Ray Kurzweil deciphers a brave new world | Newsmakers | CNET News.com: "Thanks to Moore's Law and other exponential growth rates, by 2030 a $1 computer will be as powerful as the human brain. Information technology's exponential curve will fuel advances in biology, robotics, nanotechnology and artificial intelligence--with world-shattering results including radical life extension and practically omniscient and omnipotent abilities for humans who elect self-augmentation. "

Wired News: Mighty Mice Regrow Organs: "Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.
Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.
The results stunned scientists because if such regeneration is possible in this mammal, it might also be possible in humans.
The researchers also made a remarkable second discovery: When cells from the regenerative mice were injected into normal mice, the normal mice adopted the ability to regenerate. And when the special mice bred with normal mice, their offspring inherited souped-up regeneration capabilities. "

PINR - Confrontation Looms as I.A.E.A. Passes Resolution on Iran: "That being said, India did vote in favor of the I.A.E.A. resolution due to its hope of acquiring more nuclear technology from the United States. In July 2005, India and the U.S. signed a nuclear deal that granted New Delhi access to civilian nuclear energy cooperation;"

PINR - Confrontation Looms as I.A.E.A. Passes Resolution on Iran: "Furthermore, China and Russia have been improving their bilateral relations and have been cooperating in order to limit the spread of U.S. influence in Central Asia."

PINR - Confrontation Looms as I.A.E.A. Passes Resolution on Iran: "About 15 percent of China's imported oil and natural gas comes from Iran, and U.S. attempts to destabilize Iran would pose a threat to China's energy and economic interests. "

PINR - Confrontation Looms as I.A.E.A. Passes Resolution on Iran: "Nevertheless, the United States does not consider military action against Iran a viable option under the present circumstances. For instance, the ongoing insurgency in Iraq has resulted in the overextension of the U.S. military; many of Iran's nuclear facilities are believed to be hidden, making it difficult to eliminate its nuclear research program through air strikes; and, the skyrocketing price of oil is weakening the economies of oil-dependent countries, and any military move on Iran would add more instability to energy supplies, thus lifting oil prices even higher."

Foreign Affairs - A Trade War with China? - Neil C. Hughes: "China is not stealing U.S. jobs or engaging in unfair trade practices to undercut U.S. economic might and export its way to global power. In fact, almost 60 percent of Chinese exports to the United States are produced by firms owned by foreign companies, many of them American. These firms have moved operations overseas in response to competitive pressures to lower production costs and thereby offer better prices to consumers and higher returns to shareholders. U.S. importers with dominant positions in China, such as Wal-Mart and Hallmark, have the power to compel Chinese suppliers to keep their costs as low as possible. Wal-Mart alone purchased $18 billion worth of Chinese goods in 2004, making it China's eighth-largest trading partner -- ahead of Australia, Canada, and Russia.
So who is really 'to blame' for China's 'exporting deflation' and for the surge of Chinese exports? American importers, the American consumers who buy their Chinese goods at very low prices, and their American shareholders who demand results. A sustained trade war with China would hurt these groups more than anyone else."

Foreign Affairs - A Trade War with China? - Neil C. Hughes: "Summary: With China's economic clout growing rapidly, Americans are accusing Beijing of every offense from currency manipulation to crooked trade policies. None of these charges has much merit, but they have increased the probability of a U.S.-Chinese trade war that would do considerable damage to both sides."

Foreign Affairs - The Human-Animal Link - William B. Karesh and Robert A. Cook: "Not only is local and national health care often a problem; internationally, no agency is responsible for, or capable of, monitoring and preventing the myriad diseases that can now cross the borders between countries and species. More specifically, no organization has the mandate to pursue policies based on a simple but critically important concept: that the health of people, animals, and the environment in which we all live are inextricably linked."

Foreign Affairs - The Human-Animal Link - William B. Karesh and Robert A. Cook: "Meanwhile, humanity has become vulnerable to cross-species illnesses, thanks to modern advances such as the rapid transportation of both goods and people, increasing population density around the globe, and a growing dependence on intensified livestock production for food. The global transport of animals and animal products, which includes hundreds of species of wildlife, also provides safe passage for the harmful bacteria, viruses, and fungi they carry, not to mention the prion proteins that cause insidious illnesses such as mad cow disease and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk."

Foreign Affairs - The Future of Energy Policy - Timothy E. Wirth, C. Boyden Gray, and John D. Podesta: "Energy is fundamental to U.S. domestic prosperity and national security. In fact, the complex ties between energy and U.S. national interests have drawn tighter over time. The advent of globalization, the growing gap between rich and poor, the war on terrorism, and the need to safeguard the earth's environment are all intertwined with energy concerns."

Foreign Affairs - The Future of Energy Policy - Timothy E. Wirth, C. Boyden Gray, and John D. Podesta: "Summary: The debate over energy policy in the United States has consistently failed to grapple with the large issues at stake. It is time for an ambitious new approach to U.S. strategic energy policy, one that deals with the problems of oil dependence, climate change, and the developing world's lack of access to energy."

Foreign Affairs - Development and Democracy - Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George W. Downs: "What explains the often lengthy lag between the onset of economic growth and the emergence of liberal democracy? The answer lies in the growing sophistication of authoritarian governments. Although development theorists are right in assuming that increases in per capita income lead to increases in popular demand for political power, they have consistently underestimated the ability of oppressive governments to thwart those demands. "

Foreign Affairs - Development and Democracy - Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and George W. Downs: "This prediction was not specific to China. Until quite recently, conventional wisdom has held that economic development, wherever it occurs, will lead inevitably -- and fairly quickly -- to democracy. The argument, in its simplest form, runs like this: economic growth produces an educated and entrepreneurial middle class that, sooner or later, begins to demand control over its own fate. Eventually, even repressive governments are forced to give in."

Foreign Affairs - China's Global Hunt for Energy - David Zweig and Bi Jianhai: "China's resources hunt has been a boon to some states, especially developing countries, as it has allowed them to exploit as yet untapped resources or gain leverage to negotiate better deals with older customers. But for other states, particularly the United States and Japan, China's insatiability is causing concern. Some governments worry as Beijing enters their spheres of influence or strikes deals with states they have tried to marginalize."

Foreign Affairs - China's Global Hunt for Energy - David Zweig and Bi Jianhai: "Partly on these people's advice, Beijing has been encouraging representatives of state-controlled companies to secure exploration and supply agreements with states that produce oil, gas, and other resources. Meanwhile, it has been courting the governments of these states aggressively, building goodwill by strengthening bilateral trade relations, awarding aid, forgiving national debt, and helping build roads, bridges, stadiums, and harbors. In return, China has won access to key resources, from gold in Bolivia and coal in the Philippines to oil in Ecuador and natural gas in Australia."

Foreign Affairs - China's Global Hunt for Energy - David Zweig and Bi Jianhai: "Twenty years ago, China was East Asia's largest oil exporter. Now it is the world's second-largest importer; last year, it alone accounted for 31 percent of global growth in oil demand. Now that China is the workshop of the world, its hunger for electricity and industrial resources has soared. China's combined share of the world's consumption of aluminum, copper, nickel, and iron ore more than doubled within only ten years, from 7 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2000"

Foreign Affairs - China's Global Hunt for Energy - David Zweig and Bi Jianhai: "Chinese foreign policy is now driven by China's unprecendented need for resources. In exchange for access to oil and other raw materials to fuel its booming economy, Beijing has boosted its bilateral relations with resource-rich states, sometimes striking deals with rogue governments or treading on U.S. turf. Beijing's hunger may worry some in Washington, but it also creates new grounds for cooperation."

AACC - building a futures exercise: "To understand the factors that might influence a future state.
To use math or statistics to estimate a future state or condition.
To use writing and thinking strategies to outline a future scenario for any discipline or field� society itself.. the list goes on."

AACC - futures resources - Thinking about the future: "A definitive description of the emerging discipline of futures studies. Volume I is about forecasting; Volume II is about values.
The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Professional Edition edited by Richard A. Slaughter. Foresight International, 2005. "

What's Next - Top Trends in Science, technology & design: "Expect computers to become more intelligent than humans by about 2025. At this point humankind will be faced with something of a dilemma. "

What's Next - Top Trends in Science, technology & design: Nanotechnoloy (i.e.the manipulation of structures at an atomic level — or the science of very small things) is the hyped technology of the new millennium. It’s unlikely to disappoint either because it’s a disruptive technology.

What's Next - Top Trends: "Top Trends"

: "Fuelling cycles of humiliation-for-humiliation does not lead to peace and justice.
To conclude, therefore, we call for a world-wide Moratorium on Humiliation in order to facilitate the building of a decent global village."

: "Terror attacks indicates - at least to our understanding - that the entire world community is caught in cycles of humiliation. Men such as Osama bin Laden would never have any followers, if there were not a pool of sullen feelings of humiliation somewhere, feelings that are so intense that young intelligent men, who could found families and have satisfying careers, are willing to follow such leaders and lose their lives in destroying other lives. "

: "in the first instance, it augments feelings of debasement, because inequalities and deprivation that were accepted before turn into unacceptable acts of humiliation perpetrated by the powerful on the less powerful. The promise of human rights, the promise of equal dignity for all, if unfulfilled, creates an expectation gap that can translate into wounds of humiliation if it is being perceived to be inflicted by perpetrators, either intentionally or through negligence. And, as mentioned already, acts of debasement create feelings of humiliation that in turn have a potential to lead to retaliating acts of debasement."

: "Nowadays, we no longer make people accept explanations for inequality and deprivation that allude to God's will, or to nature's order, or to punishment for past failings. We live in a world that is permeated by the promise of human rights that indicates that every human being has a right to live in enabling circumstances, that egality is the ruling idea and not hierarchy, that every person has an inner core of dignity that ought not be lowered. International experience indicates that this message indeed is heard. "

: "Vamik Volkan (2004) has developed a theory of collective violence, which he puts forth in his recent book Blind Trust: Large groups and their leaders in times of crisis and terror. He explains that when a chosen trauma that is experienced as humiliation is not mourned, it may lead to the feeling of entitlement to revenge and, under the pressure of fear/anxiety, to collective regression "

: "Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, states, 'If I've learned one thing covering world affairs, it's this: The single most underappreciated force in international relations is humiliation' (New York Times, November 9, 2003).
Aaron Lazare (2004) writes: 'I believe that humiliation is one of the most important emotions we must understand and manage, both in ourselves and in others, and on an individual and national level' (Aaron Lazare, 2004, On Apology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, p. 262-263)."

People's Daily Online -- OECD: China to become largest exporter in five years: "The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) made a comprehensive assessment of Chinese economy for the first time in its latest report. The report says judging by China's current situation and development it is likely to outpace the US and Germany to become the largest exporter and the fourth largest economic entity in the world. By then goods and service from China would account for 10 percent of international trade volume while the current figure is 6 percent. "

People's Daily Online -- China to cap population at 1.37 billion by 2010: "China's population and family planning minister said China would work to limit its mainland population to below 1.37 billion by 2010. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "France and Germany have gradually absorbed some 'Anglo-Saxon liberalism' prerogatives due to American power and influence, and thanks to the post-WWII world configuration, at a time when they needed strong relationships with the U.S. and Britain. However, they have also retained some of their respective traditions of strong state intervention in the economy, and often perceive economic globalization as an American strategy to impose U.S. economic power.

Both countries still maintain their most enduring foreign policy goals -- i.e. controlling the heart of Europe and projecting their power globally after having securitized their original geopolitical environment. A balanced multipolar world is what they perceive as in their global interest. In this sense, they oppose Anglo-American hegemony over the West, but their ruling classes are split between those who believe it is necessary to copy the current British social model in order to compete more effectively, and those who maintain that their country can effectively compete only if it can revive its own specific national model."

Recent theories of physics concerning multiple universes speculate that new universes are created on a regular basis, each with its own unique rules, but that most of these either die out quickly or else continue without the evolution of any interesting patterns (such as Earth-based biology has created) because their rules do not support the evolution of increasingly complex forms.

Most technology forecasts and forecasters ignore altogether this historical exponential view of technological progress. Indeed, almost everyone I meet has a linear view of the future. That’s why people tend to overestimate what can be achieved in the short term (because we tend to leave out necessary details) but underestimate what can be achieved in the long term (because exponential growth is ignored).

The Singularity will represent the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots. There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality. If you wonder what will remain unequivocally human in such a world, it’s simply this quality: ours is the species that inherently seeks to extend its physical and mental reach beyond current limitations.

Although impressive in many respects, the brain suffers from severe limitations. We use its massive parallelism (one hundred trillion interneuronal connections operating simultaneously) to quickly recognize subtle patterns. But our thinking is extremely slow: the basic neural transactions are several million times slower than contemporary electronic circuits.

Consider Gary Kasparov, who scorned the pathetic state of computer chess in 1992. Yet the relentless doubling of computer power every year enabled a computer to defeat him only five years later.2 The list of ways computers can now exceed human capabilities is rapidly growing.Moreover, the once narrow applications of computer intelligence are gradually broadening in one type of activity after another. For example, computers are diagnosing electrocardiograms
and medical images, flying and landing airplanes, controlling the tactical decisions of automated weapons, making credit and financial decisions, and
being given responsibility for many other tasks that used to require human intelligence. The performance of these systems is increasingly based on integrating multiple types of artificial intelligence (AI). But as long as there is an AI shortcoming in any such area of endeavor, skeptics will point to that area as an inherent bastion of permanent human superiority over the capabilities of our own creations.

I can understand why many observers do not readily embrace the obvious implications of what I have called the law of accelerating returns (the inherent acceleration of the rate of evolution, with technological evolution as a continuation of biological evolution).

The same observation holds for the “inventions” of biological evolution: consider that the genetic difference between chimpanzees and humans, for example, is only a few hundred thousand bytes of information. Although chimps are capable of some intellectual feats, that tiny difference in our genes was sufficient for our species to create the magic of technology.

Our progress in reverse engineering the human brain, a key issue that I will describe in detail in this book, demonstrates that we do indeed have the ability to understand, to model,
and to extend our own intelligence. This is one aspect of the uniqueness of our species: our intelligence is just sufficiently above the critical threshold necessary for us to scale our own ability to unrestricted heights of creative power— and we have the opposable appendage (our thumbs) necessary to manipulate the universe to our will.

AI researcher Douglas Hofstadter muses that “it could be simply an accident of fate that our brains are too weak to understand themselves. Think of the lowly giraffe, for instance, whose brain
is obviously far below the level required for self-understanding—yet it is remarkably similar to our brain.”6 However, we have already succeeded in
modeling portions of our brain—neurons and substantial neural regions— and the complexity of such models is growing rapidly.

The story is predicated on the idea that we have the ability to understand our own intelligence—to access our own source code, if you will—and then revise and expand it.

Over the last twenty years, I have come to appreciate an important metaidea: that the power of ideas to transform the world is itself accelerating. Although people readily agree with this observation when it is simply stated, relatively few observers truly appreciate its profound implications.Within the next several decades, we will have the opportunity to apply ideas to conquer age-old problems—and introduce a few new problems along the way.

The Power of IdeasI began to develop models of how distinct technologies—electronics, communications, computer processors, memory, magnetic storage, and others—developed and how these changes rippled through markets and ultimately our social institutions. I realized that most inventions fail not because the R&D department can’t get them to work but because the timing is wrong. Inventing is a lot like surfing: you have to anticipate and catch the wave at just the right moment.

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity."

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological"

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "In his classic The Age of Spiritual Machines, he presented the daring argument that with the ever-accelerating rate of technological change, computers would rival the full range of human intelligence at its best. Now, in The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations."

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "That merging is the essence of the Singularity, an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today�the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity. In this new world, there will be no clear distinction between human and machine, real reality and virtual reality"

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "Now, in The Singularity Is Near, he examines the next step in this inexorable evolutionary process: the union of human and machine, in which the knowledge and skills embedded in our brains will be combined with the vastly greater capacity, speed, and knowledge-sharing ability of our own creations."

Singularity is Near - About the Book: "At the onset of the twenty-first century, humanity stands on the verge of the most transforming and the most thrilling period in its history. It will be an era in which the very nature of what it means to be human will be both enriched and challenged, as our species breaks the shackles of its genetic legacy and achieves inconceivable heights of intelligence, material progress, and longevity."

KurzweilAI.net: "'Non-biological intelligence will match the range and subtlety of human intelligence. It will then soar past it because of the continuing acceleration of information-based technologies, as well as the ability of machines to instantly share their knowledge. By 2045, we'll get to a point where technical progress will be so fast that un-enhanced human intelligence will be unable to follow it.'

That means we will reprogram our DNA, human aging and illness will be reversed, world hunger and pollution will be solved, and our bodies will be transformed by nanotechnology, so that, for example, we will eventually be able to augment and replace our biological organs and vastly extend our intelligence."

KurzweilAI.net: "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil will be published by Viking Press on September 26, 2005. A web site focusing on the book, singularity.com, launched today, includes book excerpts, press coverage, author bio, and other resources.

In this much-anticipated sequel to The Age of Spiritual Machines, Kurzweil presents the next stage of his compelling view of the future. The merging of humans and machines -- the Singularity -- will be '... a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed,' he says. "

New Scientist Breaking News - Warming world blamed for more strong hurricanes: "This is the third report in recent months highlighting the growing risk to life and property round the world from hurricanes and tornadoes. In June, NCAR�s Kevin Trenberth reported a rising intensity of hurricanes in the North Atlantic"

New Scientist Breaking News - Warming world blamed for more strong hurricanes: "A massive global increase in the number of strong hurricanes over the past 35 years is being blamed on global warming, by the most detailed study yet. The US scientists warn that Katrina-strength hurricanes could become the norm."

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13Powering A New Generation of Cars -- (C|Net News -- September 2, 2005) Toyota, General Motors and virtually every other major automobile manufacturer are tinkering with a technology called Homogeneous Charge Compression Ignition (HCCI), which could boost fuel economy in cars by about 20 percent and generate fewer polluting hydrocarbons.

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13Airborne Laser Brings Star Wars One Step Closer -- (Reuters -- August 31, 2005) A U.S. Pentagon invention could make air combat resemble a battle scene from Star Wars, with a laser so small it can fit on a fighter jet, yet powerful enough to knock down an enemy missile in flight. The laser being designed by the Pentagon's central research and development agency will weigh just 750 kg (1,650 lb) and measures the size of a large fridge

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Scientists probe anti-ageing gene: "Scientists in the United States have discovered a gene that can keep mice alive for 30% longer than normal. "

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13Nano-Material Is Harder Than Diamonds -- (New Scientist -- August 30, 2005)
A material that is harder than diamond has been created in the lab, by packing together tiny "nanorods" of carbon. The new material, known as aggregated carbon nanorods (ACNR), was created by compressing and heating super-strong carbon molecules called buckyballs or carbon-60. These molecules consist of 60 atoms that interlock in hexagonal or pentagonal shapes and resemble tiny soccer balls.

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13Scientists Discover Life-Extending Protein in Mice to Slow Ageing -- (BBC -- August 31, 2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4186324.stm
Scientists have identified a hormone that significantly extends the life span of mice, a discovery that could mark a crucial step toward developing drugs that boost longevity in people. The hormone is the first substance identified that is produced naturally in mammals, including humans, and can extend life span.

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13It's A Miracle: Mice Regrow Hearts -- (The Australian -- September 8, 2005)
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16417002%255E29677,00.html
Scientists have created "miracle mice" that can regenerate amputated limbs or damaged vital organs, making them able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animals are unique among mammals in their ability to regrow their heart, toes, joints and tail. And when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate, researchers say.

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > AP News: "So a new breed of biologists is attempting to bring order to the hit-and-miss chaos of genetic engineering by bringing to biotechnology the same engineering strategies used to build computers, bridges and buildings.
The idea is to separate cells into their fundamental components and then rebuild new organisms, a much more complex way of genetic engineering.
The burgeoning movement is attracting big money and some of the biggest names in biology, many of whom are attending the 'Life Engineering Symposium' that begins Friday in San Francisco."

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13Prozac for Plants -- (NASA -- August 31, 2005) On Mars, plants would have to tolerate conditions that would usually cause them a great deal of stress -- severe cold, drought, low air pressure, soils that they didn't evolve for. But researchers believe they can develop plants that can live in these conditions, and stress management is the key.

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 13: "Scientists have identified a hormone that significantly extends the life span of mice, a discovery that could mark a crucial step toward developing drugs that boost longevity in people"

People's Daily Online -- UN Security Council's role "irreplaceable", Chinese president: "The third is to improve the Council's decision-making by giving greater expression to democratic principles. China stands for an enlarged Security Council based on a broad consensus, and increased representation of developing countries, African countries in particular, thus giving more countries, especially the small and medium-sized countries greater access to its decision-making. "

People's Daily Online -- Chinese president announces more aid for other developing countries: "Chinese President Hu Jintao announced in the United Nations Wednesday new measures to help other developing countries including providing more aid for such countries. "

People's Daily Online -- Inventor turns dead cats into diesel, angers animal protectors: "A German inventor recently found a way to produce diesel with dead cats, but aroused strong opposition from animal protectors. According to Reuters report, 55-year-old Christian Koch said the method uses daily garbage, cadavers of cats and other materials. The whole process can be done at home. It has been proved that the fuel can be used in common diesel generators for civilian use.
Koch said that he tanks his car with the diesel mixture and has driven it for 170,000 kilometers without any problems. "

EUROPA - Rapid - Press Releases: "But the only truly universal multilateral institution is the United Nations. With its inclusive membership and worldwide legitimacy, it remains the most important arena for advancing common solutions to our common problems. "

EUROPA - Rapid - Press Releases: "Power relationships in the 21st century may be very different.
I don't only mean the emerging economic powers, like China, India, and possibly others. There are other threats: energy security � look at the current price of oil; global health risks � HIV/AIDS, malaria and new pandemics like SARS or Avian flu; entrenched poverty � sub-Saharan Africa has been getting poorer not richer; and environmental problems � climate change, major natural disasters like the tsunamis and Hurricane Katrina, and the mix of fire and floods in Europe this summer. The world�s demographics are changing and there are generational challenges to us all. Plus the 'hard' security threats of violent extremists, international terrorism and international crime, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and trafficking in people, drugs and arms."

EUROPA - Rapid - Press Releases: "We are already a global actor � I know from my daily experience that when we talk, people listen. We are the world's largest economic bloc, and the biggest donor of development assistance. We use our foreign policy tools � aid, trade, and economic agreements - to promote human rights and good governance in every corner of the globe. And for those who say we are no military power � more than 50,000 European soldiers are currently keeping the peace and promoting stability across the world."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "In the face of increased U.S. influence in Central Asia, and the wave of colored revolutions in the region, Russia and China have seen a convergence of interests. Both states have as a foreign policy goal preventing further U.S. encroachment in the region and are attempting to use a more cohesive S.C.O. to reduce Washington's current influence there. Moscow's and Beijing's use of the S.C.O., and their scheduling of regional military exercises, are manifestations of this convergence in interests.

Washington is aware of these developments, and will attempt to retain its influence in Central Asia even though it has lost the use of Uzbekistan as a staging point for its operations in Afghanistan. It will no doubt continue to lobby Kyrgyzstan in the hopes of keeping its military base in that country secure.

Central Asia truly is a strategic battleground between the West and the two blocs of the East, Russia and China. The region's strategic energy reserves and its proximity to Russia's borders make it a hotly contested region in the coming years. It will be essential to watch whether China and Russia continue to improve their bilateral relations and attempt to pull all of the region's states firmly into their sphere of influence. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The Chinese fleet's evolution in the coming years suggests that P.L.A.N. will be essentially concerned with protecting sea trade with the aim of assuring an uninterrupted flow of energy resources to satisfy the needs most dependent on overseas resources and to safeguard sea lines of communication. The enlargement and modernization of the Chinese fleet will inevitably alarm the surrounding countries and other regional powers (such as India and Australia) and will oblige other states to renew their surface and submarine forces. However, it appears unlikely that P.L.A.N. can, or will, become a force with global projection (notably far behind the U.S. Navy's capabilities, or those of the Soviet Navy during the 1980s) in the next decade. "

Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint - New York Times: "The microcephalin and ASPM genes are known to be involved in determining brain size and so far have no other known function, he said. They are known to have been under strong selective pressure as brain size increased from monkeys to humans, and the chances seem 'pretty good' the new alleles are continuing that, he said."

Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint - New York Times: "Two genes involved in determining the size of the human brain have undergone substantial evolution in the last 60,000 years, researchers say, leading to the surprising suggestion that the brain is still undergoing rapid evolution."

Xinhua - English: " The British government has granted scientists a license to create a human embryo that would have genetic material from two mothers, the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority said on Thursday. "

People's Daily Online -- UNDP report highlights China's marked progress in human development: "China has registered some of the most rapid advances in human development in history as its Human Development Index Ranking now ranks the 85th, compared with the 105th in 1990.
This is revealed by '2005 Human Development Report,' which has been simultaneously published worldwide by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). "

Foreign Policy: The War on Drugs:The model drug of the future is already here in the form of crystal methamphetamine, a drug that is sweeping the United States and making inroads abroad. It’s cheap and easy to make—little more than Sudafed doctored up with plant fertilizer. One hundred percent of the profit goes to the manufacturer; no intermediary or army of couriers is required. Made of locally acquired materials in the garage or basement, the drug’s production is nearly impossible to stop. Only the stupid and incompetent get caught.

Foreign Policy: The War on Drugs: "But as the violence of the drug trade dies down and as drugs become safer, drug use will blossom. The boundary between legal performance enhancement (Viagra) and the illegal drugs of pleasure and creativity will blur. The political and social pressure against drug use will remain, but it will increasingly resemble the campaigns against performance- enhancing drugs for athletes. Widespread use will spark debates about fairness and authenticity: Is a drug-using musician better than one who composes and performs naturally? Is it fair for only the wealthy to have the richest sexual or culinary experiences?"

Political Parties: "We take it for granted that political parties are vital to modern political life. They have shaped representative democracies since the late 19th century. Yet, their prospects are not bright in today�s large democracies. In fact, these powerful political machines may soon disappear. "

Foreign Policy: The Public Domain: "Traditionally, the law has kept these two domains in balance. The term of copyright was relatively short, and its reach was essentially commercial. But a fundamental change in the scope and nature of copyright law, inspired by a radical change in technology, now threatens this balance. Digital technologies have made it easy�indeed, too easy�for creative work in the private domain to spread without permission. Piracy is rampant on the highways of digital technology. In response, code writers (both legislators and technologists) have created an unprecedented array of weapons (both legal and technical) to wage war on the pirates and restore control to the owners of culture. Yet the control these weapons will produce is far greater than anything we have seen in our past. "

Foreign Policy: The Public Domain: "Within every culture, there is a public domain�a lawyer-free zone, unregulated by the rules of copyright. Throughout history, this part of culture has been vital to the spread and development of creative work. It is the part that gets cultivated without the permission of anyone else.
This public domain has always lived alongside a private domain�the part of culture that is owned and regulated, that part whose use requires the permission of someone else. Through the market incentives it creates, the private domain has also produced extraordinary cultural wealth throughout the world. It is essential to how cultures develop"

Foreign Policy: The Sanctity of Life: "As we approach 2040, the Netherlands and Belgium will have had decades of experience with legalized euthanasia, and other jurisdictions will also have permitted either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide for varying lengths of time. This experience will puncture exaggerated fears that the legalization of these practices would be a first step toward a new holocaust. By then, an increasing proportion of the population in developed countries will be more than 75 years old and thinking about how their lives will end. The political pressure for allowing terminally or chronically ill patients to choose when to die will be irresistible."

Foreign Policy: The Sanctity of Life: "This year, however, that view became much more uncomfortable. South Korean researchers showed that human stem cells can be cloned by replacing the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg with the nucleus of an ordinary cell. The South Korean breakthrough poses a stark challenge to the conservative position. The possibility of cloning from the nucleus of an ordinary cell undermines the idea that embryos are precious because they have the potential to become human beings. Once it becomes clear that every human cell contains the genetic information to create a new human being, the old arguments for preserving �unique� human embryos fade away. "

Foreign Policy: Monogamy: "The demise of monogamy will not come without a struggle. All the churches will seek to forbid it, especially for women. For a while, they will hold the line. But individual freedom, once again, will triumph. The revolution will begin in Europe, America will follow, and the rest of the world will eventually come around. The implications will be enormous. Relationships with children will be radically different, financial arrangements will be disrupted, and how and where we live will change. To be sure, it will take decades for the change to be complete and yet, if we look around, it is already here. Beneath our hypocrisies�in movies, novels, and music�the shape of our future is visible."

Foreign Policy: Monogamy: "Just as most societies now accept successive love relationships, soon we will acknowledge the legality and acceptability of simultaneous love. For men and women, it will be possible to have partnerships with various people, who will, in turn, have various partners themselves. At long last, we will recognize that it is human to love different people at the same time. "

Foreign Policy: Monogamy: "Meanwhile, technological advances will further weaken the links between sexuality, love, and reproduction, which are very different concepts. Widely available birth control has already stripped away an important obstacle to having multiple partners. "

Foreign Policy: Monogamy: "Two hundred years ago, few people foresaw legalized divorce or open homosexuality�let alone gay marriage. Abstract art and jazz were unimaginable. Aesthetics, morals, and family relationships, it seems, are the bane of the futurologist. We constantly speculate about the future balance of power, looming conflicts, and emerging technologies. Yet somehow, we imagine that morals and aesthetics are immutable. So we forget to ask how conceptions of good and evil, acceptable and unacceptable, beauty and ugliness will change. And they will."

KurzweilAI.net: "The world has made enough explosives for more than 300,000 nuclear bombs, according to the latest scientific assessment of countries' nuclear stockpiles. "

Foreign Policy: Dangerously Unique: "The average homicide rate in Latin America and the Caribbean is about 25 per 100,000 inhabitants and, in sub-Saharan Africa, it is roughly 18 murders per 100,000. (In the European Union, there are just 3 homicides for every 100,000 inhabitants.)"

What happens, as these trends continue, to the familiar guideposts for deciding what is human? How will people decide, without a checklist of yes-no criteria for human standing, who, or what, is entitled to privileges and rights? The history of human groupishness -- our tendency to divide ourselves up by color, language, religion, sex, ideology and many other criteria -- hints at a possible answer.

For millennia, humans have been capable of sending help to total strangers because they're perceived to be like us -- fellow Americans, fellow Muslims or fellow men. We're also capable, of course, of declaring that Those People, over there, act and talk and smell so strange that they need not be considered human.

As machines get smarter and animals are shown to be more mindful, perhaps the same rhetoric will be applied to them. In a few years you may be reading an article that sympathizes with a plucky little robot, working hard to do a tough job -- just like me! Or asked, on the other hand, to revile the depraved, barbaric monster robots of the enemy. And people who want to sell you lobster dinners will tell you that lobsters are alien ''bugs'' that don't feel pain. While people who want lobsters to be left alone. . . . Well, actually, they're already at it.

In 1995, Mary Tyler Moore wrote an appeal for lobsters, saying they're ''fascinating beings with complex social interactions, long childhoods and awkward adolescences. Like humans, they flirt with one another and have even been seen walking 'claw in claw'! And like humans, lobsters feel pain.''

In other words, even as the clear list of differences between human and nonhuman gets shorter, the ancient rhetoric of Us and Them remains. People will never have any trouble dividing the human from the nonhuman. We've been doing it to one another for thousands of years.

David Berreby is the author of ''Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind,'' to be published by Little, Brown next month.

Deceit of the Raven - New York Times: "So science is chipping away at the case for human uniqueness from two different angles. Not only is it showing that animals are more like us than we believed but it is also making machines that are more like us than we believed possible. "

Deceit of the Raven - New York Times: "It began with apes. In the 1960's and 70's, scientists taught captive chimps to use words and documented wild ones using tools and planning hunting expeditions. Then other smart mammals -- monkeys, elephants and porpoises among them -- also proved to have surprisingly ''human'' mental powers. And in the last few years, the circle has expanded to still other mammals and beyond. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The drive for global free trade, once championed by states with advanced economies, appears to be encountering an obstacle, if not a limit. Look for increasing difficulty in promoting relaxed trade restrictions -- particularly in the W.T.O. -- as governments are pressured to protect domestic interests. If trade disputes begin to spill over into broader relations among states, globalized trade itself could suffer declines and trade disputes could exacerbate and cause political and even military conflicts. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The imposition of import restrictions on Chinese textiles by Washington and Brussels is one of many recent instances of a growing tendency toward protectionism in wealthier countries that find their domestic industries threatened by lower cost producers in rising economic powers. Interest groups in the countries with advanced economies that are disadvantaged by competition can be expected to continue to mobilize as they suffer further losses. As they defend their sectoral interests, they will attempt to fan sentiments of economic nationalism within the general public."

Vital Signs Facts: Americans Make More Than 14,000 Roundtrips to the Sun a Year: "In 1950, U.S. drivers covered some 588 billion kilometers (365 billion miles) in 40 million cars, or almost 14,600 kilometers per car. By 2003, the average distance driven per year had grown to more than 19,000 kilometers. Multiplied by the far-larger number of vehicles now on U.S. roads, the total distance traveled had grown more than seven-fold, to 4,281 billion kilometers. That�s equivalent to 14,308 roundtrips from Earth to the sun.
Driving all these vehicles required 8.3 million barrels of fuel per day in 2002, up from 5.1 million barrels in 1970. Passenger-vehicle fuel consumption now surpasses total U.S. domestic oil production and is a major driver of rising imports. "

People's Daily Online -- China faces six challenges in the 21st century, expert: "China will inevitably run into six major challenges during its development in the 21st century, said Niu Wenyuan, chief scientist and team leader of the research of sustainable development strategy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, at the 21st Century Forum' 2005 in Beijing.
First is the coming of three population peaks in the future three to four decades. China already has a total population of 1.3 billion, and each year of the coming two decades will see an average of 10 million newborns.
Second is the excessive consumption of energies and natural resources at this developing stage. It is learned that China contributed 4.3 percent to world economy in 2004, but used the world's 30 percent coal, 27 percent iron and steel, 25 percent aluminium and 40 percent cement. This extensive way of resources unitization will hardly be curbed in the coming two or three decades.
Third is the overall and continuous deterioration of ecological environment in this country. "

People's Daily Online -- UN report rates China, India as new engines of economic growth: "China and India have emerged as new engines of world economic growth, the United Nations said in a report published Friday.
'The main engine of growth, the US economy, may run out of steam before other countries or regions are able to take over that role,' says the Trade and Development Report 2005, published by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Furthermore, all three countries -- but especially China and Russia -- recognize the potentially destabilizing effect that the United States has in the region. A number of colored revolutions, often inspired by the West, have upset the power structure in the region. Both China and Russia seem to agree that a change in the status quo is not desired, and that if both countries lean on the former Soviet states, it will produce favorable results. This logic explains why the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (S.C.O.) -- which is led by Russia and China, and makes up the former Soviet states -- released a statement calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the region. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "India and China, the world's most populated countries, are in a flurry of activity to purchase energy assets since both of their economies are achieving tremendous growth, boosting their demand for energy. Additionally, as they become more dependent on energy, they become more vulnerable to energy disruption. By acquiring foreign energy assets, India and China will be in a better position to secure their energy stability, especially when buying influence in energy stakes near their borders. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "The United States is seeking to exercise sovereign authority over the planet during a time of widening global crisis: economic stagnation, increasing polarization between the global rich and the global poor, weakening U.S. economic hegemony, growing nuclear threats, and deepening ecological decline. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "In present world circumstances, when one capitalist state has a virtual monopoly of the means of destruction, the temptation for that state to attempt to seize full-spectrum dominance and to transform itself into the de facto global state governing the world economy is irresistible. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "It is common, as we have noted, for critics to attribute these dramatic changes simply to the seizure of the political and military command centers of the U.S. state by a neoconservative cabal (brought into power by the disputed 2000 election), which, when combined with the added opportunity provided by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, led to a global imperial offensive and a new militarism. Yet, the expansion of American empire, in the wake of the Soviet Union�s demise was, as the foregoing argument has demonstrated, already well advanced at that time and had been a bipartisan project from the start. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "U.S. ruling circles continued to debate, however, the manner and extent to which the United States should push its ultimate advantage�using its vast military power as a means of promoting U.S. global supremacy in the new �unipolar� world. If neoliberalism had arisen in response to economic stagnation, transferring the costs of economic crisis to the world�s poor, the problem of declining U.S. economic hegemony seemed to require an altogether different response: the reassertion of U.S. power as military colossus of the world system."

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "The 1990s saw the strengthening of neoliberal globalization: the removal of barriers to capital throughout the world in ways that directly enhanced the power of the rich capitalist countries of the center of the world economy vis-�-vis the poor countries of the periphery. A key development was the introduction of the World Trade Organization to accompany the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as organizations enforcing the monopoly capitalist rules of the game. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "Even as a massive antiglobalization movement was emerging, notably with the protests in Seattle in November 1999, the U.S. establishment was moving energetically toward an imperialism for the twenty-first century; one that would promote neoliberal globalization, while resting on U.S. world dominance. �The hidden hand of the market,� Thomas Friedman, the Pulitzer-prize-winning foreign policy columnist for the New York Times, opined, �will never work without a hidden fist�McDonald�s cannot flourish without a McDonnell Douglas, the builder of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley�s technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps� (New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1999). The �hidden fist,� however, was only partly hidden, and was to become even less so in the ensuing years."

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "During the remainder of the 1990s the United States (chiefly under Democratic President Bill Clinton) was to engage in major military interventions in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Eastern Europe. This culminated in 1999 with the war in Yugoslavia (Kosovo) in which the United States, leading NATO, bombed for eleven weeks, followed by the insertion of NATO ground troops. Purportedly carried out to stop �ethnic cleansing,� the war in the Balkans was geopolitically about the extension of U.S. imperial power into an area formerly within the Soviet sphere of influence. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "But it was the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989 that represented the real sea change for U.S. imperialism. As Andrew Bacevich wrote in American Empire (2002), �just as victory in 1898 [in the Spanish-American War] transformed the Caribbean into an American lake, so too victory [in the Cold War] in 1989 brought the entire globe within the purview of the United States; henceforth American interests knew no bounds�"

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "�An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.� This was worded so as to parallel the Monroe Doctrine, which had established U.S. claims to dominance over the Americas, and had been employed as a putative �legal principle� with which to justify U.S. military invasions of other states in the hemisphere. The Carter Doctrine said, in effect, that the United States claimed military dominance of the Persian Gulf, which was to be brought fully within the American empire �by any means necessary.� This assertion of U.S. power in the Middle East was accompanied by the onset of the CIA-sponsored war against Soviet troops in Afghanistan (the largest covert war in history), in which the United States enlisted fundamentalist Islamic forces including Osama Bin Laden in a holy war or jihad against Soviet occupying forces."

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "When the Vietnam War finally ended in 1975 the United States had suffered a major defeat in what, Cold War ideology notwithstanding, was clearly an imperialist war. The defeat coincided with a sudden slowdown in the rate of growth of the U.S. and world capitalist economy in the early 1970s, as the system�s old nemesis of secular stagnation reappeared. The vast export of dollars abroad associated with the war and the growth of empire created a huge Eurodollar market, which played a central role in President Richard Nixon�s decision to de-link the dollar from gold in August 1971, ending the dollar-gold standard. This marked the decline of U.S. economic hegemony. The energy crisis that hit the United States and other leading industrial states when the Persian Gulf countries cut their oil exports in response to Western support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 exposed U.S. vulnerability due to its dependence on foreign oil. "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "Only a few years ago some theorists of globalization with roots in the left, such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri in their book Empire (2000), were arguing that the age of imperialism was over, that the Vietnam War was the last imperialist war. Yet, today, imperialism is more openly embraced by the U.S. power structure than at any time since the 1890s. This shift can only be understood by examining the historical changes that have occurred in the last three decades since the end of the Vietnam War."

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: The argument advanced here points to a different conclusion. U.S. militarism and imperialism have deep roots in U.S. history and the political-economic logic of capitalism. As even supporters of U.S. imperialism are now willing to admit, the United States has been an empire from its inception. “The United States,” Boot writes in “American Imperialism?,” “has been an empire since at least 1803, when Thomas Jefferson purchased the Louisiana Territory. Throughout the 19th century, what Jefferson called the ‘empire of liberty’ expanded across the continent.” Later the United States conquered and colonized lands overseas in the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the brutal Philippine-American War that immediately followed—justified as an attempt to exercise the “white man’s burden.” After the Second World War the United States and other major imperialist states relinquished their formal political empires, but retained informal economic empires backed up by the threat and not infrequently the reality of military intervention. The Cold War obscured this neocolonial reality but never entirely hid it.

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: a neoconservative chicken-hawk coup...seized the White House and the Department of Defense” with George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency. For Mann the end solution is simply to “throw the militarists out of office.”

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "journalist Greg Easterbrook proclaimed in the New York Times (April 27, 2003) that U.S. military forces are �the strongest the world has ever known...stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power.� "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: All of this reflects the realities of U.S. imperial power. In his preamble to the National Security Strategy of the United States, released in fall 2002, President George W. Bush declared that since the fall of the Soviet Union there was now “a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy and free enterprise,” as embodied concretely in U.S. capitalism. Any society that rejected the guidance of that model was destined to fail—and would, it was implied, be declared a security threat to the United States. The main body of the document that followed was an open declaration of Washington’s goal of strategic dominance over the entire planet for the indefinite future. It announced U.S. intentions of waging “preemptive” (or preventive) war against nations that threatened or in the future could conceivably threaten U.S. dominance directly—or that might be considered a threat indirectly through dangers they posed to U.S. friends or allies anywhere on the globe. Preventive actions would be taken, the new National Security Strategy emphasized, to ensure that no power would be allowed to rise up to rival the United States in military capabilities anytime in the future. On April 13, 2004, President Bush proclaimed that the United States needed to “go on the offensive and stay on the offensive,” waging an unrelenting war against all those it considered its enemies.

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "The reason the Americans are in Afghanistan, or the Balkans, after all, is to maintain imperial order in zones essential to the interest of the United States. They are there to maintain order against a barbarian threat.� As �the West�s last military state� and its last �remaining empire,� the United States has a responsibility for �imperial structuring and ordering� in �analogy to Rome....We have now awakened to the barbarians....Retribution has been visited on the barbarians, and more will follow� (�The Challenges of American Imperial Power,� Naval War College Review, Spring 2003). "

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism:“This new imperialism...is humanitarian in theory but imperial in practice; it creates ‘subsovereignty,’ in which states possess independence in theory but not in fact.

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: "These views, although emanating from neoconservatives, are fully within the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, there is little dissent in U.S. ruling circles about current attempts to expand the American Empire. For Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, �the real debate...is not whether to have an empire, but what kind�"

Monthly Review September 2005 John Bellamy Foster | Naked Imperialism: The global actions of the United States since September 11, 2001, are often seen as constituting a “new militarism” and a “new imperialism.” Yet, neither militarism nor imperialism is new to the United States, which has been an expansionist power—continental, hemispheric, and global—since its inception. What has changed is the nakedness with which this is being promoted, and the unlimited, planetary extent of U.S. ambitions.