skip to main | skip to sidebar

Andres Agostini's Official WebSites (Arlington, VA, USA)

Andres Agostini is a Researching Analyst & Consultant & Management Practitioner & Original Thinker & E-Author & Institutional Coach. Topics subject of in-depth study & practice are Science, Technology, Corporate Strategy, Business, Management, “Transformative Risk Management,” Professional Futurology, & Mind-Expansion Developmental Techniques. He hereby shares his thoughts, ideas, reflections, findings, & suggestions with total independence of thinking and without mental reservation.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Andres Agostini's WebSites (Arlington, VA, USA)



ENGLISH


www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com/


www.AndresAgostini.blogspot.com/


http://WikiBloggist.blogspot.com/


http://CompleteScience.blogspot.com/


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22andres+agostini%22&btnG=Google+Search

http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%22andres+agostini%22+%22Dispatches+from+the+New+World+of+Work%22&go=Search&form=QBAA


ESPAÑOL

www.geocities.com/agosbio/a.html


Andres Agostini (Ich Bin Singularitarian !!!)

Arlington, Virginia, USA

www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com/

AndresAgostini@gmail.com

Arlington, Virginia, USA

Posted by Andres Agostini's WebSites (Arlington, VA, USA) at 11:26 AM
Labels: www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com

No comments:

Post a Comment

Newer Post Home
Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

E-mail Andy...

AgosDres@yahoo.com









WebCrawler Search



Objective!

To disseminate new ideas, hypothesis, thesis, original thinking, new proposals to reinvent theory pertaining to Strategy, Innovation, Performance, Risk (all kinds), via Scientific and Highly-Sophisticated Management, in accordance with the perspective of applied omniscience (the perspective of totality of knowledge). Put simply, to research an analyze news ways to optimize the best practices.

E-mail Andy....

AgostiniAndres@yahoo.com

Breaking News!

Breaking News!
Keep it extremely complex, stupid!

Success Precepts by Andy

SMALL SAMPLE

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 26

Don’t worry about being surprised by the unexpectable. Just carry on expecting the unexpectable, regardless of the implicated chaos. Create instability as the essence of your strategy. Keep in mind: a more volatile external environment requires a less stable internal world. Seek out substitutes and opportunities to increase productivity by measuring the mass used in your business today, and getting it to decrease every year. Respond with more rapid and varied adaptation.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 27

Conduct thousands of tests of products, prices, features, packages, marketing channels, credit policies, account management, customer service, collections, and retention. Make informed but subjective judgments. Push ahead before the competition could catch up. Seize the opportunity--even when not really prepared.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 28

Empower talented people. Accelerate talented people very quickly, because that's where you get the value. Place bets on future values. Cross boundaries, change jobs, and form new teams to meet evolving needs. Align with the business. Use good economic judgment. Be flexible. And be empathetic to your colleagues.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 29

It's okay to break the rules in the right way. Going around doing randomly disconnected things. Develop all the peripheral relationships you need to be effective organizationally. Manage the connections rather than the structure. Also know how to hybridize.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 30

Reach out to others with corresponding roles across the organization to learn and share ideas. Move around and support your colleagues when needed. Enable innovation by bringing DIVERSE elements together. Without these kinds of connections, DIVERSITY has little inherent value.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 31

Empower others and yourself by the whole chaotic percolation of ideas at the bottom of the organization. Bear in mind: Empirical evidence, based on small tests, always carried the day. Attract very bright people with initial proof of concept, then plug them into your organizational structure.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 32

Maintain common interfaces and cross-functional capabilities that allow work to flow and value chains to talk to teach other. Harvest the idea, then propagate it wildly before the mimicry of competition sets in.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 33

Employ diversification to spread their risks. Be willing to take the risk of shaping the future according to your own design. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, but don put all your eggs in one basket. Beware of this: Discontinuities, irregularities, and volatilities seem to be proliferating. Remember: Without risks, life poses no mystery.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 34

Seed, select, amplify, and destabilize the situation are the two management ideas for accelerated evolution. Don’t expect a perfect feedback system in a volatile environment. Don’t be excellent at doing; be excellent at changing, too.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 35

Explore the extremes, where nonlinear effects kick in. Sometimes, the extremes contain pleasant, nonlinear surprises. Imagine things that engender loyalty towards your organization. Through experimentation with detailed measurements and discipline and logical analysis, you find profitable innovations.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 36

Test things at the bottom of the organization that lead to big insights. Test, experiment, measure, and optimize. Institute hard-core analytic optimization. Architect your entire infrastructure to operate in real time. Let your account-management programs to be driven by experimentation.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 37

Dream up programs that might be of value to customers, and then test them. A successful test often triggers other behaviors, and you should follow these with more new offers. Shift to roll-out, because ah of a sudden your competition get a preponderance of one product of my organization that they've never seen before.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 38

Have a free flow of resources to where the value is. Rather than penalizing people who fail, praise them for their commitment and intentions. Reinforce the tolerance of risk and failure. Revise your best practices. Observe, orient, decide, act. First to fight now means first to learn.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 39

Fly great distances, meet new people, and encounter new ideas. Have a freedom of thought, the passion for experimentation, and the desire to imagine your future. Believe in not commonly believed opinions.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 40

It's about getting more from less. That's the true road to wealth. Focus on changes, challenges, and opportunities. Earn more while spending less. Reach a higher level of output. Pursue profit maximization. Remain competitive. Adapt to revolutionary innovations in technology and business efficiency the soonest. Craft value creating relationships. Establish guidelines, offer insight, and provide inspiration. Identify, analyze, and maximize your learning opportunities.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 42

Evaluate, identify, select, negotiate, manage, turn around, govern, implement, anticipate, and ensure success. Generate immediate cost savings. Realize a cash infusion from the sale of assets. Relieve the burden of staffing.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 43

Be freer to direct your attention to the more strategic aspects of your job. Keep your logic compelling.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 44

Destabilize in order to live closer to the edge of chaos. This means being agile enough to change as the environment does, but not so fluid as to lose its defining structure. Walk the walk as well as talking the talk of the Adaptive Enterprise.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 45

A lesson: The word adaptation describes the interaction between an organism and its environment.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 46

TO BEAR IN MIND! But one thing an evolutionary and ecological perspective tells us for sure: If several major forces are at work, they will not progress in separate straight lines --they will interact chaotically, creating unforeseen changes.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 47

Be willing to adapt very quickly, to pounce on an opportunity when you see it, to change the organization, to think about new developments, and to be always very open to any change in any direction.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 48

You have to be the equivalent of selective forces in nature, which calls for a willingness to let people in the organization to explore, to flourish and develop.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 49

Separate to promote independence, selfish thinking, and local solutions. Learn from each other’s mistakes and successes and you’ll get better and be able to operate at a much more accelerated pace, based upon the knowledge that has been transferred.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 50

Get your organization into a massive amount of knowledge and experience that creates a great breeding stock for subsequent ventures.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 51

Explore continually evolving technology and applications, while also creating different units to exploit commercial opportunities not always closely related to the founding capabilities.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 52

Replenish customers on demand. Take the client as an agent, and create an agent-based point of view.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 77

Seek the hidden. De-learn the learned. Make the covert overt. Implement ipso facto.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 78

De-peril your risks. Empower your financial risks to work for you. Hire them; get resigned from your bricks-and-mortars (a future not plausible).

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 79

Plan, lead, and manage.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 80

Understand your business depth today. Develop better ways to service your enterprise in the future.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 81

Before "outsourcing," NOW "Worldwide Sourcing' or "Competitive Sourcing."

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 82

Have fewer staff and run a lean operation. Favor those who leverage third-party relationships that don't tie up capital and consume resources.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 83

Strategically enhance your organization's core competencies. Address any outstanding issue with your employees, unions, and the community. Find the lowest total cost or best value.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 84

Recognize impact on internal operations. Capture the big picture.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 85

Track benefits, realize quick wins, and motivate critical stakeholders to remain committed.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 86

Early anticipation of changes can drastically reduce the time and cost of addressing them. Seek the quick win (that long forgotten in an ignored --but mission-critical-- flank).

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 87

Research assiduously which of the available external market capabilities fit best with your strategic objectives.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 88

Articulate these management principles more precisely, implement them more systematically, and rely less on the intuition of a few gifted leaders. Don't write strategy, GROW IT. Don't think in terms of maximizing your share of the market but of maximizing your share of experience. Build an innovation laboratory capable of creating a steady stream of the new ideas to stay ahead of the competition.

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 89

Differentiate or die. Be mindful that improvisation is too important to be left to the fortuitous. Consider that life is sustainable through the unperceived and those universal laws that are unknown to us. Continuity is over-dead; it hasn't yet reincarnated. History will be reshaped by the sudden and sharp change, namely "frenzy volatility."

SUCCESS PRINCIPLE / TENET # 90

Launch your employees with confidence into a somewhat chaotic environment, knowing that they will direct themselves toward optimal performance to success. Instill in the staff a loose, self-organizing culture--in search of new opportunities. Motivate and develop others to learn to change to prevail. Sharing ideas, "...an eye is not an eye because you see it; an eye is an eye because it sees you..."--Antonio Machado.

More on Singularity...

Openness and the Metaverse Singularity

The four worlds of the Metaverse Roadmap could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. But they also represent potential dangers. An "open-access Singularity" may be the answer. The people who have embraced the possibility of a singularity should be working at least as hard on making possible a global inclusion of interests as they do on making the singularity itself happen, says Jamais Cascio.

Originally presented at Singularity Summit 2007, September 8, 2007. Reprinted with permission on KurzweilAI.net November 7, 2007.

I was reminded, earlier this year, of an observation made by polio vaccine pioneer Dr. Jonas Salk. He said that the most important question we can ask of ourselves is, "are we being good ancestors?"

This is a particularly relevant question for those of us here at the Summit. In our work, in our policies, in our choices, in the alternatives that we open and those that we close, are we being good ancestors? Our actions, our lives have consequences, and we must realize that it is incumbent upon us to ask if the consequences we're bringing about are desirable.

It's not an easy question to answer, in part because it can be an uncomfortable examination. But this question becomes especially challenging when we recognize that even small choices matter. It's not just the multi-billion dollar projects and unmistakably world-altering ideas that will change the lives of our descendants. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, profound consequences can arise from the most prosaic of topics.

Which is why I'm going to talk a bit about video games.

Well, not just video games, but video games and cameraphones and Google Earth and the myriad day-to-day technologies that, individually, may attract momentary notice, but in combination, may actually offer us a new way of grappling with the world. And just might, along the way, help to shape the potential for a safe Singularity.

Earlier this year, I co-authored a document that I know some of you in the audience have seen: the Metaverse Roadmap Overview. In this work, along with my colleagues John Smart and Jerry Paffendorf, I sketch out four scenarios of how a combination of forces driving the development of immersive, richly connected information technologies may play out over the next decade. But what has struck me more recently about the Roadmap scenarios is that the four worlds could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. Not just in terms of the technologies, but—more importantly—in terms of the social and cultural choices we make while building those technologies.

The four metaverse worlds emerged from a relatively commonplace scenario structure. We arrayed two spectra of possibility against each other, thereby offering four outcomes. Specialists sometimes refer to this as the "four-box" method, and it's a simple way of forcing yourself to think through different possibilities.

This is probably the right spot to insert my first disclaimer: scenarios are not predictions, they're provocations. They're ways of describing different future possibilities not to demonstrate what will happen, but to suggest what could happen. They offer a way to test out strategies and assumptions—what would the world look like if we undertook a given action in these four futures?

To construct our scenario set we selected two themes likely to shape the ways in which the Metaverse unfolds: the spectrum of technologies and applications ranging from augmentation tools that add new capabilities to simulation systems that model new worlds; and the spectrum ranging from intimate technologies, those that focus on identity and the individual, to external technologies, those that provide information about and control over the world around you. These two spectra collide and contrast to produce four scenarios.

The first, Virtual Worlds, emerges from the combination of Simulation and Intimate technologies. These are immersive representations of an environment, one where the user has a presence within that reality, typically as an avatar of some sort. Today, this means World of Warcraft, Second Life, Sony Home and the like.

Over the course of the Virtual Worlds scenario, we'd see the continued growth and increased sophistication of immersive networked environments, allowing more and more people to spend substantial amounts of time engaged in meaningful ways online. The ultimate manifestation of this scenario would be a world in which the vast majority of people spend essentially all of their work and play time in virtual settings, whether because the digital worlds are supremely compelling and seductive, or because the real world has suffered widespread environmental and economic collapse.

The next scenario, Mirror Worlds, comes from the intersection of Simulation and Externally-focused technologies. These are information-enhanced virtual models or “reflections” of the physical world, usually embracing maps and geo-locative sensors. Google Earth is probably the canonical present-day version of an early Mirror World.

While undoubtedly appealing to many individuals, in my view, the real power of the Mirror World setting falls to institutions and organizations seeking to have a more complete, accurate and nuanced understanding of the world's transactions and underlying systems. The capabilities of Mirror World systems is enhanced by a proliferation of sensors and remote data gathering, giving these distributed information platforms a global context. Geospatial, environmental and economic patterns could be easily represented and analyzed. Undoubtedly, political debates would arise over just who does, and does not, get access to these models and databases.

Thirdly, Augmented Reality looks at the collision of Augmentation and External technologies. Such tools would enhance the external physical world for the individual, through the use of location-aware systems and interfaces that process and layer networked information on top of our everyday perceptions.

Augmented Reality makes use of the same kinds of distributed information and sensory systems as Mirror Worlds, but does so in a much more granular, personal way. The AR world is much more interested in depth than in flows: the history of a given product on a store shelf; the name of the person waving at you down the street (along with her social network connections and reputation score); the comments and recommendations left by friends at a particular coffee shop, or bar, or bookstore. This world is almost vibrating with information, and is likely to spawn as many efforts to produce viable filtering tools as there are projects to assign and recognize new data sources.

Lastly, we have Lifelogging, which brings together Augmentation and Intimate technologies. Here, the systems record and report the states and life histories of objects and users, enhancing observation, recall, and communication. I've sometimes talked about one version of this as the "participatory panopticon."

Here, the observation tools of an Augmented Reality world get turned inward, serving as an adjunct memory. Lifelogging systems are less apt to be attuned to the digital comments left at a bar than to the spoken words of the person at the table next to you. These tools would be used to capture both the practical and the ephemeral, like where you left your car in the lot and what it was that made your spouse laugh so much. Such systems have obvious political implications, such as catching a candidate's gaffe or a bureaucrat's corruption. But they also have significant personal implications: what does the world look like when we know that everything we say or do is likely to be recorded?

This underscores a deep concern that crosses the boundaries of all four scenarios: trust.

"Trust" encompasses a variety of key issues: protecting privacy and being safely visible; information and transaction security; and, critically, honesty and transparency. It wouldn't take much effort to turn all four of these scenarios into dystopias. The common element of the malevolent versions of these societies would be easy to spot: widely divergent levels of control over and access to information, especially personal information. The ultimate importance of these scenarios isn't just the technologies they describe, but the societies that they create.

So what do these tell us about a Singularity?

Second disclaimer time: although I worked with John and Jerry on the original Metaverse scenarios, they should not be blamed for any of what follows.

Across the four Metaverse scenarios, we can see a variety of ways in which the addition of an intelligent system would enhance the user's experience. Dumb non-player characters and repetitive bots in virtual worlds, for example, might be replaced by virtual people essentially indistinguishable from characters controlled by human users. Efforts to make sense of the massive flows of information in a Mirror World setting would be enormously enhanced with the assistance of sophisticated machine analyst. Augmented Reality environments would thrive with truly intelligent agent systems, knowing what to filter and what to emphasize. In a lifelogging world, an intelligent companion in one's mobile or wearable system would be needed in order to figure out how to index and catalog memories in a personally meaningful way; it's likely that such a system would need to learn how to emulate your own thought processes, becoming a virtual shadow.

None of these systems would truly need to be self-aware, self-modifying intelligent machines—but in time, each could lead to that point.

But if the potential benefits of these scenaric worlds would be enhanced with intelligent information technology, so too would the dangers. Unfortunately, avoiding dystopian outcomes is a challenge that may be trickier than some may expect—and is one with direct implications for all of our hopes and efforts for bringing about a future that would benefit human civilization, not end it.

It starts with a basic premise: software is a human construction. That's obvious when considering code written by hand over empty pizza boxes and stacks of paper coffee cups. But even the closest process we have to entirely computer-crafted software—emergent, evolutionary code—still betrays the presence of a human maker: evolutionary algorithms may have produced the final software, and may even have done so in ways that remain opaque to human observers, but the goals of the evolutionary process, and the selection mechanism that drives the digital evolution towards these goals, are quite clearly of human origin.

To put it bluntly, software, like all technologies, is inherently political. Even the most disruptive technologies, the innovations and ideas that can utterly transform society, carry with them the legacies of past decisions, the culture and history of the societies that spawned them. Code inevitably reflects the choices, biases and desires of its creators.

This will often be unambiguous and visible, as with digital rights management. It can also be subtle, as with operating system routines written to benefit one application over its competitors (I know some of you in this audience are old enough to remember "DOS isn't done 'til Lotus won't run"). Sometimes, code may be written to reflect an even more dubious bias, as with the allegations of voting machines intentionally designed to make election-hacking easy for those in the know. Much of the time, however, the inclusion of software elements reflecting the choices, biases and desires of its creators will be utterly unconscious, the result of what the coders deem obviously right.

We can imagine parallel examples of the ways in which metaverse technologies could be shaped by deeply-embedded cultural and political forces: the obvious, such as lifelogging systems that know to not record digitally-watermarked background music and television; the subtle, such as augmented reality filters that give added visibility to sponsors, and make competitors harder to see; the malicious, such as mirror world networks that accelerate the rupture between the information haves and have-nots—or, perhaps more correctly, between the users and the used; and, again and again, the unintended-but-consequential, such as virtual world environments that make it impossible to build an avatar that reflects your real or desired appearance, offering only virtual bodies sprung from the fevered imagination of perpetual adolescents.

So too with what we today talk about as a "singularity." The degree to which human software engineers actually get their hands dirty with the nuts & bolts of AI code is secondary to the basic condition that humans will guide the technology's development, making the choices as to which characteristics should be encouraged, which should be suppressed or ignored, and which ones signify that "progress" has been made. Whatever the degree to which post-singularity intelligences would be able to reshape their own minds, we have to remember that the first generation will be our creations, built with interests and abilities based upon our choices, biases and desires.

This isn't intrinsically bad; emerging digital minds that reflect the interests of their human creators is a lever that gives us a real chance to make sure that a "singularity" ultimately benefits us. But it holds a real risk. Not that people won't know that there's a bias: we've lived long enough with software bugs and so-called "computer errors" to know not to put complete trust in the pronouncements of what may seem to be digital oracles. The risk comes from not being able to see what that bias might be.

Many of us rightly worry about what might happen with "Metaverse" systems that analyze our life logs, that monitor our every step and word, that track our behavior online so as to offer us the safest possible society—or best possible spam. Imagine the risks associated with trusting that when the creators of emerging self- aware systems say that they have our best interests in mind, they mean the same thing by that phrase that we do.

For me, the solution is clear. Trust depends upon transparency. Transparency, in turn, requires openness.

We need an Open Singularity.

At minimum, this means expanding the conversation about the shape that a singularity might take beyond a self-selected group of technologists and philosophers. An "open access" singularity, if you will. Dr. Kurzweil's books are a solid first step, but the public discourse around the singularity concept needs to reflect a wider diversity of opinion and perspective.

If the singularity is as likely and as globally, utterly transformative as many here believe, it would be profoundly unethical to make it happen without including all of the stakeholders in the process—and we are all stakeholders in the future.

World-altering decisions made without taking our vast array of interests into account are intrinsically flawed, likely fatally so. They would become catalysts for conflicts, potentially even the triggers for some of the "existential threats" that may arise from transformative technologies. Moreover, working to bring in diverse interests has to happen as early in the process as possible. Balancing and managing a global diversity of needs won't be easy, but it will be impossible if democratization is thought of as a bolt-on addition at the end.

Democracy is a messy process. It requires give-and-take, and an acknowledgement that efficiency is less important than participation.

We may not have an answer now as to how to do this, how to democratize the singularity. If this is the case—and I suspect that it is—then we have added work ahead of us. The people who have embraced the possibility of a singularity should be working at least as hard on making possible a global inclusion of interests as they do on making the singularity itself happen. All of the talk of "friendly AI" and "positive singularities" will be meaningless if the only people who get to decide what that means are the few hundred of us in this room.

My preferred pathway would be to "open source" the singularity, to bring in the eyes and minds of millions of collaborators to examine and co-create the relevant software and models, seeking out flaws and making the code more broadly reflective of a variety of interests. Such a proposal is not without risks. Accidents will happen, and there will always be those few who wish to do others harm. But the same is true in a world of proprietary interests and abundant secrecy, and those are precisely the conditions that can make effective responses to looming disasters difficult. With an open approach, you have millions of people who know how dangerous technologies work, know the risks that they hold, and are committed to helping to detect, defend and respond to crises. That these are, in Bill Joy's term, "knowledge-enabled" dangers means that knowledge also enables our defense; knowledge, in turn, grows faster as it becomes more widespread. This is not simply speculation; we've seen time and again, from digital security to the global response to SARS, that open access to information-laden risks ultimately makes them more manageable.

The metaverse roadmap offers a glimpse of what the next decade might hold, but does so recognizing that the futures it describes are not end-points, but transitions. The choices we make today about commonplace tools and everyday technologies will shape what's possible, and what's imaginable, with the generations of technologies to come. If the singularity is in fact near, the fundamental tools of information, collaboration and access will be our best hope for making it happen in a way that spreads its benefits and minimizes its dangers—in short, making it happen in a way that lets us be good ancestors.

If we're willing to try, we can create a future, a singularity, that's wise, democratic and sustainable—a future that's open. Open as in transparent. Open as in participatory. Open as in available to all. Open as in filled with an abundance of options.

The shape of tomorrow remains in our grasp, and will be determined by the choices we make today. Choose wisely.

This Day In History...

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC, FRS (née Roberts; born 13 October 1925) served as British Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 until 1990, being the first and to date only woman to hold either post.

Thatcher's tenure as Prime Minister was the longest since that of Lord Salisbury and was the longest continuous period in office since the tenure of Lord Liverpool who was prime minister in the early 19th century. She was the first woman to lead a major political party in the UK, and the first of only three women to have held any of the four great offices of state. She currently has a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire, which allows her to sit in the House of Lords.

Early life and education

Born Margaret Hilda Roberts, she grew up in the town of Grantham in Lincolnshire, England. Her father, Alfred Roberts, owned a grocery shop in the town and was active in local politics and religion, serving as an Alderman and Methodist lay preacher. Roberts came from a Liberal family but stood—as was then customary in local government—as an Independent. He lost his post as Alderman in 1952 after the Labour Party won its first majority on Grantham Council in 1950. He married Beatrice Stephenson, and they had two daughters (Margaret and her older sister Muriel, 1921-2004).[1] Margaret was brought up a devout Methodist and has remained a Christian throughout her life.[2] Thatcher performed well academically, attending Kesteven and Grantham Girls' School and subsequently attending Somerville College, Oxford in 1944 to study Chemistry, specifically crystallography. She became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association in 1946, the third woman to hold the post. She graduated and then worked as a research chemist for British Xylonite and then J. Lyons and Co., where she helped develop methods for preserving ice cream. She was a member of the team that developed the first soft frozen ice cream. Thatcher was also a member of the Association of Scientific Workers.

Political career between 1950 and 1970

At the 1950 and 1951 elections, Margaret Roberts fought the safe Labour seat of Dartford, and was at the time the youngest ever female Conservative candidate for office. While active in the Conservative Party in Kent, she met Denis Thatcher, whom she married in 1951. Denis was a wealthy divorced businessman (whose first wife coincidentally had also been named Margaret) and he funded his wife's studies for the Bar. She qualified as a barrister in 1953, the same year that her twin children Carol and Mark were born. As a lawyer she specialised in tax law.

Thatcher then began to look for a safe Conservative seat and was narrowly rejected as candidate for Orpington in 1954. She had several other rejections before being selected for Finchley in April 1958. She won the seat easily in the 1959 election and took her seat in the House of Commons. Unusually, her maiden speech was in support of her Private Member's Bill (Public Bodies (Admission to Meetings) Act 1960) to force local councils to hold meetings in public, which was successful. In 1961 she went against the Conservative Party's official position by voting for the restoration of birching.

She was given early promotion to the front bench as Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in September 1961, retaining the post until the Conservatives lost power in the 1964 election. When Sir Alec Douglas-Home stepped down Thatcher voted for Edward Heath in the leadership election over Reginald Maudling, and was rewarded with the job of Conservative spokesman on Housing and Land. In this role she adopted the policy of allowing tenants to buy their council houses, an idea first developed by her colleague James Allason. The policy would prove popular.[3] She moved to the Shadow Treasury team after 1966.

Thatcher was one of few Conservative MPs to support Leo Abse's Bill to decriminalise male homosexuality, and she voted in favour of David Steel's Bill to legalise abortion. She supported retention of capital punishment and voted against the relaxation of divorce laws. Thatcher made her mark as a conference speaker in 1966, with a strong attack on the high-tax policies of the Labour Government as being steps "not only towards Socialism, but towards Communism". She won promotion to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Fuel Spokesman in 1967, and was then promoted to shadow Transport and, finally, Education before the 1970 election.

In Heath's Cabinet

When the Conservative party under Edward Heath won the 1970 general election, Thatcher became Secretary of State for Education and Science. In her first months in office, forced to administer a cut in the Education budget, she was responsible for the abolition of universal free milk for school-children aged seven to eleven (Labour had already abolished it for secondary schools). This provoked a storm of public protest, and led to one of the more unflattering names for her: "Thatcher Thatcher, Milk Snatcher". However, papers later released under the Thirty Year Rule show that she spoke against such a move in Cabinet, but was forced, due to the concept of collective responsibility, to implement the will of her fellow ministers.[4] She also successfully resisted the introduction of library book charges.

Her term was marked by support for several proposals for more local education authorities to close grammar schools and adopt comprehensive secondary education; support for this change in education policy was not restricted to the left. Thatcher also saved the Open University from being abolished. The Chancellor Anthony Barber actually wanted to abolish it as a budget-cutting measure, for he viewed it as a gimmick by Harold Wilson. Thatcher believed it was a relatively inexpensive way of extending higher education and insisted that the University should experiment with admitting school-leavers as well as adults. In her memoirs, Thatcher wrote that she was not part of Heath's inner circle, and had little or no influence on the key government decisions outside her department.

After the Conservative defeat in February 1974, Heath appointed her Shadow Environment Secretary. In this position she promised to abolish the rating system that paid for local government services, which proved a popular policy within the Conservative Party.

As Leader of the Opposition

Thatcher agreed with Sir Keith Joseph and the CPS that the Heath Government had lost control of monetary policy — and had lost direction — following its 1972 U-turn. After her party lost the second election of 1974, Joseph decided to challenge Heath's leadership but later withdrew after an unwise speech seen as supporting eugenics. Thatcher then decided that she would enter the race on behalf of the Josephite/CPS faction. Unexpectedly she out-polled Heath on the first ballot, forcing him to resign the leadership. On the second ballot, she defeated Heath's preferred successor William Whitelaw, by 146 votes to 79, and became Conservative Party leader on 11 February 1975.[5] She appointed Whitelaw as her deputy. Heath remained disenchanted with Thatcher to the end of his life for what he (and many of his supporters) perceived as her disloyalty in standing against him.

On 19 January 1976, she made a speech in Kensington Town Hall in which she made a scathing attack on the Soviet Union. The most famous part of her speech ran:

"The Russians are bent on world dominance, and they are rapidly acquiring the means to become the most powerful imperial nation the world has seen. The men in the Soviet Politburo do not have to worry about the ebb and flow of public opinion. They put guns before butter, while we put just about everything before guns."
In response, the Soviet Defence Ministry newspaper Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) gave her the nickname "Iron Lady", which was soon publicised by Radio Moscow. She took delight in the name and it soon became associated with her image as having an unwavering and steadfast character. Her reaction to her other chief nickname, "Attila the Hen" (thought to have been coined by Tory grandee Sir Ian Gilmour) is unrecorded.

Thatcher appointed many Heath supporters to the Shadow Cabinet, for she had won the leadership as an outsider and had little power base of her own within the party. One, James Prior got the important brief of shadow Employment Secretary. Thatcher had to act cautiously to convert the Conservative Party to her monetarist beliefs. She reversed Heath's support for devolved government for Scotland. In an interview for Granada Television's World in Action programme in January 1978, she said "people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture", arousing particular controversy at the time.[6] Critics regarded the comment as a veiled reference to people of colour - and thus pandering to xenophobia and reactionary sentiment. She received 10,000 letters thanking her for raising the subject and the Conservatives gained a lead against Labour in the opinion polls, from both parties at 43% before the speech to 48% for Conservative and 39% for Labour immediately after.[7]

The Labour Government ran into difficulties with the industrial disputes, strikes, increasing unemployment, and collapsing public services during the winter of 1978-9, dubbed the 'Winter of Discontent'. The Conservatives used campaign posters with slogans such as "Labour Isn't Working"[8] to attack the government's record over unemployment and its over-regulation of the labour market. James Callaghan's Labour government fell after a successful Motion of No Confidence in spring 1979.

In the run up to the 1979 General Election, most opinion polls showed that voters preferred James Callaghan as Prime Minister even as the Conservative Party maintained a lead in the polls. The Conservatives would go on to win a 44-seat majority in the House of Commons and Margaret Thatcher became the United Kingdom's first female Prime Minister. On arriving at 10 Downing Street, she famously said, in a paraphrase of St. Francis of Assisi:


Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. And where there is despair, may we bring hope.

As Prime Minister

Main article: Premiership of Margaret Thatcher

1979–1983

Enlarge picture
Thatcher with close ally and friend, United States President Ronald Reagan, 1981
Thatcher became Prime Minister on 4 May, 1979, with a mandate to reverse the UK's economic decline and to reduce the role of the state in the economy. Thatcher was incensed by one contemporary view within the Civil Service, that its job was to manage the UK's decline from the days of Empire, and she wanted the country to assert a higher level of influence and leadership in international affairs. She became a very close ally, philosophically and politically, with President Ronald Reagan, elected in 1980 in the United States.

In 1981, a number of Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army prisoners in Northern Ireland's Maze Prison (known in Northern Ireland as 'Long Kesh', its previous official name) went on hunger strike to regain the status of political prisoners, which had been revoked five years earlier under the preceding Labour government. Bobby Sands, the first of the strikers, was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Fermanagh and South Tyrone a few weeks before he died. Thatcher refused at first to countenance a return to political status for republican prisoners, famously declaring "Crime is crime is crime; it is not political."[9] However, after nine more men had starved themselves to death and the strike had ended, some rights relating to political status were restored to paramilitary prisoners. Thatcher's public hard line on the treatment of paramilitaries was reinforced during the 1981 Iranian Embassy Siege where for the first time in 70 years British armed forces were authorised to use lethal force in Great Britain.

As a monetarist, Thatcher started out in her economic policy by increasing interest rates to slow the growth of the money supply and thus lower inflation. She had a preference for indirect taxation over taxes on income, and value added tax (VAT) was raised sharply to 15%, with a resultant actual short-term rise in inflation.[10] These moves hit businesses – especially the manufacturing sector – and unemployment quickly passed two million, doubling the one million unemployed under the previous Labour government.

Political commentators harked back to the Heath Government's "U-turn" and speculated that Mrs Thatcher would follow suit, but she repudiated this approach at the 1980 Conservative Party conference, telling the party: "To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catch-phrase—the U-turn—I have only one thing to say: you turn if you want to; the Lady's not for turning."[11] That she meant what she said was confirmed in the 1981 budget, when, despite concerns expressed in an open letter from 364 leading economists,[12] taxes were increased in the middle of a recession. In January 1982, the inflation rate had dropped back to 8.6% from earlier highs of 18%, and interest rates were then allowed to fall. Unemployment continued to rise, reaching an official figure of 3.6 million. By 1983, manufacturing output had dropped 30% from 1978, while overall economic growth was stronger, and inflation and mortgage rates were at their lowest levels since 1970.[13][14]

The Falklands

Main article: Falklands War
On 2 April, 1982, a ruling military junta in Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, a British overseas territory that Argentina had claimed since an 1830s dispute on their British settlement. Within days Thatcher sent a naval task force to recapture the islands. Despite the huge logistical difficulties the operation was a success, resulting in a wave of patriotic enthusiasm and support for her government, with Newsweek declaring "The Empire Strikes Back". There were also several controversies that arose as a result of the Falklands War and Thatcher's handling of the conflict.

1983 General Election

The 'Falklands Factor', along with an economic recovery in early 1983, bolstered the government's popularity. The Labour party at this time had split, and there was a new challenge in the SDP-Liberal Alliance, formed by an electoral pact between the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party. However, this grouping failed to make its intended breakthrough, despite briefly holding an opinion poll lead. In the June 1983 general election, the Conservatives won 42.4% of the vote, the Labour party 27.6% and the Alliance 25.4% of the vote. Although the Conservatives' share of the vote had fallen slightly (1.5%) since 1979, Labour's vote had fallen by far more (9.3%) and in Britain's first past the post system, the Conservatives won a landslide victory even though it had the support of less than 43% of the electorate. This resulted in the Conservative Party having an overall majority of 144 MPs.

1983–1987

Thatcher was committed to reducing the power of the trades unions. Several unions launched strikes in response to legislation introduced to curb their power, but these actions eventually collapsed, and gradually Thatcher's reforms reduced the power and influence of the unions.

The confrontation over strikes, ordered illegally without a national ballot in 1984-85 by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in opposition to proposals to close a large number of mines, proved decisive. Police tactics during the strikes came under criticism from civil libertarians, but the images of crowds of militant miners attempting to prevent other miners from working proved a shock even to some supporters of the strikes. Two miners, Dean Hancock and Russell Shankland, were convicted of the murder of David Wilkie, a taxi driver, whom they killed by throwing a 46lb slab of concrete through the windscreen of his car from a bridge as he drove beneath it. He was driving a colleague of theirs, David Williams, to work. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment [15]. A group of workers, resigned to the impending failure of the actions, worn down by months of protests, and angry at the NUM's failure to hold a national strike ballot, began to defy the Union's rulings, starting splinter groups and advising workers that returning to work was the only viable option. The Miners' Strike lasted a full year before the NUM leadership conceded without a deal. The Conservative government proceeded to close all but 15 of the country's pits, with the remaining 15 being sold off and privatised in 1994. The defeat of the miners' strike led to a long period of demoralization in the whole of the trade union movement.

At the end of March 1984, four South Africans were arrested in Coventry, remanded in custody, and charged with contravening the UN arms embargo, which prohibited exports to apartheid South Africa of military equipment. Mrs Thatcher took a personal interest in the Coventry Four, and 10 Downing Street requested daily summaries of the case from the prosecuting authority, HM Customs and Excise.[16] Within a month, the Coventry Four had been freed from jail and allowed to travel to South Africa – on condition that they returned to England for their trial later that year. In April 1984, Thatcher sent senior British diplomat, Sir John Leahy, to negotiate the release of 16 Britons who had been taken hostage by the Angolan rebel leader, Jonas Savimbi. At the time, Savimbi's UNITA guerrilla movement was financed and supported militarily by the apartheid regime of South Africa. On 26 April 1984, Leahy succeeded in securing the release of the British hostages at the UNITA base in Jamba, Angola.[17] In June 1984 Thatcher invited apartheid South Africa's president, P. W. Botha, and foreign minister, Pik Botha, to Chequers in an effort to stave off growing international pressure for the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa, where Britain had invested heavily. She reportedly urged President Botha to end apartheid; to release Nelson Mandela; to halt the harassment of black dissidents; to stop the bombing of African National Congress (ANC) bases in front-line states; and to comply with UN Security Council resolutions and withdraw from Namibia.[18] However Botha ignored these demands. In an interview with Hugo Young for The Guardian in July 1986, Thatcher expressed her belief that economic sanctions against South Africa would be immoral because they would make thousands of black workers unemployed.[19] In August 1984, foreign minister, Pik Botha, decided not to allow the Coventry Four to return to stand trial, thereby forfeiting £200,000 bail money put up by the South African embassy in London. The Coventry Four affair, and Mrs Thatcher's alleged involvement in it, would hit the headlines four years later when British diplomat, Patrick Haseldine, wrote a letter to the Guardian newspaper on 7 December 1988.[20]

On the early morning of 12 October 1984, the day before her 59th birthday, Thatcher escaped injury in the Brighton hotel bombing during the Conservative Party Conference when her hotel room was bombed by the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Five people died in the attack. A prominent member of the Cabinet, Norman Tebbit, was injured, and his wife Margaret was left paralysed. Thatcher herself would have been injured if not for the fact that she was delayed from using the bathroom (which suffered more damage than the room she was in at the time the IRA bomb detonated). Thatcher insisted that the conference open on time the next day and made her speech as planned in defiance of the bombers, a gesture which won widespread approval across the political spectrum.[21]

On 15 November 1985, Thatcher signed the Hillsborough Anglo-Irish Agreement with Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, the first time a British government gave the Republic of Ireland a say (albeit advisory) in the governance of Northern Ireland. The agreement was greeted with fury by Northern Irish unionists.

Thatcher's political and economic philosophy emphasised reduced state intervention, free markets, and entrepreneurialism. After the 1983 election, the Government sold off most of the large utilities, starting with British Telecom, which had been in public ownership since the late 1940s. Many people took advantage of share offers, although many sold their shares immediately for a quick profit and therefore the proportion of shares held by individuals rather than institutions did not increase. The policy of privatisation, while anathema to many on the left, has become synonymous with Thatcherism. Wider share-ownership and council house sales became known as "popular capitalism" to its supporters (a term coined by John Redwood).

In the Cold War, Mrs Thatcher supported United States President Ronald Reagan's policies of deterrence against the Soviets. This contrasted with the policy of détente which the West had pursued during the 1970s, and caused friction with allies who still adhered to the idea of détente. US forces were permitted by Mrs. Thatcher to station nuclear cruise missiles at British bases, arousing mass protests by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. However, she later was the first Western leader to respond warmly to the rise of the future reformist Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, declaring that she liked him and describing him as "a man we can do business with" after a meeting in 1984, three months before he came to power. This was a start of a move by the West back to a new détente with the USSR under Gorbachev's leadership, which coincided with the final erosion of Soviet power prior to its eventual collapse in 1991. Thatcher outlasted the Cold War, which ended in 1989, and those who share her views on it credit her with a part in the West's victory, by both the deterrence and détente postures.

In 1985, as a deliberate snub, the University of Oxford voted to refuse her an honorary degree in protest against her cuts in funding for higher education. [22] This award had always previously been given to all Prime Ministers who had been educated at Oxford.

Her liking for defence ties with the United States was demonstrated in the Westland affair when she acted with colleagues to allow the helicopter manufacturer Westland, a vital defence contractor, to refuse to link with the Italian firm Agusta in order for it to link with the management's preferred option, Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation of the United States. Defence Secretary Michael Heseltine, who had pushed the Agusta deal, resigned in protest after this, and remained an influential critic and potential leadership challenger. He would eventually prove instrumental in Thatcher's fall in 1990.

In 1986, her government controversially abolished the Greater London Council (GLC), then led by the strongly left-wing Ken Livingstone, and six Metropolitan County Councils (MCCs). The government claimed this was an efficiency measure. However, Thatcher's opponents held that the move was politically motivated, as all of the abolished councils were controlled by Labour, had become powerful centres of opposition to her government, and were in favour of higher local government taxes and public spending. Several of them had however rendered themselves politically vulnerable by committing scarce public funds to causes widely seen as political and even extreme.

Thatcher had two notable foreign policy successes in her second term.
  • In 1984, she visited China and signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration with Deng Xiaoping on 19 December, which committed the People's Republic of China to award Hong Kong the status of a "Special Administrative Region". Under the terms of the One Country, Two Systems agreement, China was obliged to leave Hong Kong's economic status unchanged after the handover on 1 July 1997 for a period of fifty years – until 2047.
  • At the Dublin European Council in November 1979, Mrs Thatcher argued that the United Kingdom paid far more to the European Economic Community than it received in spending. She famously declared at the summit: "We are not asking the Community or anyone else for money. We are simply asking to have our own money back". Her arguments were successful and at the June 1984 Fontainebleau Summit, the EEC agreed on an annual rebate for the United Kingdom, amounting to 66% of the difference between Britain's EU contributions and receipts. This still remains in effect, although Tony Blair later agreed to significantly reduce the size of the rebate. It periodically causes political controversy among the members of the European Union.

1987–1990

By leading her party to victory in the 1987 general election with a 101 seat majority, riding an economic boom against a weak Labour opposition advocating unilateral nuclear disarmament, Margaret Thatcher became the longest continuously serving Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since Lord Liverpool (1812 to 1827). Most United Kingdom newspapers supported her—with the exception of The Daily Mirror, The Guardian and The Independent—and were rewarded with regular press briefings by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham. She was known as "Maggie" in the tabloids, and her opponents on their marches were given to chanting the slogan "Maggie Out!" Her unpopularity on the left is evident from the lyrics of several contemporary pop-music songs.[23]

Though an early backer of decriminalization of male homosexuality (see above), Thatcher, at the 1987 Conservative party conference, issued the statement that "Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay". Backbench Conservative MPs and Peers had already begun a backlash against the 'promotion' of homosexuality and, in December 1987, the controversial 'Section 28' was added as an amendment to what became the Local Government Act 1988. This legislation has since been abolished by Tony Blair's Labour administration.

Thatcher, the former chemist, became publicly concerned with environmental issues in the late 1980s. In 1988, she made a major speech [24] accepting the problems of global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain.

At Bruges, Belgium, in 1988, Thatcher made a speech in which she outlined her opposition to proposals from the European Community for a federal structure and increasing centralisation of decision-making. Although she had supported British membership, Thatcher believed that the role of the EC should be limited to ensuring free trade and effective competition, and feared that new EC regulations would reverse the changes she was making in the UK: "We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels". She was specifically against Economic and Monetary Union, through which a single currency would replace national currencies, and for which the EC was making preparations, now known as the euro and in force as legal tender since 2002 in twelve European countries. Britain has so far remained outside the so-called eurozone. The speech caused an outcry from other European leaders, and exposed for the first time the deep split that was emerging over European policy inside her Conservative Party.

Thatcher's popularity once again declined, in 1989, as the economy suffered from high interest rates. She blamed her Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, who had been following an economic policy which was a preparation for monetary union; in an interview for the Financial Times, in November 1987, Thatcher claimed not to have been told of this and did not approve.[25]

At a meeting before the Madrid European Community summit in June 1989, Lawson and Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe forced Thatcher to agree to the circumstances under which she would join the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a preparation for monetary union and the abolition of the Pound Sterling. At the meeting, they both claimed they would resign if their demands were not met.[26] Thatcher responded by demoting Howe and by listening more to her adviser Sir Alan Walters on economic matters. Lawson resigned that October, feeling that Thatcher had undermined him.

That November, Thatcher was challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party by Sir Anthony Meyer. As Meyer was a virtually unknown backbench MP, he was viewed as a "stalking horse" candidate for more prominent members of the party. Thatcher easily defeated Meyer's challenge, but there were sixty ballot papers either cast for Meyer or abstaining, a surprisingly large number for a sitting Prime Minister. Her supporters in the Party, however, viewed the results as a success, claiming that after ten years as Prime Minister and with approximately 370 Conservative MPs voting, the opposition was surprisingly small.[27]

Thatcher's new system to replace local government taxes, outlined in the Conservative manifesto for the 1987 election, was introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990. The rates were replaced by the Community Charge (more widely known as the "poll tax"), which applied the same amount to every individual resident, with discounts for low earners. This was to be the most universally unpopular policy of her premiership. Individuals seeking to avoid paying their share of the costs of local government effectively disenfranchised themselves by removing themselves from the electoral register.

Additional problems emerged when many of the tax rates set by local councils proved to be much higher than predicted. Opponents of the Community Charge banded together to resist bailiffs and disrupt court hearings of Community Charge debtors. The Labour MP, Terry Fields, was jailed for 60 days for refusing on principle to pay his Community Charge. As the Prime Minister continued to refuse to compromise on the tax and as many as one in five people had still not paid, unrest mounted and culminated in a number of riots. The most serious of these happened in London on 31 March 1990, during a protest at Trafalgar Square, London, which more than 100,000 protesters attended. The huge unpopularity of the tax was seen as a major factor in Thatcher's downfall.[28]

One of Thatcher's final acts in office was to put pressure on US President George H. W. Bush to deploy troops to the Middle East to drive Saddam Hussein's army out of Kuwait. Bush was somewhat apprehensive about the plan, but Thatcher's memoirs summarise her advice to him during a telephone conversation with the words, "this was no time to go wobbly!" [29]

On the Friday before the Conservative Party conference in October 1990, Thatcher ordered her new Chancellor of the Exchequer John Major to reduce interest rates by 1%. Major persuaded her that the only way to maintain monetary stability was to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism at the same time, despite not meeting the 'Madrid conditions'. The Conservative Party conference that year saw a large degree of unity; few who attended could have imagined that Mrs Thatcher had only a matter of weeks left in office.

Fall from power

See also: Conservative Party (UK) leadership election, 1990


Thatcher's political "assassination" was, according to witnesses such as Alan Clark, one of the most dramatic episodes in British political history. The idea of a long-serving prime minister — undefeated at the polls — being ousted by an internal party ballot might at first sight seem bizarre. However, by 1990, opposition to Thatcher's policies on local government taxation (the community charge, or poll tax) [30], her Government's perceived mishandling of the economy (in particular the high interest rates of 15% that eroded her support among home owners and business people), and the divisions opening in the Conservative Party over European integration made her seem increasingly politically vulnerable and her party increasingly divided. Her distaste for consensus politics and willingness to override colleagues' opinions, including that of Cabinet, emboldened the backlash against her when it did occur.[31]Others cited her strong uncompromising personality. The dislike for Thatcher that had previously come primarily from her political opponents was now being expressed by some members of her own party.

On 1 November 1990, Sir Geoffrey Howe, one of Thatcher's oldest and staunchest supporters, resigned from his position as Deputy Prime Minister in protest at Thatcher's European policy. In his resignation speech in the House of Commons two weeks later, he suggested that the time had come for "others to consider their own response to the tragic conflict of loyalties" with which he stated that he had wrestled for perhaps too long. Her former cabinet colleague Michael Heseltine subsequently challenged her for the leadership of the party, and attracted sufficient support in the first round of voting to prolong the contest to a second ballot. Though she initially stated that she intended to contest the second ballot, Thatcher decided, after consulting with her Cabinet colleagues, to withdraw from the contest. On 22 November, at just after 9.30 a.m., she announced to the Cabinet that she would not be a candidate in the second ballot. Shortly afterwards, her staff made public what was, in effect, her resignation statement:


Having consulted widely among my colleagues, I have concluded that the unity of the Party and the prospects of victory in a General Election would be better served if I stood down to enable Cabinet colleagues to enter the ballot for the leadership. I should like to thank all those in Cabinet and outside who have given me such dedicated support.
Neil Kinnock, Leader of the Opposition, proposed a motion of no confidence in the government, and Margaret Thatcher seized the opportunity this presented on the day of her resignation to deliver one of her most memorable performances:


...a single currency is about the politics of Europe, it is about a federal Europe by the back door. So I shall consider the proposal of the Honourable Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). Now where were we? I am enjoying this."
She supported John Major as her successor and he duly won the leadership contest, although in the years to come her approval of Major would fall away. After her resignation a MORI poll found that 52% agreed with the proposition that "On balance she had been good for the country", while 48% disagreed thinking she had been bad.[32] In 1991, she was given a long and unprecedented standing ovation at the party's annual conference, although she politely rejected calls from delegates for her to make a speech. She did, however, occasionally speak in the House of Commons after she was Prime Minister. She retired from the House at the 1992 election, at the age of 66 years. Her continued presence in the House of Commons after the resignation was thought to be a destabilising influence on the Conservative government.

Post-political career

In 1992, Margaret Thatcher was raised to the House of Lords by the conferment of a life peerage as Baroness Thatcher, of Kesteven in the County of Lincolnshire. She did not take an hereditary title, as she had recommended for Harold Macmillan, later Earl of Stockton, on his ninetieth birthday in 1984. By virtue of the life barony, she entered the House of Lords. She made a series of speeches in the Lords criticising the Maastricht Treaty, describing it as "a treaty too far" and in June 1993 told the Lords: "I could never have signed this treaty".[33] She had also advocated a referendum on the treaty when she returned to the back benches in 1991. She cited A. V. Dicey, to the effect that, since all three main parties were in favour of revisiting the treaty, the people should have their say.[34]

In August 1992, she called for NATO to stop the Serbian assault on Gorazde and Sarajevo in order to end ethnic cleansing and to preserve the Bosnian state. She claimed what was happening in Bosnia was "reminiscent of the worst excesses of the Nazis".[35] In December of that same year she warned that there could be a "holocaust" in Bosnia and, after the first massacre at Srebrenica in April 1993, Thatcher thought it was a "killing field the like of which I thought we would never see in Europe again". She reportedly said to Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary: "Douglas, Douglas, you would make Neville Chamberlain look like a warmonger".[36]

Margaret Thatcher had already been honoured by the Queen in 1990, shortly after her resignation as Prime Minister, when awarded the Order of Merit, one of the UK's highest distinctions. In addition, her husband, Denis Thatcher, had been given a baronetcy in 1991 (ensuring that their son Mark would inherit a title). This was the first creation of a baronetcy since 1965. In 1995, Thatcher was raised to the Order of the Garter, the United Kingdom's highest order of Chivalry.

In July 1992, she was hired by tobacco company Philip Morris Companies, now the Altria Group, as a "geopolitical consultant" for US$250,000 per year and an annual contribution of US$250,000 to her Foundation.

From 1993 to 2000, she served as Chancellor of the College of William and Mary, Virginia, USA, which was established by Royal Charter in 1693. She was also Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, the UK's only private university. She retired from the post in 1998.

She wrote her memoirs in two volumes, The Path to Power and The Downing Street Years. In 1993 The Downing Street Years were turned into a documentary series by the BBC, in which she described the Cabinet rebellion that brought about her resignation as "treachery with a smile on its face".

Although she remained supportive in public, in private she made her displeasure with many of John Major's policies plain, and her views were conveyed to the press and widely reported. She was critical of the rise in public spending under Major, his tax increases, and his support of the European Union. After Tony Blair's election as Labour Party leader in 1994, Thatcher gave an interview in May 1995 in which she praised Blair as "probably the most formidable Labour leader since Hugh Gaitskell. I see a lot of socialism behind their front bench, but not in Mr Blair. I think he genuinely has moved".[37]

In the Conservative leadership election in the aftermath of the Conservatives' landslide defeat at the hands of New Labour, Thatcher voiced her support for William Hague after Kenneth Clarke entered into an alliance with John Redwood. Thatcher reportedly then toured the tea room of the House of Commons, urging Conservative MPs to vote for Hague.

In 1998, Thatcher made an unofficial visit to the former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet, while he was under house arrest in Surrey. Pinochet was fighting extradition for human rights abuses committed during his tenure. Thatcher expressed her support and friendship for Pinochet.[38] Pinochet had been a key ally of Britain during the Falklands War. Also in 1998, she made a £2,000,000 donation to Cambridge University for the endowment of a Margaret Thatcher Chair in Entrepreneurial Studies. She also donated the archive of her personal papers to Churchill College, Cambridge where the collection continues to be expanded.

Margaret Thatcher actively supported the Conservative general election campaign in 2001. In the Conservative leadership election shortly after, Lady Thatcher came out in support of Iain Duncan Smith because she believed he would "make infinitely the better leader" than Kenneth Clarke due to Clarke's "old-fashioned views of the role of the state and his unbounded enthusiasm for European integration".[39]

In 2002, she published Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World detailing her thoughts on international relations since her resignation in 1990. The chapters on the European Union were particularly controversial; she called for a fundamental renegotiation of Britain's membership to preserve the UK's sovereignty and, if that failed, for Britain to leave and join NAFTA. These chapters were serialised in The Times on Monday, 18 March and caused a political furore for the rest of the week until Friday, 22 March when it was announced she had been advised by her doctors to make no more public speeches on health grounds, having suffered several small strokes.[40] According to her former press spokesman Bernard Ingham, Thatcher has no short-term memory as a result of the strokes.[41]

She remains active in various groups, including Conservative Way Forward, the Bruges Group and the European Foundation. She was widowed on 26 June 2003.

On 11 June 2004, Thatcher attended the funeral of, and delivered a tribute via videotape to, former United States President Ronald Reagan at his state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. In view of her failing mental faculties following several small strokes, the message had been pre-recorded several months earlier. Thatcher then flew to California with the Reagan entourage, and attended the memorial service and interment ceremony for President Reagan at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
Enlarge picture
Thatcher attends the official Washington, D.C. memorial service marking the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks, pictured with Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne Cheney.
In December 2004, it was reported that Thatcher had told a private meeting of Conservative MPs that she was against the British Government's plan to introduce identity cards. She is said to have remarked that ID cards were a "Germanic concept and completely alien to this country".[42]

On 13 October 2005, Thatcher marked her 80th birthday with a party at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hyde Park where the guests included Queen Elizabeth II, The Duke of Edinburgh, and Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy. There, Geoffrey Howe, now Lord Howe of Aberavon, commented on her political career: "Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible."

In September 2006, Thatcher attended the official Washington, D.C. memorial service marking the 5th anniversary of the September 11th terror attacks . She attended as a guest of the U.S. Vice President, Dick Cheney, and met with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit. It marked her first visit to the United States since the funeral for former U.S. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in April 2006.[43]

On 12 November 2006, she appeared at the Remembrance Day parade at the Cenotaph in London, leaning heavily on the arm of former Prime Minister, John Major. One week later, she released an effusive statement of condolence on the death of her friend and economic mentor, Milton Friedman, the man often described as the inspiration behind Thatcherism. On 10 December she announced she was "deeply saddened" by the death of the former Chilean dictator General Pinochet.[44]

On 21 February 2007 as a statue of her was unveiled in the British Houses of Parliament, Lady Thatcher made a rare and brief speech in the members' lobby of the House of Commons. She said: "I might have preferred iron - but bronze will do... It won't rust. And, this time I hope, the head will stay on." (A previous statue in stone had been attacked and decapitated while on public exhibition.[45])

On 17 June 2007 Lady Thatcher attended a ceremony marking the 25th anniversary of the end of the Falklands War, taking her place on a podium outside Buckingham Palace along with then Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York.

On 13 September 2007, Lady Thatcher was invited to 10 Downing Street to have tea with Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his wife, Sarah. Gordon Brown referred to Lady Thatcher as a:
"conviction politician. I'm a conviction politician just like her".[46]

Legacy

Enlarge picture
Thatcher (left) is awarded the 1998 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award by former U.S. First Lady Nancy Reagan (right)


Thatcher may be remembered most of all for her remark "There is no such thing as society" [47] to the reporter Douglas Keay, for Woman's Own magazine, 23 September 1987. This remark has frequently been quoted out of its full context and the surrounding remarks were as follows:

"I think we've been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it's the government's job to cope with it. 'I have a problem, I'll get a grant.' 'I'm homeless, the government must house me.' They're casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."[48]


In 1996, the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair investigated the Thatcher government's record in dealing with Saddam Hussein. It revealed how £1bn of Whitehall money was used in soft loan guarantees for British exporters to Iraq. The judge found that during Baghdad's protracted invasion of Iran in the 1980s, officials destroyed documents relating to the export of Chieftain tank parts to Jordan which ended up in Iraq. Ministers clandestinely relaxed official guidelines to help private companies sell machine tools which were used in munitions factories. The British company Racal exported sophisticated Jaguar V radios to the former Iraqi dictator's army on credit. Members of the Conservative cabinet refused to stop lending guaranteed funds to Saddam even after he executed a British journalist, Farzad Bazoft, Thatcher’s cabinet minuting that they did not want to damage British industry.

New Labour and Blairism have incorporated much of the economic, social and political tenets of "Thatcherism" in the same manner as, in a previous era, the Conservative Party from the 1950s until the days of Edward Heath accepted many of the basic assumptions of the welfare state instituted by Labour governments. The curtailing and large-scale dismantling of elements of the welfare state under Thatcher have largely remained. As well, Thatcher's program of privatising state-owned enterprises has not been reversed. Indeed, successive Tory and Labour governments have further curtailed the involvement of the state in the economy and have further dismantled public ownership.

Thatcher's impact on the trade union movement in Britain has been lasting, with the breaking of the miners' strike of 1984-1985 seen as a watershed moment, or even a breaking point, for a union movement which has been unable to regain the degree of political power it exercised up through the 1970s. Unionisation rates in Britain have permanently declined since the 1980s, and the legislative instruments introduced to curtail the impact of strikes have not been reversed. The Labour Party has worked to loosen its ties to the trade union movement . Although the power of trade unions is still significantly lower than it was before Thatcher came to power, the Employment Relations Act 2004 was introduced under the Blair government to make statutory recognition of trade unions accessible and to further protect workers taking industrial action.

Thatcher's legacy has continued to strongly influence the Conservative Party itself. Successive leaders, starting with John Major, and continuing in opposition with William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard, have struggled with real or perceived factions in the Parliamentary and national party to determine what parts of her heritage should be retained or jettisoned. One cannot yet determine what the role of Thatcherism will be under the leadership of David Cameron.

Thatcher is credited by Ronald Reagan with persuading him that Mikhail Gorbachev was sincere in his desire to reform and liberalize the Soviet Union. The resulting thaw in East-West relations helped to end the Cold War. In recognition of this, Lady Thatcher was awarded the 1998 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award by Mrs. Nancy Reagan. The award is only given to those who "have made monumental and lasting contributions to the cause of freedom worldwide," and "embody President Reagan's life long belief that one man or woman can truly make a difference." President Ronald Reagan, who was not able to attend the ceremony, was a longtime friend of Lady Thatcher.[49]

In a list compiled by New Statesman in 2006, she was voted fifth in the list of "Heroes of our time".[50] She was also named a "Hero of Freedom" by the libertarian magazine Reason.[51]

In February 2007, she became the first Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to be honoured with a statue in the House of Commons while still alive. The statue is made of bronze and stands opposite her political hero and predecessor, Winston Churchill.[52] The statue, by sculptor Antony Dufort, shows her as if she were addressing the House of Commons, with her right arm outstretched.[53] Thatcher said she was thrilled with it.[54]

In March, 2007, Variety reported that a film from the makers of the Oscar-winning drama The Queen were planning a film on Thatcher's days leading up to the Falklands War. As of late summer 2007, no stars have been attached to the project, which is still in planning stages. [1]

On 30 September 2007, William Hague at the Conservative Party Conference, referred to Lady Thatcher as "the Greatest Prime Minister".

Views

Enoch Powell

On Enoch Powell's death, Margaret Thatcher said:
"There will never be anybody else so compelling as Enoch Powell...He had a rare combination of qualities all founded on an unfaltering belief in God, an unshakable loyalty to family and friends and an unswerving devotion to our country"[55]

Titles and honours

Enlarge picture
The arms of Margaret Thatcher. The admiral represents the Falklands War, the image of Sir Isaac Newton her background as a chemist and her birth town Grantham.

Titles from birth

Titles Baroness Thatcher has held from birth, in chronological order:
  • Miss Margaret Roberts (13 October 1925 – 13 December 1951)
  • Mrs Denis Thatcher (13 December 1951 – 8 October 1959)
  • Mrs Denis Thatcher, MP (8 October 1959 – 22 June 1970)
  • The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, MP (22 June 1970 – 7 December 1990)
  • The Rt Hon. Margaret Thatcher, OM, MP (7 December 1990 – 4 February 1991)
  • The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM, MP (4 February 1991 – 16 March 1992)
  • The Rt Hon. Lady Thatcher, OM (16 March 1992 – 26 June 1992)
  • The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, OM, PC (26 June 1992 – 22 April 1995)
  • The Rt Hon. The Baroness Thatcher, LG, OM, PC (22 April 1995 – )

Honours

  • Lady of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (LG)
  • Member of the Order of Merit (OM)
  • Member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council (PC)
  • Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS)
  • Honorary member of the gentlemen's club the Carlton Club, and the only woman entitled to full membership rights.

Foreign honours

  • Presidential Medal of Freedom
  • Republican Senatorial Medal of Freedom
  • Patron of the Heritage Foundation
  • Ronald Reagan Freedom Award
  • In December 1999 Thatcher was among 18 included in Gallup's List of Widely Admired People of the 20th Century, from a poll conducted of the American people.

Chancellorships

  • Buckingham University (1992–1998)
  • College of William & Mary, Virginia, USA (1993–2000)

Commemorations

  • Falkland Islands
  • Margaret Thatcher Day (public holiday), 10 January
  • Thatcher Drive, Stanley
  • South Georgia
  • Thatcher Peninsula

Whre's Andy, cyberspace-lly?

  • http://www.geocities.com/seekingandresagostini/1.html

Andy on The Science Statement…



The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, about “science” refers: “…THE OBSERVATION, IDENTIFICATION, DESCRIPTION, EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION, and theoretical explanation of phenomena…Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena…SUCH ACTIVITIES APPLIED TO AN OBJECT OF INQUIRY OR STUDY… METHODOLOGICAL ACTIVITY, DISCIPLINE, OR STUDY…AN ACTIVITY THAT APPEARS TO REQUIRE STUDY AND METHOD…KNOWLEDGE, ESPECIALLY THAT GAINED THROUGH EXPERIENCE….”

Although I do not have a diploma to claim to be a scientist, I must state that, out the above definition, the upper-cased phrases in the definition do apply to me.

I have been surrounded all my life for some of the most challenging entrepreneurs in the world. I have been lucky. Many of them are from the U.S., U.K., Japan, Canada, Spain, Brazil, European Union, etc.

Since 1996, I have mentors and tutors and supervisors and colleagues from the hardest core of the scientific arena. I have been blessed. I have a thirst for scientific knowledge beyond the boldest dreams. And I will marshal, on the doubles, all my way to capture more and more of the avant-garde state of the art at any cost and forever.

Fine arts are a way to scan around for knowledge. Science, and everyone is a scientist documented or undocumented, is another way to capture knowledge, skill, competencies, insights, etc.

I respect all occupations and professions, especially which of those consummated scientists. Who knows? Someday I may tender a little gift, from my utmost stubbornness, recursive, forever search, to humankind.

In the mean time, my in-depth research, analyses, consultancy, e-publishing, and blogging will carry on with a Davincian mind and a Einstenian, a la “gendaken”, brain, that is, if I may. Yes, I will and without a fail.

More information on Andy at my BIO.

Andy on The Science Statement…

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, about “science” refers: “…THE OBSERVATION, IDENTIFICATION, DESCRIPTION, EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION, and theoretical explanation of phenomena…Such activities restricted to a class of natural phenomena…SUCH ACTIVITIES APPLIED TO AN OBJECT OF INQUIRY OR STUDY… METHODOLOGICAL ACTIVITY, DISCIPLINE, OR STUDY…AN ACTIVITY THAT APPEARS TO REQUIRE STUDY AND METHOD…KNOWLEDGE, ESPECIALLY THAT GAINED THROUGH EXPERIENCE….”

Although I do not have a diploma to claim to be a scientist, I must state that, out the above definition, the upper-cased phrases in the definition do apply to me.

I have been surrounded all my life for some of the most challenging entrepreneurs in the world. I have been lucky. Many of them are from the U.S., U.K., Japan, Canada, Spain, Brazil, European Union, etc.

Since 1996, I have mentors and tutors and supervisors and colleagues from the hardest core of the scientific arena. I have been blessed. I have a thirst for scientific knowledge beyond the boldest dreams. And I will marshal, on the doubles, all my way to capture more and more of the avant-garde state of the art at any cost and forever.

Fine arts are a way to scan around for knowledge. Science, and everyone is a scientist documented or undocumented, is another way to capture knowledge, skill, competencies, insights, etc.

I respect all occupations and professions, especially which of those consummated scientists. Who knows? Someday I may tender a little gift, from my utmost stubbornness, recursive, forever search, to humankind.

In the mean time, my in-depth research, analyses, consultancy, e-publishing, and blogging will carry on with a Davincian mind and a Einstenian, a la “gendaken”, brain, that is, if I may. Yes, I will and without a fail.

More information on Andy at my BIO.

The Singularity

  • http://www.vingesingularity.blogspot.com/

Andy's BIO

  • http://www.AndresBio.blogspot.com/

References on Andres Agostini! - Arlington, Virginia, USA

  • http://www.AndyReferences.blogspot.com

AgoSurvey...

  • http://www.agosurvey.blogspot.com/

Agostini Zone !!!

  • http://www.agozone.blogspot.com/

Complete Science!

  • http://www.completescience.blogspot.com/

GOOGLE it!

  • http://www.google.com/

GMAIL

  • https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?&.src=ym

I-D-E-A-S-T-R-A-T-A

  • http://www.ideastrata.blogspot.com/

I D E A N A T I O N !

  • http://www.ideasnation.blogspot.com/

HOTMAIL

  • http://login.live.com/login.srf?wa=wsignin1.0&rpsnv=10&ct=1207589642&rver=4.5.2130.0&wp=MBI&wreply=http:%2F%2Fmail.live.com%2Fdefault.aspx&id=64855

Yahoo Mail !!!

  • https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?&.src=ym

Definition of "TRM"

  • http://www.TransRiskManagement.blogspot.com/

Andy in Wikipedia ...

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Acc_Group_Advisor

Andy...Webcasted....

  • http://www.agostiniwebcasted.blogspot.com/

Seeking out Andy....!

  • http://www.search.com/search?q=%22andres+agostini%22+%22arlington%22+%22blogspot%22&nav=1.10.5.10
  • http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=%22andres+agostini%22+%22arlington%22+%22blogspot%22&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8
  • http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=%22andres+agostini%22+%22arlington%22+%22blogspot%22&go=&form=QBRE
  • http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22andres+agostini%22+%22arlington%22+%22blogspot%22&btnG=Google+Search

"Risk Essential", extracts, by Amazon.com

  • http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0071429662/ref=sib_dp_pt#reader-link

F-U-T-U-R-E___W-I-T-H-O-U-T___B-O-R-D-E-R-S

F U T U R E_ W I T H O U T _B O R D E R S !!!

Arlington, Virginia, USA



Openness and the Metaverse Singularity

By
Jamais Cascio

The four worlds of the Metaverse Roadmap could also represent four pathways to a Singularity. But they also represent potential dangers. An "open-access Singularity" may be the answer. The people who ... (November 7th 2007)

What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen?

By
Vernor Vinge

It's 2045 and nerds in old-folks homes are wandering around, scratching their heads, and asking plaintively, "But ... but, where's the Singularity?" Science fiction writer Vernor Vinge--who originated... (March 14th 2007)

Foreword to The Intelligent Universe

By
Ray Kurzweil

The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublim... (February 2nd 2007)

[
Click here
to check out all The Singularity articles]


BREAKPOINT: terrorists vs. transhumanists

By
Richard A. Clarke

Former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke
�s BREAKPOINT novel, set in the year 2012, is based on emerging technologies. "Globegrid," a high-speed global network, links supercomputers worldwide. Combi... (May 18th 2007)

Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III

By
William B. Scott

Space Wars by Willliam Scott, Michael Coumatos, and William Birnes, Forge Books (April 17, 2007) describes how the first hours of World War III might play out in the year 2010. While fiction, it's bas... (April 17th 2007)

The Moon as backup drive for civilization

By KurzweilAI.net
Imaginative new ideas for using space to protect civilization against existential risks, such as killer asteroids, nuclear war, and global terrorism, are in the works. The public increasingly sees NAS... (September 24th 2006)

[
Click here
to check out all Dangerous Futures articles]


Why Language Is All Thumbs

By
Chip Walter

Toolmaking not only resulted in tools, but also the reconfiguration of our brains so they comprehended the world on the same terms as our toolmaking hands interacted with it. With mirror neurons, some... (March 15th 2008)

AI Meets the Metaverse: Teachable AI Agents Living in Virtual Worlds

By
Ben Goertzel

Online virtual worlds have the power to accelerate and catalyze the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). As AGIs involved in this metaverse become progressively more intelligent from ... (October 18th 2007)

The Age of Virtuous Machines

By
J. Storrs Hall

In the "hard takeoff" scenario, a psychopathic AI suddenly emerges at a superhuman level, achieving universal dominance. Hall suggests an alternative: we've gotten better because we've become smarter,... (June 1st 2007)

[
Click here
to check out all How to Build a Brain articles]


Gelernter, Kurzweil debate machine consciousness

By
Rodney Brooks
, Ray Kurzweil, and David Gelernter
Are we limited to building super-intelligent robotic "zombies" or will it be possible and desirable for us to build conscious, creative, volitional, perhaps even "spiritual" machines? David Gelernter ... (December 6th 2006)

Cyber Sapiens

By
Chip Walter

...We will no longer be Homo sapiens, but Cyber sapiens--a creature part digital and part biological that will have placed more distance between its DNA and the destinies they force upon us than any o... (October 26th 2006)

Why We Can Be Confident of Turing Test Capability Within a Quarter Century

By
Ray Kurzweil

The advent of strong AI (exceeding human intelligence) is the most important transformation this century will see, and it will happen within 25 years, says Ray Kurzweil, who will present this paper at... (July 13th 2006)

[
Click here
to check out all Will Machines Become Conscious? articles]


Bootstrapping our way to an ageless future

By
Aubrey de Grey

Biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey expects many people alive today to live to 1000 years of age and to avoid age-related health problems even at that age. In this excerpt from his just-published,... (September 19th 2007)

Press ignores bias in study of multivitamins and prostate cancer

By
Ray Kurzweil
and Terry Grossman
In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil... (May 25th 2007)

Strategic Sustainable Brain

By
Natasha Vita-More

The human brain faces a challenging future. To cope with accelerating nanotech- and biotech-based developments in an increasingly complex world, compete with emerging superintelligence, and maintain i... (March 31st 2006)

[
Click here
to check out all Living Forever articles]


How to Build a Virtual Human

By
Peter Plantec

Virtual Humans is the first book with instructions on designing a "V-human," or synthetic person. Using the programs on the included CD, you can create animated computer characters who can speak, dial... (October 20th 2003)

Remarks about Tod Machover In Presenting the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music

By
Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil presented the 2003 Ray Kurzweil Award of Technology in Music to Tod Machover at the Fourth Annual Telluride Tech Festival (August 8-10, 2003). The award was in recognition of Machover's p... (August 11th 2003)

Glitches Reloaded

By
Peter B. Lloyd

In Matrix Reloaded, how can Neo fly and use telekinesis if the Matrix is supposed to a physics simulation? Peter Lloyd decodes this and other technical enigmas--reverse-engineering the design of the M... (June 2nd 2003)

[
Click here
to check out all Virtual Realities articles]


EGOGRAM 2007

By
Sir Arthur C. Clarke

The Golden Age of space travel is still ahead of us. Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will gain access to the orbital realm -- and then, to the Moon and beyond, says Sir Arthur, 89.... (February 7th 2007)

I'm Confident About Energy, the Environment, Longevity, and Wealth; I'm Optimistic (But Not Necessarily Confident) Of the Avoidance Of Existential Downsides; And I'm Hopeful (But Not Necessarily Optimistic) About a Repeat Of 9-11 (Or Worse)

By
Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil responds to John Brockman's The Edge Annual Question - 2007: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? ... (February 4th 2007)

What the Future Will Bring

By
Ray Kurzweil

"Follow your passion," Ray Kurzweil advised graduates in a commencement address on May 21 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the nation's earliest technological universities. "Creating knowled... (June 15th 2005)

[
Click here
to check out all Visions of the Future articles]


Response to 'The Singularity Is Always Near'

By
Ray Kurzweil

In "The Singularity Is Always Near," an essay in The Technium, an online "book in progress," author Kevin Kelly critiques arguments on exponential growth made in Ray Kurzweil's book, The Singularity I... (May 4th 2006)

Wolfram and Kurzweil Roundtable Discussion

By
Ray Kurzweil
and Stephen Wolfram
"The most dramatic possibility is the universe started from a simple initial condition that had some simple geometrical symmetry. It might be the case that if we turn our telescope off to the west, an... (February 24th 2006)

Ray Kurzweil Responds to Richard Eckersley

By
Ray Kurzweil

"Eckersley bases his romanticized idea of ancient life on communication and the relationships fostered by communication. But much of modern technology is directed at just this basic human need."... (February 3rd 2006)

[
Click here
to check out all Point/Counterpoint articles]


Engines of Creation 2.0: Molecular Engineering: An Approach to the Development of General Capabilities for Molecular Manipulation

By
K. Eric Drexler

Developing the ability to design protein molecules will make it possible to construct molecular machines. These can then build second-generation machines that can perform extremely general synthesis o... (March 20th 2007)

Engines of Creation 2.0: Advice To Aspiring Nanotechnologists

By
K. Eric Drexler

It makes no practical sense to try to build a molecular assembler today. But we can build enabling technologies today, including protein engineering, general macromolecular engineering, and micromanip... (March 15th 2007)

Engines of Creation 2.0: Letter From Author

By
K. Eric Drexler

Engines of Creation in 1986 inspired an explosion of interest in nanotechnology. Version 2.0 updates this classic book, including new concepts for molecular manufacturing and new uses for nanotech, s... (March 15th 2007)

[
Click here
to check out all Nanotechnology articles]

CNN: Device opens the world for blind
The Kurzweil-National Federation of the Blind Reader is featured on CNN's VIDEO page. More info: KNFBReader.com.


Experimental Biology 2008
April 5th, 2008 -- San Diego, CA

Storage Networking World Spring 2008
Sponsored by Storage Networking Industry Association
April 7th, 2008 -- Orlando, Florida

World Innovation Forum
April 8th, 2008 -- New York, NY

Toward a Science of Consciousness 2008
April 8th, 2008 -- Tucson, AZ

RoboBusiness 2008
April 8th, 2008 -- Pittsburgh, PA

14th SSI Conference on Space Manufacturing
Sponsored by Space Studies Institute
April 18th, 2008 -- Princeton, NJ

7th Annual International Symposium Systems Biology and Engineering
Sponsored by Institute for Systems Biology
April 21st, 2008 -- Seattle, WA

NanoManufacturing Conference & Exhibits
Sponsored by Society of Manufacturing Engineers
April 22nd, 2008 -- Framingham, MA

Web 2.0 Expo 2008
April 22nd, 2008 -- San Francisco, CA

The 2nd Annual Cambridge Science Festival
April 26th, 2008 -- Cambridge, MA

Universal Science and Technology ! (Link)

  • http://www.universallyscience.blogspot.com/

Universal Science and Technology!

Universal Science and Technology!

· NASA - Cassini

... Latest News. Want to be a Cassini Scientist for A Day? 04.03.08-- A group
of students from Shirley Avenue Elementary School in Reseda ...

others searched for: cassini huygens, cassini, huygens, cassinihuygens, casini

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/

Used by 8863 visitors

NASA - Space Shuttle

... Latest News. ... View Archives. Latest News. NASA Updates Target Launch Date for Next
Space Shuttle Flight. 03.31.08 - New target is 5:01 pm EDT on May 31. ...

others searched for: shuttle, space shuttle, space, nasa, launch

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/

Used by 8799 visitors

NASA - NASA-International Space Station

... Latest News. Station Crew Welcomes the Jules Verne Vehicle Image above:
The Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle docks to the aft ...

others searched for: iss, international space station, station, space, international

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/

NASA Ames Aviation Systems Division: Latest News

... NASA SimLabs News ... View Archive Site Updates Web site updates. + View List In the
Media Division news as reported by other news outlets. + Read Articles, ...

others searched for:

http://www.aviationsystemsdivision.arc.nasa.gov/news/

WINDS: Publications: Latest News

... Publications - Latest News Felix the Cat. (5) Claws at Central America (September
4, 2007) Hurricane Felix scratches at Nicaragua's coast in this Sept. ...

others searched for:

http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/index.cfm

WINDS: Publications: Archive

... (Latest News). 2006. NASA Sees Rapid Changes in Arctic Sea Ice (September 13,
2006) NASA data shows that Arctic perennial sea ice, which ...

others searched for:

http://winds.jpl.nasa.gov/publications/archive.cfm

NASA SimLabs News

... NASA SimLabs News. ...

others searched for:

http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/newsletter/news.html

NASA - Astrobiology - Latest News

... It contains historical data. For current information about the NASA Astrobiology
Program, please visit http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/. Latest News...
Items:

others searched for:

http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news/index.cfm

NASA - Astrobiology - Latest News

... For current information about the NASA Astrobiology Program, please visit
http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/. Astrobiology: Latest News. News...
Archive:

others searched for:

http://astrobiology.arc.nasa.gov/news/archive.cfm

NASA - NASA's Hurricane News page

... Latest News. For information on the storms of the 2008 hurricane season and
other past seasons, click here. Pancho Losing Its Punch. ...

others searched for:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/news/


To read more,

http://search.nasa.gov/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=latest+news

Publicado por Universal Science and Technology! en 13:02 0 comentarios

Etiquetas: www.AgosBlogs.blogspot.com, www.AndresAgostini.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves2.blogspot.com, www.geocities.com/agosbio/a.html, www.universallyscience.blogspot.com/

Universal Science and Technology!




Universal Science and Technology!



Top Business Stories

  • China signs historic pact with New Zealand
  • Pilots blame BA for chaos at Terminal 5
  • EU clears mobile phone use on flights
  • Telecoms giant sued by 16,000 shareholders
  • HSBC loses files of 370,000 customers
  • Japan's foreign reserves rise to record
  • Complaints soar at U.S. airlines

more Business stories »

U.S. Business at CNN Money

  • Stocks struggle ahead of earnings
  • Can't wait for Alcoa!
  • Issue #1: My business may not survive recession
  • Consumer borrowing slows

Videos in Business

More airline woesMore airline woes video1:10

China and UAE strengthen tiesChina and UAE strengthen ties video2:35

Johan Eliasch on 'Cool Earth'Johan Eliasch on 'Cool Earth' video3:36

all video in Business »

The Boardroom

Green crusader

Green crusader
Meet Johan Eliasch, Chairman of the Head group, who bought a piece of the Amazon rainforest the size of London

Surfing the slump

Executive Education

Executive Education
As a recession looms, business schools must earn their reputations all the more keenly....

http://edition.cnn.com/BUSINESS/

Andres Agostini

Publicado por Universal Science and Technology! en 12:55 0 comentarios

Etiquetas: www.AgosBlogs.blogspot.com, www.AndresAgostini.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves2.blogspot.com, www.geocities.com/agosbio/a.html

Universal Science and Technology!

Universal Science and Technology!

Yahoo says 'no' to Microsoft, again

Yahoo says 'no' to Microsoft, again

Yahoo continued to reject Microsoft's $44.6 billion unsolicited bid for the company Monday. The Internet company is not opposed to some sort of financial deal, but the current offer is too low, chairman Roy Bostock and chief executive Jerry Yang said in a letter responding to Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer. full story

Videos in Technology

Robot cars a realityRobot cars a reality video1:35

Air-powered cars? Really?Air-powered cars? Really? video2:48

Live video streamingLive video streaming video3:58

all video in Technology »

Top Technology Stories

  • 35,000-year-old tools unearthed in Australia
  • Building a burger, Rube Goldberg style
  • Paramount goes 'There' with film clips
  • Strange scienceVideo (4:04)
  • Navajo Nation likely to lose Internet service
  • Site can't ask about sexVideo (2:11)
  • NASA looks low-tech to fix high-tech shaking


http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/science/archive/index.html

Publicado por Universal Science and Technology! en 12:50 0 comentarios

Etiquetas: www.AgosBlogs.blogspot.com, www.AndresAgostini.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves2.blogspot.com, www.geocities.com/agosbio/a.html

Universal Science and Technology!

Universal Science and Technology!

Gray wolf: Still endangered?

The gray wolf was officially removed from the Endangered Species Act's "threatened" list Friday after three decades -- a decision that has stoked controversy among environmentalists and ranchers.

updated Thur April 3, 2008

Frontline Pioneer: Olafur Grimsson

Olafur Ragnar Grimsson is currently enjoying a third term as President of the Republic of Iceland. Since first being elected in 1996, Grimsson has been a passionate advocate of international cooperation in combating climate change.

updated Thur April 3, 2008

Which sectors are the biggest polluters?

updated Thur April 3, 2008

Future Player: Dr Joseph Adelegan

Dr Joseph Adelegan is the Founder and the Executive Chairman of the Global Network for Environment and Economic Development Research -- a front-line African non-profit and non-governmental organization involved in environment and sustainable development issues.

updated Wed April 2, 2008

A timeline of climate change science

Climatology was once a small and often overlooked branch of science. But important discoveries made as the early 19th century have contributed to what is the most important field of scientific study in the world today. Listed below are some key dates in climate change history.

updated Wed April 2, 2008

Future Player: Peter Head

Peter Head is Director of urban design and development at Arup, the global design and business consulting firm.

updated Tue April 1, 2008

Sex, murder, tentacles -- octopuses have it all

Marine biologists studying wild octopuses have found a kinky and violent society of jealous murders, gender subterfuge and once-in-a-lifetime sex.

updated Tue April 1, 2008

Fueling the future

In the coming years we face an unprecedented challenge -- to provide the means for global prosperity, growth and stability from a radically different set of energy sources.

updated Tue April 1, 2008

Climate change: Time is running out

It appears that the scale and seriousness of climate change is at last being grasped. In 2008, we stand on the brink of a historic consensus, not only between scientists, but in the corridors of political power and in boardrooms across the globe.

updated Tue April 1, 2008

Where to store wind-powered energy? Under water!

Since it became a viable energy resource around 20 years ago, wind power has emerged as a leading renewable technology.

Read in-depth and more:

http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/science/archive/index.html

Publicado por Universal Science and Technology! en 12:44 0 comentarios

Etiquetas: www.AgosBlogs.blogspot.com, www.AndresAgostini.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com, www.AndyBelieves2.blogspot.com, www.geocities.com/agosbio/a.html

Suscribirse a: Entradas (Atom)

TO READ MORE,

www.universallyscience.blogspot.com/

Future driven by Andy...

  • http://www.acrossfuture.blogspot.com/

OnLine Books Link...

  • http://books.google.com/

"Andres Agostini Success Laws"

  • http://www.agostinisuccess.blogspot.com/

Video by Andy (April 03, 2008)

REFLECTING ON STRATEGIC PLANNING BY ANDRES AGOSTINI

  • http://www.geocities.com/beyondconsultancy/2.html

Gendaken by Andy

  • http://gendaken.blogspot.com/

The Brightest “Systems Approach” Manager

The Brightest “Systems Approach” Manager

The Boldest Physicist...God Bless Him...

The Boldest Physicist...God Bless Him...

One of My Favorite Physicist...

One of My Favorite Physicist...

Woman Scientist...

Woman Scientist...
Miss Scientist of the Multiverse...

My Smartest LCD Monitor/TV...

My Smartest LCD Monitor/TV...

Sonar's First User...

Sonar's First User...
The Champion of CrossPollinazation...

HyperHuman, that of Extreme Artificial Intelligence....!

HyperHuman, that of Extreme Artificial Intelligence....!

A Non-Biological, Human Champion

A Non-Biological, Human Champion

My preferred painting...

My preferred painting...
By Leonardo Da Vinci

The Source of Pharmaceuticals of Preference...

The Source of Pharmaceuticals of Preference...

My Preferred Congress Building...

My Preferred Congress Building...

My Favorite Parliament...

My Favorite Parliament...

The Brainiest Pet of Preference...

The Brainiest Pet of Preference...
A Phamaceutical Promise!

Complete Science...

  • http://www.completescience.blogspot.com/

Andy Believe....Part 2

  • http://andybelieves2.blogspot.com/

Andy Belives ...Part 3

  • http://andybelieves3.blogspot.com/

Add to del.icio.us

  • https://secure.del.icio.us/login?url=http%3A%2F%2Fpodcasts.cnn.net%2Fcnn%2Fservices%2Fpodcasting%2Flkl%2Fvideo%2F2008%2F02%2F21%2Flkl.podcast.jon.stewart.cnn.m4v&title=Jon%20Stewart&partner=fb&v=4

Sarcozy Address to British Parliament - March 27, 2008

Address by the President of the French Republic to the British Parliament - CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY

Palace of Westminster, 26 March 2008

Madame Speaker of the House of Lords,

Mr Speaker of the House of Commons,

Prime Minister,

Ladies and gentlemen, Members of Parliament,

For the President of the French Republic, it is an exceptional honour to address members of both Houses of the British Parliament.

It is indeed here, within these walls, that modern political life was born. Without this Parliament, would parliamentary democracy have ever existed in the world? Hasn’t this parliamentary practice, begun in this place, become the best guarantee against tyranny?

The history of this institution today influences most contemporary political regimes. This Parliament has become what it is through the fight for the protection of essential individual freedoms and the principle of the consent to taxation. These two fundamental conquests, which this Parliament was the first in the world to achieve, are still today the cornerstones of all our democracies. It is here that parliamentarians have gradually developed what is a party, an electoral programme and finally a majority.

It is through these institutions that the United Kingdom’s greatness has emerged. And I am so honoured to address you precisely because the political heart of the United Kingdom is beating under this roof.

I profoundly believe in the strength of politics. I profoundly believe in the ability of politics to improve the fate of the peoples. This is the whole purpose of politics.

Institutions, however much you upgrade them, exist only to serve the people. The strength of the British people has always been that of a free people who take their own decisions and are ready for the greatest sacrifices to defend their freedom.

How many invincible armadas has your nation defeated? How many battles has it won which everyone thought lost? Your nation has succeeded in taking up so many challenges which seemed out of reach precisely because it quite simply was convinced that its cause was right, because it had faith in itself, in its values, because in all circumstances it has demonstrated an unfailing determination and courage. In this respect, the Battle of Britain was a magnificent achievement.

In the hearts and minds, even of those who fought against it, your nation has stood out through its respect of the Other, its tolerance, its way of life, its freedom of spirit which has been forged throughout a long history full of sound and fury. In all circumstances, it has succeeded in remaining itself, continued thinking for itself, and that was enough for it to embody in the eyes of many a human and political ideal.

So many peoples of its former colonies have remained attached to it precisely because they had gained their freedom in the very name of the principles whose greatness it had shown them.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Members of Parliament

If there is one people with whom you have forged exceptional ties, it’s definitely the French people. Our two countries’ destinies have been closely intertwined for nearly 1,000 years. Since William the Conqueror set off from Normandy to seize hold of the throne of Edward the Confessor, to the reverse journey made by hundreds of thousands of young Britons to participate in the liberation of Europe, our destinies have constantly intersected. France and England fought each other for centuries, each asserting her identity by opposing the other, fighting not because they were too different, but because they were too alike.

We have together laid, each in our own way, the foundations of the union between State and nation, which France and the United Kingdom have best embodied in Europe.

Our nations fought one another for a long time, until the day they understood that what brought them together was more important than what divided them, that they had interests to defend and, even more important still, common values to defend together.

This alliance had a name: the "Entente cordiale". After centuries of hostility and suspicion, it led them to confront together the most terrible ordeals. Suffering and misfortune shared in the brotherhood of arms engendered between us a profound respect.

To those who want to create opposition between the cultures and traditions of the Germanic, Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds, I want to say that we all share what’s most important: the same humanism, the same idea of man and what we call the Western civilization, what we call progress, democracy, freedom are, going beyond all the ups and downs of history, the fruits of centuries of uninterrupted dialogue between our philosophers, our politicians and our peoples.

Tomorrow as yesterday, we shall defend them, constantly reminding ourselves of what unites us and not what divides us.

France hasn’t forgotten, she will never forget that when she was almost annihilated Britain was at her side.

She will never forget the English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish blood mixed with the French blood in the mud of the trenches.

She will never forget the welcome the British people gave General de Gaulle and Free France.

She will never forget the heroic resistance of the British people without which all would have been lost.

She will never forget the fine young people who came from all over the British Empire and laid down their lives on the Normandy beaches and in the surrounding bocages.

As the last century’s wars have shown: like two brothers, what the French people and the British people can accomplish together is far greater than what they can achieve separately.

This brotherhood has gradually grown stronger as France and the United Kingdom have let their similarities take precedence over their differences. Of course, each has retained her originality. You stayed a Monarchy when we became a Republic. We remain committed to the harmony of our Roman law, the vitality of our native soil, technological prowess, everything that so many Britons love in France. You have always favoured contractual freedoms, the dynamism of metropolises, traditions which find their full place in the present, everything that so many French love in your country.

But this is no longer what’s most important. Today, if we want them to, these differences can enable us to complement each other. What’s important is that France and the United Kingdom have never been so close, had such close ties with each other. Today, the number of French citizens living in London make it the seventh-largest French city! Today, the number of British citizens who have chosen to set up home in France has never been so high.

Progressively, over the past decades, France and the United Kingdom have learned to observe each other, understand each other and help each other. In many fields, the United Kingdom has become a model, a benchmark for France and vice versa.

Perhaps what we most admire is this ability your country has always had to change to embrace and often steal a march on world progress, while remaining true to itself.

This is how the United Kingdom has carried out of her own accord, without hesitating, many revolutions which so many other peoples have decided to do only when forced to. But she has never been tempted to opt for the tabula rasa. She has never denied either her history or her identify. All through her history she has changed only to be able to remain herself. And it has been in the full awareness and full assurance of what she is that she has always found the strength and the boldness to change.

The United Kingdom has shown that in the global economy, there was a path to achieve strong growth, full employment and solidarity.

This path is that of reforms to restore the value of effort, encourage innovation, the spirit of enterprise and sense of personal responsibility.

This path is also that of the modernization of central government administration and public services.

The principles allowing the challenges of globalization to be dealt with successfully on one side of the Channel must allow these challenges to be dealt with equally successfully on the other.

The vital objective for France, who like the United Kingdom is rich in history and tradition, with the strength derived from her men and women, thriving because of her wealth and identity, is to gain all she can from what she is, while drawing inspiration from the lessons of successful experiences.

France will carry out her reforms all the more resolutely and faster because, having put them off for too long, she can no longer wait. You can count on my total determination in this respect. France, today, has begun moving again.

One firm belief has inspired my whole political life and driven me since the French entrusted me with the responsibility of heading the State: I wasn’t elected to bow to the inevitable. Moreover, I don’t believe that anything is inevitable. I was elected to create opportunities, to change France though a continuous process of far-reaching reforms.

In a world which has become incredibly dynamic and creative, it is by mobilizing all our strengths, all our energies and all our talents that our nations will maintain their standing and find their full place. This is why I say yes both to globalization and to protection for the workers, yes both to free trade and to defending European interests, yes both to the market and to a judicious policy to help strategic sectors, and yes, finally, both to the Single European Market and to common policies.

In the space of one generation, globalization has taken a new turn. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, it had been thought that history was going to end in the global triumph of democracy and the market.

With the return of friction between different identities and the return of religious fundamentalism, we now know that history hasn’t ended and that it is often tragic.

Yesterday condemned by a whole school of thinking, nations and States must today find an answer to the concerns and at times even anxieties of our fellow citizens. The world is going through huge changes and the nations need facilitators to take them from one era to another. This is the role our two countries must set themselves.

Globalization, which had brought so many answers, opened up so much hope for so many people who previously thought themselves condemned to poverty, has generated new questions, brought different forms of suffering which call for radically new remedies.

The responsibility for finding new forms of civilization to counter all the forces of destruction lies with the democracies.

It is for us, together, to invent these new forms.

In the face of all the completely new problems which are going to have to be resolved, of all the new rules which are going to have to be devised, the United Kingdom and France have a major role to play.

By putting our forces together and with a shared determination, we can contribute to the emergence of a new globalization, promoting freedom and equity, one which is more responsible and fairer.

The truth is that to be equal to their responsibilities, our two countries today need one another.

On behalf of the French people, I have come to invite the British people to write with us a new page of our common history, that of a new Franco-British brotherhood. A brotherhood for the twenty-first century.

What France wants is simple: ever more harmony, ever more cooperation and ever more solidarity.

Let’s discuss together, decide together, and act together. Everything justifies it: our common status as permanent members of the Security Council, our responsibilities as nuclear powers, the influence we each exert in a part of the world, our common membership of the European Union and our passionate commitment to democracy and freedom.

Our countries have comparable influence and strengths. France and the United Kingdom have the same population size, a virtually identical GNP and the same defence priorities. We are both ready to face up to our responsibilities, arms in hand, in the service of peace: nearly 15,000 French soldiers and nearly 15,000 British soldiers are deployed in all the world’s operational theatres. Our two countries have decided to make their ideas heard the world over. In short, our two countries can, if they so wish, perfectly complement each other.

To forestall the danger of the clash of civilizations, the world needs our two old nations who are aware of the depth of history and know the importance of the long term when it comes to understanding the feelings of the peoples.

The world needs two old nations like ours, who long ago gave up dreams of conquest and domination, but have retained from their age-old experience an incomparable knowledge of the world.

If the United Kingdom and France together want more justice, the world will be more just.

If the United Kingdom and France fight together for peace, the world will be more peaceful.

If the United Kingdom and France unite to brave the rising economic storm and jointly propose the necessary reforms, the world will be less uncertain and more prosperous.

If the United Kingdom and France together reflect on the future of financial capitalism, if, together, they express the need for it to be reformed so that the risks are more accurately assessed, so that entrepreneurs once again take precedence over speculators, so the global economy does not continue to rest on a mountain of debts, who will dare to refuse to heed them?

If the United Kingdom and France speak with one voice against climate warming, this voice will be heard even by those who still doubt the extreme gravity of the threat hanging over our planet and the extreme urgency of adopting the necessary measures. I am thinking first of all of the United States, since to prevent an ecological disaster the world needs the Americans. And who better than their most sincere friends can convince them to shoulder the global responsibilities which are theirs, in the very name of the values they share and for which they have shared so many sacrifices.

The United Kingdom and France have both opted resolutely for nuclear energy precisely because they have understood that now, as never before, it was the energy of the future, together assert the incomparable advantages of this energy for combating climate change and guaranteeing the security of supplies, then this argument will have a new reach and force.

If the United Kingdom and France together express their refusal to see the world of the twenty-first century governed with the international institutions of the twentieth, leaving on the sidelines the main emerging powers and their two and a half billion inhabitants, then their voice will be heard throughout the world.

*

Ladies and gentlemen,

Members of Parliament,

What we do together will be wholly meaningful and effective only if we do it first of all with Europe, which is the name we have always given to our common destiny.

Whenever Britain’s fate has been at stake, Europe has been the theatre. Whenever France’s fate has been at stake, Europe has been the theatre.

In the midst of the emerging powers which are gradually taking on their full role on the global stage, our two countries will go on influencing the world’s destiny within a Europe which has come together.

The European Union is our common achievement, one of peace, prosperity and democracy. An unprecedented adventure in the history of mankind: after centuries of wars, deaths and suffering in which England and France have played such a big part, Europe’s peoples have sovereignly decided to build their future together.

No one will ever forget that the first great voice which rose up after the war to call on Europe’s peoples to unite was that of the statesman who had alone embodied the passionate resistance of the British nation. No one will ever forget that the name of Europe’s first father was Winston Churchill.

35 years ago, the United Kingdom chose Europe.

Today, more than ever before, Europe needs the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom needs Europe. Who can think that the United Kingdom would have more influence in the world if she returned to splendid isolation? Who can think that Europe would be stronger without British dynamism? Who can think that the challenges facing our nations today could be resolved better in a strictly national framework?

For this no one is asking the United Kingdom to give up the extremely brotherly and deep-rooted ties which for 300 years have bound her to America, or to abandon her very special relations with the Commonwealth countries.

That would mean asking her to give up being herself. That would above all deprive Europe of the most valuable asset the United Kingdom can bring it: this openness to the world, this exceptional international influence and this culture of diversity Europe needs so much.

Since Europe’s position in the world does not depend only on the number of its inhabitants and quantity of its resources. It depends too and perhaps above all on its ability to spread its influence to every continent thanks to the particular ties of solidarity linking some of its members to vast linguistic and cultural entities which have been shaped by history. What would Europe be without France’s ties with the international Francophone organization, those of Spain with the Hispanic world, of Portugal with the Portuguese-speaking world, and of course of the United Kingdom with the Commonwealth and English-speaking world?

The truth is that at the beginning of the twenty-first century our old European nations can hope to play a role worthy of them only if they know how to act together.

The European Union is our nations’ most remarkable achievement of the past half century. Europe, which had been ravaged by wars, which had twice plunged the world into tragedy, has become a model of peace and cooperation. Europe which had been ruined in 1945 is now one of the most prosperous and dynamic regions of the world.

We have succeeded, in a few decades, in uniting in peace, prosperity and democracy, nations which had always fought each other.

In today’s Europe, we, France and the United Kingdom, see eye to eye far more often than we disagree.

Both our countries want a Europe which respects national identities, a Europe which rejects bureaucracy and does not seek to impose the same standards everywhere.

Both our countries want a Europe capable of providing solutions to the great challenges of today’s world.

For too long, we Europeans have devoted our energy to institutional debates which divided us instead of bringing us together. The Lisbon Treaty puts an end, for a long time, to the clashes of the past: it reforms the operation of the European Union, clearly turning its back on any constitutional pretensions.

From now on, Europe can devote all its energy to concrete projects: the battle against climate change, energy, immigration, development, security and defence and the reform of the common policies.

On these issues, which will be at the heart of the French Presidency in the second half of this year, the United Kingdom and France will act together with a view to achieving the same goals.

The United Kingdom wants a Europe setting the example in the fight against climate change and in environmental protection. France wants this too. We know that this is the most essential objective, the most serious challenge confronting mankind. The planet’s future depends on our response, the one we Europeans give. It’s for us to show the way! It’s for us to give the lead to all the others, from the United States to China and India. We have to invent a new growth, which is both strong and sustainable. Yes, Europe has an essential role to play to achieve a truly universal agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol. But to be credible, Europe must show that it’s ready to apply to itself the disciplines it’s calling for at world level.

This is the issue at the heart of the negotiation which has opened within the EU. The Commission’s proposal implements the commitments we all signed up to last year, at the March European Council. The question is knowing whether we will be ready for the history-changing event of 2009 in Copenhagen. For that we have to be capable of getting agreement between the Europeans before the end of the year. France, like the United Kingdom, is willing to do so: as President of the European Council, I shall do my utmost to achieve this. I look forward to being able to count on the steadfast support of my friend, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the whole British nation.

The United Kingdom wants a Europe which is capable of controlling immigration. France wants this too. It would be totally illusory to believe that we can still have 27 national immigration policies in the era of the great European market. France and the European Union are well aware of this since we have developed exemplary bilateral cooperation, which I am proud to have contributed to when I was Interior Minister. And I am particularly well placed to know that, going beyond this bilateral cooperation, a European approach is needed for any effective and long-term solution. This is why I consider it essential for Europe finally to give itself a common framework: this is the purpose of the European immigration pact which I wish to see adopted under French Presidency.

The United Kingdom wants the agricultural policy to be reformed. France is ready for this. We will see the first stage in the reform between now and the end of the year. I hope this will be the opportunity for a calm and constructive debate, allowing us to find common ground on some major principles: food safety, product quality and consumer protection. How could we not agree on these objectives? Of course, we will have differences, particularly on budgetary matters. But we will have these financial debates as and when.

***

Ladies and gentlemen,

Members of Parliament,

France and the United Kingdom are together confronting the threats against peace and international security. Our armed forces are engaged together in the Balkans and Afghanistan. In Europe, our two countries have an irreplaceable role: France and the United Kingdom account for two thirds of the defence spending of our 25 European partners and double their research efforts. Let’s drop theoretical – I was going to say theological disputes about the Atlantic Alliance and Defence Europe. It is in our and our allies’ interest to strengthen both by developing in Europe the military capabilities that are essential to our security.

It is often said that the United Kingdom and France have contradictory conceptions of Europe and that the clash between our two countries is a structural given of the European enterprise. Admittedly, there have been many disagreements in the past, but there have been even more misunderstandings and cases of incomprehension. I am convinced that the misunderstanding and incomprehension can now be overcome and belong largely to the past.

This new Franco-British brotherhood which I am calling for is essential in a Europe that is taking action.

Of course, for we French, Franco-German friendship is one of the cornerstones of European reconciliation. I am convinced that in today’s Europe the Franco-German engine is still essential. But it is no longer enough to enable Europe to act and bring its full weight to bear. We need to rally the 27. We need first of all this new Franco-British entente.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Members of Parliament,

France and the United Kingdom have an eminent role to play in building a fairer world and contributing to global peace and prosperity.

Our two countries have an important place in the institutions that emerged after World War II: the United Nations, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These institutions must be reformed to make them fairer, stronger and more legitimate. The same applies to the G8 which must be opened up and gradually enlarged to become a G13 or a G14 so it more accurately reflects the new balance in the world. These are major issues because the role of these institutions, these fora, is more essential than ever in a world that is both globalized and subject to tensions jeopardizing peace in the world, and to challenges bringing into question the very future of mankind. Our two countries have the same analysis and are equally resolved on all these issues. I subscribe to everything my friend, Gordon Brown, said in the visionary speech he gave in New Delhi.

Together, our two countries are determined to remain engaged, side-by-side, with all our allies in Afghanistan where a vital struggle is being played out. France put to her Atlantic Alliance allies a coherent, comprehensive strategy to enable the Afghan people and their legitimate government to build a future of peace and development. These proposals have been favourably received. France will therefore propose at the Bucharest summit to strengthen her military presence. We cannot accept the return of the Taliban and al-Qaida in Kabul.

Together, our two countries can make a major contribution to peace between Israelis and Palestinians. We can’t accept seeing dashed the hope born at the conferences in Annapolis and Paris! We can’t accept seeing flouted in Lebanon the wish of an entire people to live in peace and democracy!

Together, our two countries are determined, with the whole international community, to put a stop to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We refuse the trap of the alternative between the Iranian bomb and the bombing of Iran. By combining firmness on sanctions and the offer of dialogue, we are determined to convince Iran that she can become a positive player on the international stage as soon as she complies with international law.

Together, our two countries are resolved to do everything possible to end the tragedy in Darfur. We must act to re-establish security by speeding up the deployment of the joint UN and African Union forces; to relaunch urgently genuine negotiations between those involved in this tragedy; and, finally, to ensure the protection of the refugee and displaced populations in eastern Chad. We cannot accept the extension of this crisis to Sudan’s neighbours. Together, our two governments will work unremittingly for a lasting settlement to the crisis in Sudan and Chad.

Together, they will continue to be the most determined advocates for Africa. Together, they will strive to ensure that progress in peace, human rights and economic growth is lasting. Together, we want to pursue action that is closer to civil society, deliberately youth-oriented and addresses young people’s expectations!

Together, we will plead for human rights, and respect for cultural and religious identity. This is the message the United Kingdom and France conveyed to the Chinese authorities at the beginning of the tragic events in Tibet, emphasizing that there will be a solution, within the framework of Chinese sovereignty, only through dialogue between the Dalai Lama and the Beijing government.

Yes, on all these issues, France and the United Kingdom can do a great deal if they act together!

* * *

France and the United Kingdom are more closely linked today than they have ever been.

We have the same vision of the future of the world and the same resolve to act, from the reform of international organizations to action to address global warming. We have the same commitment to peace and security.

The nature of the challenges has changed, but what has not changed is the need for our two great nations to stand shoulder to shoulder to help shape the world.

More than ever, the time has come, I believe, for the French and British peoples to carry out a profoundly political act: to put behind us our old rivalries so as to build a future in which we will be stronger because we are together.

May a French president, whose youthful dreams were often inspired by Britain’s greatness, convey a brotherly greeting from the French people to the British people and thank them for giving me such a warm welcome.

It will remain etched in my memory and my heart.

Long live Franco-British friendship!

Long live the United Kingdom!

Long live France!

Source: http://www.ambafrance-uk.org/President-Sarkozy-s-speech-to,10414.html

Andy's Own Office

  • http://www.agostinioffice.blogspot.com/

Andy's Wrist Watch Gives Us The Time...

  • http://www.time.gov/timezone.cgi?Eastern/d/-5

Andy's BIO

  • http://agoscv.blogspot.com/

The Photo...

  • http://www.geocities.com/dedicatoryphoto/1.html

GMAC (General Motors Acceptance Corporation) on Andy

  • http://testimonialone.blogspot.com/

ANDRES AGOSTINI AND HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH APPLIED SCIENCES WITH VERNON L. GROSE, BS, MS, D.SC.

  • http://www.geocities.com/intoappliedscience/1.html

STEPHEN J. LOCKWOOD ON ANDRES AGOSTINI

  • http://testiomonialtwo.blogspot.com/

Dr. Carol Bilsborough, Ph.D. (Ernst & Young) on Andy

  • http://agostinimentor.blogspot.com/

Who is Andy Agostini? ...

WHO IS ANDY AGOSTINI?

“Put simply, an inspired, determined soul, with an audacious style of ingrained womb-to-tomb thinking from the monarchy of originality, who starvingly seeks and seeks and seeks —in real-time—the yet unimagined futures in diverse ways, contexts, and approaches, originated in the FUTURE. A knowledge-based, pervasive rebellious, ‘type A Prima Donna’, born out of extraterrestrial protoplasm, who is on a rampant mission to (cross) research science (state of the art from the avant-garde) progressively, envision, and capture a breakthrough foresight of what is/what might be/what should be, still to come while he marshals his ever-practicing, inquisitive future-driven scenarios, via his Lines of Practice and from the intertwined, intersected, chaotically frenzy stances that combine both subtlety and brute force with the until now overwhelmingly unthinkable.”

Andres Agostini

www.AndyBelieves.blogspot.com

11:10 p.m. (GMT / UTC)

Monday, March 24, 2008

Andy's Own Designed Sketches, Cartoons...

  • http://www.geocities.com/cartsketh/1.html

From Albert Einstein...

From Albert Einstein...
Albert Einstein, “the whole of science is nothing more than a [perpetual] refinement of everyday thinking.”

Definion of "Transformative Risk Management"

http://transriskmanagement.blogspot.com/

Andres Agostini's Multiverse Office, Arlington, Virginia, USA

  • http://www.agostinimultiverse.blogspot.com/

A Video by Andy...

A Video by Andy....

Emterprise Risk Termination...

  • http://enterpriserisktermination.blogspot.com/

Andy Webcasted...

Andy's Beliefs - Part 1

  • http://andybelieves.blogspot.com/

Andy's Beliefs - Part 2

  • http://andybelieves2.blogspot.com/

Andy Webcasted...

  • http://www.agostiniwebcasted.blogspot.com/

Yahoo SingUp / LogIn

  • https://login.yahoo.com/config/login_verify2?&.src=ym

Google...

  • http://www.google.com

Yahoo ...

  • http://www.yahoo.com

MSN Live ...

  • http://www.msn.com

Wikipedia !!!

  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Linkedin and Andy

  • http://www.linkedin.com/pub/7/787/758

The Andres Agostini Times !!!

  • http://www.theandresagostinitimes.blogspot.com/

The Andres Agostini Herald !!!

  • http://www.agostiniherald.blogspot.com/

The Andres Agostini Globe !!!

  • http://www.agostiniglobe.blogspot.com/

The Andres Agostini Multiverse !!!

  • http://www.agostinimultiverse.blogspot.com/

About Me

Andres Agostini's WebSites (Arlington, VA, USA)
View my complete profile

Ray Kurzweil & A.I. .......

  • http://www.kurzweilai.net/

Useful Links....

  • http://www.youtube.com/i
  • http://www.amazon.com
  • http://www.amazon.co.uk/
  • http://www.barnesandnoble.com
  • http://www.cnn.com
  • http://www.foxnews.com
  • http://www.ebay.com
  • http://www.wikinomics.org
  • http://www.yahoo.com
  • http://www.msn.com
  • http://www.microsoft.com
  • http://www.google.com
  • http://www.live.com
  • http://www.alexa.com/
  • http://www.alexa.com/search?q=%22andres+agostini%22&page=3&count=10

Blog Archive

  • ▼  2008 (16)
    • ►  May (1)
    • ►  April (4)
    • ►  March (10)
    • ▼  February (1)
      • Andres Agostini's WebSites (Arlington, VA, USA)