NOTE: Words of Power is published on a bi-weekly basis, and alternates with the GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, also posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. "Words of Power" commentary will explore a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability and spirit. The GS(3) Intel Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global and Cyberspace. Each issue will provide insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net.
Words of Power #11: The Outer Limits ("We control the horizontal and the vertical...")
The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.
--Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio G. Spafford, March 17, 1814
Something has gone very wrong in the psyche of USA.
An ugly and un-American mentality has crawled out of the shadows and seized control of the Horizontal and the Vertical.
Let’s consider some recent news items in context.
The Inquisitor vs. The Quantum Physicist
“Insisting that God certainly needs to be involved in the Supreme Court confirmation process,” three Christian ministers snuck into the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room and “anointed” all the chairs. (Wall Street Journal, 1-5-06) Don’t these “shepherds” or their “flocks” know that the Founding Fathers were NOT Christians? Notably Tom Paine, the man who incited the American Revolution, George Washington, the man who won the Revolutionary War, and Thomas Jefferson, the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. They were “Deists.” So was Abraham Lincoln, the man who saved the Republic. They did not believe that Jesus was their personal savior. They revered reason rather than revelation. Tom Paine wrote: “The Deist needs none of those tricks and shows called miracles to confirm his faith, for what can be a greater miracle than the creation itself, and his own existence?” The world-views of David Bohme and the Dalai Lama are much closer to those of the Founding Fathers than the the world views of Judge Alito or the three ministers who pray so ardently for his ascendancy. While, on the other hand, the world-views of Alito and some other Bush-Cheney sycophants are more in tune with Torquemada or Pinochet than the Founding Fathers: “John Yoo publicly argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering the torture of a child of a suspect in custody – including by crushing that child’s testicles. This came out in response to a question in a December 1st debate in Chicago with Notre Dame professor and international human rights scholar Doug Cassel. What is particularly chilling and revealing about this is that John Yoo was a key architect post-9/11 Bush Administration legal policy.” (www.informationclearinghouse.info, 1-18-06)
Brutalize the Sensibilities of the Public
Of course, in a healthy republic, an independent, aggressive news media (a.k.a. “the fourth estate”) acts as a national trip wire that sounds the alarm and alerts the citizenry to unwholesomeness in high places. But the US mainstream news media has abdicated that responsibility over the last five years. Indeed, they have embraced the ugly, un-American mentality that has seized the Horizontal and the Vertical. For example, CNN, the once proud network of Ted Turner and Christiane Amanpour, recently hired not only “radio host and former Reagan administration Secretary of Education Bill Bennett,” but also Glenn Beck, “a nationally syndicated radio host known for making controversial statements.”
On 9-28-05, Bennett opined: “[Y]ou could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.” On 9-9-05, Beck referred to survivors of Hurricane Katrina who remained in New Orleans as "scumbags." Also, after acknowledging that nobody "in their right mind is going to say this out loud," Beck attacked victims of the disaster in general and the families of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying: "I didn't think I could hate victims faster than the 9-11 victims." (Media Matters, 1-17-06)
In a sane society, both Bennett and Beck would have lost their radio shows for uttering such vile remarks—instead, they were both rewarded with lucrative contacts as cable TV news network commentators.
Intimidate Truth-Tellers
Meanwhile, however, James E. Hansen, NASA’s “top climate scientist,” has been warned to shut up. No, Hansen isn’t being admonished for making vile remarks about aborting black babies or hating the families of the 9/11 victims. He is being pressured to stop speaking out on the threat of global warming and what must be done to counteract it: “The scientist…longtime director of the agency's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, said…that officials at NASA headquarters had ordered the public affairs staff to review his coming lectures, papers, postings on the Goddard Web site and requests for interviews from journalists. Dr. Hansen said he would ignore the restrictions. ‘They feel their job is to be this censor of information going out to the public,’ he said….In several interviews with The New York Times in recent days, Dr. Hansen said it would be irresponsible not to speak out, particularly because NASA's mission statement includes the phrase ‘to understand and protect our home planet.’” (New York Times, 1-28-06)
Denounce The Dissidents
Nor is Hansen alone in his predicament.
Professor Saree Makdisi highlights a disturbing development on campus: “UCLA STUDENTS: Do you have a professor who just can't stop talking about President Bush, about the war in Iraq, about the Republican Party, or any other ideological issue that has nothing to do with the class subject matter? It doesn't matter whether this is a past class, or your class from this coming winter quarter. If you help expose the professor, we'll pay you for your work." This grotesque offer appeared last week on a new website taking aim at members of the UCLA faculty. The site, created by the Bruin Alumni Assn., a group founded by 2003 UCLA graduate Andrew Jones, offers differing bounties for class notes, handouts and illicit recordings of lectures ($100 for all three). A glance at the profiles of the "targeted professors," however, reveals that they have been singled out, in most cases, not for what goes on in their courses, but for the positions they have taken outside the classroom — and outside the university…My colleagues and I are being targeted for speaking out on the kinds of urgent social matters and universal principles that it has always — in every society and every age — been the task of intellectuals to address. (Witch Hunt at UCLA, Los Angeles Times, 1-22-06)
Mired in Mediocrity
Here are two more beads to string on this mala of menace:
Reporters Without Borders recently released its second world press freedom ranking: "Like last year, the most catastrophic situation is to found in Asia, with eight countries in the bottom ten: North Korea, Burma, Laos, China, Iran, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Bhutan…Cuba is in 165th position, second from last…Eritrea, in 162nd position, has the worst situation in Africa…Wealth and press freedom don’t always go together As in 2002, the ranking shows that a country’s respect for press freedom is not solely linked to its economic development. The top 50 include countries that are among the poorest in the world, such as Benin (29th position), Timor-Leste (30th) and Madagascar (46th). Conversely, the 50 countries that respect press freedom least include such rich nations as Bahrain (117th) and Singapore (144th). The ranking distinguishes behaviour at home and abroad in the cases of the United States and Israel. They are ranked in 31st and 44th positions respectively as regards respect for freedom of expression on their own territory, but they fall to the 135th and 146th positions as regards behaviour beyond their borders." ( PRESS FREEDOM IN 2005, Reporters Without Borders, 1-8-06)
A pilot study of environmental performance, jointly produced by Yale and Columbia Universities, which shows that just six nations - led by New Zealand, followed by five from Northern Europe - have achieved 85 percent or better success in meeting a set of critical environmental goals ranging from clean drinking water and low ozone levels to sustainable fisheries and low greenhouse gas emissions, ranked the United States 28th over all, behind most of Western Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Malaysia, Costa Rica and Chile, but ahead of Russia and South Korea.( Felicity Barringer, United States Ranks 28th on Environment, a New Study Says, New York Times, 1-23-06)
Excuse me? The USA is ranked 31st in the world for press freedom and 28th in the world for environmental performance?
Anti-Constitutional & Un-American
Bush, Cheney, Alito, Yoo and their fellow travelers are called “Neo-Conservatives,” but the label is misleading. They are really Neo-Totalitarians. They are anti-Constitutional and un-American. They want a Ceasar, not a Republic. They are in control of the Horizontal and the Vertical. Welcome to the Outer Limits…”
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc.
You can reach Richard Power via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net.
For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
GS(3) Intelligence Briefing 1-21-06
NOTE: GS(3) Intelligence Briefing is posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. The Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global and Cyberspace. Each issue provides insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. “Words of Power" commentary is also posted on a bi-weekly basis. This commentary explores a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability and spirit. http://www.wordsofpower.net/
This issue of GS(3) Intelligence Briefing contains excerpts from 17 news items that deserve your attention. Here is a summary of each of the five sub-sections. The excerpts with links to full text follow below.
Europe, Middle East & Africa: Although the spread of Bird Flu is a global danger, the outbreak of human bird flu cases in Turkey highlights the imminent threat to Europe. In the last two weeks, dozens of people have been acknowledged as suffering from it, and at least four children have died. The strain is showing, and the tension is rising. Consider these two stories from recent days: “Discussions questioning whether ‘bird flu could be a biological weapon’ marked the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group meeting held yesterday behind closed doors. Ankara Deputy Ersonmez Yarbay in a speech delivered at the session, at which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not attend, put forward the notion that bird flu could be a biological weapon. ‘This could be some kind of smart virus that starts from our border regions and is seen in the Turkish cities of Agri and Igdir, but does not pass to Armenia and Iran. It appears to be heading towards the West. Perhaps this is some type of biological weapon; the issue’s military dimensions must be seriously analyzed,’ Yarbay said.” (Zaman, 1-18-06). “The country has reported confirmed or suspected H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in 26 provinces, including areas a few miles away from the borders with Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Georgia. Turkey also borders Bulgaria and Greece. ‘We know through unofficial channels that the disease exists … in neighboring countries, which are ruled by closed regimes,’ Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker said during a meeting with governors of Turkey's 81 provinces. ‘These countries do not officially declare the existence of the disease.’ He did not name the countries.” (Associated Press, 1-20-06).
The mounting human toll in Indonesia, China and Turkey, which have all suffered outbreaks within the last few months, is disturbing, and indicates acceleration and escalation, whether officially acknowledged or not. (You should also assume that the situations in Indonesia and China are worse than they appear.)
I have included four stories on preparations underway in the global financial services sector, which are both encouraging and worrisome. Encouraging because some global organizations are at least now coming around to where some of us were telling them they should be six months to a year ago. Worrisome because, with the financial services sector (typically ahead of the curve) just now kicking into gear, you can be sure that most global organizations in other sectors have done little to nothing. GS(3) can help you develop crisis management and business continuity capabilities.
Asia Pacific: Global warming, like Bird Flu, is a danger that impacts everyone everywhere, but this issue highlights the implications for India, Japan and the rest of the region: “Asia is reeling under the harshest winter for years. In China, temperatures have plunged as low as minus 43C and 100,000 people had to be evacuated when houses collapsed under the snow. A quarter of a million people have been snowed in. Japan has suffered its heaviest ever blizzards, with drifts up to 10 feet deep. The authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented snow, and have had to call out the army to try to clear roads and roofs. In Kashmir, the famous Dal Lake, where tourists stay in elegant houseboats in the summer months, has frozen over for the first time in 10 years… People have been dying of the cold right across Asia: at least 70 in Japan, and at least 47 in Pakistan, where in the north temperatures have dropped to around minus 25C…”(Independent, 1-11-06)
Americas: Bin Laden (if it is indeed Bin Laden) has issued a new audiotape, in which he boasts of terror operations underway inside the US. Unfortunately, the real Bin Laden does not boast idly. (Of course, Bin Laden's messages always include quotes from the Koran, and this one does not.) It has been 1587 days, as of 1-21-06, since US. President Bush vowed to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive.” But it has also been quite a while since, in March 2002 (less than one year after 9/11), Bush said that he didn’t spend much time thinking about Bin Laden anymore. And it has been five years since Sandy Berger, the Clinton-Gore administration’s National Security Adviser, told the incoming Bush-Cheney team that smashing Bin Laden had to be their No. 1 national security priority, as it had become for Clinton-Gore. In a few months, it will be five years since FBI counterterrorism expert John P. O’Neill resigned in frustration with the Bush-Cheney team’s obstruction of his Al Qaeda investigation. So the story really isn’t Bin Laden. The story is the failure of the Bush-Cheney national security team. Of course, the environmental security and economic security of the US have also gone in the tank over the last six years. But the situation is even worse. Overarching all of these causes for despair, there is the profound Constitutional crisis that the US is spiraling into…I have included four items, which should be of interest and concern to everyone everywhere – because if the military and economic superpower ceases to be a nation of laws (and it is on the verge of such a catastrophe), the spectrum of global risk will have to be significantly recalibrated in scope and intensity.
Global: If the US had not squandered the good will it received in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on its disastrous war in Iraq, if it had focused on killing Bin Laden and Zawahiri and crushing Al Qaeda, if it had not tortured at Abu Ghraib or dropped chemical weapons on Fallujah, if it had not abandoned the Middle East peace process, if it had responded to Khatami years ago, perhaps US power and influence would not have been so badly compromised, and that power and influence could have been used as leverage in some constructive way in the EU's so far futile diplomatic initiative, and in the UN Security Council's coming deliberations. But that is all pointless speculation now. Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons (or are they?). And how the situation is handled over the next few months may determine whether or not we are all plunged into another world war (a real world war). I have included four articles from European and Asian perspectives to provide some broader context than the jingoism of the so-called "neo-cons" ("neo-totalitarians" would be more apt) and those in the political opposition too afraid to confront them with the bitter fruits of their folly.
Cyberspace: I have included two stories, one from the US and one from India, which underscore the need for every global business to have a counterintelligence capability, either in-house or on retainer. It also highlights the need for awareness and education programs that empower and enlighten people to come to grips with the danger to their personal finances, their privacy and their family’s safety. GS(3) Intelligence can help your organization develop such programs.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
On a practical level, financial institutions are being forced to consider the possibility of large numbers of staff falling ill. "If there were a pandemic firms would need to take into account being without 10 per cent of their staff over a period of three months," says a spokesman for the UK's Financial Services Authority. One lesson from Sars is to encourage employees to keep clean, and to improve hygiene in offices in order to limit the spread of the disease. Among others, Citigroup, the world's largest bank, has already improved disinfecting regimes. In the event of an outbreak, banks are also preparing to limit the contact staff have with others, possibly by allowing them to work from home.
Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are even exploring with regulators the possibility of traders working from home.
Another question banks face is whether to start vaccinating employees and their families. Some reports have suggested banks are stockpiling vaccines, but most institutions say they have not done so, although they may be considering it.
"It is better for national governments to co-ordinate this and to make sure that supplies go to the people that really need it," says a spokesman for Standard Chartered, the emerging markets bank. But financial institutions must also consider the broader impact of an outbreak of flu on the economy. Banks would have to consider how they should respond if particular sectors of the economy, such as airlines or hotel operators, got into financial difficulty. Regulators are also monitoring the insurance industry's ability to absorb a large increase in health or life insurance claims. Banks are also planning for increased cash withdrawals, and for the possibility that there may be a sudden increase in phone and internet banking if more people stay at home. Indeed, during a recent meeting at the FSA, Britain's largest banks discussed their ability to handle a sudden increase in electronic banking volumes.
Banks and insurers prepare for avian flu outbreak, Financial Times, 1-9-06
THE world's third biggest bank, the London based HSBC, has drawn up plans to cope without up to half its staff if there is a bird flu pandemic, the Financial Times reported today. The newspaper quoted HSBC's head of group crisis management, Bob Piggott, as saying several other banks were "moving towards" similar estimates for staff absences during any pandemic lasting up to three months. "(Bird flu) is probably the single biggest challenge for the whole group," said Piggott… Piggott said many employees would stay at home with the flu, some would have secondary infections and others would be absent to care for family members or to avoid infection. He said London-based HSBC, which employs more than 250,000 staff in 77 countries, had devised plans to increase working from home and other ways to get over the impact of a pandemic.
Top bank has bird flu plan, Reuters, 1-10-06
Analyst Gartner is urging businesses to prepare continuity programmes so they can react in the event of an outbreak. Steve Bittenger, research director at Gartner, said: "Business continuity and IT leaders are ideally placed to plan for avian flu's threats…So how could IT help to keep a company running? Ritchie Jeune, group CEO for Evolution Security Systems, which works with banks in Hong Kong, said having small contingency teams already set up to work remotely is essential. He said: "Part of disaster recovery is to have a working solution. You do that by creating mini companies so people can work together. You make sub-teams so you can still run your business. These groups will work from home. Basically, you are splitting your work force."
http://www.silicon.com/financialservices/0,3800010322,39155650,00.htm
Reserve Bank staff have been given medical face masks, hand gel, gloves and tissues in an "emergency bag" for use in the event of an influenza pandemic. The backpacks were given to the bank's 210 staff last August and have now been updated to include the pandemic-related items. Reserve Bank spokesman Mike Hannah said the emergency bags predated the bank's pandemic preparations. "They're designed to assist us in the event of things like an earthquake, tsunami or severe floods where we are unable to leave the building or the Wellington CBD for one to three days," he said yesterday…The backpacks also contain a light stick, plastic sanitation bag, water bottle, whistle, wind and waterproof matches, survival blanket, water purification tables, a torch and survival instructions. Staff are expected to add their own shoes, food and any medicine they may need. The Reserve Bank also holds food and water supplies …Meanwhile, a radio campaign promoting pandemic preparedness began yesterday. The advertisements have been created by Radio New Zealand, which is a "lifeline utility" under the Civil Defence and Emergency Act…RNZ had made the advertisements available to other radio stations. The advertisements stress that although there is no influenza pandemic at present, New Zealand health authorities are seriously planning for a possible pandemic in the future. The campaign gives people basic information and practical steps to reduce the impact of a flu outbreak. Last year's television advertisements will be followed by a second campaign due to start in March.
Reserve Bank staff get bird flu kit, New Zealand Herald, 1-17-06
Asia Pacific
In the climate-change disaster movie "The Day after Tomorrow," a snowstorm in Delhi is one of the freak weather conditions that are depicted as portents of doom. It hasn't got quite that bad in real life yet, but this week there was frost in the Indian capital for the first time in decades…Asia is reeling under the harshest winter for years. In China, temperatures have plunged as low as minus 43C and 100,000 people had to be evacuated when houses collapsed under the snow. A quarter of a million people have been snowed in. Japan has suffered its heaviest ever blizzards, with drifts up to 10 feet deep. The authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented snow, and have had to call out the army to try to clear roads and roofs. In Kashmir, the famous Dal Lake, where tourists stay in elegant houseboats in the summer months, has frozen over for the first time in 10 years. Weather forecasters are warnings of heavy snowfalls and possible avalanches in the areas of Kashmir and Pakistan affected by last year's earthquake, where hundreds of thousands of people are living with nothing but flimsy tents to protect them.
Compared to all that, Delhi may seem to be making an unnecessary fuss. It may be the lowest temperature in Delhi for 70 years - and the second lowest ever recorded - but it has only dipped below zero by the narrowest of margins: minus 0.2C….But for India's hundreds of thousands of homeless, the danger is very real. Every year, they die of the cold in Delhi and other cities across north India. And most years, it does not get anywhere near as cold as it has this year…People have been dying of the cold right across Asia: at least 70 in Japan, and at least 47 in Pakistan, where in the north temperatures have dropped to around minus 25C. India has not seen such extreme conditions. One of the highest death tolls has been in India's Uttar Pradesh state, where at least 102 people have died but temperatures have not dropped any lower than minus 1C. In Bangladesh, at least 40 people have died, although temperatures have not even dipped to freezing. Most South Asians are simply unable to cope with even these comparatively mild temperatures. They do not possess blankets or warm clothes. Their bodies are inured to withstand the searing heat of summer, not the cold…In this part of the world, even those with a roof over their heads rarely have heating. But for the homeless, the situation is even worse.
Justin Huggler, Extreme Weather in Asia: The Big Freeze, Independent UK, 1-11-06
Environmental problems such as global warming can be tackled only if the international community addresses the problem of population growth, a leading scientist warned today. Professor Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said the 76 million annual increase in the world's population threatens "the welfare and quality of life of future generations." But he said population growth was the "Cinderella" issue of the environmental debate, because its implications are so controversial that nobody dares to raise it. Scientific analysis suggests that the Earth can sustain around 2-3 billion people at a good standard of living over the long term, wrote Prof. Rapley in an article for the BBC News website. But the current global population of 6.5 billion - expected to rise to 8 billion by the middle of the century - means mankind is imposing an ever greater "footprint" on the planet. Advances made in the battle to rein in climate change, such as last month's Montreal agreement, threaten to be wiped out by the need of each additional person for food, shelter, transport and waste disposal facilities…Prof. Rapley acknowledged that population control and reduction was "a bombshell of a topic," raising profound moral and ethical issues.
Consequently, the issue was rarely raised when politicians, scientists and campaigners discussed what needs to be done to protect the environment, he said. But he warned: "Unless and until this changes, summits such as that in Montreal which address only part of the problem will be limited to at best very modest success, with the welfare and quality of life of future generations the ineluctable casualty."
Andrew Woodcock, Booming Population 'Threat to Climate Change Fight', Independent UK, 1-6-06
We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 percent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable…So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilization is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent…We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.
James Lovelock, The Earth is About to Catch a Morbid Fever That May Last as Long as 100,000 Years, Independent/UK, 1-16-06
Americas
Say "fascism" to anyone you meet, and you will be greeted with the boilerplate response of the blithely overconfident: such a thing cannot happen here. This is the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. Ours is a nation of laws, of checks and balances, of righteousness and decency. Our laws and traditions stand as a bulwark against the rise of totalitarian madness. It cannot happen here. Thus we are indoctrinated into the school of our own assumed greatness…The core strength of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present itself in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of our greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it. This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be sure the lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep. This new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination with the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order. The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled "Ur-Fascism," delineated several core elements that have existed in one form or another in every fascist state in history: "Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason. Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state." We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our institutions, our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute and authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being dismantled a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your street or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered fascism of today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.
William Rivers Pitt, The New Fascism, www.truthout.org, 1-17-06
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do? The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution." The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling…Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements. And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages….One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest…The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously? It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same…A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President…Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security. Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads. Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed. Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens. Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy. It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Al Gore, In Martin Luther King Day address, Gore compares wiretapping of Americans to surveillance of King, Raw Story, 1-16-06
For a constitutional confrontation at least five years in the making, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee looked as prepared to confront Samuel Alito as FEMA chief Michael Brown did in responding to Hurricane Katrina.
As with the hurricane that zeroed in on New Orleans days before coming ashore, there should have been no surprise about Judge Alito. He was exactly what the Republican base had long wanted in a Supreme Court nominee, a hard-line judicial ideologue with a pleasant demeanor and a soft-spoken style.
Indeed, Alito has been such an unapologetic supporter of the Right’s beloved Imperial Presidency that Alito’s one noteworthy assurance – that George W. Bush was not “above the law” – was essentially meaningless because in Alito’s view Bush is the law. Yet the Democrats were incapable of making an issue out of Alito’s embrace of the “unitary executive,” a concept so radical that it effectively eliminates the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers devised to protect against an out-of-control President. Bush even gave the Democrats a news hook to make the peculiar phrase “unitary executive” a household word. Bush cited his “unitary” powers just days earlier in signaling that he would use his commander-in-chief authority to override the provisions of Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture amendment passed in December 2005.
Robert Parry, Alito Hearings: Democrats' 'Katrina', 1-14-06
Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush - not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so…Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail…These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws - that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law - and repeatedly violates the law - thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government…
Elizabeth Holtzman, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, The Nation, 1-30-06
Global
Iran has broken the seals at its nuclear research centers. The desired objective? To provoke, or rather, to force, the international community to live with the issue…Given the results, it's time for the players involved to agree that the work accomplished has proven to be a failure and to use the recourse available to them, i.e., the UN. Within that institution, Great Britain, France, and the United States will face a significant obstacle: the vetoes that China and especially Russia will brandish, the first because Iran is gorging it with oil, the second because Iran is a very important commercial partner. Russia supplies it with nuclear assistance, to the point of building a power plant, and has, moreover, endowed Iran with long-range missiles. As recently as December, Moscow agreed to sell almost thirty of these, capable of covering a distance that worries Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Moscow's leniency with regard to Teheran has one and only one explanation. For the masters of the Kremlin, Iran, as part of its sphere of influence, can be an ally in the geopolitical games that agitate the region. In that regard, certain facts must be emphasized. On account of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the American Army has based itself not only in those countries, but also in certain republics of central Asia once directed by Moscow…Now, we can contemplate the following: the members of the troika will find themselves back in the closet of fiascos, the United States will grumble, the Russians will rub their hands, and - above all - Iran will buy the so-precious time in which to pursue its ultimate objective: the bomb. The bomb in the hands of fascists and, moreover, of unstable fascists, at that…
Serge Truffaut, Iran Thumbs Its Nose at the World, Le Devoir, 1-11-06
Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources…The Israeli raids would be carried out by long-range F-15E bombers and cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons program back by up to two years. Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions. The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process…Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.
Ian Bruce, Israelis Plan Pre-emptive Strike on Iran, The Herald UK, 1-10-06
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rightly acts like a man who has the upper hand. He is president (though not ruler) of a theocracy that has the world's second largest supply of gas in the middle of an energy crisis. This is a pretty strong starting point. He and his officials hurled derision at Blair and other Western leaders as they met last week to decide what to do about Iran's decision to break the seals off its nuclear research laboratory in defiance of the IAEA strictures.
Its claim to only want civil nuclear energy is risible. Russia has offered to process uranium for Iran and send it off, below the strength needed for a bomb. The European Union has made similar noises - but Tehran wants something more.
It has seen the prestige and clout which Pakistan acquired when it developed its nuclear bomb. Such countries tend not to be threatened as much, and will never be invaded. This is the status Iran wants, and it will eventually get there.
The severity of the threat lies in the nature of the regime. Iran is now the world's most active state paymaster of terrorism. Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are all its offspring - so, on a low level, it is already at war.
It is busy developing an intercontinental missile, the Saharb 3, with an 800-mile range that could hit Israel. Anti-semitism is the calling card of Ahmadinejad's government: he regularly denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to move to Europe. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obvious since it re-launched its uranium conversion programme last August. The EU thought it could sweet-talk Tehran out of them - Iran took them for the suckers they are and carried on regardless…As the world environment grows more tense than it has been since the end of the Cold War, the UN shows itself hopelessly inefficient at tackling such threats...The UN is losing a battle against murderers on camelback and horseback: no wonder Tehran is so unconcerned about Blair's threats. And if the 'great powers' cannot deal with today's Iran they stand no chance of dealing with a nuclear one. If there is no one to tame Iran, then there is no one to calm Israel. These are the stark facts of the Middle East at present - and Blair is more powerless to change them than he would dare admit.
FRASER NELSON, Let's admit it, Iran has the upper hand, The Scotmans, 1-15-06
Iran is a culturally vibrant, self-confident society with a strong economy, which now stands further boosted by high oil prices. It is a middle-level military power with a popularly elected government. It will not be easy to isolate Iran, unlike Iraq.
"In fact," said Hari Vasudevan, professor of international relations at Calcutta University, "Iran enjoys a unique strategic advantage because of the highly troubled situation in Iraq, which the US has failed to quell." He added: "Sixty percent of Iraq's population is Shi'ite, and Iran wields enormous influence in Iraq. It has so far desisted from fomenting further trouble in Iraq, but could do so if cornered and provoked by the US and its allies." Iran has two more advantages in its favor. It has been working closely with Russia in its civilian nuclear program. Russia is helping it build a power reactor at Bushehr, due to be commissioned this year. It also enjoys a degree of support and sympathy from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and China…"All this might only frustrate US efforts to diplomatically isolate Iran," said Qamar Agha, a Middle East expert at the Center for West and Central Asian Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi. "Western Europe is far too dependent upon Iran's oil and gas to go to extreme lengths in sustaining sanctions that cripple Iran's energy generation. Therefore, the US might be tempted to use military force, jointly with Israel, to bomb select facilities in Iran." A number of US doctrinal pronouncements, and reports about a recently approved US "global strike plan", with a nuclear option, suggest that a preemptive US strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, either unilateral or jointly with Israel, cannot be ruled out…Any such attack would break the 60-year-old, very welcome, taboo against the use of nuclear weapons - with extraordinarily negative consequences for global peace and security. Such an outcome can only be prevented if the West moves away from coercive diplomacy to isolate Iran and opens serious talks with it, and if the nuclear weapons states rethink their own policies. As the West accuses Iran of nursing nuclear ambitions, it has itself no intention of reducing nuclear arms…Smaller nuclear states such as Israel, India and Pakistan have set negative examples
Praful Bidwai, RED LINES IN THE IRANIAN SAND, Asia Times Online, 1-13-06
Cyberspace
The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official. Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often. And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company…In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers' phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer. And some online brokers have used deception to get the lists from the phone companies, he said…To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said…How well do the services work? The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was closed for the New Year's holiday. On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.
Ernie Rizzo, a Chicago private investigator, said he uses a similar cell phone record service to conduct research for his clients. On Friday, for instance, Rizzo said he ordered the cell phone records of a suburban police chief whose wife suspects he is cheating on her.
FRANK MAIN, Your phone records are for sale, 1-5-06
More than a week after Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh alleged that his phones were being tapped, Delhi Police on Sunday carried out raids at several places in neighbouring Haryana. Police has been raiding various places in an effort to nab those involved in forging documents and illegally tapping phones of Singh, who is the Samajwadi Party general secretary…Police have arrested Bhupendra and Anurag, both private detectives, and Kuldeep, an employee of Reliance Infocomm, in connection with the tapping of Amar Singh's phones over the last two months. Kumar added that these raids were being carried out on the basis of the information received during the questioning of these three people. Anurag is in the custody of the special cell sleuths till January 9. Members of the special cell had registered a case on December 30 last year against Bhupendra for forging letters in the name of R Narayan Swamy, principal secretary (Home) and Ranjit Narayan, joint commissioner (Crime Branch). Police have registered a case of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy against the three people.
Police raids in Haryana on phone tapping issue, Indo-Asian News Service, 1-8-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/.
This issue of GS(3) Intelligence Briefing contains excerpts from 17 news items that deserve your attention. Here is a summary of each of the five sub-sections. The excerpts with links to full text follow below.
Europe, Middle East & Africa: Although the spread of Bird Flu is a global danger, the outbreak of human bird flu cases in Turkey highlights the imminent threat to Europe. In the last two weeks, dozens of people have been acknowledged as suffering from it, and at least four children have died. The strain is showing, and the tension is rising. Consider these two stories from recent days: “Discussions questioning whether ‘bird flu could be a biological weapon’ marked the Justice and Development Party (AKP) group meeting held yesterday behind closed doors. Ankara Deputy Ersonmez Yarbay in a speech delivered at the session, at which Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan did not attend, put forward the notion that bird flu could be a biological weapon. ‘This could be some kind of smart virus that starts from our border regions and is seen in the Turkish cities of Agri and Igdir, but does not pass to Armenia and Iran. It appears to be heading towards the West. Perhaps this is some type of biological weapon; the issue’s military dimensions must be seriously analyzed,’ Yarbay said.” (Zaman, 1-18-06). “The country has reported confirmed or suspected H5N1 outbreaks in poultry in 26 provinces, including areas a few miles away from the borders with Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Georgia. Turkey also borders Bulgaria and Greece. ‘We know through unofficial channels that the disease exists … in neighboring countries, which are ruled by closed regimes,’ Agriculture Minister Mehdi Eker said during a meeting with governors of Turkey's 81 provinces. ‘These countries do not officially declare the existence of the disease.’ He did not name the countries.” (Associated Press, 1-20-06).
The mounting human toll in Indonesia, China and Turkey, which have all suffered outbreaks within the last few months, is disturbing, and indicates acceleration and escalation, whether officially acknowledged or not. (You should also assume that the situations in Indonesia and China are worse than they appear.)
I have included four stories on preparations underway in the global financial services sector, which are both encouraging and worrisome. Encouraging because some global organizations are at least now coming around to where some of us were telling them they should be six months to a year ago. Worrisome because, with the financial services sector (typically ahead of the curve) just now kicking into gear, you can be sure that most global organizations in other sectors have done little to nothing. GS(3) can help you develop crisis management and business continuity capabilities.
Asia Pacific: Global warming, like Bird Flu, is a danger that impacts everyone everywhere, but this issue highlights the implications for India, Japan and the rest of the region: “Asia is reeling under the harshest winter for years. In China, temperatures have plunged as low as minus 43C and 100,000 people had to be evacuated when houses collapsed under the snow. A quarter of a million people have been snowed in. Japan has suffered its heaviest ever blizzards, with drifts up to 10 feet deep. The authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented snow, and have had to call out the army to try to clear roads and roofs. In Kashmir, the famous Dal Lake, where tourists stay in elegant houseboats in the summer months, has frozen over for the first time in 10 years… People have been dying of the cold right across Asia: at least 70 in Japan, and at least 47 in Pakistan, where in the north temperatures have dropped to around minus 25C…”(Independent, 1-11-06)
Americas: Bin Laden (if it is indeed Bin Laden) has issued a new audiotape, in which he boasts of terror operations underway inside the US. Unfortunately, the real Bin Laden does not boast idly. (Of course, Bin Laden's messages always include quotes from the Koran, and this one does not.) It has been 1587 days, as of 1-21-06, since US. President Bush vowed to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive.” But it has also been quite a while since, in March 2002 (less than one year after 9/11), Bush said that he didn’t spend much time thinking about Bin Laden anymore. And it has been five years since Sandy Berger, the Clinton-Gore administration’s National Security Adviser, told the incoming Bush-Cheney team that smashing Bin Laden had to be their No. 1 national security priority, as it had become for Clinton-Gore. In a few months, it will be five years since FBI counterterrorism expert John P. O’Neill resigned in frustration with the Bush-Cheney team’s obstruction of his Al Qaeda investigation. So the story really isn’t Bin Laden. The story is the failure of the Bush-Cheney national security team. Of course, the environmental security and economic security of the US have also gone in the tank over the last six years. But the situation is even worse. Overarching all of these causes for despair, there is the profound Constitutional crisis that the US is spiraling into…I have included four items, which should be of interest and concern to everyone everywhere – because if the military and economic superpower ceases to be a nation of laws (and it is on the verge of such a catastrophe), the spectrum of global risk will have to be significantly recalibrated in scope and intensity.
Global: If the US had not squandered the good will it received in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on its disastrous war in Iraq, if it had focused on killing Bin Laden and Zawahiri and crushing Al Qaeda, if it had not tortured at Abu Ghraib or dropped chemical weapons on Fallujah, if it had not abandoned the Middle East peace process, if it had responded to Khatami years ago, perhaps US power and influence would not have been so badly compromised, and that power and influence could have been used as leverage in some constructive way in the EU's so far futile diplomatic initiative, and in the UN Security Council's coming deliberations. But that is all pointless speculation now. Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons (or are they?). And how the situation is handled over the next few months may determine whether or not we are all plunged into another world war (a real world war). I have included four articles from European and Asian perspectives to provide some broader context than the jingoism of the so-called "neo-cons" ("neo-totalitarians" would be more apt) and those in the political opposition too afraid to confront them with the bitter fruits of their folly.
Cyberspace: I have included two stories, one from the US and one from India, which underscore the need for every global business to have a counterintelligence capability, either in-house or on retainer. It also highlights the need for awareness and education programs that empower and enlighten people to come to grips with the danger to their personal finances, their privacy and their family’s safety. GS(3) Intelligence can help your organization develop such programs.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
On a practical level, financial institutions are being forced to consider the possibility of large numbers of staff falling ill. "If there were a pandemic firms would need to take into account being without 10 per cent of their staff over a period of three months," says a spokesman for the UK's Financial Services Authority. One lesson from Sars is to encourage employees to keep clean, and to improve hygiene in offices in order to limit the spread of the disease. Among others, Citigroup, the world's largest bank, has already improved disinfecting regimes. In the event of an outbreak, banks are also preparing to limit the contact staff have with others, possibly by allowing them to work from home.
Investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are even exploring with regulators the possibility of traders working from home.
Another question banks face is whether to start vaccinating employees and their families. Some reports have suggested banks are stockpiling vaccines, but most institutions say they have not done so, although they may be considering it.
"It is better for national governments to co-ordinate this and to make sure that supplies go to the people that really need it," says a spokesman for Standard Chartered, the emerging markets bank. But financial institutions must also consider the broader impact of an outbreak of flu on the economy. Banks would have to consider how they should respond if particular sectors of the economy, such as airlines or hotel operators, got into financial difficulty. Regulators are also monitoring the insurance industry's ability to absorb a large increase in health or life insurance claims. Banks are also planning for increased cash withdrawals, and for the possibility that there may be a sudden increase in phone and internet banking if more people stay at home. Indeed, during a recent meeting at the FSA, Britain's largest banks discussed their ability to handle a sudden increase in electronic banking volumes.
Banks and insurers prepare for avian flu outbreak, Financial Times, 1-9-06
THE world's third biggest bank, the London based HSBC, has drawn up plans to cope without up to half its staff if there is a bird flu pandemic, the Financial Times reported today. The newspaper quoted HSBC's head of group crisis management, Bob Piggott, as saying several other banks were "moving towards" similar estimates for staff absences during any pandemic lasting up to three months. "(Bird flu) is probably the single biggest challenge for the whole group," said Piggott… Piggott said many employees would stay at home with the flu, some would have secondary infections and others would be absent to care for family members or to avoid infection. He said London-based HSBC, which employs more than 250,000 staff in 77 countries, had devised plans to increase working from home and other ways to get over the impact of a pandemic.
Top bank has bird flu plan, Reuters, 1-10-06
Analyst Gartner is urging businesses to prepare continuity programmes so they can react in the event of an outbreak. Steve Bittenger, research director at Gartner, said: "Business continuity and IT leaders are ideally placed to plan for avian flu's threats…So how could IT help to keep a company running? Ritchie Jeune, group CEO for Evolution Security Systems, which works with banks in Hong Kong, said having small contingency teams already set up to work remotely is essential. He said: "Part of disaster recovery is to have a working solution. You do that by creating mini companies so people can work together. You make sub-teams so you can still run your business. These groups will work from home. Basically, you are splitting your work force."
http://www.silicon.com/financialservices/0,3800010322,39155650,00.htm
Reserve Bank staff have been given medical face masks, hand gel, gloves and tissues in an "emergency bag" for use in the event of an influenza pandemic. The backpacks were given to the bank's 210 staff last August and have now been updated to include the pandemic-related items. Reserve Bank spokesman Mike Hannah said the emergency bags predated the bank's pandemic preparations. "They're designed to assist us in the event of things like an earthquake, tsunami or severe floods where we are unable to leave the building or the Wellington CBD for one to three days," he said yesterday…The backpacks also contain a light stick, plastic sanitation bag, water bottle, whistle, wind and waterproof matches, survival blanket, water purification tables, a torch and survival instructions. Staff are expected to add their own shoes, food and any medicine they may need. The Reserve Bank also holds food and water supplies …Meanwhile, a radio campaign promoting pandemic preparedness began yesterday. The advertisements have been created by Radio New Zealand, which is a "lifeline utility" under the Civil Defence and Emergency Act…RNZ had made the advertisements available to other radio stations. The advertisements stress that although there is no influenza pandemic at present, New Zealand health authorities are seriously planning for a possible pandemic in the future. The campaign gives people basic information and practical steps to reduce the impact of a flu outbreak. Last year's television advertisements will be followed by a second campaign due to start in March.
Reserve Bank staff get bird flu kit, New Zealand Herald, 1-17-06
Asia Pacific
In the climate-change disaster movie "The Day after Tomorrow," a snowstorm in Delhi is one of the freak weather conditions that are depicted as portents of doom. It hasn't got quite that bad in real life yet, but this week there was frost in the Indian capital for the first time in decades…Asia is reeling under the harshest winter for years. In China, temperatures have plunged as low as minus 43C and 100,000 people had to be evacuated when houses collapsed under the snow. A quarter of a million people have been snowed in. Japan has suffered its heaviest ever blizzards, with drifts up to 10 feet deep. The authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented snow, and have had to call out the army to try to clear roads and roofs. In Kashmir, the famous Dal Lake, where tourists stay in elegant houseboats in the summer months, has frozen over for the first time in 10 years. Weather forecasters are warnings of heavy snowfalls and possible avalanches in the areas of Kashmir and Pakistan affected by last year's earthquake, where hundreds of thousands of people are living with nothing but flimsy tents to protect them.
Compared to all that, Delhi may seem to be making an unnecessary fuss. It may be the lowest temperature in Delhi for 70 years - and the second lowest ever recorded - but it has only dipped below zero by the narrowest of margins: minus 0.2C….But for India's hundreds of thousands of homeless, the danger is very real. Every year, they die of the cold in Delhi and other cities across north India. And most years, it does not get anywhere near as cold as it has this year…People have been dying of the cold right across Asia: at least 70 in Japan, and at least 47 in Pakistan, where in the north temperatures have dropped to around minus 25C. India has not seen such extreme conditions. One of the highest death tolls has been in India's Uttar Pradesh state, where at least 102 people have died but temperatures have not dropped any lower than minus 1C. In Bangladesh, at least 40 people have died, although temperatures have not even dipped to freezing. Most South Asians are simply unable to cope with even these comparatively mild temperatures. They do not possess blankets or warm clothes. Their bodies are inured to withstand the searing heat of summer, not the cold…In this part of the world, even those with a roof over their heads rarely have heating. But for the homeless, the situation is even worse.
Justin Huggler, Extreme Weather in Asia: The Big Freeze, Independent UK, 1-11-06
Environmental problems such as global warming can be tackled only if the international community addresses the problem of population growth, a leading scientist warned today. Professor Chris Rapley, the director of the British Antarctic Survey, said the 76 million annual increase in the world's population threatens "the welfare and quality of life of future generations." But he said population growth was the "Cinderella" issue of the environmental debate, because its implications are so controversial that nobody dares to raise it. Scientific analysis suggests that the Earth can sustain around 2-3 billion people at a good standard of living over the long term, wrote Prof. Rapley in an article for the BBC News website. But the current global population of 6.5 billion - expected to rise to 8 billion by the middle of the century - means mankind is imposing an ever greater "footprint" on the planet. Advances made in the battle to rein in climate change, such as last month's Montreal agreement, threaten to be wiped out by the need of each additional person for food, shelter, transport and waste disposal facilities…Prof. Rapley acknowledged that population control and reduction was "a bombshell of a topic," raising profound moral and ethical issues.
Consequently, the issue was rarely raised when politicians, scientists and campaigners discussed what needs to be done to protect the environment, he said. But he warned: "Unless and until this changes, summits such as that in Montreal which address only part of the problem will be limited to at best very modest success, with the welfare and quality of life of future generations the ineluctable casualty."
Andrew Woodcock, Booming Population 'Threat to Climate Change Fight', Independent UK, 1-6-06
We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics.
Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 percent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves.
Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This "global dimming" is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable…So what should we do? First, we have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act; and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can. Civilization is energy-intensive and we cannot turn it off without crashing, so we need the security of a powered descent…We should be the heart and mind of the Earth, not its malady. So let us be brave and cease thinking of human needs and rights alone, and see that we have harmed the living Earth and need to make our peace with Gaia. We must do it while we are still strong enough to negotiate, and not a broken rabble led by brutal war lords. Most of all, we should remember that we are a part of it, and it is indeed our home.
James Lovelock, The Earth is About to Catch a Morbid Fever That May Last as Long as 100,000 Years, Independent/UK, 1-16-06
Americas
Say "fascism" to anyone you meet, and you will be greeted with the boilerplate response of the blithely overconfident: such a thing cannot happen here. This is the United States of America, land of the free and home of the brave. Ours is a nation of laws, of checks and balances, of righteousness and decency. Our laws and traditions stand as a bulwark against the rise of totalitarian madness. It cannot happen here. Thus we are indoctrinated into the school of our own assumed greatness…The core strength of our new fascism is that it speaks softly. It does not present itself in such an obvious way that those who subsist on the dogmas of our greatness can point and say there, there it is, I see it. This new fascism is not fed only by lies, though to be sure the lies are there in preposterous abundance. This new fascism is fed by myths, our myths, the myths by which we rock ourselves to sleep. This new fascism is in truth an elemental fascism, reborn today by a confluence of events; the diligent work of the few, in combination with the passivity of the many, have brought forth this new order. The writer Umberto Eco, in a 1995 essay titled "Ur-Fascism," delineated several core elements that have existed in one form or another in every fascist state in history: "Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten, because it does not represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader. Doctrine outstrips reason, and science is always suspect. The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies. Argument is tantamount to treason. Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear. Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of 'the people' in the grand opera that is the state." We must disenthrall ourselves from the idea that our institutions, our traditions, the barriers that protect us from absolute and authoritarian powers, cannot be broken down. They are being dismantled a brick at a time. The separation of powers has already been annihilated. It is a whispered fascism, not yet marching down your street or pounding upon your door in the dead of night. But it is here, and it is laying deep roots. We must listen beyond the whispered fascism of today to the shouted fascism of tomorrow. We must look beyond the lies and the myths, beyond the dogmas by which we sleep.
William Rivers Pitt, The New Fascism, www.truthout.org, 1-17-06
Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is "yes" then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop, imprison citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can't he do? The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch's claims of these previously unrecognized powers: "If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution." The fact that our normal safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is deeply troubling…Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements. And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages….One of the other ways the Administration has tried to control the flow of information is by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest…The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. Yet, in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the Bill of Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march-when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously? It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same…A special counsel should immediately be appointed by the Attorney General to remedy the obvious conflict of interest that prevents him from investigating what many believe are serious violations of law by the President…Second, new whistleblower protections should immediately be established for members of the Executive Branch who report evidence of wrongdoing -- especially where it involves the abuse of Executive Branch authority in the sensitive areas of national security. Third, both Houses of Congress should hold comprehensive-and not just superficial-hearings into these serious allegations of criminal behavior on the part of the President. And, they should follow the evidence wherever it leads. Fourth, the extensive new powers requested by the Executive Branch in its proposal to extend and enlarge the Patriot Act should, under no circumstances be granted, unless and until there are adequate and enforceable safeguards to protect the Constitution and the rights of the American people against the kinds of abuses that have so recently been revealed. Fifth, any telecommunications company that has provided the government with access to private information concerning the communications of Americans without a proper warrant should immediately cease and desist their complicity in this apparently illegal invasion of the privacy of American citizens. Freedom of communication is an essential prerequisite for the restoration of the health of our democracy. It is particularly important that the freedom of the Internet be protected against either the encroachment of government or the efforts at control by large media conglomerates. The future of our democracy depends on it.
Al Gore, In Martin Luther King Day address, Gore compares wiretapping of Americans to surveillance of King, Raw Story, 1-16-06
For a constitutional confrontation at least five years in the making, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee looked as prepared to confront Samuel Alito as FEMA chief Michael Brown did in responding to Hurricane Katrina.
As with the hurricane that zeroed in on New Orleans days before coming ashore, there should have been no surprise about Judge Alito. He was exactly what the Republican base had long wanted in a Supreme Court nominee, a hard-line judicial ideologue with a pleasant demeanor and a soft-spoken style.
Indeed, Alito has been such an unapologetic supporter of the Right’s beloved Imperial Presidency that Alito’s one noteworthy assurance – that George W. Bush was not “above the law” – was essentially meaningless because in Alito’s view Bush is the law. Yet the Democrats were incapable of making an issue out of Alito’s embrace of the “unitary executive,” a concept so radical that it effectively eliminates the checks and balances that the Founding Fathers devised to protect against an out-of-control President. Bush even gave the Democrats a news hook to make the peculiar phrase “unitary executive” a household word. Bush cited his “unitary” powers just days earlier in signaling that he would use his commander-in-chief authority to override the provisions of Sen. John McCain’s anti-torture amendment passed in December 2005.
Robert Parry, Alito Hearings: Democrats' 'Katrina', 1-14-06
Finally, it has started. People have begun to speak of impeaching President George W. Bush - not in hushed whispers but openly, in newspapers, on the Internet, in ordinary conversations and even in Congress. As a former member of Congress who sat on the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings against President Richard Nixon, I believe they are right to do so…Like many others, I have been deeply troubled by Bush's breathtaking scorn for our international treaty obligations under the United Nations Charter and the Geneva Conventions. I have also been disturbed by the torture scandals and the violations of US criminal laws at the highest levels of our government they may entail…These concerns have been compounded by growing evidence that the President deliberately misled the country into the war in Iraq. But it wasn't until the most recent revelations that President Bush directed the wiretapping of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Americans, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) - and argued that, as Commander in Chief, he had the right in the interests of national security to override our country's laws - that I felt the same sinking feeling in my stomach as I did during Watergate. As a matter of constitutional law, these and other misdeeds constitute grounds for the impeachment of President Bush. A President, any President, who maintains that he is above the law - and repeatedly violates the law - thereby commits high crimes and misdemeanors, the constitutional standard for impeachment and removal from office. A high crime or misdemeanor is an archaic term that means a serious abuse of power, whether or not it is also a crime, that endangers our constitutional system of government…
Elizabeth Holtzman, The Impeachment of George W. Bush, The Nation, 1-30-06
Global
Iran has broken the seals at its nuclear research centers. The desired objective? To provoke, or rather, to force, the international community to live with the issue…Given the results, it's time for the players involved to agree that the work accomplished has proven to be a failure and to use the recourse available to them, i.e., the UN. Within that institution, Great Britain, France, and the United States will face a significant obstacle: the vetoes that China and especially Russia will brandish, the first because Iran is gorging it with oil, the second because Iran is a very important commercial partner. Russia supplies it with nuclear assistance, to the point of building a power plant, and has, moreover, endowed Iran with long-range missiles. As recently as December, Moscow agreed to sell almost thirty of these, capable of covering a distance that worries Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Pakistan. Moscow's leniency with regard to Teheran has one and only one explanation. For the masters of the Kremlin, Iran, as part of its sphere of influence, can be an ally in the geopolitical games that agitate the region. In that regard, certain facts must be emphasized. On account of the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, the American Army has based itself not only in those countries, but also in certain republics of central Asia once directed by Moscow…Now, we can contemplate the following: the members of the troika will find themselves back in the closet of fiascos, the United States will grumble, the Russians will rub their hands, and - above all - Iran will buy the so-precious time in which to pursue its ultimate objective: the bomb. The bomb in the hands of fascists and, moreover, of unstable fascists, at that…
Serge Truffaut, Iran Thumbs Its Nose at the World, Le Devoir, 1-11-06
Israel is updating plans for a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities which could be launched as soon as the end of March, according to military and intelligence sources…The Israeli raids would be carried out by long-range F-15E bombers and cruise missiles against a dozen key sites and are designed to set Tehran's weapons program back by up to two years. Pilots at the Israeli air force's elite 69 squadron have been briefed on the plan and have conducted rehearsals for their missions. The prime targets would be the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, 150 miles south of Tehran, a heavy-water production site at Arak, 120 miles south-west of the capital, and a site near Isfahan in central Iran which makes the uranium hexafluoride gas vital to the arms manufacturing process…Although Western military strategists think an attack on Tehran's scattered sites would be fraught with difficulties and could not be carried out without loss to the attacking forces, few doubt Israel's commitment to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear firepower.
Ian Bruce, Israelis Plan Pre-emptive Strike on Iran, The Herald UK, 1-10-06
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rightly acts like a man who has the upper hand. He is president (though not ruler) of a theocracy that has the world's second largest supply of gas in the middle of an energy crisis. This is a pretty strong starting point. He and his officials hurled derision at Blair and other Western leaders as they met last week to decide what to do about Iran's decision to break the seals off its nuclear research laboratory in defiance of the IAEA strictures.
Its claim to only want civil nuclear energy is risible. Russia has offered to process uranium for Iran and send it off, below the strength needed for a bomb. The European Union has made similar noises - but Tehran wants something more.
It has seen the prestige and clout which Pakistan acquired when it developed its nuclear bomb. Such countries tend not to be threatened as much, and will never be invaded. This is the status Iran wants, and it will eventually get there.
The severity of the threat lies in the nature of the regime. Iran is now the world's most active state paymaster of terrorism. Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad are all its offspring - so, on a low level, it is already at war.
It is busy developing an intercontinental missile, the Saharb 3, with an 800-mile range that could hit Israel. Anti-semitism is the calling card of Ahmadinejad's government: he regularly denies the Holocaust and calls for Israel to move to Europe. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obvious since it re-launched its uranium conversion programme last August. The EU thought it could sweet-talk Tehran out of them - Iran took them for the suckers they are and carried on regardless…As the world environment grows more tense than it has been since the end of the Cold War, the UN shows itself hopelessly inefficient at tackling such threats...The UN is losing a battle against murderers on camelback and horseback: no wonder Tehran is so unconcerned about Blair's threats. And if the 'great powers' cannot deal with today's Iran they stand no chance of dealing with a nuclear one. If there is no one to tame Iran, then there is no one to calm Israel. These are the stark facts of the Middle East at present - and Blair is more powerless to change them than he would dare admit.
FRASER NELSON, Let's admit it, Iran has the upper hand, The Scotmans, 1-15-06
Iran is a culturally vibrant, self-confident society with a strong economy, which now stands further boosted by high oil prices. It is a middle-level military power with a popularly elected government. It will not be easy to isolate Iran, unlike Iraq.
"In fact," said Hari Vasudevan, professor of international relations at Calcutta University, "Iran enjoys a unique strategic advantage because of the highly troubled situation in Iraq, which the US has failed to quell." He added: "Sixty percent of Iraq's population is Shi'ite, and Iran wields enormous influence in Iraq. It has so far desisted from fomenting further trouble in Iraq, but could do so if cornered and provoked by the US and its allies." Iran has two more advantages in its favor. It has been working closely with Russia in its civilian nuclear program. Russia is helping it build a power reactor at Bushehr, due to be commissioned this year. It also enjoys a degree of support and sympathy from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and China…"All this might only frustrate US efforts to diplomatically isolate Iran," said Qamar Agha, a Middle East expert at the Center for West and Central Asian Studies at the Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi. "Western Europe is far too dependent upon Iran's oil and gas to go to extreme lengths in sustaining sanctions that cripple Iran's energy generation. Therefore, the US might be tempted to use military force, jointly with Israel, to bomb select facilities in Iran." A number of US doctrinal pronouncements, and reports about a recently approved US "global strike plan", with a nuclear option, suggest that a preemptive US strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, either unilateral or jointly with Israel, cannot be ruled out…Any such attack would break the 60-year-old, very welcome, taboo against the use of nuclear weapons - with extraordinarily negative consequences for global peace and security. Such an outcome can only be prevented if the West moves away from coercive diplomacy to isolate Iran and opens serious talks with it, and if the nuclear weapons states rethink their own policies. As the West accuses Iran of nursing nuclear ambitions, it has itself no intention of reducing nuclear arms…Smaller nuclear states such as Israel, India and Pakistan have set negative examples
Praful Bidwai, RED LINES IN THE IRANIAN SAND, Asia Times Online, 1-13-06
Cyberspace
The Chicago Police Department is warning officers their cell phone records are available to anyone -- for a price. Dozens of online services are selling lists of cell phone calls, raising security concerns among law enforcement and privacy experts. Criminals can use such records to expose a government informant who regularly calls a law enforcement official. Suspicious spouses can see if their husband or wife is calling a certain someone a bit too often. And employers can check whether a worker is regularly calling a psychologist -- or a competing company…In some cases, telephone company insiders secretly sell customers' phone-call lists to online brokers, despite strict telephone company rules against such deals, according to Schumer. And some online brokers have used deception to get the lists from the phone companies, he said…To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said…How well do the services work? The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was closed for the New Year's holiday. On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.
Ernie Rizzo, a Chicago private investigator, said he uses a similar cell phone record service to conduct research for his clients. On Friday, for instance, Rizzo said he ordered the cell phone records of a suburban police chief whose wife suspects he is cheating on her.
FRANK MAIN, Your phone records are for sale, 1-5-06
More than a week after Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh alleged that his phones were being tapped, Delhi Police on Sunday carried out raids at several places in neighbouring Haryana. Police has been raiding various places in an effort to nab those involved in forging documents and illegally tapping phones of Singh, who is the Samajwadi Party general secretary…Police have arrested Bhupendra and Anurag, both private detectives, and Kuldeep, an employee of Reliance Infocomm, in connection with the tapping of Amar Singh's phones over the last two months. Kumar added that these raids were being carried out on the basis of the information received during the questioning of these three people. Anurag is in the custody of the special cell sleuths till January 9. Members of the special cell had registered a case on December 30 last year against Bhupendra for forging letters in the name of R Narayan Swamy, principal secretary (Home) and Ranjit Narayan, joint commissioner (Crime Branch). Police have registered a case of forgery, cheating and criminal conspiracy against the three people.
Police raids in Haryana on phone tapping issue, Indo-Asian News Service, 1-8-06
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and http://www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc. You can reach him via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net. For more information, go to http://www.wordsofpower.net/.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Words of Power #10: Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Security Crisis, Part I
NOTE: Words of Power is published on a bi-weekly basis, and alternates with the GS(3) Intelligence Briefing, also posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. "Words of Power" commentary will explore a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability and spirit. The GS(3) Intel Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global and Cyberspace. Each issue will provide insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net.
Words of Power #10: Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Security Crisis, Part I
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
"We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart."
(Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963)
An unprecedented security crisis is emerging. Its scope is planetary. Its consequences are dire. A strange confluence of powerful phenomenon (e.g., global warming, bird flu, terrorism, etc.) is already warping our common reality and impacting our lives in new and disruptive ways. The ingredients of this potent brew of risk are interacting to produce volatile and unpredictable reactions.
A decade or so down the timeline, the world we live in will look very different and much of the change will be for the worse.
This unprecedented security crisis poises some spiritual challenges for each of us and for humanity as a whole. Life styles will be threatened, economic conditions will deteriorate in many places used to at least a middle class level of affluence, resources that are taken for granted will become scarce, personal safety will become an immediate concern for many who feel relatively insulated today. If a significant percentage of the human race (significant percentages can be small) summons the vision and the courage to see clearly, speak directly and engage altruistically, the losses can be mitigated and the poisons can be transmuted.
These two themes, the 21st Century security crisis, unique in human history, and the profound spiritual challenges it confronts us with, are central in my work. Together with two other overarching principles -- i.e., that the issues of security, sustainability and spirit are interdependent, and that individuals must be empowered and enlightened on how to come to grips with these issues in both their personal lives and in their workplace -- they form four pillars and a foundation.
Unhealthy Myths
In “Words of Power #9: The Goblet of Fire, The Deep Magic & The Giant Sequoias,” I wrote about two of our allies in this great spiritual struggle: the transformative, ennobling power Myth and the miraculous, oracular power of Mother Nature. There are others, e.g., meditation, yoga, Chinese medicine, and future postings will go into each of these in context, but for now I want to further explore Myth and storytelling.
There are healthy myths and unhealthy myths.
Unhealthy myths split humanity off from nature, and seek to transcend nature instead of entering into a deeper communion with it.
Unhealthy myths divide the struggle into stark, simplistic dualities, light and dark, good and evil, heaven and earth.
Unhealthy myths do not tolerate other myths, leave room for other manifestations of divinity, or acknowledge other sources of magic.
And, of course, there is a great difference between any myth in the hands of a Torquemada and any myth in the hands of a Da Vinci.
Here is an example threaded together from recent headlines that illustrates both the spiritual challenges of the 21st Century security crisis and the perverse power of unhealthy myths.
I am not an admirer of Ariel Sharon. I remember Sabra and Shatilla , and I believe he bears responsibility for inciting the Second Intitfada. But in the last interview he gave before two strokes and a “medically induced coma,” he expressed the view that the confrontation with Iran could be dealt with through sanctions rather than war: "I was in the cabinet in 1981 and played an important role in the operation decision. The conditions were different then. I believe that we are still in the negotiations period and we can stop Iran with sanctions."
('Iran Could be Stopped with Sanctions,' Anadolu News Agency, 1-7-06)
Now consider how two leaders, engorged on unhealthy myth, reacted to Sharon's physical collapse:
“The television evangelist Pat Robertson and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but both suggested that the severe illness of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was deserved. Speaking on his Christian Broadcasting Network's ‘700 Club,’ which says it has 1 million viewers, Robertson said God was punishing Sharon for dividing the land of Israel…Ahmadinejad, elected in June, previously made headlines by calling the Holocaust a myth. ‘Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Chatilla has joined his ancestors is final,’ he was quoted by the Iranian press as saying…” (Washington Post, 1-6-06)
And no, it doesn’t matter in the least that Robertson has since apologized and retracted his remarks. He has not apologized or retracted his remarks about comedian Ellen Degeneres and Hurricane Katrina: "Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. ‘By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on ‘The 700 Club’ on Sunday. ‘Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?’” (Dateline: Hollywood, 9-5-05)
Robertson is not an obscure wacko. He is a political power broker and a media mogul within the U.S. religious right.
The notions of a paradise that awaits suicide bombers and of an avenging God that smites whole cities because of the sexual orientation of individuals, like the Nazi notion of racial superiority, are predicated on unhealthy myths that foster a split between humanity and nature and will not tolerate other world-views.
Perhaps Sharon will recover, perhaps not. Either way, remarkably, before he was struck down, he spoke out for reason and order at a crucial moment in the struggle over Iran's nuclear program. (Of course, the US mainstream news media has ignored Sharon’s remarks.)
Within the same few days, Salman Rushdie offered a noble response to the spiritual challenge posed by one of several odious sub-plots in the main text of the 21st Century security crisis: “BEYOND any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was ‘extraordinary rendition’. To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive…Language, too, has laws, and those laws tell us this new American usage is improper - a crime against the word. Every so often the habitual newspeak of politics throws up a term whose calculated blandness makes us shiver with fear - yes, and loathing…People use such phrases to avoid using others whose meaning would be problematically over-apparent. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ and ‘final solution’ were ways of avoiding the word "genocide", and to say "extraordinary rendition" is to reveal one's squeamishness about saying ‘the export of torture’…Lawsuits are under way. Lawyers for the plaintiffs suggest their clients were only a few of the victims, that in Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and perhaps elsewhere the larger pattern of the extraordinary-rendition project is yet to be uncovered. Inquiries are under way in Canada, Germany, Italy and Switzerland…In the beginning is the word. Where one begins by corrupting language, worse corruptions swiftly follow. Sitting as the Supreme Court to rule on torture last month, Britain's law lords spoke to the world in words that were simple and clear. ‘The torturer is abhorred not because the information he produces may be unreliable,’ Lord Rodger of Earlsferry said, ‘but because of the barbaric means he uses to extract it.’ ‘Torture is an unqualified evil,’ Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood added. ‘It can never be justified. Rather, it must always be punished.’ The dreadful probability is that the US outsourcing of torture will allow it to escape punishment. It will not allow it to escape moral obloquy.” (Salman Rushdie, Sydney Morning Herald, 1-9-06)
There is a poignant, ironic power in the juxtaposition of Sharon’s last interview and Rushdie’s op-ed piece with the foul-mouthed utterances of Robertson and Ahmadinejad. Rushdie lived in hiding for years, as a result of a fatwa ordering his death, issued by Iranian mullahs outraged because he dared to explore the legend of the Prophet Mohammed in the free space of his literary imagination. If anyone could be expected to condone “any means necessary” in the struggle against religious extremists and terrorists it would be someone who had been hunted by them. And, indeed, if anyone could be expected to argue for a pre-emptive nuclear strike to thwart Iran in its pursuit of WMD, it would be the old war horse some call the “Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla.” But both Sharon, in perhaps his final interview, and Rushdie, in his latest principled stand, chose life over death, reason over madness. order over chaos, clarity of mind over hallucinatory fever. Robertson and Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, enthralled with unhealthy myths, do not understand the world that is heating up around them and so they lash out.
Healthy Myths: The Secret Ingredient
Myths that lead to transformation and individuation transcend dualistic thinking.
Consider the great Taoist symbol of the Yin/Yang. Inside of the swirling wave of Yang, there is a drop of black Yin. Inside the swirling wave of Yin, there is a splash of white Yang. Healthy myths reflect this profound truth.
Consider the character of Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings.
Bilbo Baggins loved the Shire for all that was good. He loved it for its child-like innocence. He loved it for its pipe weed. He loved it for its ale. He loved it for its fertile soil. He loved it for the way in which it clung to the teat of the Green Goddess. But Bilbo was much more complex than his fellow hobbits.
Bilbo craved adventure. He journeyed far beyond the small world of the Shire. He took to the high road and journeyed into the wild. He invited danger into his life.
Bilbo sought out treasure, magic and legend…and they found him…
Bilbo brought the “Ring of Power” back to the Shire, and carried its evil and immense power on his person for more than 50 years, and yet he was able (with the help of a great wizard) to let it drop to the floor and walk away from it.
He simply stuffed a few candles and some writing materials into a light back pack, picked up his walking stick and took to the high road to “see the mountains again” and “find somewhere quiet” to finish his book.
Yes, it took it toll on him. Yes, the evil of the “One Ring” had begun to work on him. Yes, its poison had entered his being. But Bilbo was free. Why? How?
Three thousand years earlier, Isildur, the great warrior prince of Gondor, succeeded in vanquishing Sauron by severing his hand with a swipe of a broken sword. But Isildur, who had battled evil all his life, could not withstand the temptation for even a few hours. He fell under its spell. He refused the wise council of Lord Elrond, and would not cast it into the fires of Mt. Doom. He took up the “Ring of Power.” He deceived himself into thinking he could wield it for good rather than evil. It betrayed him, of course, and prolonged the struggle for Middle Earth another three thousand years.
Even Frodo succumbed to the ring’s power. In the end, like Isildur before him, he could not destroy it. It was actually Gollum, in his madness, who fulfilled the quest to save Middle Earth -- by accident. He bit the ring off Frodo’s hand, and then slipped and fell as he danced in ecstasy at the edge of the abyss. Gollum hurtled into the inferno to melt into nothingness, clutching the ring that had consumed his spirit and transformed him into a monster…
So how did Bilbo survive? Why was Bilbo able to lay down the ring? Even with Gandalf’s help, it should have been too difficult…But Bilbo let it drop to the floor as he left the Shire that night. He “lived happily,” as he told Gandalf he would, “until the end of his days.” How and why?
Well, Bilbo understood that the darkness was in the light and that the light comprehendeth it not…Bilbo had explored the shadow, Bilbo had integrated shadow and light. Bilbo was both a benefactor and a thief, Bilbo was both a Shireling and a nomad…Bilbo was free and whole…
There is much more to say on this subject and related ones, many more myths and other allies to summon, many more risks and threats to analyze.
To Be Continued…
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc.
You can reach Richard Power via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net.
For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net.
Words of Power #10: Spiritual Challenges of the 21st Century Security Crisis, Part I
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
"The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood."
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies
hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."
"We must combine the toughness of the serpent and the softness of the dove, a tough mind and a tender heart."
(Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963)
An unprecedented security crisis is emerging. Its scope is planetary. Its consequences are dire. A strange confluence of powerful phenomenon (e.g., global warming, bird flu, terrorism, etc.) is already warping our common reality and impacting our lives in new and disruptive ways. The ingredients of this potent brew of risk are interacting to produce volatile and unpredictable reactions.
A decade or so down the timeline, the world we live in will look very different and much of the change will be for the worse.
This unprecedented security crisis poises some spiritual challenges for each of us and for humanity as a whole. Life styles will be threatened, economic conditions will deteriorate in many places used to at least a middle class level of affluence, resources that are taken for granted will become scarce, personal safety will become an immediate concern for many who feel relatively insulated today. If a significant percentage of the human race (significant percentages can be small) summons the vision and the courage to see clearly, speak directly and engage altruistically, the losses can be mitigated and the poisons can be transmuted.
These two themes, the 21st Century security crisis, unique in human history, and the profound spiritual challenges it confronts us with, are central in my work. Together with two other overarching principles -- i.e., that the issues of security, sustainability and spirit are interdependent, and that individuals must be empowered and enlightened on how to come to grips with these issues in both their personal lives and in their workplace -- they form four pillars and a foundation.
Unhealthy Myths
In “Words of Power #9: The Goblet of Fire, The Deep Magic & The Giant Sequoias,” I wrote about two of our allies in this great spiritual struggle: the transformative, ennobling power Myth and the miraculous, oracular power of Mother Nature. There are others, e.g., meditation, yoga, Chinese medicine, and future postings will go into each of these in context, but for now I want to further explore Myth and storytelling.
There are healthy myths and unhealthy myths.
Unhealthy myths split humanity off from nature, and seek to transcend nature instead of entering into a deeper communion with it.
Unhealthy myths divide the struggle into stark, simplistic dualities, light and dark, good and evil, heaven and earth.
Unhealthy myths do not tolerate other myths, leave room for other manifestations of divinity, or acknowledge other sources of magic.
And, of course, there is a great difference between any myth in the hands of a Torquemada and any myth in the hands of a Da Vinci.
Here is an example threaded together from recent headlines that illustrates both the spiritual challenges of the 21st Century security crisis and the perverse power of unhealthy myths.
I am not an admirer of Ariel Sharon. I remember Sabra and Shatilla , and I believe he bears responsibility for inciting the Second Intitfada. But in the last interview he gave before two strokes and a “medically induced coma,” he expressed the view that the confrontation with Iran could be dealt with through sanctions rather than war: "I was in the cabinet in 1981 and played an important role in the operation decision. The conditions were different then. I believe that we are still in the negotiations period and we can stop Iran with sanctions."
('Iran Could be Stopped with Sanctions,' Anadolu News Agency, 1-7-06)
Now consider how two leaders, engorged on unhealthy myth, reacted to Sharon's physical collapse:
“The television evangelist Pat Robertson and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may not agree on much, but both suggested that the severe illness of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was deserved. Speaking on his Christian Broadcasting Network's ‘700 Club,’ which says it has 1 million viewers, Robertson said God was punishing Sharon for dividing the land of Israel…Ahmadinejad, elected in June, previously made headlines by calling the Holocaust a myth. ‘Hopefully, the news that the criminal of Sabra and Chatilla has joined his ancestors is final,’ he was quoted by the Iranian press as saying…” (Washington Post, 1-6-06)
And no, it doesn’t matter in the least that Robertson has since apologized and retracted his remarks. He has not apologized or retracted his remarks about comedian Ellen Degeneres and Hurricane Katrina: "Pat Robertson on Sunday said that Hurricane Katrina was God’s way of expressing its anger at the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for its selection of Ellen Degeneres to host this year’s Emmy Awards. ‘By choosing an avowed lesbian for this national event, these Hollywood elites have clearly invited God’s wrath,” Robertson said on ‘The 700 Club’ on Sunday. ‘Is it any surprise that the Almighty chose to strike at Miss Degeneres’ hometown?’” (Dateline: Hollywood, 9-5-05)
Robertson is not an obscure wacko. He is a political power broker and a media mogul within the U.S. religious right.
The notions of a paradise that awaits suicide bombers and of an avenging God that smites whole cities because of the sexual orientation of individuals, like the Nazi notion of racial superiority, are predicated on unhealthy myths that foster a split between humanity and nature and will not tolerate other world-views.
Perhaps Sharon will recover, perhaps not. Either way, remarkably, before he was struck down, he spoke out for reason and order at a crucial moment in the struggle over Iran's nuclear program. (Of course, the US mainstream news media has ignored Sharon’s remarks.)
Within the same few days, Salman Rushdie offered a noble response to the spiritual challenge posed by one of several odious sub-plots in the main text of the 21st Century security crisis: “BEYOND any shadow of a doubt, the ugliest phrase to enter the English language last year was ‘extraordinary rendition’. To those of us who love words, this phrase's brutalisation of meaning is an infallible signal of its intent to deceive…Language, too, has laws, and those laws tell us this new American usage is improper - a crime against the word. Every so often the habitual newspeak of politics throws up a term whose calculated blandness makes us shiver with fear - yes, and loathing…People use such phrases to avoid using others whose meaning would be problematically over-apparent. ‘Ethnic cleansing’ and ‘final solution’ were ways of avoiding the word "genocide", and to say "extraordinary rendition" is to reveal one's squeamishness about saying ‘the export of torture’…Lawsuits are under way. Lawyers for the plaintiffs suggest their clients were only a few of the victims, that in Afghanistan, Egypt, Syria and perhaps elsewhere the larger pattern of the extraordinary-rendition project is yet to be uncovered. Inquiries are under way in Canada, Germany, Italy and Switzerland…In the beginning is the word. Where one begins by corrupting language, worse corruptions swiftly follow. Sitting as the Supreme Court to rule on torture last month, Britain's law lords spoke to the world in words that were simple and clear. ‘The torturer is abhorred not because the information he produces may be unreliable,’ Lord Rodger of Earlsferry said, ‘but because of the barbaric means he uses to extract it.’ ‘Torture is an unqualified evil,’ Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood added. ‘It can never be justified. Rather, it must always be punished.’ The dreadful probability is that the US outsourcing of torture will allow it to escape punishment. It will not allow it to escape moral obloquy.” (Salman Rushdie, Sydney Morning Herald, 1-9-06)
There is a poignant, ironic power in the juxtaposition of Sharon’s last interview and Rushdie’s op-ed piece with the foul-mouthed utterances of Robertson and Ahmadinejad. Rushdie lived in hiding for years, as a result of a fatwa ordering his death, issued by Iranian mullahs outraged because he dared to explore the legend of the Prophet Mohammed in the free space of his literary imagination. If anyone could be expected to condone “any means necessary” in the struggle against religious extremists and terrorists it would be someone who had been hunted by them. And, indeed, if anyone could be expected to argue for a pre-emptive nuclear strike to thwart Iran in its pursuit of WMD, it would be the old war horse some call the “Butcher of Sabra and Shatilla.” But both Sharon, in perhaps his final interview, and Rushdie, in his latest principled stand, chose life over death, reason over madness. order over chaos, clarity of mind over hallucinatory fever. Robertson and Ahmadinejad, on the other hand, enthralled with unhealthy myths, do not understand the world that is heating up around them and so they lash out.
Healthy Myths: The Secret Ingredient
Myths that lead to transformation and individuation transcend dualistic thinking.
Consider the great Taoist symbol of the Yin/Yang. Inside of the swirling wave of Yang, there is a drop of black Yin. Inside the swirling wave of Yin, there is a splash of white Yang. Healthy myths reflect this profound truth.
Consider the character of Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of The Rings.
Bilbo Baggins loved the Shire for all that was good. He loved it for its child-like innocence. He loved it for its pipe weed. He loved it for its ale. He loved it for its fertile soil. He loved it for the way in which it clung to the teat of the Green Goddess. But Bilbo was much more complex than his fellow hobbits.
Bilbo craved adventure. He journeyed far beyond the small world of the Shire. He took to the high road and journeyed into the wild. He invited danger into his life.
Bilbo sought out treasure, magic and legend…and they found him…
Bilbo brought the “Ring of Power” back to the Shire, and carried its evil and immense power on his person for more than 50 years, and yet he was able (with the help of a great wizard) to let it drop to the floor and walk away from it.
He simply stuffed a few candles and some writing materials into a light back pack, picked up his walking stick and took to the high road to “see the mountains again” and “find somewhere quiet” to finish his book.
Yes, it took it toll on him. Yes, the evil of the “One Ring” had begun to work on him. Yes, its poison had entered his being. But Bilbo was free. Why? How?
Three thousand years earlier, Isildur, the great warrior prince of Gondor, succeeded in vanquishing Sauron by severing his hand with a swipe of a broken sword. But Isildur, who had battled evil all his life, could not withstand the temptation for even a few hours. He fell under its spell. He refused the wise council of Lord Elrond, and would not cast it into the fires of Mt. Doom. He took up the “Ring of Power.” He deceived himself into thinking he could wield it for good rather than evil. It betrayed him, of course, and prolonged the struggle for Middle Earth another three thousand years.
Even Frodo succumbed to the ring’s power. In the end, like Isildur before him, he could not destroy it. It was actually Gollum, in his madness, who fulfilled the quest to save Middle Earth -- by accident. He bit the ring off Frodo’s hand, and then slipped and fell as he danced in ecstasy at the edge of the abyss. Gollum hurtled into the inferno to melt into nothingness, clutching the ring that had consumed his spirit and transformed him into a monster…
So how did Bilbo survive? Why was Bilbo able to lay down the ring? Even with Gandalf’s help, it should have been too difficult…But Bilbo let it drop to the floor as he left the Shire that night. He “lived happily,” as he told Gandalf he would, “until the end of his days.” How and why?
Well, Bilbo understood that the darkness was in the light and that the light comprehendeth it not…Bilbo had explored the shadow, Bilbo had integrated shadow and light. Bilbo was both a benefactor and a thief, Bilbo was both a Shireling and a nomad…Bilbo was free and whole…
There is much more to say on this subject and related ones, many more myths and other allies to summon, many more risks and threats to analyze.
To Be Continued…
Richard Power is the founder of GS(3) Intelligence and www.wordsofpower.net. His work focuses on the inter-related issues of security, sustainability and spirit, and how to overcome the challenges of terrorism, cyber crime, global warming, health emergencies, natural disasters, etc.
You can reach Richard Power via e-mail: richardpower@wordsofpower.net.
For more information, go to www.wordsofpower.net.
Friday, January 06, 2006
GS(3) Intelligence Briefing 1-7-06
NOTE: GS(3) Intelligence Briefing is posted on a bi-weekly basis. As circumstances dictate, we may post special editions. The Briefing is organized into five sections: Europe, Middle East and Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas, Global and Cyberspace. Each issue provides insight on terrorism, cyber crime, climate change, health emergencies, natural disasters and other threats, as well as recommendations on what actions your organizations should take to mitigate risks. “Words of Power" commentary is also posted on a bi-weekly basis. This commentary explores a range of issues in the interdependent realms of security, sustainability and spirit. http://www.wordsofpower.net/
This issue of GS(3) Intelligence Briefing contains excerpts from 14 news items that deserve your attention. Here is a summary of each of the five sub-sections. The excerpts with links to full text follow below. Europe, Middle East & Africa: The recent price dispute over Russian natural gas sales to the Ukraine highlights the potential for conflict between the two former Soviet republics, and by extension the potential for conflict between Russia and the West. Energy security issues, corruption and loosely controlled nuclear weapons are a volatile mix. The region's opportunities are infused with physical, cyber and reputational risks. There are rumors of US military action against Iran sometime this year (although we heard them last year too). UN experts Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei were right about Iraq, and El-Baradei, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, is right about Iran as well. The Bush-Cheney regime sent Porter Goss to Turkey with three intelligence files on Iran (including one on its ties with Al Qaeda). Do you remember the fairy tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf?" Iran is a big problem. Indeed, it is a much bigger problem than Iraq was before the US/UK invasion. But so is Pakistan, with its compromised nuclear weapons technology and its Al Qaeda infested intelligence service.
The Europeans have been thwarted in their efforts to come to an agreement with Iran in large part because the U.S. has misplayed its hand in the Middle East. It is as if Osama himself had decided U.S. policy in the region over the last five years. And, just as the Bush-Cheney regime played straight into the hands of Bin Laden, we can sadly expect them to play straight into the hands of the hateful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I have also included Professor Juan Cole’s relevant predictions for 2006. In particular, I draw your attention to his observations on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: "The conjuncture of gas, petroleum, Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will keep the new Great Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United States all playing. The US hand is weak." We are perilously close to stumbling into a global conflict that looks a lot more like WWI than WWII. Asia Pacific: The aborted attack on an international conference at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore indicates that the country’s information technology and outsourcing centers have made it to terrorist target lists, increasing the risk for US firms that have moved those jobs off-shore. How many US-based corporations have a clear understanding of the physical, personnel and cyber security controls in such circumstances or any sense of the real security risks involved locally? Does yours? In a New Year's Eve (Roman calendar) strike on a Christian market in Central Sulawesi, eight people were killed and dozens injured -- highlighting how global terror operations are exploiting age-old strife and tension in Indonesia and elsewhere in S.E. Asia. And from Asia Times, more on the so-called Great Game: "India and China, the most aggressive shoppers for oil and gas assets in the world, and normally archrivals in the race for overseas oilfields, have finally come together to pursue their energy security in the global arena." Americas: Two substantive pieces, from two very diverse news sources, underscore our emphasis on the end of oil, or at least the end of peak oil, as a serious security risk factor in the near future. Fortune Magazine: “Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type—at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet—and it's getting closer to the And then he'll interrupt himself: ‘Look, I'm not predicting anything,’ he'll say. ‘That's when you get a little kooky-sounding.’ Rainwater is no crackpot… For the past few months he's been holed up in hard-core research mode—reading books, academic studies, and, yes, blogs.” Inter Press Service: “In the near future, analysts are warning the world's traditional and emerging economic powers to curb consumption, saying that at the current rate, proven reserves will only meet demand up to 2030. ‘The current model (of consumption) is suicidal,’ Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael RamÃrez recently told journalists. ‘The United States, for example, will use up its oil reserves in 10 years, and after that it will go after its rivers, lakes and forests.’ Global: Two stories on global warming and two stories on bird flu. Your organization may not grok why the fact that polar bears are drowning in Greenland is of significance to its business interests and security posture both in the near-term and the long-term, but Goldman Sachs has grokked it. AlterNet: In November Goldman Sachs, a financial sector leader worth $60 billion, rolled out a new environmental policy that goes further, and is smarter, than any comparable policy in the corporate world. The unveiling of the framework to address environmental degradation and climate change capped 18 months of consultations with environmental groups. Among them were Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Rainforest Alliance, World Resources Institute and Friends of the Earth. Only eight pages long, it contains some fairly typical stuff, such as a vow to use more recycled paper in Goldman's offices. But it also contains a promise to reject projects in environmental no-go zones, and to institute further changes in the way it does business--all with an eye on ethics and the environment. According to the framework, Goldman Sachs will: disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of all its operations; make $1 billion available for investments in renewable energy; set up a think tank to identify other lucrative green markets; work on public policy measures relating to climate change, conduct more rigorous assessments of its new projects' impacts on the environment and on indigenous people; refuse to finance extractive projects in World Heritage sites or any projects that violate the environmental laws of the host country. This is not a case of Goldman pretending its job is to save the world, or forsaking its primary mission to make money for its investors. Self-interest is in full effect here. Goldman Sachs is positioning itself to be a leader in the green energy sector. It's also averting risk. The policy says so in so many strangulated, jargoney words: ‘We believe that companies' management of environmental and related social risks and opportunities may affect corporate performance.’” Meanwhile, on the bird flu front, two disturbing developments: the first human deaths in Europe have been confirmed, a teenage boy and his sister in Turkey, and the death of a Chinese woman who had no known exposure to poultry. Your organization should treat these deaths as a clear indication that your bird flu response plannng (if you have any) should now global and not simply focused on Asia Pacific (if you have not already done so). Cyberspace: Your organization can invest in IDS, firewalls, strong authentication, etc., but if your physical security is lax or uncoordinated with your cyber security, you are extremely vulnerable. I call it the "Duh Factor." Consider this Washington Post story: “Marriott International Inc.'s time-share division said yesterday that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company. Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost.” In the Information Age, financial information becomes as powerful a weapon as counterfeiting machinery.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Europe may have breathed a collective sigh of relief after Russia and Ukraine signed a long-term gas supply deal, averting a possible repetition of the New Year supply cutbacks that unnerved the continent. But after a closer look at the complex pact signed on Wednesday, outsiders may yet have cause for concern about the region's energy security, especially after Ukraine's ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko launched a legal challenge to stop the deal. The accord uses as middleman a little-known Swiss-based joint venture called RosUkrEnergo, owned half by Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom and half by Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank. Sources familiar with the five-year gas deal say Raiffeisen is representing a group of mainly Ukrainian investors but their identity is shrouded in secrecy…Until it is clear who is behind the company's business, uncertainty remains over who stands to profit from it and how exposed it might be to political interference. "Ukraine cannot sign a contract where the middleman ... is a commercial structure when it declares it is a democratic and transparent European country," said Mykola Rudkovsky, a leader of Ukraine's Socialist Party, which is in the ruling coalition…Critics say the non-transparent structure could easily lead to corruption, with money being siphoned off to private pockets, and that it would be better both for Ukraine and Gazprom -- the world's largest gas firm -- to deal directly. RosUkrEnergo was set up by former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's government shortly before it was ousted from power by a popular revolution after flawed elections, leading critics to fear also that it could be linked to political interests. Within months of appearing from nowhere it had taken control of Ukraine's gas imports from Turkmenistan by the start of 2005.
During her brief tenure as premier of the reformist government swept to power in Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution,” Tymoshenko denounced RosUkrEnergo as a "criminal canker on the body" of state energy firm Naftogaz. She vowed on Thursday to fight the deal in the courts..Tymoshenko and her ally and former security service chief, Oleksander Turchinov, investigated whether Semion Mogilevich -- a Ukrainian-born Russian businessman wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for racketeering, fraud and money laundering -- was behind the Ukrainian side of RosUkrEnergo…Ukraine is the transit route for 80 percent of Russia's gas exports to Europe.
Douglas Busvine and Elizabeth Piper, ANALYSIS-Russia-Ukraine gas deal too murky for comfort, Reuters, 1-5-06
German media sources have recently reported that the Bush Administration is preparing its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for a potential attack on nuclear sites in Iran.The "Der Spiegel" weekly emphasized that "Washington is now sending high level officials to prepare allies for a potential strike, as opposed to conducting talks that just hint at the possibility, which is what has been happening until now."The Berlin paper "Tagesspiegel" quoted NATO intelligence sources last week who said that "NATO members have received information that the United States is currently looking into all possibilities, including a military attack against the regime in Tehran."
Yossi Melman, Report: U.S. preparing NATO for possible strike on Iran, Haaretz, 12-31-05
The most talked about story is a Dec. 23 piece by the German news agency DDP from journalist and intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte…According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possible 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities…According to DDP, during his trip to Turkey, CIA chief Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program…The Turkish government has also been given the "green light" to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question. The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans…So is the region now on the verge of a military strike or even a war? In Berlin, the issue is largely being played down…But the string of visits by high-profile US politicians to Turkey and surrounding reports are drawing new attention to the issue…Writing about the meeting between Porter Goss and Tayyip Erdogan, the left-nationalist newspaper Cumhuriyet wrote: "Now It's Iran's Turn." But the paper didn't offer any evidence to corroborate the claims. Instead, the paper noted that the meeting between the CIA chief and Erdogan lasted longer than an hour - an unusual amount of time, especially considering Goss had previously met with the head of Turkey's intelligence service, the MIT. The Turkish media concluded that the meetings must have dealt with a very serious matter - but they failed to uncover exactly what it was.…The Turkish government has also repeatedly stated that it opposes military action against both Iran and Syria. The key political motivation here is that - at least when it comes to the Kurdish question - Turkey, Syria and Iran all agree on one thing: they are opposed to the creation of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. But if the United States moves forward with an attack against Iran, Turkey will have no choice but to jump on board - either as an active or passive partner. It's a scenario that has Erdogan and his military in a state of deep unease. After all, even experts in the West are skeptical of whether a military intervention against nuclear installations in Iran could succeed. The more likely scenario is that an attack aiming to stop Iran's nuclear program could instead simply bolster support for Ahmadinejad in the region.
US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike? Spiegel, 12-31-05
1. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom the Bush administration has failed to capture after all this time, and who was probably responsible for the July 7 bombings in the London subway and the bombings in the Sinai in Egypt, will strike at US allies again in 2006.
2. Saudi Arabia will use the $160 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen its military and security forces, and to spread its rigid Wahhabi form of Islam.
3. Iran's clerical elites will use the $36 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen their military and security forces, and to spread their radical Khomeinist form of Islam. The US, even if it takes some desperate step, will prove unable to shake the regime in 2006.
7. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization composed of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as members and India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan as observers, will follow up on its success in getting US troops out of Uzbekistan and on strengthening energy cooperation between Kazakhstan and China on the one hand, and Russia and Kazakhstan on the other, as well as security cooperation between Russia and Uzbekistan. The conjuncture of gas, petroleum, Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will keep the new Great Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United States all playing. The US hand is weak.
10. The United States will continue to lose global political influence because its government is running large deficits and going ever deeper into debt. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower routinely used the threat of calling in loans from war-devastated Europe to get his way. He threatened UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden with loan cancellations if the latter did not get back out of the Suez in late 1956. He threatened DeGaulle with loan cancellations if the latter didn't get France out of rebellious Algeria before it went Communist. Nowadays the US is a massive debtor nation, and has lost that kind of leverage with all but the poorest and most beaten-down countries. The US nuclear arsenal is relatively useless because it cannot actually be used, and the US military is bogged down in Iraq. America remains a superpower for the third and fourth worlds, but is often a helpless, pitiful giant as far as places like Western Europe and China are concerned.
Juan Cole, Ten Amazing Predictions for 2006, www.juancole.com, 1-1-06
Asia Pacific
Eight people have been killed and dozens injured when a bomb tore through a Christian market stall selling pork in Indonesia's religiously divided province of Central Sulawesi, police have said. The latest blast to rock the restive area came as security forces across the archipelago nation were on high alert for potential Islamic extremist attacks during the New Year period. Mostly Christian shoppers had thronged the stall to buy pork, which is forbidden for Muslims, for New Year's Eve celebrations later Saturday night, police said…Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, but Christians and Muslims live in roughly equal numbers in parts of the eastern island chain of Sulawesi and in Maluku…Last month, about 1,000 extra troops and police were sent to Central Sulawesi after a spike in violence between Muslims and Christians, which has included shootings, bombings and beheadings. The province's Poso district as well as the capital Palu have been particularly targeted in the unrest, with a Christian couple and two girls shot and wounded in two separate November attacks. Masked assailants beheaded three Christian schoolgirls in Poso in late October, while several bombs have exploded or been discovered there in the past few months.
Widespread religious violence rocked the area in 2000 and 2001, killing more than 1,000 people. A government-brokered truce was put in place in December 2001 but intermittent bombings, shootings and other attacks targeting Christians, believed to be the work of Muslim extremists, have continued. On May 28 this year, twin bomb blasts tore through a busy market in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the province, killing 19 people and injuring at least 40. Indonesia's spy chief warned last week that revenge attacks by extremists could occur after militant Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin was gunned down by anti-terror police on November 9. His chief accomplice was Noordin.
Eight killed, 48 injured in Indonesia market bombing, Agence France Press, 12-31-04
India's southern city of Bangalore has been put on high alert following an apparent militant attack on an international conference at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) that killed a former professor and injured at least four others.
The incident occurred when militants armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades barged into the conference venue, attended by over 30 international scientists and several national luminaries, and opened fire indiscriminately at a group of delegates who had just left the seminar hall…One AK-47 rifle, 11 empty cartridges, and two loaded magazines for an automatic weapon were recovered on the site. According to eyewitness accounts, the gunmen stepped out of a vehicle, entered the premises of the IISc, and started firing indiscriminately on delegates. They then fled in the cover of darkness…India's leading counter-terrorism expert, Bahukutumbi Raman, director of the Chennai-based Institute for Topical Studies, said the militants were targeting southern India because of the large concentration of information technology and outsourcing companies, both Indian and foreign, in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai…The police in Hyderabad recently arrested Mohammed Ibrahim, a suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad operative who allegedly confessed that he had trained in April in a Pakistani militant camp where trainees were told to target cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad. Late last year, police in Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir unearthed a network of the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group in the capital, Srinagar. The militants had allegedly been plotting elaborate attacks on IT and outsourcing companies in India.
Animesh Roul, Attack on Indian IT hub kills 1, injures 4, ISN SECURITY WATCH, 12-29-05
India and China, the most aggressive shoppers for oil and gas assets in the world, and normally archrivals in the race for overseas oilfields, have finally come together to pursue their energy security in the global arena. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the two largest oil companies in the respective countries, announced on December 20 that they had jointly won a bid to acquire 37% of Petro-Canada's stake in Syrian oilfields for US$573 million. ONGC and CNPC, both state-owned, will have equal stakes in the al-Furat oil and gas fields…The two countries' pursuit of what India's Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Iyer calls "coopetition instead of competition" in securing their energy needs started in April this year, when during his visit to India Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that energy cooperation should be an integral part of the bilateral dialogue between the two countries…Meanwhile, it appears that the stage is set for the two countries to make more joint oil bids…India and China are also expected to sign a bilateral hydrocarbon cooperation deal in January 2006, when Iyer is slated to visit China…But this cooperation could be bad news for Western oil companies. Analysts said that if the two countries teamed up on a regular basis, it should worry Western oil majors. "The Indian and Chinese companies are willing to pay a higher premium for assets. The pressure is certainly on the majors," said Praveen Martis, an analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, in a Reuters report.
Indrajit Basu, India, China pin down $573m Syria deal, Asia Times, 12-22-05
Americas
Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet. Richard Rainwater doesn't want to sound like a kook. But he's about as worried as a happily married guy with more than $2 billion and a home in Pebble Beach can get. Americans are "in the kind of trouble people shouldn't find themselves in," he says. He's just wary about being the one to sound the alarm. Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type—at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet—and it's getting closer to the edge.... And then he'll interrupt himself: "Look, I'm not predicting anything," he'll say. "That's when you get a little kooky-sounding." Rainwater is no crackpot… For the past few months he's been holed up in hard-core research mode—reading books, academic studies, and, yes, blogs. Every morning he rises before dawn at one of his houses in Texas or South Carolina or California (he actually owns a piece of Pebble Beach Resorts) and spends four or five hours reading sites like LifeAftertheOilCrash.net or DieOff.org, obsessively following links and sifting through data. How worried is he? He has some $500 million of his $2.5 billion fortune in cash, more than ever before. "I'm long oil and I'm liquid," he says. "I've put myself in a position that if the end of the world came tomorrow I'd kind of be prepared." He's also ready to move fast if he spots an opening…"This is a nonrecurring event," he says. "The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind.…In August a friend gave Rainwater a copy of The Long Emergency, a dystopic view of the future written by ex-Rolling Stone writer James Kunstler, otherwise known for his passionate dislike of suburbia. Taking peak oil as a given, Kunstler argues that Americans have been "sleepwalking" through the end of a "100-year fossil fuel fiesta." The problem, he points out, is not that the world will run out of oil tomorrow, but rather that the lack of growth in oil production will wreak havoc on a global economic system predicated on perpetual expansion. Kunstler's "long emergency" is a decidedly unpleasant interval during which the world—and Americans in particular—must adapt to a post-oil regime of scarce energy and economic stagnation, a time of likely wars and the disappearance of all-American things like Wal-Mart and cul-de-sac homes 45 minutes by minivan from the office…Rainwater sides with the imminent peak crowd, and can rattle off facts to back up his argument. "In 1988 there were 15 million barrels a day of shut-in production"—meaning surplus that could be tapped—"and the world was using about 55 million barrels of oil. Today the world is using over 80 million, and there's no shut-in production left. We've used it up, through the combination of depletion and growth." In other words, the spigot can't be opened any wider. What concerns him most is the conflict that he thinks an oil shortage will precipitate. What happens when people get blindsided by prices rocketing past any level they have contemplated—especially when you factor in other challenges America faces? "We've got a lot of things going on simultaneously," he says. "The world as we know it is unwinding with respect to Social Security, pensions, Medicare. We're going to have dramatically increased taxes in the U.S. I believe we're going into a world where there's going to be more hostility. More people are going to be asking, 'Why did God do this to us?' Whatever God they worship. Alfred Sloan said it a long time ago at General Motors, that we're giving these things during good times. What happens in bad times? We're going to have to take them back, and then everybody will riot.' And he's right."
Oliver Ryan, The Rainwater Prophecy, Fortune Energy Bulletin, 12-13-05
While this year's record high oil prices are unlikely to come down in the near future, analysts are warning the world's traditional and emerging economic powers to curb consumption, saying that at the current rate, proven reserves will only meet demand up to 2030. "The current model (of consumption) is suicidal," Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael RamÃrez recently told journalists. "The United States, for example, will use up its oil reserves in 10 years, and after that it will go after its rivers, lakes and forests." This month, Democratic Party lawmakers in the U.S. Senate narrowly blocked a Republican-led bill that would have allowed drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which has an estimated 10 billion barrels in reserves. The United States devours one out of four of the 84 million barrels of oil consumed daily around the world, and one out of two litres of gasoline. But the emerging powers are steadily closing the consumption gap. In India, less than 200,000 new cars were sold annually two decades ago, compared to 802,000 in 2004. "Since oil began to be drilled in 1859, the world has consumed 900 billion barrels - nearly half of the planet's reserves (according to an oil industry expert quoted by the Wall Street Journal), which means we'll have oil for another 50 years at the most," said Francisco Mieres, a professor of postgraduate studies on the oil economy at Venezuela's Central University. But because consumption is increasing every year, driven by economic growth rates like those of China - which have ranged between seven and 11 percent a year - "oil will perhaps only last until 2030, even including reserves like Alaska's and the Athabasca tar sands" in Alberta, Canada, Mieres told IPS. That long-term outlook will also be affected by more immediate political factors, "like the difficulties faced by the United States in the Middle East, rebellious governments like those of Venezuela and (the future administration of leftist president-elect Evo Morales in) Bolivia, or the radicalisation of Iran's leadership," he added. On the economic front, Mieres said these developments would discourage investment by large corporations. He also mentioned the competition between China, India and other emerging powers to get their hands on the available oil resources, and the real or expected decline in deposits in the North Sea, the Caspian Sea, Mexico or Siberia in Russia…RamÃrez also stated that "the markets cannot be stabilised if political instability is provoked in producer countries, because that gives rise to high costs and uncertainty." He pointed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the George W. Bush administration's pressure on Iran and open hostility towards the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez.
Humberto Márquez, Oil Market Analysts Issue Dire Warnings, Inter Press Service, 12-30-05
Global
In November Goldman Sachs, a financial sector leader worth $60 billion, rolled out a new environmental policy that goes further, and is smarter, than any comparable policy in the corporate world.
The unveiling of the framework to address environmental degradation and climate change capped 18 months of consultations with environmental groups. Among them were Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Rainforest Alliance, World Resources Institute and Friends of the Earth.
Only eight pages long, the plan (PDF) contains some fairly typical stuff, such as a vow to use more recycled paper in Goldman's offices. But it also contains a promise to reject projects in environmental no-go zones, and to institute further changes in the way it does business--all with an eye on ethics and the environment.
According to the framework, Goldman Sachs will:
Translation: there are real financial costs to ignoring the environment and the people who depend on it for their survival, and we don't intend to get stuck paying them.
Traci Hukill, The Greening of Goldman Sachs, AlterNet, 1-3-06
The past 12 months have been one of the hottest periods ever recorded…The thermometer reached an astonishing 50C - that's 122F - in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria. Canada and Australia had their hottest-ever weather, while a record drought in Western Europe saw bush fires devastate much of Portugal's countryside. Two other phenomena besides high temperatures pointed directly at climate change in 2005. One was the record melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean, and of land-based glaciers and ice sheets; the other was the record incidence of tropical storms. In September, satellite measurements showed that the Arctic sea ice had melted to a record low extent - about 20 per cent below the long-term average - prompting fears that an irreversible decline has set in, and that the whole of the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free relatively soon, perhaps within two to three decades…In December, there were reports of polar bears being drowned because the gaps between ice masses were too great for them to swim. There are other significant reports of ice melting, especially in the glaciers and ice-sheets of Alaska and Greenland…If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, sea levels around the world would be raised by about seven metres (23ft). But even a rise of just one metre would be catastrophic for many low-lying areas, such as Bangladesh. In November, American scientists revealed that sea levels are now rising by about two millimetres a year, twice as fast as 150 years ago…According to the World Meteorological Organisation, there were 26 tropical storms in the 12-month period, exceeding the previous record of 21, set in 1933…The devastation of New Orleans in August posed the critical question - was there a link with climate change? Some scientists are uncertain about this, but in September Sir John Lawton, who chairs the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, said unequivocally that the super-powerful hurricanes battering the United States were the "smoking gun" of global warming…China and India, whose future emissions of carbon dioxide will be a crucial factor in the struggle to control climate change, agreed to talk about them for the first time.
Later in the year, the world took another step forward when almost 200 countries agreed at the UN climate conference in Montreal to start shaping a second stage to the Kyoto treaty to replace the first emissions reduction period, which ends in 2012. There was a mix of good and bad news on other fronts, such as rainforest destruction and wildlife. The Amazon was struck by its second-greatest bout of forest clearance, new figures revealed - but in September, in Kinshasa, nations home to populations of the four great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) and orangutans - agreed on a strategy to try to preserve man's closest relatives in the face of ever-increasing threats to their existence from habitat destruction and hunting.
Michael McCarthy, Review of the Year: Climate Change, Mercury rising, stormy weather - our world is taking a battering, Independent/UK, 12-30-05
The Government is closely monitoring developments in Turkey after the country's health minister confirmed two human cases of bird flu. A teenage farm boy died after developing pneumonia-like symptoms, health minister Recep Akdag confirmed. The 14-year-old boy's sister, who is in hospital and in a serious condition, also tested positive for bird flu. A third sibling is also suspected of having bird flu…Mr Akdag's statement contradicted a ministry statement earlier this week that said the boy's death was not caused by bird flu…If the boy's death is confirmed as being H5N1, it would be the first death outside Asia in the current outbreak. More than 70 people - most of them farm workers in close contact with fowl - have died from the virus in Asia, where it also has devastated flocks…Poultry workers are urged to minimise risks by maintaining good hygiene, washing hands, isolating any birds that may be sick and alerting authorities...
UK: 'Don't panic' about bird flu, 1-5-06
A woman who died last week from H5N1 avian influenza had no known contact with poultry and seldom ate poultry meat, Chinese state media said today.
The 41-year-old factory worker died on December 21 in the southeastern city of Sanming, Fujian province, an urban area where China has reported no outbreaks of the virus among birds or other animals. The woman, identified only by her surname, Zhou, developed fever in early December, the China Daily newspaper quoted local officials as saying. Zhou was already weak after an operation to remove a tumour in mid-October, the newspaper said. But she had no contact with infected birds and no bird flu infections were found in Sanming. Zhou's relatives also said that she did not like chicken and duck meat. "Zhou is unlikely to have been infected from poultry," the newspaper quoted Fujian disease control official Xu Longshan as saying…Zhou is the third person officially recorded to die from bird flu in China this year and the seventh person infected with the virus…The other two Chinese people who died from bird flu both lived in the eastern province of Anhui, where outbreaks were reported among poultry.
A 12-year-old girl also died from influenza-like symptoms after handling infected birds in the central province of Hunan. But China's health ministry said it did not list the girl as infected with bird flu because her body was cremated before experts had completed tests.
China bird flu fatality 'never touched poultry,’ Bangkok Post, 12-xx-05
Cyberspace
Marriott International Inc.'s time-share division said yesterday that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company.
Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost.
An internal investigation produced no clear answer. The company notified the Secret Service over the past two weeks, and has also told credit card companies and other financial institutions about the loss of the tapes…The Vacation Club has told time-share owners, customers and the division's employees to be on the alert for changes to their credit histories or accounts. So far no one has reported any misuse, Kinney said…The loss of Marriott's tapes is the latest in a series of high-profile security lapses involving data that can be used in identity theft schemes. In 2005, there were at least 134 data breaches affecting more than 57 million people, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a California nonprofit that helps people hurt by identity theft and lobbies on computer-privacy issues…Kinney said the tapes, which require specialized equipment to access, were the responsibility of the company's information resources group. Citing company policy, he declined to say if anyone from the group had been dismissed or disciplined because of the disappearance of the tapes.
Michael S. Rosenwald, Marriott Discloses Missing Data Files: Backup Tapes Lost At Time-Share Unit, Washington Post, 12-28-05
This issue of GS(3) Intelligence Briefing contains excerpts from 14 news items that deserve your attention. Here is a summary of each of the five sub-sections. The excerpts with links to full text follow below. Europe, Middle East & Africa: The recent price dispute over Russian natural gas sales to the Ukraine highlights the potential for conflict between the two former Soviet republics, and by extension the potential for conflict between Russia and the West. Energy security issues, corruption and loosely controlled nuclear weapons are a volatile mix. The region's opportunities are infused with physical, cyber and reputational risks. There are rumors of US military action against Iran sometime this year (although we heard them last year too). UN experts Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei were right about Iraq, and El-Baradei, who recently won the Nobel Peace Prize, is right about Iran as well. The Bush-Cheney regime sent Porter Goss to Turkey with three intelligence files on Iran (including one on its ties with Al Qaeda). Do you remember the fairy tale of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf?" Iran is a big problem. Indeed, it is a much bigger problem than Iraq was before the US/UK invasion. But so is Pakistan, with its compromised nuclear weapons technology and its Al Qaeda infested intelligence service.
The Europeans have been thwarted in their efforts to come to an agreement with Iran in large part because the U.S. has misplayed its hand in the Middle East. It is as if Osama himself had decided U.S. policy in the region over the last five years. And, just as the Bush-Cheney regime played straight into the hands of Bin Laden, we can sadly expect them to play straight into the hands of the hateful Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. I have also included Professor Juan Cole’s relevant predictions for 2006. In particular, I draw your attention to his observations on the Shanghai Cooperation Organization: "The conjuncture of gas, petroleum, Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will keep the new Great Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United States all playing. The US hand is weak." We are perilously close to stumbling into a global conflict that looks a lot more like WWI than WWII. Asia Pacific: The aborted attack on an international conference at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore indicates that the country’s information technology and outsourcing centers have made it to terrorist target lists, increasing the risk for US firms that have moved those jobs off-shore. How many US-based corporations have a clear understanding of the physical, personnel and cyber security controls in such circumstances or any sense of the real security risks involved locally? Does yours? In a New Year's Eve (Roman calendar) strike on a Christian market in Central Sulawesi, eight people were killed and dozens injured -- highlighting how global terror operations are exploiting age-old strife and tension in Indonesia and elsewhere in S.E. Asia. And from Asia Times, more on the so-called Great Game: "India and China, the most aggressive shoppers for oil and gas assets in the world, and normally archrivals in the race for overseas oilfields, have finally come together to pursue their energy security in the global arena." Americas: Two substantive pieces, from two very diverse news sources, underscore our emphasis on the end of oil, or at least the end of peak oil, as a serious security risk factor in the near future. Fortune Magazine: “Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type—at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet—and it's getting closer to the And then he'll interrupt himself: ‘Look, I'm not predicting anything,’ he'll say. ‘That's when you get a little kooky-sounding.’ Rainwater is no crackpot… For the past few months he's been holed up in hard-core research mode—reading books, academic studies, and, yes, blogs.” Inter Press Service: “In the near future, analysts are warning the world's traditional and emerging economic powers to curb consumption, saying that at the current rate, proven reserves will only meet demand up to 2030. ‘The current model (of consumption) is suicidal,’ Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael RamÃrez recently told journalists. ‘The United States, for example, will use up its oil reserves in 10 years, and after that it will go after its rivers, lakes and forests.’ Global: Two stories on global warming and two stories on bird flu. Your organization may not grok why the fact that polar bears are drowning in Greenland is of significance to its business interests and security posture both in the near-term and the long-term, but Goldman Sachs has grokked it. AlterNet: In November Goldman Sachs, a financial sector leader worth $60 billion, rolled out a new environmental policy that goes further, and is smarter, than any comparable policy in the corporate world. The unveiling of the framework to address environmental degradation and climate change capped 18 months of consultations with environmental groups. Among them were Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Rainforest Alliance, World Resources Institute and Friends of the Earth. Only eight pages long, it contains some fairly typical stuff, such as a vow to use more recycled paper in Goldman's offices. But it also contains a promise to reject projects in environmental no-go zones, and to institute further changes in the way it does business--all with an eye on ethics and the environment. According to the framework, Goldman Sachs will: disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of all its operations; make $1 billion available for investments in renewable energy; set up a think tank to identify other lucrative green markets; work on public policy measures relating to climate change, conduct more rigorous assessments of its new projects' impacts on the environment and on indigenous people; refuse to finance extractive projects in World Heritage sites or any projects that violate the environmental laws of the host country. This is not a case of Goldman pretending its job is to save the world, or forsaking its primary mission to make money for its investors. Self-interest is in full effect here. Goldman Sachs is positioning itself to be a leader in the green energy sector. It's also averting risk. The policy says so in so many strangulated, jargoney words: ‘We believe that companies' management of environmental and related social risks and opportunities may affect corporate performance.’” Meanwhile, on the bird flu front, two disturbing developments: the first human deaths in Europe have been confirmed, a teenage boy and his sister in Turkey, and the death of a Chinese woman who had no known exposure to poultry. Your organization should treat these deaths as a clear indication that your bird flu response plannng (if you have any) should now global and not simply focused on Asia Pacific (if you have not already done so). Cyberspace: Your organization can invest in IDS, firewalls, strong authentication, etc., but if your physical security is lax or uncoordinated with your cyber security, you are extremely vulnerable. I call it the "Duh Factor." Consider this Washington Post story: “Marriott International Inc.'s time-share division said yesterday that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company. Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost.” In the Information Age, financial information becomes as powerful a weapon as counterfeiting machinery.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Europe may have breathed a collective sigh of relief after Russia and Ukraine signed a long-term gas supply deal, averting a possible repetition of the New Year supply cutbacks that unnerved the continent. But after a closer look at the complex pact signed on Wednesday, outsiders may yet have cause for concern about the region's energy security, especially after Ukraine's ex-premier Yulia Tymoshenko launched a legal challenge to stop the deal. The accord uses as middleman a little-known Swiss-based joint venture called RosUkrEnergo, owned half by Russia's gas monopoly Gazprom and half by Austria's Raiffeisen Zentralbank. Sources familiar with the five-year gas deal say Raiffeisen is representing a group of mainly Ukrainian investors but their identity is shrouded in secrecy…Until it is clear who is behind the company's business, uncertainty remains over who stands to profit from it and how exposed it might be to political interference. "Ukraine cannot sign a contract where the middleman ... is a commercial structure when it declares it is a democratic and transparent European country," said Mykola Rudkovsky, a leader of Ukraine's Socialist Party, which is in the ruling coalition…Critics say the non-transparent structure could easily lead to corruption, with money being siphoned off to private pockets, and that it would be better both for Ukraine and Gazprom -- the world's largest gas firm -- to deal directly. RosUkrEnergo was set up by former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma's government shortly before it was ousted from power by a popular revolution after flawed elections, leading critics to fear also that it could be linked to political interests. Within months of appearing from nowhere it had taken control of Ukraine's gas imports from Turkmenistan by the start of 2005.
During her brief tenure as premier of the reformist government swept to power in Ukraine's 2004 "Orange Revolution,” Tymoshenko denounced RosUkrEnergo as a "criminal canker on the body" of state energy firm Naftogaz. She vowed on Thursday to fight the deal in the courts..Tymoshenko and her ally and former security service chief, Oleksander Turchinov, investigated whether Semion Mogilevich -- a Ukrainian-born Russian businessman wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for racketeering, fraud and money laundering -- was behind the Ukrainian side of RosUkrEnergo…Ukraine is the transit route for 80 percent of Russia's gas exports to Europe.
Douglas Busvine and Elizabeth Piper, ANALYSIS-Russia-Ukraine gas deal too murky for comfort, Reuters, 1-5-06
German media sources have recently reported that the Bush Administration is preparing its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies for a potential attack on nuclear sites in Iran.The "Der Spiegel" weekly emphasized that "Washington is now sending high level officials to prepare allies for a potential strike, as opposed to conducting talks that just hint at the possibility, which is what has been happening until now."The Berlin paper "Tagesspiegel" quoted NATO intelligence sources last week who said that "NATO members have received information that the United States is currently looking into all possibilities, including a military attack against the regime in Tehran."
Yossi Melman, Report: U.S. preparing NATO for possible strike on Iran, Haaretz, 12-31-05
The most talked about story is a Dec. 23 piece by the German news agency DDP from journalist and intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte…According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possible 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities…According to DDP, during his trip to Turkey, CIA chief Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program…The Turkish government has also been given the "green light" to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question. The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans…So is the region now on the verge of a military strike or even a war? In Berlin, the issue is largely being played down…But the string of visits by high-profile US politicians to Turkey and surrounding reports are drawing new attention to the issue…Writing about the meeting between Porter Goss and Tayyip Erdogan, the left-nationalist newspaper Cumhuriyet wrote: "Now It's Iran's Turn." But the paper didn't offer any evidence to corroborate the claims. Instead, the paper noted that the meeting between the CIA chief and Erdogan lasted longer than an hour - an unusual amount of time, especially considering Goss had previously met with the head of Turkey's intelligence service, the MIT. The Turkish media concluded that the meetings must have dealt with a very serious matter - but they failed to uncover exactly what it was.…The Turkish government has also repeatedly stated that it opposes military action against both Iran and Syria. The key political motivation here is that - at least when it comes to the Kurdish question - Turkey, Syria and Iran all agree on one thing: they are opposed to the creation of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. But if the United States moves forward with an attack against Iran, Turkey will have no choice but to jump on board - either as an active or passive partner. It's a scenario that has Erdogan and his military in a state of deep unease. After all, even experts in the West are skeptical of whether a military intervention against nuclear installations in Iran could succeed. The more likely scenario is that an attack aiming to stop Iran's nuclear program could instead simply bolster support for Ahmadinejad in the region.
US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike? Spiegel, 12-31-05
1. Al-Qaeda's Ayman al-Zawahiri, whom the Bush administration has failed to capture after all this time, and who was probably responsible for the July 7 bombings in the London subway and the bombings in the Sinai in Egypt, will strike at US allies again in 2006.
2. Saudi Arabia will use the $160 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen its military and security forces, and to spread its rigid Wahhabi form of Islam.
3. Iran's clerical elites will use the $36 billion windfall from high petroleum prices to strengthen their military and security forces, and to spread their radical Khomeinist form of Islam. The US, even if it takes some desperate step, will prove unable to shake the regime in 2006.
7. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization composed of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan as members and India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan as observers, will follow up on its success in getting US troops out of Uzbekistan and on strengthening energy cooperation between Kazakhstan and China on the one hand, and Russia and Kazakhstan on the other, as well as security cooperation between Russia and Uzbekistan. The conjuncture of gas, petroleum, Islam, terrorism and great power jockeying will keep the new Great Game going, this time with Russia, China and the United States all playing. The US hand is weak.
10. The United States will continue to lose global political influence because its government is running large deficits and going ever deeper into debt. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower routinely used the threat of calling in loans from war-devastated Europe to get his way. He threatened UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden with loan cancellations if the latter did not get back out of the Suez in late 1956. He threatened DeGaulle with loan cancellations if the latter didn't get France out of rebellious Algeria before it went Communist. Nowadays the US is a massive debtor nation, and has lost that kind of leverage with all but the poorest and most beaten-down countries. The US nuclear arsenal is relatively useless because it cannot actually be used, and the US military is bogged down in Iraq. America remains a superpower for the third and fourth worlds, but is often a helpless, pitiful giant as far as places like Western Europe and China are concerned.
Juan Cole, Ten Amazing Predictions for 2006, www.juancole.com, 1-1-06
Asia Pacific
Eight people have been killed and dozens injured when a bomb tore through a Christian market stall selling pork in Indonesia's religiously divided province of Central Sulawesi, police have said. The latest blast to rock the restive area came as security forces across the archipelago nation were on high alert for potential Islamic extremist attacks during the New Year period. Mostly Christian shoppers had thronged the stall to buy pork, which is forbidden for Muslims, for New Year's Eve celebrations later Saturday night, police said…Indonesia is the world's largest Muslim-populated nation, but Christians and Muslims live in roughly equal numbers in parts of the eastern island chain of Sulawesi and in Maluku…Last month, about 1,000 extra troops and police were sent to Central Sulawesi after a spike in violence between Muslims and Christians, which has included shootings, bombings and beheadings. The province's Poso district as well as the capital Palu have been particularly targeted in the unrest, with a Christian couple and two girls shot and wounded in two separate November attacks. Masked assailants beheaded three Christian schoolgirls in Poso in late October, while several bombs have exploded or been discovered there in the past few months.
Widespread religious violence rocked the area in 2000 and 2001, killing more than 1,000 people. A government-brokered truce was put in place in December 2001 but intermittent bombings, shootings and other attacks targeting Christians, believed to be the work of Muslim extremists, have continued. On May 28 this year, twin bomb blasts tore through a busy market in the Christian-dominated town of Tentena in the province, killing 19 people and injuring at least 40. Indonesia's spy chief warned last week that revenge attacks by extremists could occur after militant Malaysian bombmaker Azahari Husin was gunned down by anti-terror police on November 9. His chief accomplice was Noordin.
Eight killed, 48 injured in Indonesia market bombing, Agence France Press, 12-31-04
India's southern city of Bangalore has been put on high alert following an apparent militant attack on an international conference at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) that killed a former professor and injured at least four others.
The incident occurred when militants armed with Kalashnikovs and grenades barged into the conference venue, attended by over 30 international scientists and several national luminaries, and opened fire indiscriminately at a group of delegates who had just left the seminar hall…One AK-47 rifle, 11 empty cartridges, and two loaded magazines for an automatic weapon were recovered on the site. According to eyewitness accounts, the gunmen stepped out of a vehicle, entered the premises of the IISc, and started firing indiscriminately on delegates. They then fled in the cover of darkness…India's leading counter-terrorism expert, Bahukutumbi Raman, director of the Chennai-based Institute for Topical Studies, said the militants were targeting southern India because of the large concentration of information technology and outsourcing companies, both Indian and foreign, in Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai…The police in Hyderabad recently arrested Mohammed Ibrahim, a suspected Harkat-ul-Jihad operative who allegedly confessed that he had trained in April in a Pakistani militant camp where trainees were told to target cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad. Late last year, police in Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir unearthed a network of the Pakistani-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) militant group in the capital, Srinagar. The militants had allegedly been plotting elaborate attacks on IT and outsourcing companies in India.
Animesh Roul, Attack on Indian IT hub kills 1, injures 4, ISN SECURITY WATCH, 12-29-05
India and China, the most aggressive shoppers for oil and gas assets in the world, and normally archrivals in the race for overseas oilfields, have finally come together to pursue their energy security in the global arena. China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the two largest oil companies in the respective countries, announced on December 20 that they had jointly won a bid to acquire 37% of Petro-Canada's stake in Syrian oilfields for US$573 million. ONGC and CNPC, both state-owned, will have equal stakes in the al-Furat oil and gas fields…The two countries' pursuit of what India's Petroleum Minister Mani Shankar Iyer calls "coopetition instead of competition" in securing their energy needs started in April this year, when during his visit to India Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said that energy cooperation should be an integral part of the bilateral dialogue between the two countries…Meanwhile, it appears that the stage is set for the two countries to make more joint oil bids…India and China are also expected to sign a bilateral hydrocarbon cooperation deal in January 2006, when Iyer is slated to visit China…But this cooperation could be bad news for Western oil companies. Analysts said that if the two countries teamed up on a regular basis, it should worry Western oil majors. "The Indian and Chinese companies are willing to pay a higher premium for assets. The pressure is certainly on the majors," said Praveen Martis, an analyst at consultancy Wood Mackenzie, in a Reuters report.
Indrajit Basu, India, China pin down $573m Syria deal, Asia Times, 12-22-05
Americas
Richard Rainwater made billions by knowing how to profit from a crisis. Now he foresees the biggest one yet. Richard Rainwater doesn't want to sound like a kook. But he's about as worried as a happily married guy with more than $2 billion and a home in Pebble Beach can get. Americans are "in the kind of trouble people shouldn't find themselves in," he says. He's just wary about being the one to sound the alarm. Rainwater is something of a behind-the-scenes type—at least as far as alpha-male billionaires go. He counts President Bush as a personal friend but dislikes politics, and frankly, when he gets worked up, he says some pretty far-out things that could easily be taken out of context. Such as: An economic tsunami is about to hit the global economy as the world runs out of oil. Or a coalition of communist and Islamic states may decide to stop selling their precious crude to Americans any day now. Or food shortages may soon hit the U.S. Or he read on a blog last night that there's this one gargantuan chunk of ice sitting on a precipice in Antarctica that, if it falls off, will raise sea levels worldwide by two feet—and it's getting closer to the edge.... And then he'll interrupt himself: "Look, I'm not predicting anything," he'll say. "That's when you get a little kooky-sounding." Rainwater is no crackpot… For the past few months he's been holed up in hard-core research mode—reading books, academic studies, and, yes, blogs. Every morning he rises before dawn at one of his houses in Texas or South Carolina or California (he actually owns a piece of Pebble Beach Resorts) and spends four or five hours reading sites like LifeAftertheOilCrash.net or DieOff.org, obsessively following links and sifting through data. How worried is he? He has some $500 million of his $2.5 billion fortune in cash, more than ever before. "I'm long oil and I'm liquid," he says. "I've put myself in a position that if the end of the world came tomorrow I'd kind of be prepared." He's also ready to move fast if he spots an opening…"This is a nonrecurring event," he says. "The 100-year flood in Houston real estate was one, the ability to buy oil and gas really cheap was another, and now there's the opportunity to do something based on a shortage of natural resources. Can you make money? Well, yeah. One way is to just stay long domestic oil. But there may be something more important than making money. This is the first scenario I've seen where I question the survivability of mankind.…In August a friend gave Rainwater a copy of The Long Emergency, a dystopic view of the future written by ex-Rolling Stone writer James Kunstler, otherwise known for his passionate dislike of suburbia. Taking peak oil as a given, Kunstler argues that Americans have been "sleepwalking" through the end of a "100-year fossil fuel fiesta." The problem, he points out, is not that the world will run out of oil tomorrow, but rather that the lack of growth in oil production will wreak havoc on a global economic system predicated on perpetual expansion. Kunstler's "long emergency" is a decidedly unpleasant interval during which the world—and Americans in particular—must adapt to a post-oil regime of scarce energy and economic stagnation, a time of likely wars and the disappearance of all-American things like Wal-Mart and cul-de-sac homes 45 minutes by minivan from the office…Rainwater sides with the imminent peak crowd, and can rattle off facts to back up his argument. "In 1988 there were 15 million barrels a day of shut-in production"—meaning surplus that could be tapped—"and the world was using about 55 million barrels of oil. Today the world is using over 80 million, and there's no shut-in production left. We've used it up, through the combination of depletion and growth." In other words, the spigot can't be opened any wider. What concerns him most is the conflict that he thinks an oil shortage will precipitate. What happens when people get blindsided by prices rocketing past any level they have contemplated—especially when you factor in other challenges America faces? "We've got a lot of things going on simultaneously," he says. "The world as we know it is unwinding with respect to Social Security, pensions, Medicare. We're going to have dramatically increased taxes in the U.S. I believe we're going into a world where there's going to be more hostility. More people are going to be asking, 'Why did God do this to us?' Whatever God they worship. Alfred Sloan said it a long time ago at General Motors, that we're giving these things during good times. What happens in bad times? We're going to have to take them back, and then everybody will riot.' And he's right."
Oliver Ryan, The Rainwater Prophecy, Fortune Energy Bulletin, 12-13-05
While this year's record high oil prices are unlikely to come down in the near future, analysts are warning the world's traditional and emerging economic powers to curb consumption, saying that at the current rate, proven reserves will only meet demand up to 2030. "The current model (of consumption) is suicidal," Venezuelan Energy Minister Rafael RamÃrez recently told journalists. "The United States, for example, will use up its oil reserves in 10 years, and after that it will go after its rivers, lakes and forests." This month, Democratic Party lawmakers in the U.S. Senate narrowly blocked a Republican-led bill that would have allowed drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which has an estimated 10 billion barrels in reserves. The United States devours one out of four of the 84 million barrels of oil consumed daily around the world, and one out of two litres of gasoline. But the emerging powers are steadily closing the consumption gap. In India, less than 200,000 new cars were sold annually two decades ago, compared to 802,000 in 2004. "Since oil began to be drilled in 1859, the world has consumed 900 billion barrels - nearly half of the planet's reserves (according to an oil industry expert quoted by the Wall Street Journal), which means we'll have oil for another 50 years at the most," said Francisco Mieres, a professor of postgraduate studies on the oil economy at Venezuela's Central University. But because consumption is increasing every year, driven by economic growth rates like those of China - which have ranged between seven and 11 percent a year - "oil will perhaps only last until 2030, even including reserves like Alaska's and the Athabasca tar sands" in Alberta, Canada, Mieres told IPS. That long-term outlook will also be affected by more immediate political factors, "like the difficulties faced by the United States in the Middle East, rebellious governments like those of Venezuela and (the future administration of leftist president-elect Evo Morales in) Bolivia, or the radicalisation of Iran's leadership," he added. On the economic front, Mieres said these developments would discourage investment by large corporations. He also mentioned the competition between China, India and other emerging powers to get their hands on the available oil resources, and the real or expected decline in deposits in the North Sea, the Caspian Sea, Mexico or Siberia in Russia…RamÃrez also stated that "the markets cannot be stabilised if political instability is provoked in producer countries, because that gives rise to high costs and uncertainty." He pointed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the George W. Bush administration's pressure on Iran and open hostility towards the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez.
Humberto Márquez, Oil Market Analysts Issue Dire Warnings, Inter Press Service, 12-30-05
Global
In November Goldman Sachs, a financial sector leader worth $60 billion, rolled out a new environmental policy that goes further, and is smarter, than any comparable policy in the corporate world.
The unveiling of the framework to address environmental degradation and climate change capped 18 months of consultations with environmental groups. Among them were Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Rainforest Alliance, World Resources Institute and Friends of the Earth.
Only eight pages long, the plan (PDF) contains some fairly typical stuff, such as a vow to use more recycled paper in Goldman's offices. But it also contains a promise to reject projects in environmental no-go zones, and to institute further changes in the way it does business--all with an eye on ethics and the environment.
According to the framework, Goldman Sachs will:
- disclose the greenhouse gas emissions of all its operations;
- make $1 billion available for investments in renewable energy;
- set up a think tank to identify other lucrative green markets;
- work on public policy measures relating to climate chan
- conduct more rigorous assessments of its new projects' impacts on the environment and on indigenous people;
- refuse to finance extractive projects in World Heritage sites or any projects that violate the environmental laws of the host country.
Translation: there are real financial costs to ignoring the environment and the people who depend on it for their survival, and we don't intend to get stuck paying them.
Traci Hukill, The Greening of Goldman Sachs, AlterNet, 1-3-06
The past 12 months have been one of the hottest periods ever recorded…The thermometer reached an astonishing 50C - that's 122F - in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Algeria. Canada and Australia had their hottest-ever weather, while a record drought in Western Europe saw bush fires devastate much of Portugal's countryside. Two other phenomena besides high temperatures pointed directly at climate change in 2005. One was the record melting of ice in the Arctic Ocean, and of land-based glaciers and ice sheets; the other was the record incidence of tropical storms. In September, satellite measurements showed that the Arctic sea ice had melted to a record low extent - about 20 per cent below the long-term average - prompting fears that an irreversible decline has set in, and that the whole of the Arctic Ocean may be ice-free relatively soon, perhaps within two to three decades…In December, there were reports of polar bears being drowned because the gaps between ice masses were too great for them to swim. There are other significant reports of ice melting, especially in the glaciers and ice-sheets of Alaska and Greenland…If the Greenland ice sheet were to melt completely, sea levels around the world would be raised by about seven metres (23ft). But even a rise of just one metre would be catastrophic for many low-lying areas, such as Bangladesh. In November, American scientists revealed that sea levels are now rising by about two millimetres a year, twice as fast as 150 years ago…According to the World Meteorological Organisation, there were 26 tropical storms in the 12-month period, exceeding the previous record of 21, set in 1933…The devastation of New Orleans in August posed the critical question - was there a link with climate change? Some scientists are uncertain about this, but in September Sir John Lawton, who chairs the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, said unequivocally that the super-powerful hurricanes battering the United States were the "smoking gun" of global warming…China and India, whose future emissions of carbon dioxide will be a crucial factor in the struggle to control climate change, agreed to talk about them for the first time.
Later in the year, the world took another step forward when almost 200 countries agreed at the UN climate conference in Montreal to start shaping a second stage to the Kyoto treaty to replace the first emissions reduction period, which ends in 2012. There was a mix of good and bad news on other fronts, such as rainforest destruction and wildlife. The Amazon was struck by its second-greatest bout of forest clearance, new figures revealed - but in September, in Kinshasa, nations home to populations of the four great apes - gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) and orangutans - agreed on a strategy to try to preserve man's closest relatives in the face of ever-increasing threats to their existence from habitat destruction and hunting.
Michael McCarthy, Review of the Year: Climate Change, Mercury rising, stormy weather - our world is taking a battering, Independent/UK, 12-30-05
The Government is closely monitoring developments in Turkey after the country's health minister confirmed two human cases of bird flu. A teenage farm boy died after developing pneumonia-like symptoms, health minister Recep Akdag confirmed. The 14-year-old boy's sister, who is in hospital and in a serious condition, also tested positive for bird flu. A third sibling is also suspected of having bird flu…Mr Akdag's statement contradicted a ministry statement earlier this week that said the boy's death was not caused by bird flu…If the boy's death is confirmed as being H5N1, it would be the first death outside Asia in the current outbreak. More than 70 people - most of them farm workers in close contact with fowl - have died from the virus in Asia, where it also has devastated flocks…Poultry workers are urged to minimise risks by maintaining good hygiene, washing hands, isolating any birds that may be sick and alerting authorities...
UK: 'Don't panic' about bird flu, 1-5-06
A woman who died last week from H5N1 avian influenza had no known contact with poultry and seldom ate poultry meat, Chinese state media said today.
The 41-year-old factory worker died on December 21 in the southeastern city of Sanming, Fujian province, an urban area where China has reported no outbreaks of the virus among birds or other animals. The woman, identified only by her surname, Zhou, developed fever in early December, the China Daily newspaper quoted local officials as saying. Zhou was already weak after an operation to remove a tumour in mid-October, the newspaper said. But she had no contact with infected birds and no bird flu infections were found in Sanming. Zhou's relatives also said that she did not like chicken and duck meat. "Zhou is unlikely to have been infected from poultry," the newspaper quoted Fujian disease control official Xu Longshan as saying…Zhou is the third person officially recorded to die from bird flu in China this year and the seventh person infected with the virus…The other two Chinese people who died from bird flu both lived in the eastern province of Anhui, where outbreaks were reported among poultry.
A 12-year-old girl also died from influenza-like symptoms after handling infected birds in the central province of Hunan. But China's health ministry said it did not list the girl as infected with bird flu because her body was cremated before experts had completed tests.
China bird flu fatality 'never touched poultry,’ Bangkok Post, 12-xx-05
Cyberspace
Marriott International Inc.'s time-share division said yesterday that it is missing backup computer tapes containing credit card account information and the Social Security numbers of about 206,000 time-share owners and customers, as well as employees of the company.
Officials at Marriott Vacation Club International said it is not clear whether the tapes, missing since mid-November, were stolen from the company's Orlando headquarters or whether they were simply lost.
An internal investigation produced no clear answer. The company notified the Secret Service over the past two weeks, and has also told credit card companies and other financial institutions about the loss of the tapes…The Vacation Club has told time-share owners, customers and the division's employees to be on the alert for changes to their credit histories or accounts. So far no one has reported any misuse, Kinney said…The loss of Marriott's tapes is the latest in a series of high-profile security lapses involving data that can be used in identity theft schemes. In 2005, there were at least 134 data breaches affecting more than 57 million people, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a California nonprofit that helps people hurt by identity theft and lobbies on computer-privacy issues…Kinney said the tapes, which require specialized equipment to access, were the responsibility of the company's information resources group. Citing company policy, he declined to say if anyone from the group had been dismissed or disciplined because of the disappearance of the tapes.
Michael S. Rosenwald, Marriott Discloses Missing Data Files: Backup Tapes Lost At Time-Share Unit, Washington Post, 12-28-05
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