Oberg - What is peace? Summarising 35 years of thinking and practising: "The only realistic way to handle conflict is to accept and embrace them, become clever at handling them – in short, stop conflict avoidance and reduce conflict illiteracy, i.e. intensify across the board education and professionalization when it comes to learning how to “quarrel well.” This means that, grosso modo, peace can be learnt and has extremely little to do with good versus evil human beings as some will have us believe.
So, the dynamics or peace is perfectly compatible with conflict, indeed it can’t be separated from it. What it is incompatible with and must be separated from is violence. Thus, for true peace we need violence prevention or, to quote the UN Charter most significant and globally recognized (but violated) norm: peace by peaceful means (Article 1.1) and the abolition of war as an accepted social institution (the Preamble’s first sentence)."

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper: "In another hemisphere, anti-American populists have been elected in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, and are busy centralizing power and reversing the trend of the 1990s toward openness and economic integration. Around the world, authoritarian regimes are learning repression from one another. What political scientist Samuel Huntington labeled the 'third wave' of democratization began in the 1970s with Spain and Portugal, spread through Latin America and Asia, and culminated in the collapse of communism. But this wave has clearly crested. Not wanting to see another democratic upsurge like Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, Russia, Egypt, Syria and Venezuela have all passed laws closing off international funding for pro-democracy groups.
Underlying these worrisome trends is a huge decline in the prestige of the American model, which since the Iraq war has come to be symbolized less by the Statue of Liberty than by the hooded prisoner at Abu Ghraib. "

Foreign Policy: Think Again: India

Foreign Policy: Think Again: India: "Consider India’s relationship with Iran. The energy-hungry subcontinent looks at Iran in the same way that the United States views Saudi Arabia. Iran and India reached a “strategic partnership” in 2003, cementing the “historical ties” between the two nations. India is now chafing at Western demands that it stop backing Iran’s right to develop its nuclear capacities. Despite a new American deal to share advanced nuclear technology with India, Delhi is likely to resist opening its own nuclear facilities to serious international inspection and remains steadfast in its refusal to sign major international arms-control agreements. A key player in the development of its nuclear weapons, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, is now the country’s president."

Rise of China and India changes course of global economic history -- Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China News: "The rise of China, India, other Asian economies, and other emerging market economies is a major watershed for the global economy. Their rise - as former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers put it last January in Davos - may be the most important event in human history in the last 1,000 years, after the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution.

In 'Chindia,' 2.2 billion people are starting to join the global labor force; this is a massive and challenging process of integration in the global economy.

With economic power - a larger share of global GDP coming out of emerging markets - also comes political power, as the rising influence of China and India on geopolitical affairs clearly shows."

Rise of China and India changes course of global economic history -- Shanghai Daily | 上海日报 -- English Window to China News: "THE overarching theme of the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting, which will take place in Davos, Switzerland, tomorrow, is 'The Shifting Power Equation.'

Participants will try to make sense of the various ways that power is being transferred and re-distributed in our ever-more-connected global polity. One manifestation of this shift is the changing global economic architecture. "

Foreign Affairs - Background on the News: "China has just overtaken Japan as the world's second-largest spender on research and development, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reports — and its efforts are furrowing brows abroad. Yet spending alone might not be enough to overcome China's deep structural problems in this area. As George Gilboy pointed out in Foreign Affairs two years ago, China has traditionally imported technological processes wholesale, without investing in long-term capabilities of its own, and it has yet to develop a domestic R&D network linking innovative local firms, universities, and research centers. In other words, China is extremely dependent on technology from industrialized states and that could limit the country's growth down the road."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Finally, there are also larger geopolitical concerns, which likely provided some of the basis for the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in the first place. If the U.S. hand is removed from the Green Zone, it will provide the green light to Iran to increase funding for its actors in Iraq. If Iran is able to assist into power a regime that is pro-Iranian, then Iraq will move more toward the policy aims of Iran rather than those of the West or of the Sunni powers in the region. The United States, which is already engaged in a political struggle with Iran, hopes to avoid Iran becoming even stronger, which is what would occur should Iraq become more stable yet under Iranian influence."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Iraq's history outlines the gravity of today's circumstances. The Ba'athist establishment suppressed Iraq's different power factions for decades. Upon the removal of that establishment, it was natural that the different power factions would engage in conflict until a proper power sharing balance, or state disunion, was eventuated. In all conflicts, the quest for a power balance often involves violent struggle, similar to the struggles seen in other non-homogonous countries such as Lebanon and Yugoslavia. The one way to avoid this in Iraq was to foster Iraqi nationalism as a unifying force. However, throughout the process of forming transitional governments, drafting a constitution, and forming the permanent government, maintaining self-imposed deadlines was given greater importance than containing sectarian divisions. In fact, political parties were formed on sectarian lines, and the constitution itself now provides more space to the divvying up of resources and power along these lines than to the actual form of the government."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "The removal from power of Saddam Hussein acted as a giant release valve for Iraq's competing interest groups. Throughout the process of drafting a constitution and fielding political parties, sectarian divisions were placed above national ties. After the constitution was completed, sectarian groups used their own security forces and militias to protect their territorial holdings and gain leverage over other power factions. With the bombing of the al-Askariya mosque in February 2006, the sectarian violence increasingly took on the nature of a civil war.

The country is now engaged in a non-polarized civil war, where the different parties are using their resources to gain the instruments of power."

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."

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."

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."

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."