Tag Archives: Inequility

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S RECENT EVENTS IN PARIS SHOWS ITS TIME TO FOCUS ON THE BIG PICTURE.

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Climate Change., Paris Climate Change Conference 2015, Paris terrorist attack., Politics., The world to day., War, Where's the Global Outrage.

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We must focused on the “big picture” exploring all avenues for influencing humans everywhere.

How societies have developed through all of human history – from Neanderthals to i Phones.

At the rate things are going, the Earth in the coming decades could cease to be a “safe operating space” for human beings.

The question is why a pretty small group of nations around the shores of the North Atlantic had come to dominate the planet in the last 200 years in a way that the world’s never really seen before is now rapidly becoming irrelevant.

Since no CLARITY is being provided by any of our World Organisations or Political leaders regarding a solution I will offer in this post the reasons why this is true and a solution that is achievable in our life time.

We have four primary issues that must be addressed for us to live in harmony with nature: Overpopulation, Over consumption, dependence on fossil fuels and our harmful and wasteful typical western consumerism.

We have already crossed four “planetary boundaries.”

They are the extinction rate; deforestation; the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; and the flow of nitrogen and phosphorous (used on land as fertilizer) into the ocean.

The urgency now is driven by the fact that we simply don’t have the necessary time to address the first three. They will take many decades (if not centuries) to resolve and we may be down to just a few years as the experts agree that we’re rapidly approaching or passing certain tipping points, beyond which there is no possibility of avoiding the worst effects of crossing all these planetary boundaries.

In the end of all of this mess amounts to simple massive transfers of wealth from the middle classes and the poor to the rich.

Because whatever you’re fighting for: Racism, Poverty, Feminism, Gay Rights, or any type of Equality. It won’t matter in the least, because if we don’t all work together to save the environment, we will be equally extinct.

It has brought us to a situation of the greatest schism between rich and poor in history. The utter breakdown of democratic government in favour of the new technological driven Feudalism.

As our social development continues to accelerate, we continue to change the meaning of the word poor.

We are not apart from nature, we are a part of nature.

I’m sorry that we paid so much attention to ISIS, and very little how fast the ice is melting in the arctic.

It is imperative now than ever that France in honor its recent unnecessary lost of innocent lives insures that the Climate Change Conference is not effected.

Unfortunately we must tried to see beyond the horrific events in Paris – into the misery beyond.

If we cannot see something, it is difficult to know how we can possibly begin to devise ways to avoid it.

It is time to attend to this generation’s apocalypse, and to do so we must recover both the fear and the hope of early ’80s politics.

There has to be another way, and this time it must include all of humanity, and all of our planet.

So far, few works have managed to put the unthinkable in front of our eyes –

The Internet, is the public face of globalization.  Corruption is not only thriving online, but winning. The digital revolution has degenerated into an underworld of organized crime, dirty tactics, black ops and terrorism.

There is no such thing as “national cyberspace.” International cooperation will be needed, but be warned that the Internet will not go away in any place it touches.

“Lets just say that today’s Internet is a dirty mess waiting to be cleaned up.”

I am sure that there is no need to give a history lesson but here is one that tells the truth and which I admire.

Written by Roberto Savio.

It out lines why we are in the current mess and if you want to understand why it is so it is compulsory reading.

Roberto Savio, founder and president emeritus of the Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and publisher of Other News, offers ten explanations of how the current mess in which the world finds itself came about.

1)  ” The world, as it now exists, was largely shaped by the colonial powers, which divided the world among themselves, carving out states without any consideration for existing ethnic, religious or cultural realities. This was especially true of Africa and the Arab world, where the concept of state was imposed on systems of tribes and clans.

2)  After the end of the colonial era, it was inevitable that to keep these artificial countries alive, and avoid their disintegration, strong men would be needed to cover the void left by the colonial powers. The rules of democracy were used only to reach power, with very few exceptions. The Arab Spring did indeed get rid of dictators and autocrats, just to replace them with chaos and warring factions (as in Libya) or with a new autocrat, as in Egypt.

The case of Yugoslavia is instructive. After the Second World War, Marshal Tito dismantled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and created the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. But we all know that Yugoslavia did not survive the death of its strongman.

The lesson is that without creating a really participatory and unifying process of citizens, with a strong civil society, local identities will always play the most decisive role. So it will take some before many of the new countries will be considered real countries devoid of internal conflicts.

3)  Since the Second World War, the meddling of the colonial and super powers in the process of consolidation of new countries has been a very good example of man-made disaster.

Take the case of Iraq. When the United States took over administration of the country in 2003 after its invasion, General Jay Garner was appointed and lasted just a month, because he was considered too open to local views.

Garner was replaced by a diplomat, Jan Bremmer, who took up his post after a two-hour briefing by the then Secretary of State, Condolezza Rice. Bremmer immediately proceeded to dissolve the army (creating 250,000 unemployed) and firing anyone in the administration who was a member of the Ba’ath party, the party of Saddam Hussein. This destabilised the country, and today’s mess is a direct result of this decision.

The current Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, whom Washington is trying to remove as the cause of polarisation between Shiites and Sunnis, was the preferred American candidate. So was the President of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, who is now virulently anti-American. This is a tradition that goes back to the first U.S. intervention in Vietnam, where Washington put in place Ngo Dihn Dien, who turned against its views, until he was assassinated.

There is no space here to give example of similar mistakes (albeit less important) by other Western powers. The point is that all leaders installed from outside do not last long and bring instability.

4)  We are all witnessing religious fighting and Islam extremism as a growing and disturbing threat. Few make any effort to understand why thousands of young people are willing to blow themselves up. There is a striking correlation between lack of development/employment and religious unrest. In the Muslim countries of Asia (Arab Muslims account for less than 20 percent of the world’s Muslim populations), extremism hardly exists.

And few realise that the fight between Shiites and Sunnis is funded by countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran.

Those religions have been living side by side for centuries, and now they are fighting a proxy war, for example in Syria. Saudi Arabia has been funding Salafists (the puritan form of Islam) everywhere, and it has provided nearly two billion dollars to the new Egyptian autocrat, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, because he is fighting the Muslim Brotherhood, which predicates the end of kings and sheiks and power for the people. Iraq is also becoming a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, defender of the Sunnis, and Iran, defender of the Shiites.

So, when looking at these wars of religion, always look at who is behind them. Religions usually become belligerent only if they are used. Just look at European history, where wars of religion were invented by kings and fought by people. Of course, once the genie is out of the bottle, it will take a long time to put it back. So this issue will be with us for quite some time.

5)  The end of the Cold War unfroze the world, which had been kept in stability by the balance between the two superpowers.

Attempts to create regional or international alliances to bring stability have always been stymied by national interests. The best example is Europe. While everybody was talking about Crimea, Ukraine and Vladimir Putin (who had been made paranoiac about Western encirclement, from the George Bush Jr. administration onwards) and how to bring him to listen to the United States and Europe, European companies continued trade in spite of a much talked about embargo. And now, Austria has quietly signed an agreement with Russia to join the South Stream, a pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Europe – so much for the unity of a Europe which has been clamouring about the need to reduce its energy dependence on Russia.

A multipolar world is in the making, but it has to be seen how stable it will be.

In Asia, China and Japan are increasing their military investments, as are surrounding countries. And while local conflicts, like Syria, Iraq and Sudan, are not going to escalate into a larger conflict, this would certainly be the case in Asia.

6)  In a world more and more divided by a resurgence of national interests, the very idea of shared governance is losing its strength, and not only in Europe.

The United Nations has lost its significance as the arena in which to reach consensus and legitimacy. The two engines of globalisation – trade and finance – are not part of the United Nations, which is stuck with the themes of development, peace, human rights, environment, education and so on. While these issues are crucial for a viable world, they are not seen as such by those in power. Conclusion: the United Nations is sliding into irrelevance.

7)  At the same time, values and ideas which were considered universal, such as cooperation, mutual aid, international social justice and peace as an encompassing paradigm are also becoming irrelevant.

French President Francois Hollande meets U.S. President Barack Obama, not to discuss how to stop the genocide in Sudan, or the kidnapping of children in Nigeria, but to ask him to intervene with his Minister of Justice to reduce a giant fine on a French bank, the BNP-Parisbas, for fraudulent activities. The outstanding problem of climate control was largely absent in the last  G7 meeting, not to talk of nuclear disarmament … and yet these are the two main threats to the planet!

8)  After colonialism and totalitarian regimes, the key phrase after the Second World War was “implementation of democracy”. But after the end of the Cold War, democracy was taken for granted. In fact, in the last twenty years, the formula of representative democracy has been losing its glamour. Pragmatism has led to the loss of long-term vision, and politics have become more and more mere administration.

Citizens feel less and less related to parties, which have basically become self-centred and self-reliant.  International affairs are not considered tools of power by parties, and decisions are taken without participation. This leads to choices which often do not represent the feelings and priorities of citizens.

The way in which the bailout of Cyprus from its financial crisis a few years ago was treated in the European Commission was widely recognised as a blatant example of lack of transparency. Few people certainly make more mistakes than many …

9)  A very important element of the mess has been the growth of what its proponents, especially in the financial world, call the “new economy” – an economy that contemplates permanent unemployment, lack of social investments, reduced taxation for large capital, the marginalisation of trade unions, and a reduction of the role of the State as the regulator and guarantor of social justice.

Inequalities are reaching unprecedented levels. The world’s 85 richest individuals possess the same wealth as 2.5 billion people.

10)  All this brings its corollary. It is not by chance that all mainstream media worldwide have the same reading of the world.

Information today has basically eliminated analysis and process, to concentrate on events. Their ability to follow the world mess is minimal, and they just repeat what those in power say. It is very instructive to see media which are very analytical about national affairs and very superficial about international issues. The media depend largely on three international news agencies, which represent the Western world and its interests. Have you read anywhere about the gas agreement between Austria and Russia?

So, a final point: never be satisfied with what you read in the newspapers, always try to get additional and opposite viewpoints through the net. This will help you to look at the world with your eyes, and not with the eyes of somebody else who is probably part of the system which has created this mess. Do not go with the tide … search for the other face of the moon. And if they tell you that they know, well, just look at the results. So, be yourself and, if you make a mistake, at least it will be your mistake. “

I thank him and I could not agree more with his advise in his summing up. He states what I have being advocating in post after post.

Many factors influenced the civil war in Syria, including long-standing political, religious, and ideological disputes; economic dislocations from both global and regional factors; and the consequences of water shortages influenced by drought, ineffective watershed management, and the growing influence of climate variability and change.

Here is my solution. 

Greed is the real terrorist operating under the banner of Profit for Profit sake.

Make Profit for Profit Sake Pay;

By placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all new drilling and mining Licences.

A commission rate ranging from 0.005 to 0.25 percent would generate between $15 and $300 billion per year, of which a substantial amount could be allocated to promote international peace and development and resolving Climate Change.

This would create a perpetual Funded Fund to contributed to rectifying the very thing that caused the problems in the first place.   Greed. 

And as we look forward into a world increasingly dominated by technology, what will geography mean in the 21st century?
Dead Iraq children

A new report claiming the numbers killed by ‘the war on terror’ globally may be as high as 2 million has been met with almost total silence.

What will all the deaths achieve? Every death is a tragedy.

This is a good starting point for a wider debate about the justifications and rationalisations for the great swathe of global violence unleashed in response to the 9/11 attacks.

The under reporting by the media of this human toll attributable to ongoing Western interventions, whether deliberate, or through self-censorship, has been key to removing the “fingerprints” of responsibility.’

The new age of humanitarian war which suggests that war is not as bad as it used to be, or at least that it’s not so bad that the costs outweigh the gains. Is totally naive.

High-tech precision weapons, precision targeting enabled by lawyers, new ethical norms, population-centric counterinsurgency – all this has made it possible to vaporise the bad guys is not true as we all saw up close yesterday in Paris.

Mr Hollands declaration of war is understandable, as was Americas after 9/11. But it should not be the first choice rather than a last resort.

The first choice should be to convince their populations that war will not only be cost-free for them, but that its effects on the countries on the receiving end of it will also be minimal and ultimately beneficial.

This is what we have been told ever since the US invasion of Panama and the first Gulf War and throughout the last fourteen years of the ‘war on terror,’ whenever the US and its allies are considering who next to bomb or hit with a drone.

War used to be a way to learn Geography – Fool me once.

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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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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT OUR WORLD ORGANISATIONS. PART THREE- THE WORLD BANK.

16 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in The world to day., Uncategorized, World Organisations.

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The World Bank system was created as an integral element of the post-World War II Bretton Woods system of international and multilateral institutions. The Bank was designed to avoid future world wars by ensuring an open international trading system and global financial stability.

The same as the Nato and the United Nations it is another World Organisation that should be either shutdown, reinvented or amalgamated.   Afficher l'image d'origine

Like the IMF the World Bank is empowered by the governments which control it (led by the U.S., the U.K., Japan, Germany, France, Canada, and Italy — the “Group of 8,” which holds over 40% of the votes on their boards) with imposing economic austerity policies in the countries of the so-called “Third World” or “global South.”

Company Images ™World Bank ® is a regeistered trademark © all rights reserved. In partenership with the Holy Spirit and ™Crown Interntional © all rights reservedThe World Bank, the IMF and central banks such as the Federal Reserve literally control the creation and the flow of money worldwide.

They want all of us enslaved to debt, they want all of our governments enslaved to debt, and they want all of our politicians addicted to the huge financial contributions that they funnel into their campaigns.

According to the World Bank Articles of Agreement, all its decisions must be guided by a commitment to the promotion of foreign investment and international trade and to the facilitation of capital investment. Here is a dated example.

The first country to receive a World Bank loan was France. The French loan was for US$250 million, half the amount requested, and it came with strict conditions.

France had to agree to produce a balanced budget and give priority of debt repayment to the World Bank over other governments. Before the loan was approved, the United States State Department told the French government that its members associated with the Communist Party would first have to be removed. The French government complied with this diktat and removed the Communist coalition government.  Within hours, the loan to France was approved.

When the Marshall Plan went into effect in 1947, many European countries began receiving aid from other sources. Faced with this competition, the World Bank shifted its focus to non-European countries.

The size and number of loans to borrowers was greatly increased as loan targets expanded from infrastructure into social services and other sectors mostly for the personal interest of larger world nations ignoring the like Vietnam because they were communist who were fighting for their lives to reject democracy from running over their country.

To finance more loans, the Bank used the global bond market to increase the capital available to the bank.

One consequence of the period of poverty alleviation lending was the rapid rise of third world debt.

From 1976 to 1980 developing world debt rose at an average annual rate of 20%.

During the 1980s, the bank emphasized lending to service Third-World debt, and structural adjustment policies designed to streamline the economies of developing nations.

UNICEF reported in the late 1980s that the structural adjustment programs of the World Bank had been responsible for “reduced health, nutritional and educational levels for tens of millions of children in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.”

And it left millions of families poor and children unprotected subject to Mason sponsored Child Sex trafficking.

Beginning in 1989, in response to harsh criticism from many groups, the bank began including environmental groups and NGOs in its loans to mitigate the past effects of its development policies that had prompted the criticism.

It also formed an implementing agency, in accordance with the Montreal Protocols to stop ozone-depletion damage to the Earth’s atmosphere by phasing out the use of 95% of ozone-depleting chemicals, with a target date of 2015.

Less recently, a project in Seychelles to promote local tourism by the name of project MAGIC was launched in 2010. Its successor project TIME was scheduled to be launched in 2012.  Nothing more of it was heard of it since and was a project that at least to me makes no sense in its disclosure.

Traditionally, based on a tacit understanding between the United States and Europe, the president of the World Bank has always been selected from candidates nominated by the United States. In 2012, for the first time, two non-US citizens were nominated.

In 1991, the bank announced that to protect against intentional deforestation, especially in the Amazon, it would not finance any commercial logging or infrastructure projects that harm the environment.

About that time, in order to promote global public goods and free trade commercial market, the World Bank tried to control communicable disease created by laboratories in Intelligence agencies around the world, but could not stop the tragic effects of Ebola.

Since then, in accordance with its so-called “Six Strategic Themes,” the bank has put various additional policies into effect to preserve the environment while promoting development.

The World Bank is best known for financing big projects like dams, roads, and power plants, supposedly designed to assist in economic development, but which have often been associated with monumental environmental devastation and social dislocation.

In recent years, about half of its lending has gone to programs indistinguishable from the IMF’s: austerity plans that “reform” economic policies by suffocating the poor and inviting corporate exploitation.

The World Bank Group is the second largest public development institution in the world. Reform is long overdue. However, the most influential players are the finance ministers of the G8 countries, above all the US Treasury which sees no need for reform.

In 1992, an internal World bank review found that more than a third of all Bank loans did not meet the institution’s own lending criteria.

Unlike the United Nations, where each member nation has an equal vote, voting power at the World Bank and IMF is determined by the level of a nation’s financial contribution. Therefore, the United States has roughly 17% of the vote, with the seven largest industrialized countries (G-8) holding a total of 45%.

Because of the scale of its contribution, the United States has always had a dominant voice and has at all times exercised an effective veto. At the same time, developing countries have relatively little power within the institution, which, through the programs and policies they decide to finance, have tremendous impact throughout local economies and societies.

The global rise in prosperity and personal freedoms over the past 65 years has been an immense human achievement despite a string of horrible regional conflicts and pockets of terrible suffering.

However we are now facing the latest “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” — climate change, food security, infectious disease and urban youth unemployment — are rapidly approaching. It is hard to believe that the seven billion people living in 200 nations on earth today will be successful in holding them off without strong truly global institutions.

Its time to make our global institutions look and feel more global.

If we ask the question are these institutions ready to meet the challenge? The answer from most analysts is “No.”

While the WTO is based in Geneva, Switzerland, both the IMF and the World Bank are headquartered in Washington, D.C. The time has come to move at least one of them out of the United States.

The almost universal perception that there is no significant difference between the IMF and the World Bank. They work so closely together and have so many overlapping activities that they look like conjoined twins.

Their missions, however, are fundamentally different. Separation could make each one more effective.

Because the World Bank’s operations are overwhelmingly in developing countries, a case can be made for moving the World Bank to Africa, Asia or Latin America.

The biggest obstacle to moving the World Bank out of Washington is the veto power that only the United States wields.  So re-locating the World Bank is a political non-starter.

By enhancing the Bank’s legitimacy, it would help to make the World Bank more effective in meeting the global challenges that are likely to become more difficult in the years to come.

The huge gap between the world’s richest and poorest countries remains one of the great moral dilemmas for the west. It also presents one of the greatest challenges for development economics. Do we really know how to help countries overcome poverty?

At least a billion people on the planet live in desperate circumstances resembling conditions that prevailed hundreds of years ago. Our failure to alleviate their plight is morally reprehensible. But where, exactly, are the greatest concentrations of poor people? Data is hard to come by and even harder to interpret. How can one compare cost-of-living indices in different periods when new goods are constantly upending traditional consumption models?

Consider the impact of cell phones in Africa, for example, or the internet in India.

The World Bank investment policy consolidates the position of the corrupt, inefficient and undemocratic regimes of many developing countries.

The Bank has evinced willingness to deal directly with almost any government without sensitivity to their human rights record.

Given that developing countries are both shareholders and clients in the Bank, the agencies are unlikely to admit that loans to a particular regime will not achieve any benefit until a reformed government achieves power.

The negotiation process between the Bank and the regime is invariably closed and the circulation of Bank reports restricted to the participants.

The poor are disenfranchised from the very institution supposed to support their development.

It is not necessary to deny that some of the infrastructure projects supported by the IBRD, from the road-building schemes in the 1980s to the dam construction programmes of the 1990s, failed to reduce poverty and caused a degree of environmental damage.

Only 3% of the Bank portfolio is set aside to protect against the loss of revenue from defaulting debtors.

Faced with mounting attacks from all sides, the IMF and World Bank are scrambling to assuage critics. On Apr. 10, the IMF set up an independent review board to evaluate its policies. The World Bank is pushing an initiative to combat the global scourge of AIDS. And both are working on a new strategy for fighting global poverty. But in the end, more radical reforms may be needed to get the demonstrators off the streets and the politicians off the two agencies’ backs.

The IMF — along with the WTO and the World Bank — has put the global economy on a path of greater inequality and environmental destruction.

Over the past decade an estimated 3.4 million people have been displaced by bank-funded projects.

There’s always a price tag for development. But the question is: Who should pay the price?

Should poor people be the ones who sacrifice when the government tries to do a big project? Even the World Bank says the budget for a project should include money to cover people’s losses.Afficher l'image d'origine

The World Bank’s role in the global climate change finance architecture has also caused much controversy. Civil society groups see the Bank as unfit for a role in climate finance because of the conditionalities and advisory services usually attached to its loans.

The Bank’s undemocratic governance structure – which is dominated by industrialised countries – its privileging of the private sector and the controversy over the performance of World Bank-housed Climate Investment Funds

The World Bank working in partnership with the private sector may undermine the role of the state as the primary provider of essential goods and services, such as healthcare and education, resulting in the shortfall of such services in countries badly in need of them.

As an increasing shift from public to private funding in development finance has been observed recently, the Bank’s private sector lending arm – the International Finance Corporation (IFC) – has also been criticised for its business model, the increasing use of financial intermediaries such as private equity funds and funding of companies associated with tax havens.

As the World Bank and the IMF are regarded as experts in the field of financial regulation and economic development, their views and prescriptions may undermine or eliminate alternative perspectives on development.

There are also criticisms against the World Bank and IMF governance structures which are dominated by industrialised countries.

The World Bank hasn’t even adopted specific human rights policies, and doesn’t recognize that it has organizational responsibilities to abide by international human rights law.

Before I sign off on this post I should mention the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) established on 17 May 1930, is the world’s oldest international financial organisation. The BIS has 60 member central banks, representing countries from around the world that together make up about 95% of world GDP.

The BIS was created out of the Hague Agreements of 1930 and took over the job of the Agent General for Repatriation in Berlin. When established, the BIS was responsible for the collection, administration and distribution of reparations from Germany – as agreed upon in the Treaty of Versailles – following World War I. The BIS was also the trustee for Dawes and Young Loans, which were internationally issued loans used to finance these reparations.

After World War II, the BIS turned its focus to the defense and implementation of the World Bank’s Bretton Woods System. Between the 1970s and 1980s, the BIS monitored cross-border capital flows in the wake of the oil and debt crises, which in turn led to the development of regulatory supervision of internationally active banks.

The BIS has also emerged as an emergency “funder” to nations in trouble, coming to the aid of countries such as Mexico and Brazil during their debt crises in 1982 and 1998, respectively. In cases like these, where the International Monetary Fund is already in the country, emergency funding is provided through the IMF structured program.

The Bank for International Settlements is an organization that was founded by the global elite and it operates for the benefit of the global elite, and it is intended to be one of the key cornerstones of the emerging one world economic system.

Its head office is in Basel, Switzerland and there are two representative offices: in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China and in Mexico City.

The mission of the BIS is to serve central banks in their pursuit of monetary and financial stability, to foster international cooperation in those areas and to act as a bank for central banks.

Given the continuously changing global economic structure, the BIS has had to adapt to many different financial challenges. However, by focusing on providing traditional banking services to member central banks, the BIS essentially gives the “lender of last resort” a shoulder to lean on. In its aim to support global financial and monetary stability, the BIS is an integral part of the international economy.

The BIS is a global center for financial and economic interests. As such, it has been a principal architect in the development of the global financial market. Given the dynamic nature of social, political and economic situations around the world, the BIS can be seen as a stabilizing force, encouraging financial stability and international prosperity in the face of global change.

In the old days World Bank and maybe in the future will act as a lender of last resort to the banking sector during times of bank insolvency or financial crisis.

As the face of hunger has changed, so has its address.

The Wealth of Nations and the inheritance for humankind and all forms of life rest with World Organisation that are out of date  – this should explain to many as to the disappearance of an equal World.

Money Talks as is evident with the latest Trade deal TTPI.

However, in today’s modern economy we are witnessing a rapidly expanding array of services with mobile technologies as their backbone, but what a World we are making. Our priorities are driving by growth at all costs, and a media owned by our Capitalist culture. We produces 1.3 billion metric tons of garbage each year, and that number is expected to double by 2025.

Is it not time that we the guardians of the Planet got together to shut some doors by tabling a peoples UN resolution to place a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions (over $20,000) and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions ( See previous posts)

The chances of this ever happening are minuscule as self-interest is deep rooted.

Take a Selfie, or comment       Afficher l'image d'origine

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S WHAT HAS CAPITALISM ACHIEVED

07 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by in Capitalism, Humanity., Unanswered Questions., WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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To understand the role of capitalism in modern economic times you must understand the word Growth.

Growth at any cost.  Which we are just coming to apprentice thanks to the Internet.

For a long time nothing much happened till Wheat conned humans into growing it.

It is not my intention here to address Money and Power. It is sufficient to say that money leads to power and corruption and that all three intermingle in the notoriously subject of Economics.

What I want you to do is to look at Capitalism that founded states and ruined them, opened up new horizons and enslaved millions, moved the wheels of Industry and drove hundreds of species of plants and animals into extinction, plundered the earth resources for profit, promoted science, all to the dethronement of a sustainable planet and ask yourself is it easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.

There can be no doubt without some system the human race would descend into barbarism based on nothing but self-interest.

Our cultural output throbs with this notion of self-interest. Just look at the present Refugee problem facing the European Union.

So would the collapse of Capitalism lead to misery?

Capitalism in all its credulity and inequality reflects mans barbarous nature. Indeed the horrors of ISIS are trumpeted so vehemently by the western press precisely because they fill this narrative.

However a dog eat dog world with which capitalism and the state justify themselves is in part a fallacy.

In fact nature teems with co-operation – both between animals, between species and within the ecosystem as a whole.

We are the same, but it is no coincidence that where we do co-operate these areas are dominated by capital and constructed in a way that systematically reward the uglier sides of our common nature.

We know that the world in unfair where the few have too much and the most have too little.

The feeling that Capitalism, inequality, and injustice are inevitable and the idea that to struggle for a better world is naive is coming to an end.

If we could only entrench the cooperative compassionate and empathetic sides of our nature as dominant values in society we would redesign our Capitalist world – to a world worth while living in.

The current state of our planet is affording all of us this opportunity.

How can we tackle the world problems ?

A good place to start would be to get Capitalism to pay for it.

By placing a World Aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions over ($20,000) on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions, on all Drilling Wells.  This would create a perpetual pot out of Profit for Profit sake that could fund the inevitable cost of climate change.

In doing so we would redistribute the world’s wealth from the whole of the world. ( see previous Posts)

Sooner than later we are going to exhaust the raw materials and energy of the planet Earth. What will happen then?

Which is why, whenever the opportunity arises, we must be prepared to seize it.

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The Beady Eye looks at Man and Woman.

23 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Humanity.

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Stating the oblivious.

We see one or the other every day. We love, hate, kill, and sell them, in all colors, shapes and sizes but we have little understand of them.

 

But what does it mean to-day when we say “mankind.” Is it  referring to both male and female.

For centuries, the differences between men and women were socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism in which men assumed superiority over women and maintained it through domination.

Sexual attraction is controlled mainly by factors hardwired into the brain, due to evolutionary forces.

The vision of equality between the sexes has narrowed the possibilities for discovery of what truly exists within a man and within a woman. As the goal of equality between men and women now grows closer we are also losing our awareness of important differences.

” Men know life too early. Woman knows life too late”. That is the difference between men and woman” Oscar Wild.

The word ‘men’, meaning “to think” or “to have a cognitive mind”, was also gender neutral and connected to “man”, which meant “the thinker”.

It is my position that men and women are equal but different. When I say equal, I mean that men and women have a right to equal opportunity and protection under the law. None of us would argue the fact that men and women are physically different.

Modern society hasn’t made relationships between men and women any easier.

The challenge facing men and women is to become aware of their identities, to accept their differences, and to live their lives fully and as skillfully as possible.

It’s not that men and women live in completely different realities. It’s not that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. To understand the difference we must first understand in what ways we are different.

The world will be less interesting when everything is same.The stereotype that men are more “thick-headed” than women is not far-fetched. Let me clearly state that I do not believe that men (or women) are locked into these negative stereotypes.Post image for Why Are Men So Difficult? The 8 Big Differences Between Men’s and Women’s BrainsTypically, men’s brains are 11-12% bigger than women’s brains. Sadly, this difference in size has absolutely nothing to do with intelligence, but does explain the difference in size between men and women. Men need a bigger brain to control their bigger bodies and muscles.

Women on the other hand have four times as many brain cells (neurons) connecting the right and left side of their brain.

So where does that get us in any understanding?

Women are apparently extremely complex and mysterious creatures while men are a simple-minded species.

The most obvious difference is probably the emotions.

Men rely easily and more heavily on their left brain to solve one problem one step at a time. Women have more efficient access to both sides of their brain and therefore greater use of their right brain.

Most men are less concerned and do not feel the same as women when solving a problem. Men approach problems in a very different manner than women. Men have a tendency to dominate and to assume authority in a problem solving process.

Women consider and process information differently.

Women tend to be intuitive thinkers. Women have a larger deep limbic system than men, it allows them to be more in touch with their feelings and better able to express themselves, which promotes bonding with others.

It must be emphasized that they can and do solve problems in a similar manner.

Men have a hard time understanding emotions that are not spoken, while women tend to intuit emotions and emotional cues. In stress situation men have a response reaction that resembles “fight or flight” while women react with a “tend and befriend” strategy. Men are more turned on by visual stimuli.

Recent evidence suggests that humanity is not only still evolving but that human evolution is actually accelerating. Neanderthals did not die out, but instead were absorbed into modern humanity.

Woman:     https://youtu.be/Xrp0zJZu0a4

Men:          https://youtu.be/wkOo_znVJF0

Facebook may soon need to add “Just got served divorce papers” to its list of relationship statuses.

A Manhattan judge ruled in the case of Ellanora Baidoo, 26, who wanted to divorce her husband, Sena Blood-Dzraku, but had no mailing address for him and therefore no place to which she could send the paperwork. The judge is allowing Baidoo to serve her estranged husband with a divorce summons through Facebook.

Maybe the word ‘man’  should be replaced with dude.

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The Beady Eye looks at Big Data.

30 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Big Data., Politics., Privatization, Technology, The Future

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Is our world along with humanity disappearing into the Cloud.?

We as individuals are turning into “walking data generators”  ” App Material”

The Beady eye is only going to look a the most contentious realms of Big Data. Technologies that drive the explosion of growth of digital information such as the information collected.

Big Data is disseminated from trillions of devices such as smartphones and embedded sensors.

Huge quantities of digital trace data are collected through digitized devices (captured, for example, via social networks, online shopping, blogs, Apps, ATM withdrawals and the like) and through in-built sensors. The latter technologies include those that are equipped with GPS systems (e.g., smartphones and other surveillance and monitoring devices) and thus have the ability to identify a user’s location.

Ever since the dawn of life with language man has been collecting information. Not until written letters or symbols arrived was this information stored for future generations.

It is now being collected to replace us all with AI.

Knowledge was and still is the power that split the world into cultures- the rich in information and the poor with illiteracy – Slave or Master.

To day data is money and it is re splintering the world into the have and have not’s.

A next-generation retailer will be able to track the behavior of individual customers from Internet click streams, update their preferences, and model their likely behavior in real-time. Traditional advertising is shifting rapidly into the realm of personalized and highly targeted online and mobile ads—the realm of data driven marketing. Big Data and Advertising Case Study

Across all industries, including government, healthcare, media, energy, among others, data is becoming central to business operations. Every business is a digital company; and, every customer or employee is a content producer.

Today’s organizations use a plethora of information systems to support their business processes.

Advances in technologies and the increasing amount of information are transforming how business is conducted in many industries, including government.

Every business sector now collects data of one form or another, and the future marketplace will have even more computing power at their fingertips to mine customer behavior. Someone from every major industry is looking at the impact of being able to glean data from multiple data sources, structured and unstructured, from Healthcare to agriculture and more.

Businesses are using the power of insights provided by big data to instantaneously establish who did what, when and where.

The world’s volume of data doubles every 18 month.

In all forms it will grow 650 percent over the next five years.

Despite feeling overwhelmed, there’s an insatiable desire for more data.

The information overload is real and causing problems.

There is little or no regulations governing every time you click on a website, post on social media, use a mobile app and comment via email or to call centers, your data is collected for future use.

In my opinion, the world needs proper regulations about how and what kind of data should be collected.

My bigger concerns are related to unsanctioned organizations using my data and inferences about my interests, passions, affiliations and associations for borderline uses about my political, religious, sexual, etc. preferences. Just because a company can collect all kinds of personal information on consumers, it doesn’t mean they should use it willy nilly.

The more is better” philosophy.  There in lies the trouble.

Tracking customer preferences and purchases can reveal all kinds of private information, like illnesses, financial problems, even pregnancy.

For example a father recently discovered that his daughter was expecting a baby only because of Target’s TGT – 0.5% customer advertising technology. It analyzing his daughter shopping patterns so the store started to send her coupons for baby products which alerted the father.

Data gathering is not going away.

This should have us concerned, not just about targeted marketing but about what can be inferred about all of us every time we “like” something on FACEBOOK or post a snarky tweet on TWITTER.

From what I can tell, what Big Data does best is spy on individuals and collect useless data that helps people develop false and inaccurate assumptions.

Big Data may have wonderful potential, but we’re still going to have to get better at data exchange and integration before it’s going to have its biggest impact. We’ve spent decades digitizing everything, we should be able to analyze it. The problem is, that’s really hard – and it always has been.

THE BIG QUESTION REMAINS: Who does it belong to, and who should have access to it?
Human Face of Big Data

Big Data will let us watch flu outbreaks bloom and direct scarce vaccines to the most critical area’s. Schools are collecting more data than ever on how children are doing. Companies and nonprofits, meanwhile, are racing to put that data to use in the classroom.

Today, we’re at the convergence of these innovations—biotechnology, the ability to remote monitor and sensor, and now Big Data—which puts an augmented reality at our disposal.

However there is an undercurrent of concern about who owns big data and who has the right to access it.

Big Data technologies are at the heart of the intelligent economy and the solutions that enable it.

Big Data technologies are analyzing massive data sets, in science and research as well as mine data to prevent bad actors from committing acts of terror and/or to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.

Government data generation and digital archiving rates are on the rise due to the rapid growth of mobile devices and applications, smart sensors and devices, cloud computing solutions, and citizen-facing portals.

As digital information expands and becomes more complex, information management, processing, storage, security, and disposition become more complex.

Information is a strategic asset, and government needs to protect, leverage, and analyze both structured and unstructured information to better serve and meet mission requirements.

New technology brings new challenges, and they should be properly educated to use it wisely and critically. It is used to study employee performance and retention.

The younger generations are not always aware of the challenges and dangers that come with big data.

Privacy here is a key issue to consider.

I sometimes get frightened to see what younger generations publish on their social media, without being aware how they expose themselves to the outside world. Just think about recommender systems.

When you want to buy a product or service from an online retailer, you are often frustrated because of the many choices and configurations possible. Thanks to an intelligent, analytical recommender system, purchases (and their customer feedback) are continuously monitored to better tailor future recommendations to customers.

Credit card fraud detection system.

In fact, thanks to credit risk analytics, our savings money is now efficiently safeguarded since every bank is obliged (via the Basel III capital accord) to analytically estimate credit losses and make sure it has enough provisions or equity buffers for worst-case scenarios.

Big Data is being used to detect social security fraud, to detect tax evasion fraud, to employ and fire people.

New data stores have emerged increasing the distribution of data and the complexity of securing and protecting that data along with it. It is now harder to protect sensitive data as it may move around between different transactional and analytical data stores as companies create new analytical workloads.

While there is more to do to wrestle big data to the ground. Defense (DOD) is investing approximately $60 million annually for new projects that will harness and utilize massive data in new ways and bring together sensing, perception, and decision support to make truly autonomous systems that can learn from experience, maneuver and make decisions on their own, and understand the limits of their knowledge.

Governments are facing more and more challenges in managing the life cycle of Big Data as government’s traditional silo approach hinders sharing knowledge and working across organizational boundaries.

While emails, instant messages, data files, document files, and scanned images are all driving the growth of Big Data, managing and storing this information — and its growth — are not trivial tasks. It has raised red flags about privacy, which remain unresolved.

The only way to make data totally safe is to not ever use it or keep it. Big Data Discriminates.

Our currents Laws cannot adequately handle the issues raised by Big data.

Just look at the legal complications created by systems using data and algorithms to include and exclude people from various programs.

What we have are porous laws on how this new technology changes previous understandings of civil liberties, not to mention data analysis, machine learning and the work scientists have been doing on non-discriminatory data mining models.

Individuals should be granted meaningful opportunities to challenge adverse decisions based on scores miscategorizing them.

Where data goes in and a decision comes out it’s unclear, or certainly opaque, just how that decision was arrived at. There is no way to trace why a decision was made.

With programmers doing real-life damage without even knowing it. The question is:  How do we update our understanding of due process for the 21st century?

These black box issues such as credit-scoring systems should be legal required to make their Systems Transparent.

If you take Google’s search algorithms for instance no one knows how it chooses the direction of its search. Perhaps it directs your search only to its profit.  It’s not  just about the quality of the user experience.HUNGARY–DPA Requesting a Flyby

Drones are becoming more widespread globally, the non military use of drones will add a further deluge of big data:

Cameras, heat and motion sensors, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi signals, facial recognition and bio metric scanners allow for the growing use of drones in the industrial, agricultural, transportation and retail areas.

The use of drones—theoretically—should only be possible upon individual permit irrespective of the drone’s starting point and final destination.

However enforcement may be difficult.

The only way is a world license that creates an official record of the individuals operating/using drones for a commercial purpose.

In practice, the widespread use of drones for private purposes may result in unreasonable administration in connection with the above, drone users and operators may also be reluctant to provide so detailed information on their activities for confidentiality reasons.

If the drone records flight details for aviation safety considerations, personal data captured but not relevant for this purpose should be anonymised and stored separately or should be made unidentifiable, unrecognizable and inaccessible by the controller immediately after the drone finished flying.

Data should be stored on the drones only temporarily.

For example, during the security surveillance of a property, the drone may record pedestrians’ faces, movements, body-temperature etc., and the devices should be configured in a way which prevents them from this kind of processing. Drones should solely be able to signal the location and fact of an allegedly unauthorized attempt at entry onto the premises.

In practice, this principle should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, as the actual use of the drone may require more extended data processing than envisaged at the beginning. The drone may locate a trespasser who needs to be identified (to ensure to security surveillance purpose), and, in such a case, privacy-by-default settings should not prevent the enforcement of the drone operator’s legitimate interests.

For example, a recording of an agricultural land cannot be used for the surveillance of agricultural workers.

Given the amount of data governments store on citizens and the sensitivity of some of that data, it makes sense for state budgets to carve out funds for someone to shepherd how that data is collected, treated and stored.

Should there be a meaningful data life cycle amidst the sea of data.

In fact , big data may ultimately be a key factor in how nations, not just companies , compete and prosper . Algorithmic decision-making:

In a nutshell, the problem with ‘datification’ is that somebody else may … use the data thus produced – often with purposes different from those originally intended.

Make no mistake about it:

Our future, the future of humanity and the planet hangs in the balance.

Do we have what it takes to disrupt what is…in order to create what can be?

Big data as a high concept will never fully define itself it’s just a big scam. Surveillance programs. High Frequency Stock Trading. Electronic Currency Trading. Dooming us all down to rely on Google.

I hope it die’s a miserable death.

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Roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”

28 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by in WORLD POVERTY WHERE'S THE GLOBAL OUTRAGE

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Many in the first world imagine the amount of money spent on aid to developing countries is massive.

In fact, it amounts to only 0.3% of GNP of the industrialized nations.

Most wealthy nations spend far more on military than development.  Northern countries exhibiting mercantilist, or monopoly capitalist principles, rather than free market capitalism, even though that is what is preached to the rest of the world.

Aid Amounts are dwarfed By Effects Of First World Subsidies, Third World Debt, Unequal Trade, Etc.  Aid does not aid the recipient, it aids the donor.

There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to food aid, military assistance, etc. Development aid has long been recognized as crucial to help poor developing nations grow out of poverty. In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their GNI (Gross National Income) as official international development aid, annually.

This year it is estimated that $37 billion—roughly half of global aid—is “phantom aid”  

Year after year almost all rich nations have constantly failed to reach their agreed obligations of the 0.7% target.  Instead of 0.7%, the amount of aid has been around 0.2 to 0.4%, some $150 billion short each year.

Considering the typical aid amount at around 0.25 to 0.4% of GNI for over 40 years, the total shortfall is a substantial and staggering amount: just under $5 trillion aid shortfall at 2012 prices:

And you wonder why we have problems in the world. 

Rich nations have rarely met their actual promised targets. Recent increases [in foreign aid] do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality.

For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most.

For example,

  • The US recently increased its military budget by some $100 billion dollars alone
  • Europe subsidizes its agriculture to the tune of some $35-40 billion per year, even while it demands other nations to liberalize their markets to foreign competition.
  • The US also introduced a $190 billion dollar subsidy to its farms through the US Farm Bill, also criticized as a protectionist measure.
  • While aid amounts to around $70 to 100 billion per year, the poor countries pay some $200 billion to the rich each year.

Some of the largest benefactors of European agricultural subsidies include the Queen of England and other royalties in Europe. 

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations:

Sub-Saharan Africa is a massive $272 billion worse off because of ” free” trade policies forced on them as a condition of receiving aid and debt relief.

Aid amounts are also dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products, while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products.

Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient.

  • In effect then, there is more aid to the rich than to the poor.
  • The US, Europe and Japan spend $350 billion each year on agricultural subsidies (seven times as much as global aid to poor countries)
  • These subsidies are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty.

Rich countries might be going through some tough times but that doesn’t change the fact that they owe the rest of the world. Rich countries need to switch from traditional forms of aid-giving to supporting global goods in new ways.

The UK gave not £10, not £1, but 56p ($0.91) in overseas aid for every £100 ($163) we earned as a country. On average, since 1990, we have given even less, 35p ($0.57).

Being truly generous requires rich countries to undergo fairly profound changes in the way they have lived for the last few decades.

We are creating is hugely unequal societies that will in the long run bite our hands off.

To suggest that we should seek to help the poorest at home by withdrawing support from people abroad who are much poorer, while the rich make off with their millions, is surely morally indefensible in any philosophy. It will take a long time to carry out the radical reform needed to bring aid to something verging on sanity and fairness.

Rich countries need to be more generous not less and, they should be proud when they stand in solidarity with the worse off. For the OECD countries to meet their obligations for aid to the poorer countries is not an economic problem.

It is a political one.

Just look at the most recent EU plans to allow only 5,000 refugees for resettlement by asylum seekers in response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis.

Wow I can’t say but I am impressed.

If they offered 5,000 places to persons qualifying for protection. That would be one 30th of the number of immigrants who reached Europe in 2014. This year more than 36,000 of them have arrived in countries like Italy, Malta and Greece.

https://soundcloud.com/rttv/worse-boat-capsizing

They need to make a commitment to resettle all the refugees who get over to Europe immediately as a basic humanitarian gesture, and then they need to get onto the problem of providing the resources and the funds to countries that have been decimated by Western foreign policy over the last 10-15 years. That would cost again a fraction of the amount of money that was spent on occupying Afghanistan, bombing Iraq; the amount of money that is pumped into Israel to ensure that they clamp down and repress the Palestinian people.

Western powers need to end their war policy in the Middle East, recognize the responsibility for the catastrophe in the region, and pump billions of pounds of emergency aid into the destroyed countries.

With the recent Earth Quakes in Nepal the eyes of the world will once again focus for a few weeks on the disaster and Aid. There will be the usual outpouring of support and offers of aid.

Every country’s foreign aid is a tool of foreign policy.

For example you would wonder why when Hurricane Katrina hit the richest country in the world.

  • Bangladesh offered $1 million and a disaster management team. The monetary aid was accepted, but the disaster management team was ultimately turned down on September 14, 2005.
  • “Pakistan offered doctors and paramedics, and $1 million to the American Red Cross, tents, sheets and pillows. The monetary aid was accepted, but the material aid was turned down on September 14, 2005.
  • “Honduras offered experts on flooding, sanitation and rescue personnel. This aid was turned down on October 6, 2005.
  • The government of Kuwait made the largest offer, with $100 million in cash and $400 million in oil. Because of the delay in accepting this aid, Kuwait eventually gave its monetary support to two private groups in order to support relief indirectly.

Not forgetting the most embarrassing diplomatic snafu during Hurricane Katrina involved the donation of nearly 400,000 Meals Ready to Eat (MREs) from the United Kingdom, which the U.S. government gladly accepted in September of 2005. That acceptance, however, had to be rescinded shortly thereafter when it was learned that the British MREs contained beef, which the U.S. still banned at that time due to the outbreak of mad-cow disease in the UK in the mid-1990s.

Furthermore, while $854 million was pledged, not all of this money reached the U.S.

My point here is-  if the USA could not handle the assistance on offer so what hope had the Philippines and now Nepal.

It begs the question as to why in this age of technology there is no software package to coordinator and track the Aid on offer.

It appears that the sheer number of donations from foreign countries only help complicate matters.

Take the Philippines currently suffering from Typhoon Hagupit. The country was donated by the US more than $37 million worth of food and relief goods to those who were affected by the typhoon. Whether it was ever delivered no one knows.

Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it;  All too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.

'Total aid from all development assistance committee countries at a Glance, 2011-2012' from the OECD

Some aid money that is pledged often involves double accounting of sorts. Sometimes offers have even been reneged or just not delivered.

Aid tied with conditions cut the value of aid to recipient countries by some 25-40 percent, because it obliges them to purchase uncompetitive priced imports from the richer nations.

European and American farm subsidies “are crippling Africa’s chance to export its way out of poverty. It kicks away the ladder by which Africa could eventually climbed out of poverty. It purpose is to deprive others of the means of climbing up the ladder.

And to top it all we are now looking at the privatization of water and water services where the poor often can no longer access clear drinking water.

I suppose we have to grateful for the aid that does reach where it is needed whether it is privately donated or otherwise. As we all know when in need you get to know your friends.

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Democracy is clearly suffering from serious structural problems.

02 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by in Politics.

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Welcome to a world where the bottom line trumps the common good and government takes a back seat to big business.

I have addressed this subject before. We all have our opinions on Capitalism and Democracy or Capitalism V Democracy.

Capitalism’s role is to increase the economic pie, nothing more.

While Democracy, at its best, enables citizens to debate collectively how the slices of the pie should be divided and to determine which rules apply to private goods and which to public goods.

If we are to restructure the relationship we could not start at a better place than by Putting Ownership Back into Democracy.

Our Governments are paying the penalty for the years they allowed corporations and elites buoyed by runaway economic success to undermine the government’s capacity to respond to citizens’ concerns which has lead to:  A sense of political powerlessness which is on the rise among citizens in Europe and the USA.

Today, the tasks of re balancing is increasingly being left to the market.

Companies have shed their loyalties to communities with CEOs who take home exorbitant paychecks from industries that often wreak havoc on the environment. They have morph into global supply chains of great power plundering the world for Profit.

Much of labor inequality comes because high earners getting paid through stock options and capital ownership.

Relative poverty, what we are now calling inequality cannot be viewed in isolation from the larger economy. We must take disparities in the way the benefits of growth and productivity are distributed into account. We haven’t really begun to tackle this problem.

The result is an arms race for political influence that is drowning out the voices of average citizens.

If the Labor Party in the UK were to adopted Putting Ownership Back into Democracy such a policy which would return it to its core values would win them the forthcoming election.

While corporations are increasingly writing their own rules, they are also being entrusted with a kind of social responsibility or morality which of course does not exist as Corporate executives are not authorized by anyone — least of all by their investors — to balance profits against the public good.

Shareholders do not invest in firms expecting the money to be used for charitable purposes. They invest to earn high returns.

Now it the time to create Tax breaks for any privately owned company that offer participating of employees in a share of their profits or losses through stock options. Such a course of action should be encouraged – so that workers can supplement their wages with significant capital ownership stakes and meaningful capital income and profit shares.”

In other words, let’s turn everyone into a capitalist.

The purpose of democracy is to accomplish ends we cannot achieve as individuals.

But democracy cannot fulfill this role when companies use politics to advance or maintain their competitive standing, or when they appear to take on social responsibilities that they have no real capacity or authority to fulfill.

That leaves societies unable to address the trade offs between economic growth and social problems such as job insecurity, widening inequality, and climate change. As a result, consumer and investor interests almost invariably trump common concerns

It is worth contemplating for a moment Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them.

Indeed if any Political party were to recognizes that the worsening inequality is an inevitable outcome of free market capitalism it would be large a step in the right direction.

Entrepreneurs are become increasingly dominant over those who own only their own labor. For instance Zero Hour Contracts or for a better word Modern day slavery.

Politicians are surrendered more and more power to trade, to global markets and to what I call supranational bodies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the world trade organisation, the EU.

The question is, what is the point in electing any one when globalization is changing national politics and our states are activity selling your countries resources to privatization for short-term profit.

Fresh Water, Clean Air, Power, Rail Transport, Medical Care and Education should be state-owned.  Run by the Nation for the Nation not for the GDP.  

We are on a path toward a degree of inequality that will reach levels likely to cause severe social disruption. I don’t have to tell you where to look.

Politicians forget about the constant small changes which make up the whole economic picture and spend their time fighting between the past and future, between inherited entitlements and future investment. They put too much emphasis on elections and too little the other essential features of democracy.

It’s no wonder that politicians have to lie all the time.

There was a time that people elected representatives who pulled the levers of national power for a fixed period.

You don’t have to have a crystal ball when looking at the world to realize that economic growth worldwide is very likely to be stuck at 1 to 1.5 percent through the rest of this century.

And that the digital revolution it turning democracy’s institutions into out of date institutions that are handing more powers to special interests turning politics into the struggle of who gets what, when, how.

Technological changes and discontinuities (or globalization) have created a surge in inequality, where online hyper democracy rules and will continue to do so.

The Internet makes it easier to organise and agitate, in a world where people are voting daily in reality TV or supporting a petition with the click of a mouse. They only vote for Government every five years.

Political power changing is also a major contributor to the rise in inequality in advanced economies.

If we are honest with ourselves today, we will acknowledge that the ideal of Democracy has never failed, but that we haven’t carried it out, and in our lack of faith we have debased the human being who must have a chance to live if Democracy is to be successful.

The Moral Basis of Democracy (1940)

When the Clean Air Act was passed in the United States, the joke in Tokyo and Osaka was that while Ford and General Motors called in their lawyers, Toyota and Nissan called in their engineers.

Here is what going wrong.

If political power exactly followed economic power there is little hope for Democracy.

We all know that it is not possible to please all the people all of the time.

The problem is that democracy and capitalism are not bed partners.

Traditional liberal government policies on spending, taxation and regulation will fail to diminish inequality. The higher” the rate of return on capital is in comparison to the rate of growth of the economy. The higher this ratio is, the greater inequality is.

It all starting roughly with the onset of World War I.

The owners of capital – those at the top of the pyramid of wealth and income – absorbed a series of devastating blows. These included the loss of credibility and authority as markets crashed; physical destruction of capital throughout Europe in both World War I and World War II; the raising of tax rates, especially on high incomes, to finance the wars; high rates of inflation that eroded the assets of creditors; the nationalization of major industries in both England and France; and the appropriation of industries and property in post-colonial countries.

In Eisenhower’s words, “Should any political party attempt to abolish Social Security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear from that party again in our political history.”

Leaving us with a belief that the economy is the be all and the end all to keep the masses happy.

However personal income distribution is getting more unequal — which indeed is what we have witnessed in the past 30 years. Zero Hour Contracts, no security, higher and higher Vat.

There is no point in creating millions of modern-day slavery jobs. They are worthless in galvanizing a nation’s wealth. Pride of ownership is what produces productivity and happiness. It’s not rocket science.

On a world scale to halt inequality there are a few options:

Create a World Aid Fund which feeds of Profit by placing a world aid Commission on all High Frequency Trading, on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( over $20,000) on all Foreign Wealth Funds Acquisitions. (see previous Posts)

Or

Impose a global progressive tax on wealth – global in order to prevent (among other things) the transfer of assets to countries without such levies. A global tax, in this scheme, would restrict the concentration of wealth and limit the income flowing to capital.

Or

Impose an annual graduated tax on stocks and bonds, property and other assets that are customarily not taxed until they are sold.

The very infeasibility of establishing a global wealth tax serves to reinforce the argument concerning the inevitability of increasing inequality.

The International Labor Organization, an agency of the United Nations, reported recently that the number of unemployed grew by 5 million from 2012 to 2013, reaching nearly 202 million by the end of last year. It is projected to grow to 215 million by 2018.

No country can deal with Climate Change, and the forthcoming shortage of fresh water, never mind tax evasion.

The political economy is such that the political power to enact those taxes also requires a mobilized citizenry and institutional power, such as a robust labor movement.  When in fact all that people want is equal opportunity.

I am no Karl Marx but the capitalist economic system is in its present state undermining the democratic system by compromising the very values that democracy was founded upon.

It is imperative to remember that we are also citizens who have it in our power to reduce social costs, making the true price of the goods and services we purchase as low as possible for all.

Conclusion:

Since capitalism means the rule of a small elite in the economy, and democracy means the rule of all people, the option of capitalism as the base for democracy is questionable regardless of the wishes of the workers or the community.
Are there any authentic democratic institutions left.  No.
Lets hope Capitalism as we know it is obsolete well before machines do everything.
The contradictions between democracy and capitalism will be on full display in the UK elections if you are interested over the coming weeks.
https://youtu.be/9uNYsbOKIFw
https://youtu.be/iFDe5kUUyT0

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THE FUTURE OF TAXATION.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Tax Due Warning - A single, angled spotlight reveals a...

A common thief does not typically act with greater force or stealth.

I would guess like me you have tried to get your head around the taxes you pay without much success.

With the rising inequality concerns maybe it time you did as taxation has a future that will affect you and your love ones.

But where, and in what guise? Let’s have a look.

Slow population growth is depressing income growth, which leads to higher taxes.

Virtually every government could pay off its debts by taxing wealth.

Luckily for the rich such taxes are often politically unacceptable.

In other words, fiscal problems are best regarded as problems of dysfunctional governance by governments that are selling off state assets into Privatization until there will not be enough national wealth to pay off any debts.

Anyway for the purpose of this post it is essential that we try to appreciate the difference between real taxes and current (or nominal) taxes.

The real tax over any significant period is the level of government spending in relation to national output. The higher public spending as a percentage of GDP, the higher the real tax. That amount must in time be transferred from private to public hands—be it now or later.

The current tax, for its part, is the amount actually paid to a government in any given period, and is almost never equal to the real tax.

Got it. No. Shame on you. Try again.

A current tax lower than the real tax (that is, a public deficit) implies higher current taxes in the future, while a current tax higher than the real
tax (a public surplus—a phenomenon observable in only three of the past 50 years) implies lower current taxes in the future.

Now. You have.

So the stated political orientation of the administration presiding over a gap between current and real taxation—be it social democratic or of the supply side right—does not matter.

Because deferred taxes are simply claims against the public.

There are two ways to meet these claims:

1) higher current taxes in some future period or 2) inflating the claims away.

Inflation, which generally induces a shift of wealth from private to public hands, is the functional equivalent of a tax increase. These relations do not follow from any policy or ideology, but are purely matters of arithmetic.

Any clearer.? It’s of no matter.

Because what appears on the surface to be public debate over the appropriate level of taxation—and this goes on all the time—is in fact political maneuver by interested constituencies to get out of the line of fire of inevitable tax increases while deflecting the higher taxes onto someone else.

Now you have.

Different taxes do have different allocative effects.

Future taxes will perpetuate or even compound the misallocative effects of the present tax system.

Taxes in the next ten years, even though considerably higher than today’s, will nonetheless be insufficient, in all likelihood, to fill the revenue gap that opened wide during the last ten.

Inflation is all that remains to look forward to.

For a governments it will be like letting go to the pull of gravity.

Most wealth has already been subjected to income and other taxes, perhaps multiple times. It doesn’t seem fair to the holders of that wealth to suddenly pay additional taxes on assets that they thought were in the clear, and such taxes would signal that previous policy has failed.

It seems to me that on both ends of the political spectrum there is remarkably little concern with the allocative effects of taxation in its various forms.

However it matters how you tax if we are to halt the growing inequality in our life styles as over the next 10 to 15 years current taxes will increase mightily. Why?  Because our own consumption, fueled by debt, outstripped our incomes in recent years, while foreign savers, predominantly from Asia/China/and the Far East financed the bulk of new investment in our economies.

Why aren’t foreign savers put off by double tax on capital income?

The answer is that they would be, if they paid it. But they don’t.

Another reason it that the massive fiscal stimulus that have been pumped into our economies by Quantitative easing and the selling off of state Assets (To Sovereign Wealth Funds, see previous posts) will in their wake pull up current taxes or spread inflation, another form of higher taxation —whether consumers or savers, suppliers of capital or suppliers of labor, or both in a maelstrom of inflation.

When income from labor is saved rather than consumed, the income from that saving (now capital income, in economic terms) is taxed again.

This “second” tax on saving makes the tax cost of capital income greater than that of labor income spent on immediate consumption. The two separate layers of income tax imposed on corporate earnings and then again on dividends distributed to shareholders actually imply a third tax on corporate profits. This goes far toward explaining why we don’t save.

What can be done:

What is needed is a shift in the burden of taxation away from capital income and onto consumption.  In short, some form of consumption tax should be the predominant national tax.

The problem with a value-added tax is that people can to a considerable extent earn their incomes in one tax environment and spend them (either at retail on vacation or wholesale in retirement) in a different (and VAT-free) environment, so that ultimately both their incomes and their consumption are untaxed.

Value-added taxes and payroll taxes are analogous to an income tax that is imposed territorialy, whereas a tax on consumed income is imposed on worldwide income, minus the component of saving, and is therefore a tax on the worldwide consumption of a taxpayer.

(Turnover-type taxes such as sales taxes and value-added taxes are widely and correctly understood as consumption taxes. So is any tax that does not reach capital income.)

A tax on consumed income is an income tax in which personal saving is deducible from taxable income, thus excluding capital income and leaving only the amount of income that is consumed subject to current taxation.

In stead of contemplating such a tax in many EU Member States we got political, academic and public debate on wealth taxation which always gains traction in times of strained public finances.

The question is who ultimately bears the burden of wealth taxation (tax incidence)

The existence of a blurry frontier between capital and labor, income for the high-income earners, the role of transparency and automatic exchange of information in facilitating tax compliance and the serious political economy constraints makes any form of wealth tax unworkable.

Just imagine the difficulty to evaluate one’s wealth and the administrative costs along with the risks of tax evasion and capital flight.

Many people have become distressed about their taxes because they have been led to believe that the property they acquired would not he taxed to the extent that it has been. Accordingly, they have paid prices for the property that have reflected those expectations. They may be the reasons they are “mad as hell” simply because they feel that they have been misled by their government and that they not only have had to give up taxes but also have had to give up wealth in terms of reduced market prices for their property.

Economics have performed the heroic task of measuring wealth for eight leading economies: the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Australia.

Their estimates reveal some striking trends. For instance, wealth accumulation in these eight countries has risen relative to yearly production.

Wealth-to-income ratios in these nations climbed from a range of 200 to 300 percent in 1970 to a range of 400 to 600 percent in 2010. Behind the changing ratios is some bad news, namely that slow productivity growth and but also some good news — that relative peace and capital gains have preserved wealth up to now.

Virtual economies pose a real-world tax compliance risk, even if citizens aren’t purposefully shielding their money.

No one has a clue on how to manage the Planet. The only way forward is a consumption tax regime.

 

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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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