Eggers: Government 2.0: "The term used to describe the technologies that will enable these changes is intelligent transportation systems (ITS), a catch phrase for a mix of infrastructure, communications and vehicle technologies, including adaptive signal control, collision-avoidance systems, dynamic message signs, electronic toll collection, intelligent cruise control, mayday systems, virtual weighing stations, ramp metering, route navigation devices, traveler information systems and more. "

Eggers: Government 2.0: "Technology-enabled changes could profoundly impact everything from warfare to transportation, regulation and education. In these and other areas, IT has the potential to not only reinvent service delivery but also change the terms of the left/right debate and render many existing policy debates irrelevant. To fully exploit the potential of today's technologies, government officials must move beyond Web sites, Web portals and internal improvement projects to embrace fundamental transformation. "

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 7 Women are Powering Ahead in the Race for Riches – (News Telegraph – April 22, 2005)
Female millionaires in the UK will outnumber their male counterparts across all age groups within 20 years. A recent study predicts that women will own 60 per cent of the United Kingdom's personal wealth by 2025, with many using their professional and personal skills to extraordinary financial effect. At present, women millionaires between the ages of 18-44, and over the age of 65, outnumber male millionaires, and currently own 48 per cent of the UK's personal wealth.

Guardian Unlimited | Life | The end of oil is closer than you think: "If he is correct, then global oil production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2-3% a year, the cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade, and anything made of plastic rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies. As one US analyst said this week: 'Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye.'"

FUTUREdition Volume 8, Number 7Scientists Create Animals That are Part-Human – (Associated Press – April 29, 2005) n a farm outside Reno, Nevada is a flock of about 50 sheep, many of them possessing partially human livers, hearts, brains and other organs. The biological co-mingling of animal and human is now evolving into even more exotic and unsettling mixes of species. In the past two years, scientists have created pigs with human blood, fused rabbit eggs with human DNA and injected human stem cells to make paralyzed mice walk. Particularly worrisome to some scientists are the nightmare scenarios that could arise from the mixing of brain cells: What if a human mind somehow got trapped inside a sheep’s head?

THE CHINA FACTOR - Booming Economy Tests World's Vital Signs: Worldwatch Institute News: "2004 was a record-breaking year across the board,� said Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch. �The world economy expanded at a rate of five percent, pushing consumption and production of grain, meat, steel, and oil to new highs. Those physical indicators of growth serve to remind us that we have by no means freed ourselves from the material world and its persistent threats�among them global warming and ecological degradation�as we surf the information superhighway.�"

VITAL FACTS - Selected facts and story ideas from Vital Signs 2005: Worldwatch Institute News: "World oil consumption surged by 3.4 percent in 2004, the fastest rate of increase in 16 years. (p. 30)
Production is falling in 33 of the 48 largest oil-producing countries, including 6 of 11 OPEC members. (p. 30)
In the continental U.S., oil production peaked at 8 million barrels per day in 1970 and fell to just 2.9 million barrels a day in 2004. "

VITAL FACTS - Selected facts and story ideas from Vital Signs 2005: Worldwatch Institute News: "High-income countries, home to only 16 percent of the world�s people, account for $662 billion, or 75 percent, of global military expenditures. (p. 76)
Military budgets of high-income countries are roughly 10 times larger than their combined development assistance. (p. 76)
Traditional military deployments abroad dwarf peacekeeping efforts. Some 530,000 soldiers (70 percent of them from the U.S.) in military operations overshadow the 125,000 peacekeepers worldwide. (p. 78) "

VITAL FACTS - Selected facts and story ideas from Vital Signs 2005: Worldwatch Institute News: "Every hour, the world spends more than $100 million on soldiers, weapons, and ammunition. ("

VITAL FACTS - Selected facts and story ideas from Vital Signs 2005: Worldwatch Institute News:
- Explosive growth in emerging markets, particularly China, was a large factor behind the 5 percent increase in the gross world product in 2004, to $55 trillion. China’s economy alone grew by 9 percent.
- China represented more than 20 percent of the increase in world trade volumes in 2004, and its share in world exports nearly doubled over the previous four years, to 5.8 percent.
- Of poorer countries, China was the largest recipient of foreign direct investment in 2003, at $54 billion.
- China increased its oil consumption by 11 percent in 2004, cementing its position as the world’s number two user (after the U.S.) at 6.6 million barrels per day.
- China is rapidly increasing its dependency on automobiles, with sales of cars and light commercial vehicles expected to reach 5 million units in 2005 and 7.3 million by 2007.
- China’s fleet of airplanes is due to skyrocket from 777 planes in 2003 to over 2,800 planes in 2023.
- China now ranks second (after the U.S.) in global carbon emissions, with a 14-percent share. Emissions in China are up more than 47 percent since 1990, and it accounted for half the global increase in 2003.
- Between 2001 and 2020, some 590 thousand people a year in China are projected to suffer premature deaths due to urban air pollution—nearly one third of the projected world total.

Gmail - [PR] Security Budget, Global Good Neighbor, NPT, VietnamSince September 11 and the commencement of the "war on terror," the world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude oil that lie beneath the region's soil. In Blood and Oil, world security expert, Michael Klare, shows how America's own wells are drying up as our demand increases; by 2010, the U.S. will need to import 60% of its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically unstable, often violently anti-American zones­the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa­our dependency is bound to lead to recurrent military involvement. Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.

Foreign Policy In Focus-CDI Special Report: A Unified Security Budget for the United States, 2006: "The security debate has shifted during the past year, toward broad agreement that the United States needs to invest more in nonmilitary security tools. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "If states like China, India or Germany privilege strategic partnerships in this phase, it is because they want to increase their energy and technology acquisition capabilities, thus creating conditions for a rapid accumulation of power. Compared to complex integration processes like the European Union, strategic partnerships do not involve national sovereignty transfers which more often than not damage a state's capabilities, which is why they are preferable under many aspects."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Political integration is nowadays often regarded as the most advanced strategy to build new powerful geopolitical actors. The European Union is the archetypical example of such a model, which is often quoted as a pattern to be replicated by other regions' states (Latin America, Africa, Central Asia, etc.). The E.U.'s history is, nonetheless, often misunderstood in idealistic or abstract terms. In fact, it should be remembered that the European Community was strongly supported by the United States because of the need to fully reintegrate West Germany into the Atlantic Alliance and to counter the Soviet Union's expansion in Europe. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Great and medium powers' strategy to preserve their influence and to seek their interests is therefore a combination of engagement and balancing, whose dominating character (engagement with the U.S. or attempts to balance its power) is highly dependent upon Washington's choices. Strategic partnerships like the Russo-German or the Sino-Indian ones are potentially excellent ways to increase one's capabilities without directly confronting the U.S. while at the same time maintaining a high degree of independence."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "In a unipolar context, the way in which the global superpower acts is decisive. Since states tend to enhance their power continuously to better compete in world politics, the U.S. is likely to seek hegemony. It is far from established, however, whether Washington will prefer a 'liberal hegemony' predicated upon multilateralism and shared rules (as it appeared to do in the 1990s), or the consolidation of a unilateral, 'imperial hegemonic' turn. Washington's strategy will be crucial for slowing or accelerating other powers' attempts to build a multipolar world because it will change -- in one sense or another -- these states' perceptions of U.S. intentions. After all, hegemony is not merely a decisively superior military might, but also the ability to gain other states' acquiescence to one's leadership. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "A unipolar system is, of course, subject to change like any other polarity. A transition toward a bipolar or multipolar configuration is possible under certain conditions, so that one or more states accumulate enough power to emerge as 'peer competitors' against the only global superpower. However, it is first and foremost important to understand how great and medium powers try to act under unipolarity in order to understand many of today's crises and conflicts and to predict future ones. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "All these bilateral talks, deals and agreements mark an emerging trend in the international system at a time of unipolarity. Unipolarity can be defined as the disproportion between the United States and all other great and medium world powers in terms of military might, technological innovation capability, diplomatic and cultural influence, economic prosperity and ability to provide security. The fall of the Soviet Union led many analysts to talk about a coming multipolarity in the 21st Century, but the 1990s saw the rise of the U.S. as the only global geopolitical superpower. Washington is today the only real regional hegemon because it is not only the premier military and economic world power, but also the only great power whose security is not threatened by neighboring states. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Strategic partnerships also do not involve any transfer of national sovereignty to a supranational authority, for example in political integration attempts such as the European Union. The E.U.'s official goals are ones of common security, free market enhancement, shared sovereignty and the general underpinning of the role of states in the global context. Political integration is therefore aimed at both security and influence enhancement, but national independence is sacrificed in order to implement common monetary, fiscal and defense policies.

Instead, a strategic partnership is based upon the mutual goal of increasing individual power and independence, thus allowing the preservation of national sovereignty."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): " ecent developments in the international relations arena such as the new Sino-Indian cooperation agreements and the Russo-German strategic deals, both from April 2005, call for a theoretical interpretation in the context of the current phase of world affairs. These relationships are often defined as 'strategic partnerships.' A strategic partnership can be explained as a bilateral relationship with the main function being to facilitate the increase of power (at first in absolute terms) of the two states involved. In this sense, it differs both from a classical security-oriented alliance and from political and economic integration processes such as the European Union. "

Rahul Rao @ NASPIR There has been a tremendous renewal of interest in ‘empire’ as a concept relevant to the understanding of contemporary international relations. This is an entirely welcome development —if only because a term that has long been an epithet deployed by the left and denied by the right seems to be regaining the status of an analytical category enabling us to describe the way power is actually exercised in the world today.

Gmail - Libell� : Goo-Alerts: "Scientists around the world are scrambling to unlock the potential of stem cells. The United States may be leading the pack, but it owes its position more to the weakness of its competitors than to the wisdom of its approach. Europe is limping under tough restrictions and sluggish private investment. Meanwhile, Asia is coming on strong, but it must develop the expertise to match its enthusiasm. What governments do in the next few years may determine who wins the greatest scientific race ever run."

Foreign Policy: Measuring Globalization: The noted international economist Joseph Stiglitz called 2003 “a disaster for globalization.” At one level, he was right. The Iraq war and its aftermath created deep fissures between the United States and its allies, and the great majority of countries who opposed the war. The U.N. Security Council, the lead body for international peace and security issues, was dealt a blow by the willingness of the coalition to launch a military campaign without its blessing. The war even prompted boycotts and muttering about possible trade embargoes.

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "We are at a critical moment in human history�perhaps not as dramatic as that of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but a moment no less crucial. Neither the Bush administration, the congress, the American people, nor the people of other nations have debated the merits of alternative, long-range nuclear weapons policies for their countries or the world. They have not examined the military utility of the weapons; the risk of inadvertent or accidental use; the moral and legal considerations relating to the use or threat of use of the weapons; or the impact of current policies on proliferation. Such debates are long overdue. If they are held, I believe they will conclude, as have I and an increasing number of senior military leaders, politicians, and civilian security experts: We must move promptly toward the elimination�or near elimination�of all nuclear weapons. For many, there is a strong temptation to cling to the strategies of the past 40 years. But to do so would be a serious mistake leading to unacceptable risks for all nations."

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: " The Bush administration s nuclear program, alongside its refusal to ratify the CTBT, will be viewed, with reason, by many nations as equivalent to a U.S. break from the treaty. It says to the nonnuclear weapons nations, We, with the strongest conventional military force in the world, require nuclear weapons in perpetuity, but you, facing potentially well-armed opponents, are never to be allowed even one nuclear weapon. "

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "In conventional war, mistakes cost lives, sometimes thousands of lives. However, if mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no learning curve. They would result in the destruction of nations. The indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of nuclear catastrophe. There is no way to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, other than to first eliminate the hair-trigger alert policy and later to eliminate or nearly eliminate nuclear weapons. The United States should move immediately to institute these actions, in cooperation with Russia. That is the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis. "

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "Among the costs of maintaining nuclear weapons is the risk�to me an unacceptable risk�of use of the weapons either by accident or as a result of misjudgment or miscalculation in times of crisis. "

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "To launch weapons against a nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a nonnuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant, and politically indefensible."

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "But the attention of many nations, including some potential new nuclear weapons states, is also on the United States. Keeping such large numbers of weapons, and maintaining them on hair-trigger alert, are potent signs that the United States is not seriously working toward the elimination of its arsenal and raises troubling questions as to why any other state should restrain its nuclear ambitions."

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: The whole situation seems so bizarre as to be beyond belief. On any given day, as we go about our business, the president is prepared to make a decision within 20 minutes that could launch one of the most devastating weapons in the world. To declare war requires an act of congress, but to launch a nuclear holocaust requires 20 minutes’ deliberation by the president and his advisors. But that is what we have lived with for 40 years. With very few changes, this system remains largely intact, including the “football,” the president’s constant companion.

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "How destructive are these weapons? The average U.S. warhead has a destructive power 20 times that of the Hiroshima bomb. Of the 8,000 active or operational U.S. warheads, 2,000 are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched on 15 minutes� warning. How are these weapons to be used? The United States has never endorsed the policy of �no first use,� not during my seven years as secretary or since. We have been and remain prepared to initiate the use of nuclear weapons�by the decision of one person, the president�against either a nuclear or nonnuclear enemy whenever we believe it is in our interest to do so. For decades, U.S. nuclear forces have been sufficiently strong to absorb a first strike and then inflict �unacceptable� damage on an opponent. This has been and (so long as we face a nuclear-armed, potential adversary) must continue to be the foundation of our nuclear deterrent. "

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "Today, the United States has deployed approximately 4,500 strategic, offensive nuclear warheads. Russia has roughly 3,800. The strategic forces of Britain, France, and China are considerably smaller, with 200�400 nuclear weapons in each state�s arsenal. The new nuclear states of Pakistan and India have fewer than 100 weapons each. North Korea now claims to have developed nuclear weapons, and U.S. intelligence agencies estimate that Pyongyang has enough fissile material for 2�8 bombs."

Foreign Policy: Apocalypse Soon: "It is time�well past time, in my view�for the United States to cease its Cold War-style reliance on nuclear weapons as a foreign-policy tool. At the risk of appearing simplistic and provocative, I would characterize current U.S. nuclear weapons policy as immoral, illegal, militarily unnecessary, and dreadfully dangerous. The risk of an accidental or inadvertent nuclear launch is unacceptably high. Far from reducing these risks, the Bush administration has signaled that it is committed to keeping the U.S. nuclear arsenal as a mainstay of its military power�a commitment that is simultaneously eroding the international norms that have limited the spread of nuclear weapons and fissile materials for 50 years."

International Relations and Security Network ISN - Security Watch: "In an annual classified risk assessment report on US military capabilities issued to Congress on Monday, the US� most senior military officer, General Richard Myers, said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could hamper the country�s ability to fight other wars.
Currently the US has 17,000 troops in Afghanistan and 138,000 in Iraq.
While the report said the US could still win in another war, it noted that the military would not be able to build up its forces as quickly as it did for the Iraq war or as quickly as is expected in current contingency plans.
The report also said future armed conflicts would last longer and produce higher casualties. The depletion of stockpiles of precision weapons and the availability of pre-positioned equipment, including vehicles and reserve units, were cited as reasons why the military would have a harder time dealing with additional conflicts."

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Assuming that today's geopolitical patterns hold true for the next 15 years, Russia will find itself in a political environment that will at least partially resemble multipolarity. China's and India's improved economies will give the two states greater international clout, prompting the United States to adjust its foreign policy to reflect the appearance of two more powers on the world scene. The U.S. will not likely diminish in its hegemonic status; however, major policy centers like the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington predict that it will have more difficulties in advancing its policies around the world. It is also predicted that the European Union will possibly emerge as a more unified political entity with as much desire to advance its interests as the United States, China and India. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Russia will remain a major global player in the near future for two main reason: its abundant natural resources will assume greater importance to the world's major developed economies, and its military research and development will continually earn it a top place as one of the top producers and suppliers of hardware around the world. Its economic strength is still under question -- even if major improvements take place in the Russian economy, it will still be a fraction of China's and even a smaller fraction of the U.S.' and Europe's economies for the next several decades."

The New York Times > Science > Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs: "From the biologists' point of view, animals made to grow human tissues do not really raise novel issues because they can be categorized as animals with added human parts. Biologists are more concerned about animals in which human cells have become seeded throughout the system."

The New York Times > Science > Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs: "Chimeras grip the imagination because people are both fascinated and repulsed by the defiance of natural order. "

The New York Times > Science > Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs: "The promise of embryonic stem cells is that since all the tissues of the body are derived from them, they are a kind of universal clay. If biologists succeed in learning how to shape the clay into specific organs, like pancreas glands, heart muscle or kidneys, physicians may be able to provide replacement parts on demand."

The New York Times > Science > Chimeras on the Horizon, but Don't Expect Centaurs: "The promise of embryonic stem cells is that since all the tissues of the body are derived from them, they are a kind of universal clay. If biologists succeed in learning how to shape the clay into specific organs, like pancreas glands, heart muscle or kidneys, physicians may be able to provide replacement parts on demand.
Developing these new organs, and testing them to the standards required by the Food and Drug Administration, will require growing human organs in animals.
Such creations - of pigs with human hearts, monkeys with human larynxes - are likely to be unsettling to many."

Gmail - [PINR] 02 May 2005: Detente in South Asia: Euphoria Needs Caution: "India and Pakistan have fought three major wars, in 1947, 1965 and 1971, and one minor one in 1999, just a year after both countries became nuclear weapon powers. "

WorldNetDaily: Ex-CIA chief warns of EMP nuke threat: "EMP attacks are generated when a nuclear weapon is detonated at altitudes above a few dozen kilometers above the Earth's surface. The explosion, of even a small nuclear warhead, would produce a set of electromagnetic pulses that interact with the Earth's atmosphere and the Earth's magnetic field.
'These electromagnetic pulses propagate from the burst point of the nuclear weapon to the line of sight on the Earth's horizon, potentially covering a vast geographic region in doing so simultaneously, moreover, at the speed of light,' said Wood. 'For example, a nuclear weapon detonated at an altitude of 400 kilometers over the central United States would cover, with its primary electromagnetic pulse, the entire continent of the United States and parts of Canada and Mexico.' "

WorldNetDaily: Ex-CIA chief warns of EMP nuke threat: "In an article titled, 'Electronics to Determine Fate of Future Wars,' the journal explains how an EMP attack on America's electronic infrastructure, caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon high above the U.S., would bring the country to its knees. "

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "The unsettling reality is there will always be some small number of nuts and political fanatics who will use any means available to them to kill as many of us as they can. The lethal force available to them will only grow with time. This dynamic is one of my deepest worries for the future"

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "At home, this is an argument for civil discourse, since you never know when there's an excitable boy, a potential Timothy McVeigh, tuned in. Abroad, it's an argument for exercising power with grace. Sometimes you have to antagonize the world to do the right thing, but more than ever we should avoid antagonizing the world gratuitously."

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "The upshot of the technological trends that empowered Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden is that over time hatred will morph into lethality with growing efficiency. Dampening hatred is a disconcertingly vague challenge, but there are things we can do at home and abroad."

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "allowing others to inspect our facilities may be a reasonable price to pay for the right to conduct inspections in other countries. "

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "The lesson from millenia of human history is clear. All weapons, no matter how technologically sophisticated when created, ultimately become widely available. The catapult, longbow, musket, rifle, machine gun, biological weapons, and chemical weapons have gone from high technology to something any talented high school student can manufacture. Nuclear weapons are not yet that easy to make but that is primarily due to the large scale of the required infrastructure, not technology that is out of reach. And even with nukes the trend is clear. It was inconceivable in 1945 that third world nations would develop their own nuclear weapons but that is clearly possible today. It would be foolish to assume that nuclear weapons will forever remain out of reach of high school students."

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "basic source: growing ingenuity in the concoction of lethal force; wider availability of the ingredients in an ever-more-industrialized, interconnected world; and growing access, via information technology, to the knowledge needed to use them."

shiningright: Terrorism: the long term threat: "as technology advances, it will only get easier for terrorists to obtain weapons of mass destruction."