Salon.com News | The atheist: "Richard Dawkins is the world's most famous out-of-the-closet living atheist. He is also the world's most controversial evolutionary biologist. Publication of his 1976 book, 'The Selfish Gene,' thrust Dawkins into the limelight as the handsome, irascible, human face of scientific reductionism. The book provoked everything from outrage to glee by arguing that natural selection worked its creative powers only through genes, not species or individuals. Humans are merely 'gene survival machines,' he asserted in the book. "

Wake Up! - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Finally, the most important change we could make in American policy would be to dismantle our imperial presidency and restore a balance among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of our government. The massive and secret powers of the Department of Defense and the CIA have subverted the republican structure of our democracy and left us exposed to the real danger of a military takeover. Reviving our constitutional system would do more than anything else to protect our peace and security. "

The Nature of CIA Intervention in Venezuela - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "When I was in the agency from the late 1950s on through to the late 1960s, the agency had operations going internationally, regionally, and nationally, attempting to penetrate and manipulate the institutions of power in countries around the world, and these were things that I did in the CIA�the penetration and manipulation of political parties, trade unions, youth and student movements, intellectual, professional and cultural societies, religious groups and women�s groups and especially of the public information media. We, for example, paid journalists to publish our information as if it were the journalists� own information. The propaganda operations were continuous. We also spent large amounts of money intervening in elections to favor our candidates over others. The CIA took a Manichean view of the world, that is to say there were the people on our side, and there were people who were against us. And the agency�s job was to penetrate, weaken, divide, and destroy those political forces that were seen to be the enemy, which are those to the left of social democrats, normally, and to support and strengthen the political forces that were seen to be friendly to US interests in all these institutions I just mentioned a few minutes ago. "

The Nature of CIA Intervention in Venezuela - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "When Ch�vez was first elected and I began following events here, I could see the writing on the wall, as I could see it in Chile in 1970, as I could see it in Nicaragua in 1979-80. There was no doubt in my mind that the United States would try to change the course of events in Venezuela as they had in Chile and in Nicaragua, and before that in various other countries. "

Keeping the Fear Alive - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "it's disturbing to think that the Bush administration may well need the chaos, fear, and instability of the 'war on terror' in order to legitimize its actions. "

Balancing the Iraq Equation - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum: "The cost of the Iraq war is expected to reach 207.5 billion dollars by the end of September, according to the National Priorities Project. "

Sport genetics could make Superman fantasy a reality - Yahoo! News: "Genetic engineering and steroid enhancement could turn Superman-like fantasy figures into reality, American football officials and players warned in a Congressional hearing.
The first signs of a massive mighty race might already be appearing in 21st Century American sports, where teams do not face World Anti-Doping Agency standards even though lawmakers are pondering imposing such measures."

International Relations and Security Network ISN - Security Watch: In Beijing’s eyes, a breakthrough in relations with Tokyo will only happen if Tokyo ceases to become a pawn and weapon in Washington’s anti-China “containment and encirclement” conspiracy. Beijing cadres have privately cited the so-called Australian, Singapore and South Korean model. This is a reference to direct or indirect pledges made by politicians and community leaders in these countries that in the event of a conflict between China and the US over Taiwan - or other issues - Canberra, Singapore and Seoul will remain largely neutral. In the case of Japan, Hu is anxious to secure from the Koizumi administration at least an indirect and secret promise that Tokyo will prevent US military forces from using Japan's bases for the purpose of attacking China. It is understood that Beijing is willing to make generous concessions - including backing Tokyo’s bid for PMUNSC - if Tokyo were willing to stop being, in Chinese perception, “Uncle Sam's main hit-man in the Asia-Pacific”.

10 Emerging Technologies: Nantero CEO Greg Schmergel holds a circular wafer of silicon, about the size of a compact disc, sealed in an acrylic container. It’s a piece of hardware that stores 10 billion bits of ­digi­tal information, but what’s remarkable about it is the way it does it. Each bit is encoded not by the electric charge on a circuit element, as in conventional electronic ­memory, nor by the direction of a magnetic field, as in hard drives, but by the physical orientation of nanoscale structures. This technology could eventually allow vastly greater amounts of data to be stored on computers and mobile devices. Experts estimate that within 20 years, you may be able to fit the content of all the DVDs ever made on your laptop computer or store a digital file containing every conversation you have ever had on a handheld device.

Welcome to Freedom House: "However, the overall level of press freedom worldwide-as measured by global average score-worsened, continuing a three-year downward trend according to the survey. Notable setbacks took place in Pakistan, Kenya, Mexico, Venezuela, and in the world's most powerful democracy, the United States.
While the United States remained one of the strongest performers in the survey, its numerical score declined due to a number of legal cases in which prosecutors sought to compel journalists to reveal sources or turn over notes or other material they had gathered in the course of investigations. Additionally, doubts concerning official influence over media content emerged with the disclosures that several political commentators received grants from federal agencies, and that the Bush administration had significantly increased the practice of distributing government-produced news segments. "

Welcome to Freedom House: "While press freedom registered important gains in some key countries in 2004, notable setbacks occurred in the United States and elsewhere in the Americas, according to a major study released today by Freedom House. Increased restrictions were also detected in parts of Asia, Africa, and the former Soviet Union."

China Third in R&D Spending!: "Total research and development spending in China in 2001 reached nearly 60 billion dollars, behind only the United States and Japan who had expenditures of 282 billion and 104 billion respectively, said the Paris-based group in a report published every two years."

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "Innovation is critical to growth, but R&D spending in the United States has declined in relative terms from 60 percent of world R&D in the 1960s to 30 percent today."

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "In the 1990s, Beijing permitted a new FDI trend to develop: a shift away from joint ventures and toward wholly owned foreign enterprises (WOFEs). Today, WOFEs account for 65 percent of new FDI in China, and they dominate high-tech exports. "

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "First, China's high-tech and industrial exports are dominated by foreign, not Chinese, firms. Second, Chinese industrial firms are deeply dependent on designs, critical components, and manufacturing equipment they import from the United States and other advanced industrialized democracies. Third, Chinese firms are taking few effective steps to absorb the technology they import and diffuse it throughout the local economy, making it unlikely that they will rapidly emerge as global industrial competitors."

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "Furthermore, China allows foreign firms to invest in its domestic market on a scale unprecedented in Asia. Since it launched reforms in 1978, China has taken in $500 billion in FDI, ten times the total stock of FDI Japan accumulated between 1945 and 2000. "

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "U.S. industrial firms such as Boeing, Ford, General Motors, IBM, Intel, and Motorola also save hundreds of millions of dollars each year by buying parts from lower-cost countries such as China, increasing their global competitiveness and allowing them to undertake new high-value activities in the United States. "

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "According to Morgan Stanley, low-cost Chinese imports (mainly textiles, shoes, toys, and household goods) have saved U.S. consumers (mostly middle- and low-income families) about $100 billion dollars since China's reforms began in 1978. (Cheaper baby clothes from China helped U.S. families with children save about $400 million between 1998 and 2003.) "

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "First, to forestall the rise of a politically independent private sector, the Chinese government has implemented economic reforms that strongly favor state-owned enterprises (SOEs), granting them preferential access to capital, technology, and markets. But reforms have also favored foreign investment, which has allowed foreign firms to claim the lion's share of China's industrial exports and secure strong positions in its domestic markets. As a result, Chinese industry is left with inefficient but still-powerful SOEs, increasingly dominant foreign firms, and a private sector as yet unable to compete with either on equal terms."

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "China's own choices along the road to global economic integration have reinforced trends that favor the continued industrial and technological preeminence of the United States and other advanced industrialized democracies. In its forced march to the market, Beijing has let political and social reforms lag behind, with at least two critical -- and unexpected -- consequences. "

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "In fact, the United States and China are developing precisely the type of economic relationship that U.S. strategy has long sought to create. China now has a stake in the liberal, rules-based global economic system that the United States worked to establish over the past half-century. "

Geological Society - News - SUPER-ERUPTIONS POSE GLOBAL THREAT �5-10 TIMES MORE LIKELY THAN ASTEROID IMPACT�: "The occurrence of a super-eruption would have severe environmental effects and might threaten global civilisation. This is the assessment of a Geological Society of London working group [Notes 1,2] composed of senior Earth Scientists. The effects of a super-eruption would be comparable to those predicted for the impact of a 1km-diameter asteroid with the Earth. In fact, super-eruptions are 5-10 times more likely to occur than such an impact."

Foreign Affairs: "Ralph Bunche, a great American and the first UN official to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, once said that the UN exists 'not merely to preserve the peace but also to make change -- even radical change -- possible without violent upheaval. The UN has no vested interest in the status quo.'"

Foreign Affairs - "In Larger Freedom": Decision Time at the UN - Kofi Annan: "The starting point for a new consensus should be a broad view of today's threats. These dangers include not just international wars but also civil violence, organized crime, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction. They also include poverty, infectious disease, and environmental degradation, since these ills can also have catastrophic consequences and wreak tremendous damage. All of these can undermine states as the basic units of the international system."

Foreign Affairs - "In Larger Freedom": Decision Time at the UN - Kofi Annan: "No nation can defend itself against these threats entirely on its own. Dealing with today's challenges -- from ensuring that deadly weapons do not fall into dangerous hands to combating global climate change, from preventing the trafficking of sex slaves by organized criminal gangs to holding war criminals to account before competent courts -- requires broad, deep, and sustained global cooperation. States working together can achieve things that are beyond what even the most powerful state can accomplish by itself."

Foreign Affairs - "In Larger Freedom": Decision Time at the UN - Kofi Annan: "In fact, all of us are vulnerable to what we think of as dangers that threaten only other people. Millions more of sub-Saharan Africa's inhabitants would plunge below the poverty line if a nuclear terrorist attack against a financial center in the United States caused a massive downturn in the global economy. By the same token, millions of Americans could quickly become infected if, naturally or through malicious intent, a new disease were to break out in a country with poor health care and be carried across the world by unwitting air travelers before it was identified."

Foreign Affairs - "In Larger Freedom": Decision Time at the UN - Kofi Annan: "Ask a New York investment banker who walks past Ground Zero every day on her way to work what today's biggest threat is. Then ask an illiterate 12-year-old orphan in Malawi who lost his parents to AIDS. You will get two very different answers. Invite an Indonesian fisherman mourning the loss of his entire family and the destruction of his village from the recent, devastating tsunami to tell you what he fears most. Then ask a villager in Darfur, stalked by murderous militias and fearful of bombing raids. Their answers, too, are likely to diverge."

Early onset of puberty � the EU gets serious - Karolinska Institutet: "Children in Europe and other parts of the world are entering puberty at an ever younger age. The reasons for this are unknown, and the EU is now financing a major three-year project called PIONEER in a determined effort to get to the root of the problem."

>IDEA< Debatabase: International Community: "The international community we live in today is a global community incorporating the whole world. Previous international communities were partial and regional (e.g. the Roman Empire, the medieval Holy Roman Empire and concept of Christendom, the medieval Islamic world, the 19th century European congress system), and cooperation was sporadic and unsystematic. Today's international community is a global phenomenon, in which different political, economic, ideological, military, legal, technological and cultural strands are intertwined. The question of the survival of the international community has now become very important due to feelings of crisis in a number of areas. This is due to the development of military technology, especially the invention and proliferation of atomic and other weapons of mass destruction, the overexploitation of world's resources, ecological problems, and increasing international tension, among other issues. Some may think from surveying the state of the world that human civilisation and the modern international community are suicidal by nature. Others take a sunnier view and argue both that things are not really so bad, and that mankind is able to find solutions to any new problems it encounters or creates. "

Where did the $3 trillion in oil revenues go? Mostly to armaments, subsidies, payoffs, population growth, and grandiose prestige projects — far la bella figura, as the Italians say. Showy projects look bad when neglected. The Saudis in 1980 had $180 billions in foreign assets. They are now in debt, running deficits even in the last few years.

ultimate knowledgeTo know ultimate reserves, we must first have ultimate knowledge. Nobody knows this, and nobody should pretend to know.

The current Energy Bill — or “Energy Barbecue” will create all sorts of new handouts, vested interests, and jobs that will be hotly defended in later years. The more wasteful a law, the more defenders it creates.

Oil is not the first fossil fuel that conventional wisdom has identified as nearing exhaustion. Even before 1800, the worry in Europe was that coal — the supposed foundation of their greatness — would run out. European production actually did peak in 1913, and is nearly negligible today.

There is not, and never has been, an oil crisis or gap. ? Oil reserves are not dwindling. The Middle East does not have and
has never had any “oil weapon.” How fast Russian oil output
grows is of minor but real interest. How much goes to the United
States or Europe or Japan — or anywhere else, for that matter
— is of no interest because it has no effect on prices we pay
nor on the security of supply.

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "The purpose was to plan for an East Asian summit meeting to be held in November 2005 to begin creating an 'East Asia Community.' In December 2004, the ASEAN countries and China also agreed to create a free-trade zone among themselves by 2010. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "In turn, China agreed with Brazil's state-controlled oil company to finance a $1.3 billion gas pipeline between Rio de Janeiro and Bahia once technical studies are completed. China and Brazil also entered into a 'strategic partnership' with the objective of raising the value of bilateral trade from $10 billion in 2004 to $20 billion by 2007. President Hu said that this partnership symbolized 'a new international political order that favored developing countries.'"

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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.'"

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "Rapidly industrializing China also developed a voracious appetite for petroleum and other raw materials, which brought it into direct competition with the world's largest importers, the U.S. and Japan. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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, which meant that after the collapse of the Soviet Union 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. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "For example, on August 13, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell stated baldly in Tokyo that if Japan ever hoped to become a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council it would first have to get rid of its pacifist Constitution. Japan's claim to a Security Council seat is based on the fact that, although its share of global GDP is only 14%, it pays 20% of the total U.N. budget. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "By contrast China's population is likely to stabilize at approximately 1.4 billion people, and is heavily weighted toward males. (According to Howard French of the New York Times, in one large southern city the government-imposed one-child-per-family policy and the availability of sonograms have resulted in a ratio of 129 boys born for every 100 girls; 147 boys for every 100 girls for couples seeking second or third children. The 2000 census for the country as a whole put the reported sex ratio at birth at about 117 boys to 100 girls.)"

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "Japan's inevitable decline because its population will begin to shrink drastically after about 2010. [5] Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that the number of men in Japan already declined by 0.01% in 2004; and some demographers, it notes, anticipate that by the end of the century the country's population could shrink by nearly two-thirds, from 127.7 million today to 45 million, the same population it had in 1910."

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "The CIA's National Intelligence Council forecasts that China's GDP will equal that of Britain's in 2005, Germany's in 2009, Japan's in 2017, and the U.S.'s in 2042. [4] 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. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "China's growing economic weight in the world today is widely recognized and applauded, but it is China's growth rates and their effect on the future global balance of power that the U.S. and Japan, rightly or wrongly, fear."

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: " As Britain's Financial Times observed, 'Three years after its entry into the World Trade Organization [in 2001], China's influence in global commerce is no longer merely significant. It is crucial.'

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "After all, the most salient characteristic of international relations during the last century was the inability of the rich, established powers - Great Britain and the United States -- to adjust peacefully to the emergence of new centers of power in Germany, Japan, and Russia. The result was two exceedingly bloody world wars, a forty-five-year-long Cold War between Russia and the 'West,' and innumerable wars of national liberation (such as the quarter-century long one in Vietnam) against the arrogance and racism of European, American, and Japanese imperialism and colonialism. "

JPRI Working Paper No. 105: "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"

Globalization Is Not Made in the West - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Three challenges stand out: first, the challenge of extending and deepening democratization globally. Increases in inequalities, exacerbated by war and debt, have lost the third wave of globalization much of its legitimacy. However, like the empires of old, the industrialized world cannot survive as a world unto itself. Human interconnectivity makes that impossible. Second, there exists the environmental challenge of addressing issues of sustainability globally. Just as democracy cannot survive in a sea of poverty, so it cannot survive in an environmentally damaged and disease-ridden world. The third challenge is multicultural. We need to adjust to the diversity that globalization presents. With human migration greater and more rapid than at any time in the past, all forms of exclusivity risk instability. They deny common citizenship and collective responsibility as tools for sustainability in increasingly multicultural societies. "

Globalization Is Not Made in the West - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "When postwar prosperity faltered in the 1970s, corporations exploited fears of recession to deregulate domestic economies and transform global regulatory systems to their advantage. As capital became more transnational, it harnessed a new generation of technological change to fashion global production networks. But it was not the only global force to survive the Cold War. "

Globalization Is Not Made in the West - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Today, the history of this early transformation is usually read in terms of civilizations and economic activity: Because Europeans initiated global networks, many observers stress European exceptionalism as its cause; because of the tremendous growth in commercial activities, many also give centrality to capitalism. But the transformation was much more extensive and destabilizing than these interpretations suggest. It accelerated the global distribution of plants and animals, transformed human diets, spawned rapid population growth, and stressed environments as land-use patterns changed and urbanization increased. "

Globalization Is Not Made in the West - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "Humans first experienced this transformative effect 1000 years ago, when the most advanced society of the time fueled continental interconnectedness. China's trade surpluses fed a network of regional linkages that stretched across the world's most populous continent. But the momentum did not last. China succumbed to Mongolian warlords and much of Afro-Eurasia fell victim to the plague they carried across the continent. Like HIV/AIDS and SARS today, the plague was an early indicator that interconnectedness possesses real dangers. In the 14th century, China lost one-quarter of its population and Europe, one-third. "

Globalization Is Not Made in the West - Globalization - Global Policy Forum: "First, although globalization is often viewed as the consequence of new technologies and changing political priorities after the Cold War, it is in fact a much older force for change.A historical view of globalization, stressing the common heritage of humanity, enables us to contextualize changes such as industrialization without assigning superiority to the West. The result is a much more inclusive interpretation of globalization. Second, a historical interpretation enables us to treat globalization as a process facilitating the most radical transformation of societies that humans have ever experienced: a transformation called democratization. Globalization, then, is not about rampant capitalism, technology or homogenization. It is about the changed environments people create and manipulate as their societies globally interconnect, environments that have become increasingly commercialized, urbanized, and democratized. "

war of ideasAt this moment, conservatives are still winning in the war of ideas, and that success cannot be chalked up only to the power of their ideas. It is because these ideas have a winning organization behind them.

marketing of liberal ideas. Conservative think tanks have quite successfully provided political leaders, journalists, and the public with concrete ideas about shrinking the role of the federal government, deregulation, and privatization. They are succeeding by aggressively promoting their ideas. By contrast, liberal and mainstream foundations back policy research that is of interest to liberals. But these funders remain reluctant to make explicit financial commitment to the war of ideas, and they do relatively little to support the marketing of liberal ideas.

war of ideasThis spending is intended to win the “war of ideas” under way in American politics. It supports research and advocacy that aims to influence how elected officials and the public think about a broad range of policies. This “war of ideas” is fundamentally a battle between liberals and conservatives, progressives and libertarians, over the appropriate role for government.

The Infinite Library: But others are more cautious about the leap Google’s partner libraries are taking. Brewster Kahle, who is often described as an inspiring visionary and sometimes as an impractical idealist, founded the nonprofit Internet Archive in 1996 under the motto “universal access to human knowledge.” Since then, the archive has preserved more than a petabyte’s worth of Web pages (a peta­byte is a million gigabytes), along with 60,000 digital texts, 21,000 live concert recordings, and 24,000 video files, from feature films to news broadcasts. It’s all free for the taking at www.archive.org, and as you might guess, Kahle argues that all digital library materials should be as freely and openly accessible as physical library materials are now.

The Infinite Library: "In fact, Google may put the entire texts of these public-�domain materials online itself. In the future, Google could even use those materials to create a kind of literary equivalent of the Web, says Wojcicki. �Imagine taking the whole Harvard library and saying, �Tell me about every book that has this specific person in it.� That in itself would be very powerful for scholars. But then you could start to see linkages between books��that is, which books cite other books, and in what contexts, in the same way that websites refer to other sites through hyperlinks. �Just imagine the power that that would bring!�"

The Infinite Library: "Whatever happens, transforming millions more books into bits is sure to change the habits of library patrons. What, then, will become of libraries themselves? Once the knowledge now trapped on the printed page moves onto the Web, where people can retrieve it from their homes, offices, and dorm rooms, �libraries could turn into lonely caverns inhabited mainly by �preservationists. Checking out a library book could become as anachronistic as using a pay phone, visiting a travel agent to book a flight, or sending a handwritten letter by post."

The Infinite Library: "The digitization of the world�s enormous store of library books�an effort dating to the early 1990s in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere�has been a slow, expensive, and underfunded process. But last December librarians received a pleasant shock. Search-engine giant Google announced ambitious plans to expand its �Google Print� service by converting the full text of millions of library books into searchable Web pages. At the time of the announcement, Google had already signed up five partners, including the libraries at Oxford, Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Michigan, along with the New York Public Library. More are sure to follow."Most librarians and archivists are ecstatic about the announcement, saying it will likely be remembered as the moment in history when society finally got serious about making knowledge ubiquitous. Brewster Kahle, founder of a nonprofit digital library known as the Internet Archive, calls Google’s move “huge....It legitimizes the whole idea of doing large-volume digitization.”

Ville en mouvement � Citie on the move: In less than twenty years, China’s urban population has virtually doubled... With the development of the cities, lifestyles are undergoing profound transformation, which includes an increase in mobilities. Cities are investing in infrastructures to enhance accessibility – expressways, underground railway systems, fast buses... and urgently need to invent solutions that allow for economic constraints, quality of life and environmental imperatives, and the maintenance of a specific identity.

BBC - Science & Nature - Space - Beginnings: "The expanding Universe took hundreds of thousands of years to cool to the temperature of the Sun's surface. At that stage, the electrons and ions combined into neutral atoms that no longer scattered the radiation. The Universe became transparent, lifting the 'fog'. The primeval light then shifted into the infrared part of the spectrum, and the Universe literally became dark, until the first stars formed, lighting it again. "

BBC - Science & Nature - Space - Beginnings: "Cosmology is the study of the large scale structure and evolution of the Universe. Where do space, matter, energy, and the forces of nature come from? How did the Universe begin?"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The most visible sign of Sino-Indian cooperation can be found in Iran, where the Yahavaran oilfield is being financed by India, China and Iran. This project demonstrates how geopolitics are being shifted by China's and India's need for energy. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): " New Delhi has been remarkably successful in encouraging the advances of Washington and Beijing without scaring off the competing suitor; in many ways, it has demonstrated a more 'non-aligned' approach to its international relations than when this was official policy. India is likely to use its newly discovered desirability to increase its status as an economic and military power, ideally operating independently of Beijing's and Washington's influence; nevertheless, there are many roadblocks preventing any of these states from seeing gains from this triangular relationship."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "China and the United States are increasingly looking to New Delhi to secure the realization of their interests in the complex world of Asian geopolitics and energy security. "

Guardian Unlimited | Online | War games: "In offices created by an ex-Star Trek designer and using techniques and technology from movies and gaming, some of Hollywood's top creative talents are helping the US military to train for war in the 21st century. "

Eco-Economy Indicators - Trends to Track for a Sustainable Economy: "Eco-Economy Indicators highlight the most important trends that affect progress toward an eco-economy."

Eco-Economy Indicators: ECONOMIC GROWTH - World Economic Growth Fastest in Nearly Three Decades: "Rapidly increasing carbon emissions, deforestation, collapsing fisheries, falling water tables, and soil erosion are just a few of the trends teaching us that our current economic model is no longer viable. "

Eco-Economy Indicators: ECONOMIC GROWTH - World Economic Growth Fastest in Nearly Three Decades: "Furthermore, the current economic model�assessed by GDP�ignores the natural systems that support it. GDP shows only the total economic output without fully reflecting the costs of environmental input. As a counter to this, a number of sustainability and development indicators have been created. The World Economic Forum publishes the Environmental Sustainability Index (ESI), which benchmarks the ability of nations to protect the environment. The ESI demonstrates that high incomes contribute to the potential for strong environmental stewardship but do not guarantee it. The United States, for example, ranks first in GDP but forty-fifth in ESI rankings. "

Eco-Economy Indicators: ECONOMIC GROWTH - World Economic Growth Fastest in Nearly Three Decades: "Worldwide, the richest 5 percent of the world�s people earn 114 times as much income as the poorest 5 percent. Within countries, disparities have isolated entire areas and groups. In China, large economic and social gaps exist between the mostly urban coastal areas, and inland regions, with coastal areas growing five times as fast."

Eco-Economy Indicators: ECONOMIC GROWTH - World Economic Growth Fastest in Nearly Three Decades: "The year 2004 was a milestone for the world economy, which grew by 5.1 percent�the fastest in nearly three decades. Among the leaders were China, expanding at 9.5 percent, Argentina at 9 percent, and India at 7.3 percent. World output of goods and services increased from $7 trillion in 1950 to $56 trillion in 2004, while annual income per person grew from $2,835 to $8,753 during this time."

A comprehensive Earth observation system will benefit people around the world by improving our ability to monitor, understand, and predict changes to the Earth. The United States will work with other nations to develop and link observation technologies for tracking environmental changes in every part of the globe, thus enabling citizens and leaders to make more informed decisions affecting their lives, environment, and economies. This international cooperation, along new developments in monitoring, assessing, and predicting environmental changes, will enable development of capabilities to predict droughts, prepare for weather emergencies and other natural hazards, plan and protect crops, manage coastal areas and fisheries, and monitor air quality, to name but a few direct benefits that affect our economic prosperity and quality of life.

The Earth is an integrated system All the processes that influence conditions on the Earth, whether ecological, biological, climatological, or geological, are linked, and impact one another.

Yahoo! News - Officials Want to Wire Earth, Check Signs: "The new 'Strategic Plan for the U.S. Integrated Earth Observation System' envisions linking nearly 60 nations within a decade to gather and share information from satellites, ocean buoys, weather stations and other surface and airborne instruments.
'Whether it's agriculture, or land use, or water planning, or transportation, or energy, there's a lot of data about the environment that has to be collected,'"

KurzweilAI.netRay Kurzweil: You spoke about the role of the technology revolution in building new bridges of understanding. I'm concerned about the difficulty we're having in this country in attracting our young people into technical careers. I've been gathering statistics on this. Ten years ago, we had about 60,000 engineering graduates in the U.S. That figure is now around 53,000. In China, the comparable figure ten years ago was about 10,000, a small fraction of the U.S., but has now soared to over 300,000. There is a similar trend in all scientific areas, and also at the doctoral level. India is much the same. How is this going in Russia?

Mikhail Gorbachev: The figure in Russia is over 200,000 engineering graduates per year.

If You Build It, They Will Kill - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "While the military-academic complex and DARPA scientists are hard at work creating the sort of killing machines that a generation back were the stuff of unbelievable sci-fi novels, old-fashioned firearms and even new energy weapons are being readied for use by the American imperial army tomorrow or just a few short years in the future."

If You Build It, They Will Kill - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Lets face it, making war is fast superceding sports as the American national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again) and that's not even the full list. It stands to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate complex are in constant need of feeding. "

Gmail - Press Review for April 18, 2005: Finance Chiefs Agree More Aid Needed, Haggle Over Numbers: "Since the latest oil boom began, the nations of the Middle East and North
Africa have enjoyed an average economic growth rate of 5.6 percent - the
fastest rate in a decade, the Bank said. But that's still well below the
six to seven percent rate the region needs to remedy what the bank called
its 'extraordinary' scarcity of jobs. 'Close to 100 million new jobs will
be needed over the next 20 years to keep pace with new labor force
entrants and absorb the current unemployed,' "

The Earth Institute at Columbia University: "Approximately 20 percent of the Earth�s land surface is exposed to at least one of the natural hazards evaluated;
160 countries have more than one quarter of their population in areas of high mortality risk from one or more hazards;
More than 90 countries have more than 10 percent of their population in areas of high mortality risk from two or more hazards;
In 35 countries, more than 1 in 20 residents lives at relatively high mortality risk from 3 or more hazards; "

Development Gateway | Environnement et D�veloppement | Natural Disaster Hotspots A Global Risk Anal...: "3.4 billion people, more than half the world's population, live in areas where at least one hazard could significantly impact them. The report presents a global view of disaster risks associated with some major natural hazards�drought, floods, cyclones, earthquakes, volcanoes and landslides. "

If You Build It, They Will Kill - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Lets face it, making war is fast superceding sports as the American national pastime. Since 1980, overtly or covertly, the United States has been involved in military actions in Grenada, Libya, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Haiti, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Liberia, Sudan, the Philippines, Colombia, Haiti (again), Afghanistan (again) and Iraq (again) and that's not even the full list. It stands to reason when the voracious appetites of the military-corporate complex are in constant need of feeding. "

Democracy Starts at Home - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Beyond elections, citizens can provide an effective check on government only if they are well informed. That is why right-to-know laws are so important. Of course, politicians prefer to work in secrecy, without oversight. No one can imagine hiring a worker, but allowing him not to inform his employer about what he is doing on the job. Politicians work for the citizenry�which has the right to know what their employees are doing.
Citizens also have the right to know how their money is being spent, and who is being consulted to form policy. They have the right to know whether Enron and the oil companies are shaping energy policy. They have the right to know why America, and the world, was misled by false claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. "

Democracy Starts at Home - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The Bush administration praised Saudi Arabia’s municipal elections, but what about the rights of women—including their voting rights? It welcomed (if it did not actively participate in) the toppling of Venezuela’s democratically elected leader, but it continues to support Pakistan’s military dictator. It criticizes Russian President Vladimir Putin, but only after he goes against business interests. And it may raise concerns about media concentration in Russia, but remains silent about media concentration in Italy.

The Empire Shifts - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Diplomacy is rarely a zero-sum game, but the signal from Washington is that these gains will be someone else's loss. Although now cloaked in the language of human rights and democracy, the Bush doctrine is still the one articulated in his first term: to prevent the emergence of a hostile rival. The only competitor on the horizon is China."

The Empire Shifts - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "If proof were needed that the 21st century will be about the struggle to shape Asia's destiny, then it came from the mouth of Condoleezza Rice last month. In New Delhi for the day during her trip across the continent, the US secretary of state told the Indian prime minister that America's newest foreign policy goal was to 'help India become a major world power in the 21st century'.
A state department briefing elaborated by saying that Washington understood 'fully the implications, including military implications, of that statement'. "

Headlines for Saturday, April 16, 2005: "Reuters further reports that a senior G24 official said on Friday unless there were changes in the quota formula of the World Bank and IMF, many emerging countries would simply stray from the institutions. 'The current system of governance is completely out of line with economic realities,' Ariel Buira, director of the G24 Secretariat, told a news conference. 'What is happening is that many countries are now moving away from these institutions.' 'We want a multilateral system for international monetary cooperation in which everybody is represented in a fair and open way,' he said."

Headlines for Sunday, April 17, 2005: "Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention,"

Headlines for Saturday, April 16, 2005: "Ministers from the Group of Twenty Four, meeting on the eve of the spring meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, said representation in the hierarchy of the institutions did not accurately represent the increasing stake of emerging markets in the global economy. 'Ministers stress the need for concrete actions to reduce the democratic deficit and enhance the voice and participation of developing countries in decision-making at the IMF and World Bank,' the G24, which includes countries from Latin America, Asia and Africa, said in a communiqu� after their meeting. Emerging-market countries have long sought a change in the voting rights of the institutions and questioned why the head of the IMF has always been a European and the World Bank is headed by an American."

Gmail - Security Watch: Thursday, 14 April 2005Japan are rapidly souring, Tokyo has issued rights for the exploratory drilling of natural gas and oil in the East China Sea - territory that has long been disputed by the two countries.
After more than three decades of restraint, Tokyo on Wednesday moved to lift the ban on deep-sea gas exploration in the disputed East China Sea, which both countries say lies within their exclusive economic zones.

International Relations and Security Network ISN - Security Watch: Kennan had written in a celebrated 1947 Foreign Affairs piece that “the main element of any United States policy toward the Soviet Union must be that of a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies”. The Chinese must be very nervous about the possibility that Rice - and Bush - will simply substitute PRC for USSR. After all, it was Rice who coined the phrase “strategic competitor” in a 2000 Foreign Affairs article about the need to adequately take on a fast-emerging China. “It is important to promote China's internal transition through economic interaction while containing Chinese power and security ambitions,” she wrote.

BBC NEWS | Business | IMF stresses developing country role: "For the International Monetary Fund's chief economist, two big global trends jump off the page - the growing role of developing countries in the world economy and the ageing population of the developed world. "

The Cornell Daily Sun - Brooks Forecasts Future of Robotic Technology: "Brooks acknowledges that the development of intelligent robots is still in beginning stages, although significant progress has been made in areas like navigation. However, he said, 'I think beyond navigation, robots have new possibilities which will be important.'
As the world's demographics shift in the next half century, robots can be useful in fields such as manufacturing, agriculture and elderly assistance. Brooks imagines being able to roboticize large agriculture machines for the maintenance of individual plants. Such robots could do menial and time-consuming tasks like pruning and picking. "
"Europe and the U.S. import low-cost labor now ... But that labor may not be there in 50 years," Brooks said.

The Cornell Daily Sun - Brooks Forecasts Future of Robotic Technology: "In another experiment suggestive of robots' similarity to children in their earliest stages of development, the lab called in various people to speak with the robot.
'When a mother interacts with her child, she generates messages through her voice: praise, attention, prohibition,and soothing are the four basic messages,' Brooks said.
In the video, when one woman said, 'Good job, Kismet! Look at my smile!' in an encouraging voice, the robot smiled proudly. When another said, 'No, no, that's not appropriate' in a disparaging tone, Kismet lowered his head, his large ears drooping. "

The Cornell Daily Sun - Brooks Forecasts Future of Robotic Technology: "'Mankind has had a long history of retreat from 'special-ness,'' Brooks said.
Centuries ago, humans discovered that Earth was not, in fact, the center of the universe. Later, humans and animals were found to have common ancestors. DNA as the fundamental mechanism of life means that humans and yeast are somewhat similar.
'Over time men have become less special and more like technology,' Brooks said. 'We only have 25,000 genes -- even potatoes have more than that!'
Brooks showed videos of several robots designed in his lab. In one scene, Brooks's colleague Cynthia 'plays' with a robot she designed, Kismet. "

The Cornell Daily Sun - Brooks Forecasts Future of Robotic Technology: "Artificial intelligence and robotics expert Rod Brooks forecasts major changes in the next 50 years. Much in the way that computers have revolutionized society, robots may take on an increasingly significant role in people's lives. As part of the Gerard Salton Lecture Series, Brooks delivered a talk yesterday entitled 'Flesh and Machines: Robots and People' to discuss potential applications of intelligent robots.
Brooks, who directs the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) at MIT, asserted that we have more in common with robots, and machines in general, than we think."

Gmail - Worldwatch: Farming's New Feudalism, Live Discussions, & More"The privitization of seed is but one part of the steady consolidation of economic power throughout agriculture," writes Robert Schubert in "Farming's New Feudalism." Also, in "When Good Corporations Go Bad," the first in a series, Worldwatch researcher Erik Assadourian looks at the evolution of the modern corporation by comparing its relationship to society with the mutualism and parasitism found in nature

[PINR] 13 April 2005: Japan's Nationalism Risks its Power Position in East AsiaJapan's nationalism is a response to what it perceives as a changing balance of power in East Asia. The growth of China as a power has caused Japan to rethink its foreign policy strategy. It recognizes that despite its excellent trade relations with Beijing -- trade between the two countries grew by 17 percent in 2004 -- China is a threat to Japan's power and influence in East Asia since its current path will supplant Japan's role as the most powerful regional state.
In order to prepare for this future, Tokyo is increasing its military power while indirectly declaring that it supports the containment of China, evidenced by its statement that it would join the United States in defending Taiwan against a Chinese invasion. While its relationship with the United States is critical if it wishes to keep its regional power, it needs to also work with other Asian powers so it does not find itself isolated on the fringe of East Asia, facing a Chinese-dominated bloc spanning its entire western coast.

Gmail - [PINR] 13 April 2005: Japan's Nationalism Risks its Power Position in East AsiaThe demand by neighboring countries -- led by China and South Korea -- to have Tokyo include such information in its textbooks is being played off by the Japanese political elite as being anti-Japanese rhetoric, which then ignites Japanese nationalism, moving the population more toward supporting rearmament and a nationalist foreign policy. As argued by Fujioka, "More and more people share our opposition to instilling self-hatred in our children."

Gmail - [PINR] 13 April 2005: Japan's Nationalism Risks its Power Position in East AsiaWhile in the past such levels of nationalism would be restrained due to the country's recognition of its violent expansion throughout East Asia in the first half of the 20th century, in recent years Japan's society has changed; the memory of Japan's actions before and during WWII are fading, China is dramatically increasing its power, and the difficulties encountered by the U.S. in Iraq have eroded the certainty that Washington will intervene completely in defense of Japan upon a conflict with China.

This explains why a growing segment of the Japanese political elite has been stoking Japanese nationalism in order to create the societal conditions conducive to military growth.

Gmail - [PINR] 13 April 2005: Japan's Nationalism Risks its Power Position in East AsiaJapan's growing nationalism derives from its desire to develop a more independent foreign policy and to increase its military power; much of the country's political elite want to see a return of a powerful Japan. Fomenting nationalism among the Japanese population is a necessary development to increase support for a stronger military.

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "One particularly pernicious outgrowth of natural law is the idea that states are sovereign equals. As Kennan pointed out, the notion of sovereign equality is a myth; disparities among states 'make a mockery' of the concept. Applied to states, the proposition that all are equal is belied by evidence everywhere that they are not -- neither in their power, nor in their wealth, nor in their respect for international order or for human rights. "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "The real questions for achieving international peace and security are clear-cut: What are our objectives? What means have we chosen to meet those objectives? Are those means working? If not, why not? Are better alternatives available? If so, what tradeoffs are required? Are we willing to make those tradeoffs? What are the costs and benefits of competing alternatives? What support would they command?"

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "Architects of an authentic new world order must therefore move beyond castles in the air -- beyond imaginary truths that transcend politics -- such as, for example, just war theory and the notion of the sovereign equality of states. These and other stale dogmas rest on archaic notions of universal truth, justice, and morality. The planet today is fractured as seldom before by competing ideas of transcendent truth, by true believers on all continents who think, with Shaw's Caesar, 'that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.' Medieval ideas about natural law and natural rights ('nonsense on stilts,' Bentham called them) do little more than provide convenient labels for enculturated preferences -- yet serve as rallying cries for belligerents everywhere."

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "In the winter of 2003, that entire edifice came crashing down. It is tempting, in searching for reasons, to return to the blueprints and blame the architects. The fact is, however, that the fault for the council's collapse lies elsewhere: in the shifting ground beneath the construct. As became painfully clear this year, the terrain on which the UN's temple rested was shot through with fissures. The ground was unable to support humanity's lofty legalist shrine. Power disparities, cultural disparities, and differing views on the use of force toppled the temple."

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "It is the 'uncertainty of their condition,' Madison wrote, that prompts the strong to play by the rules today. But if the future were certain, or if the strong believed it to be certain, and if that future forecast a continued reign of power, then the incentive on the powerful to obey the law would fall away. "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "The question, as the framers posed it, was why the powerful should have any incentive to obey the law. Madison's answer, in the Federalist Papers, was that the incentive lies in an assessment of future circumstances -- in the unnerving possibility that the strong may one day become weak and then need the protection of the law. "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "No one can doubt the utility of checks and balances, deployed domestically, to curb the exercise of arbitrary power. Setting ambition against ambition was the framers' formula for preserving liberty. The problem with applying this approach in the international arena, however, is that it would require the United States to act against its own interests, to advance the cause of its power competitors "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "The first and last geopolitical truth is that states pursue security by pursuing power. Legalist institutions that manage that pursuit maladroitly are ultimately swept away.
A corollary of this principle is that, in pursuing power, states use those institutional tools that are available to them. "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "Whatever doctrinal formula is chosen to describe the current crisis, therefore, the conclusion is the same. 'If you want to know whether a man is religious,' Wittgenstein said, 'don't ask him, observe him.' And so it is if you want to know what law a state accepts. If countries had ever truly intended to make the UN's use-of-force rules binding, they would have made the costs of violation greater than the costs of compliance."

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "Since 1945, so many states have used armed force on so many occasions, in flagrant violation of the charter, that the regime can only be said to have collapsed. In framing the charter, the international community failed to anticipate accurately when force would be deemed unacceptable. Nor did it apply sufficient disincentives to instances when it would be so deemed. Given that the UN's is a voluntary system that depends for compliance on state consent, this short-sightedness proved fatal."

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "Moreover, cultural divisions concerning the use of force do not merely separate the West from the rest. Increasingly, they also separate the United States from the rest of the West. On one key subject in particular, European and American attitudes diverge and are moving further apart by the day. That subject is the role of law in international relations. There are two sources for this disagreement. The first concerns who should make the rules: namely, should it be the states themselves, or supranational institutions?"

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "In the face of such opposition, Washington has made it clear that it intends to do all it can to maintain its preeminence. The Bush administration released a paper detailing its national security strategy in September 2002 that left no doubt about its plans to ensure that no other nation could rival its military strength. More controversially, the now infamous document also proclaimed a doctrine of preemption -- one that, incidentally, flatly contradicts the precepts of the UN Charter. Article 51 of the charter permits the use of force only in self-defense, and only 'if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.' The American policy, on the other hand, proceeds from the premise that Americans 'cannot let our enemies strike first.' "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "French President Jacques Chirac has battled tirelessly to achieve this end. According to Pierre Lellouche, who was Chirac's foreign policy adviser in the early 1990s, his boss wants 'a multipolar world in which Europe is the counterweight to American political and military power.' Explained Chirac himself, 'any community with only one dominant power is always a dangerous one and provokes reactions.'"

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: " In reality, however, the council's fate had long since been sealed. The problem was not the second Persian Gulf War, but rather an earlier shift in world power toward a configuration that was simply incompatible with the way the UN was meant to function. It was the rise in American unipolarity -- not the Iraq crisis -- that, along with cultural clashes and different attitudes toward the use of force, gradually eroded the council's credibility. "

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "In truth, there had been no progress for years. The UN's rules governing the use of force, laid out in the charter and managed by the Security Council, had fallen victim to geopolitical forces too strong for a legalist institution to withstand. By 2003, the main question facing countries considering whether to use force was not whether it was lawful. Instead, as in the nineteenth century, they simply questioned whether it was wise."

Foreign Affairs - Why the Security Council Failed - Michael J. Glennon: "'The tents have been struck,' declared South Africa's prime minister, Jan Christian Smuts, about the League of Nations' founding. 'The great caravan of humanity is again on the march.' A generation later, this mass movement toward the international rule of law still seemed very much in progress. In 1945, the League was replaced with a more robust United Nations, and no less a personage than U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull hailed it as the key to 'the fulfillment of humanity's highest aspirations.' The world was once more on the move.
Earlier this year, however, the caravan finally ground to a halt. With the dramatic rupture of the UN Security Council, it became clear that the grand attempt to subject the use of force to the rule of law had failed."

Wake Up!: Washington's alarming foreign policy -- In These Times: "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 United States requires capital imports of at least $2 billion per day to pay for its governmental expenditures. Any decision by 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 will likely produce a meltdown of the American economy"

Hang in There: The 25-Year Wait for Immortality"I think it’s reasonable to suppose that one could oscillate between being biologically 20 and biologically 25 indefinitely."

Wired News: Cells That Go Back in Time: "People who believe it's unethical to destroy any embryos, even those abandoned and destined for destruction at in vitro fertilization clinics, have touted adult stem cells as an ethical choice. The field has seen some success, but many researchers believe adult stem cells have less 'plasticity,' or ability to become different types of cells.
Others have promoted various schemes for getting around the embryo conundrum, but none has received a unanimous stamp of approval from scientists and religious groups or others who oppose the destruction of embryos.
But at least one religious leader believes the ability to use dedifferentiation to create human stem cells would eliminate the controversy. "

Wired News: Cells That Go Back in Time: "In newts and some other animals with the ability to regenerate, cells at the site of an injury can revert to their embryonic stem-cell stage and can become another type of cell in that creature's body. In other words, a skin cell can dedifferentiate into a stem cell, then regenerate into a muscle cell or another completely different type of cell. "

Brand USA Is in Trouble, So Take a Lesson from Big Mac - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Meanwhile, the ongoing wrangling over who will form Iraq's next government, despite the United Iraqi Alliance being the clear winner, points to an electoral system designed by Washington that is less than democratic. Terrified at the prospect of an Iraq ruled by the majority of Iraqis, the former chief US envoy, Paul Bremer, wrote election rules that gave the US-friendly Kurds 27% of the seats in the national assembly, even though they make up just 15% of the population.
Skewing matters further, the US-authored interim constitution requires that all major decisions have the support of two-thirds or, in some cases, three-quarters of the assembly - an absurdly high figure that gives the Kurds the power to block any call for foreign troop withdrawal, any attempt to roll back Bremer's economic orders, and any part of a new constitution. "

Brand USA Is in Trouble, So Take a Lesson from Big Mac - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "The Bush administration wholeheartedly agrees, as evidenced by the orgy of redescription that now passes for American foreign policy. Faced with an Arab world enraged by the US occupation of Iraq and its blind support for Israel, the solution is not to change these brutal policies: it is to 'change the story'.
Brand USA's latest story was launched on January 30, the day of the Iraqi elections, complete with a catchy tag line ('purple power'), instantly iconic imagery (purple fingers) and, of course, a new narrative about America's role in the world, helpfully told and retold by the White House's unofficial brand manager, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. 'Iraq has been reframed from a story about Iraqi 'insurgents' trying to liberate their country from American occupiers and their Iraqi 'stooges' to a story of the overwhelming Iraqi majority trying to build a democracy, with US help, against the wishes of Iraqi Ba'athist fascists and jihadists.' "

Cheney�s Other Trick NIE? - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "And yet chances appear good that the ever-narrowing circle of advisers around President Bush will persuade him to do just that, and for the same underlying reasons�oil, Israel and a strategic presence in the region. "

Why Media Ownership Matters - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "At the time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by Westinghouse and NBC by General Electric. Two of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers owned two of the major networks. Westinghouse and GE made most of the parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War. It was no surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks looked like a military hardware show. We see reporters in the cockpits of war planes, interviewing pilots about how it feels to be at the controls. We almost never see journalists at the target end, asking people huddled in their homes what it feels like not to know what the next moment will bring. "

Why Media Ownership Matters - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush administration, we've had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the government's lies.
As the Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand. When it comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the corporations themselves � the ones that own the major news outlets. "

US, Cuba and Democracy - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "As numerous interventions have demonstrated, the engine of American foreign policy has been fueled, not by a devotion to democracy, but rather by the desire to: 1) make the world safe for American transnational corporations; 2) enhance the financial statements of defense contractors at home; 3) prevent the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model; 4) extend political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a 'great power'; and 5)fight a moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy.
Over the past fifty years, in striving to establish a world populated with governments compatible with these aims, the United States has -- apart from monumental lip service -- accorded scant priority to this thing called democracy. "

US, Cuba and Democracy - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "At the same time, the words 'freedom' and 'democracy' rolled easily and routinely off the lips of American leaders, while American policies habitually supported dictatorships. Indeed, it would be difficult to name a brutal right-wing dictatorship of the second half of the twentieth century that was not supported by the United States -- not merely supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the populace. "

US, Cuba and Democracy - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Naturally, the only way to win cold-war propaganda points with team lineups like these, was to extol your team's brand of virtue and damn the enemy's lack of it, designating the former 'democracy' and the latter 'totalitarianism'."

Under the Surface - UN Security Council - Global Policy ForumIt is well known that Iraq holds 10% of the world’s known oil reserves, second only to Saudi Arabia. Along with Iran, Kuwait and the UAE, these five countries of the Middle East hold almost two thirds of the world’s oil. But since the nationalisations of the 1970s, these reserves have been out of the control of the West, and off the balance sheets of its companies.

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: Furthermore, the pattern in U.S. foreign policy is clear—noncompliant leaders sitting atop strategic oil supplies, whether Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, are potential targets for “regime change.” Systematic abusers of human rights who are compliant and who sit astride strategically important oil resources, such as Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia, get a pass. Russia is still too powerful to fall victim to U.S.-orchestrated regime change. But the growing possibility that Russia might wield its increasing oil and energy clout for interests not totally compatible with U.S. corporate understandings of free markets (that is, foreign capital access) has created a window of opportunity for U.S. criticism.

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: "U.S. democracy-promotion efforts have historically been compromised by the central importance of securing foreign markets for significant financial interests or at least promoting an ideological vision of market openness potentially compatible with such interests, even if an actual economic payoff is not always immediately realizable. "

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: "Furthermore, Russia is now Europe�s largest supplier of natural gas and oil. Given the rising price of oil and Russia�s increasing emergence as an oil-producing giant, the prospect exists for a growing synergy between Russian and European economic cooperation and investment interests. With the continued weakening of the U.S. dollar and the growing urgency of securing access to strategic oil supplies to keep America�s increasingly indebted economy afloat, Washington may wish to discourage this synergy from developing."

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: "A key point for Robinson, however, is that U.S. policymakers increasingly recognize that democracy, if properly masterminded, can serve as a most effective tool for installing foreign governments sympathetic to transnational economic interests. Such democracies hold elections and, on paper, protect democratic rights. In reality, however, these �polyarchies� are only nominally accountable to broad-based domestic interests. Thus, functioning as a legitimizing smoke screen, Washington�s rhetoric about democracy and freedom effectively serves the transnational corporate interests that decisively influence U.S. foreign policy. "

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: "As William Robinson argued in his important book Promoting Polyarchy, U.S. administrations since the 1970s have increasingly engaged in �overt operations� to install in each target country a pliant leadership sympathetic to the agenda of transnational capital. Instead of relying on active military force or supporting a domestic coup, according to Robinson, Washington cultivates a network of civil and business organizations able to wangle elections to bring to power a transnational-friendly ally. "

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned?: "As editorialists from across the United States and Western Europe have reiterated lately, Russian democracy is under assault."

Foreign Policy In Focus Policy Report: Democracy�s Eclipse in Russia�Why Is the United States So Concerned? A key point for Robinson, however, is that U.S. policymakers increasingly recognize that democracy, if properly masterminded, can serve as a most effective tool for installing foreign governments sympathetic to transnational economic interests. Such democracies hold elections and, on paper, protect democratic rights. In reality, however, these “polyarchies” are only nominally accountable to broad-based domestic interests. Thus, functioning as a legitimizing smoke screen, Washington’s rhetoric about democracy and freedom effectively serves the transnational corporate interests that decisively influence U.S. foreign policy.

There are a huge range of opportunities and risks in this idea. In case of an emergency,
responders can now be directed to exactly the right location. Missing objects can be tracked with precision. There is no longer any concept of “being lost”. Pets, children, or Alzheimer’s patients could be monitored and located if concerns arise.

There are two aspects to an idea such as packet switching. First, there is the conception of how the future could be different and better. This aspect captures what is important about the idea. It is our story to the world, to excite people about our goals for the future. The other aspect is the technical approach to getting there. Both aspects are necessary for a vision to be a useful contribution to progress, but it is important to note that the technical approach may take on a very different form for different visions. It is rare to find a single technical innovation that has had the sweeping implications of packet switching. Rather,
in mature fields, it may require a suite of technical innovations to accomplish an
important objective. Sometimes, it requires that a number of ideas that already exist be put together in some novel and useful way.

Headlines for Thursday, April 7, 2005: "�The issue is to correct the enormous American deficit. The Bank favors an adjustment scenario�A program that is too drastic would plunge the US into a recession. Things seem to be moving. One only needs to listen to Alan Greenspan to be convinced of this. But we are at the mercy of the nervousness of market operators. No catastrophes are anticipated for the next 6 to 9 months to come. I am not yet entirely pessimistic. However, we are in an abnormal situation: it is emerging countries that are concentrating a surplus of savings invested within a sole rich country, the US, which emits and manages the global currency.�"

Headlines for Thursday, April 7, 2005: "In its �2005 Global Development Finance Report,� the Bank identified the 'gravest risk' for emerging markets as a deep and disorderly dollar decline. This could create volatility, including a dollar collapse below what the bank's economists see as its long-term equilibrium level. The result, it said, could be 'a costly restructuring of world industry that would have to be undone in following years as the dollar returned to its equilibrium level'."

NIC - Mapping the Global Future: Pervasive Insecurity: "Expanded development of existing or new sources of wealth will remain key. Although mineral and natural resources are not evenly distributed among its countries, Sub-Saharan Africa is well endowed with them and has the potential not only to be self-sufficient in food, but to become a major exporter of agricultural, animal, and fish products. The lowering or elimination of tariff barriers and agricultural subsidies in the European Union and the United States, combined with the demand for raw materials from the burgeoning Chinese and Indian economies, could provide major stimulus to African economies and overcome decades of depressed commodity prices."

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "- Between January 2001 and July 2004, the portion of the US debt privately held by foreigners rose from 30% to 42%.

- Between September 2003 and September 2004, foreigners increased their holdings by US$400 billion, from $1.46 trillion to $1.86 trillion - financing virtually the entire $422 billion budget deficit for fiscal year 2004.

- US Treasury Department statistics through July 2004 reveal that five of the seven top foreign holders of US obligations are Asian, with Japan ($696 billion) and China ($167 billion) in first and second place, respectively. (The other three in Asia, ranked five, six and seven, are South Korea at $62 billion, Taiwan at $58 billion, and Hong Kong at $50 billion.)

- Despite an overall increase in the value of foreign holdings for all of calendar year 2004, December saw a sharp monthly decline in foreign purchases of Treasury bonds and notes. Foreign central bank acquisitions nose-dived by two-thirds (from $21 billion to $7 billion) while private foreign purchases plummeted by nearly 75% (from $32.8 billion to $8.4 billion).

- Japanese non-central-bank holdings dropped $3.1 billion (from $714.9 billion to $711.8 billion) from November to December 2004. South Korea's portion registered a slight decrease. In contrast, the Chinese increased their total holdings by $2.7 billion (from $191.1 billion to $193.8 billion).

- In late February 2005, South Korea's central bank revealed its intention to 'diversify' by straying from the US dollar to other currencies - undoubtedly the euro, which has strengthened over the past few years. "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "Taub said the foreign and domestic policy of US President George W Bush reflects this merchant-age backwardness. 'The invasion of Iraq was, in part, classic merchant age: start a war for business purposes - oil, weapons, reconstruction contracts, etc. The United States' merchant-minded leadership is making it hard for working Americans to do their jobs, and use their professional/managerial skills to keep the country competitive. Medical and legal costs are out of control, 45 million people lack health insurance, teachers are underpaid and undervalued, and filing lawsuits is a national pastime that squanders precious resources. If China has to make reforms to become competitive, the US must make reforms to stay competitive.' "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "William Kelly, intercultural communications lecturer at the University of Southern California who wrote a foreword to Taub's books, pointed out that nationalism - strong in China and Korea and growing in Japan - will not necessarily be a hindrance to the formation of a Confucian Union. 'It is obvious that the only way to fulfill the desire for national glory as well as economic success is by getting together in a union and being stronger than the other two blocs [the EU and NAFTA],' said Kelly. 'First, Japanese militarism could be neutralized by such a bloc. But the real future danger could be Chinese rather than Japanese nationalism, since there is much resentment and a sense of grievance behind it.' "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "Taub has argued the name 'socialist democracy' is not an oxymoron. 'It perfectly describes the half-communist, half-capitalist hybrid system that all industrialized or industrializing countries are currently developing,' he said. 'It is a system that is half market and private business-driven and half highly central-government-regulated. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan also have that system - in fact Japan pioneered it - but they call themselves capitalist. Most Western European countries call themselves social democracies, which sounds pretty close to socialist democracy.' "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "Taub explained that the merchant caste age was dominated by capitalists, industrialists and landowners. Its source of power was capital and its social ideal the 'self-made man'. The worker caste age is dominated by technocrats and bureaucrats. Its source of power is scientific and managerial knowledge, and its social ideal is the 'organization man'. Taub acknowledged that East Asia also has its merchants, but he argued that Confucian Asia is more in tune with the worker caste age than either Europe or the United States. "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "The centerpiece of Taub's macro-history is what Taub calls the Caste Model, a remarkable synthesis of the ancient Indian Theory of Caste and actual historical development. Most observers agree that the world's economic center of gravity is moving from the West to East Asia, but Taub's Caste Model gives this historical shift a theoretical basis. Taub argues the world is in the midst of a transition from the merchant caste age to the worker caste age."

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "'France and Germany formed the European Union less than a decade after fighting a bitter war. The EU integrated Germany into the European family of nations and neutralized its militaristic tendencies. But more importantly, the formation of unions is a sign of our times. Regional economies are banding together. They integrate their economies to pack a bigger punch in the global trade arena. Unions like NAFTA, ASEAN, the EU, and Mercosur [a South American economic union] make individual states stronger vis-a-vis other blocs.' "

Asia Times Online :: China News, China Business News, Taiwan and Hong Kong News and Business.: "JOMTIEN, Thailand - In 10 to 15 years East Asia will form a political-economic union along the lines of the European Union. It will follow the reunification of the two Koreas, likely to occur around 2007. A 'Confucian' union will integrate Japan into East Asia the way the EU integrated Germany into Europe. By about 2020, the East Asia Union will be the world's most powerful bloc, ahead of the EU and US-led North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). And its core will be China. "

Emory scientist finds different paths lead to similar cognitive abilities: "Recent research by Marino and her colleagues has traced the changing encephalization, or relative brain size, of cetaceans during the past 47 million years by using magnetic resonance imaging and histological studies of the fossil record. While modern humans have brains that are seven times bigger than would be expected for our body size, giving us an encephalization level of seven, some modern dolphins and whales have an encephalization level close to five -- not a huge difference, says Marino. For example, Homo sapiens' closest relatives, the great apes, have encephalization levels of only two to two-and-a-half.
'While humans are the most encephalized -- the brainiest -- creatures on earth, we are relative newcomers to that status,' says Marino. 'The cetaceans enjoyed a tremendous increase in brain size and organization about 35 million years ago, whereas humans got their big brains much more recently during the past one to two million years.'
Marino's earlier research has shown how dolphins have the capacity for mirror self-recognition, a feat of intelligence previously thought to be reserved only for Homo sapiens and their closest primate cousins. "