Foreign Policy:Every day, migrants working in rich countries send money to their families in the developing world. Last year, these remittances added up to $80 billion, outstripping foreign aid. Find out why remittances boomed in the 1990s�and how this money is lifting entire nations out of poverty, rewiring international politics, and reshaping immigration policy.

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "After the six-day war of 1967, when nationalism and socialism seemed to have brought only humiliation and defeat, there was a revival of religious politics in the Arab world. Palestinians long held out against this trend, but despairing of the ordinary political process, the Islamist parties finally emerged in 1987. Once God is brought into the conflict, positions become absolute, sacred and far more difficult to negotiate. "

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "Yet to those who had studied these movements it was clear long before 9/11 that fundamentalists all over the world were expressing fears and anxieties that no government could safely ignore. "

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "The 'fundamentalist' movements that emerged in every major faith tradition during the 20th century conform to this pattern. Wherever a western-style, secularist society has been established, a religious counterculture has developed alongside it. The persistence of this militant piety shows a disturbing and worldwide alienation from western modernity. Every group that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has experienced secularism as destructive, and is engaged in a battle designed to push God and religion back to centre stage. All are convinced that the secularist liberal establishment is determined, in one way or another, to wipe them out. "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Matthew Engel: Road to ruin: "America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet "

PressInfo 190, Hydra, Proliferation, Fullspectrum dominance: "'The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority, will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance. Space forces play an increasingly critical role in providing situational awareness (e.g. global communications; precise navigation; timely and accurate missile warning and weather; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to US forces.)
Space doctrine, organizations, training, materiel, leadership and personnel will evolve to fully realize the potential of space power. Space power is a vital element in moving towards the Joint Vision goal of being persuasive in peace, decisive in war, and pre-eminent in any form of conflict.'"

PressInfo 190, Hydra, Proliferation, Fullspectrum dominance: "'The horror scenarios of the Cold War have disappeared, but the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons has not. Like the monstrous Hydra of Greek mythology, modern weapons of mass destruction are sprouting new heads faster than anybody can cut them off.'
So wrote Anna Lindh and Erkki Tuomioja, the Foreign Ministers of Sweden and Finland respectively, in an article in The International Herald Tribune, whose title gives their answer to the threat: 'Slaying the Hydra - together'. As they conclude:
'Even Hercules could not kill the many headed monster alone. Only by acting together will we safeguard the security of all.'"

Economist.com | The future of energyBy introducing a small but steadily rising tax on petrol, America would do far more to encourage innovation and improve energy security than all the drilling in Alaska's wilderness. Crucially, this need not be, and should not be, a matter of raising taxes in the aggregate. The proceeds from a gasoline tax ought to be used to finance cuts in other taxes�this, surely, is the way to present them to a sceptical electorate. Judging by the debate going on in Washington, a policy of this kind is a distant prospect. That is a great shame.

Economist.com | The future of energy: "If treating the West's addiction to oil will be costly, is it really worth doing? To be sure. Petro-addiction imposes mighty costs of its own. First, there is the political risk of relying on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil still has a near-monopoly hold on transport. If the supply is cut off even for a few days, modern economies come to a halt, as Britain discovered when tax protestors blockaded some domestic oil depots two years ago. And despite what sound like large investments in new oil fields in Russia and elsewhere, Saudi Arabia's share of the world oil market will actually grow over the next two decades simply because it has such huge reserves of cheap oil. Geology has granted two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves to Saudi Arabia and four of its neighbours. Because of this continuing concentration of supply, the risk of a disruption to oil flows will continue to be a threat, and may even rise."

Economist.com | The future of energy�THE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.� This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as Utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister three decades ago. His words are rich in irony.

MIT Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Change: "The MIT JOINT PROGRAM ON THE SCIENCE & POLICY OF GLOBAL CHANGE was founded in 1991 as an interdisciplinary organization that conducts research, independent policy analysis, and public communication on issues of global environmental change. It is not a degree-granting entity. "

MIT Integrated Global System Model: "The MIT Integrated Global System Model "

Trends Online Abstract: "Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. 2003. Trends Online: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tennessee."

Amazon.com: Editorial Reviews: Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change: "For the past 4 billion years, the chemistry of the Earth's surface, where all life exists, has changed remarkably. Historically, these changes have occurred slowly enough to allow life to adapt and evolve. In more recent times, the chemistry of the Earth is being altered at a staggering rate, fueled by industrialization and an ever-growing human population. Human activities, from the rapid consumption of resources to the destruction of the rainforests and the expansion of smog-covered cities, are all leading to rapid changes in the basic chemistry of the Earth."

If ...China�s economy would be three times larger than the US by 2030 in US dollar terms and 25 times larger by 2050.As countries develop, these forces fade and growth rates tend to slow towards developed country levels. In Japan andGermany, very rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s gave way to more moderate growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This is why simple extrapolation gives silly answers over long timeframes. As a crude example, assuming that China�s GDP growth continued to grow at its current 8% per year over the next three decades would lead to the prediction that China�s economy would be three times larger than the US by 2030 in US dollar terms and 25 times larger by 2050.

DreamingWith BRICs: The Path to 2050Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China�the BRICs economies could become a much larger force in the world economy. Using the latest demographic projections and a model of capital accumulation and productivity growth, we map out GDP growth, income per capita and currency movements in the BRICs economies until 2050.

It's back to the old world order - OCT 17, 2003: "One is that the real environmental crisis is coming at us even faster than the pessimists feared: Four or five billion people in the Brics and other Asian and Latin American countries, who will be consuming at current European levels by 2050, will put huge additional stress on the environment. The time for emergency measures is probably now - not that there is any real hope of such a thing."

Can We Abolish Poverty? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum With the per capita income for the world being $7140.00, there must be many poor people around. It is in the nature of the ratio of the world�s resources and its population that some people will have more than they need, while others can hardly eke out a living. The four richest people in the world � Bill Gates (worth $46.0 billion), Warren Buffet ($36.0 billion), Karl/Theo Albrecht ($25.6 billion), and Paul Allen ($22.0 billion) have combined assets of approximately $130 billion, which is more than three times the gross domestic product for Nigeria. The world�s resources are not equitably distributed among countries � just as the wealth within any particular country is not shared equally among the residents.

Can We Abolish Poverty? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Examples of such countries as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia, and Sierra Leone show that the good work achieved through decades of gradual progress towards leaving the poverty club can be wiped out in only a few months of political crisis, which is usually accompanied by looting the national treasury with impunity."

Noosphere: "The Noosphere is the part of the world of life that is created by man's thought and culture.Pierre Teillhard De Chardin, Vladimir Ivanovich Verdansky and Edouard Le Roy distinguish the noosphere from the geosphere, the non living world, and from the biosphere, the living world. "

TheStar.com - Downsizing American imperialism: "'The problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.'"

Beyond WTO, Will South-South Cooperation Bite? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumAgain the WTO has no role in regulating the traders. Almost 70% of world trade is between transnational corporations. In today�s world it is corporations that trade not countries. Through their governments, the TNCs can influence an organisation which has no power to regulate them. The WTO increasingly looks like the wrong trade organisation for the reality of international trade today. But at least it is, in theory, a democratic organisation, with its 146 countries � soon to be 148 with the addition of Cambodia and Nepal � having an equal say. Members have the power to change the rules. The new alliances have testing times ahead.

Beyond WTO, Will South-South Cooperation Bite? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumWill the new alliances fare better? Are we now seeing South-South cooperation with teeth? The Cancun alliances look impressive. Foremost is the G23 which includes all the big developing countries, notably Brazil, China, India and South Africa. At the start of the Cancun meeting, as the G20, it submitted a key paper on agriculture which calls for an end to export subsidies for farmers that encourage dumping, and for a cap on direct payments, within a specific time frame. The paper shook the complacency of the US and EU. By the end of the meeting, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria had joined the group and the G23 represented well over half the world�s population.

Japan Pledges $1 Billion in African Aid - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, opening a major donor conference Monday, pledged $1 billion in new aid for education and health care in Africa. The money, to be dispersed over five years, will help fund AIDS treatment, vaccinations and building schools and facilities for drinking water. Koizumi's announcement came at the start of a three-day conference in Tokyo on fighting poverty and promoting sustainable development in Africa. Heads of state from 23 African countries and representatives of leading donor nations and aid groups will discuss infectious diseases, conflict prevention and investment on the continent during the meeting. "

Interview : Pierre L�vy: "Disons que le langage oral porte l'intelligence collective de la tribu, que l'�criture porte l'intelligence collective de la ville, et que le futur Web s�mantique exprimera l'intelligence collective de l'humanit� mondialis�e interconnect�e dans le cyberespace. "