A Lobby, Not A Conspiracy: "Some would prefer, when explaining American actions overseas, to point a finger at the domestic 'energy lobby.' Others might blame the influence of Wilsonian idealism, or imperial practices left over from the cold war. But that a powerful Israel lobby exists could hardly be denied by anyone who knows how Washington works. Its core is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, its penumbra a variety of national Jewish organizations. "

Exporting 'Democracy' � Importing Trouble- by Justin Raimondo: "'Democracy' is what the neoconservative ideologues who lied us into war talk about when they want to divert attention away from their real motives. The only question now is: what were their real motives?"

America Meets the New Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "Rise of An Eastern Superpower
POPULATION
* 1.3 billion
ECONOMICS
* World's fastest growing economy
* Economy has grown 9.5 per cent annually for 25 years
* GDP quadrupled from 1980 to 2000
* 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in 25 years"

America Meets the New Superpower - Empire? - Global Policy Forum: "While Mr Bush has only given Mr Hu an hour of his time for a state lunch, the global balance of power is changing and in future meetings, the Chinese will set the timetable. The rise of China is posing awkward questions for the US, along with the realisation that its days as the world's economic superpower are numbered. Some analysts see America entering a period of 'managed decline' not unlike that which Britain has experienced since the end of the Second World War and the end of empire. "

FrontPage magazine.com :: When There Was No Jewish Lobby by Sol Stern: “I do not feel it is necessary for any pressure group, however well meaning, to devote its time and money to the business of ‘molding American opinion

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - WARTIME MOBILIZATION TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND CIVILIZATION: "Since the first Earth Day 36 years ago, we have won many environmental battles but we are losing the war. Our early twenty-first century civilization is on an economic path that is destroying and disrupting the natural systems on which it depends. We are consuming renewable resources faster than they can regenerate. Forests are shrinking, grasslands are deteriorating, soils are eroding, water tables are falling, and fisheries are collapsing.

We are using up oil at a pace that leaves little time to plan beyond peak oil. And we are discharging greenhouse gases into the atmosphere faster than nature can absorb them. As a result, the earth�s temperature is rising, ice sheets are melting, and the sea is rising."

CNN.com - Cybernetics: Merging machine and man - Apr 18, 2006: "'We will be putting more and more robotic technology inside us,' says MIT Robotics Lab Director and CNN Future Summit Nominating Committee Member Rodney Brooks. 'Robotic joints, replacement limbs, a lot of people now, over a 100,000, have cochlear implants, with direct neural implants into their cochlear, so they can hear. As us baby boomers get older and older, we're going to be looking for all sorts of replacement parts. We're going to become partially robotic. What's a robot, what's us, is starting to get a bit messy.'"

CNN.com - Cybernetics: Merging machine and man - Apr 18, 2006: "But new technologies and our growing understanding of the brain and nervous system means that simply replacing lost form isn't enough anymore. Scientists are moving, in a variety of ways, to restoring and lost and augmenting normal function as well. 'The field is marching towards a future,' says Herr, 'where there's a blurring of the boundaries between the synthetic aspects of the prosthesis and the person's body; blurring the boundaries between synthetics and cells and tissues.'"
The key issue: Understanding the human brain and how it interacts with the body and the world around it.

"Even the most advanced neuroscientist would admit that the brain is unbelievably complicated,"

CNN.com - Cybernetics: Merging machine and man - Apr 18, 2006: "The science of control and communications in the animal and machine,' is how American mathematician Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics. The fields of neuroscience, biomechanics, robotics, mathematics, computer science, materials science and tissue engineering all play a role in the effort to use machines to help patients who have lost some control over their bodies, whether through accident or disease."

CNN.com - Cybernetics: Merging machine and man - Apr 18, 2006: "Ever since our ancestors first started making tools, humanity has been trying to go beyond its limitations to improve on the way our bodies interact with nature. "
Over thousands of years we have been able to develop the way we work with, and adapt to, our environment by using an increasingly sophisticated array of tools. Now high-tech tools, implanted or attached to the human body, are bringing biology and technology together to repair, replace and augment human ability.

RED HERRING | The Future of the Internet#: "Everything from the family fridge to the office coffee pot�as well as heating, cooling, and security systems�will be managed through the Internet, possibly using souped-up mobile phones doubling as universal remote controls, says Google�s Mr. Cerf. By 2016, he predicts the online population of 1 billion will treble, and a huge portion will be mobile. And by then, the Internet will become so pervasive that connecting to it will no longer be a conscious act."

Inside the International Terror Market - by Christopher Deliso: "The first, which attempts to provide some past context for the turbulence of today, takes a look at how the proxy wars and interventions waged by the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War devastated large areas of the globe, dramatically increasing the illegal narcotics and weapons businesses, propping up dictatorships and terrorist groups, and generally introducing widespread chaos that could only be partially controlled by the installation of ever more brutal and authoritarian statelets, militias, and overlords. Throughout, both major combatants appeared oblivious to the potential ramifications these covert interventions would have in the future."

KurzweilAI.net: "Spurred by the risks from roadside bombs and terrorist ambushes, the military is aggressively seeking to replace troops with battlefield robots, including new versions armed with machine guns."

Guardian Unlimited | Science | In the 70s he was a TV fantasy. Now the bionic man is real - and he even plays sax: "Helping the blind to see again, being able to carry enormous loads without the prospect of backache and a prosthetic robotic hand that works (almost) like a real one were some of the ideas presented at a recent meeting of engineers, physicists, biologists and computer scientists organised by the American Association of Anatomists."

KurzweilAI.net: "Cell division occurs millions of times each day in the human body and is essential to life itself. In the lab, Gorbsky and his OMRF colleagues were able to control the protein responsible for the division process, interrupt and reverse the event, sending duplicate chromosomes back to the center of the original cell, an event once thought impossible. "

Zapatero's success at negotiating with ETA has reminded the world of his role in providing a model for a different way of responding to terror attacks: don't go to war, pull your troops out of the existing illegal war, change your policies and talk-talk-talk.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/ngos/advocacy/protest/iraq/2006/0406bennis.htm

Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds: "'Recent human history was a time of rapid change in population size, diet, pathogen exposure, and culture,' Akey said.
'These are all potentially strong selective forces, which Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues appear to have captured in their analysis.' "

Human Genome Shows Proof of Recent Evolution, Survey Finds:These are very recent events—within the past ten thousand years," said Jonathan Pritchard, a geneticist whose laboratory team conducted the study.
The results suggest that humans in different regions have continued to adapt in numerous ways to both environmental changes and cultural innovations.
Many of the genetic changes Pritchard's group detected came during or after the emergence of agriculture, beginning about 10,000 years ago, and long after the formation of modern human populations.
Some of the genes most strongly affected by selection were those associated with skin color, bone structure, and the metabolism of different foods.

Earth Policy Institute Book Bytes - IT�S INCOME TAX TIME FOR AMERICANS And It�s Time for the Entire World to Lower Income Taxes and Raise Environmental Taxes: "As Americans are filing their income taxes, many of their counterparts in several European countries are benefiting from a steady decline in income taxes as governments lower taxes on income and raise taxes on environmentally destructive activities�like burning gasoline or coal. The purpose of this tax shifting is to incorporate the environmental costs of products and services into the market price to help the market tell the environment truth. This rewards environmentally responsible behavior such as reducing energy use."

The Singularity Summit at Stanford: "A growing number of highly respected technological figures, including Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, have in recent years forecast that computational intelligence will, in the coming two or three decades, not only match but swiftly surpass human intelligence, and that civilization will at that point be radically transformed in ways that our puny minds cannot possibly imagine. This bold hypothesis, now often called 'The Singularity,' strikes some as wonderful and strikes others as abhorrent. But whether it is wonderful or abhorrent, is the singularity scenario even remotely plausible, or is it just science fiction? If the singularity scenario is plausible, is the time frame proposed ridiculous or realistic?"

The Singularity Summit at Stanford: "For over a hundred thousand years, the evolved human brain has held a priviliged place in the expanse of cognition. Within this century, science may move humanity beyond its boundary of intelligence. "

The Singularity Summit at Stanford: "For over a hundred thousand years, the evolved human brain has held a priviliged place in the expanse of cognition. Within this century, science may move humanity beyond its boundary of intelligence. "

The Power and Interest News Report (PINR): "Both the U.S. and Iran continue to take little steps toward confrontation. Washington wants to prevent, or at least delay, Iran's move toward controlling the nuclear fuel cycle, and Tehran is testing Washington's limits since it believes that military action against it is unlikely and that the U.S. is in a weak position to confront Iran effectively. "

Mystical Paths: Trends Worth Noticing: "The majority of Jews in the world now live in Israel. This population statistic was noted earlier this year.

Tel Aviv has more Jews living there than New York City, making it the most Jewish populated city in the world. This was also noted ealier this year."

Arutz Sheva - Israel National News: "According to the survey, 81% of Israel's population is Jewish, 12% are Muslim, 3.5% are Christian, 1.5% are atheist and .5% said they belong to other religions. 48% of Israel's Druze population said they were not religious.

The survey also examined religious trends among Israel's Arabs, finding that only 18% said they were not religious at all. 11% said they were 'very religious,' 49% said they were 'religious,' and 21% as 'not very religious.'"

Arutz Sheva - Israel National News: "According to the study, which was carried out from 2002 to 2004, 8% of Israeli Jews defined themselves as hareidi-religious, 9% as Orthodox and 39% as traditional � leaving secular Jews as a minority of 44%.

The rate of those identifying as secular is much higher among native Israelis of European and North American origin (63%) than those from Asian origin (33%) or Sephardic and North African origin (25%).

When the questions used terms of religiosity instead of denominational labels, just 18% said they were 'not religious at all.' 11% said they were 'very religious,' 42% as 'religious' and 21% said they were 'not very religious.' "

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Knowledge - Technology Review: "Harvard's Matthew Meselson has said the same and added that a world in which the new biotechnology was deployed militarily 'would be a world in which the very nature of conflict had radically changed. Therein could lie unprecedented opportunities for violence, coercion, repression, or subjugation.' Meselson adds, 'Governments might have the objective of controlling very large numbers of people. If you have a situation of permanent conflict, people begin contemplating things that the ordinary rules of conflict don't allow. They begin to view the enemy as subhuman. Eventually, this leads to viewing people in your own culture as tools.'"

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Knowledge - Technology Review: "The 21st century will see a biological revolution analogous to the industrial revolution of the 19th. But both its benefits and its threats will be more profound and more disruptive.
The near-term threat is that genes could be hacked outside of large laboratories. This means that terrorists could create recombinant biological weapons. But the leading edge of bioweapon research has always been the work of government labs. The longer-term threat is what it always has been: national militaries. Biotechnology will furnish them with weapons of unprecedented power and specificity. George Poste, in his 2003 speech to the National Academies, warned his audience that in coming decades the life sciences would loom ever larger in national-security matters and international affairs. Poste noted, 'If you actually look at the history of the assimilation of technological advance into the calculus of military affairs, you cannot find a historical precedent in which dramatic new technologies that redress military inferiority are not deployed.'"

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Knowledge - Technology Review: "A burgeoning revolution in 'targeting specificity' (targeting is the process of engineering molecules to recognize and bind to particular types of cells) is creating new opportunities in pharmaceuticals; simultaneously, it is advancing the prospects for chemical and biological weapons. Current research is investigating agents that target the distinct biochemical pathways in the central nervous system and that could render people sedate, calm, or otherwise incapacitated. All that targeting specificity could, in principle, also be applied to biological weapons."

In February, a report by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council of the National Academies entitled "Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences" argued, "In the future, genetic engineering and other technologies may lead to the development of pathogenic organisms with unique, unpredictable characteristics." Pondering the possibility of these recombinant pathogens, the authors note, "It is not at all unreasonable to anticipate that [these] biological threats will be increasingly sought after...and used for warfare, terrorism, and criminal purposes, and by increasingly less sophisticated and resourced individuals, groups, or nations." The report concludes, "Sooner or later, it is reasonable to expect the appearance of "bio-hackers.'"
http://www.technologyreview.com/BioTech/wtr_16485,306,p2.html

The Impact of Emerging Technologies: The Knowledge - Technology Review: "Biotechnology�s advance could give malefactors the ability to manipulate life processes--and even affect human behavior."

Summit for the Future blog: "The Asian Development Bank has forecast that China could be the world�s largest economy as early as 2025. "

When we look at cooperate life expectancy, we have to remember that many companies have died and many live for a very short period. The average life expectancy of companies in the northern hemisphere was 16 years in the 1950ies and has since then decreased. We did a follow up study in Europe and Japan. 10 years after the Shell study, life expectancy was down to 9,5 years. In France it is 9 years and latest in the US, it is down to 4 years.

Human work community, which aims at continuity from generation to generation. The idea of the leader disappears; young come in and follow the old. The goal is survival and self-development and the measure of success is the life expectancy of the company, 100 better than 40.

‘Companies are institutions that produce goods and services for which other people are prepared to pay a price’

Ten Trends Reshaping the Global Landscape by Van Wishard, World Trends Research: "Fourth, the information environment in which the individual lives has been radically altered. Throughout history, the transmission of information, ideas and images took place slowly, taking weeks, even months, to move around the world. Such a slow pace of information travel gave people time to adjust psychologically to a new information environment. Today, we zap information, ideas and images across the globe in nanoseconds. People have no time to adjust, no time to assimilate the new information and shape it into coherent meaning. The result is uncertainty and disorientation."

There may be a slight increase in the role of religion in the near future. 35% see religion
increasing in their lives and only 5% believe that it will play a lesser role, although a majority see
the role of religion playing about the same role in their lives as it does now. Younger voters and
African-Americans are particularly likely to see religion playing a greater role in their lives over the
next decade, a trend that has the potential for political impact.

The 2004 election saw a significant shift toward cable/satellite television and Internet/blogs as
sources of political news. According to the survey, that trend is likely to continue over the next
decade with the greatest increase in consumer demand for news likely to be for Internet/blogs
followed by cable television.

There is likely to be continued movement toward the right, as America remains a center-right
country. 27% of the electorate say they will become more conservative while 15% say more
liberal which represents a slight shift to the right. 11% said they would most likely move toward
the middle, and 44% say they are not likely to change. Of particular importance, however, is our
finding that there may be significant ideological movement among liberals and the minority
communities, which may pose an opportunity for conservatives.
http://www.conginst.org/pulse/pdf/winston.pdf

World Peace Herald: "The Arab-Israeli conflict is not a religious one. It is not Islam versus Judaism. Muslims and Jews have lived together peacefully in the region for thousands of years. The conflict is one of occupier and occupied. The conflict is about land and resources. "

Voices - Debating The Pro- Israel Lobby's Influence On US Policy In The Mideast: "It's obvious that Americans need a free and fair-minded national debate that addresses at least three crucial questions (because they are NOT merely academic): (1) Is the pro-Israel lobby a major causal factor in persuading the US government to attack Iran; (2) If not, what are the major causal factors that are pushing the US government to attack Iran; and (3) In either case, is it truly in America's national interests - as opposed to Israel's national interests or the Corporatocracy's war-profiteering interests - to unnecessarily commence an unjust and illegal war of aggression against Iran? "

Voices - Debating The Pro- Israel Lobby's Influence On US Policy In The Mideast: "Nevertheless, we can surmise that five major causal factors are pushing the Anglo-Americans toward war against Iran: (a) Big Oil (e.g., Bush, Cheney and Rice are former oil-company executives who know that Iran holds 10% of the world's known oil reserves, and that any pipeline from the new Central Asian oilfields would have to run directly through Iran to be shipped from the Mediterranean Sea to England and the eastern USA); (b) the American military-industrial complex and its war-profiteering investors (e.g., Halliburton and the Carlyle Group); (c) the American Religious Right (e.g., to satisy their evangelical pro-war, end-times vision of a reconstituted 'Greater Israel'); and (d) Israel and its pro-Israel lobby in America (e.g., AIPAC and JINSA, to satisfy their Zionist visions of Israeli dominance in the region without any real concessions). "

The Korea Herald : The Nation's No.1 English Newspaper: "It is a fact of democratic life in the United States that determined interest groups annex their own spheres of federal policy. Energy policy is run by the oil companies, and trade policy by manufacturers, exporters and importers, with an input from Wall Street.
U.S. Cuba policy is decided by the Cuban lobby in Florida, and policy on Armenia by Americans of Armenian descent. The Middle East, or at least its part of it, belongs to Israel.
However, in the Israeli case, the lobbying effort is linked to a foreign government, even if the lobbyists sometimes take a policy line not that of the government. Moreover, the lobbying involves issues of war and peace. "

Does Israel Conduct Covert Action in America? - by Michael Scheuer: "Covert action is much talked about and little understood. At its most basic level, covert action is a set of intelligence operations undertaken by a specific state's intelligence agencies to advance its national interests. They are executed in a manner that limits the visibility of that state's hand in whatever is done. Ideally, covert actions cannot be traced back to their sponsor. Most people take the term covert action to mean violent actions of one kind or another: kidnapping, assassination, support for insurgents, etc. While violence can certainly be part of a covert-action campaign, the more insidious � and often more effective � arm of covert action is called 'political action,' whereby one state seeks to influence the public opinion of another by speaking through the mouths of that country's citizens. "

Today the first five most spoken
languages are Chinese, English, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, and Arabic. The
projections for the year 2050 for the age group between 15 and 24 years give the
following estimates in millions: Chinese (166), Hindi/Urdu (74), Arabic (77),
English (65) Spanish (63) , Portuguese (33)24.
I always say optimistically, “Since wars have become the expression of cultural
arrogance, cultural humility is now the new name for peace.”25
Mutual tolerance is and will always remain the key to survival.

You can bombard and bulldoze towns and buildings but you can never do the
same to values which are the most resistant components in the socio-cultural
components of all societies.

The question of allegiance is of great relevance to our topic. A recent survey of
the American institute PEW has shown that in the Arab countries allegiance to
Islam came way before the one to the nation. In the case of Morocco, for
instance, a vast proportion of the population (80%) put Islam first.

Let us examine a few figures concerning the demography of various religions5 in
the world:
• Christianity: 2.1 billion
• Islam: 1.6 billion
• Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion
• Hinduism: 900 million
• Chinese traditional religion: 394 million
• Buddhism: 376 million
• Primal-indigenous: 300 million
• African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million
• Sikhism: 23 million
• Spiritism: 15 million
• Judaism: 14 million
Let us not forget that the Arab world represents only 20% of the total world
Muslim population. The present and the future of Islam are both in Asia.
The total fertility rate of the Muslim world is slightly above 3 children per
woman and 30 percent of its population is under 15 years of age. By way of
comparison, Western Europe has a fertility rate of 1.6, which is below
replacement, and only 17 percent of its population is under 15. Hence the
problem is not only quantitative but also qualitative when comparing the age
pyramids. This is why according to the United Nations, Europe will need 159
million immigrants between 2000 and 2025. Where will they come from?

The notion of the Nation-State which was born in Europe after bloody religious
wars is now being slowly eroded as that continent discovers the advantages of
unity. This unity is being carried out through various schemes whereas the
Muslim world has been for many decades the object of Western dividing
policies which fragment its population continuously particularly since the end of
the Ottoman Empire and up to this day.

I have said on many occasions and I repeat it today that no Western Power is
ready to accept the emergence of truly democratic regimes in the Muslim world.
Such a change would wipe out the benefits which the present corrupt regimes
offer them.
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Elmandjra_Muslims_Europe.pdf