The Hindu Business Line : World economy to witness strongest year of growth: IMF outlook: "'...We always knew that the phenomenal growth of China and, to a lesser extent, India, would eventually weigh on global energy resources. But that future is now upon us. There are some obvious steps some countries can take to ensure that growth is sustainable such as greater efforts at conservation and efficiency and a reduction on unnecessary impediments to exploration and production. There may also be a need to explore new ways of reducing energy-related risk in the world economy,' Mr Rajan has said. "

People's Daily Online -- A permanent Security Council member must meet three criteria: "At the UN General Assembly session held on September 21, the question concerning the reform of the Security Council is an important topic of debates. Along with the development of the international situation in recent years, the global nature of the various issues confronting humankind has made more and more countries to pin greater hope on the Security Council, hoping that the Security Council would exercise more functions in safeguarding international security. In the meantime, some countries hope that before the report on the proposal concerning Security Council reform comes out, they would first expound their stands to form public opinion so as to occupy a more advantageous position in future Security Council reform"

Haaretz - Israel News - The threat of nuclear terror: "It is no wonder that important American strategists are saying that the greatest security threat to the United States today is a nuclear terror attack, which will surprise and cause the U.S. a mortal blow. They believe that if preventative measures against atomic terror are not taken, then an 'American Hiroshima,' as they call it, is almost inevitable. "

Wired 12.09: VIEW: "The rate of technological change is dizzying, and it's only getting faster. In September at Stanford, the Institute for the Study of Accelerating Change is acknowledging the trend with its second annual Accelerating Change conference. The 2003 confab was billed as 'the first in the world to focus on the multidisciplinary implications of accelerating change and the multidisciplinary implications of accelerating change and the consequences of a technological singularity.' What is a technological singularity? A moment when runaway ad-vances outstrip human comprehension and all our knowledge and experience becomes useless as a guidepost to the future."

Locus Online: John Shirley: Global to Local: "The world seems dangerously chaotic; the spread of nuclear technology, unmonitored fissionable materials, WMDs and so forth, might be an argument for a powerful centralized global government. On the one hand this has fascist overtones, or it risks something dictatorial; on the other hand one could argue it's the only way to prevent significant loss of life. Can one defend greater governmental control for the future, in this increasingly overpopulated world? "

Locus Online: John Shirley: Global to LocalI used to think that the USA, being an innovative, high-tech polity, would be inventing and promulgating a lot of tomorrow's social change. I don't believe that any more. These days I spend a lot of time looking at Brazil, China, India, and Europe. Japan and Russia, interestingly, are even more moribund than the USA.”

Gmail - Volume 7, Number 18Millions of people across the globe are set to die early due to extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves caused by climate change, said a British scientist. Professor Mike Pilling cited the heat wave in Europe last year that killed thousands of people from a combination of heat exhaustion and an increase in atmospheric pollution.

Gmail - Volume 7, Number 18It's been seven months since the Pentagon pulled the plug on LifeLog, its controversial project to archive almost everything about a person. But now, the Defense Department seems ready to revive large portions of the program under a new name. Using a series of sensors embedded in a GI's gear, the Advanced Soldier Sensor Information System and Technology, project aims to collect what a soldier sees, says and does in a combat zone

Slavery is not dead, just less recognizable. | csmonitor.com: "Modern-day slavery has little of the old South. Of those 27 million, the majority are bonded laborers in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal - workers who have given their bodies as collateral for debts that never diminish no matter how many years, or sometimes generations, the enslaved labor on. Cooking the books is an early lesson for slaveholders"

Telegraph | News | Microwave gun to be used by US troops on Iraq rioters: "Microwave weapons that cause pain without lasting injury are to be issued to American troops in Iraq for the first time as concern mounts over the growing number of civilians killed in fighting."

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "Goldstone proposes an 'odd and quirky story' to explain European divergence. In the 17th century the most powerful empires in the world, the Spanish Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Ming Empire, and many other regions, experienced rebellions. Each of these societies was able to restore order and reassert authority leading to a new period of stability and prosperity, 'but that strength and unity comes at the price of cultural conformity and intensifying traditional orthodoxies regarding beliefs, social hierarchy, and state power'38. "

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "Goldstone proposes an 'odd and quirky story' to explain European divergence. In the 17th century the most powerful empires in the world, the Spanish Empire, the Mughal Empire, and the Ming Empire, and many other regions, experienced rebellions. Each of these societies was able to restore order and reassert authority leading to a new period of stability and prosperity, 'but that strength and unity comes at the price of cultural conformity and intensifying traditional orthodoxies regarding beliefs, social hierarchy, and state power'38. "

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "Importantly for Frank, the context for the Industrial Revolution was not European, but global. It is viewed as a 'world development' that moved to the West: 'the relevant question is not so much what the 'distinctive' European features or factors are of the industrial revolution as how and why this industrial shift took place from East to West'24"

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "'Technology turns out not to be independently parallel. Instead, technology is rapidly diffused or adapted to common and/or different circumstances. In particular, the choice, application, and 'progress' of technology turns out to be the result of rational response to opportunity costs that are themselves determined by world economic and local demand and supply conditions'20."

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "Frank asserts that 'Asians were preponderant in the world economy and system not only in population and production, but also in productivity, competitiveness, trade, in a word, capital formation until 1750 or 1800."

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "It was the existence of this global economic system that had attracted Europe to seek access to trade with Asia since the time of the crusades. The so-called voyages of discovery were a result of this attempt to get at the wealth of Asia. Frank outlines in detail the structure of global trade within this world economy. Europe used gold and silver stolen from the New World to buy its way into this already established world economic system. During the early modern period, Europe was economically backward in relation to the rest of Eurasia and Europeans had nothing other than gold and silver to offer in the global market. Most of the silver extracted from the New World flowed into China in exchange for the Asian commodities Europeans coveted. The degree of Europe's trade deficit is demonstrated by the fact that gold and silver never constituted less than two-thirds of its total exports. As a result, there was no significant capital accumulation in Europe, as others have argued, and European participation in the global economy remained dependent on the flow of precious metals from America. "

Revista Electr�nica "Historia Actual On-Line": "In ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age he asserts that the 'real world' between 1400 and 1800 is one in which Asia dominated an already existing world economic system. "

Why the West?:Landes identifies three factors that he sees as critical for understanding why the Industrial Revolution occurred in Europe and during the late 18th century. These three factors are: (1) the growing autonomy of intellectual inquiry; (2) method, that is, a language of proof; and (3) the routinization of research and its diffusion[16].

Glossary and the Concept of Emerging Systemic Risks: "The notion of risk refers to potential damage caused by a single event, or a series of events. Technically speaking, risk is generally considered as the combination of two factors: the probability of occurrence of a hazard, and the vulnerability to it."

People's Daily Online -- 55 Years of new China: great progress seen in jubilating figures (II): "55 Years of new China"

To Defeat Al Qaeda, US Must Build Trust of Moderate Muslims - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The 9/11 commission is right. Al Qaeda is the militant tip of a religious political movement that is spreading throughout the Muslim world, particularly in nations allied to the US, such as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Moreover, this movement is gathering public support. Like most successful movements, it is built like a stool on three legs: committed militants, moderates who may disagree with the tactics of the militants but feel they have a legitimate grievance, and a convenient scapegoat - in this case, the US. "

Crude Dudes - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "Not only does Iraq have vast quantities of easily accessible oil, but its oil is almost untouched. 'Think of Iraq as virgin territory .... This is bigger than anything Exxon is involved in currently .... It is the superstar of the future,' says Gheit, 'That's why Iraq becomes the most sought-after real estate on the face of the earth.' Gheit just smiles at the notion that oil wasn't a factor in the U.S. invasion of Iraq. He compares Iraq to Russia, which also has large undeveloped oil reserves. But Russia has nuclear weapons. 'We can't just go over and ... occupy (Russian) oil fields,' says Gheit. 'It's a different ballgame.' Iraq, however, was defenceless, utterly lacking, ironically, in weapons of mass destruction. "

Crude Dudes - Global Policy Forum - UN Security Council: "'The cheap oil has already been found and developed and produced and consumed,' says Gheit. "

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals: "The national nursing vacancy rate for hospitals and nursing homes has risen to 13%, with a total of 126,000 vacancies. By 2020, there will be 400,000 nursing vacancies. Yet, between 1995 and 2001, there was a 29% decline in the number of nursing graduates."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals"The global nuclear inventory includes more than 30,000 nuclear weapons, and enough highly enrich uranium and plutonium for 240,000 more…Unless the US changes course--and fast--a nuclear terrorist attack on the US will be more likely than not in the decade ahead."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals: "Although Osama bin Laden's ability to instigate terror has been severely curtailed, countries must eradicate enemies without creating new ones: 'bin Laden's worldview is receiving immeasurably more support around the globe than two years ago.'"

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals"There is little doubt that the US will continue to decline as a decisive force in world affairs over the next decade…The US is a lone superpower that lacks true power, a world leader nobody follows and few respect, and a nation drifting dangerously amidst a global chaos it cannot control."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals It is clear that abrupt changes in the nature of the Earth System may well be the most important aspect of global change in terms of impacts and consequences.

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and ProposalsMOBILE PHONES In 1991, there were 16 million subscribers to mobiles telephone service worldwide, and 546 million fixed main lines. "In 2002, the International Telecommunications Union estimated the number of mobile subscribers (more than 1.15 billion) surpassed the number of fixed main lines in service (less than 1.13 billion) for the first time."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals"Gays are being incorporated into mainstream society…a slow and uneven but steady march toward social acceptance and equality. Gay life is today very different than it was just a decade or two ago. Gay Americans today have more choices about how to live."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals"American religion has been so transformed that we have reached the end of religion as we have known it. This does not mean religion no longer has meaning. It means we have to know it in new ways."

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals"Overall, the global drug problem continues to spread in geographical terms, as more countries reported increases rather than decreases in drug abuse." The strongest increase in abuse levels was for cannabis, followed by amphetamine-type stimulants.

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and ProposalsMunicipal waste generation in OECD countries increased by 14% in the 1990-2000 period, and per capita waste rose 6%, from 509kg to 540kg on average, with a forecast of reaching 640kg per capita by 2020. However, environmental impacts of waste have declined over the last ten years, due to extensive regulation and planning.

Future Survey -- Top Ten Trends, Forecasts, and Proposals "Human activities such as agricultural intensification, urbanization, and industrialization alter element interactions. These alterations contribute to major environmental problems such as climate change, acid precipitation, photochemical smog, and anoxic areas in the coastal zone. Looking to the future, the human race will have to manage element cycles and their interactions…"

WFS - Excerpt from THE FUTURIST: "Interfaith global cooperation is one way that people of different civilizations can find common cause. Another is global environmental cooperation seeking to maintain and enhance the life-sustaining capacities of the earth. Also, people everywhere have a stake in working for the freedom and welfare of future generations, not least because the future of their own children and grandchildren is at stake.
Many more examples of cooperation among civilizations in the pursuit of common goals can be found in every area from medicine and science to moral philosophy, music, and art. A truly global commitment to the exploration, colonization, and industrialization of space offers still another way to harness the existing skills and talents of many nations, with the aim of realizing and extending worthy human capacities to their fullest. "

WFS - Excerpt from THE FUTURIST: "Cultural differences do indeed separate people between various civilizations, but they also separate groups within a single culture or state. Many countries contain militant peoples of different races, religions, languages, and cultures, and such differences do sometimes provoke incidents that lead to violent conflict--as in Bosnia, Cyprus, Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and elsewhere. Moreover, within many societies today (both Western and non-Western) and within many religions (including Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) the culture war is primarily internal, between fundamentalist orthodox believers on the one hand and universalizing moderates on the other. However, for most people most of the time, peaceful accommodation and cooperation are the norms."

Futurist Update -- News & Previews from the World Future Society: "The goal is to consolidate information from disparate sources on where innovation is taking place and the amount of resources being put into research and development of innovative ideas and products."

KurzweilAI.netNanotech is often defined as the manipulation and control of matter at the nanometer scale (critical dimensions of 1-100nm).

KurzweilAI.netWhile the future is becoming more difficult to predict with each passing year, we should expect an accelerating pace of technological change. Nanotechnology is the next great technology wave and the next phase of Moore’s Law. Nanotech innovations enable myriad disruptive businesses that were not possible before, driven by entrepreneurship. Much of our future context will be defined by the accelerating proliferation of information technology·as it innervates society and begins to subsume matter into code. It is a period of exponential growth in the impact of the learning-doing cycle where the power of biology, IT and nanotech compounds the advances in each formerly discrete domain.

Aljazeera.Net - Bush's America asks: Why us?: "In fact, a smaller number of citizens vote in the US than in almost any western democratic nation.' "

Al Qaeda Seen as Wider Threat: "In the past, Al Qaeda militants were mostly educated young men in their mid-20s and older who had strong religious convictions and middle-class backgrounds. They trained extensively at camps in Afghanistan and their missions were planned over months or years.

Recent attackers were drawn from a larger pool of alienated young men, reflecting the wider tug of Al Qaeda's doctrine, Bin Laden's status as a hero to some Muslims and fury at American foreign policy."

Al Qaeda Seen as Wider Threat: "Adherents generally share a few basic principles: an overarching belief that Muslims must take up arms in a holy war against the Judeo-Christian West, a profound sense of indignation over the deaths of Muslims in Palestinian territories and Iraq, and a conviction that secular rulers should be replaced by Islamic governments"

Mahdi Elmandjra, The Future of the Arab World: "None of the 'Western democratic liberal' countries would be ready to accept the introduction of truly democratic regimes in the Arab world. It would endanger their vested interests and the politically corrupt systems they have backed for years. One finds here a hypocritical connivance between the reactionary forces in the Arab world and the Western officials who proselytise democracy and human rights."

Internet-based management toolsWe know the world is increasingly complex and that the most serious challenges are global in nature, yet we don�t seem to know how to improve and deploy Internet-based management tools and concepts fast enough to get on top of the situation.

Processes to set priorities In addition to policymakers needing training in how to make decisions, processes to set priorities (local, national, and international) need further development.

Democracy is becoming more global Since healthy democracies need relevant information, and since democracy is becoming more global, the public will need globally relevant information to sustain this trend.

Trans-institutionsFor trans-institutions��a new concept of an institution that is composed of some income and personnel from governments, corporations, NGOs, universities, and international organizations without the majority from any one category of institution. Such transinstitutions would commit the resources and talent to address the goal and would act through each category of conventional institution.

Decision system of the world The de facto decision system of the world is not adequately addressing the Global Challenges.

GlobalizationGlobalization and advanced technology allow fewer people to do more damage, in less time, than ever before; hence, the welfare of anyone should be the concern of everyone. Such platitudes are not new, but the consequences of their failure will be quite different in the future than in the past.

Information overload Information overload makes it increasingly difficult to separate the noise from the signal of what is important to know in order to make a good decision.

Collective human-machine intelligenceThe synergies and confluence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology, and cognitive science�known as NBIC�will dramatically increase individual and group performance and the support systems of civilization. Dramatic increases in collective human-machine intelligence are possible within 25 years.

Nation-states Nation-states can be understood as a series of decision points that are vulnerable to the vast amounts of money from crime syndicates. Transnational organized crime is increasingly interfering with the ability of governments to act.

285 minority groupsThis engagement will be increasingly important since, according to one study, there are 285 minority groups that could be in future conflicts due to different forms of injustice, and within the next 25 years it is possible that single individuals acting alone might use advances in science and technology to create and use weapons of mass destruction.

Disenfranchised While the number of major armed conflicts (those with 1,000 or more deaths) continues to fall, some major powers have not fully understood that Industrial Age military force is not sufficient to counter asymmetrical warfare. Engagement of the disenfranchised by the more powerful is essential to reducing terrorism and ethnic conflicts.

Infectious diseases More than 30 new and highly infectious diseases have been identified in the last 20 years, such as avian flu, Ebola, AIDS, SARS, and crossspecies viruses in Africa; for many there is no treatment, cure, or vaccine.

In the past 20 years, income per capita has grown almost 10%, life expectancy has increased about seven years, secondary school enrollments have grown by 30%, and infant mortality has dropped by almost 40%. Yet without major policy interventions, the income disparities could grow enough to create global instabilities. The ratio of the average income of people in the top 5% to the bottom 5% has grown from 6:1 in 1980 to over 200:1 now.

civilization is vulnerableAt the same time, civilization is vulnerable to cyber terrorism, power outages, information pollution (misinformation, pornography, junk e-mail, media violence), and virus attacks. (The probability of a catastrophic attack�global damages in excess of $100 billion from a chain of combined events�has risen from 2.5% for 2003 to about 30% for 2004, according to mi2g Ltd.)

China Meanwhile, the merging of information and telecommunications technologies is creating a self-organizing mechanism that can improve the collective intelligence of humanity. As mobile phones and the Internet merge, China is set to become a unique cyber phenomenon: it has the largest number of mobile phone users in the world and within two years it will also have the most Internet users.

98% of this growth the current population of 6.4 billion is forecasted to grow to 8.9 billion by 2050; 98% of this growth is expected in the poorer countries.

By 2050 there could be 2 billion people who are 60 or older, which will be more than the number who are under 15.

global futures After seven years of accumulative global futures research by the Millennium Project, it has become increasingly clear that humanity has the resources to address its global challenges; what is less clear is how much wisdom, good will, and intelligence will be focused on these challenges.

Democracy in Trouble (washingtonpost.com): "The long-term global trends, according to the nonprofit organization Freedom House, remain positive: the number of countries rated free has doubled in the past 30 years, and a higher proportion of the world's population than ever before is living in freedom. "

Democracy in Trouble (washingtonpost.com): "Ten years ago democracy was on the march, and its progress seemed more or less inevitable. Political freedom was assumed to expand with economic prosperity, and international relations were expected to grow smoother as the number of democratic nations swelled. "

The New York Times > AP > National > U.S. Declines to Back Poverty Declaration: "UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The presidents of Brazil and France inspired 110 countries to back a new declaration to fight hunger and poverty and to increase funds for development, but the United States was not among them."

A Flawed Blueprint: The Covert Politicization of Development Economics- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumWhat then should we believe today about the relation between political institutions and economic development? The goal of the research on political institutions is to identify those institutional arrangements that promote economic growth, internal peace, and general welfare. Thus far, we have not been very successful. One paradox of this area of research is that while subjective evaluations—whether of corruption, transparency, security of property rights, or simply the “quality of governance”—will predict economic performance, studies based on observable aspects of political institutions consistently raise doubts. Nevertheless, many international bodies and agencies of the US government are eager to impart advice to less developed countries, and some are even willing to condition their policies on what they consider “good governance.” In my view, most of this advice is ill-founded and hastily offered, as likely to be helpful as to lead to disaster. This story cautions against pretending that we know more than we do. Blueprints—whether communist, anti-communist, authoritarian, or neo-liberal—have a wretched historical record.

Harvard International Review: Divine InterventionReligion historically has been a major source of international conflict, and its role as such has been reinforced in recent years. Hans Kung has asserted that the “most fanatical and cruelest political struggles are those that have been colored, inspired, and legitimized by religion.” In his famous essay, “Clash of Civilizations,” Samuel Huntington went so far as to argue that the great divisions among humankind and the dominating sources of conflict in global politics are based on culture, which is primarily differentiated by religion. Huntington’s opinion, however, is an exaggeration of the importance of religion in international conflict. In fact, most assessments of religion in international affairs tend to oversimplify the causal interconnections between religion and confl ict and often disregard important alternate variables.

: "They also ignore the fact that economic activity is entropic - it constantly degrades energy. Although the Earth is an open system that receives energy from the sun, it is nevertheless a whole within which human beings cannot exceed the limits of the resources and space available. The ecological footprint (the area required to sustain all human activity without disrupting ecological equilibrium) is already 120% of that available on Earth. Considering the great disparities in development, four or five planets would be needed if the whole population of the world consumed as much, and produced as much waste, as the inhabitants of the United States "

FT.com / World / International economy - Frontrunners combine to push bid for UN seats: "Germany, Japan, India and Brazil are planning this week to highlight their joint campaign for permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council."

Feature Article: "Finally, we could learn to replace our damaged organs, substituting the young and healthy for the old and failing. Many researchers now believe that one day the human life span could be greatly extended by replenishing aging organs with stem cells. We are just now starting down this road. Such regenerative medicine and tissue engineering may sound like science fiction, but a growing number of scientists are taking the first steps to grow tissues and organs to replace failed ones. Laboratories around the world are making progress in building replacement lung, kidney, liver, and heart tissue. "

Feature Article: "Many scientists now believe that, for the first time in human history, we have developed a sophisticated enough understanding of the nature of human aging to begin seriously planning ways to defeat it."

Submerging Markets� - Recent Posts: Democracy in America and Elsewhere:Part I: Does It Really Have to Be This Way?When we do so, we arrive at a disturbing conclusion: in many respects, American democracy is falling behind the rest of the democratic world.

Submerging Markets� - Recent Posts: Democracy in America and Elsewhere:Part II: Recent Global Trends Toward DemocracyEven though, time and again, this noble commitment to sowing democracy abroad has turned out to be pure rhetoric, it provides such an elastic cover story for all our many transgressions that it keeps on being recycled, over and over

Submerging Markets� - Recent Posts: Democracy in America and Elsewhere:Part II: Recent Global Trends Toward DemocracyEven though, time and again, this noble commitment to sowing democracy abroad has turned out to be pure rhetoric, it provides such an elastic cover story for all our many transgressions that it keeps on being recycled, over and over

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "US force structure is now designed to support an economic empire, not a political empire. The venue for building this economic empire is neo-liberal globalized trade, not military occupation. A geopolitical system has been quietly fashioned out of market fundamentalism to protect this economic empire, with the deceptive slogan of a crusade for democracy, the same way Winston Churchill tried to protect the British economic empire with bogus democracy and market capitalism after having sucked up all the capital from the colonies."

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "The votes of the non-permanent members of the Security Council were crucial. Zaire, occupying the rotating chair, was offered undisclosed 'debt forgiveness' and military equipment in return for silencing Security Council members during the attack. Only Cuba and Yemen held out. Minutes after Yemen voted against the resolution to attack Iraq, a senior US diplomat characterized the vote to the Yemeni ambassador as the most expensive 'no' vote he ever cast. Within three days, a US aid program of $70 million to one of the world's poorest countries was suspended. Yemen suddenly had problems with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; and 800,000 Yemeni workers were abruptly expelled from Saudi Arabia. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "Iraq, situating on the eastern flank of the Arab world, is sandwiched between two historical formidable non-Arab powers which have survived as the modern states of Turkey and Iran, with whom Iraq shares ethnic groups."

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "Iraq, like all Middle East nations, aspires to be finally free of foreign intervention in its domestic affairs, to enjoy a high standard of living in peace and harmony consistent with its oil riches as God's gift. These national aspirations have been shaped by a history of wounded national pride, of betrayal by foreign allies who exploited inter-tribal rivalry, of evolving nationalism, of ethnic, religious and linguistic tension, and of demographic pressure from an increasingly youthful and impatient population. In Iraq, as in many other countries in the region, more than half of the population of 25 million is under the age of 25 who have not accumulated any assets that would provide incentive to be politically conservative. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "There is, sadly, a huge prospect that no one will win in Iraq, that the quagmire will linger on, more people will die, and more 'sitting duck' occupying soldiers, while Iraq's pipelines continuously get sabotaged and precious resources are laid to waste, emboldening those who dream of Iraq's partition. In this nightmare scenario, the only potential winner is Israel, which pushed hard for the invasion through its allies in Washington and the nation's think-thanks, and which seemingly thrives on the world's perpetual distraction with Iraq while its government continues with its iron-fist, expansionist unilateralism, both tacitly and openly backed by the White House and the US Congress. "

Asia Times - Asia's most trusted news source for the Middle East: "Secretary of State Collin Powell, who is on record for blaming the invasion on pro-Israel 'crazies' in the Pentagon and the White House, told a Senate committee last week that bringing stability to Iraq 'is not impossible'. "

Aljazeera.Net - Of homeland, identity and occupation: "I can say that individual states will not have a place in the future. Blocs of population less than 300 million people will not be accounted for, Arabs must realise that."

Aljazeera.Net - Of homeland, identity and occupation: "Knowing that Europe and other big players are trying to book a place for themselves in tomorrow's world, the US is interested in disrupting oil flow to such huge competitive blocs.I think it is vital for any power to control the world's most important resource - oil."

Life After the Oil Crash: "Classical economic theory works great for goods within an economy. Relying on it to address a severe and prolonged energy shortage, however, is going to prove disastrous. Classical economics works well so long as the market indicators arrive early enough for people to adapt. In regards to oil, market indicators will likely come too late for us to implement even the modest solutions we have available. Once the price of oil gets high enough that people begin to seriously consider alternatives, those alternatives will become too expensive to implement on a wide scale. Reason: oil is required to develop, manufacture, transport and implement oil alternatives such as solar panels, biomass, and windmills."

Entrez PubMed: "There are 481 segments longer than 200 base pairs (bp) that are absolutely conserved (100% identity with no insertions or deletions) between orthologous regions of the human, rat, and mouse genomes. Nearly all of these segments are also conserved in the chicken and dog genomes, with an average of 95 and 99% identity, respectively. Many are also significantly conserved in fish. These ultraconserved elements of the human genome are most often located either overlapping exons in genes involved in RNA processing or in introns or nearby genes involved in the regulation of transcription and development. Along with more than 5000 sequences of over 100 bp that are absolutely conserved among the three sequenced mammals, these represent a class of genetic elements whose functions and evolutionary origins are yet to be determined, but which are more highly conserved between these species than are proteins and appear to be essential for the ontogeny of mammals and other vertebrates."

Trade Flip-Flops (washingtonpost.com): "The same is true of most things China makes. China is a low-wage, low-capital economy; the United States is a high-wage, capital-intensive economy; China is unlikely to make the same things we make. Instead, it will make the stuff we want to purchase. If it makes lots of it, forcing down prices, we may want to boost assistance to other low-wage countries, which may genuinely suffer. But we should hardly fear for our prosperity."

People's Daily Online -- Design you DIY tours on the Net: "As China merges into the world, sightseeing tours outside the country are no longer things beyond reach. Chinese tourists now can be seen in Southeast Asia, Australia, the ROK, Japan and Europe, which just opened to China. On the other hand, DIY tours have taken the place of group tours to become the major organization form in domestic tourism. As a combination of the two, overseas DIY tours have gradually won heart of young people. "

Gmail - GPF Newsletter Sep. 7-10-LinksAn Elder Challenges Outsourcing's Orthodoxy (September 9, 2004) The Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul A. Samuelson challenges the view that the US economy benefits from all forms of trade. In contrast to the mainstream consensus among economists, Samuelson argues that the breakdowns of "old geographical boundaries between labor markets" enhanced by globalization, do pose a serious threat to the average wage in the US. (New York Times)

International Aid - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum
Aid to “Poorly Performing” Countries: A Critical Review of Debates and Issues (July 2004)
Donors increasingly link international aid to the analysis of “poor” or “good” country performance. This paper stresses that such concepts are flawed. “Poor performance” per se is not the problem, but the effect of weak national institutions combined with the inadequacy of donors to address problems integrally. (Overseas Development Institute) http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/oda/2004/07ppcaid.pdf

$2.3 Trillion in New Debt Expected by 2014 - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum A new Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report predicts that the federal budget will accumulate up to $3.2 trillions in new debt during the next 10 years if the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq continue. The executive director of the Concord Coalition, a conservative budget watchdog group, comments that "tough [fiscal] choices are needed", but so far both presidential candidates have made campaign pledges that most surely will exacerbate the already record high federal budget deficit. (Washington Post)

Global Apartheid Continues to Haunt Global Democracy- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum Within global apartheid structures and systems, aid has always been connected to politics. During the Cold War, for example, investment flows, development efforts and humanitarian assistance tended to reflect the changing pattern of superpower alliance and competition. It has been pointed out that tying aid to politics translates into “choice less democracy.” Thus, aid is a means of inducing policies and programs favourable to the donor countries, even though promoting economic performance of recipient countries is the given rationale for doing so. According to a World Bank report, “Aid can be the midwife of good policies.”

Global Apartheid Continues to Haunt Global Democracy- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Current manifestations of global apartheid are exhibited in the dominance of bilateralism and the hegemonic behaviour of the United States, the unbalanced and undemocratic processes in the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the disproportionate power of multinational corporations and the Washington-based International Financial Institutions (IFIs). "

Global Apartheid Continues to Haunt Global Democracy- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Global apartheid, like globalization, is a buzzword that has evolved to describe a new global paradigm. Put simply, global apartheid is an international system of minority rule that promotes inequalities, disparities and differential access to basic human rights, wealth and power. Global apartheid is the opposite of global democracy. People like South Africa's president Thabo Mbeki, Fidel Castro of Cuba and the scholars Ali Mazrui, Richard Falk, and Patrick Bond, among many others, have used this concept in an effort to describe the global or economic injustice of our time."

People's Daily Online -- US anti-terror war goes through many wrong paths: "What is puzzling is that senior US officials, on the one hand, loudly shout their opposition to the 'civilization conflict' theory, but on the other hand, they tell the world people: the source of the Middle East terrorist activities and anti-US sentiment does not lie in US biased Middle East policy, but in the radical Islamic forces' opposition to US democracy and concept of value, and their hatred toward Western free lifestyle. Such an attitude is also unfavorable to people's understanding of the real root cause of the emergence of terrorism. "

People's Daily Online -- US anti-terror war goes through many wrong paths: "Just as the British 'Janes Intelligence Review' recently pointed out: Network in sympathy with Qaeda continues to expand, this is one of the reasons explaining why US-led counter-terror war has now seemed to fall into predicament. Fourth, the security situation in Iraq will for a long term attract and consume US financial forces and troops: Currently, the United States spends in Iraq a daily US$177 million, its total expenditure has amounted to nearly US$150 billion; US troops killed in Iraq have exceeded 1,000 people. Recently, Bush had to admit: US troops' quick occupation of Iraq is a 'disastrous victory'. "

People's Daily Online -- US anti-terror war goes through many wrong paths: "US anti-terror war has been going on for nearly three years since the 'September 11, 2001' attack. What's the result of this war in the past three years? President George W. Bush insists on saying: The United States has become more secure and the world has become more peaceful. But the evaluation of world opinion is just the opposite, holding that terrorist activities, instead of decreased, has increased over the past three years. Facts also show there is no sign of any weakening in terrorist activities, instead, there is the trend of intensification. "

People's Daily Online -- China has about 12.5 million teachers: "China had approximately 12.5 million teachers at the end of last year at schools of various levels, an increase of 3.25 million, or 35.2 percent, since 1985, according to government statistics released on Friday. "

People's Daily Online -- More private enterprises into nation's top 500: "What is worth mentioning is that 18 of China's top 500 entered the global tally in 2004, six more than in 2003. State Power Grid Corporation, China's number one, edged into the world's top 50 for the first time. Four manufacturing enterprises: Bao Steel Group, China Faw Group Corporation, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (Group) and Dong Feng Motor Co., Ltd, join the world's top-500 family hand in hand. "

Yahoo! News - Scientist: Extreme Weather Will Kill Millions: "Millions of people across the globe are set to die early due to extreme weather events such as floods and heat waves caused by climate change, a British scientist said Tuesday. "

People's Daily Online -- Bush Administration remains untouched towards high oil price, Why?: "The US energy department says, petroleum is the 'lifeblood' of the US economy. The US owns approximately 300 million vehicles, hence known as a 'country on tyres'. With a daily consumption of 20 million barrels of oil it takes up around one fourth of the total oil consumption of the world. "

KurzweilAI.net: "If Louis de Branges really has cracked the Riemann hypothesis, financial disaster might follow. Suddenly all cryptic codes could be breakable. No Internet transaction would be safe, since they all depend on generating prime numbers; the Riemann hypothesis would explain primes and possibly allow for them to be easily cracked. "

KurzweilAI.net: "Scientists in the 'Virgo Consortium' are working on an ambitious project whose goal is to simulate on a supercomputer the evolution of the entire universe, from just after the Big Bang until the present -- the largest and most detailed computer model of the universe ever made. "

TheStar.com - Brain research? Pay it no mind: "I think the reason people want to believe in all of this is that they have lost religion and the little of religion that remains to them takes the form of a belief that science will explain things,' he comments.
'My students get very bothered even by the suggestion that some problems will not be solved. When I talked about this in class, one of my students was almost crying. She actually said I had removed the meaning of her life. I thought, get a grip.'"

TheStar.com - Brain research? Pay it no mind: "A friend of mine, who teaches physics at the University of Toronto and has read a shelf-load of books on cognitive science, neuroscience, and so on, says to me, 'You take a problem such as human creativity � anything I have ever read on that particular topic says to me that these scientists have absolutely no idea, not even the beginning of an idea, how we come up with new ideas, whether as artists or scientists. We just don't know.' "

People's Daily Online -- Ten specious fallacies on current world's high oil prices: "In 1990, Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, said, the root why Iraq was not allowed to swallow Kuwait, was that the 20 percent of the world's proven oil reserves were not hoped to be left to Saddam, who is hostile to the United States. "

People's Daily Online -- Ten specious fallacies on current world's high oil prices: "The US-led war on Iraq was laughably interpreted as defending the Western freedom and democracy. However, it was for the oil there. Just like Dr. Kissinger once said, oil is too important to be left to the Arabians. "

People's Daily Online -- Ten specious fallacies on current world's high oil prices: "While oil price can be settled, the drought is irresistible. With the depletion of oil resources, there will never be any cheap oil. Many scientists and engineers in the world project that the outputs of oil and natural gas will peak one after another in the first two decades of the 21st century, which means the present oil price is not overestimated but underestimated. The prediction by French Institute of Petroleum in August is that the oil price will linger between US$ 30 to 80 per barrel. "

Reinventing US Foreign Aid at Millennium Challenge Corp.- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "The federal agency will hand over huge sums of money to a select group of countries that are evaluated and ranked according to series of benchmarks graded by outside parties. Only 16 countries -- out of a potential pool of 75 of the world's poorest nations -- qualified for the first round of funding, based on the quality of the government, public investment in people and economic freedoms. When the program is fully funded, each eligible country could receive as much as $300 million in additional aid per year beyond its current foreign assistance. "

The More We Grow, The Less Able We Are to Feed Ourselves- Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "The world is consistently failing to grow enough crops to feed itself, alarming official statistics show. Humanity has squeaked through so far by eating its way into stockpiles built up in better times. But these have fallen sharply and are now at the lowest level on record.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) latest report on global food production says that this year's harvest is expected to fall short of meeting consumption for the fifth year running. Even a forecast record harvest this year is failing to ease the crisis. This suggests that rising demand, through population growth and increasing affluence, is outpacing production, fulfilling the gloomy predictions of Thomas Malthus over 200 years ago. "

Cultural Imperialism in the Late 20th Century - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Imperialism cannot be understood merely as an economic-military system of control and exploitation. Cultural domination is an integral dimension to any sustained system of global exploitation. "

Big Media the Real Elephant in the Garden - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "In 1987, a bill to turn the Fairness Doctrine into federal law was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan after furious lobbying by the media industry. Today, most Americans still believe that news media are held to this rule, which required broadcasters to cover controversial issues in their community, and to do so by offering opposing views and diverse political perspectives. This is not the case. An August 2004 Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting study of Fox's 'Special Report with Brit Hume' found that conservatives accounted for 72 percent of the show's political guests, while centrists made up 15 percent and progressives only 14 percent. "

Big Media the Real Elephant in the Garden - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The real elephant in The Garden this year is the rise of big media to the commanding heights of power and influence in America. The eight top media firms in New York to cover the conventions now rank among Fortune's 2004 list of the 300 largest corporations in the world. General Electric, which owns NBC, USA Network, and Universal Pictures to name a few, posted $134.2 billion in worldwide revenues in 2003 -- more than five times the gross domestic product of Azerbaijan. This year, Forbes magazine calculated that over one-third of the 40 richest Americans generated the bulk of their income through media or media related industries"

Oil, Guns and Money - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "As the U.S. searches for new ways to reduce its reliance on Middle East oil, protecting energy supplies from Latin America, Central Asia and West Africa will take on greater importance. The new realignment of its global military might will likely see the U.S. risk placing its armed forces in danger throughout the most treacherous and politically unstable areas of the world for decades to come. It is a scenario likely to be replayed not just in the Persian Gulf but also across the Central Asian republics, West Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America and anywhere else in the developing world where new oil is found. The net result may ensure America gets the oil it needs, but it is a policy that makes the United States secure, not safer. More U.S. troops will perish protecting oil and hatred of America will expand far beyond the ravings of Islamic extremists. Ultimately, it is an unsustainable policy. "

Oil, Guns and Money - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "There are very few known terrorist outfits in the waters off West Africa but there is an enormous amount of oil. Africa possesses an estimated 80 billion barrels of oil, 8 percent of total world crude reserves. The U.S. imports some 16 percent of its foreign oil from this part of the world and by 2015 it is expected to rise to 25 percent. And that makes African oil, in the words of U.S. undersecretary of state for African affairs, Walter Kansteiner, 'a national strategic interest.' "

Oil, Guns and Money - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The Pentagon is also concerned with other areas of the world that have been indentified by the US government as crucial to its energy future. The Caspian Sea, especially the waters of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, could prove to be one of the largest oil finds in the world after the Middle East. In 2000, oil companies discovered the Kashagan field off the coast of Kazakhstan -- the single largest oil find in over 40 years. By the end of the decade, Kazakhstan is destined to be the world's fifth largest oil producer. "

Oil, Guns and Money - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The most recent redeployment of military forces is just one more reaffirmation that in the post-Cold War global order, preserving access to energy resources is the prime strategic imperative. "

KurzweilAI.net: "The force driving the development of personal robots-- and what will eventually create demand for them in the marketplace -- is aging baby boomers, who will be increasingly unable to care for themselves or their homes.

Robot experts predict that a decade from now, boomers might buy a specialized R2D2-like robot to clean the kitchen and another health care 'bot to monitor vital signs and make sure pills are taken. Yet another robot -- built more like a skinny, five-foot-tall human -- might specialize in fetching things from shelves or the basement, making life easier and reducing chances for falls. "

Wired News: Hydrogen Fuel Closer to Fruition: "The premise is sound, but the obstacles are substantial. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. However, it is shamelessly promiscuous. It will hook up with almost any atom it passes. Like oxygen, in whose sweet embrace it produces water. Or carbon, in whose grubby grope it makes fossil fuels. It doesn't come in a pure form."

Wired 12.09: Let a Thousand Reactors Bloom: "Explosive growth has made the People's Republic of China the most power-hungry nation on earth. Get ready for the mass-produced, meltdown-proof future of nuclear energy."

sacbee.com -- Opinion -- Editorial: Worlds of work and play: "What's clear is that the global economy is changing rapidly, and that the forces driving it are unlikely to be stopped or even slowed much by shortsighted, nationalist policies. What's not clear is how, or if, the world can adapt to such changes with as little painful disruption as possible. In that context, Americans, with the world's largest and most dynamic economy, need to rethink assumptions about how to balance work and leisure in ways that enhance the quality of workers' lives. That's a lot to think about on a day that's supposed to be a day of rest."

sacbee.com -- Opinion -- Editorial: Worlds of work and play: "There's no end of debate about which system is best. The pro-U.S. argument is that, while inequities are greater here, the flexibility of the U.S. economy has brought more growth, created more jobs (the current U.S. jobless rate of 5.6 percent is just over half the 10 percent rates in most of Europe) and fostered greater technological innovation and job-creating new businesses. Critics of the U.S. system call it trickle-down economics and say it puts too much emphasis on work and too little on social factors that, over time, make for a healthier, happier, more cohesive - and rested - society."

ZNet |Foreign Policy | The Faith that Supports U.S. Violence:: "The Bush administration inaugurated an era in which the U.S. withdrew from arms control, environmental, and human rights treaties, and conducted its foreign policy as an unapologetic hegemon, openly disdainful of the rule of law, the interests of other states, and the concerns of other peoples. Not since the Nazis came to power in Germany and imperial Japan seceded from the League of Nations (March 1933), abrogated the Washington Arms Reduction Treaty (December 1934), and withdrew from the London Naval Conference on arms reduction (January 1936) had a major power so quickly lost the trust of other governments. "

Headlines for Thursday, September 2, 2004: "Multilateral development banks or MDBs have strayed far from their original mission of being what their name implies: that is, 'banks' that borrow money where there are capital surpluses and lend it where there are capital deficits. If the MDBs did not already exist they would need to be invented, because there obviously is a crying need for institutions able to intermediate long-term credits to projects that are critical to economic progress."

Foreign Policy: Think Again: Bush?s Foreign Policy: "During the Cold War, preventive action in the Third World was standard operating procedure. If the United States did not intervene, falling dominos would threaten U.S. security. In other words, containment and deterrence in Europe did not foreclose unilateral, preventive initiatives elsewhere. The United States took anticipatory action to deal with real and imagined threats from Central America, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. In each case, policymakers employed the same rhetorical justification that Bush uses now: freedom. "

Income poverty In spite of increased income poverty in much of Africa, in the transition countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, and most recently in some countries in Latin America, the huge weight of population in India and China dominates in the world counts. While it would be true to say that, apart from two countries, poverty in the world is getting worse, it is also true that nearly half the world’s population lives in places where poverty is falling. On the negative side, there is no progress or even negative progress in Africa, with increasing income poverty accompanied by falling life-expectancy associated with HIV/AIDS.

Market exchange rate The problem is that (to simplify matters a little) market exchange rates are determined by supply and demand of imports and exports; importers into India need dollars and euros which are supplied by exporters selling Indian goods in the world market. The market exchange rate then ensures that goods that are traded into and out of India have prices in rupees that, when converted at the market exchange rate, are comparable to the world prices of those goods in dollars.

Measuring poverty at the local level is traight forward, at the national level it is hard but manageable, but at the level of the world as a whole it is extremely difficult, so much so that
some people argue that it is not worth the effort. In particular, because there is no world political authority that can set a poverty line, and use it in anti-poverty policies, we lack the opportunities that exist at the national level to come to some sort of political agreement on what is a useful
definition of poverty.

Poverty lineThe current (2001) poverty line in the United States for a family of two adults and two children is $18,000 a year, more than ten times as much as the international “extreme poverty” line of $1 a person a day used by the World Bank and the United Nations.

PovertyIn recent years, Amartya Sen has been an important voice urging that poverty needs to be seen more broadly than inadequacy of income. He argues that poverty is the absence of one or more of the basic capabilities that are needed to achieve minimal functioning in the society in which one lives.

Economic growthWhen there is economic growth, in the sense of an increase in average consumption and average income, what happens to poverty depends on what happens to the distribution of income and consumption. If everyone’s incomes grow together, then growth at the mean goes straight into poverty reduction. If economic growth benefits only the rich, the distribution of income widens, and there will be no reduction in poverty in spite of the fact that growth among the rich means that average incomes are growing.

Economic development As the name suggests, economic development was originally thought of as economic growth, but in recent years it has increasingly come to be thought of as poverty reduction.