GS(3) Intelligence Briefing 8-5-06: Polish Economy Hit By Climate Change, Niger Plants Trees, France Prosecutes Le Pen (Vive Le France!), Tsunami Warning System Update, Telesur to reach USA, Dead Zone in Gulf Expands, Cybercrime in Australia, & More!
By Richard Power
Here are highlights from 12 items, including both news stories and op-ed pieces, from 11 diverse, international sources: Warsaw Voice, IRIN, European Jewish Press, Reuters, Eurasianet, Associated Press, NOAH, Independent/UK, Yes Magazine, Federal Computer Week, and the Sydney Morning Herald. This issue of the GS(3) Intelligence briefing explores the economic impact of global warming and climate change in Eastern Europe, environmental security in Africa and the Gulf of Mexico, the Asia Pacific early warning system for tsunamis, influence warfare in the Americas, the state of preparedness for cyber attacks against the US information infrastructure, and hacking and identity theft in Australia. (NOTE: I am monitoring the conflict in Lebanon, the Bird Flu threat, and the disputed Mexican presidential election, and will continue to post related Hard Rain Journal entries or GS(3) Thunderbolts, as warranted. I have also included references to breaking news stories from this last week posted on Words of Power.)
Here is a summary. Longer excerpts and links follow below. Customized analysis is provided for clients.
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Weeks of sweltering weather may be keeping producers of mineral water, beer, ice-cream and air conditioners happy, but for other sectors of the economy the relentless heat is becoming a serious problem....The heat and lack of rainfall have affected farmers the most severely. Meadows and pastures are drying up and grain and vegetable crops are failing. According to data from the Agricultural Markets Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which monitors the state of farm crops on a regular basis, meadows and pastures will sustain the heaviest losses: 30-100 percent. Losses of spring crops are expected to reach 10-45 percent, winter crops 10-35 percent, rapeseed 5-35 percent, potato and beet 10-30 percent, and vegetables about 30 percent....(Warsaw Voice 8-2-06)
Vast arid Niger needs to plant more trees and more irrigated land to combat the creeping desert and fight growing hunger, according to President Mamadou Tandja. In a speech marking the 46th anniversary of the West African nation's independence on Wednesday, Tandja said a seven-month campaign to improve the country's soil and prevent dunes from burying its valleys and roads had also enabled to keep more than 25,000 youngsters busy at work. (IRIN, 8-3-06)
France’s extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will stand trial for commenting that Nazi occupation of France had not been 'particularly inhumane' France’s extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will stand trial for comments he made last year when he said that the Nazi occupation of France had not been "particularly inhumane." The comments were made during an interview with the far-right weekly magazine Rivarol. (European Jewish Press, 7-26-06)
Asia Pacific
Indian Ocean nations must shed national pride and ensure a planned regional tsunami warning system is simple enough to work, a top official from the United Nations' science arm said on Tuesday. When the project first started in the wake of the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that killed around 230,000 people, many Indian Ocean countries wanted to host a regional alert centre, UNESCO assistant director general Patricio Bernal said. "Everybody has their expectations that they would be able to be the centre. I think they are wrong," Bernal said on the sidelines of a meeting aimed at protecting Indian Ocean nations from the threat of tsunami. (Reuters, 8-1-06)
The release of new estimates showing that Afghanistan may possess substantial reserves of oil and gas may shake up Central Asia’s increasingly competitive energy contest and alter the region’s geopolitical balance....(Eurasianet, 8-3-06)
Americas
Telesur has expanded to 17 Latin American countries in its first year on the air, and now the TV station financed by Venezuela and four other nations is eyeing U.S. markets, officials said Thursday. Telesur, which marked its one-year anniversary Thursday, is touted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an upstart that can offer an alternative to what he calls the Washington-friendly coverage of media giants such as CNN. (Associated Press, 7-28-06)
A team of scientists from the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science , Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium and Louisiana State University is forecasting that the "Dead Zone" off the coast of Louisiana and Texas this summer will be larger than the average size since 1990. (NOAA, 7-24-06)
Global
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth's upper atmosphere. Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is needed. (Independent, 7-31-06)
By what name will future generations know our time? Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth? We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced. (Yes! Magazine, Summer 2006)
If you're looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark. It is the happiest country in the world while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, according to a report by a British scientist released Friday. Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the University of Leicester in central England, based his study on data from 178 countries and 100 global studies from the likes of the United Nations and the World Health Organization....(Reuters, 7-28-06)
Cyberspace
The [US] Homeland Security Department is not ready for a cyberattack or a natural disaster that causes a major Internet disruption, according to a Government Accountability Report released today. (Federal Computer Week, 7-28-06)
More than 10,000 Australian computers have been infected by a trojan virus - invisible to most anti-virus software - that is transmitting their owners' private details to identity thieves. The Australian Tax Office confirmed yesterday that 178 taxpayers had unwittingly revealed their tax file numbers while lodging tax returns online. (Sydney Morning Herald, 8-3-06)
Europe, Middle East & Africa
Weeks of sweltering weather may be keeping producers of mineral water, beer, ice-cream and air conditioners happy, but for other sectors of the economy the relentless heat is becoming a serious problem....The heat and lack of rainfall have affected farmers the most severely. Meadows and pastures are drying up and grain and vegetable crops are failing. According to data from the Agricultural Markets Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, which monitors the state of farm crops on a regular basis, meadows and pastures will sustain the heaviest losses: 30-100 percent. Losses of spring crops are expected to reach 10-45 percent, winter crops 10-35 percent, rapeseed 5-35 percent, potato and beet 10-30 percent, and vegetables about 30 percent....If these forecasts are confirmed, prices are likely to increase for flour, pasta, and possibly meat-due to less fodder. There are also fears that the higher prices of raw materials for food production will hamper exports. ...The drought is not only taking its toll on farmers. Production and transport firms have also sustained losses, caused by extra stoppages, an increase in spending on water and problems with deliveries. During the heat wave, power cuts are more likely, as heated cables lose their ability to conduct electricity, causing breakages and reduced supplies...The high temperatures not only obstruct the production of electricity, but also affect power grids. "Thus far, the grids have endured the heat, but they may be sending less electricity, according to the rule: the higher the temperature, the less power is transmitted," says Głuszek. Even if in the coming days there are no down periods caused by power cuts, it may turn out that the overall economic production reported by firms will be lower.
Andrzej Ratajczyk, Heat Affects the Economy, Warsaw Voice, 8-2-06
Vast arid Niger needs to plant more trees and more irrigated land to combat the creeping desert and fight growing hunger, according to President Mamadou Tandja. In a speech marking the 46th anniversary of the West African nation's independence on Wednesday, Tandja said a seven-month campaign to improve the country's soil and prevent dunes from burying its valleys and roads had also enabled to keep more than 25,000 youngsters busy at work.
A total 600 hectares of sand dunes had been fixed and 5,200 hectares of land reclaimed in the project aimed at replenishing the water table. "This is an efficient way of preserving our environment and fighting against youth unemployment," he said. In a country where 3.8 million of the 12 million people this year face problems of food insecurity, according to United Nations officials, the head of state also pledged to continue efforts to extend irrigation....A series of drought years and the after-effects of a massive locust invasion combined in 2005 to create an extra difficult year across the band of Sahelian countries that fringe the south of Africa's Sahara desert. Niger, the poorest country in the world according to the UN, was particularly hard-hit.
NIGER: Fight desert with trees, president says, Reuters, 8-3-06
France’s extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will stand trial for commenting that Nazi occupation of France had not been 'particularly inhumane' France’s extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen will stand trial for comments he made last year when he said that the Nazi occupation of France had not been "particularly inhumane." The comments were made during an interview with the far-right weekly magazine Rivarol. Le Pen had said: "In France, at least, the German occupation was not particularly inhumane, although there were some blunders, inevitable in a country of 550,000 sq km." A judicial source said Le Pen would be tried for "complicity in contesting crimes against humanity and complicity in justifying war crimes." This is not the first time that Le Pen has made insensitive comments about the Holocaust. In 1987, the Front National (National Front) party leader stated on RTL radio that the Holocaust was "a detail of history.” In 1990, he was convicted of incitement to racial hatred by casting doubt on the Nazi persecution of Jews and Gypsies under a French law banning such rhetoric. He was fined 183,000 euros for "trivializing" the Nazi persecutions. He appealed the sentence to the European Court of Human Rights. He made similar statements in Munich in 1997, violating Germany’s hate speech laws....Le Pen has also been no stranger to outright anti-Semitism. In February 1997, Le Pen accused President Jacques Chirac of being "in the pay of Jewish organizations.” In April 2000, Le Pen was banned from public office and stripped of his seat in the European Parliament for one year, following a 1998 conviction for assaulting a Socialist politician the year before during elections. However, more recently Le Pen has turned his attention to Muslims, more specifically North African immigrants to France....In 2002, Le Pen qualified for the second round of presidential elections and a run off against eventual winner, Jacques Chirac.
Le Pen to face trial for Nazi comments, European Jewish Press, 7-26-06
Other EMEA Stories Posted On Words of Power This Week:
Hard Rain Journal 8-3-06: Darfur is A Mirror Held Up to the Souls of the Great Nations, & What It Reveals is Hideous
Asia Pacific
Indian Ocean nations must shed national pride and ensure a planned regional tsunami warning system is simple enough to work, a top official from the United Nations' science arm said on Tuesday. When the project first started in the wake of the Dec. 26, 2004 tsunami that killed around 230,000 people, many Indian Ocean countries wanted to host a regional alert centre, UNESCO assistant director general Patricio Bernal said. "Everybody has their expectations that they would be able to be the centre. I think they are wrong," Bernal said on the sidelines of a meeting aimed at protecting Indian Ocean nations from the threat of tsunami. "It will be complicating the protocols of transmission. If you have, say, eight centres, it will be self defeating. It will never work," he said, adding the Indian Ocean needed only one or two hubs to link up to national earthquake and tsunami centres. After 18 months of work, government weather agencies in almost all members of the Intergovernmental Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System have been connected. However, they still rely on the Japan Meteorological Agency and the U.S. Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre for tsunami alerts although both are hubs for the Pacific, not the Indian Ocean. At the current meeting on the resort island of Bali, member states should decide who will host the Indian Ocean hub...The advanced part of the project is having sophisticated tsunami detectors -- huge metal buoys with deep-ocean pressure sensors that can send instant signals to weather centres -- throughout the Indian Ocean.
Achmad Sukarsono, Streamlined Indian Ocean tsunami alert key - expert, Reuters, 8-1-06
The release of new estimates showing that Afghanistan may possess substantial reserves of oil and gas may shake up Central Asia’s increasingly competitive energy contest and alter the region’s geopolitical balance....Today, there are two pipeline projects involving Afghanistan that would connect Central Asian exporters and South Asian markets. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive]. One is a projected Iran-Pakistan-India line (IPI) and the other is a Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India line (TAP). Naturally, these contrasting plans have helped spur geopolitical maneuvering in the region....The possibility of Afghanistan holding large energy reserves significantly increases the chances that the US-favored TAP pipeline gets built. And Afghanistan’s emergence as an energy exporter could sharply reduce Russia’s leverage over Turkmenistan and other regional producers. Indeed, the new Afghan energy estimates may help explain why Turkmen leader Saparmurat Niyazov suddenly upped the price of his country’s natural gas. The increased likelihood that TAP becomes a reality could encourage Ashgabat to keep on trying to squeeze money out of Moscow for gas deliveries, which are critical to the running of the Russian economy. Russia could still gain a foothold in South Asia through the IPI line, but there are several factors beyond the prospect of Afghanistan’s potential energy wealth that are clouding the project. For one, India highly values its relationship with the United States and New Delhi may be reluctant to anger Washington by opting for the IPI route. The same factor also appears to be discouraging Pakistan’s participation in IPI. A decision by India and Pakistan to select the TAP route over IPI would constitute a major geopolitical setback for both Russia and Iran.
Stephen Blank, AFGHANISTAN’S ENERGY FUTURE AND ITS POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS, Eurasianet, 8-3-06
Other Asia Pacific Stories Posted On Words of Power This Week:
Hard Rain Journal 8-2-06: North Korean flood toll thought to be 10,000, Agence France Press reports
Americas
Telesur has expanded to 17 Latin American countries in its first year on the air, and now the TV station financed by Venezuela and four other nations is eyeing U.S. markets, officials said Thursday. Telesur, which marked its one-year anniversary Thursday, is touted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as an upstart that can offer an alternative to what he calls the Washington-friendly coverage of media giants such as CNN. Despite obstacles presented by highly competitive U.S. markets, Telesur hopes to make inroads in Hispanic communities in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, New York, New Jersey and Florida, said Telesur president and former Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra. "The whole process for Telesur has been quite uphill because we are an alternative media outlet," Izarra said at a news conference, citing corporate media control over distribution. "We continue advancing and we have not lost hope," he said. In the U.S., Telesur would be going up against established Spanish-language broacasters including Univision Communications Inc. (UVN) and Telemundo. The Venezuelan government holds a 51% stake in Telesur, with Argentina owning 20%, Cuba 14%, Uruguay 10% and Bolivia 5%, Izarra said. According to Izarra, Telesur has grown to reach an estimated 2.5 million cable subscribers in 17 countries, and operates 10 bureaus across the Americas including one in Washington. Chavez, a frequent critic of Washington's foreign policy, has cast Telesur as an alternative to established broadcasters which he has accused of "bombarding" Latin Americans with pro-U.S. coverage.
Associated Press, 7-28-06
A team of scientists from the NOAA National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
NOAA Forecasts Larger Than Normal "Dead Zone" for Gulf This Summer, NOAA, 7-24-06
Other Americas Stories Posted On Words of Power This Week:
Hard Rain Journal 7-30-06: Struggle for Fair Elections, North & South of the Rio Grande
Global
A Nobel Prize-winning scientist has drawn up an emergency plan to save the world from global warming, by altering the chemical makeup of Earth's upper atmosphere. Professor Paul Crutzen, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on the hole in the ozone layer, believes that political attempts to limit man-made greenhouse gases are so pitiful that a radical contingency plan is needed. In a polemical scientific essay to be published in the August issue of the journal Climate Change, he says that an "escape route" is needed if global warming begins to run out of control. Professor Crutzen has proposed a method of artificially cooling the global climate by releasing particles of sulphur in the upper atmosphere, which would reflect sunlight and heat back into space. The controversial proposal is being taken seriously by scientists because Professor Crutzen has a proven track record in atmospheric research. A fleet of high-altitude balloons could be used to scatter the sulphur high overhead, or it could even be fired into the atmosphere using heavy artillery shells, said Professor Crutzen, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany.
The effect of scattering sulphate particles in the atmosphere would be to increase the reflectance, or "albedo", of the Earth, which should cause an overall cooling effect. Such "geo-engineering" of the climate has been suggested before, but Professor Crutzen goes much further by drawing up a detailed model of how it can be done, the timescales involved, and the costs.
Steve Connor, Scientist Publishes 'Escape Route' from Global Warming, Independent, 7-31-06
By what name will future generations know our time? Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?
We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.
Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.
Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.
Developments distinctive to our time are telling us that Empire has reached the limits of the exploitation that people and Earth will sustain. A mounting perfect economic storm born of a convergence of peak oil, climate change, and an imbalanced US economy dependent on debts it can never repay is poised to bring a dramatic restructuring of every aspect of modern life. We have the power to choose, however, whether the consequences play out as a terminal crisis or an epic opportunity. The Great Turning is not a prophecy. It is a possibility....
In these turbulent and often frightening times, it is important to remind ourselves that we are privileged to live at the most exciting moment in the whole of the human experience. We have the opportunity to turn away from Empire and to embrace Earth Community as a conscious collective choice. We are the ones we have been waiting for.
David Korten, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community, Yes! Magazine, Summer 2006 Issue
If you're looking for happiness, go and live in Denmark. It is the happiest country in the world while Burundi in Africa is the most unhappy, according to a report by a British scientist released Friday. Adrian White, an analytical social psychologist at the University of Leicester in central England, based his study on data from 178 countries and 100 global studies from the likes of the United Nations and the World Health Organization....The main factors that affected happiness were health provision, wealth and education, according to White who said his research had produced the "first world map of happiness." Following behind Denmark came Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and the Bahamas. At the bottom came the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe and Burundi. The United States came in at 23rd, Britain was in 41st place, Germany 35th and France 62nd. Countries involved in conflicts, such as Iraq, were not included. "Smaller countries tend to be a little happier because there is a stronger sense of collectivism and then you also have the aesthetic qualities of a country," White said. "We were surprised to see countries in Asia scoring so low, with China 82nd, Japan 90th, and India 125th. These are countries that are thought as having a strong sense of collective identity which other researchers have associated with well-being."
Nothing Is Rotten in the State of Denmark, Reuters, 7-28-06
Other Global Stories Posted On Words of Power This Week:
Hard Rain Journal 8-4-06: No Blood for Water? Are Lebanon & Tibet Being Robbed of The Most Vital Resource
Cyberspace
The [US] Homeland Security Department is not ready for a cyberattack or a natural disaster that causes a major Internet disruption, according to a Government Accountability Report released today. DHS has begun several initiatives to fulfill its responsibility in developing a plan that bridges the public and private sectors, but none of the efforts are complete or comprehensive, GAO found. The department has also created initiatives to train government and industry to recover from Internet disruptions, but it has made only limited progress on them, GAO reported. The relationships between various initiatives are not clear. One challenge DHS faces is a lack of consensus on what its role should be and when it should get involved in responding to a disruption, according to GAO. Legal issues and the general reluctance of the private sector to share information with the department are also hampering its efforts, GAO found. GAO's recommendations include one to Congress: Clarify the legal framework guiding Internet recovery. The oversight body also recommended to DHS that it complete the plans it has begun.
Michael Hardy, GAO: DHS public/private cyber plan incomplete, Federal Computer Week, 7-28-06
NOTE: To download this report in .pdf, click here: http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06863t.pdf
More than 10,000 Australian computers have been infected by a trojan virus - invisible to most anti-virus software - that is transmitting their owners' private details to identity thieves.
The Australian Tax Office confirmed yesterday that 178 taxpayers had unwittingly revealed their tax file numbers while lodging tax returns online.
These people had been notified and were being offered new tax file numbers, a spokesman said.
The Tax Office was warned of the infection by the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (Auscert), which has been issuing similar warnings to banks and other large organisations whose clients' details have been compromised.
A security analyst at Auscert, MacLeonard Starkey, said the "Haxdoor" trojan could log keystrokes from computers, capture usernames and passwords stored in the Windows operating system and harvest data being transmitted from a computer during the completion of online forms such as tax returns.
Identity theft virus infects 10,000 computers, Sydney Morning Herald, 8-3-06
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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 www.wordsofpower.net
Geopolitics, Global Warming, Energy Security, Environmental Security, Alternate Energy, Sustainability, Renewable Resources, Climate Change, Niger, Poland, Tsunami, Identity Theft, Anti Semitism, Australia, Cyber Crime, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, Telesur, Oceans
