Tunnel Vision on Corruption - Nations and States - Global Policy Forum: "About a decade ago, the world witnessed a corruption eruption. As democratic winds swept the world, the dirty deals of once unaccountable dictators and bureaucrats came out into the open. During the Cold War, kleptocratic dictatorships often traded their allegiance to one of the two superpowers for that superpower's countenance of their thievery. With the superpower contest over, such corrupt bargains dried up. And, thanks to the information revolution, if there was even a hint of corruption at the highest levels, it quickly became global news. "

US Dominates World Bank Leadership - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Good governance. Consultation. Participation.
You would be a millionaire if you had a dollar for every time a World Bank official has mentioned these words. Unfortunately, the selection process for the top post at the World Bank completely ignores these principles. Right now, there is a vacancy for the most senior post in official world development circles, a job that is of direct interest to billions of people across the globe. The process and candidates are shrouded in secrecy and the only candidates in the running are U.S. citizens. "

US Dominates World Bank Leadership - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Good governance. Consultation. Participation.
You would be a millionaire if you had a dollar for every time a World Bank official has mentioned these words. Unfortunately, the selection process for the top post at the World Bank completely ignores these principles. Right now, there is a vacancy for the most senior post in official world development circles, a job that is of direct interest to billions of people across the globe. The process and candidates are shrouded in secrecy and the only candidates in the running are U.S. citizens. "

People's Daily Online -- Chinese lawmakers call on sever punishment on revealing sex of fetus: "Chinese doctors would now face criminal prosecution if they reveal the sex of a fetus expectant parents for non-medical reasons, according to suggestions proposed by Chinese lawmakers.
On the 14th meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), the Chinese top legislature, members proposed the revision of the Criminal Law.
Many lawmakers said they were concerned about the abnormal ratio of male to female babies born in China, which is 119/100 and even 130/100 in some regions. "

What place for God in Europe? | csmonitor.com: "Secularists who think like that are swimming in friendly waters in Europe, where religious convictions and practice have dropped sharply in recent decades, and where mainstream churches - especially the Catholic Church - continue to lose members and influence.
Today, just 21 percent of Europeans say religion is 'very important' to them, according to the most recent European Values Study, which tracks attitudes in 32 European countries. A survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that nearly three times as many Americans, 59 percent, called their faith 'very important.'"

What place for God in Europe? | csmonitor.com: "'The clash between those who believe and those who don't believe will be a dominant aspect of relations between the US and Europe in the coming years,' says Jacques Delors, a former president of the European Commission. 'This question of a values gap is being posed more sharply now than at any time in the history of European-US relations since 1945.'"

What place for God in Europe? | csmonitor.com: "Across Europe,the conflicting currents of secularism, Christianity, and Islam are compelling Europeans to wrestle with their values as never before. In this first installment of a three-part series, the Monitor examines the forces that are shaping European identity - and explores why the Continent is debating what role, if any, religion should play in public life."

In 2010 In 2010, about 40 million Americans of a population of 300 million will speak Spanish as their primary language, with strong attachments to Latin America. Close to another 35 million will be African Americans, whose living links to Africa may not be strong, but who have an emotional attachment to their roots and origin. Perhaps 20 million Americans will have strong attachments to Asia, and millions more American communities have substantial emotional links to virtually every part of the world.

Leadership rather than domination US policy over the past decade has not been encouraging for those who hope that America will opt for leadership rather than domination. As discussed in chapter 3, the United States has tended to oppose proposals that imply some degree of shared sovereignty, whether it has been the Kyoto Protocol, the International Court of Justice, the Treaty to Ban Landmines, or the necessity to wait for UN Security Council authorization before invading Iraq.

Gradual emergence of a global community of shared interest As to what is at stake when the United States is involved, Zbigniew Brzezinski (2004, vii) might have put it best: “American power and American social dynamics, working together, could promote the gradual emergence of a global community of shared interest. Misused and in collision, they could push the world into chaos while leaving America beleaguered.” In an October 2003 lecture delivered at Chatham House in London, Brookings Institution president Strobe Talbott presented the key question as “whether the US recommits itself to the utility of collaborative institutions and consensual arrangements—not just as a participant, but as a leader.” Will the United States try to dominate the world relying primarily on unrivaled military might, and regard global institutions as potentially useful but nonessential tools to supplement its power as a nation-state?

Barnes�&�Noble.com - Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: "'In his Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond examined how and why Western civilizations developed the technologies and immunities that allowed them to dominate much of the world. Now, Diamond probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to collapse into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates?' As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of historical-cultural narratives. Moving from the prehistoric Polynesian culture on Easter Island to the formerly flourishing Native American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya, the doomed medieval Viking colony on Greenland, and finally to the modern world, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of catastrophe, spelling out what happens when we squander our resources, when we ignore the signals our environment gives us, and when we reproduce too fast or cut down too many trees. Environmental damage, climate change, rapid population growth, unstable trade partners, and pressure from enemies were all factors in the demise of the doomed societies, but other societies found solutions to those same problems and persisted. "

Foreign Affairs - The Overstretch Myth - David H. Levey and Stuart S. Brown: "The resurgence of U.S. economic and political power in the 1990s momentarily put such fears to rest. But recently, a new threat to the sustainability of U.S. hegemony has emerged: excessive dependence on foreign capital and growing foreign debt. As former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers has said, 'there is something odd about the world's greatest power being the world's greatest debtor.'"

Foreign Affairs - Mind the Gap - Robert C. Pozen: "the U.S. population will grow from 290 million today to approximately 370 million by 2030, whereas the population of the EU15 will stay roughly flat--at 380 million--in the same period."

[PINR] 25 February 2005: Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security In fact, growing Sino-Russian energy cooperation resurrects former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov's idea for a strategic triangle between Russia, India and China. These states are bound together by their shared interests in the fight against terrorism, the push for a multipolar world, and respect for the principles of state sovereignty and non-intervention with regards to their respective "separatist" movements in Chechnya, Kashmir and Taiwan. Now the energy sector can be added to this list of shared interests. India and China are already collaborating in the energy sphere with India holding a 20 percent stake and China a 50 percent stake in the development of the Yahavaran oil field in Iran. China Gas Holdings has also established an alliance with India's largest energy conglomerate, Gail. With India and China vying for assets in Yukos, Sino-Indian-Russian collaboration in the energy sphere could be further cemented.

[PINR] 25 February 2005: Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security However, China's increasing presence in Central Asia has been accompanied by a Russian reengagement with the region, an increasing U.S. presence following 9/11 as well as an increasing role by India (using its historical links), Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (using their religious links), Turkey and Iran (using their cultural links) and South Korea and Japan (that are relying on economic links to the region). Numerous overlapping power blocs are emerging in the region, which spill over into the energy arena. For example, improving Sino-Indian relations have manifested in the energy sphere with the chairman of Xinjiang autonomous region, Ismail Tiliwandi, making a trip to India in October 2004 to discuss transport links and a Sino-Indian natural gas pipeline project. With a growing military presence in the region and increasing desperation to access the region's energy resources, it is conceivable that Central Asia could re-emerge as the stage for future great power conflicts.

[PINR] 25 February 2005: Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security China's quest for energy resources on the world stage is creating a destabilizing effect on international and regional security. Fueled by the lack of a coherent multilateral approach to energy security in Asia and by China's already tense relations with neighboring states, the competition for energy resources may prove to be the spark for regional and international conflict. In many cases, China is vying for energy resources in some of the most unstable parts of the world. Its involvement in regions with raging conflicts could potentially draw it into the disputes, escalating a regional conflict into an international conflict.

[PINR] 25 February 2005: Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security Nevertheless, in the presence of sporadic power shortages, growing car ownership and air travel across China and the importance of energy to strategically important and growing industries such as agriculture, construction, and steel and cement manufacturing, pressure is going to mount on China to access energy resources on the world stage. As a result, energy security has become an area of vital importance to China's stability and security. China is stepping up efforts to secure sea lanes and transport routes that are vital for oil shipments and diversifying beyond the volatile Middle East to find energy resources in other regions such as Africa, the Caspian, Russia, the Americas and the East and South China Sea region.

Europe's Energy Future: "Under market conditions the direct public expenditures in the energy sector will be very low. Private actors will be in charge of research and development (R&D), production, distribution and sales. If scenario one ('Low Price' / market economy and economical focus) is realized, economy will be the primary focus for business, consumers and politicians. The actors will provide energy at the lowest possible prices. There will be free competition between energy forms, and fossil fuels may be expected to be the primary energy source the next 20-30 years. Private and public investments in alternative energy sources will be low until oil prices reach so high a level that alternative energy sources become economically competitive. In its purest form, this scenario will result in increasing dependence on the Middle East and growing environmental problems. Large private actors will dominate the energy sector."

About 20 to 40 percent of entering firms failabout 20 to 40 percent of entering firms fail within the first two years of life. Confirming previous results, failure rates decline with duration: conditional on surviving the first few years, the probability of survival becomes higher. But only about 40-50 percent of total entering firms in a given cohort survive beyond the seventh year.

Surviving firms are not only relatively larger but also tend to grow rapidly. The combined effect of exits being concentrated among the smallest units and the growth of survivors makes the average size of a given cohort increase rapidly toward the efficient scale.

Creative destruction is important for promoting productivity growth. While the continuous process of restructuring and upgrading by incumbents is essential to boost aggregate productivity, the entry of new firms and the exit of obsolete units also play an important role. The contribution of firm churning to productivity is particularly important in high-tech industries -- where new technologies are often better harnessed by new firms.

The presence of high turbulence in most marketsis consistent with the active learning model developed by Ericson and Pakes (1995).4 In their model, a firm explores its economic environment actively and invests to enhance its profitability under competitive pressure from both within and outside the industry.

Competition continuously separates winners and losersCompetition continuously separates winners and losers with unsuccessful firms exiting the market relatively rapidly, and successful survivors growing and adapting. The accumulation of experience and assets, in turn, strengthens survivors and lowers the likelihood of failure.

For any given size of firm For any given size of firm, the proportional rate of growth is smaller the older the firm, but its survival probability is greater....The number of producers in a given market tends first to rise to a peak, and later to fall to some lower level. Entry rates tend to be higher for more recent industries but tend to decline as the industry matures..The probability of survival tends to increase with firm (or plant) size...The pattern of reallocation is far from random. In well-developed market economies, the evidence is overwhelming that the pattern of reallocation is productivity enhancing.

World Bank Research - Working Papers: "All countries display a massive reallocation of resources, with the entry and exit of many firms in all markets, the failure of many newcomers, and the expansion of successful ones. This process of creative destruction affects productivity directly by reallocating resources toward more productive uses, but also indirectly through the effects of increased market contestability. There are also large differences across groups of countries. While entry and exit rates are fairly similar across industrial countries, post-entry performance differs markedly between Europe and the United States, a potential indication of the importance of barriers to firm growth as opposed to barriers to entry. Transition economies show an even more impressive process of creative destruction and those that have progressed the most toward a market economy show better outcomes from this process. Finally, Mexico shows large firm dynamics with many new firms entering the battle but also many failing rapidly, while Argentina resembles Continental Europe with smaller flows and less impressive post-entry growth of successful firms. "

Eco-Economy Indicators: ICE MELT - Ice Melting Everywhere: "Marine transport through the Arctic is expected to increase as ice melts and new shipping routes become available. The length of the navigation season along the Northern Sea Route is projected to increase to about 120 days by 2100, up from the current 20�30 days. While this could have positive economic effects, some observers worry about the environmental costs that might accompany increased ship access to Arctic waters, such as oil spills and fishery depletion. "

India regional power in 15 years: US report: India will emerge as an “unrivalled” regional power with large military capabilities in the next 15 years but its “rising ambition” would further strain its relations with China besides complicating ties with Russia and Japan, America’s National Intelligence Council has said in a report.
“India will be the unrivalled regional power with a large military — including naval and nuclear capabilities — and a dynamic and growing economy,” the NIC, which represents 15 spy agencies of the US including the CIA, has said in its global trends forecast for 15 years.
“The size of its population — 1.2 billion by 2015 — and its technologically driven economic growth virtually dictate that India will be a rising regional power,” it said. However, the report said that the unevenness of its internal economic growth, with a growing gap between rich and poor, and serious questions about the fractious nature of its politics, all cast doubt on how powerful India will be by 2015.
“Whatever its degree of power, India’s rising ambition will further strain its relations with China, as well as complicate its ties with Russia, Japan and the West — and continue its nuclear standoff with Pakistan,” it said. Moreover, other South Asian states — Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal — will be drawn closer to and more dependent on India and its economy. Afghanistan will likely remain a weak and destabilising force in the region and the world.
Wary of China, India will look increasingly to the West, but its need for oil and desire to balance Arab ties to Pakistan will lead to strengthened ties to persian Gulf states as well... It said numerous factors provide India a competitive advantage in the global economy including the largest English-speaking population in the developing world; its education system which produces millions of scientific and technical personnel.
The global community will have to deal with the military, political and economic dimensions of the rise of China and India and the continued decline of Russia.

Effective and democratic governance in the SouthMick Moore will look at ways in which the existence of the rich countries and global markets consistently undermines the scope for effective and democratic governance in the South. In particular:
1. The vast surpluses that politicians in the South can obtain from the export of oil and minerals.
2. The corrupting effective of a narcotics industry that largely exists to meet rich country demand.
3. The bribery practiced in the South by transnational companies.
4. The great scope for corrupt Southern leaders to launder money safely abroad.
5. The tolerance of deeply repressive regimes that provide military facilities for Northern governments.
6. The rapid growth of unregulated private military companies based in the North.

Headlines for Wednesday, February 23, 2005: "Yet a deeper question is how far the rich world is itself causing the fragility. Mick Moore of the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex lists five sources of vulnerability that emanate directly from the rich world: the supply of convenient and well-hidden places to stash loot; the willingness of global powers to defend bad rulers of countries that supply valuable natural resources; the ease with which combatants can obtain weaponry; the vast wealth that can be generated by selling prized commodities (such as oil, diamonds or, worst of all, illegal drugs) to rich country markets; and the willingness of companies to bribe those in power in poor countries. "

Headlines for Wednesday, February 23, 2005: "The UK's department for international development lists 46 countries, with an aggregate population of some 900 million or 14 percent of the world total, as fragile. Among them are two giants: Indonesia, with a population of 212 million, and Nigeria, with a population of 133 million.

The World Bank uses a narrower list of 'low-income countries under stress'. The bank describes 11 countries as being in a particularly severe condition: Afghanistan, Angola, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Haiti, Liberia, Burma, the Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe. These had aggregate populations of 165 million in 2003. Another 16 countries are 'core' LICUS countries, with aggregate populations of 267 million. "

The technology of war has become even more deadlyThe technology of war has become even more deadly, and, after a brief decrease in the early 1990s, worldwide expenditures on armaments have increased despite the end of Cold War rivalry. Teenagers growing up today in China, the Middle East, Europe, or the United States can communicate with each other over the Internet and share insights, hopes, and questions in a way that has truly revolutionized the world. And yet it is not clear that they have a safer future than their parents had. Far from enjoying the peace dividend that we hoped for in the early 1990s, we now feel a deep sense of insecurity as high officials declare that the worst terror is yet to come.

Is it possible to reform the International Monetary Fund the World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and other international institutions so that they are not only more effective but more respected and legitimate in the eyes of all the world’s citizens?

Global markets require good global politics.Today we
have globalization without representation—and thus without the checks and balances, the rule of law, the level playing field, and most important of all, the sense of ownership and legitimacy that democracy brings to market economies. That is the fundamental message of this new book.

CGD | Publications: "A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance, and Reform_ By Kemal Dervis.
The huge costs of armed conflict, the great challenge of state failure, and the slow pace of international actions to address world poverty all point to weaknesses in the global institutional framework and the need for much more effective international cooperation. A Better Globalization: Legitimacy, Governance, and Reform is a reformist manifesto that argues that gradual institutional change can produce beneficial results if it is driven by an ambitious long-term vision and by a determination to continually widen the limits of the possible. It presses for reform on a broad front with a renewed, more legitimate, and more effective United Nations as the overarching framework for global governance based on global consent. "

Amazon.com: Books: The Fourth Power: A Grand Strategy for the United States in the Twenty-First Century: "The question is 'whether America's purposes are best achieved through empire and force or through principle and persuasion.' To suggest the former, Hart argues, is to misread both history and our current revolutionary age, one where terrorism, the internationalization of markets, information technology, eroding nation-state authority and other realities demand not doctrines of superstate unilateralism and preemption but rather appreciation for new collective security structures, international regulatory bodies, even forms of collaborative sovereignty."

Patent agreement The way in which WTO patent rules drive up the price of vital medicines in the developing world is perhaps the most shocking illustration of the way in which trade policy is often subordinated to corporate interests, at the expense of the public good. The rules, enshrined in the WTO’s patent agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), also push up the price of seeds, textbooks, software, and other knowledge-intensive goods that are essential for development. At the same time, the TRIPS agreement offers no protection to the traditional knowledge and biological assets of the developing countries.

Foreign Policy: No Country Left Behind: Development is not a “soft” policy issue, but a core national security issue. Although we see a link between terrorism and poverty, we do not believe that poverty directly causes terrorism. Few terrorists are poor. The leaders of the September 11 group were all well-educated men, far from the bottom rungs of their societies. Poverty breeds frustration and resentment, which ideological entrepreneurs can turn into support for—or acquiescence to—terrorism, particularly in those countries in which poverty is coupled with a lack of political rights and basic freedoms.

External stabilising factors External stabilising factors can help provide resilience and over time build capacity to manage the risks of instability or effects of external shocks. Most prominent external stabilising factors involve the exchange of security guarantees, political relationships and economic associations.

External stabilising factors External stabilising factors can help provide resilience and over time build capacity to manage the risks of instability or effects of external shocks. Most prominent external stabilising factors involve the exchange of security guarantees, political relationships and economic associations.

External stabilising factors External stabilising factors can help provide resilience and over time build capacity to manage the risks of instability or effects of external shocks. Most prominent external stabilising factors involve the exchange of security guarantees, political relationships and economic associations.

External stabilising factors External stabilising factors can help provide resilience and over time build capacity to manage the risks of instability or effects of external shocks. Most prominent external stabilising factors involve the exchange of security guarantees, political relationships and economic associations.

External stabilising factors External stabilising factors can help provide resilience and over time build capacity to manage the risks of instability or effects of external shocks. Most prominent external stabilising factors involve the exchange of security guarantees, political relationships and economic associations.

External funding External funding: several Cold War era conflicts were funded by
superpowers and ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union (e. Angola). Some cases of external power funding remain - often in contexts e.g. Democratic Republic of the Congo. Misallocation of development aid can result in an unintended funding of conflict.

Natural resources Dependence on natural resources has already been identified as a major risk factor for instability through its creation of incentives for violent elite competition. In the case of oil and gas this risk will tend to increase as demand is growing rapidly, and supply from traditional sources is falling. This is leading to increased geopolitical competition amongst major importers seeking to gain access to secure supplies beyond the Middle East in West Africa, Central Asia, the Caucasus and Latin America.

Divergence of interests or political will between countries will always
potentially hamper common action. However, in most cases these differences are compounded by a lack of common understanding of the situation and absence of strategic capability to develop clear joint policy options. Effective systems are needed for setting priorities and developing strategies for engaging in countries.

Important external risk drivers and stabilisers that must be addressed A twin focus on the country’s capacity and its elites is, however, insufficient. There are important external risk drivers and stabilisers that must be addressed to create a supportive external environment for stability. The third strategic response is therefore to increase international responsibility,

Addressing instability in a country or region requires that the incentives of its governing and other elites are aligned with stability. Unless this is achieved, capacity-building assistance will not achieve maximum impact. The second strategic response is thus aligning incentives of domestic power-brokers with stability. There are three aspects of effective influencing. First, international partners need to understand who is influential within a society, their sources of influence, and their incentives. Second, positive incentives
need to be developed. Membership of aspirational ‘clubs’ or preferred relationships can have an important effect in aligning incentives and can
deliver more sustained and effective influence than conventional diplomacy or aid conditionality. Third, international actors should develop more effective targeted sanctions to address destabilising activity, including economic misconduct such as widespread looting of state assets by individuals in power.

Systemic and coherent engagement Fourth, systemic and coherent engagement across different types of actors (military, diplomatic, development, rule of law, etc.) and the international community is necessary.

Drivers of instability In situations where a country’s internal capacity is weak, many drivers of instability are present, and there are few external stabilisers, the country runs a high risk of instability. It becomes vulnerable to crisis, which can be manifested as any combination of economic decline, political instability and violence and lack of territorial control, or at the extreme as state failure and major humanitarian disaster. These symptoms of instability exacerbate underlying risk factors, causing a country to be more prone to future crises. Shocks to this unbalanced system can also tip a country into crisis.

Instability Framework

International community has found it difficult to translate its rhetoric of prevention into concrete realityAlthough it has become common wisdom that prevention is better than cure, the international community has found it difficult to translate its rhetoric of prevention into concrete reality. The UK supports the UN High Level Panel in endorsing the emerging norm that there is a collective international responsibility to protect. Taking this norm seriously requires the international community to take concrete steps to prevent crisis. If prevention fails, the international community needs to respond more effectively to reduce the human costs of crisis and improve chances of recovery.

Collective benefit of stability over short term national interest A progressive doctrine based on the collective benefit of stability over short term national interest can provide a shared unity of purpose...The right response in each situation should emerge from a sophisticated understanding of the country and regional dynamics, and the political and other resources that can be mobilised. In addition to country- or regionspecific actions, global policy responses are also needed to enhance stability.

Stabilising future trends Looking ahead, stabilising future trends are likely to be counterbalanced by a number of powerful destabilising forces. Stabilising trends include economic growth, national and regional governance and improved counterterrorism co-operation. Destabilising trends include unresolved conflicts, HIV/AIDS, strategic competition for oil, local environmental scarcity and climate change. Instability can manifest itself in a range of ways including economic crisis, political coups, civil war, and in the most extreme case state collapse.

InstabilityRecent data on 2004 shows that instability remains a significant
phenomenon within the international system with 18 countries experiencing major political violence during the period and another six possible emerging
problems.

Telegraph | News | Pentagon prepares to build �70bn robot army: "One researcher, Jeff Grossman, said the intelligence of the machines was increasing. 'Now, maybe, we're a mammal. We're trying to get to the level of a primate.'
When researchers succeed, a number of troubling moral dilemmas will have to be addressed. Some in the American computer business are asking whether it is acceptable to have machines decide for themselves whether to take human life and what will happen when, inevitably, the robot makes a mistake.
Bill Joy, who helped to found Sun Microsystems, said 21st century machines could become 'so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses'."

Telegraph | News | Pentagon prepares to build �70bn robot army: "The programme is already causing other nations to reassess their military priorities. Britain's Armed Forces in particular will need to follow the American lead if only because the two militaries fight together so often.
While the cost of the scheme is huge, it may ultimately save large sums of money. Professional soldiers, their dependants and pensions are pricey. Once robotic technology is developed, the Americans say, the cost of a robot soldier might be only 10 per cent that of its human counterpart."

Telegraph | News | Pentagon prepares to build �70bn robot army: The Pentagon is spending £70 billion on a programme to build heavily-armed robots for the battlefield in the hope that future wars will be fought without the loss of its soldiers' lives...The scheme, known as Future Combat Systems, is the largest military contract in American history and will help to drive the defence budget up by almost 20 per cent to just over £265 billion in five years' time.

Plausible Futures Newsletter: A hundred years after Malthus it was polite to believe that human creativity could solve every possible problem. We represent a synthesis of these two perspectives. It’s obvious that human creativity can solve every conceivable problem as long as it’s principally solvable. The problem is that we might not have enough time. The problems are so many and coming at us so fast that even if they are solvable at a slower speed we get problems getting the solutions in place in time.

Plausible Futures Newsletter: "The fundamental question is whatever societies react best when confronted with a threat or when confront with an attractive possibility. Looking back, it seems like doom-saying and scare-mongering about future events has little effect on society. It�s better to look for a positive angle that cause change in behaviour. It�s about possibilities, not threats. It�s hard to imagine presenting a sufficiently negative �worst-case� scenario to society and expect them to react before it�s too late. You often have to wait until the symptoms are visible. It was no problem getting people to help and pay for the damage after the tsunami had hit. "

GW Forecast Revolutionary innovation is occurring in all scientific and technological fields. This wave of unprecedented change is driven primarily by advances in information technology (IT), but is much larger in scope that the Information Revolution – it is a Technology Revolution. Science and technology are essentially accumulations of knowledge, and the Information Revolution is magnifying our ability to create and share technical knowledge. The result is that IT has become a major factor enabling unusually rapid technical developments, thereby accelerating advances in all fields. For instance, science has been transformed as networks of researchers are able to collaborate regardless of geography. Moreover, IT-enabled research organizations are evolving into new forms that speed up investigations: "All the lab equipment is connected to the network,"

GW Forecast Revolutionary innovation is occurring in all scientific and technological fields. This wave of unprecedented change is driven primarily by advances in information technology (IT), but is much larger in scope that the Information Revolution – it is a Technology Revolution. Science and technology are essentially accumulations of knowledge, and the Information Revolution is magnifying our ability to create and share technical knowledge. The result is that IT has become a major factor enabling unusually rapid technical developments, thereby accelerating advances in all fields. For instance, science has been transformed as networks of researchers are able to collaborate regardless of geography. Moreover, IT-enabled research organizations are evolving into new forms that speed up investigations: "All the lab equipment is connected to the network,"

Commission for Social Development - (Disabilities Article): "Noting that human mobility was now one of the defining features of the globalized world, the Permanent Observer for the International Organization for Migration said that, since Copenhagen, the number of international migrants worldwide had reached some 185 million -- an increase of some 60 million in 10 years. While many objectives set forth a decade ago remained the goals of today, the collective appreciation for their relevance and complexity had sharpened, along with the recognition that migration was an essential, inevitable and potentially beneficial component of the economic and social life of every State and every region."

Commission for Social Development - (Disabilities Article): "the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Europe ( ECE ) said that 10 years after the landmark Copenhagen Declaration, the situation of poverty, employment and social integration continued to be marked by many negative trends. Along with countries in sub-Saharan Africa facing continued food insecurity and a rise in extreme poverty, many others, especially those constrained by adverse geographical conditions, were 'tied in poverty traps'. Unstable socio-economic political environments and military conflicts in the Middle East and Africa had hindered the adoption of socially friendly policies and diverted resources from development to the military and police."

Tomorrow's God - CwG.org: "Tomorrow�s God by New York Times best-selling author Neale Donald Walsch is one of the single most extraordinary spiritual statements of our time. Purporting to be the dictation of a direct conversation with God, it places before humankind an unexpected prediction�that our species will create a new God in the very near future. "

[PINR] 16 February 2005: Implications of the Iraqi National Elections Toward U.S. Strategic Interests The lack of confidence in the United States, and by implication the more U.S.-oriented Iraqi political parties, greatly affected the January 30 general elections. The Iraqi List party, led by U.S.-backed interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, made a poor showing in the elections, receiving only 13.7 percent of the national vote despite a major media campaign. The Iraqi List party espouses secularism and is most closely aligned with the United States; indeed, Allawi was given the honor of addressing a joint session of the U.S. Congress in September 2004. He was also responsible for the suppression of al-Sadr's uprising in the Shi'a holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. Allawi was involved in approving the heavy U.S.-organized assaults on the Sunni Arab strongholds of Fallujah and Samarra. These actions by Allawi were not popular among the Iraqi population and resulted in much of the popular anger that is now directed toward the United States

[PINR] 16 February 2005: Implications of the Iraqi National Elections Toward U.S. Strategic Interests The pivotal win for Iraq's Shi'a majority -- a victory that was expected -- is a worrying development for the United States since it will likely result in an improvement of relations between Iraq and Iran, two long-time antagonists that each received support from the United States at one time due to Washington's interests of preventing any one Middle Eastern state from gaining enough power in the region to make a run for regional hegemony. The path toward regional hegemony in a region as rich with oil and gas reserves would create dangerous instability and develop into a situation where the Middle Eastern hegemon would be able to extract concessions from Western powers in exchange for energy supplies.

World Bank Press Review for Tuesday, February 15, 2005: "During the cold war, aid was generous but often doled out to political allies with few questions asked about whether the money was put to good use, wasted or stolen. Acceptance on the part of rich nations' taxpayers was bought by 'tying' aid to purchasing exports from the donor countries, further reducing its effectiveness.After the cold war, however, a consensus grew among academics and practitioners that aid would do most good when directed at well-governed countries and when aligned with the priorities of recipients rather than donors. But this was barely put to the test. As the geopolitical imperative for buying loyalty diminished in the 1990s, so did aid budgets.
Now, aid has begun to pick up again, with the attacks of September 11 2001 helping to focus US attention on the dangers posed by poor and failing states. A game of competitive compassion has ensued among rich countries, spurred by the added imperative of the Aids crisis engulfing the developing world. "

Development In one way or another we want to look at objects of development - (the individual, community, society, and all humans) - the requirements for development (awareness, ability, access and resources) and the levels of development (physiological, safety, belonging, esteem, understanding, aesthetics, self-actualization and transcendence).

Our human species is at an historic crossroads facing a looming punctuation in the evolution of life on our planet. Whether it is the prospect of rapid climate change, terrorist warfare with nuclear and biological weapons, the now current ability to duplicate and fundamentally engineer life forms, or the absolute dependency that the world's economic system has on intrinsically vulnerable global information systems - it seems clear that these examples, among a growing number of extraordinary potential events, are conspiring to rapidly reconfigure the world in which we live in the coming years.

a vision of future fighting machines.: "I think classical wars will occur less often. Decentralized communication such as the Internet is inherently a democratizing force, and has been behind the move towards greater democracy in the world. Although not a perfect system, democracies tend not to fight wars against each other. Future conflicts will tend to be with smaller groups who will try to amplify their impact by finding vulnerabilities in our technological infrastructure. "

a vision of future fighting machines.: "Many of the elements of avoiding war are not military issues, but ones of promoting political stability, education, and other elements of societies in which all members have a stake. From a military angle, we will need to strengthen international cooperation, as modern dangers are global issues. Missiles, biological viruses, and information pathogens all travel around the world without regard for national boundaries."

a vision of future fighting machines.: "Technology typically moves in an incremental fashion rather than a single leap, but with each generation of technology taking less time than the last, this evolutionary process is moving more quickly."

A vision of future fighting machines: "Within 25 years, non-biological intelligence will match human intelligence in areas in which humans now excel, principally in pattern recognition. It will combine these abilities with the inherent advantages of machine intelligence, such as speed, easy sharing of knowledge and skills. One implication will be that we will enhance our own biological intelligence through direct connection with non-biological intelligence."

[@RT Flash] Lettre 323 On voit bien que l’accès généralisé et instantané, grâce au Net, à une information qui a été longtemps détenue de manière quasi-exclusive par les pouvoirs politiques ou économiques change la nature même de nos systèmes démocratiques. Désormais nos concitoyens, tout en restant fondamentalement attachés aux principes démocratiques, veulent être associés à tous les stades de la réflexion et de la décision politique, et ils n’acceptent plus le fait du Prince. Dans ce nouveau cadre démocratique hyper médiatisé, où les opinions se font et se défont très rapidement, l’art de gouverner devient d’abord l’art de mettre en place les outils et les procédures qui permettent de réaliser un projet politique en permettant son appropriation puis son approbation par les citoyens. Dans un tel contexte il devient de plus en plus difficile aux responsables politiques d’avoir le courage d’aller contre une opinion publique dominante, même lorsqu’ils sont convaincus que leur projet sert l’intérêt général à long terme. Si nous voulons éviter que la démocratie électronique ne se transforme en démagogie électronique et que la puissance publique ne devienne impuissante à réaliser les réformes nécessaires mais impopulaires dont nos sociétés ont besoin, nos élus et responsables politiques vont devoir apprendre à convaincre l’opinion publique avant de prendre des décisions importantes, en l’associant de manière sincère et active aux processus de réflexions.

[@RT Flash] Lettre 323: Ce rapport souligne le vieillissement des populations dans la plupart des pays occidentaux ou au Japon, l’accroissement de l’insécurité globale et le rôle clé joué par les nouvelles technologies dans le développement économique. Mais il soutient aussi, avec insistance, combien la face du monde sera changée par l’avènement de nouvelles superpuissances, notamment la Chine et l’Inde.
Ce n’est plus simplement la crainte de voir s’effriter la toute puissance américaine qui s’exprime, mais bien la conviction du caractère inéluctable de l’émergence des grands pays asiatiques, et les bouleversements qu’elle entraînera. Ainsi, en soulignant le fait que "la Chine et l’Inde sont bien placés pour devenir des leaders technologiques", et que tous deux "afficheront des PNB surpassant ceux de la plupart des puissances économiques occidentales", le rapport insiste sur "l’impact majeur, au plan géopolitique, économique ou militaire" de l’émergence de ces pays, engendrant une transformation comparable au développement de l’Allemagne au 19e siècle et à l’apparition de la puissance américaine au 20e siècle. "On estime souvent que le 20e siècle a été le siècle de l’Amérique. Le 21e siècle pourrait bien être celui de l’Asie", lit-on.

Boston.com / News / Nation / Washington / US denies patent for part-human hybrid: "The decision letter to Newman notes that many people have heart valves from pigs. A patent has been issued on the use of baboon cells in people to aid in organ transplantation. Those procedures, the letter says, 'did not convert the human patient to a nonhuman.'
Similarly, mice that contain up to 1 percent human brain cells in their skulls are clearly mice, said Stanford University biologist Irving Weissman, one of the scientists who helped make hybrid rodents. The tricky part, all agree, is what to do with the middle ground. Weissman and others, for example, have talked about their desire to produce mice whose brains are composed entirely of human cells."

Boston.com / News / Nation / Washington / US denies patent for part-human hybrid: " A New York scientist's seven-year effort to win a patent on a laboratory-conceived creature that is part human and part animal ended in failure Friday, closing a historic and somewhat ghoulish chapter in US intellectual property law."

What worries Western powers most are China’s and India’s growing ties with Iran, a country Washington is trying to isolate. Both Beijing and New Delhi have recently signed 25-year gas and oil deals with Iran that are collectively valued at between $150 and $200 billion, and both countries are also deepening their military cooperation with Tehran. Iran and India conducted their first-ever joint naval exercises last September, and India has agreed to modernize Iran’s aging Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and MiG fighters.

Both China and India have also tried to thwart Western attempts to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, which has largely been built with Russian assistance. In a departure from China’s traditional neutrality on international issues that do not involve its own interests, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing flew to Tehran last November when the United States threatened to haul Iran before the U.N. Security Council and announced that China would oppose any such effort. And in January, the State Department imposed penalties against some of China’s largest weapons manufacturers for their support of Iran’s ballistic missile program.

The potential volatility from such aggressive oil politics could bring China and India into conflict with Western, Japanese and other regional interests, says Robert Karniol, the Asia-Pacific editor of Jane’s Defence Weekly. “Even if China’s oil consumption doubles by 2020, it will still only be half that of the U.S.,’” says Zheng, the energy researcher at Beijing Institute of Technology. Yet the sheer size of the Asian juggernauts and the prospect that they might indiscriminately swallow global resources scare economic planners.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/economy/2005/0131oilaxis.htm

The Axis of OilBy 2010 India will have 36 times more cars than it did in 1990. China will have 90 times more, and by 2030 it will have more cars than the United States, according to the Energy Research Institute of Beijing. More than 4.5 million new vehicles are expected to hit Chinese roads this year alone, a far cry from the time when families saved for months to buy a Flying Pigeon bicycle. The country is now the world’s largest oil importer after the United States, guzzling about 6.5 million barrels of oil a day; this figure will double by 2020, says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.

India, the world’s second-fastest growing economy after China, now consumes about 2.2 million barrels a day—about the same as South Korea—and this is expected to rise to 5.3 million barrels a day by 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. With global oil production barely 1 million barrels over the global consumption rate of 81 million barrels a day, the surge in demand from China and India could eventually lead global demand to outstrip supply, causing fuel prices to shoot up beyond their recent highs of around $56 a barrel, says Roach. The impact of this on the global economy, particularly in developing countries that import most of their fuel, would be severe. The International Energy Agency says that for every $1 increase in oil price, the global economy loses $25 billion.

The Axis of Oil - Empire?China and India are locked in an increasingly aggressive wrangle with the United States over the world’s most critical economic commodity: oil. More than any other issue, this tussle will shape the economic, environmental and geopolitical future of these three countries, and the world....Ensuring a steady flow of cheap oil has always been one of the central goals of U.S. foreign and economic policy, and Washington’s preeminent position in the world is based in large measure on its ability to do this. But China and India are increasingly competing with the United States to secure oil exploration rights in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Latin America. India has invested more than $3 billion in global exploration ventures and has said it will continue to spend $1 billion a year on more acquisitions. China, which has already invested about $15 billion in foreign oil fields, is expected to spend 10 times more over the next decade. The motive, says Zheng Hongfei, an energy researcher at the Beijing Institute of Technology, is that “there is just not enough oil in the world” to cover China’s and India’s growing energy needs.

Newsletter Jan. 31 - Feb. 4A CIA Report Predicts That American Global Dominance Could End in 15 Years (January 26, 2005) According to a National Intelligence Council report, US imperialist advantages could end by 2020 due to the falling dollar, globalization trends that favor Asia over the West, and growing economies such as India and China. While forecasting potential scenarios from an economic-oriented "Davos World" to a fear-induced "Orwellian world," the report urges the US to maintain military power and a strong counterterrorism strategy. But this Slate article argues that the US "can't sell freedom if we can't sell ourselves."

David Brin's Official Web Site: "The Real Culture War" (article): "scientific proposals to alter Creation's design"

State of the World 2005 - Notable Security Trends: Worldwatch Institute Press Release: "More than 28,000 nuclear weapons are held by eight states around the world. Six countries possess declared stocks of chemical weapons, with over 98 percent of the stockpile being controlled by the U.S. and Russia."

State of the World 2005 Table of Contents: "Access to oil is another cause of instability that has commanded recent attention. The dramatic run-up in prices to over $50 per barrel in the fall of 2004 coincided with growing instability in the Persian Gulf, where the world's richest oil resources are located. The dominance of the oil industry in the Middle East has undermined the economic and political development of the region while flooding it with petrodollars that have increased economic disparities and financed the rise of terrorism. The dependence of the United States and Europe on Middle Eastern oil has led to highly skewed economic flows and heavy military investments that have created deep resentments on both sides. The prospect of world oil production beginning a long decline within the next decade, just when large countries like China and India stake their claims to remaining reserves, would be reason enough for concern even without the crisis caused by the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Together, they have created a global powder keg."

State of the World 2005 Table of ContentsDemographic imbalances are one destabilizing force. As Lisa Mastny and Richard Cincotta describe in the second chapter, in roughly one third of the world's countries—most of them in Africa, the Middle East, and South and Central Asia—a large generation of teenagers is faced with limited economic prospects and often little in the way of education. Most of the world's civil wars, emigration, and terrorism emerge from those countries—exacerbated in many cases by ethnic and religious differences and by the breakdown of the social and ecological systems people depend on.

State of the World 2005 Table of Contents: "Drawing on the varied expertise and insights of our own staff, as well as on a record number of collaborators from around the world, we have sought to unravel the often hidden links between such disparate phenomena as falling water tables, the spread of AIDS, transnational crime, environmental refugees, terrorism, and climate change. In doing so, we have found ample reason to fear that the profound insecurity that has gripped the world for the past three years may grow even deeper in the years ahead."

Worldwatch: Security Redefined, Problems Without Passports, and MoreSecurity concerns are once more at the top of the world's agenda, but terrorism is only symptomatic of a far broader set of complex problems that require more than a military response. Acts of terror and the reactions they provoke are often the result of profound socioeconomic, environmental, and political pressures—forces that together create a less stable world. Among them are endemic poverty, convulsive economic transitions that cause growing inequality and high unemployment, the spread of deadly armaments, large-scale population movements, recurring natural disasters, ecosystem breakdown, new and resurgent communicable diseases, and rising competition over land and other natural resources.

InstitutionsThe dilemma at the global level is reconciling the continuing need for financial support of the rich countries with the ability of the ability of the institutions to remain legitimate and effective in a changing world.

The cranky user: Performance anxiety: "Computers are getting faster all the time, or so they tell us. But, in fact, the user experience of performance hasn't improved much over the past 15 years. "

[Les P�n�lopes]: "Sally Burch, director of ALAI, an independent news agency in Quito, Ecuador, pointed out that new independent media organisations question market rules and are ready to share and struggle against the privatisation of knowledge. These media groups have created communication circuits and networks that link the local to the global and vice versa. They also monitor the big media conglomerates while at the same time questioning the evident power abuses that companies and governments commit. 'These new media's vision is based on rights and not on market rules,' said Burch. 'They struggle so that their communication rights are guaranteed and also their access to diverse and plural sources of information'.
One example of this development is the CIRANDA information and communication project that started with the first World Social Forum in 2001. CIRANDA has a pool of 1,000 journalists from alternative media, and currently, there are already 6,000 journalists who participate in the CIRANDA initiative by sharing resources and articles and creating a well-organised media network."

The Darwinian Interlude: "Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal."

The Darwinian Interlude: "His main theme is the obsolescence of reductionist biology as it has been practiced for the last hundred years, and the need for a new biology based on communities and ecosystems rather than on genes and molecules. He also raises another profoundly important question: when did Darwinian evolution begin? By Darwinian evolution he means evolution as Darwin himself understood it, based on the intense competition for survival among noninterbreeding species. He presents evidence that Darwinian evolution did not go back to the beginning of life. In early times, the process that he calls �horizontal gene transfer,� the sharing of genes between unrelated species, was prevalent."...Woese is postulating a golden age of pre-Darwinian life, during which horizontal gene transfer was universal and separate species did not exist. Life was then a community of cells of various kinds, sharing their genetic information so that clever chemical tricks and catalytic processes invented by one creature could be inherited by all of them. Evolution was a communal affair, the whole community advancing in metabolic and reproductive efficiency as the genes of the most efficient cells were shared. But then, one evil day, a cell resembling a primitive bacterium happened to find itself one jump ahead of its neighbors in efficiency. That cell separated itself from the community and refused to share. Its offspring became the first species. With its superior efficiency, it continued to prosper and to evolve separately. Some millions of years later, another cell separated itself from the community and became another species. And so it went on, until all life was divided into species.

The Darwinian Interlude: "The basic biochemical machinery of life evolved rapidly during the few hundred million years that preceded the Darwinian era and changed very little in the following two billion years of microbial evolution. Darwinian evolution is slow because individual species, once established, evolve very little. Darwinian evolution requires species to become extinct so that new species can replace them. Three innovations helped to speed up the pace of evolution in the later stages of the Darwinian era. The first was sex, which is a form of horizontal gene transfer within species. The second innovation was multicellular organization, which opened up a whole new world of form and function. The third was brains, which opened a new world of co�rdinated sensation and action, culminating in the evolution of eyes and hands. All through the Darwinian era, occasional mass extinctions helped to open opportunities for new evolutionary ventures."....Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal.

In the post-Darwinian era, biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora.

People's Daily Online -- Review: China topics at World Economic Forum 2005: "Lenovo's unprecedented purchase of IBM's personal computer part also became a focus of public attention. If succeeded, Lenovo would become the world's third biggest PC producer next only to DELL and HP. Earlier, China's household appliance producer TCL bought a large part of Thomson's stocks. Communications equipment producer Huawei Technologies has extended its business to more than 70 countries and become a powerful rival of CISCO and Alcatel. As an analyst once exclaimed, the whole world is watching every move of China with astonishing eyes: this country, which possess a foreign exchange reserve over 600 billion US dollars, is marching into overseas markets. "

People's Daily Online -- China to beef up surveying of mineral resources home and abroad: "Meng is concerned about the possible adverse influence on the national economic security and sustainable development due to the overdependence on foreign supply. He recognized that the shortage of important mineral resources has constituted a bottleneck to the sustainable development of the economy and society.
Meng believes that exploiting both the domestic and overseas resources is the right solution to the problem. 'Mineral resources are global. It is impossible for any country to rely on its own resources to fuel its development,' said Meng.
He suggested further international cooperation and exchanges on geology, as well as efficient use of overseas resources, so as to strengthen the participation into and diversify the use of foreign resources. "

People's Daily Online -- China to beef up surveying of mineral resources home and abroad: "Mineral resources which have been discovered so far in China account for 12 percent of the world's total, following US and Russia. However, the resources per capita is merely 58 percent of the world's average, ranking the 53rd in the world. Generally, China is a populous country with insufficient resources.
This map of China's mineral resources endowment was depicted by Meng Xianlai, Director of Bureau of Geological Investigation recently.
He thought that the country would have to consume more mineral resources than ever to fuel its modernization. He has noticed that the country's fast growing national economy has been whetting its appetite for important minerals like oil, iron, copper and aluminum. As a result, consumption of mineral resources is rising faster than the storage"