Large-scale human behavior change

This coming year, we'll be addressing the subject of tools that can be
used for large-scale human behavior change – essentially looking at
the capabilities that are available to help affect a global social
value shift.

Worldwatch Institute: Global Security: Worldwatch Global Security Brief #1
► Economic growth will slow and inflation will rise if oil prices stay at or above their current level of more than $40 per barrel. The United States will spend roughly $160 billion on oil imports this year, and many oil-dependent developing countries could soon fall into recession if prices stay high.
► Growing dependence on Persian Gulf oil will alter the international balance of power, flooding those countries with extra cash. If the past is guide, these growing revenues may delay economic and political reforms, and further line the pockets of a wealthy elite.
► Dependence on Russia, the one other country where production is growing substantially, will also grow dramatically, shifting the international balance of power. With China rapidly rivaling the United States as the world’s largest oil importer, international pressures will grow.
► Additional airline bankruptcies are likely given the oil intensity of the industry. A major shakeup in the automobile industry is also possible. Companies such as Toyota that have pioneered highly-efficient hybrid-electric cars may benefit, while some of the U.S. companies that have relied heavily on SUVs for their profits may be in trouble.

Robot Project: We Live in the Robot Age : EXPO 2005 AICHI,JAPAN: "Robot Project: We Live in the Robot Age"

BBC - Science & Nature - Genes - Future of Reproduction: Page 2: "In vitro fertilisation is essentially the externalisation of human reproduction and is an extraordinary milestone, but it too is relatively uncontroversial, perhaps because there is no country where it yet accounts for more than 1 in 100 births. Despite two decades of refinement, IVF is still too expensive and downright unpleasant for couples not afflicted by infertility to use.

This situation could soon change, however, which is critical to the future of human reproduction, because IVF will be the foundation for the technologies poised to shape the genetics of future children. It is easy for journalists to conjure up visions of shopping for designer babies, but such possibilities cannot figure prominently in our future until IVF improves significantly or until their potential benefits are so seductive that would-be parents see the limitations of current IVF as a small price to pay. "

Wired News: Ecobot Eats Dead Flies for Fuel: "Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol, are working on creating autonomous robots that power themselves using substances found in the environment. Professors Chris Melhuish and John Greenman plan to give robots their very own guts -- artificial digestive systems and the corresponding metabolisms that will allow robots to digest food. "

Headlines for Wednesday, December 15, 2004: "the WFP is counting on China sharing lessons it has learned since the late 1970s, a period when a total of 300 million Chinese have escaped poverty -- an 'unprecedented accomplishment,' according to Morris. 'China has had more experience moving people out of hunger and poverty than any country in the world in the history of mankind,' he said. "

Headlines for Wednesday, December 15, 2004: "China is set to complete the transition from aid recipient to international donor in the next year, the head of the world's biggest humanitarian agency said yesterday as he announced plans to phase out food support for Beijing and introduce a new period of cooperation to help poor countries in Asia and Africa"

The New York Times > International > Middle East > The Elections: Iraqi Campaign Raises Question of Iran's Sway: "Many American and Iraqi officials say the talk of Iranian influence here reflects what they call a more plausible fear: that Shiite dominance in Iraq, coupled with Shiite rule in Iran, would reshape the geopolitical map of the Middle East. The development would be particularly threatening to Sunni-ruled states that border Iraq and run down the Persian Gulf, the officials say, carrying as it would the threat of increasing unrest among long-suppressed Shiite populations. "

The New York Times > International > Middle East > The Elections: Iraqi Campaign Raises Question of Iran's Sway: "Among the Sunni Arab minority in Iraq, the fear of a Shiite-led government influenced by Iran has helped drive a powerful insurgency. If large numbers of Sunnis boycott the elections, and pro-Iranian Shiite religious groups dominate the 275-seat national assembly the voters will select, some Iraqis fear the country could spiral into civil war. They predict conflicts between Sunni and Shiite militias, or between secular and religious Shiite parties. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The purpose of the summit was to spotlight, consolidate and advance the growing economic and political links between China and the E.U. The E.U. has become, since its enlargement, China's biggest trading partner, and China has become the E.U.'s second-largest trading partner -- total trade between them is now $200 billion per year. Beijing and its European supporters believe that the Sino-European relationship has reached a level at which China should become a full partner with no restrictions. The opponents of lifting the embargo cite Beijing's continued human rights violations, but they are also motivated by pressure from Washington, whose interests are primarily geostrategic."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Currently the major presumptive power centers are China in East Asia, India in South Asia, Brazil in South America, the Franco-German combine in Europe and Russia at the center of its multiregional periphery. As an area of contention that is internally divided and subject to strong pressures from outside powers, the Near East has no single presumptive power center, although Iran is bidding for that role. There is no state in Africa that has the resources to be a hegemon, although Nigeria and the Republic of South Africa might take that position or share it in the future. The U.S. has secure dominance in its North American base, but its global reach is in question as it faces challenges and tests from ascending powers elsewhere."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "What Washington has most essentially lost is acquiescence to its leadership. Other powers no longer have any compunction about opposing U.S. policies and preferences when it is not in their own independent interests to follow them. It is a game of every power for itself, in which each regional power center cooperates with others when it shares common interests with them and opposes them when interests conflict. The result is the absence of a single paradigm of world order or even of a coherent pattern of alliances. In their place are coalitions of convenience that -- taken together -- have no consistent direction."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The tendency toward a multipolar configuration of world politics, in which a number of regional power centers compete for hegemony over their spheres of influence within a framework of international agreements and institutions, is a long term process involving incremental gains and losses for the major players."

Headlines for Tuesday, December 14, 2004MT: “Do you think there is a big difference for developing countries between now and thirty years ago?” Bourguignon: “It depends on the country. If you look at growth over the past twenty years, the growth rate has not been extraordinary. Some countries have positive growth rates. You also have to look at the shocks some countries have encountered over that period. It is possible that everything that has been achieved is destroyed by a shock, particularly one linked to primary resources. Has aid been inefficient? It has been in some countries, and it has been efficient in other countries. Recipient countries are not necessarily to blame. Until the 1990s, with the Cold War, a lot of development aid decisions were not efficient because they were based on geopolitical strategies.”

Foreign Policy: Spreading Democracy: "The effort to spread democracy is also dangerous in a more indirect way: It conveys to those who do not enjoy this form of government the illusion that it actually governs those who do. But does it? We now know something about how the actual decisions to go to war in Iraq were taken in at least two states of unquestionable democratic bona fides: the United States and the United Kingdom. Other than creating complex problems of deceit and concealment, electoral democracy and representative assemblies had little to do with that process. Decisions were taken among small groups of people in private, not very different from the way they would have been taken in nondemocratic countries. Fortunately, media independence could not be so easily circumvented in the United Kingdom. But it is not electoral democracy that necessarily ensures effective freedom of the press, citizen rights, and an independent judiciary. "

Foreign Policy: Spreading DemocracyDemocracy is rightly popular. In 1647, the English Levellers broadcast the powerful idea that “all government is in the free consent of the people.” They meant votes for all. Of course, universal suffrage does not guarantee any particular political result, and elections cannot even ensure their own perpetuation—witness the Weimar Republic. Electoral democracy is also unlikely to produce outcomes convenient to hegemonic or imperial powers. (If the Iraq war had depended on the freely expressed consent of “the world community,” it would not have happened.) But these uncertainties do not diminish the appeal of electoral democracy.

Google Is Adding Major Libraries to Its Database: "Google, the operator of the world's most popular Internet search service, plans to announce an agreement today with some of the nation's leading research libraries and Oxford University to begin converting their holdings into digital files that would be freely searchable over the Web.
It may be only a step on a long road toward the long-predicted global virtual library. But the collaboration of Google and research institutions that also include Harvard, the University of Michigan, Stanford and the New York Public Library is a major stride in an ambitious Internet effort by various parties. The goal is to expand the Web beyond its current valuable, if eclectic, body of material and create a digital card catalog and searchable library for the world's books, scholarly papers and special collections. "

A new trade pact between the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China represents a move towards a two billion person pan-Asian market, which according to the Guardian could "rival the EU and the US." In addition to the establishment of a free trade zone by 2010, the pact calls for military and security cooperation, tourism promotion and the creation of early-warning systems for infectious diseases.

"Save the World, Not the Empire" - Empire?: This is neither to suggest that the war in Afghanistan was devised on the same pretexts of the latter war, nor that the ruling class in Washington adheres to the same political, ideological or self-motivated philosophy. The increasingly prevailing narrative now indicates that Iraq was the prize sought by the neo-conservative elements in US administrations as early as a decade prior to September 11, 2001. While the justifications for the war were modified according to the political atmosphere in Washington, Israel’s security was, and remains a focal point. This in part explains why neo-conservatives are often labeled the '‘Likudists'’ on Capital Hill, referring to Israel’s right wing Likud party. The allegation is equally strengthened by the incontrovertible fact that some neo-cons – as they are often called - have served as advisors to past Israeli governments.
But the war party’s interests are, of course, not limited to that of Israel, or even to any other lone factor, be it strategic control over oil reserves, obstructing the growing Chinese economic force from encompassing the Middle East, defending the reputation of a weakening empire, or simply hunting for some Pentagon contracts. Added to that is the religious fanaticism and its rampant fervor that has more institutionalized and far-reaching influence in Washington than anywhere else in the world, with the possible exception of Israel and Iran.

>"Save the World, Not the Empire" (December 1, 2004) This article asserts that US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan represent classical "historical imperatives" that predict the demise of an empire. It suggests that the only way to bring about an end to international chaos and disorder "ensued and nurtured by fundamental and right-wing elements" is continued Iraqi resistance and popular opposition abroad. (YellowTimes.org)

Newsletter Dec. 6-10 Japan Shifts to High Gear in Military Fast Lane (December 9, 2004) Despite public opposition, Japan will extend the deployment of its 600-troop Self Defense Force in Iraq for another year. Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi defended his cabinet's decision, saying it was "appropriate [...] as the next year will be an important one for Iraq." Critics fear that Japan's close cooperation with the US "greatly endangers the security of the Japanese" and simply courts "die-hard conservatives who want to promote an overseas role for Japanese troops as a means of restoring past military glory." (Inter Press Service)

Gmail Militainment Gone Amok (December 3, 2004) What do you get when you combine US military psychological operations and media? Cable television's latest offering, the new Military Channel. According to this article, the channel will combine "accurate information to the media and public" with "misleading information and propaganda to influence the outcome of a campaign or battle." (Mediachannel.org)

Gmail There is nothing wrong with these principles per se, but they bear little relation to reality.
Ethnicity and religion are highly politicized in all African states, and even quite democratic, federal states have problems in dealing with their ethnic and religious diversity once it has become politicized.

Gmail Countries with economic or strategic interests in the big states have, not surprisingly, sought to protect those interests without much attention to the long-term consequences of their policies or the long-term needs of their countries. With the weakening of colonial ties, most recently those of France with its former colonies, and the end of the Cold War, expediency is now directed less at safeguarding interests than at avoiding the pressure to become involved directly in stabilizing troubled countries.

Gmail - Worldwatch: A Message from the President: "Unfortunately, much of the media has turned a blind eye to the most critical problems of our time. On issues ranging from oceans to climate change, short-term private interests are getting priority over the long-term future of people and the planet. "

Global Economic Prospects 2005 - Global Growth: "The world economy accelerated sharply in 2004, expanding by an estimated 4 percent.
The United States and Japan, whose economies grew by more than 4 percent, continued to lead Europe in the recovery.
Even stronger growth was experienced by a number of large developing countries, notably China (8.8 percent), Russia (8.0 percent), and India (6.0 percent). Their performance helped power developing countries as a whole to an anticipated 6.1 percent growth rate in 2004-an expansion without precedent over the past 30 years. "

Headlines for Monday, December 6, 2004: "The Financial Times (12/06) writes Oxfam said in its report the 'war on terror' threatens to revive an era when foreign aid was dictated by security concerns rather than poverty reduction. In 2002, a third of the increase in aid flows from rich to poor countries came from allocations to Afghanistan and Pakistan, according to the report. Flows of US aid to Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and Afghanistan in the past three years are equal to aid to the rest of the world combined. Development campaigners have contrasted the quick progress in reaching agreement among the Paris Club countries to write off up to 80 percent of Iraq's debt with slow progress in forgiving the debt of poor African countries."

Headlines for Monday, December 6, 2004: "The amount of aid rich countries give to poorer nations has fallen by half since the 1960s, risking the lives of millions of children, a leading development charity said in a report released Monday, reports The Associated Press (12/06)."

Population 8.97 billion by 2300 In these projections, world population peaks at 9.22 billion in 2075. Population therefore grows slightly beyond the level of 8.92 billion projected for 2050 in the 2002 Revision, on which these projections are based. However, after reaching its maximum, world population declines slightly and then resumes increasing, slowly, to reach a level of 8.97 billion by 2300, not much different from the projected 2050 figure.

The Resort to Force, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Hegemony or Survival): "the Clinton doctrine that the US is entitled to resort to 'unilateral use of military power' to ensure 'uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources.' The world 'is a much more insecure place' now that Russia has decided to follow the US lead"

UN Body Rejects Censure, Threatens Revolt - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "''The action by the General Assembly committee highlights a political-cultural divide in a world split between those who insist on the application of the rule of law, peaceful resolution of international disputes and the universality of human rights, on one hand, and those who practice unilateralism, preventive wars and selective standards of human rights, on the other. ''Claims of divine inspiration, reinforced by expansionist designs and driven by an outdated moral mission, are no longer accepted by a broad segment of a divided world that has grown tired of global autocracy and a reincarnation of old-fashioned imperialism,''"

GPF Newsletter Nov. 29 - Dec. 3 This TomDispatch article highlights recurring similarities in US media language covering rebellions against US interventions since the 1980s. The author points out that the dichotomy between the labels "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" changes once the US becomes a country's prime enemy and target. The government's position in a given conflict, the article claims, has generally directed reportage.

The Coup Connection (November 2004) The International Republican Institute (IRI), a US government-financed organization which calls itself "nonpartisan," aims at "democratization" overseas. This article explains how the IRI organizes political training sessions for opposition movements in countries where the governments' policies do not coincide with Washington's interests, such as in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Cambodia. (Mother Jones)

News Media in the 60th Year of the Nuclear Age - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "When Einstein called for 'the aroused understanding and insistence of the peoples of the world,' he was describing a need that news media ought to help fill. But instead, mostly we get the official stories: dumbed-down, simplistic, and - yes - narrowly nationalistic. The themes are those of Washington's powerful: our nukes good, our allies' nukes pretty good, unauthorized nukes very bad.
That sort of propaganda drumbeat won't be convincing to people who doubt that a Christian Bomb is good and a Jewish Bomb is good but an Islamic Bomb is bad. You don't have to be an Einstein to understand that people are rarely persuaded by hypocritical messages along the lines of 'Do as we say, not as we do.' "

Pentagon Propaganda Shop Lives on, 'LA Times' Reports - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "A key recent development, according to the Times, was the decision by commanders in Iraq in mid-September to combine public affairs, psychological operations, and information operations into a 'strategic communications' office."

Pentagon Propaganda Shop Lives on, 'LA Times' Reports - Empire? The Pentagon in 2002 was forced to shutter its controversial Office of Strategic Influence (OSI) when it became known that the office planned to plant false news stories in the media. But now officials say that much of its mission, including using misinformation in the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, has been taken over by other offices within the government, the Los Angeles Times reported today. “Some of the ongoing efforts include having U.S. military spokesmen play a greater role in psychological operations in Iraq, as well as planting information with sources used by Arabic TV channels such as Al Jazeera to help influence the portrayal of the United States,” the Times revealed.

Gmail - Press Review: "China has taken a first step toward reducing the emission of harmful emissions into the air from burning coal, the World Bank said Thursday, according to a Xinhua report."

BostonHerald.com - Business: Economic `Armageddon' predicted: "America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.'' "..Roach's argument is that America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants. The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.

Description of terrorism as “any action, in addition to actions already specified by the existing conventions on aspects of terrorism, the Geneva Conventions and Security Council resolution 1566 (2004), that is intended to cause death or serious bodily harm to civilians or non-combatants, when the purpose of such act, by its nature or context, is to intimidate a population, or to compel a Government or an international organization to do or to abstain from doing any act”.

State use of force The United Nations must achieve the same degree of normative strength concerning non-State use of force as it has concerning State use of force. Lack of agreement on a clear and well-known definition undermines the normative and moral stance against terrorism and has stained the United Nations image.

Current trends indicate persistent and possibly worsening food insecurity in many countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. Population growth in the developing world and increased per capita consumption in the industrialized
world have led to greater demand for scarce resources. The loss of arable land, water scarcity, overfishing, deforestation and the alteration of ecosystems pose daunting challenges for sustainable development. The world’s population is expected to increase from 6.3 billion today to 8.9 billion in 2050, with nearly all of that growth occurring in the countries least equipped to absorb it. Feeding such a rapidly growing population will only be possible if agricultural yields can be increased significantly and sustainably.

Preventing deadly violenceThe biggest source of inefficiency in our collective security institutions has simply been an unwillingness to get serious about preventing deadly violence.

The security of the most affluent State can be held hostage to the ability of the poorest State to contain an emerging disease. Because international flight times are shorter than the incubation periods for many infectious diseases, any one of 700 million international airline passengers every year can be an unwitting global disease-carrier. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) spread to more than 8,000 people in 30 countries in three months, killing almost 700.

Global economic integration means that a major terrorist attack anywhere in
the developed world would have devastating consequences for the well-being of millions of people in the developing world. The World Bank estimates that the attacks of 11 September 2001 alone increased the number of people living in poverty by 10 million; the total cost to the world economy probably exceeded 80 billion dollars. These numbers would be far surpassed by an incident involving nuclear terrorism.

The cold war shaped much of global politics for the next 45 years. The rivalry
between the United States and the former Soviet Union blocked the Security Council from playing a dominant role in maintaining international peace and security. Nearly all armed conflicts and struggles for liberation were viewed through the prism of East-West rivalry until the historic collapse of the former Soviet Union and the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe.

Decolonizationwas only one of the forces that shaped the United Nations. The
United Nations founders did not anticipate that the United States and the former Soviet Union would soon embark on a global rivalry, developing and deploying tens of thousands of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the world many times over.

Between 1975 and 1999, sub-Saharan Africa saw no overall increase in its per capita income.

The case for collective securityThe case for collective security today rests on three basic pillars. Today’s threats recognize no national boundaries, are connected, and must be addressed at the global and regional as well as the national levels. No State, no matter how powerful, can by its own efforts alone make itself invulnerable to today’s threats. And it cannot be assumed that every State will always be able, or willing, to meet its responsibility to protect its own peoples and not to harm its neighbours.

The threats are from non-State actors as well as States, and to human security as well as
State security.

A decisive moment in the human story. Historians may well look back on the first years of the twenty-first century as a decisive moment in the human story. The different societies that make up the human family are today interconnected as never before. They face threats that no nation can hope to master by acting alone - and opportunities that can be much more hopefully exploited if all nations work together.

People's Daily Online -- China's development affects Europe: "According to experts' forecast, China will export cars made by China in 10 years. They said they are also astonished at the improvement speed of the car spare parts produced in China. "

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals: "'The dangers of global fascism cannot be discounted as imaginary or alarmist.'"

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals: "'The recent appearance and spread of 'bird flu' across Asian poultry populations has raised concerns that a devastating new influenza pandemic is imminent�should the bird flu virus evolve to a form that readily infects humans, widespread loss of life is predicted.'"

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals: "SURPLUS MALES IN CHINA AND INDIA. 'The masculinization of Asia's sex ratios is one of the overlooked megatrends of our time, a phenomenon that may very likely influence the course of national and perhaps even international politics in the 21st century.'"

The New York Times > International > U.N. Report Urges Big Changes; Security Council Would Expand: "The report addressed six specific and interconnected threats to international peace - 'interstate conflict, civil war, economic and social threats, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and organized international crime.'"

The New York Times > International > U.N. Report Urges Big Changes; Security Council Would Expand: "The United Nations on Tuesday proposed the most sweeping changes in its history, recommending the overhaul of its top decision-making group, the Security Council, and holding out the possibility that it could grant legitimacy to pre-emptive military strikes."

The New York Times > International > U.N. Report Urges Big Changes; Security Council Would Expand: "The United Nations on Tuesday proposed the most sweeping changes in its history, recommending the overhaul of its top decision-making group, the Security Council, and holding out the possibility that it could grant legitimacy to pre-emptive military strikes."

Asia Times Online - The trusted source for news on Central Asia: "The US has now adapted and perfected the latest communication techniques to apply to post-Soviet states to bring about desirable changes. 'Instruments of democracy' are used to topple unpopular dictators or unfriendly regimes, once a successor candidate friendly to the West has been groomed. The Central Intelligence Agency-sponsored Third World uprisings of the Cold War days to remove prime minister Mohammed Mossadaq of Iran, who had nationalized its oil resources, and of Salvador Allende of Chile, which brought US favorite General Augusto Pinochet to power, a man whose crimes are still being catalogued and looked into, are now passe.

That is the promotion of democracy, US style. Who is next in line?"

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "The mission of PSYOP [psychological operation] is to influence the behavior of foreign target audiences to support US national objectives. PSYOP accomplishes this by conveying selected information and advising on actions that influence the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign audiences. Behavioral change is at the root of the PSYOP mission. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "The Fallujah offensive has virtually disappeared from the news cycle. But history - if written by Iraqis - may well enshrine it as the new Guernica. Paraphrasing Jean-Paul Sartre memorably writing about the Algerian War (1956-62), after Fallujah no two Americans shall meet without a corpse lying between them: the up to 500,000 victims of the sanctions in the 1990s, according to United Nations experts; the up to 100,000 victims since the beginning of the invasion of Iraq, according to the British medical paper The Lancet; and at least 6,000 victims, and counting, in Fallujah, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "'It's difficult to believe that in this day and age, when people are blogging, emailing and communicating at the speed of light, a whole city is being destroyed and genocide is being committed - and the whole world is aware and silent. Darfur, Americans? Take a look at what you've done in Fallujah.'"

Asia Times Online - News from greater China; Hong Kong and Taiwan: "On Monday the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) signed an accord with China that will create an open market of 2 billion people by 2010 to compete with Europe and the United States. The pact aims to drop most tariffs over the next five years in a move some analysts have said is a sign Beijing may be moving to undercut America's vast economic influence over the region. "

Migration For most of human history, migration has been constrained by physical barriers and transport difficulties rather than government action. More recently, sharply different rates of population and economic growth across the world have combined to make many workers from poorer countries eager to move to countries where more jobs are available and wages are much higher. Modern communications make the differences even more
visible, and modern transport makes migration easy and affordable. But migrants are not always welcome in rich countries.

The New York Times > Washington > Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies: "Researchers at a government nuclear laboratory and a ceramics company in Salt Lake City say they have found a way to produce pure hydrogen with far less energy than other methods"

News for a Synergic Earth :: "Adversaries believe there is not enough for everyone and only the physically strong will survive. They believe humans are coercively dependent on others, and they best understand the language of force. In this crisis, they will kill as many as they can to insure their survival. Neutralists believe there is enough for everyone, if only you work hard enough and take care of yourself. They believe humans are financial independent and should be self-sufficient unless they are too lazy or defective. They best understand the language of money. In this crisis, they will try to buy their way out. ... And, finally a new type of human is emerging. Synergists believe there is enough for everyone, but only if we work together and act responsibly."

Competing for Souls: "China's growing material wealth has eluded the countryside, home to two-thirds of its population. But there is a bull market in sects and cults competing for souls. That has alarmed the authorities, who seem uncertain whether the spread of religion or its systematic repression does more to turn peasants against Communist rule.
The demise of Communist ideology has left a void, and it is being filled by religion. The country today has more church-going Protestants than Europe, according to several foreign estimates. Buddhism has become popular among the social elite. Beijing college students wait hours for a pew during Christmas services in the capital's 100 packed churches.
But it is the rural underclass that is most desperate for salvation. The rural economy has grown relatively slowly. Corruption and a collapse in state-sponsored medical care and social services are felt acutely. But government-sanctioned churches operate mainly in cities, where they can be closely monitored, and priests and ministers by law can preach only to those who come to them. "

US Military on the Scent of Oil - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Dominant military powers have always had to deal with countries not part of their 'empire' - whether the empire is formal or informal. This rule still applies in the 21st century despite the US claim to overwhelming 'global' power and reach. And a corollary also still applies: the 'natural' tendency of those outside the empire is to work together to split off parts of the imperium or even undermine the entire edifice of empire"

US Military on the Scent of Oil - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The 1991 war was not the first time that 'black gold' was the catalyst of war. Adolf Hitler's need for petroleum for Germany's military machine and industry lay behind his assault on the Soviet Union, and Roosevelt's actions to cut Japan's access to oil contributed to Tokyo's decision to attack the US. Now, under the 'Bush Doctrine', oil has become the catalyst for preventive war. "

US Military on the Scent of Oil: "Second, notwithstanding current consolidations under way in Germany (13 facilities closing) and in South Korea (18 facilities closing), what remains unchallenged in the CBO report is the contention by outside observers that future US base locations in Europe, the Middle East, Southwest and Central Asia will be tied to oil sources and oil transport considerations.
Even with additional closings and consolidations to the 702 overseas 'installations' (army 381, navy 44, Marine two, air force 275) identified by the CBO, the US will continue to maintain the most extensive foreign basing structure of any country. For the Pentagon, it seems, not only is 'location everything', it's 'everywhere'. "

Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country (updated September 30, 2004) This table shows the number of US military personnel on active duty in the US and throughout the world. (United States Department of Defense)"

The forces of world order The larger question is how to engage the forces of world order appropriately to strengthen weak states and deter – globally – those factors that everywhere in the developing world impel or motivate failure.

Other political goods Other political goods typically supplied by states and expected by their citizens include medical and health care; schools and educational instruction; roads, railways, harbors and other arteries of commerce; a money and banking system; a fiscal and institutional context within which citizens can pursue entrepreneurial goals and prosper; space for the flowering of civil society; and methods of regulating the sharing of the environmental commons.

Supply of security There is a hierarchy of political goods. None is as critical as the supply of security, especially human security. The state’s prime function is to provide the political good of security – to prevent cross-border invasions and infiltrations, to eliminate domestic threats to or attacks upon the national order and social structure, to prevent crime and any related dangers to human security, and to enable citizens to resolve their differences with the state and their fellow inhabitants without recourse to arms or other forms of physical coercion.

Weak states typically harbor ethnic, religious,
linguistic, or other tensions that may at some near point be transformed into all out conflict between contending antagonisms.

The more non-state actors and the forces of terror can take opportunistic advantage of a deteriorating internal security situation to mobilize adherents, train insurgents, gain control of resources, launder funds, purchase arms, and ready themselves for assault on world order.

State failure Weak states, even seemingly strong nation-states in the developing world, fail with increasing frequency. The decade plus since the end of the cold war has witnessed a cascading plethora of state failure, mostly in Africa but also in Asia. In addition, more and more states are at risk, exhibiting acute signs of weakness and/or the likelihood of outright failure.

ECONOMY: International Lenders Rethink China Aid: "China's officially announced defence budget for 2004 is 25 billion dollars. However, the U.S. Department of Defence estimates that actual military-related spending in 2003 has been in the range of 50 to 70 billion dollars, making China the third largest defence spender in the world, after the United States and Russia.

Japan - one of China's largest country donors, is clearly uncomfortable with Beijing's defence buildup. Citing the country's rampant military spending and its rise as an economic powerhouse, earlier this month a group of Japanese lawmakers recommended a cut in aid to China. "

ECONOMY: International Lenders Rethink China Aid: "Based on its extreme poverty benchmark of living on less than one U.S. dollar a day, the World Bank estimates that China's impoverished population has fallen sharply from more than 600 million in 1981 (64 percent of the population at the time) to 132 million or 11 percent of the population in 2004.

In May 2004, the World Bank and China co-hosted a global conference on poverty reduction in Shanghai, an event that offered stunning testimony to the ways in which China has, both, developed its economy and re-introduced itself to the world over the past 24 years. "

ECONOMY: International Lenders Rethink China Aid: "China's explosive economic growth and world superpower ambitions are prompting many developed countries to rethink their aid to the country as lending agencies begin to cut back on loans and focus instead on funding economic advisors to the government. "

ID21 - communicating development research: "The conventional project based approach is a tried-and-tested, convenient and simple mechanism for the transfer of aid resources. However, development practitioners are increasingly realising that implementing a project is not an effective way to address the needs of poor people. They are founded on unequal power relationships between donor and beneficiaries and are unsustainable due to poor integration with other development initiatives. Could sustainable livelihoods approaches (SLAs) better address the needs of poor people?"

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The European Dream: How Europe's Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing the American Dream - Jeremy Rifkin: "The new European dream celebrated by Rifkin 'emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power.' .... it will be a pity if American overconfidence leads them to ignore this valiant attempt to show that the American way of organizing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not necessarily the best (even if some of Rifkin's musings on 'the third stage of human consciousness' are a bit windy). "

Aid Agency Competition Entry to the market is continuing as new agencies find new business models—or new recipient countries, in the case of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). EBRD serves private sector clients, as do its large contemporary, the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and France’s Proparco and Denmark’s Investment Fund for Central and Eastern Europe (IFU). Recently two new agencies—the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFAT) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)—started operations. They are expected to expand quickly in the next two or three years. In addition, emerging economies such as China and Slovenia have moved to set up aid agencies. The prospects for continued innovation and new entry seem good. Despite this, there has been very little exit. All the agencies created since 1945 still exist.

Issue 278 - Public Policy Journal - Privatization, Infrastructure & Business Environment - The World Bank Group: "It would be hard to disagree with the objectives of the international aid industry. But how much are donors contributing to their achievement? Despite recent progress, we still know surprisingly little. We know that some donors give much more than others relative to income. We also know that donors are focusing aid less on poor countries and more on countries with strong institutions or good policies. And we know that there appears to be no tradeoff here: the countries that give the most aid also target poor countries and those with good policies. Yet we are still in the dark about which donors, or which projects, are achieving the best results. "

Official flowshave fallen relative
to rich-country income by 30 percent in the past 30 years.

Monthly Review November 2004 Samir Amin: "We know that opinion also is manufactured. Israel is incapable of resisting for more than a few days even moderate measures of a blockade such as the Western powers inflicted on Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Cuba. It would thus not be difficult to bring Israel to its senses and to create the conditions of a true peace, if it were wanted, which it is not."

Monthly Review November 2004 Samir Amin: "the United States works hard for the right to seize all the natural resources of the planet to meet its consumption requirements. The race for raw materials (oil in the first place, but other resources too�water in particular) has already been resumed in all its virulence. All the more since these resources are likely to become scarce not only by reason of the malignant waste inherent in Western consumerism, but also by the development of the new industrialization of the peripheries. "

Monthly Review November 2004 Samir Amin: "The North American economy lives parasitically, to the detriment of its partners in the world system. �The United States depends for 10 percent of its industrial consumption on goods whose import costs are not covered by the exports of its own products,� as Emmanuel Todd recalls.3 The world produces, and the United States (which has practically no national saving) consumes. "

Monthly Review November 2004 Samir Amin: "The present U.S. project, overweening, even crazy, and criminal in its implications, did not spring from the head of George W. Bush to be implemented by an extreme right junta that seized power through dubious elections. This is the project the U.S. ruling class has unceasingly nurtured since 1945, even though its implementation passed through ups and downs and could not always be pursued with the consistency and violence demonstrated since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
The project always allocated a decisive role to its military dimension. Very quickly, the United States devised a global military strategy, dividing the planet into regions and allocating the responsibility for the control of each of them to a U.S. Military Command. The objective was not only to encircle the Soviet Union (and China), but also to secure the position of Washington as the ruler of last resort throughout the world. In other words, it extended the Monroe Doctrine to the entire planet, which effectively gave to the United States the exclusive right of managing the whole globe in accordance with what it defined as its national interests."

Monthly Review November 2004 Samir Amin To the Atlanticism promoted by Washington he envisioned a counterstrategy founded on Franco-German reconciliation and the construction of a non-American Europe carefully excluding Great Britain, which he judged rightly to be the Trojan horse of Atlanticism. Europe could then open the way to reconciliation with “Soviet Russia.” Reconciling and drawing together the three big European populations—French, German and Russian—would put a definite end to the American project of dominating the world. The internal conflict specific to the European project can thus be summarized as the choice between two alternatives: Atlantic Europe, in which Europe is an appendage of the American project, or non-Atlantic Europe (integrating Russia). This conflict is still not resolved.

People's Daily Online -- Bush, new int'l order and China's choice: "At present, the United States has become the sole hegemony. How to keep this hegemonic status under the new situation? Judging from US strategies toward Afghanistan and Iraq, America seems continuing the use of the method of occupation and troops stationing. However, it is estimated that the United States has learned sufficient lessons from the above-mentioned method. This method is not necessarily an effective strategy, as evidenced by the high price America has paid for it either because of factors of nationalism or of religion.
The United States has started to reduce its forces stationed in Europe and Northeast Asia, and switched to seek more military strongholds set up worldwide, this move indicates the possibility of US changing its method of occupation and troops stationing. When the high cost of this method, the characteristics of modern military revolution and US needs in global counter-terrorism are taken into consideration, this transformation has become inevitable. "

Gmail - [PINR] 22 November 2004: Rice Nomination Reinforces Washington's Drift Toward Isolation The possibility that Washington will act to resist the drift toward multipolarity in world politics and toward its own isolation has grown dim with the Rice nomination and the appointment of her deputy, Stephen Hadley, to the post of national security adviser. Those who believe that neo-conservative triumphalism will genera! te new interventions probably have misplaced fears. It is far more likely that -- stripped of the viability of its vision -- the dominant neo-conservative tendency will be paralyzed, hastening the erosion of U.S. power worldwide and providing many opportunities for rising powers to test their mettle .

Gmail - [PINR] 22 November 2004: Rice Nomination Reinforces Washington's Drift Toward Isolation Rice has been identified as the major exponent of the third foreign policy tendency in the first Bush administration, realism, although her present position is unclear. Realism here means the principle that international politics are determined by states using all their power resources to maximize the satisfaction of their interests. For Rice before 9/11, this meant that Washington should not be constrained by allianc! e structures or international organizations from acting unilaterally when it was in its interest to do so, which placed her closer to the neo-conservatives than to the internationalists.

Balance on US Current Account 1960 - 2002 - Global Policy Forum - Social and Economic Policy: "Balance on US Current Account 1960 - 2002 "

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "Realpolitik suggests that countries never readily surrender power. So, while the overwhelming majority of UN members would undoubtedly support a change, it seems unlikely that the five permanent members would voluntarily give up their privileges, and there does not seem to be a carrot big and juicy enough to compel them to do so. That is probably more true for the US, whose persistent default on its dues to the UN budget is just one expression of a rather deeply suspicious predisposition and lack of support towards the organization even in its current form. "

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "Second, even when decisions are taken, they often account for little more than lip service. The lack of political will to commit the resources and provide the capabilities that are needed to enforce resolutions that are not vital to the main powers� interests, makes decisions inconsequential, an argument that was used, albeit hypocritically, by the US and Britain in the Iraq case. There have been numerous cases where even the deployment of peacekeeping forces has been so inadequate that it represented all but an empty show "

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "First, the veto-holding permanent members have the power to block any decisions that go against their interests or those of their allies. The examples abound: the SC has not condemned, let alone acted upon, the US invasions of Grenada and Panama, the oppression in Tibet or Chechnya, Iraq�s invasion of Iran when Saddam was regarded an ally against Islamic fundamentalism, while nothing much has been done to control Israel�s aggression in Palestine. "

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: As a matter of fact, sanctioning and guiding the use of force through the UN, as it happened during the first Gulf War and the Korean war in the 1950s, has been the exception rather than the rule. On both occasions, incidentally, that was mainly providing cover for geopolitical undertakings dominated by the US. So the paralytic antagonism of a bi-polar world during the Cold War has been replaced by a situation in which a sole superpower can do as it pleases unchallenged. The optimism of the new world order of the early 1990s, if there ever was such a thing, has long melted into air.

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "As a matter of fact, sanctioning and guiding the use of force through the UN, as it happened during the first Gulf War and the Korean war in the 1950s, has been the exception rather than the rule. On both occasions, incidentally, that was mainly providing cover for geopolitical undertakings dominated by the US. So the paralytic antagonism of a bi-polar world during the Cold War has been replaced by a situation in which a sole superpower can do as it pleases unchallenged. The optimism of the new world order of the early 1990s, if there ever was such a thing, has long melted into air. "

A Radical Vision for the Future of the UN - Global Policy Forum - UN Security CouncilThe UN, of course, as a whole has a brief that goes far beyond conflict resolution. Its various councils and commissions are dealing with refugees, development, humanitarian and disaster relief, cultural co-operation, the environment, human rights, health, education and a range of other issues. Proponents of the organization stress its indispensability in these areas, while critics point out that many of its stated objectives regarding peoples’ well being in the developing world (e.g. the Millennium Development Goals) represent little more than wishful thinking, due to inadequate resources, lack of political will, powerful (national) vested interests and the absence of mandatory implementation of decisions.

The Economist co-sponsored Copenhagen Consensus 2004. Deputy Editor Clive Crook, who took part in the experts’ meetings, said: “The starting point of Copenhagen Consensus is that the world
faces many problems, and we cannot afford to solve them all, here and now. The positive message from the experts is that there are some extraordinarily good solutions. HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, trade barriers, and malaria – these are problems that can be addressed effectively.

Copenhagen Consensus’ expert panel of economists has decided that HIV/AIDS, hunger,free trade and malaria are the world’s most urgent problems.

>IDEA< Debatabase Topic: International Community: "The international community we live in today is a global community incorporating the whole world. Previous international communities were partial and regional (e.g. the Roman Empire, the medieval Holy Roman Empire and concept of Christendom, the medieval Islamic world, the 19th century European congress system), and cooperation was sporadic and unsystematic. Today's international community is a global phenomenon, in which different political, economic, ideological, military, legal, technological and cultural strands are intertwined. The question of the survival of the international community has now become very important due to feelings of crisis in a number of areas. This is due to the development of military technology, especially the invention and proliferation of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction, the overexploitation of world's resources, ecological problems, and increasing international tension, among other issues. "

100,000 Civilian Deaths Estimated in Iraq (washingtonpost.com): "One of the first attempts to independently estimate the loss of civilian life from the Iraqi war has concluded that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have died because of the U.S. invasion. "

The West's battle for oil - [Sunday Herald]: "All five permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the UK, France, China, Russia and the US -- have international oil companies that would benefit from huge windfalls in the event of regime change in Baghdad. The best chance for US firms to make billions would come if Bush installed a pro-US Iraqi opposition member as the head of a new government.
Representatives of foreign oil firms have already met with leaders of the Iraqi opposition. Ahmed Chalabi, the London-based leader of the Iraqi National Congress, said: 'American companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil.'"

The West's battle for oil - [Sunday Herald]: "One of the most telling passages in the document reads: 'Iraq remains a destabilising influence to ... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export programme to manipulate oil markets.
'This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader ... and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.
'The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies.'"

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 7, Number 21: "The U.S. Air Force quietly has put into service a new weapon designed to jam enemy satellite communications, a significant step toward U.S. control of space. The ground-based jammer uses electromagnetic radio frequency energy to knock out transmissions on a temporary and reversible basis, without frying components, the Air Force Space Command said."

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Environment | First things first: "Last week, a coalition of environmental and development organisations published a report stating the Kyoto protocol and even stricter policies should be our first priority. Not surprisingly, they criticised the Copenhagen Consensus as 'intellectually corrupt' with 'bizarre conclusions' reached through 'intellectual illiteracy'. Such language is often used instead of strong arguments.
If you read the coalition's report, it does not show that global warming is where we can do the most good. It simply points out that climate change can have serious, negative impacts. The real question remains: where can we do the most good for our efforts? "

SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society Environment | First things first: "In a world where we cannot deal with all the problems at the same time, we need to ask: what should we do first? This was the question answered by the Copenhagen Consensus, a project that brought together 38 of the world's top economists to set up a list of the global priorities. They looked at the main challenges to humanity, and the many solutions that we already have, analysing both their benefits but also their price tag. By using cost-benefit analysis the expert panel of economists found that HIV/Aids, hunger, free trade and malaria were the world's top priorities. Equally, the experts rated urgent responses to climate change extremely low. In fact, the panel called these ventures 'bad projects', simply because they cost more than the good they do. "

People's Daily Online -- China to lose labor advantage in a decade, scholar: "China's advantage in cheap labor will disappear and its industrial structure will be forced to upgrade ten yens later when the 'baby boom' generation born in the 1950s and 60s enter their old age. "

SEMI NanoForum Highlights Opportunities, Challenges in Emerging Industry: "During a keynote speech on the first day of NanoForum, Richard Smalley,
director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice University in Houston, Texas, identified the shortage of fossil fuels as the most
significant problem facing human civilization. Nanotechnology has the potential to provide an energy storage capability so that alternative energy
sources can be widely adopted. 'We need new technology to solve the energy problem,' he said.
However, Smalley warned that the U.S. would experience a shortage of future scientists to find solutions to these problems. That's because fewer young people were pursuing science and technology as careers."

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 7, Number 21: "In a British court, people with inherited forms of cancer have won the right to select embryos free from the genes that might trigger the disease in future generations"

Headlines for Monday, November 15, 2004: "Sachs says the coils of Africa's poverty trap include: Very high transport costs, with many Africans living in the interior of a continent with few navigable rivers; low agricultural productivity, with erratic rainfall, few rivers for irrigation, and not enough fertilizer to replace nutrients in an increasingly withered soil. Africa has also missed out on much of the 'Green Revolution', which has focused on wheat, rice and maize. Only the latter is widely grown in Africa, which is also heavily dependent on millet and tubers. A very high disease burden, especially from HIV/AIDS and malaria, climatic and biological factors that make African malaria particularly intractable, adverse geopolitics, including ruthless exploitation by colonial powers, a vast slave trade stretching back centuries undermining state formation; and, finally, a very slow diffusion of technology from abroad all have added to Africa s woes."

Gary Leupp: Imperialist France Destroys an African Air Force: "Chirac's government challenged the U.S. on Iraq, not because of some higher Gallic moral standard, nor because of cozy business ties with Saddam (such as the neocons alleged as they pronounced this old ally an 'enemy'). It opposed the invasion because it understood its goal: to secure U.S. hegemony over the entire, strategically located and oil-rich Middle East, to ensure that in what the neocons posit as the 'New American Century' no other power (including a united Europe) will be able to challenge America's 'full spectrum dominance' of the planet."

People's Daily Online -- Middle East enters a 'post-Arafat era': News analysis: "The death of Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine National Authority (PNA), affects the nerve of the Middle East and the world as a whole. What does the departure of this decades-long influential fighter imply to Palestine? After his death, how will the various political forces regroup themselves and distribute powers? And what will be the prospect of the Middle East peace process? "

The Sources of American Legitimacy - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "World public opinion now sees the United States increasingly as an outlier-invoking international law when convenient, and ignoring it when not; using international institutions when they work to its advantage, and disdaining them when they pose obstacles to U.S. designs. "

China/Iran: Beijing Looking To Tehran to Fuel Its Booming Economy - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "China's economy is booming, witnessed by its skyrocketing energy needs. Oil imports have doubled over the past five years and surged nearly 40 percent during the first eight months of 2004 alone. In an effort to secure future energy reserves, state oil trader Zhuhai Zhenrong agreed earlier this year to buy $20 billion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Iran over the next 25 years. More recently, Beijing signed a much bigger accord with Tehran under which China will buy Iranian oil and gas and help develop the country's giant Yadavaran oil field. "

Africa: Diminishing Water Resources Could Fuel Conflict - Experts - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: Experts at a conference organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the African Union, and the Dutch and Ethiopian governments warned that water scarcity in Africa could lead to conflict, disease and food shortages. "Unsustainable use of water, poor management, pollution, increasing consumption and rapid population growth" cause water shortages, and the UN says that by 2025 one out of two Africans will be living in countries facing water scarcity. (Integrated Regional Information Networks)

J'accuse: War Crimes & Iraq - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council Conn Hallinan charges that the US has systematically violated international law in its fight against terrorism. The US has violated the Geneva Conventions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention Against Torture through mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The Bush administration justifies its acts by pointing to the "changed nature of the post-9/11 world," a world in which international law apparently does not apply to Washington's decision-makers. (Foreign Policy in Focus)

Global Issues of the Twenty-First Century: United Nations Challenges: "Each person now being a member of a surviving group(state?), fighting/competing/cooperating with others individuals or groups for dominance/benefits/survival, and also able to threaten any function or survival of the environment, has'suddenly'become one of a species with potential planetary-scale creation or destruction. "

Global Issues of the Twenty-First Century: United Nations Challenges: "About five centuries ago, the human race - for the first time in a million-year history - began an increasingly disciplined study of itself and the whole world. In the resulting'evolutionary instant', we have already discovered enough about laws of physics to fundamentally change our conditions and capacities. We may possess the power to transform our entire planet - and ourselves - for good or ill."

Message From the Director-General: "How will our mass consumption, such as automobiles, airplanes, electric device and chemical products which we have created, influence the futurity of global environment?
Although we have been faced with various forms of highly unusual events such as earthquakes or global warming phenomena, we had never a measure of how to accurately predict what is going to happen in the future.
By means of Earth Simulator, we have come to a point where we can predict the future by recreation of Earth, basing from the present to distant past."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Only in the unlikely case that Washington manages to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq in the short term will other powers think twice about probing U.S. vulnerabilities. In South America, Brazil will attempt to secure a foothold for the Mercosur customs union and beat back Washington's efforts to extend the N.A.F.T.A. formula south. In East Asia, China will push for regional hegemony and is likely to put pressure on Taiwan and to try to draw Southeast Asian states into its sphere of influence. Beijing can also be expected to drag its feet on North Korean denuclearization and to continue to oppose sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Russia will attempt to increase its influence over the states on its periphery that were formerly Soviet republics. Moscow will try to strengthen ties in Central Asia, the Transcaucasus and Eastern Europe (Belarus and Ukraine), and to fend off Washington's inroads into those areas. The European Union, with the Franco-German combine at its heart, will continue its moves to assimilate its Eastern European members and extend its sphere of influence to the entire Mediterranean basin through trade agreements. In each of these regions, Washington will face tests leading to the possibility of an overload of challenges and a decreased likelihood that any one of them will be handled with sufficient attention and resources."

PINR - The Waning Influence of Neo-Conservative Strategists: "Now, due to pursuing these idealistic policies, the U.S. is embroiled in a difficult conflict in Iraq, only marginally successful in its intervention in Afghanistan, and is witnessing a rise in Islamist activity around the world -- couple this with a mounting a U.S. budget deficit, and the United States is in a precarious geopolitical position."

PINR - The Waning Influence of Neo-Conservative Strategists: " Brought to power through the inauguration of the Bush administration, a group of individuals who pursued neo-conservative ideology managed to institute their policy directives during the window of opportunity created after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. The central goal of this neo-conservative faction was, and remains, to sustain the U.S. as the unchallenged superpower in the world, capable of launching military strikes against any states or groups that threaten this status."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Since all of bin Laden's complaints are key components in U.S. interests, it will be difficult for the U.S. to compromise on any of them. The dilemma, however, is that these important U.S. interests are affecting Muslims in adverse ways. Through U.S. support of Israel, Muslims in Palestine are oppressed, in addition to Arab and Persian aspirations for regional dominance. Through the proliferation of U.S. troops in the region, Muslims see themselves weak in the face of superior U.S. technology and control. U.S. support of regional dictatorships has resulted in these leaders having the financial and political support to crack down on dissidents, often imprisoning or torturing these individuals who care to exercise democratic rights -- whether through violent or peaceful means. Finally, U.S. demand for below-market oil prices is seen by Muslims as theft of their oil resources. Indeed, thus far, the U.S. has not compromised on any of these interests which explains why al-Qaeda still considers the U.S. a threat and a target, and demonstrates why Muslims continue to hold a negative view of the United States.

This fundamental clash of interests, which is only heightened by the difference in cultures, exemplifies why the United States and Islamic revolutionaries have not been able to find common ground on issues that affect them both."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "attacks are meant to advance bin Laden's clear, focused, limited, and widely popular foreign policy goals: the end of U.S. aid to Israel and the ultimate elimination of that state; the removal of U.S. and Western forces from the Arabian Peninsula; the removal of U.S. and Western military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and other Muslim lands; the end of U.S. support for the oppression of Muslims by Russia, China, and India; the end of U.S. protection for repressive, apostate Muslim regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, et cetera; and the conservation of the Muslim world's energy resources and their sale at higher prices."

Gmail - World Bank Development News Headlines for Wednesday, November 10, 2004The United States are on "a very dangerous path" because it is spending $450 billion annually on the military and just $15 billion to promote development in poor countries, Dow Jones reports the head of the UN anti-poverty effort warned Tuesday.

Foreign Policy: Devour and Conquer: "Such was the distraction that while the perpetrators of September 11 were taking flight lessons and buying box cutters, the U.S. defense establishment was consumed debating the merits of a multibillion-dollar, multi-year investment in a national shield against ballistic missiles that can only be lobbed by other nations. This in a country where 60 million people enter on more than 675,000 flights each year, where 116 million vehicles cross land borders, and more than 90,000 merchant ships carrying over 9 million cargo containers come to dock. Within this massive flow, termites are sure to lurk, and national missile defense is of no use."

Foreign Policy: The Cost of Living Dangerously: "More severe security measures are probably necessary and inevitable, even from a narrow economic perspective. Another atrocity on the scale of September 11 would wreak havoc on energy prices, stock markets, and consumer confidence, slamming the brakes on today�s global economic recovery. But just like other desirable government initiatives (such as environmental regulations or workplace safety laws), antiterrorism measures can work at far less cost when they are flexible and market-friendly. For example, just as some countries provide fast-track airport security lines to high-paying business travelers, shippers ought to be able to pay higher fees to move more quickly to the head of the customs queue. Similarly, higher fees should help accelerate visa applications. No doubt, such measures may offend some people�s sense of egalitarianism, but these policies and others like them are essential. The benefits of today�s interconnected market economies won�t survive under a vast and inflexible command-and-control security arrangement."

Foreign Policy: The Cost of Living Dangerously: "Consider, for example, the likely consequence of enhanced security at shipping ports worldwide to monitor for biological or nuclear weapons material, a precaution many experts consider inevitable. Currently, only about 2 percent of all cargo reaching U.S. shores is subject to inspection. The July 2004 report of the U.S. 9/11 Commission noted that, until better technologies become available, authorities should improve methods of �identifying and tracking the high-risk containers, operators, and facilities that require added scrutiny."

Foreign Policy: Four More Years: Whatever some hawks might like to do, the reality is that the Bush administration will face a series of constraints—military, diplomatic, political, and economic—that will curb its ability to launch new preventive wars. Moreover, say adherents of the Skeptic school, the power of the neoconservatives inside the administration will probably be diminished, not augmented, during Bush’s second term.

Labor is less mobile By some measures, capital markets were more integrated at the beginning of the century, and labor is less mobile than in the second half of the 19th century when sixty million people left Europe for new worlds.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Globalization and Trade: "Globalism" does not imply universality. At the turn of the millenium, a quarter of the American population used the World Wide Web compared to one hundredth of one percent of the population of South Asia. Most people in the world today do not have telephones; hundreds of millions of people live as peasants in remote villages with only slight connections to world markets or the global flow of ideas. Indeed, globalization is accompanied by increasing gaps, in many respects, between the rich and the poor.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Globalization and Trade: Islam's quite rapid diffusion from Arabia across Asia to what is now Indonesia was a clear instance of globalization;

Bioinvasion Fears of “bioinvasion” led some environmental groups to call for a reduction in global trade and travel.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Globalization and Trade: "During the European colonial period, traders, invaders, settlers, and slaves were transported via ocean-going ships from one continent to another. These colonists brought new diseases and exotic species with them that ravaged human populations and ecosystems in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Australia. The modes of transportation, and the speed at which items have been transported, have increased exponentially over time. As these capabilities have developed, new communications technologies were introduced that have enabled corporations, governments, and militaries to significantly increase the transportation of goods, services, and information from continent to continent. "

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Globalization and Trade: "Species once spread across the earth very slowly, blocked by deep oceans and varying climates on land. Human beings took more than one million years to move from Africa to all the other continents. Human trade and communication over great distance dates back more than 2,000 years, when products first began to travel between China and Europe along the Silk Road. Within a few centuries the Silk Road carried Buddhism from India to China. It was the desire to trade that drove European nations to develop great sailing ships at the end of the fifteenth century, breaking the Venetian monopoly on trade with Asia and causing the European discovery of the Americas in 1492. These ships became the technology that allowed large numbers of plants, animals, people, and viruses to be transported from one continent to another."

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "Many analysts see a change away from the culture of consumption as a more promising way of reducing environmental degradation. The consumption choices of middle- and upper-class people drive much of the world�s pollution. These choices are encouraged by mass advertising and are rarely discouraged by government policy. Furthermore, according to capitalist economic theory, a lack of growth in consumption could lead to serious economic recessions. Economists and government officials are working to develop tools that could guide a more environmentally sustainable economy."

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "Pollution created by transportation use is growing quickly for a number of interrelated reasons. The use of airplanes is rising, which creates pollution that incites increases in greenhouse gases that contribute to the intensity and frequency of unusual climate events. The international transportation of consumer goods is growing, commutes are lengthening as the world�s cities increase their urban sprawl, and automobiles are quickly becoming more common in some of the world�s most populous nations (e.g., China, India, etc.). "

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "Reliance on fossil fuels is entrenched in current technologies in many sectors (e.g., energy, transportation, industrial production, etc.) and replacing the fuels that drive these industries with sustainable energy sources will be a complicated process that must include considerations such as: the introduction of more environmentally sustainable technological inventions, the retrofitting of fueling stations, and ethically related cultural changes that support the reduction of consumption. "

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "In 2002 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) issued the third edition of its biennial report, Global Environment Outlook. This GEO3 report describes four scenarios for the environment and human society over the next thirty years. The four scenarios are entitled: Markets First, Policy First, Security First, Sustainability First.
The authors of GEO3 consider the Sustainability First scenario to be the most positive outcome for developing societies hoping to move forward in an environmentally sustainable manner."

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: The contrast between the “haves” who accumulate excess consumer goods and the “have-nots” who still lack basic necessities (e.g., electricity and transportation) affects global economic and environmental interests.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "Most water, land, and atmospheric pollution can be traced to the production and increased consumption of various products. A large proportion of the world�s energy is devoted to middle- and upper-class consumption of expensive products (e.g., cars, televisions, meat, etc.). Advertising by the mass communications industry, for example, encourages the consumption of more products, often specialty products that require extended transportation over longer distances. Yet the details of how the manufacture of various products is linked to increases in pollution levels are practically unknown to the typical consumer. Though there are limits to many natural resources, many people believe that there is no limit to the products they should be able to purchase, as long as they can earn enough money to buy them. "

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "Several trends are increasing the use of transportation. Lower tariffs on imported goods (agreed upon through international trade negotiations at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conferences) are encourages increases in international trade and this is, in turn, encouraging production which in turn encourages pollution through both the production and transportation of these goods. "

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: As humans become accustomed to inexpensive mobility and consumer products transported from other countries, it becomes more difficult to limit the carbon-dioxide emissions that are changing the Earth’s climate.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Energy, Transportation, Consumer Culture: "For these reasons, new technologies must be developed not only for energy production, but also for energy conservation and for the infrastructure that links production to consumption. For example, since the infrastructure to fuel vehicles powered by alternative fuels (e.g., hydrogen, electricity) does not yet exist on a widespread basis, a new generation of automobile fueling stations will need to be constructed."

UK's Brown Says Poverty Breeds Terrorism, Urges More Aid - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "China's rivals are suffering, but capital goods producers are winning, reports the Australian Financial Review. How has the Chinese export juggernaut affected the development of its neighbors? It's no trivial issue. The developing countries of the region, in which we have a major strategic and economic interest, depend on export-oriented growth to power their development and lift their citizens out of poverty. Indonesia is one example. It needs strong export growth to recapture the dynamic growth of the pre-crisis decades. But Indonesia's export performance has been weak, although its exchange rate has been, on average, 30 per cent below its pre-crisis level. Part of Indonesia's problem, according to the International Monetary Fund, is intense competition from Chinese exporters. "

We Want to Elect the American President - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "It seems to me that to democratize the Middle East we need to liberate ourselves from not one but three authorities: autocratic power structures throughout the region; the authorities above the law, i.e. Israel; and the most overreaching authority of all, the United States of America. None of these authorities, as far as the 'Middle East' is concerned, is genuinely democratic. "

We Want to Elect the American President - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "Therefore, the nation state is no longer the only suitable locus for democracy. For if the situation continues as is, the contradictions resulting from the application of democratic principles in sovereign states will increase, leading us to a new colonial era where calls for democracy from around the world would remain largely unanswered. This new colonial wave already has its own ideology: the clash of civilizations, militarism and Bushism. "

We Want to Elect the American President - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "We ought to take seriously the findings of a recent global opinion poll in 23 countries and consider joining the citizens of the world in electing the next American president. Making this proposition a reality should be very simple since it rests on a fundamental and democratic tenet: decisions taken by the resident of the White House affect the destiny of countries, peoples and individuals all over the world. In other words, the latter is the president of the world and it is only right for those who are at the receiving end of any authority's decisions to express their opinion and participate in its election. "

Gmail By the mid-1980s the Soviets were in Kabul, and had all but defeated the Mujahedeen. The Soviet Union appeared secure in its military occupation of Afghanistan. But then, in 1986, the first US Stinger missiles reached the hands of the Afghani resistance; and, quite suddenly, Soviet helicopter gunships and MiGs began dropping out of the skies like flaming stones. The tide swiftly turned, and by 1989 it was all over but the hand wringing and gnashing of teeth in the Kremlin. Defeated, the Soviets slunk back across the frontier. The whole world cheered the American Stingers, which had carried the day.

Une Amérique chrétienne pour sauver le monde Universités, télévisions, sites internet, journaux, livres, tracts: les évangéliques et leurs pasteurs vedettes disposent de grands moyens pour convertir l’Amérique et la planète entière

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-: "Noting the self-interested nature of governments throughout history, US dispute resolution scholar Lawrence Susskind proposes innovative ways to increase compliance with international treaties, such as the posting of bond money by national governments which is then slowly recovered by each government as long as it continues to follow the treaty."

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-Predictions about the future of conflict vary widely. Some political scientists believe that the US, with economic and military strength far exceeding any other country, will be able to instill a worldwide “Pax Americana” through the twenty-first century, similar to the “Pax Romana” period under the Roman Empire when there was little international conflict in the area controlled by the Romans. Others argue that the economic and military power of the US could be successfully challenged in this century, possibly by China, by the outrage of the world’s poorest peoples, or by the growing network of militant, terrorist-oriented fundamentalist groups located throughout the world.

FORE: Disciplines-Policy-Global Trends-: "governments spent approximately $800 billion on military expenses, about $130 per human being, and employed over twenty million soldiers."

OECD Observer: Global truths: "Chief among these is the notion that globalisation places draconian limitations on national policies. This statement bears close examination. My own view is that wrong-headed policies that lead businesses and individuals to use their resources or time in wasteful, unproductive ways will bring economic decline and less prosperity, whether or not the national economy is engaged in the global economic system. We have many historical examples of countries that tried autarky and failed."

Gmail - [PINR] Nov. 5, 2004: Growing Russian Influence in Central AsiaOn the energy front, despite moves made by the U.S. and China to exercise control over energy routes, Russia still has an edge. Most of the existing Central Asian pipelines pass through Russia. At present, Russia contributes nearly 15 percent of the oil supplied to the U.S. According to Russia’s Minister of Economic Development and Trade German Gref, Russia can start to freely compete with the Arab oil-producing countries to supplement the American market.

Press Review for Nov. 3, 2004 Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions in the world, will slide deeper into poverty over the next decade despite a bold economic recovery plan, according to a survey released by the independent South African Institute of Race Relations' (SAIRR) on Tuesday, Reuters reports.
This annual report estimates that the region, ravaged by an HIV/AIDS pandemic, will account for half the world's poor by 2015 - up from 27 percent in 1999. "Despite the efforts of New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union ... Africa will get significantly poorer during a time period that will see global povertyreduced by a third," the SAIRR said. The study predicted that the number of people living on less than a dollar a day globally would fall to 810 million from 1.17 billion by 2015. "In sub-Saharan Africa the opposite will happen. From 241 million people living on less than a dollar a day in 1990 that figure increased to 315 million in 1999 and is set to reach over 400 million by 2015," it said.
The study also found that spending on healthcare had declined by 4.8 percent in real terms in South Africa between 1996 and 2003, and that the mortality rate for children under five years of age had risen by 63.9 percent between 1998 and 2002. The SAIRR said the proportion of tuberculosis cases recorded in the country that were also HIV positive related increased from 23.4 percent in 1995 to 62 percent in 2003.
SAPA adds that apart from North Africa and the Middle East -- where the poor would increase from six million in 1999 to eight million in 2015 -- Sub Saharan Africa was the only region in the world which is getting poorer.