisations.Re Establish the United Nations an effective world organisation that could address and react to world needs, where ever, when ever.
It could be managed under the UN umbrella, provided it was totally independent/ transparent of any lobbing and political veto interference.
Its funds could be granted with no repayments requirements.
It would change the world for the better, by spreading its wealth where it is needed most.
Of course the problem remains as to how we get our Capitalist Master to implement such a course of action.
Perhaps Bitcoin’s ability to promote the divorce between Money and State, might be a place to start.
All suggestions appreciated.
All human comments appreciated. All Like clicks chucked in the bin.
PROBLEMS are caused by our actions, and can only be
resolved by us changing these actions.
The scientific innovations and new technologies thus
generated seem limitless, as they unfold everywhere
and on all kinds of fronts. It is the wild west where
rules are made up as we go and hope for the best.
There is no central body GOVERNING the use of the
cloud.
In a constantly evolving world transformed by cloud, social and mobile technologies, we’ve become accustomed to the idea of storing our personal data in the cloud, whether it’s via Dropbox, the iCloud or even Facebook.
as confusing as it may be we are never far from a new
era of revolt.
But this really only tells half the story. So far cloud computing has, for the most part, been used to speed up and reduce the costs of existing processes.
However we’re moving into what is becoming known as the mobile/cloud era. Cloud computing is set to impact not only on the way we do business, but how we live or lives.
Our thinking is being shaped by several key areas:
Applications we’re seeing at the moment really are the tip of the iceberg and, as the technology matures further, who knows how we may be using the cloud in even a year from now.
Smart cities are growing ever closer to becoming the norm as organisations begin to realize that the cloud can do so much more than simply speed up or reduce the cost.
Eight years from now we are likely to see low-power processors crunching many workloads in the cloud, housed in highly automated data centres and supporting massively federated, scalable software architecture.
So far we know that the following things are likely to happen:
There will be larger clouds. Some of these clouds will link to others. Many services that businesses consume will sit on top of clouds. Software will be much, much larger.
As with any technology, a lot of the true problems could come in implementation. Who will be the police? Who will be the judge? Who will be the jury for penalties?
We don’t have a clue what the procedures, policies and infrastructure really are.
It is said that changing the world is a noble, innate, haunting idea that, when flirting with it, ends up becoming as beautiful as it is dangerous.
Experts estimate cloud apps will account for a whopping 90 percent of worldwide mobile data traffic by 2019.
Cloud computing brings with it a whole new set of applications that will sit on multiple tiers of cloud infrastructure.
All the cloud promises is that you will have to turn over your security interests to a third-party in the clouds, and secondly that you are going to turn over your ability to do ANY real work to some third-party software provider in the cloud and become totally dependent on an internet connection to even work on the most simple of application based tasks.
Cloud data centers will “become much like a breathing and living organism with different states.
They will be differentiated by their infrastructure capabilities into a whole new set of classes.
So where are we.
How are we going to operate them efficiently?
Will they have standards and full technical disclosure?
The answer to both questions is that it is highly unlikely will we see either.
What we will see is a pitched battle fight for dominance with us reduced to an “inside-out” perspective.
For instance, “The more the president [of the United States] scandalizes the world with Tweets, rather than embracing the future together with minimal barriers, we see the Western world retreating and starting to look inwards.
Technology has brought meaning to the lives of many technicians, but it is also destroying what it left of any world community spirit, with the smart phone embodying this state of affairs.
Technological advances in the fields of robotics, artificial intelligence or augmented reality are upset the global economy. The ability to acquire new knowledge will be worth more than the knowledge already learned, with people becoming brand-proof, it will become very difficult to exist the devil’s boots that don’t creak.
Behold the Cloud.
Every revolution up to now has had a common thread with the resulting conflicts largely boiling down to pervasive economic inequality.
The Cloud revolution however is wireless dogma, not a guide for action, accepting connections and doling out information anywhere, anytime if you have the money to pay.
The Internet revolution of tomorrow with the cloud as it’s center of power, will be the content revolution ,that does not bode well for the state of the world to-day and that could be inviting the collapse of society as we know it.
We are heading for a unilateral and silent war, which I think its going to be horrendous.
The difficulty will not come from governments that will be held hostage to a communication that it does not control but from profit seeking AI that feeds off the cloud.
A whopping 90% of businesses already use at least one cloud computing service.
The main players, Amazon, Google Drive, Apple Cloud, Microsoft, with revenue estimated to be in trillions by 2020, know this.
It’s now totally the way of the future.
The cloud it is not just a metaphor for the internet it is more than a motor, it is a fuel that is constantly renewed, tirelessly feeding self learning algorithms.
The crisis of technological capitalism opens the prospect of new revolutionary waves everywhere.
Many economists extol the fact that “It’s very good for the economy” but this is not true. The world in which Beethoven grew up was in turmoil. It was a world of wars, revolutions and counter-revolutions – just like ours today.
This is not a war in the traditional sense of the term: it is and will be more and more a confrontation between belligerent technological armies; it is a war waged by the “civilized world”, firmly entrenched in its positions, against hundreds of millions of deprived civilians.
The divide between rich and poor started with the domesticate plant and animals, which lead to farming – based societies resulting in land ownership. It became easy to acquire wealth and to pass it down from generation to generation, till we arrived to-day with half of the world’s wealth owned by 1%.
We have never being able to decrease inequality peacefully and we never will be able to do so in the future with self learning profit seeking algorithms.
However we are now looking at a new revolution that will be governed by time in the cloud.
Why?
Because Revolutions are voluble, and the cloud is highly suited to exploiting that volubility.
Because capitalism is and always will be set up for consumerism profit, to acquire wealth for the few not the many.
The frenetic pace of change has caused enormous social disruption as entire industries and employment have migrated to lower cost centers in Asia and other developing regions.
Throughout the course of human history, wealth, or the lack thereof, has driven social unrest.
And so while the incredible benefits of globalisation have lifted many from poverty, profit seeking AI are going to create alienation and isolation in those areas that have lost out.
All new inventions and technologies have one thing in common:
They derive their strength from digital and information technologies. All innovations are made possible and are enhanced by digital power. That power is in the Cloud.
Similarly, without computing power, no artificial intelligence and, without it, no sophisticated robots.
To live this transition means first to become aware of current and future changes, and to consider their impact at all levels of society as a whole.
However, the reasons to rise up are not lacking: economic precariousness, multiplication of political scandals, crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions are all ringing warning bells.
Globalisation didn’t create multinational corporations but those that can take advantage of the changes have and will enriched themselves beyond imagination. While swathes of society will find themselves left behind, forced to compete for jobs at ever lower wages.
The free flow of money and the demolition of trade barriers fostered their growth and delivered them the political power to challenge the fundamental ideals of democracy.
The planet can deal with human demands on it at only 30 percent of what we take from-dump on it now (anyone who thinks that we can double our demands on the planet and people every 12-20 years in perpetuity or that technology will save us should be excluded from serious discussions, I think).
The world has limited resources and cannot go on consuming and squeezing people into every available space. That sense of powerlessness now threatens to overwhelm the positives of globalisation and free trade; such as cheaper consumer goods and higher global living standards.
Forcing nations into a tax rate race to the bottom.
And then there’s Donald Trump, who takes venality to an entirely new level. For all the good it has done, however, it has come at a significant cost, particularly in the developed world. Today, this translates into a crisis of political authority: we are not only frustrated by the incapacity of politicians to solve our problems, but we also question their legitimacy to act on our behalf since we discover, in certain situations, more capacities to act and find solutions than they do.
Tomorrow, this may result in an awareness that citizens can, in some cases, do without policies to make politics.
There are two major threats to us all. Climate Change and The Cloud.
If we do not wake up and demand change we will all indeed be living with zero intelligence.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.
Climate change is real and so are its effects, despite what Trump and his 22 Republican senators might stubbornly, short-sighted and nonsensical choose to believe.
Indeed, that climate change is real and caused by human activity is no longer an issue up for debate. That time has long passed.
It’s true that the train may be out of the station when it comes to avoiding climate change altogether, but we can still attempt to mitigate and alleviate the worst of the effects.
The fact that an agreement was achieved was a breakthrough. Never before have 195 countries agreed to some form of emissions reductions, even if they aren’t exactly binding.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced he was pulling United States out of the agreement, which means the US would join Syria and Nicaragua as the only nations that did not agree to the pact. Even Palestine and North Korea signed it.
In that context, Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement, the most promising global initiative addressing climate change, seems like a big deal. And it is, but not because his decision to withdraw will catapult us toward assured and quick global demise.
It is perhaps the best thing that could happen for the future of the agreement and, by side effect, the planet. After all, the accord is largely a voluntary gentleman’s agreement.
Trump’s decision might actually have a positive effect on the future of climate negotiations, freeing world leaders to pull together a stronger agreement that forces greater action.
It sends the message that the agreement is more about symbolism than action. Despite all of the fanfare that went on at the time, it seems that there are currently only 3 European Union countries pursuing climate policies that put them in line with the agreements made at the Paris Climate Change Talks.
The great majority of countries want to rig the law with loopholes so they can continue business as usual.
Some of the primary loopholes in question, are the use of higher baselines for measuring CO2 emissions reductions and a greater use of forestry credits (tree planting as an offset). Also, 9 member states “want to exploit the ETS’s huge surplus of 100 million allowances, worth an expected €2 billion, to help them meet their emissions obligations on paper.”
In effect, the U.S. risks becoming an unreliable country run by an administration that explicitly prioritizes corporate greed, short-termism, isolationism and nepotism over science, reason, growth and global sustainable prosperity.
The response to such a senseless act by the Trump administration should be a renewed and strengthened international commitment to combat climate change and the maintenance of a global climate governance regime that will be effective in keeping global warming below the critical 2 degrees Celsius.
This will never be achieved.
Why ?
Because man down through the age has demonstrated that he is incapable of cooperate with each other in large groups.
The modern deal offers power provided we renounce our belief in a great cosmic plan that gives meaning to life. On an individual level we are inspired to constantly increase our income and our standard of living. Greed comes easily to humans.
Don’t worry, The ecological meltdown is going to be great.
God like technology has it downside, like how or what is going to control these structures as traditional political structures can no longer process the data fast enough to produce meaningful visions.
We live in a world full of small interest groups and ruthless billionaires, we becoming chips enabled and manipulated by algorithms.
An international fund to help countries transition to green economies and cope with climate change will have an expected $100 billion US dollars per year. So far, only $62 billion US dollars has been gathered.
The whole thing will end in gridlock.
The climate change narrative is beginning to change.
There is only one way to stop climate change and that is to place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all transactions that exploit us and the world for profit sake.
For Example: High Frequency Trading, Sovereign Wealth Fund Acquisitions, Foreign Exchange Transactions over 50,000$, World Lotteries etc.
This will create a perpetual funded world aid fund to address climate change and the inequality that drives it.
Failure to act—or worse, acting to exacerbate—climate change could have lasting implications for the entire planet. The world has already burned more than two-thirds of the carbon that is expected to raise global temperatures by 2 degrees celsius (the previous target)–a catastrophic threshold.
If developing nations followed similar development trajectories as the US, for instance, then there would be no possibility for keeping climate change under control.
Emissions targets will never be legally binding, but report cards and updated promises are binding. No penalties will be given out for countries who fail to meet targets.
There is no doubt that the work of modern-day leaders is complicated
around the world. Leaders will need to demonstrate a different set of behaviors IF WE ARE TO SAVE THIS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENT DRIVEN WORLD FROM GOOGLE, FACEBOOK, TWITTER, AND SOCIAL MEDIA.
It is true that today’s leaders are already facing challenges and changes that are rapidly transforming where, how, and with whom they do business.
WHY?
Because of the shrinking talent pool.
Unfortunately with climate change the world now needs:
Agility, Authenticity, Talent, Sustainability, with better deliver value that embrace social responsibility, all combining to give a distinctive leadership framework of connectivity for the further.
We all know that in the past the world has seen some good, some rotten to the core, however some of the current bunch take the biscuit.
So let’s have a look at a few of them.
Donald Trump: Age 71. Elected by the power of money, twitter, and social media. Woman grouper. A real estate developer, reality television star. Turned his name into a brand. Three marriages. 5 children. Filed for bankruptcy several times. Represents 325 million people.
Chinese President Xi Jinping: Installed. Undergraduate degree in chemical engineering and a doctorate degree in law. Not much is known about Xi’s policies. Supports the large state-owned enterprises that have allowed high-ranking Communist Party officials to make millions of dollars. Represents 1 billion 342 million people.
Vladimir Putin: Age 65. Married Divorced. Two children. KGB.Appointed acting president after Boris Yeltsin’s resignation. Named Time Person of the Year. Represents 143 million people.
Narendra Modi. Age Teetotaler. Bachelor’s degree in Political Science.Unsuccessful arranged marriage. Childless. Poet. 26 million followers on Twitter. Represents 1 billion 342 million people.
Kim Jong-il World’s youngest head of state, believed to be turning 33 on 8 January.Married to Ri Sol-Ju.Move over Jesus. Based on Kim Jong-iI’s official biography, he was born on Korea’s most sacred mountain, Mt. Baekdu. Fashion icon. Invented The Hamburger. Never used a toilet. Head of one of the largest armies in the world. Awarded an honorary doctorate in economics by a private Malaysian university called the HELP University.To break from its “imperialist past”, North Korea announced it would follow “Pyongyang time” in August 2015 – which is half an hour later than the previous time zone it shared with South Korea and Japan. In 2014, a UN report found: “The gravity, scale and nature of these [human rights] violations reveal a state that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world.” Represents 25 million people.
Bashar al-Assad : Age 52. Married 3 children. Elected unopposed. The second son of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad. Study medicine at the University of Damascus, graduating in 1988. Leader of the Ba’ath Party and commander-in-chief of the military. Using chemical weapons against civilians with assistance from Russian president Vladimir Putin. April 2017, following news of another round of chemical weapons unleashed on civilians, new U.S. president Donald Trump ordered airstrikes on a Syrian airbase. By February 2016, the conflict had led to an estimated 470,000 deaths in Syria. Controls 25 percent of Syrian territory, and he’ll hold on to it as if his life depends on it. Controls 25 percent of Syrian territory, and he’ll hold on to it as if his life depends on it. 4 million people have left the country and another 7.6 million Syrians have been forced from their homes but remain inside Syria. Turkey highlights the fundamental problem with the war in Syria: every actor has his own agenda. Turkey wants to fight Kurds, Iran wants to beat back Syrian rebels backed by Saudi Arabia, the US is focused on ISIS, and Putin gains political ground by “standing up to the West.” Alliances and rivalries overlap, with just one clear winner: Bashar al-Assad. He may be fighting ISIS for control of Syria, but it’s the rise of ISIS that’s keeping him in power. Represents himself.
Ayatollah Khamenei: Age 78. Married 6 children. The supreme religious leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979, now the religious and political leader of Iran for life.Well known for releasing a fatwa (a legal document issued by a Muslim cleric) calling for the death of Indian-British author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses in 1989. No friend of Israel. Recently stated “We however thank this new guy in the White House, since he largely did the job we had been trying to do in the past decades: to divulge the true face of the US. We had been working to show the world the depth of corruption in US government and ranks and files of the ruling elite; Trump did it in few days after coming to the White House.” Represents 81 million people.
Angela Merkel: Chancellor of Germany, Age 53. Married divorced. No Children. University of Leipzig, B.S., 1978; German Academy of Sciences, Ph. D, 1986. Named Person of the Year by Time magazine 2015. Forbes named her as the “Most Powerful Woman in the World” in May, 2016. A former research scientist. The only leader in the history of G20, to have attended every meeting, since the first in 2008. The longest-serving incumbent head of government in the history of European Union, as of March 2014. Described as the “Liberal West’s Last Defender.” Honored with the Grand Cross Special Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the highest class of the Order. Awarded with the President’s Medal the highest civil medal given by the State of Israel, in the year 2014. Awarded the title Doctor Honoris Causa, by the Comenius University in Bratislava in 2014, the University of Bern in 2015 and the Ghent University and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in the year 2017. Awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States.Had “private and informal talks,” with the 14th Dalai Lama in the Chancellery in Berlin in the year 2007, amid China’s protests. Following this meeting, China cancelled any kind of separate talks with all the officials from Germany. Opened the doors to Syrian Refugees. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award of the United States. Represents 81 million people.
Francois Gerard Georges Hollande. Age 53. Married divorced. 4 children. First Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995. Taught economics at the elite Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.Receives 28.6% of the vote in France’s presidential election in April 2012. Won in runoff election for the presidency of France by 51.62% of the vote. Enjoys a wide range of holiday residences. Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces and may order the use of nuclear weapons. At the forefront of securing a global climate deal and after the Paris attacks he persuaded Europe and the US to step up the fight against Isis. One of the very last European leaders to believe in Europe. Represents 65 million.
Theresa May: Age 60. Married. No children. Incumbent Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. A graduate in Geography from Oxford University. Suffering with Type 1 diabetes and Brexit. Worked at the Bank of England. Head of the European Affairs Unit of the Association for Payment Clearing Services. The second longest-serving home secretary in the past 100 years. Fashion-conscious. Instinctively secretive and very rigid. Holds herself at one remove.. Her wider political appeal is, as yet, untested. Mrs May will not have to face a general election until May 2020 unless she decides to seek a fresh mandate – something she has seemingly ruled out but the folly of brexit ill see her overseeing the brake up of the UK.One does not know unless one is educated about or knows the culture. Represents 65 million people.
Dilma Rousseff. (suspended) Age 70. Married,divorced twice. One child. Democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas. Her chairmanship of the state oil company Petrobras and misuse of election funds, all of which she denies, soon plunged her presidency into crisis. Impeach. Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. Did Represent 211 million people.
Malcolm Turnbull. Age 63. Married Two children. The country’s fourth Prime Minister since 2013. One of Australia’s wealthiest and most prominent lawmakers. Prone to remind the people of his intelligence and their stupidity. A journalist, a barrister, a banker, a developer of shopping centres, a businessman, a politician, a Rhodes scholar, a student at Oxford. Represents 25 million people.
Muhammadu Buhari. Age 73. Married Divorced. 10 Children. A farmer, cattle rearer. Retired Major General in the Nigerian Army Latest in a family of 23 children. He contested four times (2003,2007,2011 and 2015) under the platform of CPC, ANPP and APC. The first man to overthrow (by the poll) a sitting Nigerian president. He was one of the two African “not in government ” individuals invited to President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Represent 175 million people.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Age 53. Married. 4 children. Semi-professional football player.Accused of autocratic tendencies, corruption and extravagance, including the 1,000 room-plus palace he built on publicly protected land. Erdogan has also been heavily criticized for failing to protect women’s and human rights, curbing freedom of speech and attempting to curb Turkey’s secular identity. Mayor of Istanbul. Co-founds the Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP). Elected president during the first-ever direct elections. Recent attempted coup by a faction of the military squashed, at least 161 people are killed and 1,140 wounded. Says that women and men are not equal “because their nature is different. Wants to transfer power from parliament to the presidency. Represents 81 million people.
Susuga Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi Age 63. Married has been in office for eighteen years and is the leader of the Human Rights Protection Party. Bachelor of Commerce and Master of Commerce degrees. He holds Chairman positions in many organisations and corporations in Samoa as well as in international organisations. Represents 195 thousand people.
Considering there are 195 countries in the world,6,909 distinct languages and 4,200 different religions, it’s no wonder that the world is in a mess.
Some behaviors may be the norm in one country but different in another.
What is accepted in one culture may be unacceptable or taboo in another.
It is essential to be aware of the cultural nuances. One does not know unless one is educated about or knows the culture
All existing human speech is one in the essential characteristics which we have to consider, even as humanity is one in its distinction from the lower animals; the differences are in nonessential.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.”
Francois Gerard Georges Hollande. Age 53. Married divorced. 4 children. First Socialist president since Francois Mitterrand left office in 1995. Taught economics at the elite Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, or Sciences Po.Receives 28.6% of the vote in France’s presidential election in April 2012. Won in runoff election for the presidency of France by 51.62% of the vote. Enjoys a wide range of holiday residences. Commander-in-Chief of the French Armed Forces and may order the use of nuclear weapons. At the forefront of securing a global climate deal and after the Paris attacks he persuaded Europe and the US to step up the fight against Isis. One of the very last European leaders to believe in Europe. Represents 65 million.
Dilma Rousseff. (suspended) Age 70. Married,divorced twice. One child. Democratized Brazil’s electricity sector through the “Luz Para Todos” (Light for All) program, which made electricity widely available, even in rural areas. Her chairmanship of the state oil company Petrobras and misuse of election funds, all of which she denies, soon plunged her presidency into crisis. Impeach. Petrobras are accused of illegally “diverting” billions from the company’s accounts for their personal use or to pay off officials. Rousseff served as chair of Petrobras during many of the years when the alleged corruption took place. Did Represent 211 million people. 
Muhammadu Buhari. Age 73. Married Divorced. 10 Children. A farmer, cattle rearer. Retired Major General in the Nigerian Army Latest in a family of 23 children. He contested four times (2003,2007,2011 and 2015) under the platform of CPC, ANPP and APC. The first man to overthrow (by the poll) a sitting Nigerian president. He was one of the two African “not in government ” individuals invited to President Barack Obama’s inauguration. Represent 175 million people.
