george monbiot: "All over our planet, the rich get richer while the poor are overtaken by debt and disaster. The world is run not by its people but by a handful of unelected or underelected executives who make the decisions on which everyone else depends: concerning war, peace, debt, development and the balance of trade. Without democracy at the global level, the rest of us are left with no means of influencing these men but to shout abuse and hurl ourselves at the lines of police defending their gatherings and decisions. Does it have to be this way? "

george monbiot“Our task is not to overthrow globalisation, but to capture it, and to use it as a vehicle for humanity’s first global democratic revolution.”

Headlines for Monday, November 24, 2003: "Some 175 million people, or 3 percent of the world's population, live outside the country where they were born, Annan said in a lecture at New York's Columbia University. The mobility this demonstrates, the $88 billion migrant workers send back to their home countries each year and the resulting cultural diversity should be cause for celebration...But the phenomenon has also raised concerns about migrants committing terrorist acts, taking away peoples' jobs or depleting limited social services budgets, Annan said. 'These are understandable concerns and they must be answered. The answers are not easy. But I have come here today to say that they do not lie in halting migration - a policy that is bound to fail,' he said. 'I say the answer must lie in managing migration - rationally, creatively, compassionately and cooperatively.'...Annan's speech, billed as a major policy address, comes during a US crackdown on immigration as part of its global war on terror and amid years of European efforts to exclude foreigners to protect domestic jobs. "

Headlines for Monday, November 24, 2003: "India's economy hasn't looked better since the country's independence over half a century ago, and its impressive pace of expansion is likely to be maintained for the next several years, Dow Jones reports Finance Minister Jaswant Singh has said. 'The fundamentals of the Indian economy today are such as to give one the confidence to assert that they have not been better for the last 52 years,' said Singh, speaking at the India Economic Summit organized by the World Economic Forum."

*"Center of gravity" is a term in physics used to describe an imaginary point in a body where the total weight of the body is concentrated. Identifying the center of gravity is useful for predicting the behavior of the body when acted upon by external forces. In geopolitics, the term is defined by Carl von Clausewitz in his classic work, On War, as the hub of all power and movement. It can be the morale or supply lines of an army, an alliance or network of alliances between states, a geographic location or even an idea. It is the point on which the conflict may be turned when too much pressure is applied. Identifying the center of gravity is critical for predicting the behavior of actors in any conflict.

The shape and contour of the military conflict will determine in large part the political dynamics in the Middle East, at least during the short to medium term. The variety and versatility of the many players involved and the resources and influence for which each is competing are of enormous value.

Environmental Sustainability...Environmental Sustainability...
Undeniable environmental changes in the early 00’s shifted values away from materialism, towards personal respon-sibility for the environment and the welfare of future generations; some communities punish the misuse of resources.
“Eco-preneurs” developed ecologically friendly technologies and extremely sophisticated resource use and recycling systems -- with crossover innovations among genetic engineering, the biosciences, and materials science, plastic now grows on trees [shrubs, actually].
Lifestyles downsize: from nations to bioregions; from cities to towns; from 3 SUV’s per family to one shared among three families.
Environmental restoration and bio-recreation of extinct species.
Less materialism; more emphasis on learning and the arts.

High Tech Decentralization...: "High Tech Decentralization...
Human inventiveness triumphs! Clean, abundant energy and advances in robotics, nanotechnology, and material science give people very precise, low waste control of our resources and environments.
Genetic engineering gives us precise control over our bodies -- and our definitions of who and what we are.
High-definition, multi-sense holography and virtual reality let us create virtual worlds of our inner visions -- leading to new art forms AND a new form of autism.
Data and telecoms networks freed information globally, and local and regional direct democracies are the most common form of governance.
Respect for the environment just part of rational resource management. "

Futures Studies Futures Studies is…a transdisciplinary, systems-science-based approach to.. analyzing patterns of change in the past; identifying trends of change in the present; and extrapolating alternative scenarios of possible change in the future, in order to help people create the futures they most desire.

Toffler Associates- Featured: Article In short, we can expect to hear more and more demands for immediate preemption in more and more varied fields where the acceleration of change — one of the mightiest forces on the planet today — is shortening the interval between crises.

Toffler Associates- Featured: Article: "The reason is today's ever-accelerating rate of change, especially in scientific and technological advance. This is doubly so in fields like biology and genetics that underpin some of the most terrifying weapons of mass destruction. Not only is research advancing more quickly, but the Internet and other new means of communication speed up distribution of the latest findings. "

Transport system A long-term focus is important in order to bring about an evolution toward a more sustainable transport system, including near-zero carbon emissions and non-petroleum fuels.

The future The future arises from a constant stream of human actions, decisions, strategies and commitments that have to be made in the present with as much skill, wisdom and foresight as possible.

Exposure varies with location and occupation In the United States, exposure varies with location and occupation. The poor, excluded and marginalized communities such as inner cities, colonias and reservations are often subject to multiple exposures due to incinerators, maquiladoras, poor water quality, malnutrition and unsafe jobs. Therefore even toxic substances which meet EPA standards will prove more harmful than expected. But these effects will be hard to detect since we will observe an array of health impairments rather than a single harm appearing to different degrees.

In ecological and social sciences What good is a model that assumes constant conditions? Here we see one of the powerful ways in which models are both useful and dangerous in science. In physical and engineering sciences it is often possible to isolate a problem sufficiently to ignore external influences, assume that all switches are the same in what is relevant, that all salt molecules are interchangeable and so on. Then we can measure accurately and get equations that are as exact as we need. But in ecological and social sciences this is not possible. The populations are not uniform, conditions change and there is always an outside impinging on the system of interest. We cannot even believe the equations too literally. But we can still study these systems.

Factors of Evolution On the other hand, species in the middle of their range are likely to show less effect of an environmental change. Therefore when we ask, how will a 1�C change in temperature affect the distribution of malaria, we have to ask how close to their boundaries not only the vector mosquito but also its natural enemies and competitors are located. Different localities near the boundary will respond differently for no obvious reason, just because of the extreme sensitivity to even undetectable changes of circumstance.

Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the world is left with only one dominant social model, the consumerist culture of the United States. Since the early 1970�s, trade barriers between nation states have been largely broken down, justified by "free trade" economic models. These models are largely myth, as most powerful nation states use government subsidies to obtain and control economic advantage.

Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School: "The idea of Emergent Properties introduced in the beginning of the course will be used to explore a relatively new emergent property of the past 200 years called a Transnational Corporation (TNC). These new entities are
a. Not rooted in space
b. Not subject to national laws
c. Have more rights than citizens
d. Were created in the judicial system
e. Immortal
The TNCs disproportionately control both the governments of nation states and the institutions for global justice and oversight: the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. "

Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical SchoolEven a cursory examination of the economic structure of the world reveals dramatic differences in the wealth, life expectancy and share of society�s benefits of its citizens. The 400 richest people have a combined net worth greater than the bottom 45 percent of the world�s population�about 2.3 billion�and over a billion people live on less than US$1/day. In general, these disparities are segregated along a North/South axis, with the majority of the industrialized nations being in the Northern Hemisphere and the "underdeveloped", "Third World", non-technological nations occupying the Southern Hemisphere. These disparities have a long history, about 14,000 years.

Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School: "With the world's population increasing every minute we must consider the correlation between human population growth and poverty. Almost all of the growth in population will occur in the world's poorest countries. The stabilization of global population at a level that will permit sustainable development is attainable only if efforts to expand and improve the quality of reproductive health programs are maintained. This lecture will review population dynamics, the impact of population growth and consumption patterns on the human and ecosystems health."

In all Member States (with the exception of Italy) the majority of citizens believe that Israel presents a threat to peace in the world with �yes� results as high as 74% in the Netherlands and 69% in Austria. Italy is the only country were opinions are divided with 48% of respondents confirming that they perceive Israel as a threat to peace in the world and 46% of the opposite opinion.

What better way for the United States to ward off that competition and secure its own hegemonic position than to control the price, conditions, and distribution of the key economic resource (oil) upon which those competitors rely? And what better way to do that than to use the one line of force where the US still remains all-powerful-military might?

Directors Statement: "we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way of life. Being sensate entities, we become our environment - we become what we see, what we hear, what we eat, what we smell, what we touch. Where doubt is prohibited, we become, without question, the environment we live in. With our origins based in the natural order, should this context radically change (as I am suggesting), the mysterious nature of the human being shall also radically change - a change that will reflect the transformation of nature itself, at a turning point or vanishing point. Natural diversity becomes a burnt offering, sacrificed to the infinite appetite of technological homogenization. "

The Ivan Illich Archive -- Facts and Figures: "The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. "

Directors Statement: "The living environment, old nature, is replaced by a manufactured milieu, an engineered host - synthetic nature. In a real sense, we are off planet, dwelling on a lunar surface of stone, cement, asphalt, glass, steel and plastics, engulfed in the atmosphere of electromagnetic vibrations - the soothing lullaby of the machine. The common notion tells us that technology is neutral, that we can use it for either good or bad. From the p.o.v. of NAQOYQATSI, we do not use technology, we live technology; technology is our way of life."

Foreign Policy:Every day, migrants working in rich countries send money to their families in the developing world. Last year, these remittances added up to $80 billion, outstripping foreign aid. Find out why remittances boomed in the 1990s�and how this money is lifting entire nations out of poverty, rewiring international politics, and reshaping immigration policy.

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "After the six-day war of 1967, when nationalism and socialism seemed to have brought only humiliation and defeat, there was a revival of religious politics in the Arab world. Palestinians long held out against this trend, but despairing of the ordinary political process, the Islamist parties finally emerged in 1987. Once God is brought into the conflict, positions become absolute, sacred and far more difficult to negotiate. "

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "Yet to those who had studied these movements it was clear long before 9/11 that fundamentalists all over the world were expressing fears and anxieties that no government could safely ignore. "

Our Role in the Terror - 9/11 - Global Policy Forum: "The 'fundamentalist' movements that emerged in every major faith tradition during the 20th century conform to this pattern. Wherever a western-style, secularist society has been established, a religious counterculture has developed alongside it. The persistence of this militant piety shows a disturbing and worldwide alienation from western modernity. Every group that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam has experienced secularism as destructive, and is engaged in a battle designed to push God and religion back to centre stage. All are convinced that the secularist liberal establishment is determined, in one way or another, to wipe them out. "

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Matthew Engel: Road to ruin: "America produces a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, the population has risen by 100 million since 1970 and when an area three times the size of Britain was recently opened up for mining, drilling, logging and road building, no one took much notice. What does the Bush administration do? It ignores all attempts to curb environmental damage. In a major investigation that took him from the Salton Sea in California to Crooked Creek in Florida, Matthew Engel reports on how America is ravaging the planet "

PressInfo 190, Hydra, Proliferation, Fullspectrum dominance: "'The emerging synergy of space superiority with land, sea, and air superiority, will lead to Full Spectrum Dominance. Space forces play an increasingly critical role in providing situational awareness (e.g. global communications; precise navigation; timely and accurate missile warning and weather; and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to US forces.)
Space doctrine, organizations, training, materiel, leadership and personnel will evolve to fully realize the potential of space power. Space power is a vital element in moving towards the Joint Vision goal of being persuasive in peace, decisive in war, and pre-eminent in any form of conflict.'"

PressInfo 190, Hydra, Proliferation, Fullspectrum dominance: "'The horror scenarios of the Cold War have disappeared, but the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons has not. Like the monstrous Hydra of Greek mythology, modern weapons of mass destruction are sprouting new heads faster than anybody can cut them off.'
So wrote Anna Lindh and Erkki Tuomioja, the Foreign Ministers of Sweden and Finland respectively, in an article in The International Herald Tribune, whose title gives their answer to the threat: 'Slaying the Hydra - together'. As they conclude:
'Even Hercules could not kill the many headed monster alone. Only by acting together will we safeguard the security of all.'"

Economist.com | The future of energyBy introducing a small but steadily rising tax on petrol, America would do far more to encourage innovation and improve energy security than all the drilling in Alaska's wilderness. Crucially, this need not be, and should not be, a matter of raising taxes in the aggregate. The proceeds from a gasoline tax ought to be used to finance cuts in other taxes�this, surely, is the way to present them to a sceptical electorate. Judging by the debate going on in Washington, a policy of this kind is a distant prospect. That is a great shame.

Economist.com | The future of energy: "If treating the West's addiction to oil will be costly, is it really worth doing? To be sure. Petro-addiction imposes mighty costs of its own. First, there is the political risk of relying on the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Oil still has a near-monopoly hold on transport. If the supply is cut off even for a few days, modern economies come to a halt, as Britain discovered when tax protestors blockaded some domestic oil depots two years ago. And despite what sound like large investments in new oil fields in Russia and elsewhere, Saudi Arabia's share of the world oil market will actually grow over the next two decades simply because it has such huge reserves of cheap oil. Geology has granted two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves to Saudi Arabia and four of its neighbours. Because of this continuing concentration of supply, the risk of a disruption to oil flows will continue to be a threat, and may even rise."

Economist.com | The future of energy�THE Stone Age did not end for lack of stone, and the Oil Age will end long before the world runs out of oil.� This intriguing prediction is often heard in energy circles these days. If greens were the only people to be expressing such thoughts, the notion might be dismissed as Utopian. However, the quotation is from Sheikh Zaki Yamani, a Saudi Arabian who served as his country's oil minister three decades ago. His words are rich in irony.

MIT Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Change: "The MIT JOINT PROGRAM ON THE SCIENCE & POLICY OF GLOBAL CHANGE was founded in 1991 as an interdisciplinary organization that conducts research, independent policy analysis, and public communication on issues of global environmental change. It is not a degree-granting entity. "

MIT Integrated Global System Model: "The MIT Integrated Global System Model "

Trends Online Abstract: "Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center. 2003. Trends Online: A Compendium of Data on Global Change. Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy, Oak Ridge, Tennessee."

Amazon.com: Editorial Reviews: Biogeochemistry: An Analysis of Global Change: "For the past 4 billion years, the chemistry of the Earth's surface, where all life exists, has changed remarkably. Historically, these changes have occurred slowly enough to allow life to adapt and evolve. In more recent times, the chemistry of the Earth is being altered at a staggering rate, fueled by industrialization and an ever-growing human population. Human activities, from the rapid consumption of resources to the destruction of the rainforests and the expansion of smog-covered cities, are all leading to rapid changes in the basic chemistry of the Earth."

If ...China�s economy would be three times larger than the US by 2030 in US dollar terms and 25 times larger by 2050.As countries develop, these forces fade and growth rates tend to slow towards developed country levels. In Japan andGermany, very rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s gave way to more moderate growth in the 1980s and 1990s. This is why simple extrapolation gives silly answers over long timeframes. As a crude example, assuming that China�s GDP growth continued to grow at its current 8% per year over the next three decades would lead to the prediction that China�s economy would be three times larger than the US by 2030 in US dollar terms and 25 times larger by 2050.

DreamingWith BRICs: The Path to 2050Over the next 50 years, Brazil, Russia, India and China�the BRICs economies could become a much larger force in the world economy. Using the latest demographic projections and a model of capital accumulation and productivity growth, we map out GDP growth, income per capita and currency movements in the BRICs economies until 2050.

It's back to the old world order - OCT 17, 2003: "One is that the real environmental crisis is coming at us even faster than the pessimists feared: Four or five billion people in the Brics and other Asian and Latin American countries, who will be consuming at current European levels by 2050, will put huge additional stress on the environment. The time for emergency measures is probably now - not that there is any real hope of such a thing."

Can We Abolish Poverty? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum With the per capita income for the world being $7140.00, there must be many poor people around. It is in the nature of the ratio of the world�s resources and its population that some people will have more than they need, while others can hardly eke out a living. The four richest people in the world � Bill Gates (worth $46.0 billion), Warren Buffet ($36.0 billion), Karl/Theo Albrecht ($25.6 billion), and Paul Allen ($22.0 billion) have combined assets of approximately $130 billion, which is more than three times the gross domestic product for Nigeria. The world�s resources are not equitably distributed among countries � just as the wealth within any particular country is not shared equally among the residents.

Can We Abolish Poverty? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Examples of such countries as Ethiopia, Rwanda, Liberia, and Sierra Leone show that the good work achieved through decades of gradual progress towards leaving the poverty club can be wiped out in only a few months of political crisis, which is usually accompanied by looting the national treasury with impunity."

Noosphere: "The Noosphere is the part of the world of life that is created by man's thought and culture.Pierre Teillhard De Chardin, Vladimir Ivanovich Verdansky and Edouard Le Roy distinguish the noosphere from the geosphere, the non living world, and from the biosphere, the living world. "

TheStar.com - Downsizing American imperialism: "'The problem with American power is not that it is American. The problem is simply the power. It would be dangerous even for an archangel to wield so much power.'"

Beyond WTO, Will South-South Cooperation Bite? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumAgain the WTO has no role in regulating the traders. Almost 70% of world trade is between transnational corporations. In today�s world it is corporations that trade not countries. Through their governments, the TNCs can influence an organisation which has no power to regulate them. The WTO increasingly looks like the wrong trade organisation for the reality of international trade today. But at least it is, in theory, a democratic organisation, with its 146 countries � soon to be 148 with the addition of Cambodia and Nepal � having an equal say. Members have the power to change the rules. The new alliances have testing times ahead.

Beyond WTO, Will South-South Cooperation Bite? - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy ForumWill the new alliances fare better? Are we now seeing South-South cooperation with teeth? The Cancun alliances look impressive. Foremost is the G23 which includes all the big developing countries, notably Brazil, China, India and South Africa. At the start of the Cancun meeting, as the G20, it submitted a key paper on agriculture which calls for an end to export subsidies for farmers that encourage dumping, and for a cap on direct payments, within a specific time frame. The paper shook the complacency of the US and EU. By the end of the meeting, Egypt, Indonesia and Nigeria had joined the group and the G23 represented well over half the world�s population.

Japan Pledges $1 Billion in African Aid - Social and Economic Policy - Global Policy Forum: "Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, opening a major donor conference Monday, pledged $1 billion in new aid for education and health care in Africa. The money, to be dispersed over five years, will help fund AIDS treatment, vaccinations and building schools and facilities for drinking water. Koizumi's announcement came at the start of a three-day conference in Tokyo on fighting poverty and promoting sustainable development in Africa. Heads of state from 23 African countries and representatives of leading donor nations and aid groups will discuss infectious diseases, conflict prevention and investment on the continent during the meeting. "

Interview : Pierre L�vy: "Disons que le langage oral porte l'intelligence collective de la tribu, que l'�criture porte l'intelligence collective de la ville, et que le futur Web s�mantique exprimera l'intelligence collective de l'humanit� mondialis�e interconnect�e dans le cyberespace. "