Contents of Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble - by Lester R. Brown - Earth Policy Institute - Entering a New World - Restoring the Earth: "Plan B 2.0:
Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble

2006"

Foreign Affairs - The Myth Behind China's Miracle - George J. Gilboy: "Summary: Washington need not worry about China's economic boom, much less respond with protectionism. Although China controls more of the world's exports than ever before, its high-return high-tech industries are dominated by foreign companies. And Chinese firms will not displace them any time soon: Beijing's one-party politics have bred a timid business culture that prevents domestic firms from developing key technologies and keeps them dependent on the West."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - A New Materials Economy: "The potential for reducing materials use has been examined over the last decade in three specific studies. The first—Factor Four, by Ernst von Weizsäcker, an environmentalist and leader in the German Bundestag—argued that modern industrial economies could function very effectively with a level of virgin raw material use only one fourth that of today. This was followed a few years later by research from the Factor Ten Institute organized in France under the leadership of Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek. It concluded that resource productivity can be raised by a factor of 10, which is well within the reach of existing technology and management, given the appropriate policy incentives."

Minsky talks about life, love in the age of artificial intelligence - The Boston Globe: "The theme of the book is really resourcefulness and why are people so much better at controlling the world than animals are? The argument is: because they have far more different ways to think than any competitor."

Wired 14.12: Me Translate Pretty One Day: "Spanish to English? French to Russian? Computers haven't been up to the task. But a New York firm with an ingenious algorithm and a really big dictionary is finally cracking the code."

ZNet |Economy | Factors in Our Colossal Mess: "Given this growing consensus of risks, on November 13 Sir John Gieve, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, concluded, in the Financial Times, that each national state regulating full-blown financial crises was no longer feasible: the financial system is international in scope today and no national mechanism can handle it. There have been at least 13 borderline or full-blown financial crises since the late 1970s and some of the methods for dealing with them would be 'less easy to deploy' under present conditions-which is a polite way of saying they were irrelevant. His conclusion: Regulators 'should practise coping with global crisis,' 'work together' on practical examples to develop machinery, especially to avoid the 'moral hazards' of bailing out firms in trouble, including 'closing down a large firm in an orderly way.'"

Peter Norvig forecasts the future - science-forecasts - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist: "We are in the middle of an expansion of information access, with the internet providing democratic access to billions of pages of text. Most of this is mediated by search engines. The only other comparable expansion started in 1456, with the introduction of the printing press. Fifty years and 15 million books later, the theologian Sebastian Brant wrote 'There is nothing nowadays that our children... fail to know.'

Today, 12 years into the era of search engines, we still have not made good on Brant's boast. Search engines deliver relevance but knowledge requires human work.

In 50 years the scene will be transformed. Instead of typing a few words into a search engine, people will discuss their needs with a digital intermediary, which will offer suggestions and refinements. The result will not be a list of links, but an annotated report (or a simple conversation) that synthesises the important points, with references to the original literature. People won't think of 'search' as a separate category - it will all be part of living."

Daniel Pauly forecasts the future - science-forecasts - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist: "In light of the time span considered here, I think the most important development for the oceans would be a device that could detect, amplify and transmit to us the emotions and fleeting, inarticulate 'thoughts' of animals in such a form as to evoke analogous emotions and thoughts in human brains. This would first work with primates, then mammals in general, then the other vertebrates including fish."

Francis Collins forecasts the future - science-forecasts - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist: "The challenge doesn't stop there. We are already setting our sights on the ultimate nemesis of Generation C: ageing. Genomic research will prove key to discovering how to reprogram the mechanisms that control the balance between the cell growth that causes cancer and the cell death that leads to ageing. It is possible that a half-century from now, the most urgent question facing our society will not be 'How long can humans live?' but 'How long do we want to live?'"

Robert May forecasts the future - 18 November 2006 - New Scientist: "Application of the physical and biological sciences has made today arguably the best of times: we live longer and healthier lives, food production has doubled in the past 35 years and energy subsidies have substituted for human labour, washing away hierarchies of servitude. But the unintended consequences of these well-intentioned actions - climate change, biodiversity loss, inadequate water supplies, and much else - could well make tomorrow the worst of times."

Special Report on Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years - New Scientist: "
What will be the biggest breakthrough of the next 50 years? As part of our 50th anniversary celebrations we asked over 70 of the world's most brilliant scientists for their ideas.
In coming decades will we: discover that we are not alone in the universe? Unravel the physiological basis for consciousness? Routinely have false memories implanted in our minds? Begin to evolve in new directions? And will physicists finally hit upon a universal theory of everything? In fact, if the revelations of the last 50 years are anything to go on - the internet and the human genome for example - we probably have not even thought up the exciting advances that lay ahead of us.
Delve into those visions of the future by author in the story list of this special report, or navigate forecasts by topic here:
Life: Ageing, alien life, consciousness, ecology, embryology, environment, evolution, genetics, health, humans, language, neuroscience, oceans, psychology, sex and social science.
Space and technology: Artificial intelligence, communications, computing, cosmology, space and technology.
Physical sciences: Chemistry, energy, materials, maths and physics."

The Arlington Institute: "We are no more than 20 years away from the introduction of an utterly transformative technology: molecular manufacturing. This is the ability to create just about anything molecule-by-molecule, using millions of tiny nanodevices acting in concert inside of a 'factory' not much bigger than a laser printer. In principle, you'll be able to make a new toothbrush, laptop or even new nanofactory at home just as easily as you now burn a CD."

The Arlington Institute: "# There are more than 4 million closed-circuit television cameras in Britain - about one for every 14 people.
# Average human male testosterone levels have dropped by 1% a year for the past 20 years."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Recent rumors of a Russian-led gas cartel akin to O.P.E.C. and suggestions that it could redirect energy exports to China are driving Europe's fears that Moscow will seize its role as a major energy supplier to take hostile actions against Europe. As Russia possesses over a quarter of the world's gas reserves, and the European Union predicts that it will have to import 70 percent of its energy needs by 2030, Brussels will continue to search for alternatives to Russian energy in the long term while at the same time seek stable trade relations with Moscow.
"

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #6: Ocean Currents May Surpass Wind as an Energy Source. Turbines driven by ocean currents could generate four times more electricity than windmills. At one site alone—in the Channel Islands off the coast of France—the potential electricity could match that produced by three nuclear power plants."

WFS Forecasts for the Next 25 Years: "Forecast #1: Hydrogen fuel cells will be cost competitive by 2010. The cost of power via fuel cell is dropping rapidly—from $600,000 per kilowatt-hour in the 1970s to $1,200 today. By 2012, fuel cell power is expected to cost around $400 per kilowatt-hour. It would then be competitive with every type of power. Fuel cells will power cars and allow each home to have its own non-polluting electricity generator."

UN Pulse | A Service/Blog of the United Nations Library - Connecting to UN Information: "The Report of the High-Level Group of the Alliance of Civilizations has been presented to the Secretary-General today at a meeting in Istanbul. The report concludes that the key reasons for the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies are not religious, but political. Part I of the report presents an analysis of the global context and of the state of relations between Muslim and Western societies; Part II reflects the Group's view that tensions across cultures have spread beyond the political level into the hearts and minds of populations."

Jamaica Gleaner News - Global trends in missions - Saturday | November 11, 2006: "For centuries European Christians were in the forefront of sending missionaries to serve in non-Western nations. But within the last 100 years, the centre of gravity of Christianity has shifted to the Southern hemisphere.
European Christianity is today a shadow of itself. Some even describe Europe as post-Christian and even anti-Christian. The new centre of gravity for Christianity includes Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Pacific nations...
Evangelical Christianity, he said, is the fastest growing religious movement in the world at this time. 'We are growing at more than double the closest religion and more than triple of the world's population growth rate,' he told the audience."

Augean Stables » Media War of Attrition: Inbar on Implications of Walt-Mearsheimer: "Jerusalem needs clarity of purpose and a sophisticated strategy, as well as determination and resources, to help the enlightened world appreciate that we are fighting the bad guys."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "New pledges of aid, tariff reductions, incentives for investment, and programs to strengthen cultural ties are expected to come out of the summit. China will specifically be looking to gain access to natural resources needed to maintain its nine percent economic growth rate. By investing in Africa's infrastructure, Beijing also hopes to secure access to developing markets in Africa for its goods. Two-way trade increased by more than 30 percent in 2005, and it is expected to rise a further 25 percent this year. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "China famously claims, 'Business is business. We try to separate politics from business.' However, after analyzing China's record in Africa, it becomes clear that there is a strategic logic behind China's lending practices. While China is primarily interested in securing natural resources, it also promotes a particular ideology: development before democracy. Beijing is keen to export this model on which it has built its power, and many countries shunned by the West are attracted to this thinking."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "China is also interested in securing other resources from Africa, and is using similar methods to secure iron, uranium, copper, as well as agricultural products. Beijing has remained President Robert Mugabe's main lifeline in Zimbabwe, even as the West has isolated his government for defaulting on loans and continued human rights concerns. China's ambassador to Namibia recently announced Beijing's intention to import uranium from the country.

China's focus on securing Africa's natural resources has drawn concern from some African leaders and from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By focusing on exporting natural resources, African states are missing out on opportunities to diversify their exports. China has made some steps toward addressing these concerns (for example, it is helping Nigeria to launch a satellite)"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "As China moves to secure more energy resources for its expanding economy, it has found difficulties in establishing markets where it must compete directly with the large, Western multinational corporations. For this reason, it has been more willing to invest in less competitive areas -- often in countries where sanctions prevent Western companies from investing. In this sense, Africa is ripe with opportunity. "

The Arlington Institute: "A Dangerous Step toward Space Warfare -- (MIT Technology Review -- October 27, 2006)
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17668&ch=infotech
The release of the U.S. National Space Policy has worried many experts, who say the policy marks a strategic shift toward a more military-oriented, unilateral approach to space for the United States. They fear that the policy, if followed, could begin an arms race leading to catastrophic space warfare."

HEALTHmap | Global disease alert mapping system: "Global disease alert mapping system"

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "New revolutions in military affairs, possibly centered on biotechnology and cyber-war, promise to give smaller states or sub-state actors more destructive capacity. Imagine the havoc that could be caused by a genetically engineered contagion combining the worst properties of, say, smallpox and the Ebola virus. Or imagine how much damage our enemies could inflict by using computer viruses — or directed-energy weapons — to immobilize critical bits of our civilian or military computer networks. In theory, it's possible to crash stock markets, send airliners plowing into the ground and blind our most advanced weapons systems."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "We have an insurmountable advantage in high-end military hardware. No other state is building nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, stealth fighters or unmanned aerial vehicles. In fact, we spend more on the development and testing of new weapons — $71 billion this year — than any other country spends on its entire defense. But all that spending produces weapons systems that aren't much good for pacifying Baghdad or Kandahar."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "The Information Revolution of the late 20th century upset the seemingly stable postwar order. The Soviet Union had no Silicon Valley and could not compete with the United States in incorporating the computer into its economic or military spheres. U.S. prowess at waging war in the Information Age was showcased in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, which, along with the collapse of the Soviet empire, left the United States standing alone as a global hegemon."

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "Until the 15th century, the mightiest military forces belonged to the Mongols. But strong as they were in the days of bows and arrows, the Mongols could not keep pace with the spread of gunpowder weapons and the rise of centralized governments that used them. They fell behind, and Europe surged to the forefront. In 1450, Europeans controlled just 15% of the world's surface. By 1914 — following not only the Gunpowder Revolution but also the first Industrial Revolution — their domain had swollen to an astounding 84% of the globe. "

Are we the Mongols of the Information Age? - Los Angeles Times: "GREAT POWERS cease to be great for many reasons. In addition to the causes frequently debated — economics, culture, disease, geography — there is an overarching trend. Over the last 500 years, the fate of nations has been increasingly tied to their success, or lack thereof, in harnessing revolutions in military affairs.
"

Gmail - FUTUREdition Volume 9, Number 14U.S.: 'Keep Out of My (Outer) Space' -- (ABC -- October 18, 2006)
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2583812&page=1
The White House has quietly put out a new National Space Policy - a document that, among other things, makes it clear that the Bush administration will not sign any treaty that limits America's ability to put weapons in orbit. The policy states, "... the United States will preserve its rights, capabilities and freedom of action in space … and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "China's global strategy, including in the Middle East, has been to avoid antagonizing the United States. Rather, China has sought -- through quiet diplomacy and by boosting trade ties and creating interdependence -- to present itself as an alternative and benign power with a global reach. Yet, its late arrival in the Gulf, and given the United States' entrenched presence and unparalleled power, will prevent China from emerging as a definitive power in the Gulf for the time being. Instead, China will have to be content as a power among secondary powers such as Britain and France. For as long as China can continue to secure energy sources, expand its own exports to the region and present itself as a responsible power, time is on China's hands. "

KurzweilAI.net
Is all of this too implausible to consider? Will Homo sapiens really give way to Cyber sapiens that seamlessly integrate the molecular and digital worlds just as our ancestors merged the technological and biological worlds two million years ago? Evolution has presided over stranger things. It took billions of years before the switching and swapping of genes brought us into existence. Our particular brain then took 200,000 years to get us from running around in skins with stone weapons to the world we live in today. Evolution is all about the implausible. And the drive to survive is a relentless shaper of the seemingly impossible. We ourselves are the best proof.

KurzweilAI.net
So it seems the long habit of our inventiveness has placed us in a pickle. In the one-upmanship of evolution, our tools have rendered the world more complex and that complexity requires the invention of still more complex tools to help us keep it all under control. Our new tools enable us to adapt more rapidly, but one advance begs the creation of another, and each increasingly powerful suite of inventions shifts the world around us so powerfully that still more adaptation is required.

KurzweilAI.net
If this is true, all of our technologies are an extension of us, and each human invention is really another expression of biological evolution.

KurzweilAI.net
Even if these technological adaptations were outside what we might consider normal biological bounds, the effect was just as profound, and far more rapid. In an evolutionary snap, that first flint knife changed what we ate and how we interacted with the world and one another. It enhanced our chances of survival. It accelerated our brain growth which in turn allowed us to create still more tools which led to yet bigger brains.

KurzweilAI.net
It is strange to think of the invention of machines, even robotic ones, as having anything to do with Darwin’s natural selection. We usually regard evolution as biological—a world of cells, DNA and “living” creatures. And we think of our machines as unalive, unintelligent and shifted by economic forces more than natural ones. But it isn’t written anywhere that evolution has to be constrained by what we traditionally think of as biology. In fact each day the lines between biology and technology, humans and the machines we create are blurring. We are already part and parcel of our technology.

KurzweilAI.net
Our current situation is unlike anything nature has seen before because we are not simply a by-product of evolution, we are ourselves now an agent of evolution. We are this animal, filled with ancient emotions and needs, amplified by our intellects and a conscious mind, embarking on a new century where we are creating fresh tools and technologies so rapidly that we are struggling to keep pace with the very changes we are bringing to the table.

KurzweilAI.net
Now after six million years of evolution, where do we go next? How will evolution, our newly arrived intellect, our primal drives and the powerful technologies we continually create, change us?

BBC NEWS | UK | Human species 'may split in two': "Human species 'may split in two'
Different human sub-species predicted by Dr Oliver Curry
Humanity may split into an elite and an underclass, says Dr Curry
Humanity may split into two sub-species in 100,000 years' time as predicted by HG Wells, an expert has said."

CreativeMan.pdf (Objet application/pdf)The late agrarian age, before the invention
of the steam engine, was in many ways a time of harmony in the sense that the three basic groups of human needs – material needs, social needs and personal
growth needs – were satisfied in about equal measure. However, for most people, this equal measure was less than satisfying.
Creative Man - Logics

The Theory of Lateral Pressure

The core part of the research generating the Theory of Lateral Pressure examines a quantitatively constructed "global" system, where processes and structures are reduced to three "master variables", namely Population, Technology and (natural) Resources - from which, interactively, all ‘intervening’ and 'dependent’ variables derive. For states and empires in a global context, differential and successive levels and rates of change in the master variables play central role in shaping ”profiles” of growth and development. These differentials affect the derivative processes and structures in international relations, as well as the position of each country within the system relative to other countries; the linkages with other countries; and the potentials for impact upon both natural and social environments. The specific challenge is to identify the nature of the intervening processes as well as the conditions under which different outcomes prevail, and the various ‘paths’ connecting ‘causes’ to ‘consequences’ – and how interacting processes within and among states in the system alter the entirety (whole) of the system and its (individual) parts.

Accompanied by powerful strategic and environmental changes, the current globalization process is creating major shifts in international relations and new challenges for policy and decision. The central proposition of this research is that different patterns of growth and development of groups and states generate different patterns of socio-economic and political behavior, and different forms of environmental damages. While this proposition is intuitively obvious, the details are less clear. We seek to develop robust ways of characterizing these patterns, understanding conditions under which socio-economic as well as environmental pressures lead to ‘system breaks’, conflict or violence. The detailed specifications are articulated in the Theory of Lateral Pressure.

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: IFs is heavily data-based and also deeply rooted in theory. It represents major agent-classes (households, governments, firms) interacting in a variety of global structures (demographic, economic, social, and environmental). The system draws upon standard approaches to modeling specific issue areas whenever possible, extending those as necessary and integrating them across issue areas.

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: "International Futures (IFs) is a large-scale integrated global modeling system. The broad purpose of the International Futures (IFs) modeling system is to serve as a thinking tool for the analysis of long-term country-specific, regional, and global futures across multiple, interacting issue areas. "

Welcome to the Home of INTERNATIONAL FUTURES by Barry B Hughes, Denver: "International Futures (IFs) is a thinking tool for our global future. It was developed to assist people who are interested in personal and social choices lying ahead.

IFs is a computer simulation of global systems for classroom and research use. IFs can be used to teach about or study demographics, economics, food, energy, the environment, and international politics. It is especially suitable for analysis of sustainable development and for examining the human dimensions of global change."

GamePresentation.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
Some IR Simulations International Futures – Denver University
Theory-based
http://www.du.edu/~bhughes/ifswelcome.html
Seven Futures – CSIS thinktank
Political goals
http://216.12.139.57/discover/index.cfm
SimCountry – Game
Imaginary countries
Automated
http://www.simcountry.com/ QPawn -Web-based
Real countries
Run by moderators, forum-based
http://www.angelfire.com/oh/qpawn/

Network_Project_Presentation3_28_06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
Trade…
Forces cultures to interact;
Is a mode of communication for ideas;
and Is a mode of communication for technology.

Network_Project_Presentation3_28_06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
The World is A Network of Networks
Countries are linked to other countries often
in quantifiable ways:
– Migration;
– Investment;
– Aid payments;
– Troop Deployments; ..

People's Daily Online -- Globalization gains by sharing: "In the history of human development, every economic change has created both winners and losers. The key point here is that changes to the world economic structure should be made to allow people to share the world's wealth. Creating a new wealth distribution mechanism has always been a challenge. To eliminate inequalities caused by the process of economic globalization in a practical way, governments should compensate and assist vulnerable groups by providing a better social security system."

Annihilation omens - Commentary - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper: " In a nanosecond of history, the evolution that took millions of years from primates to Homo sapiens will jump into the unknown. Homo connectus will relegate the obsolete nation-state and its dysfunctional institutions to artifacts of history, quaint but useless. This gigantic leap of history will 'obliterate all previous notions about military power, pose a fundamental challenge to all religions, and eventually upend human civilization.' "

Foreign Affairs - Global NATO - Ivo Daalder and James Goldgeier: "On September 12, 2001, NATO members took the unprecedented step of invoking the North Atlantic Treaty's collective defense provisions, under which an attack against one alliance member is deemed to be an attack against all of them. At first, the Bush administration rejected any direct NATO involvement in military operations in Afghanistan. But it later realized that such involvement was necessary to help it meet the challenges of the global age, particularly because the deployment of forces to Iraq left the United States needing more help in securing and rebuilding Afghanistan."

Knowledge Services from IDS: "Drawing on the collective expertise and experience of IDS Knowledge Services staff, the guide highlights websites that are a good place to start searching for information on over 30 development themes. And if these starting points inspire you to explore the Internet further, we've included some handy hints on how to improve your search results."

k_delic_4.pdf (Objet application/pdf)This vision of the IE represents the magical and compelling challenge of
creating large-scale artifacts that closely resemble nature-born living
organisms -- very much like the Darwinian picture of the world in which
species are created, evolved and morphed into better forms and superior
organizations. Some of these species have disappeared and can only be
seen today in museums. There is no reason that something similar may
not happen to some contemporary enterprises. It seems that the lessons
from Mother Nature should be studied carefully by scientists,
technologists, business people and dream-driven futurists.

k_delic_4.pdf (Objet application/pdf)The question may arise why we are comparing engineered systems to
biological, natural systems? And why do we assume that adaptation is a
key behavior? This comes from our belief that both systems share the
same ultimate objective: to survive in an evolving environment and
changing circumstances. To achieve this, a system should be able to sense
its environment, to understand the situation and to create a viable plan
that will be then reliably executed. A system should also exhibit learning
behavior. Engineered systems will likely never reach the level of
sophistication, elegance and beauty of nature-born systems, which from
the pragmatic point of view serve as the ultimate ideal to strive for.

v7i38_ai.pdf (Objet application/pdf)We are surrounded by the host of omnipresent, complex systems (cells, markets,
companies, supply networks, etc) for which elucidation of closed-loop control
patterned after natural, biological systems combined with knowledge
representation, learning and analytic techniques may lead the creation of largescale
embodied systems. As is Intelligent Enterprise, for example, system of the
high, practical value and important scientific relevance [see The Rise of The
Intelligent Enterprise - http://acm.org/ubiquity/views/k_delic_4.pdf].We
believe that the future of AI will be far more successful as research in Complex
Systems over the next 50 years.

v7i38_ai.pdf (Objet application/pdf)Chess, go and backgammon machines able to compete against champions, global
search engines capable of searching billions of web pages, embedded car and
consumer device technologies, automated robotic production lines, financial
screening and automated trading engines, decision support systems, space
exploration voyagers, multi-player Internet games, and mobile intelligent agents
are only a few notable examples of AI-inspired technologies that have attained
serious deployment in consumer, business, and scientific systems.

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "The costs of increasing congestion and longer commuting times are high. Traffic congestion in the United States in 2003 caused 3.7 billion hours of travel delay and wasted 2.3 billion gallons of fuel. The total bill for all of this was $63 billion."

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "The United States, with its 226 million motor vehicles, has paved some 4 million miles of roads—enough to circle the Earth at the equator 157 times. In addition to roads, cars require parking space. Imagine a parking lot for 226 million cars and trucks. If that is too difficult, try visualizing a parking lot for 1,000 cars and then imagine what 226,000 of these would look like."

October 4, 2006: U.S. Population Reaches 300 Million, Heading for 400 Million: No Cause for Celebration: "Sometime this month, the U.S. population is projected to reach 300 million. In times past, reaching such a demographic milestone might have been a cause for celebration. In 2006, it is not. Population growth is the ever expanding denominator that gives each person a shrinking share of the resource pie. It contributes to water shortages, cropland conversion to non-farm uses, traffic congestion, more garbage, overfishing, crowding in national parks, a growing dependence on imported oil, and other conditions that diminish the quality of our daily lives."

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Empires do not survive for long if they cannot establish and sustain local consent and if they allow more powerful coalitions of rival empires to unite against them. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "The empire states of the mid-20th century were to a considerable extent the architects of their own downfalls. In particular, the Germans and Japanese imposed their authority on other peoples with such ferocity that they undermined local collaboration and laid the foundations for indigenous resistance. That was foolish, as many people who were “liberated” from their old rulers (Stalin in Eastern Europe, the European empires in Asia) by the Axis powers initially welcomed their new masters. At the same time, the territorial ambitions of these empire states were so limitless—and their combined grand strategy so unrealistic—that they swiftly called into being an unbeatable coalition of imperial rivals in the form of the British Empire, the Soviet Union, and the United States. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Why did the new empires of the 20th century prove so ephemeral? The answer lies partly in the unprecedented degrees of centralized power, economic control, and social homogeneity to which they aspired. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Today’s world, in short, is as much a world of ex-empires and ex-colonies as it is a world of nation-states. Even those institutions that were supposed to reorder the world after 1945 have a distinctly imperial bent. For what else are the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council if not a cozy club of past empires? And what is “humanitarian intervention,” if not a more politically correct-sounding version of the Western empires’ old “civilizing mission”?
"

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Empires, more than nation-states, are the principal actors in the history of world events. Much of what we call history consists of the deeds of the 50 to 70 empires that once ruled multiple peoples across large chunks of the globe. Yet, as time has passed, the life span of empires has tended to decline. Compared with their ancient and early modern predecessors, the empires of the last century were remarkably short lived. This phenomenon of reduced imperial life expectancy has profound implications for our own time. "

Global Politician: "The relationship between Japan and China will shape the main characteristic of East Asian international relations in the years to come. At the same time, the US policy toward the region and more importantly, the nature of Sino-American relations will be a key defining factor behind Sino-Japanese relations. Japanfs China policy is becoming the main obsession of Japanese foreign policy makers and their decisions are mainly influenced by how the United States will deal with China."

Global Politician: "Asking Japan to remove its constitutional constraints in favor of playing a more active role in political and security affairs of the region, emphasizing US-Japan alliance and developing it to new areas like cooperation over missile defense shield and supporting US forces by Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) in some necessary conditions, bringing India and Australia to a new circle of American close friends that may shoulder parts of US possible strategy to contain Chinafs rising power in future, and opposing any initiative for regionalism and institution-building in the region which may exclude the US, are among the main policies of the United States to keep its stance secured in East Asia."

Global Politician: "The United States of America is regarded as a multi-dimensional power and the leader of Western hegemony which ruling the world in visible and invisible ways. With the end of the Cold War and disappearing of its classic rival, Soviet Union, in more than one and half decades ago, the US has been determined more than ever to maintain this position and prevent any possible power-center that may stand up before the American hegemonic stance. At the same time, the global balance of power is underway to shift significantly from the West to the East. East Asia is going to become the main challenge to the West and in every measure everything is shifting to Asia (8). While China has still a long way to catch up with the United States, but it is considered as the main suspect of this fundamental shift in the current global balance of power and a potential rival which may challenge American power and Western hegemony."

Global Politician: "American foreign policy making is mainly based on realist principles and driven by political expediency without being committed to consistency. The US pattern of international relations and friend and foe making is also interlinked with its various national interests. We see, for example, that during the Second World War, Japan was the US number one enemy and China was a friend. During the early Cold War while Japan became an ally for the US, China was a foe. After the normalization of Sino-American relations in the 1970s, China became a strategic friend while Japan was regarded as an economic foe for the US (7).

Since the end of the Cold War, the US has always been asking Japan to overcome its economic difficulties and with removing legal barriers, primarily the Article Nine of the Constitution, take a more active role in regional and global affairs politically and militarily, mainly in favor of the United States. At the same time, the US voicing its serious concerns over Chinafs military expenditures, but Chinafs rising as an economic challenge and a political rival is the main target."

Global Politician: "The liberal school of international relations maintains that as a byproduct of economic cooperation and interdependence between countries, a wide range of norms, rules and institutions will emerge to coordinate and regulate their cooperation(1). In such process, they will necessary become politically integrated and the institutions that are created would foster collective actions in order to achieve their intended objectives. Based on this view, an increasing level of economic interdependence and regional cooperation could act as the precursor of political integration, with the final goal of region-building. While the story of European integration would be considered as a solid evidence of such approach, however, the region of East Asia, and more importantly, the recent history of Japan-China relationship has until now shown to be an exception to this idea. "

MediaPost Publications - 'Hourglass Society' Values Community, Ecology - 10/02/2006: "Between 2000 and 2020, the world population of people over age 50 will increase by 70 percent, and the population of 15- to-24-year-olds will increase by 11 percent"...The result will be an "hourglass society" heavily populated and dominated by two groups: the older and younger generations.

People's Daily Online -- New war tactics more brutal: "Increasingly, wars do not have a front. Armies take a more tactical approach that is less likely to endanger the lives of servicemen. Attacks are launched in the form of air and missile strikes. They try to destroy infrastructure such as roads and bridges as well as disrupt important public services like energy, communication, hospitals and schools. Some military theorists believe this is a more successful way to cripple a country than directly attacking military targets. However, this tactic is not always successful. "

People's Daily Online -- New war tactics more brutal: "War is brutal. However, no matter how furious the war, it is unacceptable to kill the innocent, and this has generally been considered one of the unwritten basic principles of conflict.

However, this principle is gradually being lost with the development of bigger and more effective weapons. Some experts believe that 5 percent of the war dead in World War I were innocent civilians; that proportion increased to 50 percent in World War II and in the Vietnam War, 95 percent of those that died were innocent victims! In the recent Israel-Lebanon conflict, many civilians were also killed. The trend is scary and relates to the development of society."

Monthly Review September 2006 Michael Watts ¦ Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa: "The availability of arms to both government and insurgent groups has “democratized” the access to the means of violence in the struggle for political power."

Monthly Review September 2006 Michael Watts ¦ Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa: "The strategic interests of the United States certainly include not only access to cheap and reliable low-sulphur oil imports, but also keeping the Chinese (for example in Sudan) and South Koreans (for example in Nigeria)—aggressive new actors in the African oil business—and Islamic terror at bay. Africa is, according to the intelligence community, the “new frontier” in the fight against revolutionary Islam. Energy security, it turns out, is a terrifying hybrid of the old and the new: primitive accumulation and American militarism coupled to the war on terror."

Monthly Review September 2006 Michael Watts ¦ Empire of Oil: Capitalist Dispossession and the Scramble for Africa: "The policy failed miserably (U.S. dependency upon imported oil in the late 1960s was 20 percent and is expected to be about 66 percent by 2025) and Nixon resorted to maximizing domestic supply and turning to reliable foreign suppliers at minimal cost—just as George Bush intends to do."

International Socialist Review: "over the past half century “every pro-U.S. repressive dictatorship in the world has received some kind of overt or covert Israeli aid,” including apartheid South Africa, every murderous military regime in Latin America, and the Suharto dictatorship in Indonesia during its genocidal occupation of East Timor. Washington “funnels weapons and aid through Israel when it wants to evade congressional bans on aid to repressive regimes.”"

Editorial from Challenge No. 99: The First Post-Zionist War: "It is a matter of long-term economic occupation and the effects thereof. The per capita GDP in Israel today is $24,600. In the West Bank it is $1000, in Gaza $600.

In Egypt it is $3900, in Jordan $4700. These countries are nominally at peace with Israel, but their populations have become increasingly hostile to it and the West. "

Foreign Affairs - The Globally Integrated Enterprise - Samuel J. Palmisano: "The mid-nineteenth century saw the emergence of what can be called the international corporation. An entrepreneurial joint-stock company, organized in simple hub-and-spoke networks, it established and controlled international trade routes, often relying on its home state's armed forces for protection. In some industries, corporations used these routes to import raw materials (diamonds, rubber, tea, and oil) and export finished products (chocolate, soap, margarine, and other manufactured consumer goods). The basic structure of home-country manufacture and international distribution applied across almost every industry."

Foreign Affairs - The Globally Integrated Enterprise - Samuel J. Palmisano: "In its early forms, the corporation was a creature of the state. Governments chartered and sanctioned corporations to perform specific duties on behalf of the nation and its rulers. This changed somewhat during the nineteenth century, when the United Kingdom, the United States, and other countries granted company owners limited liability, and corporations gained a more liberated status as independent 'legal persons.'"

Foreign Affairs - The Globally Integrated Enterprise - Samuel J. Palmisano: "But businesses are changing in fundamental ways -- structurally, operationally, culturally -- in response to the imperatives of globalization and new technology... thinking about the global corporation of the future and its implications for new approaches to regulation, education, trade, and commerce."

Foreign Affairs - The Globally Integrated Enterprise - Samuel J. Palmisano: "The multinational corporation (MNC), often seen as a primary agent of globalization, is taking on a new form, one that is promising for both business and society. From a business perspective, this new kind of enterprise is best understood as 'global' rather than 'multinational.'

The corporation has evolved constantly during its long history. The MNC of the late twentieth century had little in common with the international firms of a hundred years earlier, and those companies were very different from the great trading enterprises of the 1700s. The type of business organization that is now emerging -- the globally integrated enterprise -- marks just as big a leap."

"The different worldviews : and theological assumptions underlying Asian religions (e.g., Hindu, Shintoism) and Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are as yet irreconcilable, and these irreconcilable differences threaten prospects for world peace in the years ahead. What they do have in common - a set of moral values (compassion, justice, etc.) - could help bridge the gap among the world's religions, thus offering a basis for peaceful co-existence. The author offers three scenarios for peace and justice in the global village by 2050: Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism (integration)."

: "The different worldviews and theological assumptions underlying Asian religions (e.g., Hindu, Shintoism) and Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) are as yet irreconcilable, and these irreconcilable differences threaten prospects for world peace in the years ahead. What they do have in common - a set of moral values (compassion, justice, etc.) - could help bridge the gap among the world's religions, thus offering a basis for peaceful co-existence. The author offers three scenarios for peace and justice in the global village by 2050: Exclusivism, Pluralism, and Inclusivism (integration)."

War and disasters aside, 2005 brought world progress | csmonitor.com: "Income: Worldwide incomes are at their highest levels in history and are rising. Since 1960, more than 1 billion people have pulled themselves out of the direst poverty. This trend caused the World Bank to conclude that 'the past two decades have witnessed one of the most rapid reductions in poverty in human history.'"

War and disasters aside, 2005 brought world progress | csmonitor.com: "Judging from the headlines, 2005 was a gloomy year, indeed. Gulf Coast hurricanes, the devastating earthquake in Kashmir, ongoing war in Iraq, civil war in Sudan, renewed famine in central Africa, and the threat of a worldwide pandemic flu darkened the news. These headlines, however, obscure a far brighter underlying trend: On average, people across the planet are living longer, healthier lives, with greater opportunities for education and political freedom than ever before.

We unavoidably view our world through news articles that break up an otherwise overwhelming stream of information into digestible bites. As a result, we often 'lose the forest for the trees' by focusing on sensational short-term stories that impact relatively few people. It is difficult to place these singular events in context and it is all too easy to lose sight of more fundamental developments. If we step back from daily headlines and examine broader global trends in human progress, an encouraging picture for 2005 emerges."

Five meta-trends changing the world: global, overarching forces such as modernization and widespread interconnectivity are converging to reshape our lives. But human adaptability--itself a "meta-trend"--will help keep our future from spinning out of control, assures THE FUTURIST's lifestyles editor. from Goliath Industry and Business News: "As each of these indicators rises in a society, the birthrate in that society goes down. The principal measurable consequence of cultural modernization is declining fertility. As the world's developing nations have become better educated, more urbanized, and more institutionalized during the past 20 years, their birthrates have fallen dramatically. In 1988, the United Nations forecast that the world's population would double to 12 billion by 2100. In 1992, their estimate dropped to 10 billion, and they currently expect global population to peak at 9.1 billion in 2100. After that, demographers expect the world's population will begin to slowly decline, as has already begun to happen in Europe and Japan.
"

Five meta-trends changing the world: global, overarching forces such as modernization and widespread interconnectivity are converging to reshape our lives. But human adaptability--itself a "meta-trend"--will help keep our future from spinning out of control, assures THE FUTURIST's lifestyles editor. from Goliath Industry and Business News: "Demographers have identified several leading social indicators as key measures of the extent to which a nation's culture is modern. They cite the average level of education for men and for women, the percentage of the salaried workforce that is female, and the percentage of population that lives in urban areas. Other indicators include the percentage of the workforce that is salaried (as opposed to self-employed) and the percentage of GDP spent on institutionalized socioeconomic support services, including insurance, pensions, social security, civil law courts, worker's compensation, unemployment benefits, and welfare. "

Five meta-trends changing the world: global, overarching forces such as modernization and widespread interconnectivity are converging to reshape our lives. But human adaptability--itself a "meta-trend"--will help keep our future from spinning out of control, assures THE FUTURIST's lifestyles editor. from Goliath Industry and Business News: "Around the world over the past generation, the basic tenets of modern cultures--including equality, personal freedom, and self-fulfillment--have been eroding the domains of traditional cultures that value authority, filial obedience, and self-discipline. The children of traditional societies are growing up wearing Western clothes, eating Western food, listening to Western music, and (most importantly of all) thinking Western thoughts. Most Westerners--certainly most Americans--have been unaware of the personal intensities of this culture war because they are so far away from the 'battle lines.' Moreover, people in the West regard the basic institutions of modernization, including universal education, meritocracy, and civil law, as benchmarks of social progress, while the defenders of traditional cultures see them as threats to social order. "

Reason: Confessions of an Alleged ExxonMobil Whore Actually no one paid me to be wrong about global warming. Or anything else.: "In hindsight I can only plead that there is no magic formula for deciding when enough evidence has accumulated that a fair-minded person must change his or her mind on a controversial scientific issue. With regard to global warming it finally did for me in the last year. "

Global Ecosystems Under More Stress | Worldwatch Institute: "In 2005, the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA)—a comprehensive analysis produced by 1,360 scientists after four years of consultations and research—determined that the health of the world’s ecosystems was in significant decline. Ecosystems provide essential services to people. Yet of the 24 ecosystem services examined in the MA, the scientists found that 15 (62.5 percent) are being degraded or used unsustainably, a trend that “could grow significantly worse during the first half of this century.”"

Vital Signs Online | Worldwatch Institute: "With Vital Signs Online, Worldwatch presents our newest compilation of significant global trends in 10 categories—with written analysis, Excel charts & worksheets, and PowerPoint slides to illustrate each trend."

Aljazeera.Net - Ramin Jahanbegloo and openDemocracy: "The passions that democratic politics ushered in then were played out within nations. In the 21st century, the arena of democratic argument has become global. The last century should be a warning. If we want to avoid decades of what we can describe only as global civil war, we need to make international democracy work.

"

Global Diagrams - World Christian Trends / World Christian Encyclopedia: "Global diagrams
Global diagrams are one-page sheets providing detailed measurements of a specific theme. 10 of the 74 global diagrams from World Christian Trends are provided here in pdf format.
. World Christian Trends across 22 centuries."

Wired News: Human Family Tree: Shallow Roots: "Though people like to think of culture, language and religion as barriers between groups, history is full of religious conversions, intermarriages, illegitimate births and adoptions across those lines. Some historical times and places were especially active melting pots -- medieval Spain, ancient Rome and the Egypt of the pharaohs, for example."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "In the years ahead, urbanization could slow or even be reversed. In a world of land, water, and energy scarcity, the value of each resource may increase substantially, shifting the terms of trade between the countryside and cities. Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the terms of trade have favored cities because they control capital and technology, the scarce resources. But if land and water become the scarcest resources, then those in rural areas who control them may sometimes have the upper hand. With a new economy based on renewable energy, a disproportionate share of that energy, particularly wind energy and biofuels, will come from nearby rural areas."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "The oil that provides much of the energy to move resources into and out of cities itself often comes from distant oil fields. Rising oil prices will affect cities, but they will affect even more the suburbs that many cities have spawned."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "Food comes from even greater distances, as is illustrated by Tokyo. While Tokyo still depends for its rice on the highly productive farmers in Japan, with their land carefully protected by government policy, its wheat comes largely from the Great Plains of North America and from Australia. Its corn supply comes largely from the U.S. Midwest. Soybeans come from the U.S. Midwest and the Brazilian cerrado."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "Early cities relied on food and water from the surrounding countryside, but today cities often depend on distant sources even for such basic amenities. Los Angeles, for example, draws much of its water supply from the Colorado River, some 970 kilometers (600 miles) away. Mexico City’s burgeoning population, living at 3,000 meters, must now depend on the costly pumping of water from 150 kilometers away and must lift it a kilometer or more to augment its inadequate water supplies. Beijing is planning to draw water from the Yangtze River basin nearly 1,500 kilometers away."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "Cities require a concentration of food, water, energy, and materials that nature cannot provide. Concentrating these masses of materials and then dispersing them in the form of garbage, sewage, and as pollutants in air and water is challenging city managers everywhere.

Most of today’s cities are not healthy places to live. Urban air everywhere is polluted. Typically centered on the automobile and no longer bicycle- or pedestrian-friendly, cities deprive people of needed exercise, creating an imbalance between caloric intake and caloric expenditures. "

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "In 1900 there were only a handful of cities with a million people. Today 408 cities have at least that many inhabitants. And there are 20 megacities with 10 million or more residents. Tokyo’s population of 35 million exceeds that of Canada. Mexico City’s population of 19 million is nearly equal to that of Australia. New York, São Paulo, Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Delhi, Calcutta, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai follow close behind."

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - The Ecology of Cities: "Urbanization is one of the dominant demographic trends of our time. In 1900, 150 million people lived in cities. By 2000, it was 2.9 billion people, a 19-fold increase. By 2007 more than half of us will live in cities—making us, for the first time, an urban species."

According to estimates from Wireless Intelligence, the total number of cellular connections in the world will reach 2.5 billion by the end of September, and is expected to reach 3 billion connections around the end of 2007.

People's Daily Online -- "Smart power" vital to war on terror: U.S. scholar: "The most important lesson from the 5 years after 9/11 is that terrorism cannot be defeated by military might alone, and the only way to win is to combine 'hard power' with 'soft power,' a prominent U.S. scholar told Xinhua in a recent interview.

'Winning the war on terror requires more use of the soft power of attraction rather than relying so heavily on hard military power, as the Bush administration has done,' said Joseph Nye, a leading professor in international relations at Harvard University who initiated the 'soft power' theory."

Foreign Policy: Think Again: 9/11: "The most dramatic changes, of course, are in Afghanistan and Iraq. But both countries have effectively been fighting civil wars for 25 years, with the United States backing the losing side (the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, and the Kurds and Shiites in Iraq). After 9/11, the Bush administration transformed the losers in those conflicts into winners. But the civil wars continue, with the unseated groups now playing the role of insurgents. The change is significant, but the transformation is far less complete than what was imagined in the spring of 2003. "

Foreign Policy: Think Again: 9/11: "“9/11 Radically Changed U.S. Foreign Policy
No. American policy has changed only at the margins. The attacks temporarily removed constraints on U.S. political elites, allowing them to pursue their policies more aggressively. As we now know, President Bush and his advisors wanted to undermine Saddam’s regime well before September 11. Absent the attacks, the administration might have employed a limited bombing campaign, a covert operation, or a coup attempt. The attacks suddenly made a years-long land war in the Middle East politically palatable. But that energy has now dissipated, and it has left behind little fundamental change in U.S. policy."

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "An empire, then, will come into existence and endure so long as the benefits of exerting power over foreign peoples exceed the costs of doing so in the eyes of the imperialists; and so long as the benefits of accepting dominance by a foreign people exceed the costs of resistance in the eyes of the subjects. Such calculations implicitly take into account the potential costs of relinquishing power to another empire. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is the American attention deficit. Past empires had little difficulty in sustaining public support for protracted conflicts. The United States, by contrast, has become markedly worse at this. It took less than 18 months for a majority of American voters to start telling pollsters at Gallup that they regarded the invasion of Iraq as a mistake. Comparable levels of disillusionment with the Vietnam War did not set in until August 1968, three years after U.S. forces had arrived en masse, by which time the total number of Americans killed in action was approaching 30,000. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Empires do not survive for long if they cannot establish and sustain local consent and if they allow more powerful coalitions of rival empires to unite against them. The crucial question is whether or not today’s global powers behave in a different way than their imperial forebears. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "The empires created in the 20th century, by contrast, were comparatively short. The Bolsheviks’ Soviet Union (1922–91) lasted less than 70 years, a meager record indeed, though one not yet equaled by the People’s Republic of China. Japan’s colonial empire, which can be dated from the acquisition of Taiwan in 1895, lasted barely 50 years. Most fleeting of all modern empires was Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, which did not extend beyond its predecessor’s borders before 1938 and had retreated within them by early 1945. Technically, the Third Reich lasted 12 years; as an empire in the true sense of the word, exerting power over foreign peoples, it lasted barely half that time. Only Benito Mussolini was a less effective imperialist than Hitler.

Why did the new empires of the 20th century prove so ephemeral? The answer lies partly in the unprecedented degrees of centralized power, economic control, and social homogeneity to which they aspired.
"

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "It is trickier to give precise dates to the maritime empires of the West European states, because these had multiple points of origin and duration. But the British, Dutch, French, and Spanish empires can all be said to have endured for roughly 300 years. The life span of the Portuguese empire was closer to 500.



"

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "We tend to assume that the life cycle of empires, great powers, and civilizations has a predictable regularity to it. Yet the most striking thing about past empires is the extraordinary variability in the chronological as well as geographic expanse of their dominion. Especially striking is the fact that the most modern empires have a far shorter life span than their ancient and early modern predecessors. "

Foreign Policy: Empires with Expiration Dates: "Today’s world, in short, is as much a world of ex-empires and ex-colonies as it is a world of nation-states. Even those institutions that were supposed to reorder the world after 1945 have a distinctly imperial bent. For what else are the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council if not a cozy club of past empires? And what is “humanitarian intervention,” if not a more politically correct-sounding version of the Western empires’ old “civilizing mission”? "

Johan Galtung, Professionalization in peace research: "We are moving away from the world as an inter-state system, toward an inter-regional, inter-local authorities, inter-human, inter-gender/generation/race/class world; all dependent on the environment. Merely blowing fresh air into the Westphalia system is suboptimal."

Johan Galtung, Professionalization in peace research: "REALISM as a doctrine is based on the 'ultima' above, force, not persuasion from basic principles, nor bargaining offering incentives, nor decision-making by authoritative bodies. A derivative of this thesis would be that the final word belongs to whoever has superior force, the big sticks of the big powers. In the present world Anglo- America; a peace proposal unacceptable to them is not 'realistic'.

The supreme goal of the realist will be security, meaning low probability of being hurt/harmed by the violence of any Other. The underlying philosophy is that Evil exists, ready to turn violent for violence's own sake, and that the only counter-measure is sufficient strength to deter and/or crush Evil; thereby producing security."

Richard Falk, World Order after theLebanon War: "In the face of experiences in Iraq and Lebanon, the frustrated states, addicted as they seem to be to military solutions for political problems, are likely to go back to their drawing boards, devising new weapons and tactics, but convinced that in the future it will be possible to restore the relevance of superior military power as measured by wealth and technological capacity. This will be a costly mistake. It overlooks the extent to which war is becoming dysfunctional in the 21st century, wasting incredible amounts of resources that could be put to much better uses in raising living standards and creating a more stable, cooperative world."

Richard Falk, World Order after theLebanon War: "Of course, both sides learn within their respective paradigms. Israel adapts future war plans to overcome failure in Lebanon, while Hezbollah tries to anticipate these adjustments in planning to mount an even more devastating resistance in the course of the next flair-up."

People's Daily Online -- U.S. attempts to gain initiative in Africa with preemptive attack theory: "As many African countries have long been in a state of abject poverty and war turmoil, according to the United States, the African continent has become an area with relatively active terrorist activities. To date, the American armed forces, nevertheless, has only a small-size, temporary military organ in Africa ¨C the Horn of Africa joint operation headquarters. This is far from being adequate to ensure the United States to acquire oil from Africa (It makes up 13.5 percent of the US oil import, and is expected to account for 25 percent by 2015) and other natural resources smoothly and to meet the urgent needs for battling terrorism in Africa."

People's Daily Online -- Top 500 Enterprises 2006 account for 78 percent of China's GDP: "China Top 500 Enterprises 2006 posted total operating revenue of 14.14 trillion yuan (1.77 trillion U.S. dollars), accounting for 77.6 percent of the gross domestic product."

Etat d’urgence permanent: "Tribunaux d’exception, torture, prisons secrètes, Parlements phagocytés par les exécutifs, écoutes illégales, etc. : au nom des impératifs sécuritaires, les acquis de la démocratie libérale sont, un à un, rognés aux Etats-Unis et au Royaume-Uni.
Rarement la distance entre démocratie réelle et démocratie formelle a été aussi grande. Partout ou presque, dans les pays démocratiques « avancés », des exécutifs faiblement légitimes gouvernent depuis des années sans – et souvent contre – l’assentiment populaire. En France, au Royaume-Uni, aux Etats-Unis et ailleurs, le pouvoir exécutif s’est autonomisé de la société, lui imposant, dans une marche en avant néolibérale et néoconservatrice aveugle, des « réformes » sociales régressives, ainsi que des mesures disciplinaires et sécuritaires de plus en plus répressives.

Network_Project_Presentation3_28_06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
Consequences of Interdependency
z Propagation for Economic Failure – z Policy Decisions – lcountries. z Ideas are flowing – Development in South Africa will impact Greenland (South Africa trades with both China and Japan, both of whom are major trading partners with Greenland), Example: In 1912, Norman Angell argued that increasing economic interdependence woud make wars more costly and therefore as levels of economic cooperation between countries increased, we should expect less war between Cultures are spreading, fusing, and interacting.

MIT OpenCourseWare | Political Science | 17.918 New Global Agenda: Exploring 21st Century Challenges through Innovations in Information Technologies, January (IAP) 2006 | Home: "This workshop is designed to introduce students to different perspectives on international politics in the 21st century. Students will explore how advances in information technology are changing international relations and global governance through opening new channels of communication, creating new methods of education, and new potentials for democratization."

MIT_SSP_Breakthroughs06.pdf (Objet application/pdf)
You Never Knowism relies on flawed logic. But because it is generally a cover for politics, defeating You Never Knowism
requires more than reason. It requires changing the politics that create it.
One solution is competition with a budget ceiling. Because dangers have organizational advocates, budgetary pressure should force organizations to discredit threats that their rivals promote. The more public these fights, the better.

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "Pre-modern states are often struggling to survive; modern states fit perfectly with the theories of realism; post-modern states are countries like Luxembourg, whose GDP per capita is over $60,000. Although material interests are still among its concerns, it is no longer a focal point. Therefore, modern countries pursue material benefits and post-modern countries seek more abstract interests such as women's rights and environmental protection. Chinese people are mostly concerned with accumulating the wealth that the West has. In fact, part of the contradictions between China and the Western countries exist because they are at different stages of development."

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "The second reason is regionalism. Every mature region promotes regional cooperation so as to accelerate the development of all the countries in its region. The most outstanding examples are the development of the EU, the establishment of the North American Free Trade Area, and, the development of East Asian regionalism. ¡¡¡¡"

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "The first is civilizationiism. In his theory on the 'clash of civilizations,' Samuel Huntington argues that the Western world should band together in the conflict between civilizations. When two civilizations use their identity as a tool to achieve their political objectives, civilizationism emerges."

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "A number of transitional economies have emerged, particularly Brazil, Russia, India and China. "

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "United States policy on the Middle East, revised after 9/11, was an external stimulus for the chaos. Before 9/11, the United States' strategic objective in the Middle East was regional security. It supported a dominant force in the Middle East to control the situation but had no intention of deliberately overthrowing dissenting regimes. Following 9/11, the United States changed the foundation of its policy on the Middle East. It now seeks to alter the basic political environment and social situation in the Middle East through military strikes and democratic revolution. The region has been completely destabilized by conflict between races, religions, sects, and countries. The Middle East is constantly a focal point of trouble and contradiction. The United States' new policy for the Middle East not only upset the original status quo (however unstable that was), but triggered a series of conflicts and undermined various political powers in the region."

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "When the Cold War ended, the world political arena changed. During the Cold War, the two superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States, dominated and fought against each other only in proxy wars. That situation no longer exists. No country is powerful enough to resist the United States' military power. In the past, the Soviet Union and the United States defended different camps and offered protection to medium and small-sized countries that supported them; now these countries are on their own. As these countries were not directly involved in the Cold War, they lack diplomatic experience and struggle with the complex post-Cold War political environment."

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "The absence of a sense of security causes different forces to engage in heated competition, each determined to gain control and ensure a better future. This kind of competition reflects political developments in a new world."

People's Daily Online -- Disorder will persist in world political arena: "The world political order is more complex now than it was during the Cold War. The four 'isms' -- civilizationism, regionalism, nationalism and tribalism -- coexist with three types of states: failed states, modern states and post-modern states."

The Arlington Institute: "The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by the technology of yesterday. "

The Arlington Institute: "Overweight Top World's Hungry -- (BBC -- August 15, 2006)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4793455.stm
There are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones, according to experts. Researchers told the International Association of Agricultural Economists the number of overweight people had topped 1 billion, compared with 800 million undernourished. Obesity is rapidly spreading, while hunger is only slowly declining among the world's 6.5 billion population."

The Arlington Institute: "America's War on the Web -- (Sunday Herald -- April 02, 2006)
http://www.sundayherald.com/54975
At the Pentagon, technologies are being deployed to wage the war on terror on the internet, in newspapers and even through mobile phones. The US wants to take control of the Earth’s electromagnetic spectrum, allowing US war planners to dominate all forms of modern communication. At the flick of a switch, entire countries could be denied access to telecommunications resources."

The Arlington Institute: "There seems to be an acceleration of the number of significant events that point toward big change in the near future. At TAI we watch many different trends, but the most significant ones are climate change and the possibility of a rapid shift in the world�s weather, the peaking of the global supply of oil and the attendant emergence of a new energy era, a major disruption in the world�s financial system, a global pandemic and, of course, the possibility that terrorism will escalate to a much higher level. There are other areas that interest us, like the dwindling supply of drinking water and technology trends, but the big ones get most of our attention."

People's Daily Online -- US: Possibility of world war never too far away: "Although there has been no war in the style of World War I or II, primarily because of nuclear deterrence, there is another kind of war emerging. The US has developed its own method of 'seek and destroy', weeding out and defeating countries one by one. Since the end of World War II, the US and its allies have been engaged in war; North Korea (1951), Vietnam (1961), Grenada (1983), followed by Libya, Panama, the Gulf War, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Today it is pointing its sword towards Iran and North Korea. The flames of war ignited by the US are spreading across the world.

A book by British scholar Dr. Vassilis K Fouska entitled, 'New American Imperialism: Bush's war on terror and blood for oil,' caused widespread concern in Europe and the US. In the book, the author points out that 'the new American imperialists often use splendid rhetoric to disguise themselves. [They use phrases] such as ¡®maintaining peace' and ¡®democracy and freedom.''"

Metaverse Roadmap: Roadmap 2016 Page 2: "The emerging metaverse sector of the global economy includes resources, products, and services managed through 2D and 3D virtual and augmented reality environments. As the density of our network accelerates on a planet with finite surface area, and as our digital and physical environments become increasingly intelligent, automated, networked, and transparent, major new developmental emergences must occur."

AACC - Institute for the Future - Ask About the Future with John Smart (page 2): "The continued acceleration of local technological intelligence is very likely to be the central driver and determinant of the modern era. Hesitantly at first, and quickly now, our increasingly fast and microscopic technological extensions of our humanity may soon learn (encode, predict, and understand) both the physical and abstract nature of all the slow and macroscopic systems in our local environment—our biological selves included. "

AACC - Institute for the Future - Ask About the Future with John Smart (page 2): "The generalized rate of electronic evolutionary development is at least seven million times faster than biological information processing, the speed of an action potential and synaptic diffusion in a human brain. In an utterly surprising state of affairs, each new generation of computing system has been, without exception, increasingly miniaturized, increasingly resource efficient (per standard computation, however defined), increasingly human autonomous (in the replication of its complexity, again however defined) and increasingly biologically-inspired (having features of evolutionary development or organization increasingly similar to our own) than the last."

AACC - Institute for the Future - Ask About the Future with John Smart: "In human history anthropologists have long noted that significant cultural advances (neolithic tool kits, architectures, language, civil society, law, science) have emerged at an accelerating rate in human history. Many scholars (Jared Diamond, James Burke, Robert Wright) consider such factors as increasing population density, technological diffusion, and communication rates to be key drivers of these sociotechnological accelerations.

Over the last millennium, rates of planetary technological innovation and diffusion have broadly accelerated as a whole, with ever-briefer pauses between each new phase of acceleration. The increasingly rapid development of what may be called the 'average distributed complexity' of our sociotechnological systems has been apparent even as catastrophes, declines, wars and revolutions have caused local discontinuities within specific civilizations. "

AACC - Institute for the Future - Ask About the Future with John Smart: "Eric Chaisson (Cosmic Evolution, 2002) has recently given the calendar a helpful thermodynamic explanation. He notes that as universal development moved from galaxies to solar systems to life-friendly planets to microbes to plants to animals to human brains to computing technology, each new computational system in this hierarchy has operated with significantly greater free energy rate density (energy available for computation per volume per unit time). This increased energy density has allowed each of these complex systems, whether living or nonliving, to model and react to its environment far more rapidly and extensively than its predecessors. There is also independent data that later-developed systems in this hierarchy are significantly more resource efficient (per physical or computational output), denser, and more miniaturized. This impressive resource efficiency and energy density of the most newly emergent systems apparently allows the leading edge of universal intelligence to continually avoid resource limits to accelerating growth."

AACC - Institute for the Future - Ask About the Future with John Smart: "In our best current understanding, the history of universal evolutionary development has always seen an increasingly faster development of computational complexity (modeling intelligence) within special subsets of locally emergent forms. Carl Sagan first popularized this in his famous metaphor of the 'Cosmic Calendar.' Place all universal history on a calendar year, and the closer you get to the end of the calendar, the faster change goes, with the pace of change continually accelerating."

The Future of Robots - Popular Science: "The brain can be described in just 15 million to 50 million bytes because most of its wiring is random at birth. For example, the trillions of connections in the cerebellum are described by only a handful of genes. This means that most of the cerebellum wiring in the infant brain is chaotic. The system is designed to be self-organizing, though, so as the child learns to walk and talk and catch a fly ball, the cerebellum gets filled with meaningful information."

The Future of Robots - Popular Science: "Today there are more than two million Roomba robots scurrying around performing a task (vacuuming) that used to be done by humans, but they look more like fast turtles than maids. Most robots will continue to be utilitarian devices designed to carry out specific tasks. But when we think of the word “robot,” Capek’s century-old concept of machines made in our own image still dominates our imagination and inspires our goals."

The Future of Robots - Popular Science: "Human experience is marked by a refusal to obey our limitations. We’ve escaped the ground, we’ve escaped the planet, and now, after thousands of years of effort, our quest to build machines that emulate our own appearance, movement and intelligence"

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "uring the past few weeks, oil prices have flared. The reasons behind this rise are various, such as the conflict between Israel and Lebanon, the endemic instability in Iraq, mounting clashes in Nigeria, concerns about the Iranian nuclear program, stronger energy demand from China and India, and the Alaskan oil pipeline shutdown."

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News - Lifting seven veils of the Iraqi illusion: "A minimally viable central government is built on at least three foundations: the coercive capacity to maintain order, an administrative apparatus that can deliver government services and directives to society, and the resources to manage these functions. "

People's Daily Online -- US to catch her breath in military expansion: "n the past, whenever national strength developed, the United States renewed her ability of waging war, thus opening up new colonies or enlarging her 'sphere of influence' through launching wars and occupying trade channels, raw materials and markets to provide better support for further domestic development. This serves as both energy consumption accumulated in early wars and a start for collecting greater military capacity in the near future. Within the world political and military vision, the US has been exercising her war power by launching one round of military expansion, followed by another. The WWI, WWII, Korean War, Vietnam War, and Iraq War are all essentially the same"

People's Daily Online -- US to catch her breath in military expansion: "Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States took advantage of this golden world political situation and unfolded a new round of military expansion, aiming to build a US empire with a global presence that is similar to the Ancient Roman Empire. She started expansion in the early 1990s which has vigorously changed the world political environment. The successor of the Soviet Union has been degraded to a second class nation and is busily defending her homeland; the former Soviet Union influence has lessened. The US military has entered various important strategic places across the world and has obtained distinct geographical advantage against Russia and China. The US image of a preeminent empire has been initially established. However, there is evidence indicating that the United States has used up her capacity to fight accumulated during the cold war in achieving these results. She seems to have no more spare energy to continue launching war."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Approximately 20 percent of Asians do not have easy access to water while almost 60 river basins in Asia have been identified as potential flashpoints for inter-state conflict according to a joint study by the United Nations and the University of Oregon. The rapid development, growing populations and long-standing inter-state and internal instabilities in South Asia, Central Asia, and the Mekong Sub-region in Southeast Asia increases the likelihood of water-related conflict in these regions and makes any water-related tensions in these areas of wider regional and potentially global significance. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "In the 21st century, however, Asia may emerge as the new focal point of water-related conflict given the rapid growth of the region, which is likely to put pressure on water resources, coupled with the concentration of long-standing internal and inter-state tensions, which can act as a spark for turning water-related disputes into full-scale conflicts. Asia is home to 57 international basins, the third largest after Europe and Africa."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Water is increasingly emerging as a scarce commodity, fueled by population pressures, intensive irrigation, and erratic weather patterns brought on by global warming. According to the International Water Management Institute, by 2025 one-third of the world's population will lack access to water."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "hile the world's attention is focused on record high oil prices, water, like oil, is increasingly emerging as a catalyst for international instability and conflict as the recent upsurge in violence in Sri Lanka illustrates. "

Fastest-evolving human gene linked to brain boost - being-human - 16 August 2006 - New Scientist: "The fastest evolving gene in the human genome is one linked to brain development, researchers say.

A study of differences between the human and chimp genomes has identified a gene associated with neural growth in the cerebral cortex – the part of the brain involved in processing thoughts and learning – as having undergone “accelerated evolutionary change”.

Katherine Pollard and colleagues at the University of California Santa Cruz, US, suggest that the fast-changing gene may help explain the dramatic expansion of this part of the brain during the evolution of humans.

They identified the rapidly evolving region of DNA – called human accelerated region 1 (HAR1) – after carrying out an extensive computational comparison between the genomes of humans, chimpanzees and other vertebrates."