THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHO IS MAKING HAY WHILE THE SUN SHINES IN SUPPLYING ARMS TO THE UKRIAN?

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( Fifteen minute read)

The human being is apparently the most aggressive and cruel species that has ever inhabited the Earth: There is no other animal that kills members of its own species in such a systematic way as man does (Sangrador, 1982).

So it is not surprising that the current Ukraine war raises difficult political and ethical questions, because these day with technology we fail to see systematic polarisation, because we all assume good and bad are equally distributed among us, but that is just an abstract idea, far from the reality.

If western leaders think that their arms-length encouragement of Ukraine will bring about a Ukrainian military victory, then they are fatally misreading Putin’s intentions and resolve.

Russia’s progress may be slowed, but it’s highly unlikely to be stopped, far less pushed out of Ukraine, and in the meantime the grinding destruction and hideous war crimes continue.

The west’s current approach of supporting Ukraine’s war aim of defeating the aggressor, and providing arms for that purpose while pointedly avoiding direct military intervention, is guaranteed to prolong the war and it is not at all clear that the kind of support we are giving (and not giving) is the right way to go about preserving the Ukrainian nation.

One thing is certain it is that Putin will never accept defeat.

He is already too deeply invested in this war to back off with nothing to show for it.

If Russia’s aim was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation, then the west’s approach is helping to do just that. Encouraging the Ukrainians to continue, however just their cause, is merely making their country uninhabitable.

Of course as with any war the problem is how what and where should support be given but in the background of any war there are those supplying ammunition and arms to both the aggressor and the opposition.

Large defence companies are already seeing their share prices go up as investors anticipate the impact of the war on profits.

Thales shares have risen by 35% since the invasion, while BAE Systems shares are up 32%. Lockheed Martin has seen an increase of 14% and Aero Vironment 63%.

Supplying weapons offers no effective means of reducing violence.

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In wars there is a profound failure to mourn loose of life, because there is nothing good enough to allow the process to begin, leads to an enactment where loss is transferred usually bodily into another.

We accept that no one has the right to take another’s life, however, justified their grievances.

It is true that some people can feel that their own identity, country, belief system, are so under threat that the annihilation of the other, to preserve their own belief systems, is sometimes justified. The aggressive attacker has forfeited their rights and therefore it’s okay to attack them, to kill them, or to hurt them.

In the case of wars people are violent because it feels like the right thing to do.

It follows that supporting Ukraine is the right thing to do, with Britain and Poland now suppling Tanks.

So where are we with the War?

I think when we look at the state of the world we have two conflicting regimes at war with each other: We tend to think that the seed of violence is outside of us and we are exempt from it but ” violence begets violence ” laying the seed for future clashes.

Religious fundamentalism in the form of a particularly virulent form of Islam, which most Muslims do not of course adhere to.

The other is an unfettered fundamentalism, a form of Neo-liberal secular market economics, that promulgates a vicious form of Social Darwinism. “We are all revolutionary in our shopping habits now,” that most of us don’t want to adhere to this idea – but unwittingly play a part in it – and until we realise the damage to climate change and the plight of refugees.

We are actually in a period of profound economic crisis where the human industrial system could threaten to destroy all traces of tradition, certainty and belief.

It is possible that no other currency of communication can be imagined other than death to the enemy. Hence, the dynamic can be perpetuated down the generations. The desire for vengeance and the righting of wrongs can shape an entire life.

Instead of listening to the grievances arising from the Middle East, we in the West continue to employ professional soldiers to perform what might seem acts of state-sanctioned terrorism in the name of foreign policy such as the invasion of Iraq, still a highly peculiar response to the 9/11 attacks.

Can there ever be just wars?

The answer to that question (in a democratic society) is almost always going to be “no” because the test of “Is it a last resort” which is one of the tests for a just war, is never going to be reached, because there is always in a democratic society, an alternative way of reaching your goal, which is to pursue things through the normal political process.

Is this true?

Some violence is more rational or ethically justifiable than others, such as surgical strikes, or limited warfare, the use of things like drones has become very common. The remote drone operator carrying out clean surgical hits allegedly in our name. The pleasure of an Isis general being blown to pieces.

But the question remains. Can there ever be a just war?

How many of us for instance would think it was worthwhile for anyone’s sons or daughters to die in the service of keeping the Falklands Islands British, or during the invasion of Iraq, whether this action is seen as an atrocity or ‘liberation’.

Nelson Mandela was deemed a terrorist, not a rebel with great cause, he remained on the US terrorism list most of his life. Reagan and Thatcher both viewed Mandela as a threat. Indeed, he was at first involved in necessary violent guerrilla actions against the apartheid state.

You can’t defeat an ideology, when it feels based on a justified grievance that belief systems are under threat from the modern world and a wish to regress from the advances of modernity, which seems to lack all spiritual awareness except that of materialism.

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Can violence be fought with violence?   Of course it can.

The paradox of fighting violence with violence is within psychology two opposing concepts, one called “compassion fatigue” and the opposite “substitution trauma.” Both associated with chronic stress and its effect on ceasing to feel empathy for others or feeling sympathetic to others..

Currently, because we are shown violent images daily on Television stations and social media it make’s us reflect on the consequences suffered by victims of aggression as well as the different types of aggression that are shown, making many of these scenes appear as “happy violence.”

However, luckily it is still very rare that you’ll see anybody claim that hurting someone else is an inherently moral thing to do.

Unfortunately morality as understood and practiced by real-world human beings, doesn’t always prohibit violence. In fact they make the case that most violence is motivated by morality.

An emotional abduction (Goleman, 2012) can trigger our violence: a lack of self-control, an unexpected event, the protection of a loved one, defence against an out-of-control animal, or even an attack of zeal, can trigger our most heinous thoughts.

Social interaction influences the brain and the brain influences social interaction.

Social behaviour is learned mainly by observing and imitating the actions of others, and secondly, by being directly rewarded and punished for our own actions. In this regard Putin points to the extermination of the native Indians in West (The Establishment Americas, war list is endless ) as defence of his actions.

The best way to change someone’s behaviour is to understand what motivated that behaviour in the first place.

Political leaders are right to condemn terrorist attacks – we do not have to accept the moral codes of others in order to acknowledge that they exist. However, long-term solutions to terrorist atrocities, as well as many other forms of violence such as wars in our society, might benefit from a taking a perspective that the perpetrators believe that what they are doing is good, just, and right.

Russia’s age-old security concerns, perhaps even the very logic of basing today’s international frontiers in that part of Europe on what were internal borders in the USSR, drawn up by communist leaders precisely to prevent Soviet republics and regions from being viable independent states.

“People are only as mad as the other people are deaf” – Adam Philips.

The greatest acts of violence in the last century have in fact been perpetrated by western colonialism and economic expansionism, we are now arguably reaping the backlash of those policies. The exploitation of the poor by the neoliberal economy is one huge factor in social and state violence, which leads to wars and militarism.

So to create a violent attack firstly ignore the underlying factors, poverty inequality and western exploitation, the severe effects of climate change, global warming, arguably caused by unscrupulous western economic policies.

No day goes past without some senior western politician proclaiming that Ukraine will be “successful” and that Russia is “failing” which is clearly nonsense. The risk involved in this – of a third world war – is obvious, and it’s why the west refuses to intervene directly.

Can violence be fought with violence?

Like all wars, Russia’s barbaric attack on Ukraine will finish at some point. How it ends will determine whether Europe is destined to live with a festering sore of bitterness and division at its heart.

How will the war end?

First, there is outright victory by one side or the other. Second, there is a negotiated ceasefire leading to a peace settlement of some kind. Third, an inconclusive outcome, with the fighting gradually subsiding leaving a stalemate or frozen conflict.

The most pressing question is how do we prevent a repeat of the most violent conflict that humanity has ever seen, the second world war.

Remember that world war two didn’t come out of nothing its starting fuse was the peace agreement of world war one.

Outright victory with unconditional surrender by the losing side is rare and military victory frequently led to a much more ambiguous political outcome sowing the seeds of future conflict.

The third way conflicts end is in a stalemate, with no clear winner and no peace agreement, but a gradual ebbing away of the fighting, leaving a more or less chaotic and unstable situation.

None of these analogies will apply precisely.

How will Putin’s latest Ukraine war end?

Outright victory by one side looks the least likely. Even if Russia managed to topple the Zelensky government and install a puppet regime, subjugating the whole country would require a massive army of occupation, far larger than Moscow can muster.

Moscow and Kyiv have set out their opening positions. But these are light-years apart.

Any amputation of Ukraine’s territory will result in a hostile stand-off, with regular upsurges of fighting along a line of separation. Another words back to a full-scale Cold War with Russia.

If NATO were to actively enter the war and make a quick, massive and decisive strike to cripple Russia’s invasion forces it would be the demise of the EU catapulting it back to a situation of the 1930s where there were individual states in Europe pitted against each other.

In the end there will be no classless society or reign of the Just. It will just carry on in the same kind of way. Meanwhile, all we have is the means. The means is how we will be judged.

As some put it: Peace only be achieved without weapons.

We create refugees with our economics and then blame them for wanting a better life.

Tell them (they have names)

and when they turn the bodies over

To count the number of closed eyes. And they tell you 800’000: you say no. that was my uncle. He wore bright coloured shirts and pointy shoes.

2 million: you say no. that was my aunty.

her laughter could sweep you up like

The wind to leaves on the ground.

6 million: you say no. that was my mother.

her arms. the only place I have ever

Not known fear.

3 million: you say no. that was my love.

We used to dance. Oh, how we used to dance.

Or 147: you say no. that was our hope. Our future. The brains of the family.

And when they tell you that you come from war: you say no. I come from hands held in prayer before we eat together.

When they tell you that you come from conflict: you say no. I come from sweat. On skin. glistening. From shining sun.

When they tell you that you come from genocide: you say no. I come from the first smile of a new born child. tiny hands.

When they tell you that you come from rape: you say no. and you tell them about every time you have ever loved.

Tell them that you are from mother carrying you on her back. until you could walk. until you could run. until you could fly.

Tell them that you are from father holding you up to the night sky. full of stars. and saying look, child.

this is what you are made of. From long summers. full moons. flowing rivers. sand dunes.

you tell them that you are an ocean that no cup could ever hold.

JJ Bola | poet

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In a world where there are disadvantages, neglect and unfairness, there will always be collective and individual activity to reverse the inferior position, by finding other bodies and minds to carry it.

The thing is, no one would ever engage in something that serves the purpose of one’s species’ survival unless one found some pleasure in it.

But does this concept imply while making the revolution enjoying the violence in the process is okay?

Is there really such a convenient separation between a revolution (or rebellion or civil war) and everyday life violence?

If so, one has to use a different register for judgement.

People could receive reinforcement or rewards for their aggressive behaviour in different ways: directly or indirectly.

Every act of violence can feel justified with the currency of communication is the exchange of pain.

It is clear that such questions can and must be discussed.

You can’t defeat an ideology, when it feels based on a justified grievance that belief systems are under threat from the modern world and a wish to regress from the advances of modernity, which seems to lack all spiritual awareness except that of materialism.

When the state is violent, is violence justifiable?

What happens when we tolerate the intolerant? And when we spare the life of a killer? Do we become their enablers?

Is assassination a more justifiable form of political violence than war?

The ethics of selective assassination as a tactic in warfare has not really been given much of consideration until the invention of drones, and with their appears, the acceptance, increasingly that you can execute people before you have tried them.

Freedom is a form of human flourishing that we can only develop or aspire to acquire in relationships with other people.

Violence is destructive of the great fabric of human association that I need in order to develop as a free person.

For example, the Taliban was supposed to be crushed by the invasion of Afghanistan; a very similar kind of organisation to ISIS or ISIL. In the end, as John Alderdice has said, they have to be talked to.

To the Russian President: Vladimir Putin.

Your time will end.

Please end your invasion of the Ukraine . It’s not working. Whatever your reason was for the invasion is no longer valid. You are only hurting your own people. The scansions are incredible and direct and hurtful for your people. It’s not working and it’s not worth destroying both the Ukraine and Russia. However, if you insist on being closed minded an ignorant the please go about it. You will only end up destroying yourself. What you are doing is crazy and stupid.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS 2023 GOING TO BE THE YEAR THAT HUMANITY FINDS OUT THAT IT IS NOT THE DOMINANT FORCE OF CHANGE ON PLANET EARTH?

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( Three minute read)

What can be achieved in this decade to put the world on a path to a more sustainable, more prosperous future for all of humanity?

Temptation is to say, that you may rest assured that it will be another year of unadulterated verbal dioramas diarrhoea.

With humanity waging war on nature the risks we are taking are astounding.

What did Earth look like from space in 2022?

It looked beautiful, it looked dangerous. It looked small and inconsequential, it looked incredible.iss066e109851

Nature always strikes back – and it is already doing so with growing force and fury.

About 96% of all mammals by weight are now humans and our livestock, like cattle, sheep and pigs. Just 4% are wild mammals like elephants, buffalo or dolphins. Seventy-five percent of Earth’s ice-free land is directly altered as a result of human activity, with nearly 90% of terrestrial net primary production and 80% of global tree cover under direct human influence.

We have grossly simplified the biosphere, a system of interactions between lifeforms and Earth that has evolved over 3.8 billion years. As the pressure of human activities accelerates on Earth, so, too, does the hope that technologies such as artificial intelligence will be able to help us deal with dangerous climate and environmental change. That will only happen, however, if we act forcefully in ways that redirects the direction of technological change towards planetary stewardship and responsible innovation.2022-05_geocolor_20220505180018_logos-1

Rising greenhouse gas emissions means that “within the coming 50 years, one to 3 billion people are projected to experience living conditions that are outside of the climate conditions that have served civilizations well over the past 6,000 years.

In this decade we must bend the curves of greenhouse gas emissions and shocking biodiversity loss. This means transforming what we eat and how we farm it, among many other transformations.

Nature has now become for us a kind of glossy cardboard, digitized and virtualized, increasingly distant from our lives.

The recent Covid-19 global pandemic is an Anthropocene phenomena. It has been caused by our intertwined relationship with nature and our hyper-connectivity. ( We order Pizza by sending messages into space.)

However our actions are making the biosphere more fragile, less resilient and more prone to shocks than before.

Humans use the majority of natural geo-resources, like minerals, rocks, soil and water.

Two of the biggest barriers are unsustainable levels of inequality and technology that undermines societal goals.

Inequality and environmental challenges are deeply linked. Reducing inequality will increase trust within societies.

It is time to flick the “green switch.   We have a chance to not simply reset the world economy but to transform it.

It is time to integrate the goal of carbon neutrality into all economic and fiscal policies and decisions. And to make climate-related financial risk disclosures mandatory.

It is time to transform humankind’s relationship with the natural world – and with each other. And we must do so together.

It’s is time to get off your smart phone and start to demand transparency of Algorithms that are plundering the world for profit. .

The state of the planet is much worse than most people understand and that humans face a grim.

Because as of yet there is no political or economic system, or leadership, is prepared to handle the predicted disasters, or even capable of such action

The problem is compounded by ignorance and short-term self-interest, with the pursuit of wealth and political interests stymying the action that is crucial for survival.

Most economies operate on the basis that counteraction now is too costly to be politically palatable. Combined with disinformation campaigns to protect short-term profits it is doubtful that the scale of changes we need will be made in time.

We need to be candid, accurate, and honest if humanity is to understand the enormity of the challenges we face in creating a sustainable future.

Without political will backed by tangible action that scales to the enormity of the problems facing us, the added stresses to human health, wealth, and well-being will perversely diminish our political capacity to mitigate the erosion of the Earth’s life-support system upon which we all depend.

Without fully appreciating and broadcasting the scale of the problems and the enormity of the solutions required, society will fail to achieve even modest sustainability goals, and catastrophe will surely follow.

So the Beady Eye wishes all a Happy New Year with the near certainty that the abovementioned problems will worsen over the coming decades, with negative impacts for centuries to come, if we dont now get our fingers out of where the sun does not shine.

No one has a right to pollute the air or the water, which are the common inheritance of all.

We have not inherited the Earth from our parents, we have borrowed it from our children.

The time has come to re-educate to nature and contact with it as a lever to ensure collective well-being, physical and mental; to restore beauty, kindness, ecosystem thinking, emotional intelligence and a formation of values, heritage inherited from the wisdom of the past but negligently neglected.

After all, this is what ecology is all about: looking at reality as it is, understanding its connections, accepting its complexity, and striving for harmony between all parts.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: THE NEW TYPE OF NON- CONSCIOUS INTELLIGENCE DRIVEN BY NON-CONSCIOUS ALGORITHMS IS GOING TO DESTROY WHAT IS LEFT OF DECENCY IN THE WORLD. (Guest post an unknown source.)

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( A six-minute read)

The idea that humans will always have a unique ability beyond the reach of non-conscious algorithms is just wishful thinking.

The fact is, as time goes by it will be easier and easier to replace humans with computer algorithms, not because they are getting smarter and smarter but because humans are professionalising.

One would have to say are we all such naive bonkers that we are going to allow algorithms dictate our lives.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of algorithms"

The answer so far appears to be yes. We are going to become militarily and economically useless.

Technical difficulties or political objections might slow down the algorithmic invasion of the job market but while the systems might need humans, it will not need individuals.

These systems will make most of the important decisions depriving individuals of their authority and freedom.

They are already assembling humans into dividuals ie. humans are becoming an assemblage of many different algorithms lacking a single inner voice or a single self.

Its time we realized that if we continue down this path allowing large corporations platforms to introduce algorithms willy nilly with no overall vetting as to whether they comply with our values we will be replacing the voter, the consumer, and the beholder.

The Al algorithm will know best, will always be right, and beauty will be in the calculation of the algorithm. Individualism will collapse and authority will shift from individual humans to autonomous networks.

People will not see themselves as individuals but as collections of biochemical mechanisms that are constantly monitored and guided by a network of electronic algorithms.

We are already crossing the line. Most of us use Apps without any thought whatsoever.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of algorithms"

You might say that every age has its organizing principles.

The nineteenth century had the novel, and the twentieth had TV; in our more modern times, they come and go more quickly than ever—on Web 1.0 it was the website, for example, and a few years later, for 2.0, it was the app.

And now, another shift is underway:

Today’s organizing principle is the algorithm. (Though you could productively argue that our new lingua franca will either be artificial intelligence or virtual reality.)

Algorithms rule the modern world, silent workhorses aligning data sets and systematizing the world. They’re everywhere, in everything, and you wouldn’t know unless you looked. For some of the most powerful companies in the world—Google, Facebook, etc.—they’re also closely held secrets, the most valuable intellectual property a company owns. 

Perhaps it is naïve to believe algorithms should be neutral? but it’s also deceptive to advance the illusion that Facebook and the algorithms that power it are bias-free.

They are not neutral.

Facebook is intended to be the home of what the world is talking about. Their business model depends on it, even if that’s an impossible goal. As such, with now well over a billion users, and still growing, it’s worth asking:

What role should Facebook play in shaping public discourse? And just how transparent should it be?

After all, Facebook is mind-boggling massive.

It accounts for a huge portion of traffic directed to news sites; small tweaks in its own feed algorithm can have serious consequences for media companies’ bottom lines.

What can be done? ( See previous posts)

Evolution will continue and will need to do so if we humans are to exist.

We therefore should welcome all technology that enhances our chances of this existence in as far that it equates to human values.

All Algorithms that violate these values for the sake of profit or power should be destroyed.

After all if humans have no soul and if thoughts, emotions, and sensations are just biochemical algorithms why can’t biology account for all the vagaries of human societies.?

If Donald Trump is the best that twitter Algorithms can produce it appears to me that there is a long way to go and it’s not too late to change course.

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

 

CAPITALISM CONTINUES TO PRIVATIZE THE PLANET.

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This is the first post to this blog .

 The purpose of this blog is to start a world mobile phone movement to effect change by Uniting the combined Communication Powers of us all into one world voice that will have to be listened to by World Organizations  and World Corporations.

These days we are  served up doom and gloom daily with the last decade leading us down the path to disillusionment. 

DEMOCRACY ERODED, LIVELIHOODS DESTROYED.  WITH GOVERNMENTS EVERYWHERE BETRAYING THE MANDATES THAT BROUGHT THEM INTO POWER.

September 11 tragedy now turned into a convenient Excuse for any anti-people legislation denying civil liberties worldwide. The Arab Spring is a quagmire>The Euro a nightmare >The Afghan War a needless lost of life>The Israel Palestine Question a dark cul-de-sac>NATO a war machine>The United Nations a gum shield between the west and the rest>China a supermarket>Climate change a trading commodity>Football a religion>Austerity a goal>Economic Growth an aspiration that no one seems to know how to achieve.

IF WE ARE ALL HONEST WITH OURSELVES THE WORLD IS GOING WRONG:

By the year 2030 there will be 50% more of us-6 million a month.

Humanity will have to put aside the deep divisions it has maintained for thousands of years.

Find a new spirit of human co- operation. Stop spending trillions on arms. One-fifth of the world’s present days population live in the “rich world” consuming 86% of the world’s goods. While over half the people on Earth live on 2$ a day with the absolute  poor on a !$ making up billions. Where is the justice that the gross domestic product of the poorest 48 Nations is less than the wealth of the World’s three riches people.

You don’t have to look far to see why we have Terrorism. Poverty and lack of Education spawns it.

While we turn back the evolutionary clock pumping 8 billion tons of Carbon into the Atmosphere each year wiping out 50,000 species a year in collective denial.

There can be no trade-off between economic development and the protection of the Environment Even if it is possible looking back from the Moon and see no trace of human activities that show up.

Our Democracies seem unable to achieve any progress such as mitigating climate change, better managing ecosystems, creating a fair global trading system. However we have the knowledge, the data and the technologies to do all of these things.

The question is not so much ” How could we have learned so little in all these years after two World Wars? But ” How could we have learned so much and done so little?

So it’s time to stop supporting large World Corporations and the like that don’t show a corporate social responsibility and use the power of getting Smart with our smart phones.

Any comments, suggestions, are welcome.  My next blog posting will out line a plan to create a World Aid Tax to be applied on all World stock Exchanges.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WHERE IS MIGRATION GOING TO GO?

30 Tuesday Apr 2024

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( Five minute read) k;ldsa;k;

 

Understand where migrants come from, where they go, and why migration is increasing, is going to be a major problem with climate change.

Why it’s time to rethink migration?

Because it’s increasingly likely that people will encounter—or become—migrants in their lifetime.

Just imagine if Chinese people had to move (1,425,293,425) it would be worse than a nuclear bomb.

Faced with such a reality, the question is not whether migration is right or wrong. The question is how can we make it work best to support prosperity and development for countries of destination, countries of origin, and the migrants themselves.

This is where the debate often becomes confused because we use a single word — migration — to refer to distinct types of movements that have different impacts, and call for different policy responses than  trafficking in humans legally or non legal. 

The challenge is to manage the cost, to reduce it and to share it as global.

Climate change along with inequality requires smarter policies for global development and a prosperous future.

Where people migrate depends on what’s happening in the world shaped by new global challenges, the rise of technology, and protracted modern conflicts, in Sudan, the Middle East and Ukraine.

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The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that by the end of 2022, over 100 million people were forcibly displaced. Syrians, Palestinians, and Afghans account for more than half of all refugees.

Around 80 percent of refugees live outside camps.

Out of the 60.9 million recorded displacements that occurred last year, 32.6 million, were due to climate disasters, including floods, drought and landslides.

More than 280 million people—roughly one out of every thirty people on earth—currently live in a country in which they were not born.

This means that more than 1 in every 74 people have been forcibly displaced.

—————–

Though migration is not a new phenomenon, it takes on a new significance in an increasingly interconnected world.

Migration—who migrates, where, and why—is constantly evolving. #WorldOnTheMove 

“Flotsam of Humanity”

The majority of migrants, however, are pulled to countries that offer better economic prospects for themselves or their families.

People are far more likely to be international migrants today than in the recent past.

About one-third of all international migrants come from just ten countries. However, numbers alone don’t tell the whole story:

Many refugees and asylum seekers, who make up just over 10 percent of the world’s international migrants, have more than likely previously within their own countries. 763 million people are internal migrants, who have moved within their country.

High-income nations hosted a majority of international migrants.

That’s not surprising considering that a vast majority of the world’s international migrants are economic migrants who have voluntarily left their countries for better economic opportunities elsewhere.

In 2020, 93.9% of all people living in the United Arab Emirates were international migrants, followed by 80.6% of people in Qatar and 71.3% of people in Kuwait.

The U.S. has more migrants than any other nation, but migrants only account for about 15.1% of the U.S. population – a smaller share than in 24 countries or territories with a total population of at least 1 million.

Though India is the single largest source of international migrants, its 17.9 million migrants in 2020 accounted for only 1.3% of all people born in India by that year.

By comparison, the United Kingdom’s 4.7 million international migrants accounted for 7.6% of those born in the UK by 2020. Mexico’s 11.2 million international migrants accounted for 8.2% of those born in Mexico.

Many of the forces driving migration today are.

  • Poverty
  • Conflict and violence
  • Persecution
  • Political instability
  • Economic opportunity
  • Competition for resources
  • Natural disasters and environmental changes
  • Reuniting families

Who decides which migrants receive refugee status?

The UN Refugee Convention defines a refugee as any person who owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it. 146 nations agree to this definition.

However, host governments ultimately get to decide whether to recognize someone as a refugee. This protective status is known as asylum. 

Both refugees and asylum seekers are fleeing for their safety. However, the distinction between these two, though seemingly small, makes a big difference in how they are treated by governments and international organizations. 

Just like refugees and asylum seekers, internally displaced persons by the end of 2022, there were over seventy-one million. This is nearly twice the number of refugees in the world. They don’t have the same protections as refugees.  International law does not apply to them. Instead, they fall under the laws of their own national government.

Predictions in the field of migration appear particularly difficult given the complexity and diversity of the migration processes, the limited availability and quality of data, and the limited understanding of the migration drivers.

Borders define our fate, our life expectancy, our identity, and so much more.

With up to three billion people expected to be displaced by the effects of global warming by the end of the century, should it lead to a shift in the way we think about national borders.

It can be argued, however, that most of these imaginary lines are not fit for the world of the 21st Century with its soaring population, dramatic climate change and resource scarcity.

As global temperatures increase, causing climate change, sea level rise and extreme weather over the coming decades, large parts of the world that are home to some of the biggest populations will become increasingly hard to live in. 

Unable to adapt to increasingly extreme conditions, millions – or even billions – of people will need to move.

One to three billion people are projected to be left outside the climate conditions that have served humanity well over the past 6,000 years.

The threat posed by climate change and its social reper­cussions dwarf those surrounding national security.  

Enabling free movement could double global GDP.

In addition, we would see an increase in cultural diversity, which studies show improves innovation. At a time when we have to solve unprecedented environmental and social challenges, it could be just what is need. What if we thought of the planet as a global commonwealth of humanity, in which people were free to move wherever they wanted? We’d need a new mechanism to manage global labour mobility far more effect­ively and efficiently – it is our biggest economic resource, after all.

THE CHANCES OF THIS HAPPING IS ZERO.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHAT ARE WE LEAVING THE NEXT GERERATION?

27 Saturday Apr 2024

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( Fifteen minute read)

It’s hard to feel for future people. We are bad enough at feeling for our future selves.

Even if we last just 1 million years, as long as the average mammal – and even if the global population fell to 1 billion people – then there would be 9.1 trillion people in the future.

Concern for future generations is common sense across diverse intellectual traditions. When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don’t say, “Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now?

Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today.

Is any of this true?

Current global rates of consumption require the resources of about 1.6 earths. At this rate, we risk exhausting our planet’s life support systems that provide us with fresh water, nutritious food and clean air.

What 2050 could look like if we don’t do anything about climate change?  This doesn’t need an answer.

That is a future unwritten.  It’s also worth noting that, in fact, it is entirely up to us whether these hypothetical future beings ever actually come into existence.

So what do we owe the generations to come?

You might answer that since we don’t even owe to them to bring them into existence in the first place, we can’t possibly owe them anything all. Then wouldn’t the people of the future be within their rights to look back at us and ask, ‘Given that you despoiled our planet, why did you even bother bringing us into existence?

Maybe we might actually have an obligation not to bring future people into existence, at least if we’re going to mess things up enough to make their hypothetical lives unbearable.

That would imply that future people count more than us. And who thinks that? Certainly not me. I’m not even sure they count the same as us. That leaves us with only one option. I hate to say it, but future people surely count less than we do—at least a little less.

“What, I am trying to get you to see, is that we have an absolute duty to future generations not to ruin their future planet.”

Think of today’s teeming masses, displaced by violence and climate change, wandering the world in search for a safe harbour.

In comparison to all that present day concrete suffering, the hypothetical suffering of hypothetical future people seems sort of distant and abstract.

I should say that I am actually all for combating climate change. And I am all for weighing both the interests of present people and the interests of future people in the calculus of what is to be done about it. I just don’t think it’s obvious how much weight we should give to the wellbeing of hypothetical future people as opposed to our own.

——————–

Now more than ever, the world needs young people to step up to address the many other challenges ahead of us.

It is crucial to engage young people in decision-making – but in parallel – it’s also important for young people to think differently about how they want to engage.

They cannot vote or lobby or run for public office, so politicians have scant incentive to think about them. They can’t bargain or trade with us, so they have little representation in the market, And they can’t make their views heard directly: they can’t tweet, or write articles in newspapers, or march in the streets. They are utterly disenfranchised.

We make laws that govern them, build infrastructure for them and take out loans for them to pay back.

So what happens when we consider future generations while we make decisions today?

Is it really as bad as all that?

Our situation can be summed up as follows:

While facing an extinction event, instead of working toward reversing the march toward climate disaster, in the name of security we are investing in killing each other.

What will it take to unleash the energy and passion of youth leaders and activists to dismantle inequitable systems and work together to build an more inclusive future?

Social media will likely play a role in that revolution—if it doesn’t sink our kids with anxiety and depression first.

Asked young people what changes they want for the future.

HERE ARE SOME OF THE RED LINES.

  • Incentivize sustainable consumption and penalize production that’s not.
  • All stakeholders to take urgent action to safeguard nature and future food production.
  • Sanctions against institutions that resort to internet blackouts to supress citizen freedoms.
  • Tech companies to be transparent about misinformation and its spread on their platforms.
  • Governments to implement policies to protect individual citizens against harmful content.
  • Capacity-building programmes and education to help citizens better identify fake news.
  • Strengthened laws against media monopolies to protect democratic freedoms.
  • A Global Convention for Cybersecurity to uphold the integrity of political systems.
  • A global wealth tax on assets worth more than US$ 50 million to fight growing inequality.
  • Universities to end the exorbitant tuition fees that stifle social mobility.
  • Governments to guarantee universal access to mental health services.
  • Governments to invest in communities most at risk from climate change.
  • Financial institutions to stop bankrolling companies initiating fossil fuel exploration.
  • Companies to significantly reduce the GHG emissions of their operations and supply chains to help keep global heating within 1.5°C.
  • Governments to implement fit-for-purpose policies and regulations on big tech.
  • Companies to integrate technology ethics into the design of their products and services.
  • Governments to prioritize the immediate needs of healthcare workers and their families.
  • Companies to drive digitalization in healthcare services to improve patient care.
  • Governments to end qualified immunity in law enforcement for police officers.
  • Increased action against gun violence.

Two critical questions guided these dialogues:

What are the barriers that have hindered progress?

And, what key values, principles and practices will enable us to foster long-lasting systemic impact for the next decade?

As many around the world push for the creation of a more just, equitable and sustainable future we must remember that technology is one of the greatest tools for achieving these goals, but without ethical considerations at the fore… this will likely only perpetuate the very inequalities that we hope to address.

Every generation of teens is shaped by the social, political, and economic events of the day and how fast teens grow up depends on their perceptions of their environment.

For example their ubiquitous use of the iPhone, their valuing of individualism, their economic context of income inequality, their inclusiveness, and more.

Social media is creating an “epidemic of anguish.

We can’t market technologies that capture dopamine, hijack attention, and tether people to a screen, and then wonder why they are lonely and hurting. It makes humanity look like an “imprudent teenager”, with many years ahead, but more power than wisdom.

Fortunately, there are concrete things humanity to day can do.

The field of sustainability is evolving.

For example, if there is any moral weight on future people, then many common societal goals (like faster economic growth) are vastly less important than reducing risks of extinction (like nuclear non-proliferation).

The entire value chain needs to be sustainable, from raw material sourcing to the manufacturing and usage of the products.

Transparency, accountability, trust and a focus on stakeholder capitalism will be key to meeting this generation’s ambitions and expectations. Doing so would help save the lives of people alive today, reduce the risk of technological stagnation and protect humanity’s future.

Our biases toward present, local problems are strong, so connecting emotionally with the ideas can be hard. It’s humbling and inspiring to see the role we can play in protecting the future. We can enjoy life now and safeguard the future for our great grandchildren.

If we name each generation based on the technological conditions it experienced, generations may soon encompass only a few years apiece. Slicing the population into ever-narrower generations, each defined by its very specific relationship to technology, is fundamental to how we think about the relationship between age, culture, and technology.

They include the digital natives, the net generation, the Google generation or the millennials.

All of these terms are being used to highlight the significance and importance of new technologies within the lives of young people. But generation gaps did not begin with the invention of the microchip. What’s new is the fine-slicing of generational divides, the centrality of technology to defining each successive generation.

If the role of technology in shaping an emergent generational consciousness it seems obvious, to imagine a return to the days when sociological generations spanned multiple decades is over. If you believe that technological conditions profoundly shape the life experience and perspectives of each successive generation, then those generations will only get narrower. If we name each generation based on the specific technological conditions it experienced during childhood or adolescence, we may soon be dealing with generations that encompass only a few years apiece.

At that point, the very idea of “generations” will cease to have much utility for social scientists, since it will be very hard to analyse attitudinal or behavioural differences between generations that are just a few years part.

The problem is that all will come at a price. That price is and will be.

The loss of intentional and thoughtful communication techniques to preserve meaningful connections in a society that is becoming more and more reliant on technology.

Be it the metaverse, smart glasses or large language models, the world as we know it may never be quite as we first imagined it, merging into physical and digital spaces.

While the internet offers unparalleled convenience and connectivity, it is essential to recognize its limitations in reproducing the depth of personal interaction found in face-to-face encounters.

—————

Technology will be a vital tool for creating a cleaner, safer and more inclusive world, but what changes can we expect to see?

  • 5G will create a lot of new use cases including drone management, robotic surgery and autonomous vehicles. Large language models will become a given because they lower the cost of artificial intelligence (AI)
  • Quantum computing merges with classical computing.
  • Our grandchildren will live in a very different world thanks to the democratization of products and services that are currently only available to the elite or wealthy,
  • Holographic image in front of you, seen through smart glasses will be your algorithmic world.
  • No matter what  future we leave behind life my advice is life is beautiful-celebrate -celebrate – never give up.
  • If all of this is hurting your head, let’s just get back to the basics: if there is a secret to life, it might all be down to what we do, not what we are.

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

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: SHOULD THERE BE CONGRATULATIONS TO ENGLAND IN PASSING INTO LAW THE EXPORTATION OF IMMIGRANTS TO RWANDA.

23 Tuesday Apr 2024

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( Twelve minute read)

Did you know that the very first convicts to land in Australia did so in 1788? (This was part of a transportation system that was put into place in Britain to ease their crime rates, primarily due to the rising levels of poverty created by the Industrial Revolution.)

A system of transportation was put into place in 1717. They believed that sending people to distant colonies would give them a second chance at life. Around 160,000 convicts had been transported to Australia during this time period.

The British government believed that Australia would be an ideal place to send their convicts because it was so far away from Britain, a more humane alternative to execution. They decided to use old warships as prisons, and called them ‘hulks’. The hulks began to run out of room so they moved the occupants’ as cheap slave labour to Australia.

The effects of this moment would change the fate of an entire continent that still has significant impacts in the modern world.Reuters Rishi Sunak attends a press conference at Downing Street in London

This time its not petty criminals that they are going to export to Rwanda but immigrants.

As I understand it. One-way ticket to Rwanda to have their claims to asylum processed there.

Under the proposal:

Rwanda would take responsibility for the people who made the more than 4,000-mile journey, put them through an asylum process, and at the end of that process, if they were successful, they would have long-term accommodation in Rwanda not the UK.

Rwanda will have the “capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead.

Rwanda’s human rights record makes it the ideal place to get rid of unwanted immigrants. 

In 1994, one of the worst incidents of genocide in modern history took place in Rwanda, where Hutu extremists slaughtered nearly a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu.

Rwanda genocide of 1994, planned campaign of mass murder in Rwanda that occurred over the course of some 100 days in April–July 1994. The genocide was conceived by extremist elements of Rwanda’s majority Hutu population who planned to kill the minority Tutsi population and anyone who opposed those genocidal intentions. It is estimated that some 200,000 Hutu, spurred on by propaganda from various media outlets, participated in the genocide. More than 800,000 civilians—primarily Tutsi, but also moderate Hutu—were killed during the campaign. As many as 2,000,000 Rwandans fled the country during or immediately after the genocide, is now a safe place.

The effects of this new law (yet to be signed off by their King,) undermines the core principle of the universality of human rights and breach’s the international Refugee Convention, which the UK is signed up to.

Under EU membership there was a mechanism to return asylum seekers to the first safe European country they passed through, but this returns scheme is no longer available to the government due to Brexit.

Slamming the door in the face of refugees, is cruel and nasty decision, which will do little” to deter people. Instead the UK, the government should be focusing on creating a system that protects the right to claim asylum and that prioritises both compassion and control.

How are we treating these humans?

Are we suddenly saying those coming from Ukraine, their lives are better value than those coming from certain other countries? I think it’s abhorrent.

Voyages of despair filled with hardship. There go I but for the grace of god.

Getty Images A British Immigration Enforcement officer and an Interforce security officer escort migrants, picked up at sea by a lifeboat whilst they were attempting to cross the English Channel

The theoretical cost for sending 1,000 migrants to Rwanda could be £169m – or £169,000 a person – in contrast to the £106m it would cost to accommodate them in the UK.

More than 45,000 people crossed the English Channel last year on small boats – so-called deterrence measures simply don’t work.

£100m was paid to Rwanda in April and that an extra £50m would be handed over next year.

Of the £290m allocated to Rwanda so far, only £20m has gone towards set-up costs of the deportation scheme.

That brings the total cost to £290m but does not account for the cost of actually deporting any migrants to the country, which could end up sending the bill over £400m.

Instead of returning to medieval practices, there is no reason that on arrival applications for asylum could not be examined

The apathic irony of all of this is that we consistently hear that the providers of care are struggling to recruit and retain enough skilled staff, which is having a knock-on effect on access to care services and leading to unmet needs. Around half a million people are waiting either for an adult social care assessment with more people than ever waiting for elective NHS care (6.7 million).

The latest figures for January 2024 show: Over 321,000 of these patients have been waiting over a year for treatment,

A care system is in gridlock.

Almost 100,000 people in the UK are waiting for a decision on their asylum claims.

“Our Illegal Migration Bill will help to stop the boats by making sure people smugglers and illegal migrants understand that coming to the UK illegally will result in detention and swift removal – only then will they be deterred from making these dangerous journeys in the first place.”

Where would I sent them.?  Not Rwanda but into Care industry’s or does England no longer want to be the nation that wants to help other people.

As Climate change without a doubt is going to cause mass migration overall, this decision is likely to bring greater clarity to an area of law that is both complex and frequently in the public eye.

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THE BEADY EYE ASK’S ARE OUR LIVES GOVERENED BY FEAR? THE FLIP SIDE OF HOPE.

21 Sunday Apr 2024

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( Twenty minute read)

How much of our lives is governed by fear?

Fear is an ancient and conserved response that served humans well enough before the advent of civilisation, but it has become distorted in modern societies where primordial fears can readily transform into phobias.

Fear is part instinct, part learned, part taught. Some fears are instinctive: Pain, for example, causes fear because of its implications for survival. Other fears are learned and also partly imagined.  Imagined threats cause paralysis. Real threats, on the other hand, cause frenzy.

For instance social media is now fanning, the flames of fear and disseminating misinformation quickly and widely with fake news.

It’s hard to fully understand the way fear shapes our world without addressing its relationship to anger.

And anger is important for those who profit from fear because anger generates action.

People are more vulnerable when they’re in an angered state. When we’re angry, we don’t pay attention to the details of complex messages, the more one person expresses anger, the more others express anger, and then it becomes a kind of spiral where the anger is ratcheted up and up.

Many bemoan online when social media platforms seemingly descend into ranting and abuse but a great deal of the anger we find when perusing our devices isn’t organic, it’s engineered – for profit.

Provoking anger is rapidly becoming the standard for many online operations.

Why?

Because fidelity of the source is taken by social media sites and search engines as key factors for their Automated Decision Making (ADM) systems to classify content.

In their defence, social media platforms are between a rock and a hard place because of their need to balance free speech against repression of damaging or hateful material.

It works because in our algorithmically driven culture the popularity of any given content is no longer driven by the number of eyeballs that see it, but by the level of engagement it generates.

—————–

Fear sharpens the mind, which is why fear is used in campaigns, whether it’s public health, whether it’s to change people’s attitude to things like climate change.

Fear can steel resolve to do something.

After the second World War and the horrors that the world experienced, democratic countries became defensive.  In other words, they saw fear as an important tool for making sure that these kinds of perversions never happened again, but in the process of doing that, fear actually became too important as a component. It started to eclipse the very values that it was supposed to be protecting-  “enculturated” in fear – NATO.

But that’s not the whole story.

We can now register a fear with new characteristics in the fear taxonomy, and we could call it global fear.

.For example during COVID too much fear created apathy leading to disinterest and distrust.

What’s needed is a better public understanding of the role these emotions play in our lives, and a clearer appreciation that when emotions are manipulated, even good intentions can have disastrous consequences.

——————–

Fear and anger are dominating our world right now, but are we being manipulated for profit?

Fear and anger abound – in our politics, in our social discourse, and in our expectations for the future.

When fear is pervasive in a system — and it’s pervasive in all of our systems — what that means is that we lose dynamism, we lose innovation. Fears put a stranglehold on our life force. Fear paralyzes us. Fear diminishes us. And the more we conquer our fears, the more meaningful our life becomes.

Fear and anger have been monetised, the result of deliberate manipulation by commercial and political interests.

The antidote for our current malaise isn’t simply to suppress our emotional extremes. In fact, both fear and anger can help positive social change by fostering a thirst for justice and even revolution.

The difficulty for people today is empathising or imaginatively trying to situate themselves in the future … It’s very, very difficult.

The growing fear-based discourse around climate change, for example, and the use of fear-laden expressions and words often backfires on those who deploy them. When someone like [UN Secretary-General] António Guterres uses the term ‘global boiling’ the problem is a lot of people in their daily lives are not experiencing a climate crisis, they don’t experience excessive heat, they don’t have wildfires on their doorstep. They just switch off.

While we tend to equate fear-based leadership with totalitarianism or populism, there are many instances in democratic countries where politics is coloured by the use of fear as a blunt tool of coercion.

More people realise that we’re living in a vicious cycle, where manufactured fear fuels anger and anger in turn blinds us to the recognition that our fear is misplaced. Take the discourse around “illegal” immigration.

As George Orwell’s warnings 1984 to the world which are now coming true as we move into an age of totalitarian Ai dictatorial -an age in which freedom of thought will be a deadly sin and later on a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence.

Totalitarianism relies on mass support so we need more people to realize what is at stake and start seeing all around us by taking the smart phone out of our ears.

With AI moving into the Physical world, algorithms are running more and more of life as we know it.

Combined they are evolving towards the same system, a form of oligarchical collectivism with manufactured fear.  The strategy of fear is one of their most valuable tactics.

Don’t let it happen. Face recognition becoming a thought or face crime.

————————-

You see the state of the world.

It is not important who is at war or with who, it’s the removal of freedoms and constant surveillance which is now conducted through the smartphones we carry around in our pockets, with every sound you make, every movement scrutinised.

The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence. Everything fades into mist. The past is erased, the erasure is forgotten and the lie comes truth.

No one can stand aside, dont let it happen it depends on you

It’s understandable that we may worry about world events but fear is hardwired in your brain, and for good reason.

—————–

War is peace freedom is slavery.

Israel is as we watch becoming a Totalitarian State.

How does one witness the cruelty of indiscriminate bombing? We cannot physically or mentally feel another’s pain, but we can empathize with it. We tend to still think of war as great power competition or as the Second World War.

The USA vetoed Palestine becoming a full member of the United nations then approved more than $61bn worth of military assistance to help Ukraine in its desperate defence against Russia, as well as billions for other allies including Israel and Taiwan.

The $95bn in total funding includes roughly $61bn for Ukraine (with much of the funding going towards replenishing American munitions); $26bn for Israel; $8bn for US allies in the Indo-Pacific region, including Taiwan; and $9bn in humanitarian assistance for civilians in war zones, such as Haiti, Sudan and Gaza, though the package also includes a ban on direct US funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (Unrwa), an agency providing key assistance to Gaza, until March 2025. The US has so far sent Ukraine roughly $111bn in weapons, equipment, humanitarian assistance and other aid since the start of the war more than two years ago.

The Israel bill includes about $4.4bn to replenish depleted US supplies given to Israel; $4bn for missile defence, including the much-vaunted Iron Dome, and $1.2bn for the Iron Beam; and $3.5bn to help Israel buy weapons. There are also provisions to make it easier to supply Israel with US munitions held in other countries.

What is what.

If you can have all the information that’s out there, crunch it into some kind of algorithm, that you can then target discriminately, proportionately.

The idea that machines are going to replace humans in wars  is fundamentally untrue.

We are seeing this to a certain extent right now, in Palestinian/Israel war with Ai deciding who and how to kill.  Both wars are is very much a battle of machines and soldiers, a high technology-driven conflict.

Where you can attack, use some surgically precise weapons, take care of the problem, eliminate your opponent and then extract yourself from a situation, has actually turned into a quagmire with new super weapons, whether it be cyber information warfare or artificial intelligence everyone wants to be ahead of the curve, right?

However, this approach also overshadows political considerations, including the causes of conflicts, obscures the costs of conflict, and creates illusions of quick and easy victories—all of which has led to two decades of war in the twenty-first century.

One of the problems here is this idea that you can simply solve problems by targeting them with cruise missiles, is simply not the case.

The belief that technology can help prevent war by creating a deterrent, is an illusion.

Wars will never be able to solve the difficult and complex political and cultural problems on the ground. Weapons can help produce ceasefires, but they cannot themselves create long-lasting, established peace.

Essentially, the idea that science can produce technologically advanced weapons so horrible that no one will ever want to fight is farcical. If we are ever going to get rid of war military culture it must be understood that it  does not exist in isolation.

Through the use of technology WE GOING TO CREATE WARS.

The rush to apply cutting edge technologies like artificial intelligence to military systems is well under way. A new breed of techno-evangelists, many of whom stand to make billions if we go down the high tech path they are so aggressively promoting.

The application of science to unpick the supposedly immutable principles of warfare, making conflicts shorter and more humane, or eliminating the need for large-scale campaigns, found a home in the United States by the middle of the nineteenth century.

Such views reached their zenith with the advent of nuclear weapons and the logic of deterrence.

Importantly,  technology-based approach emerges as a counter to the deterrence-based approach. Although nuclear weapons had made war unlikely, given the risks of mass casualties and devastation.

There is a need for much greater restraint in making assumptions as to what ends can be achieved militarily. Replacing people with machines on the battlefield, will not result in ‘clean’ conflicts.

Where there may be feelings of anger and betrayal, or even a sense of exhaustion, not uncovering the truth may lead to conspiracy or a turn to an engineering-infused idealism—that smarter systems will produce better results next time.

High-tech wars transfers the risk from soldiers to civilians.

It envisions the military drawing on US advanced technologies, such as AI, cyber resources, unmanned systems and machine learning to offset or create an overmatch of adversarial capabilities. Reducing the time that it takes from identifying a target to destroying it (known as the “kill chain”) and diminishing or eliminating human input could be a recipe for unprecedented disaster.

The Ukraine war is been used as a proof of concept for their systems, and a marketing tool to boot – after all, what’s more attractive than buying “battle proven” technology?

Revelations that Israel has used AI not to spare civilians but to step up the rate and scope of its devastation of Gaza is just the latest example of why we need to think twice before acquiescing in the rush towards a world dominated by automated warfare.

Between 2019 and 2022, U.S. military and intelligence agencies awarded major tech firms contracts with ceilings worth at least $53 billion combined. Resulting in large military contracts to big tech firms like Microsoft, Amazon and Google.

The idea that America alone has the ability (and the duty) to protect the world’s democratic societies; and a steadfast belief that the best way to preserve U.S. dominance is through a largely unregulated free market that prioritizes corporate needs is a farce. It is on the verge of losing an epic struggle for global geopolitical and economic supremacy—unless it can outpace China in the ‘AI arms race.

U.S. government for Israel’s war on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice has suggested can plausibly be considered a case of genocide.

Russia’s or Israeli nuclear status means that NATO countries are unlikely to become involved in direct fighting given the risk of escalation.

The time to act is now, because nobody has any idea if we have cyborg fighting wars.

There is another response in play when there is a perceived threat to survival. Physical harm, threats to property used for protection, threats to self value that erode a desire to survive come from the Caveman part of our brain that dictate the innate need to run, hide, fight. As to what is coming next is anyone’s guess.

My guess is that it will be self-help.

Physical aggression and violence dictate fear. the use of run, hide, fight.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com