Millennium Ecosystem AssessmentThe challenge of reversing the degradation of ecosystems while meeting increasing demands for their services can be partially met under some scenarios that the MA has considered but these involve significant changes in policies, institutions and practices, that are not currently under way

Millennium Ecosystem AssessmentOver the past 50 years, humans have changed ecosystems more rapidly and extensively than in any comparable period of time in human history, largely to meet rapidly growing demands for food, fresh water, timber, fiber and fuel
The changes that have been made to ecosystems have contributed to substantial net gains in human well-being and economic development, but these gains have been achieved at growing costs in the form of the degradation of many ecosystem services, increased risks of nonlinear changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: "The trend toward rapid, global diffusion of technology will continue, although the stepped-up technology revolution will not benefit everyone equally.
Among the drivers of the growing availability of technology will be the growing two-way flow of high-tech brain power between developing countries and Western countries, the increasing size of the technologically literate workforce in some developing countries, and efforts by multinational corporations to diversify their high-tech operations. "

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: Some experts believe it is only a matter of time before a new pandemic appears, such as the 1918–1919 influenza virus that killed an estimated 20 million worldwide. Such a pandemic in megacities of the developing world with poor health-care systems—in Sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, Bangladesh or Pakistan—would be devastating and could spread rapidly throughout the world. Globalization would be endangered if the death toll rose into the millions in several major countries and the spread of the disease put a halt to global travel and trade during an extended period, prompting governments to expend enormous resources on overwhelmed health sectors. On the positive side of the ledger, the response to SARS showed that international surveillance and control mechanisms are becoming more adept at containing diseases, and new developments in biotechnologies hold the promise of continued improvement.

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: "The process of globalization, powerful as it is, could be substantially slowed or even stopped. Short of a major global conflict, which we regard as improbable, another large-scale development that we believe could stop globalization would be a pandemic. However, other catastrophic developments, such as terrorist attacks, could slow its speed."

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: Currently, about two-thirds of the world’s population live in countries that are connected to the global economy. Even by 2020, however, the benefits of globalization won’t be global. Over the next 15 years, gaps will widen between those countries benefiting from globalization—economically, technologically, and socially—and those underdeveloped nations or pockets within nations that are left behind. Indeed, we see the next 15 years as a period in which the perceptions of the contradictions and uncertainties of a globalized world come even more to the fore than is the case today.

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: In terms of capital flows, rising Asia may still accumulate large currency reserves—currently $850 billion in Japan, $500 billion in China, $190 billion in Korea, and $120 billion in India, or collectively three-quarters of global reserves—but the percentage held in dollars will fall. A basket of reserve currencies including the yen, renminbi, and possibly rupee probably will become standard practice.
Interest-rate decisions taken by Asian central bankers will impact other global financial markets, including New York and London, and the returns from Asian stock markets are likely to become an increasing global benchmark for portfolio managers.

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: Rising Asia will continue to reshape globalization, giving it less of a “Made in the USA” character and more of an Asian look and feel. At the same time, Asia will alter the rules of the globalizing process. By having the fastest-growing consumer markets, more firms becoming world-class multinationals, and greater S&T stature, Asia looks set to displace Western countries as the focus for international economic dynamism—provided Asia’s rapid economic growth continues.

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Contradictions of Globalization: "The reach of globalization was substantially broadened during the last 20 years by Chinese and Indian economic liberalization, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the worldwide information technology revolution. Through the next 15 years, it will sustain world economic growth, raise world living standards, and substantially deepen global interdependence. "

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 5
Software that gives legal advice could shake up the legal profession by dispensing faster and fairer justice. Given the choice, who would you rather trust to safeguard your future: a bloodsucking lawyer or a cold, calculating computer? It is a choice that you may well encounter in the not-too-distant future, as software based on “artificial intelligence” (AI) starts to dispense legal advice. Instead of paying a lawyer by the hour, you will soon have the option of consulting intelligent legal services via the web.

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 5To combat a shrinking population, a small town in northern Japan has decided to give a cash award to each woman who has a third child.

Economist.com | BRAIN SCAN: "Mr Kurzweil has no time for sceptics who argue that human immortality is impossible, or that mortality is what makes life precious. �That's nonsense,� he says. �What makes the human species unique is that we insist upon going beyond our limitations. We are not staying within the limits of our biology. Life expectancy was 37 in 1800, 45 in 1900 and now it's over 80. Ageing is not a graceful process and death is a great tragedy, a profound loss of knowledge, skill, experience and relationships.� "

Traditional economic theory predicts that capital mobility and international trade will push the world's national economies to one income level. As poorer nations race ahead, richer ones should slow down. Eventually, theory says, national economies would reach equilibrium. The reality of the last few decades, however, defies this notion; most of the poorest economies continue to lag far behind. For 50 years, foreign aid has been the main way the international community has promoted economic development. Yet it has not proven to be a silver bullet.

Headlines for Wednesday, March 30, 2005: "Dow Jones and The Associated Press report that the four-year, $24 million study - the largest-ever to show how people are changing their environment - found that humans had depleted 60 percent of the world's grasslands, forests, farmlands, rivers and lakes. Unless nations adopt more eco-friendly policies, increased human demands for food, clean water and fuels could speed the disappearance of forests, fish and fresh water reserves and lead to more frequent disease outbreaks over the next 50 years, "

Headlines for Wednesday, March 30, 2005: "The study contains what its authors call 'a stark warning' for the entire world. The wetlands, forests, savannahs, estuaries, coastal fisheries and other habitats that recycle air, water and nutrients for all living creatures are being irretrievably damaged. In effect, one species is now a hazard to the other 10 million or so on the planet, and to itself. 'Human activity is putting such a strain on the natural functions of Earth that the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted,'"

Headlines for Wednesday, March 30, 2005The human race is living beyond its means. A report [titled “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report”] backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure

Headlines for Wednesday, March 30, 2005: "In consultation with other governments and with non-governmental organizations, the G7 countries can provide the catalyst for taking five steps to create a more inclusive, transparent and effective selection process for the heads of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. First, develop job descriptions for the positions, including qualifications and experience. Second, eschew barriers that limit the candidate pool to a certain country (the US in the case of the World Bank) or set of countries ('old' Europe in the case of the IMF). Third, appoint, when needed, an internationally balanced selection committee to evaluate applicants and provide a shortlist for consideration by the boards of the multilateral institutions. Fourth, allow the boards formally to interview the candidates, and fifth, specify a voting process that would select a candidate who commands consensus."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The Sino-Indian relationship is bound to be one of the most important bilateral relationships in the coming decades simply by the sheer weight of numbers: combined they represent 40 percent of the world's population and their continuing economic growth will project them to the second and third place within the next two decades. How they manage their relationship will have a tremendous impact on peace and stability in the regional and, increasingly, global context. "

Foreign Affairs - North America's Second Decade - Robert A. Pastor: "Summary: In just ten years, NAFTA has created the world's most formidable free trade area. But in the absence of true partnerships and multilateral institutions, movement toward further regional integration has slowed. The United States, Mexico, and Canada have many common interests; they need to pursue them in common ways."

Another area of concern is the erosion of democracy in all democratic countries because of the influence wielded by multinational corporations and private business. Multinational corporations can have a devastating impact
on livelihoods in the Third World and this book brings this to light. It emphasises that the international political economic system must be reformed.

Nanotechnology could promote hydrogen economy: "A major obstacle to establishing the 'hydrogen economy' is the safe and cost-effective storage and transport of hydrogen fuel. "

Intro: Mind-Culture Coevolution: "A central phenomenon of the human presence on earth is that, over the long term, we have gained ever more capacity to understand and manipulate the physical world and, though some would debate this, the human worlds of psyche and society."

Sinking Globalization - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "The same problem exists today. We all know that another, bigger September 11 is quite likely; it is, indeed, bin Laden's stated objective. We all know--or should know--that a crisis over Taiwan would send huge shockwaves through the international system; it could even lead to a great-power war. We all know that revolutionary regime change in Saudi Arabia would shake the world even more than the 1917 Bolshevik coup in Russia. We all know that the detonation of a nuclear device in London would dwarf the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand as an act of terrorism. "

Sinking Globalization - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "This deficit is the biggest difference between globalization past and globalization present. A hundred years ago, the global hegemon--the United Kingdom--was a net exporter of capital, channeling a high proportion of its savings overseas to finance the construction of infrastructure such as railways and ports in the Americas, Asia, Australasia, and Africa. Today, its successor as an Anglophone empire plays the diametrically opposite role--as the world's debtor rather than the world's creditor, absorbing around three-quarters of the rest of the world's surplus savings. "

Sinking Globalization - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Today, technological innovation shows no sign of slackening. From nanocomputers the size of a pinhead to scramjets that can cross the Atlantic in an hour, there seems no limit to human ingenuity, given sufficient funding of research and development. That is the good news. The bad news is that now technology also helps the enemies of globalization. Before 1914, terrorists had to pursue their bloody trade with Browning revolvers and primitive bombs. These days, an entire city could be obliterated with a single nuclear device. "

Sinking Globalization - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "The last age of globalization resembled the current one in numerous ways. It was characterized by relatively free trade, limited restrictions on migration, and hardly any regulation of capital flows. Inflation was low. A wave of technological innovation was revolutionizing the communications and energy sectors; the world first discovered the joys of the telephone, the radio, the internal combustion engine, and paved roads. The U.S. economy was the biggest in the world, and the development of its massive internal market had become the principal source of business innovation. China was opening up, raising all kinds of expectations in the West, and Russia was growing rapidly. "

Sinking Globalization - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "From around 1870 until World War I, the world economy thrived in ways that look familiar today. The mobility of commodities, capital, and labor reached record levels; the sea-lanes and telegraphs across the Atlantic had never been busier, as capital and migrants traveled west and raw materials and manufactures traveled east. In relation to output, exports of both merchandise and capital reached volumes not seen again until the 1980s. Total emigration from Europe between 1880 and 1910 was in excess of 25 million. People spoke euphorically of 'the annihilation of distance.' "

Globalising Freedom - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "It is also why so many people greeted the president�s inaugural address and State of the Union speech with scepticism. Until the administration realises that spreading democracy across the world means giving people a say in all the decisions that affect them � including the ones that originate in Washington � it will fail to achieve its admirable goals.
Resolving the democratic mismatch does not require building a global republic. It does, however, necessitate giving greater weight to the concerns of people affected by American foreign policy. For a superpower, multilateralism is a necessary component of democracy because it gives people a say in decisions that touch their lives. In this sense, the United States spreads freedom when it consults with people and nations affected by its actions and works with international institutions and within international law. "

Globalising Freedom - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "There are good reasons why people outside the United States cannot vote in US elections. After all, critics will contend, the American government is elected to represent Americans. Nonetheless, it is important for advocates of freedom to realise that defining democracy exclusively at the national level can lead to serious problems when political concerns become transnational. "

Playing the Democracy Card - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The United States flaunts the banner of democracy in the Middle East only when that advances its economic, military, or strategic interests. The history of the past six decades shows that whenever there has been conflict between furthering democracy in the region and advancing American national interests, U.S. administrations have invariably opted for the latter course. Furthermore, when free and fair elections in the Middle East have produced results that run contrary to Washington's strategic interests, it has either ignored them or tried to block the recurrence of such events."

Mapping the Oil Motive - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "That these various factors were intertwined in the administration's thinking is clearly evident from the most important speech given by Vice President Dick Cheney on the reasons for war, in an address before the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Aug. 25, 2002. 'Should all [of Hussein's WMD] ambitions be realized, the implications would be enormous,' he declared. 'Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror and a set atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.' From this perspective, inaction was unthinkable."

Mapping the Oil Motive - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "The second review, released as the National Energy Policy on May 17, 2001, also described a worrisome situation: domestic oil production in the United States was in irreversible decline at a time of soaring energy demand, and so the nation was becoming increasingly dependent on imported energy. But while expressing concern over the dangers inherent in this situation, the authors of the report concluded that the United States had no choice but to increase its reliance on imports in order to fuel the nation's cars and factories. And because so much of the world's remaining untapped petroleum lay in the Persian Gulf area, U.S. energy policy would have to concentrate on gaining greater access to these supplies. 'By any estimation, Middle East oil producers will remain central to world oil security,' the NEP affirmed. Hence, 'The Gulf will be a primary focus of U.S. international energy policy. "

Mapping the Oil Motive - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "The starting point for such an assessment is the locale for this war: the Persian Gulf region, home to two-thirds of the world's known oil reserves. For more than 40 years, U.S. foreign policy has been guided by America's growing dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East. Embraced by both Republicans and Democrats, this policy is known as the Carter doctrine because it was articulated most clearly by President Jimmy Carter in 1980.
Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Clinton have all acted under the banner of the Carter Doctrine: supporting Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), opposing Iraq by liberating Kuwait in 1991, imposing sanctions and no-fly zones between 1991 and 2003. As I described in the December issue of The Progressive, Bush and the neocons used the banner of the war on terror after 9/11 to massively expand American capacity to employ force in the pursuit of global oil reserves. "

Mapping the Oil Motive - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "means that we cannot identify a precipitating action for war, but instead must examine the calculus of costs and benefits that persuaded President Bush to invade Iraq at that particular moment. On one side of this ledger were the disincentives to war: the loss of American lives, the expenditure of vast sums of money and the alienation of America's allies. To outweigh these negatives, and opt for war, would require powerful incentives. But what were they? This is the question that has so bedeviled pundits and analysts since the onset of combat. "

Iraq--Two Years Later: "Given the strong nationalist and Islamist identity of most Iraqis and the widespread resentment of the United States, it is hard to imagine a truly representative government that would support U.S. military and economic goals in the Middle East. While not admitting it publicly, it is becoming increasingly clear that Iraq will either have a democratic government or a pro-American government. It cannot have both. "

Russia will play a central role in global energy supply and trade over the Outlook period, with major implications for the world’s energy security

As international trade expands, risks will grow of a supply disruption at the critical chokepoints through which oil must flow. A total of 26 million barrels currently pass through the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian
Gulf and the Straits of Malacca in Asia every day. Traffic through these and other vital channels will more than double over the projection period. A
disruption in supply at any of these points could have a severe impact on oil markets. Maintaining the security of international sea-lanes and pipelines will take on added urgency. Future trends in oil prices are a major source of uncertainty. Prices of crude oil and refined products have risen sharply since 1999, hitting all-time

The pace of technology development and deployment in these and other areas is the key to making the global energy system more economically, socially and environmentally sustainable in the long term. But consumers will have to be willing to pay the full cost of energy – including environmental costs – before these technologies can become competitive. Governments must decide today to accelerate this process.

It is clear from our analysis that achievinga truly sustainable energy system will call for technological breakthroughs that radically alter how we produce and use energy.

A central message of this Outlook is that short-term risks to energy
security will grow.Recent geopolitical developments and surging energy prices have brought that message dramatically home. Major oil- and gasimporters
– including most OECD countries, China and India – will become ever more dependent on imports from distant, often politically-unstable parts
of the world. Flexibility of oil demand and supply will diminish. Oil use will become ever more concentrated in transport uses in the absence of readilyavailable substitutes. Rising oil demand will have to be met by a small group of countries with large reserves, primarily Middle East members of OPEC and Russia. Booming trade will strengthen the mutual dependence among exporting and importing countries. But it will also exacerbate the risks that 30 World Energy Outlook 2004 wells or pipelines could be closed or tankers blocked by piracy, terrorist attacks or accidents.

But serious concerns about energy security emerge from the market trends projected here. The world’s vulnerability to supply disruptions will increase as international trade expands. Climate-destabilising carbon-dioxide
emissions will continue to rise, calling into question the sustainability of the current energy system. Huge amounts of new energy infrastructure will need to be financed. And many of the world’s poorest people will still be deprived of modern energy services. These challenges call for urgent and decisive action by governments around the world.

The Earth’s energy resources are more than adequate to meet demand
until 2030 and well beyond. Less certain is how much it will cost to extract them and deliver them to consumers.

OECD Observer: High energy: "The World Energy Outlook presents an alternative policy scenario to demonstrate that by using policies to address environmental and energy-security concerns already being considered, together with faster deployment of clean technology, it may be possible to reduce pressures from energy demand and emissions, and so create a more environmentally-friendly future."

OECD Observer: High energyIf governments stick with the policies in force as of mid-2004, the world’s energy needs will be almost 60% higher in 2030 than they are now, requiring a cumulative global investment of over $500 billion. This is the sobering message of the latest World Energy Outlook 2004, published by the International Energy Agency (IEA),

OECD Observer: Statistics, knowledge and progress: "To my mind, good policy relies on a triangular paradigm anchored at one side by economic growth and on the other by social stability or social cohesion, with good governance ensuring the transfer of the benefits of growth to society as a whole, with this paradigm resting on natural capital (the environment). To sustain progress, governments must design and adapt their policies on all three fronts."

Emerging Technology - Discover Magazine - science news articles online technology magazine articles Emerging TechnologyM-TRAN has an even more fundamental kinship with computers. What made the first digital computers revolutionary was not just that they could calculate missile trajectories or factor pi at superhuman speeds but also that they could perform an infinite variety of tasks. We take this entirely for granted now. Your personal computer might be inept at handling photographs, so you install a piece of software, and suddenly the machine has a new talent. Robots and other mechanical devices have traditionally lacked that open-endedness. They’re limited at birth to a specific range of skills, and those skills are notoriously fragile. If a gear fails or a piece of paper jams, the skill disappears.

People's Daily Online -- Human tissues can be "batch-produced' in more than 10 years: scientist: "Part of human tissues such as bone, muscle, blood vessel, or even nerve can be 'batch-produced'' in another 10 or 15 years said Doctor Cui Zhanfeng, professor with the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford and the first chair professor of Cheung Kong Scholar Program with Dalian University of Technology, in his recent interview with reporters.
Professor Cui has been engaged in tissue engineering research for a long time. He said the tissue engineering aims at developing biological substitute and implanting the substitute into human body in order to replace, repair, maintain or strengthen the functions of human body tissues. "

In Search of the Sixth SenseWe’ve already seen a migration away from jobs that involve extending our bodies. At the beginning of the 20th century, 30% of the population worked on farms and 30% worked in factories. Those figures are now down to 3% each. So we’ve seen a profound shift there already. Increasingly, professions involve expanding the reach of our minds and creating knowledge. Knowledge in very broad forms, whether the knowledge is music or art or culture or writing or science or technology. Increasingly that’s where our work efforts will be directed.

In Search of the Sixth SenseThe basic message is software remains viable if somebody cares about it. And there’s an analogy in our own lives even today: if you don’t care about your own life, then you’re likely to not maintain your physical body very well. But yes, we’ll ultimately be able to separate the hardware and software of our lives. Right now, they’re deeply embedded with one another. When our hardware crashes, the software goes with it. And there is actually information in our brains. It is literally information. I’ve estimated it in thousands of trillions of bytes, reflecting our skills, our knowledge, our memories, our personality. You can argue about those estimates, but there is a certain amount of information there. And right now, when someone dies, that information is lost. In my view, death is a tragedy. It’s a tragic loss of all of that precious knowledge of experience and personality. And ultimately we’ll be able to separate the hardware from the software. But, as I pointed out, it doesn’t necessarily mean the software lives forever -- it’s just no longer dependent on one hardware substrate. It will only live as long as someone wants it to.

In Search of the Sixth SenseThese are not intelligent machines coming from outer space, invading the planet. It’s emerging from within our human civilization. Civilization is already a biological / non-biological hybrid. We do fantastic things that would be impossible without our technology. It’s the technological portion that’s exploding exponentially. We’ll have human-like intelligences that don’t have a biological substrate.

In Search of the Sixth SenseAs you interact with them, you’ll be interacting with someone who’s a hybrid of non-biological and biological intelligence. We know that biological intelligence is pretty fixed in its architecture. Today, we have approximately 10^26 calculations per second in the humans species. 50 years from now, the power of our biological thinking will still be 10^26 power. It’s not going to grow. Non-biological intelligence basically doubles every year. The crossover point will be in 2020s. You get to the 2030s and 2040s, the non-biological portion of our thinking is going to be millions of times more powerful than the biological portion. So if you talk to a person of biological origin, the fast majority of their interacting is going to be non-biological.

In Search of the Sixth SenseOne of the ways in which our biological intelligence is limited is that we have only limited ways of hooking up our intelligence to others. We have some ways. We have the Internet, language, books, magazines. We have been able to pool human intelligence across individuals. Now that we have computers and the Internet to gather our knowledge and allow us to search through our knowledge, our ability to do intellectual achievements has grown. But we still can’t hook up the resources of one brain to another. Computers can do that. You can take a network of 10,000 computers and they can create one supercomputer and very quickly share knowledge and data and have all the different processes working on the same problem. Then they can be made separate again.
That’s one of the profound benefits of non-biological intelligence, that it can pool its intelligence.

Gmail - African Terrorism Bulletin - March 2005A working group at the recent International Summit on Democracy, Terrorism and Security in Madrid divided the root causes of terrorism into individual, political, economic, cultural and religious levels. There was an agreement amongst scholars from around the world, that there was no one cause at any of these levels, but that there were risk factors at each of these levels, and that these risk factors interacted with one another.

Terrorism remains a multi-faceted phenomenon. Each terrorist movement and incident should be analysed in its own specific context taking individual, political, economic, cultural and religious risk factors into account. There is not one single ‘capture them all’ method. Predicting future terrorist activities will remain a difficult undertaking, as there is no set formula. The threat of terrorism is real and cannot be eliminated;

Gmail - African Terrorism Bulletin - March 2005One of the most contentious and ongoing debates in the field of terrorism is the question of causality of the phenomenon. Increasingly, analysts are steering away from formulating anti-terrorism strategies only; a concerted effort has been put into the study of the underlying causes of terrorism. Some analysts offer single-level explanations; typically they would identify a single cause of terrorism, such as poverty, religion or ideology. Others look at multiple root causes or explanations including individual, political, economic, cultural and religious levels.

Post 9/11, Africa is often credited with the dubious honour of being the ‘breeding ground of terrorism” (refer to the “Critical Perspectives’ section). The argument goes that Africa because of its porous borders, lax security, political instability, a lack of state resources and capacities, impoverished populations and an abundance of weapons creates the perfect environment for the recruitment and breeding ground for terrorists.

People's Daily Online -- China, Congo agree to further economic, trade cooperation: "China and the Democratic Republicof Congo (DRC) Monday agreed to expand economic and political cooperation to maintain their 'long-term stable friendship.'
Chinese President Hu Jintao, in his talks with visiting DRC President Josef Kabila, said China supports the DRC's peace process and economic reconstruction and is willing to improve exchanges and cooperation at all levels and in all fields to promote relations between the two countries.
China and the DRC established full diplomatic ties in 1972. Hu said the relations between the two sides have developed steadily with increasing mutual trust in politics, effective cooperation ineconomic and social sectors and mutual understanding and support in international affairs"

allAfrica.com: PanAfrica: UK/Africa: Commissioning Development?: "On behalf of the African Commission for Britain.
... we therefore call upon the UK to:
Stop forcing African countries to open up their markets.
Stop export dumping.
Reach the 0.7% aid target by 2010.
Stop tying economic policy conditions to aid.
Cancel unpayable debts.
Allow all people with HIV access to lifesaving treatments.
Stop UK corporations from undermining basic human rights.
Cut carbon emissions.
Work to resolve and prevent armed conflict.
Stop supporting bribery and corruption in Africa."

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability - William W. Lewis: "Serious competition, however, is usually a necessary condition for improving techniques, and serious competition is unlikely to occur without a national mindset that accords a higher value to consumers than it does to producers. Lewis also argues that a large government is almost inevitably beholden to special interests (i.e., producers) -- and is thus typically a major impediment to competition."

ID21 - communicating development research: "Conflicts over natural resources have become increasingly common in many parts of the world. Population growth and land shortages increase competition, leading to tension between different user groups. In West Africa, conflicts over natural resources are a growing concern. The basic sources of conflict are different ways of using land. However, conflicts are often simplified as disputes between �farmers� and �herders�, which introduces ethnicity as a factor. "

KurzweilAI.net: "Performing complex tasks at lightning speed is the machine's greatest strength; thinking and intelligence are still in our heads.

After decades of trying to create machines that can think, researchers now just want to take advantage of computers' speed and make them less stupid.

Intellext's Watson, which uses pattern recognition to find relevant documents, is one example of software that takes advantage of more powerful computers. Another is a program from NICE Systems that tracks the emotions of people talking on the phone, created by a firm that monitors call center conversations"

An Asia that Isn�t the East - Global Policy Forum - Nations and States: "Asia, like Europe, wants to create regional institutions strong enough to counterbalance the power of the United States. Two apparently different ideas - liberal globalisation and the �new empire� - have knit together military unions, collaborative economic associations and international political institutions to set up a global order encompassing politics, the economy, culture and the military. This order may be called �neoliberal imperialism�. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Why should China's emergence as a rich, successful country be to the disadvantage of either Japan or the United States? History teaches us that the least intelligent response to this development would be to try to stop it through military force. As a Hong Kong wisecrack has it, China has just had a couple of bad centuries and now it's back. The world needs to adjust peacefully to its legitimate claims -- one of which is for other nations to stop militarizing the Taiwan problem -- while checking unreasonable Chinese efforts to impose its will on the region. Unfortunately, the trend of events in East Asia suggests we may yet see a repetition of the last Sino-Japanese conflict, only this time the U.S. is unlikely to be on the winning side. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Tony Karon of Time magazine has observed, 'All over the world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as the major trading partner to some of Latin America's largest economies. . . . French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of �multipolarity' in a post-Cold War world, i.e., the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the �unipolarity' of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality.' "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Over time this downward spiral in relations will probably prove damaging to the interests of both the United States and Japan, but particularly to those of Japan. China is unlikely to retaliate directly but is even less likely to forget what has happened -- and it has a great deal of leverage over Japan. After all, Japanese prosperity increasingly depends on its ties to China. The reverse is not true. Contrary to what one might expect, Japanese exports to China jumped 70% between 2001 and 2004, providing the main impetus for a sputtering Japanese economic recovery. Some 18,000 Japanese companies have operations in China. In 2003, Japan passed the United States as the top destination for Chinese students going abroad for a university education. Nearly 70,000 Chinese students now study at Japanese universities compared to 65,000 at American academic institutions. These close and lucrative relations are at risk if the U.S. and Japan pursue their militarization of the region. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "In this context, the Bush administration, perhaps influenced by the election of November 2 and the transition from Colin Powell's to Condi Rice's State Department, played its most dangerous card. On February 19, 2005 in Washington, it signed a new military agreement with Japan. For the first time, Japan joined the administration in identifying security in the Taiwan Strait as a 'common strategic objective.' Nothing could have been more alarming to China's leaders than the revelation that Japan had decisively ended six decades of official pacifism by claiming a right to intervene in the Taiwan Strait. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "It has long been an article of neo-con faith that the U.S. must do everything in its power to prevent the development of rival power centers, whether friendly or hostile. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, this meant they turned their attention to China as one of our probable next enemies. In 2001, having come to power, the neo-conservatives shifted much of our nuclear targeting from Russia to China. They also began regular high-level military talks with Taiwan over defense of the island, ordered a shift of Army personnel and supplies to the Asia-Pacific region, and worked strenuously to promote the remilitarization of Japan. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Ironically, part of Japan's debt is a product of its efforts to help prop up America's global imperial stance. For example, in the period since the end of the Cold War, Japan has subsidized America's military bases in Japan to the staggering tune of approximately $70 billion. Refusing to pay for its profligate consumption patterns and military expenditures through taxes on its own citizens, the United States is financing these outlays by going into debt to Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and India. This situation has become increasingly unstable as the U.S. requires capital imports of at least $2 billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by East Asian central banks to move significant parts of their foreign exchange reserves out of the dollar and into the euro or other currencies in order to protect themselves from dollar depreciation would produce the mother of all financial crises. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "But Shahid Javed Burki, former vice president of the World Bank's China Department and a former finance minister of Pakistan, predicts that by 2025 China will probably have a GDP of $25 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity and will have become the world's largest economy followed by the United States at $20 trillion and India at about $13 trillion -- and Burki's analysis is based on a conservative prediction of a 6% Chinese growth rate sustained over the next two decades."

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Between 1992 and 2003, Japan was China's largest trading partner, but in 2004 Japan fell to third place, behind the European Union (EU) and the United States. China's trade volume for 2004 was $1.2 trillion, third in the world after the U.S. and Germany, and well ahead of Japan's $1.07 trillion. China's trade with the U.S. grew some 34% in 2004 and has turned Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland into the three busiest seaports in America. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The major question for the twenty-first century is whether this fateful inability to adjust to changes in the global power-structure can be overcome. Thus far the signs are negative. Can the United States and Japan, today's versions of rich, established powers, adjust to the reemergence of China -- the world's oldest, continuously extant civilization -- this time as a modern superpower? Or is China's ascendancy to be marked by yet another world war, when the pretensions of European civilization in its U.S. and Japanese projections are finally put to rest? That is what is at stake. "

No Longer the "Lone" Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Strange to say, since the end of the Cold War in 1991 and particularly under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States has been doing everything in its power to encourage and even accelerate Japanese rearmament.
Such a development promotes hostility between China and Japan, the two superpowers of East Asia, sabotages possible peaceful solutions in those two problem areas, Taiwan and North Korea, left over from the Chinese and Korean civil wars, and lays the foundation for a possible future Sino-American conflict that the United States would almost surely lose. It is unclear whether the ideologues and war lovers of Washington understand what they are unleashing -- a possible confrontation between the world's fastest growing industrial economy, China, and the world's second most productive, albeit declining, economy, Japan; a confrontation which the United States would have both caused and in which it might well be consumed. "

Shortage of reporting ? : "There is no shortage of reporting on the underlying weaknesses of the Chinese banking system, the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the unemployment problems, the uneven distribution of wealth and labor and myriad equally troubling and seemingly insurmountable problems. However, the holy grail of selling a single orange to each of the 1.3 billion Chinese continues to blind others to the reality of the situation, and the desire for a piece of what someone else might get has fed a steady stream of investment into China, keeping the system on life support and 'justifying' the positive outlooks."

China: is obviously a major factor for East Asia in the next decade. And in looking at China, the status of the economy -- particularly growth -- is the core issue. It is our view that China's economic growth rates, driven largely by foreign investment, trade and government spending, will continue to slow. This slowing will exacerbate underlying structural tensions in the Chinese economic system -- between the urban and rural areas, between the coast and the interior, between the north and south, between the rich and poor and between the center and the periphery -- and at its core between the state-controlled and market economies."

World Future Society -- future times Newsletter: "WFS is also participating in a CyberFair with the Global SchoolNet Foundation, where students from around the world compete on educational web project development around the theme 'Unite and Prepare for the Future.' These students will examine the conditions that will affect the future of their community, and around the globe. Working in small teams, they will conduct original research to produce high-quality web-based responses to these problems. "

BBC NEWS | Technology | Hitachi unveils 'fastest robot': "Japanese electronics firm Hitachi has unveiled its first humanoid robot, called Emiew, to challenge Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio robots.
Hitachi said the 1.3m (4.2ft) Emiew was the world's quickest-moving robot yet at 6km/h (3.7 miles per hour). "

From Empire to Community: "Nation-states, Etzioni argues, can no longer attend to rising transnational problems, from SARS to trade in sex slaves to cybercrime. Global civil society does help, but without some kind of global authority, transnational problems will overwhelm us. The building blocks of this new order can be found in the war against terrorism, multilateral attempts at deproliferation, humanitarian interventions and new supranational institutions (e.g., the governance of the Internet). Basic safety, human rights, and global social issues, such as environmental protection, are best solved cooperatively, and Etzioni explores ways of creating global authorities robust enough to handle these issues as he outlines the journey from 'empire to community.'"

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations - Amitai Etzioni: "Transnational cooperation is also growing in other areas, such as commerce, banking, the Internet, health, the environment, human rights, and crime prevention. Etzioni believes that effective global governance requires normative and institutional innovations, and his most ambitious proposal is to unite the growing array of transnational authorities into a formal, United Nations-style global institution-a modern-day 'world state.' "

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations - Amitai Etzioni: "In this sweeping vision of an emerging world community, Etzioni, a distinguished sociologist and leading communitarian thinker, lays out a world order that charts a path between power-oriented realism and law-oriented liberalism. It is a vision in which U.S. power is closely tied to a wider global community infused with shared values and bolstered by legitimate institutions of governance. "

From Empire to Community: "Whether one favors the U.S. global projection of force or is horrified by it, the question stands - where do we go from here? What ought to be the new global architecture? Amitai Etzioni follows a third way, drawing on both neoconservative and liberal ideas, in this bold new look at international relations. He argues that a 'clash of civilizations' can be avoided and that the new world order need not look like America. Eastern values, including spirituality and moderate Islam, have a legitimate place in the evolving global public philosophy."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Furthermore, the increasing interdependence between China and India as a result of their burgeoning trade relationship reduces the possibility of conflict over energy resources. Sino-Indian bilateral trade reached $13.6 billion in 2004 making China India's second largest trading partner. It should be noted, however, that expanding trade relations do not necessarily preclude the possibility of conflict, as seen by the fact that China is Japan's largest trading partner, with trade up 26 percent in 2004, while relations in the political and security arena have continued to plummet over historical animosities and territorial disputes rooted in nationalism and energy resources. India faces this same volatile combination in many of its disputes with neighboring countries. Thus, the cards are still out over whether India's quest for energy security will undermine international security. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "However, conflict over increasing energy needs is not inevitable. The need to access energy resources on the world stage can be as much a catalyst for cooperation as it can for conflict. For example, the Iran-Pakistan-India and Myanmar-Bangladesh-India natural gas pipelines raise the stakes for regional states to resolve their differences. Conversely, India's plans for generating hydroelectric power through rerouting several river systems adds an additional element of instability in relations between India and downstream and upstream states such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "As India has made limited progress in accessing energy resources on its doorsteps due to poor relations with neighboring states, it has shown a growing interest in accessing energy resources further afield, including in Africa and Latin America. In many cases, India is vying for energy resources in some of the most unstable parts of the world such as Sudan where India has invested $1.5 billion. In July 2004, India's O.V.L. signed a $194 million contract with the Sudanese government for the construction of a 741km petroleum product pipeline from Khartoum refinery to Port Sudan. Khartoum refinery is currently owned by the Sudanese government and China's C.N.P.C.

While India has made no where near the progress of China on the international energy stage, it is conceivable that India could become a major player in the near future thus bringing it into competition with other major energy consuming countries. Furthermore, India's and China's attempts to engage 'rogue states' such as Myanmar, Iran and Sudan in order to access their energy resources is undermining attempts by the West to isolate these regimes. The quest for energy resources on the world stage could eventually be added to the outsourcing debate as an area of contention between India and the West. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "In fact, growing Indo-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 development of the Yahavaran oil field in Iran and India's leading state-owned gas company, Gas Authority of India Limited (G.A.I.L.), has acquired a 10 percent stake in China Gas Holdings. With India and China vying for assets in Yukos, Sino-Indian-Russian collaboration in the energy sphere could be further cemented. On December 3, during Russian President Vladimir Putin's meeting with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi, a joint statement was released which included a proposal for greater cooperation with China, stating that 'the sides express their conviction in favor of a progressive increase in trilateral cooperation, which also leads to social and economic development amongst the three countries.'"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "However, this quest for energy security is being impeded by India's sometimes tense relations with energy suppliers, energy transit countries and energy competitors. For example, just as India and China have for centuries engaged in competition for leadership in Asia, the developing world and status on the world stage, so the need for energy security has now raised the possibility of further competition and confrontation in the energy sphere. India's tense relations with Pakistan also have an added dimension with the question of a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan or Iran to India, which will have to traverse Pakistani territory. Nationalism and oil are proving to be a volatile mix. Resolving territorial disputes and improving relations with traditional adversaries will become increasingly important for India if it is to meet its energy import needs by peaceful means. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "India is playing catch-up with other major players in the global energy game. This realization has not come a moment too soon given the advent of rising oil prices, India's unprecedented growth levels, lack of energy-efficient technologies and reliance on energy-heavy industries for its development. Power shortages and blackouts continue to plague India's major cities and undermine the confidence of investors and foreign companies operating in India. These power shortages have been fueled by a combination of burgeoning growth rates, inefficiencies by the state-run power sector and power being stolen or siphoned for votes. The growing popularity of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and multi-purpose vehicles in India is also placing strains on its energy needs.

India, as the world's number six energy consumer, is also in a more desperate situation compared to its peers. For example, oil imports account for two-thirds of India's oil consumption while China imports one-third of its crude oil consumption. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Nevertheless, for the short to medium term India will have to rely on an increasing amount of imported oil and gas to meet its energy needs. As a result, India is stepping up energy diplomacy with states in the South Asia region as well as states further afield in Central Asia, Russia, and the Middle East and as far away as Latin America and Africa. O.N.G.C., for example, has invested in offshore gas fields in Vietnam, as well as energy projects in Algeria, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Venezuela, Libya and Syria, while Indian Oil Corporation is looking to invest in deepwater exploration in Sri Lanka. Reliance Industries, India's largest private sector oil firm, also has stakes in an offshore field in Yemen and a liquefied natural gas project in Iran and is in talks to acquire energy assets in Nigeria, Chad, Angola, Cameroon, Congo and Gabon in Africa as well as in South America and the Middle East. "

Aljazeera.Net - US report acknowledges peak-oil threat: "'the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary. Previous energy transitions were gradual and evolutionary. Oil peaking will be abrupt and revolutionary.'"

Aljazeera.Net - US report acknowledges peak-oil threat: "'World oil peaking is going to happen,' the report says. Only the 'timing is uncertain'.
The effects of any oil peak are similarly not ignored. Specifically, the impact on the economy of the United States. 'The development of the US economy and lifestyle has been fundamentally shaped by the availability of abundant, low-cost oil. Oil scarcity and several-fold oil price increases due to world oil production peaking could have dramatic impacts ... the economic loss to the United States could be measured on a trillion-dollar scale,' the report says."

The Naked Hegemon, Part 1: Why the emperor has no clothes - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumBut nearly half is owed to foreigners. All Uncle Sam's debt, including private household consumer credit-card, mortgage etc debt of about $10 trillion, plus corporate and financial, with options, derivatives and the like, and state and local government debt comes to an unvisualizable, indeed unimaginable, $37 trillion, which is nearly four times Uncle Sam's GDP

Military Gobbles Funds Earmarked for Social Development - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Werner Fornos, president of the Washington-based Population Institute, told IPS that it is �a global scandal that the funding estimated to be spent on the military and the war on terrorism is nearly 20 times higher than the amount currently allocated for economic and social development worldwide.� It is incredibly shortsighted to short-change programmes for improving lives by diverting resources to programmes of death and destruction, he said. �The proliferation of poverty and hunger and the lack of health care, education and employment fuel the push factor of desperation and despair that, in turn, breeds alienation, discontent, rebellion, and terrorism,� Fornos said. "

Military Gobbles Funds Earmarked for Social Development - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Beginning in 1993, world military expenditures declined for five straight years: from 762 billion dollars to a low of 690 billion dollars in 1998, at which point it began increasing. By 2002, global military spending rose to 784 billion dollars, surpassing the 1993 level for the first time, and increasing to a record 900 billion dollars in 2003 and an estimated 950 billion dollars in 2004. If current trends continue, the estimated figure for 2005 is expected to reach over one trillion dollars.
�Siphoning off resources from social programmes to the military is a return to the politics of barbarism, abandoning the lessons of the twentieth century that a dollar of prevention of social disruption can save a million in war spending,� Dan Plesch, a research fellow at the school of politics and sociology at the University of London, told IPS. �No one could have imagined that after the Cold War we would abandon arms control in favour of armed anarchy and forget that 95 percent of defeating terrorism and civil war requires social programmes,� said Plesch, author of the acclaimed �Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace.� "

Military Gobbles Funds Earmarked for Social Development - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "The rise in global defence spending and the ongoing war on terrorism are diverting scarce economic resources from social development to the military, says a new U.N. report released here [at the United Nations]. The study, a 10-year review of a plan of action adopted at the 1995 World Summit on Social Development (WSSD), concludes that the international community has achieved little or no progress on most of the 10 commitments made by world leaders at the U.N. talkfest that took place in Copenhagen. �There have been both advances and severe disappointments in the social situation with respect to the summit's priority areas of poverty, employment, social integration, gender equality and universal access to education and primary health care,� says the 66-page report. "

Lessons for the American Empire - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "History shows that in the long run, economic policy tends to be just as important as military policy when it comes to a country's national security. In the short run, military spending can be supported by borrowing (Britain) or authoritarian measures (the Soviet Union), but eventually the guns belong to those whose economies can afford them. "

GPF Newsletter Feb. 7-11Lessons for the American Empire (January 30, 2005)
While the US is the "unrivaled world leader" in terms of economic and military power, "nothing lasts forever," says the New York Times. This article fails to question an empire's adverse impacts, but demonstrates that the US government, given rising debts, increased military spending, and the expanding terror war, has too much confidence in its strength. The author uses the work of empire historian Niall Ferguson to conclude that the US empire will suffer an abrupt decline unless the government cuts military spending.

Lessons for the American Empire - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "History shows that in the long run, economic policy tends to be just as important as military policy when it comes to a country's national security. In the short run, military spending can be supported by borrowing (Britain) or authoritarian measures (the Soviet Union), but eventually the guns belong to those whose economies can afford them. "

Lessons for the American Empire - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Managing a potential decline also requires knowing what the competition is up to. That is not to say a global power can't tread its own path, but if it goes too far out of step with emerging rivals, the balance of power could shift. For instance, if the United States continues to be the greatest military spender in the world, while its rivals use their resources for economic growth, the current advantages held by the United States will shrink over time. ..IN fact, a great power that ignores its economy can become its own worst enemy. According to Professor Kennedy, when great powers have been threatened with decline, they have tended to increase their spending on security; as a result, they starved their economies of needed investment. Such a short-term strategy ultimately cannot be sustained, and the fall can be abrupt.

"

Lessons for the American Empire - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Managing a potential decline also requires knowing what the competition is up to. That is not to say a global power can't tread its own path, but if it goes too far out of step with emerging rivals, the balance of power could shift. For instance, if the United States continues to be the greatest military spender in the world, while its rivals use their resources for economic growth, the current advantages held by the United States will shrink over time. "

GPF Newsletter March 7-11Rising prices in valuable mineral resources have renewed tensions between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In November 2004 Rwanda threatened to invade the DRC, arguing Kinshasa harbors Hutu militias who participated in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Armed Rwandan-backed groups control Congolese mines and profit from the increasing value of coltan, casting doubt on Rwanda's intentions as its troops gather on the DRC's borders. Experts fear clashes between Congolese government forces and renegade factions could destroy the fragile peace process in the country. (Mail and Guardian Online)

GPF Newsletter March 7-11Firms Tap Latin Americans for Iraq (March 3, 2005)
Security companies active in Iraq look to Latin America for trained fighters, many of whom have experience in ongoing conflicts throughout the region and are willing to work for less than US and European recruits. Such work attracts Latin Americans, as it pays several times more than what they make in jobs as soldiers or policemen in their own countries. Iraq has some "20,000 armed personnel employed by private contractors [. . .] making up the second largest foreign armed force in the country." (Christian Science Monitor)

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - Worlds of Power: Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa - Stephen Ellis and Gerrie Ter HaarA religious revival is taking place in sub-Saharan Africa, with Christianity and Islam gaining converts at unprecedented rates and syncretic practices, combining traditional African and Western beliefs, also gaining ground. These two books explore this religious revival from different perspectives, and taken together they provide a striking portrait of religious practice on the continent. The religious revival, they both assert, is related to the region's long-standing economic and political crises: Africans look to religion both to understand and to overcome their current misfortunes.

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - The Power of Productivity: Wealth, Poverty, and the Threat to Global Stability - William W. Lewis: "a large government is almost inevitably beholden to special interests (i.e., producers) -- and is thus typically a major impediment to competition."

HEALTH: Deaths Outnumber Births as AIDS Ravages Southern Africa: "In terms of annual averages, the major net receivers of international migrants are projected to be the United States (1.1 million annually), Germany (204,000), Canada (201,000), the United Kingdom (133,000), Italy (120,000) and Australia (100,000).

The major countries of net emigration are projected to be China (minus 333,000 annually), Mexico (minus 304,000), India (minus 245,000), the Philippines (minus 180,000), Pakistan (minus 173,000) and Indonesia (minus 168,000) "

HEALTH: Deaths Outnumber Births as AIDS Ravages Southern Africa: "According to the U.N. report, world population will increase by 2.6 billion over the next 45 years: from 6.5 billion today to 9.1 billion by 2050.

During 2005-2050, nine countries are expected to account for half of the world's projected population increase: India, Pakistan, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, the United States, Ethiopia and China, listed according to the size of their contribution to population growth.

Very rapid population growth is expected in a number of developing countries, the majority of which are least developed, the poorest of the poor.

Between 2005 and 2050, population is projected to at least triple in Afghanistan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Chad, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Timor-Leste, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger and Uganda. "

HEALTH: Deaths Outnumber Births as AIDS Ravages Southern Africa: "In Southern Africa, described as the region with the highest prevalence of the deadly disease, life expectancy has fallen sharply: from 62 years in 1990-1995 to 48 years in 2000-2005.

The average life span in that region is also projected to decrease further: to about 43 years over the next decade, before a slow recovery starts. "

POLITICS: U.S. Has Zero Credibility Among Muslims - Pentagon Panel: "''Strategic communication is a vital component of U.S. national security'', stressed the 111-page report. ''It is in crisis, and it must be transformed with a strength of purpose that matches our commitment to diplomacy, defence, intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security ... Collaboration between government and the private sector on an unprecedented scale is imperative.''

The document also called on U.S. policy makers to spend more time ''listening'' to their intended audience and use messages that ''should seek to reduce, not increase, perceptions of arrogance, opportunism and double standards''. "

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 1Dangerous Government Secrecy Oaths – (San Diego Union Tribune – December 2, 2004)
America now has an Unofficial Secrets Act. In an expansion of government secrecy, the Department of Homeland Security has begun swearing its employees to silence, criminalizing the disclosure of information to the public – even if it is not classified. What's an example of information that the public can't know? The law. Last month, while at the Boise, Idaho, airport, former Congresswoman Helen Chenoweth-Hage, R-Idaho, was pulled aside for a security pat-down. Hage asked what regulation authorized the screening. Local security director Julian Gonzalez said the regulation "is called 'sensitive security information.' She's not allowed to see it, nor is anyone else."

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 1Ecobot Eats Dead Flies for Fuel – (Wired News – December 15, 2004)
Researchers at the University of the West of England, Bristol, are working on creating autonomous robots that power themselves using substances found in the environment. They plan to give robots their very own guts - artificial digestive systems and the corresponding metabolisms that will allow robots to digest food. Doing away with solar cells and batteries, their robot Ecobot II has a stomach consisting of eight microbial fuel cells, or MFCs, that contain bacteria harvested from sewage sludge. The microbes break down the food into sugars, converting biochemical energy into electricity that powers the robot.

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 1Of Mice, Men and In-Between – (Washington Post – November 20, 2004) In Minnesota, pigs are being born with human blood in their veins. In Nevada, there are sheep whose livers and hearts are largely human. In California, mice peer from their cages with human brain cells firing inside their skulls. Biologists call these hybrid animals chimeras, after the mythical Greek creature with a lion's head, a goat's body and a serpent's tail. They are the products of research in which human stem cells were added to developing animal fetuses. Chimeras are allowing scientists to watch, for the first time, how nascent human cells and organs mature and interact. Some are already revealing deep secrets of human biology and pointing the way toward new medical treatments. But with no federal guidelines in place, an awkward question hovers above the work: How human must a chimera be before more stringent research rules should kick in?

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 1: "The genetic code of the chicken shares about 60% of its genes with humans and has a common ancestor that lived about 310 million years ago. "

Gmail - Earth Policy News - OUTGROWING THE EARTH: Stabilizing Water TablesNot only are there no substitutes for water, but we need vast amounts of it to produce food. At the personal level, we drink roughly four liters of water a day (nearly four quarts), either directly or indirectly in various beverages. But it takes 2,000 liters of water—500 times as much—to produce the food we consume each day.
Since food is such an extraordinarily water-intensive product, it comes as no surprise that 70 percent of world water use is for irrigation. Although
it is now widely accepted that the world is facing water shortages, most people have not yet connected the dots to see that a future of water
shortages will also be a future of food shortages.

Earth Policy News - OUTGROWING THE EARTH: Stabilizing Water Tables: "Although public attention has recently focused on the depletion of oil resources, the depletion of underground water resources poses a far greater threat to our future. While there are substitutes for oil, there are none for water. Indeed, we lived for millions of years without oil, but we would live for only a matter of days without water."

PINR - China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game: "The growing strategic relationship between Moscow and Beijing represents a shift in the world balance of power that works to Beijing's advantage by pulling Moscow closer to its sphere of influence and away from the West. Having resolved in 2004 the marginal territorial disputes that had kept them from cooperating, Beijing and Moscow are now ready to act in greater concert to achieve the multipolar configuration of power that they both desire. It is just such changes that speed and channel the drift towards multipolarity and begin to give it a more stable form."

PINR - China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game: "In a period in which the configuration of world power has a measure of indeterminacy, powers adopt and support paradigms as desired futures based on perceived interests. Washington's National Security Strategy, for example, is conditioned by the goal of a unipolar configuration in which the U.S. is the arbiter of globalization by virtue of unchallengeable military power. In contrast, major regional powers -- China, the Franco-German combine, Russia, Brazil and India -- desire a multipolar world in which the U.S. is decentered and becomes a North American regional power with global reach. The regional powers adopt multipolarity because it gives each one of them advantages over the U.S. The great struggle of the first two decades of the 21st century will be over which of the two configurations gains ascendancy and how power will be distributed in the configuration that triumphs."

PINR - China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game: "Despite the growth and proliferation of international and transnational political organizations, the basis and framework of world politics remain the configuration and distribution of power among states, each one applying a strategy to realize the interests perceived by its decision makers. At present, the configuration of world political power is confused, somewhere between a pattern of unipolar U.S. dominance and multipolarity in which a number of regional powers with varying degrees of global reach and influence cooperate to keep the globalizing world economy stable while competing for strategic advantage on the margins of their respective regions."

PINR - China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game: "Beijing's strategy puts Washington on the defensive with the expectation that, as time goes on, the balance of power will shift inexorably in Beijing's favor. That is why Washington's current National Security Strategy posits a window of opportunity of about a decade for the U.S. to achieve permanent strategic supremacy in the world."

[PINR] 07 January 2005: China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game: "It is common knowledge that China is the most important ascending world power, and one that has only begun to realize its economic and military potential. Before the World Trade Center bombings on September 11, 2001, neoconservative strategists in Washington identified China as the most significant future threat to U.S. interests and defined the Sino-American relation as one of 'strategic competition' rather than 'strategic partnership.' Although the 'war on terrorism' has taken precedence over the longer term conflict with China in Washington's geostrategy, the neoconservatives' pre-9/11 judgment was well founded and remains so."

Asia Times Online :: Asian news and current affairs: "US dollars accounted for 63.8% of the world's currency reserves at the end of 2003, down from 66.9% two years earlier, according to International Monetary Fund (IMF) figures released last April. A survey this January commissioned by the Royal Bank of Scotland Plc and conducted by London-based Central Banking Publications Ltd showed that central banks across the world were boosting euro holdings. Almost 70% of the 56 central banks surveyed said they had increased exposure to the euro. "

GPF Newsletter Feb. 28-Mar. 04The Third Stage of American Empire (March 1, 2005)
The US has thrived upon the notion of empire, from westward expansion and involvement in the "troubles of the 'Old World'" to the present day "perpetual state of war," says truthout author William Rivers Pitt. This third stage of empire, spurred by the "first taste of...global dominance," manifests itself in the war on terrorism. But empires inevitably fall, and "this third American empire is threatening to collapse under its own ponderous weight."

GPF Newsletter Feb. 28-Mar. 04Bush's "Priceless" War (February 25, 2005)
The major problem in estimating the cost of the war in Iraq is that it is not over. According to a US report released by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee, the war and occupation could end up costing between US$461 billion and $646 billion by 2015. These numbers are far higher than earlier predictions; Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush's former chief economic adviser, cited a figure between $100 and $200 billion at most, which the administration dismissed. (Asia Times)

Bush's "Priceless" War - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "According to a report on the cost of the war in Iraq released last week by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee, the war and ongoing insurgency could cost the United States between US$461 billion and $646 billion by 2015, depending on the scope and duration of operations. "

Headlines for Friday, March 11, 2005: ".' The report, welcomed by aid agencies, says: 'The amount stolen and now held in foreign bank accounts is equivalent to more than half the continent's external debt.' It also reveals no G8 nation has signed the UN anti-corruption convention, committing the west to repatriate stolen funds. 'It is pointless for the developed world to bemoan African corruption when it does not take the measures needed to counter it.'"

[@RT Flash] Lettre 327 Avec approximativement 1,7 million d’espèces nommées et entre 10 à 15 millions restant à décrire, c’est un vrai travail de fourmis qui s’annonce.

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The competition for natural resources and regional influence between Japan and China has increased greatly over the past several years; both countries see opportunities in Nepal to gain an advantage over the other."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "India and the U.S. are the major donors to Nepal; each uses aid donations to influence the events in the state to its benefit. India's own Maoist rebels, the Naxalites, have proven to be an intransient threat in half a dozen Indian states, including a stronghold in the Bastar region of Chattisgarh. Bangladesh is also dealing with a similar threat. The possibility of a successful Maoist coup in Nepal, which would embolden their counterparts in India, has caused the Indian government to provide extensive training and aid to the king's military. The U.S. would like to use Nepal as a client state in a strategy of encircling China and containing Beijing's influence in southwestern Asia. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "But if white-collar offshoring swells enough, the resulting job losses could undercut a large swath of U.S. consumers. In part, this is a question of scale. There's little doubt that globalization is likely to continue to cut into the country's 14.5 million factory hands. Add in 57 million white-collar workers suddenly facing global competition, too, and more than half the U.S. workforce of 130 million could feel the impact. Then, economists conclude, the benefits of globalization would flow mostly to companies and shareholders who profit from the cheaper labor, with little pass-through to workers and consumers. ``If a majority of Americans have lower wages from outsourcing, then capital would be the prime beneficiary, even if U.S. GDP goes up,'' says Harvard's Freeman. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Two tests will come next year when U.S. membership in the World Trade Organization comes up for review, as does the President's so-called fast-track authority to negotiate trade agreements. ``I'm worried that rising anxiety among higher-skilled workers will erode support for continued globalization in the U.S.,'' says Dartmouth University economics professor Matthew J. Slaughter. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "A second concern is how much of the gains from trade will flow through to U.S. consumers. Until now the pain of globalization has been borne by less than a quarter of the workforce, mostly lower-skilled workers, whose wage cuts outweighed the cheaper-priced goods globalization brings. But the other three-quarters of American workers still came out ahead, since they weren't affected by foreign wage competition. If blue- and white-collar employees alike are thrown into the global labor pool, a majority of workers could end up losing more than they gain in lower prices. Then the benefits of increased trade would go primarily to employers. ``It's entirely possible that all workers will lose and shareholders will gain; you have to be concerned about that,'' says Harvard University trade economist Dani Rodrik. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "There are three ways this new development could disrupt the U.S. economy. If enough cheap, high-skilled workers become available around the world, competition may drive down U.S. wages for a wide swath of white-collar workers. Even economists who still see overall net gains agree that this is a potential problem. ``For the first time, high-skilled U.S. workers are going to be exposed to international competition, though it's not clear how much it will hurt their wages,'' says Bhagwati. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Now that brainpower can zip around the world at low cost, a global labor market for skilled workers seems to be emerging for the first time -- and has the potential to upset traditional notions of national specialization. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Now this long-held consensus is beginning to crack. True, China is emerging as a global powerhouse, realigning many economic relationships. But in the long run a more disruptive trend may be the fast-rising tide of white-collar jobs shifting to cheap-labor countries. The fact that programming, engineering, and other high-skilled jobs are jumping to places such as China and India seems to conflict head-on with the 200-year-old doctrine of comparative advantage. With these countries now graduating more college students than the U.S. every year, economists are increasingly uncertain about just where the U.S. has an advantage anymore -- or whether the standard framework for understanding globalization still applies in the face of so-called white-collar offshoring. ``Now we've got trade patterns that challenge the common view of trade theory, which might not be so true anymore,'' says Gary C. Hufbauer, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics (IIE), a Washington (D.C.) think tank. A leading advocate of free-trade pacts, he still thinks white-collar job shifts are good for the U.S. "

Shaking Up Trade Theory - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Ever since Americans began fretting about globalization nearly three decades ago, economists have patiently explained why, on balance, it's a boon to the U.S. Yes, some Americans lose their jobs, either to imports or because factories move to cheap-labor countries such as China or India. But the bulk of this work is labor-intensive and lower skilled and can be done more efficiently by countries that have an abundance of less-educated workers. In return, those countries buy more of our higher-value goods made by skilled workers -- for which the U.S. has a comparative advantage. The lost jobs and lower wages in the U.S., economists say, are more than offset when countries specialize like this, leading to more robust exports and lower prices on imported goods. "

March 9, 2005: Learning from China: Why the Western Economic Model Will Not Work for the World: "Plan A, business as usual, is no longer a viable option. We need to turn quickly to Plan B before the geopolitics of oil, grain, and raw material scarcity lead to political conflict and disruption of the social order on which economic progress depends. "

March 9, 2005: Learning from China: Why the Western Economic Model Will Not Work for the World: "The sooner we recognize that our existing economic model cannot sustain economic progress, the better it will be for the entire world. The claims on the earth by the existing model at current consumption levels are such that we are fast depleting the energy and mineral resources on which our modern industrial economy depends. We are also consuming beyond the sustainable yield of the earth�s natural systems. As we overcut, overplow, overpump, overgraze, and overfish, we are consuming not only the interest from our natural endowment, we are devouring the endowment itself. In ecology, as in economics, this leads to bankruptcy. "

Earth Policy News - Learning From ChinaWith energy, the numbers are even more startling. If the Chinese use oil at the same rate as Americans now do, by 2031 China would need 99 million barrels of oil a day. The world currently produces 79 million barrels per day and may never produce much more than that.
Similarly with coal. If China's coal burning were to reach the current U.S. level of nearly 2 tons per person, the country would use 2.8 billion tons annually--more than the current world production of 2.5 billion tons.
Apart from the unbreathable air that such coal burning would create, carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning in China alone would rival those
of the entire world today. Climate change could spiral out of control, undermining food security and inundating coastal cities.

Gmail - Earth Policy News - Learning From China During the 26 years since the far-reaching economic reforms of 1978, China's economy has been growing at a breakneck pace of 9.5 percent a year. If it were now to grow at 8 percent per year, doubling every nine years, income per person in 2031 for China's projected population of 1.45 billion would reach $38,000. (At a more conservative 6 percent annual growth rate, the economy would double every 12 years, overtaking the current U.S. income per person in 2040.)

Earth Institute announces results of global mapping project: "The majority of the world�s population will soon live in urban rather than rural areas. Adding a spatial dimension to population estimates, a new study finds that as much as three percent of the Earth�s land area has already been urbanized, which is double previous estimates. "

February 16, 2005: China Replacing the United States as World's Leading Consumer (printable): "China is now importing vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the world raw materials economy. Its voracious appetite for materials is driving up not only commodity prices but ocean shipping rates as well. "...The new industrial giant’s need for access to raw materials and energy is shaping its foreign policy and security planning. Strategic relationships with resource-rich countries such as Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia, Indonesia, and Australia are built around long-term supply contracts for products such as oil, natural gas, iron ore, bauxite, and timber. These strategic ties it is forming are welcomed in countries like Brazil as a counterweight to U.S. influence.

February 16, 2005: China Replacing the United States as World's Leading Consumer Although the United States has long consumed the lion’s share of the world’s resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another.
Among the five basic food, energy, and industrial commodities—grain and meat, oil and coal, and steel—consumption in China has already eclipsed that of the United States in all but oil.

The traditional definition of capital The traditional definition of capital is accumulated wealth in the form of investments, factories, and equipment. Actually, an economy needs four types of capital to function properly:
. human capital, in the form of labor and intelligence, culture, and organization
. financial capital, consisting of cash, investments, and monetary instruments
. manufactured capital, including infrastructure, machines, tools, and factories
. natural capital, made up of resources, living systems, and ecosystem services

Humankind has inherited a 3.8-billion-year store of natural capital. At present rates of use and degradation, there will be little left by the end of the next century. This is not only a matter of aesthetics and morality, it is of the utmost practical concern to society and all people.

Bginning to limit our development It is not the supplies of oil or copper that are beginning to limit our development but life itself. Today, our continuing progress is restricted not by the number of fishing boats but by the decreasing numbers of fish; not by the power of pumps but by the depletion of aquifers; not by the number of chainsaws but by the disappearance of primary forests.
Wile living systems are the source of such desired materials as wood, fish, or food, of utmost importance are the services that they offer,2 services that are far more critical to human prosperity than are nonrenewable resources.