Increasing water scarcity could drive the next century's conflicts.
Al Jazeera, 25 April 2013
Has water replaced oil as the word’s scarcest resource? By 2030, 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high scarcity. In Yemen, the situation is already verging on catastrophic and is low on the government agenda. It has long been contentious between Israelis and Palestinians, and with little cooperation on the issue; there is no solution in sight. Whether it’s due to issues of natural or politically created scarcity, will future wars be fought over water? Join the conversation at 1930GMT.
Sorcha Faal is exaggerating again I think but the numbers are rising and the virus is spreading. It is a situation of great concern as the WHO has warned.I haven't heard a good explanation yet for the thousands of dead pigs floating in Chinese rivers.
Phi Beta Iota: Sorcha Fall (David Booth) is a known fabricator with a gift for connecting dots. We think of his stuff as good musical background to ethical evidence-based thinking.
A grim report prepared for President Putin by Health Minister Dr. Veronika Skvortsova on the growing pandemic in China is now warning that a “global mass death event” is currently underway as the spread of the H7N9 avian flu virus continues to grow and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
A team of IBM researchers is working on a solar concentrating dish that will be able to collect 80% of incoming sunlight and convert it to useful energy. The High Concentration Photovoltaic Thermal system will be able to concentrate the power of 2,000 suns while delivering fresh water and cool air wherever it is built. As an added bonus, IBM states that the system would be just one third the cost third of current comparable technologies.
Will Smartglasses Replace Eyeglasses? PAUL MCDOUGALL – Salon
This is coming, it reminds me of when mobile phones began. A few early adapters had phones in their cars, and carried around 10 lb over the shoulder cases for walking around. I had one in Miami, where my ship Seaview was homeported when in American waters, a project to locate sunken ships on the Grand Bahama Banks using Remote Viewing. People thought I was a drug dealer, since they were notable early adapters.
The corporations that persist in making these toxic chemicals, like the tobacco industry are evil. They know that what they are doing is destructive and they don't care because it is so profitable. Their strategy is not to improve their products, but to corrupt the government, as they have done so effectively in the U.S. This is what they are up to in Europe.
Here is some good news about agriculture. Most socially progressive movements, such as this one, are very idealistic, and people work very hard to advance them, but to little effect. This one I think actually has a chance of being successful. Support it wherever you can. This report presents information about what you can do, and where to start.
KABUL, Afghanistan — For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency.
All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader.
“We called it ‘ghost money,’ ” said Khalil Roman, who served as Mr. Karzai’s chief of staff from 2002 until 2005. “It came in secret, and it left in secret.”
The C.I.A., which declined to comment for this article, has long been known to support some relatives and close aides of Mr. Karzai. But the new accounts of off-the-books cash delivered directly to his office show payments on a vaster scale, and with a far greater impact on everyday governing.
Moreover, there is little evidence that the payments bought the influence the C.I.A. sought. Instead, some American officials said, the cash has fueled corruption and empowered warlords, undermining Washington’s exit strategy from Afghanistan.
“The biggest source of corruption in Afghanistan,” one American official said, “was the United States.”
The United States was not alone in delivering cash to the president. Mr. Karzai acknowledged a few years ago that Iran regularly gave bags of cash to one of his top aides.
At the time, in 2010, American officials jumped on the payments as evidence of an aggressive Iranian campaign to buy influence and poison Afghanistan’s relations with the United States. What they did not say was that the C.I.A. was also plying the presidential palace with cash — and unlike the Iranians, it still is.
KABUL, Afghanistan — It is always hard to gauge what diplomats really think unless one of their cables ends up on WikiLeaks, but every once in a while, the barriers fall and a bit of truth slips into public view.
That is especially true in Afghanistan, where diplomats painstakingly weigh every word against political goals back home.
The positive spin from the Americans has been running especially hard the last few weeks, as Congressional committees in Washington focus on spending bills and the Obama administration, trying to secure money for a few more years here, talks up the country’s progress. The same is going on at the European Union, where the tone has been sterner than in the past, but still glosses predictions of Afghanistan’s future with upbeat words like “promise” and “potential.”
Despite that, one of those rare truth-telling moments came at a farewell cocktail party last week hosted by the departing French ambassador to Kabul: Bernard Bajolet, who is leaving to head France’s Direction Génerale de la Sécurité Extérieure, its foreign intelligence service.
After the white-coated staff passed the third round of hors d’oeuvres, Mr. Bajolet took the lectern and laid out a picture of how France — a country plagued by a slow economy, waning public support for the Afghan endeavor and demands from other foreign conflicts, including Syria and North Africa — looked at Afghanistan.
While it is certainly easier for France to be a critic from the sidelines than countries whose troops are still fighting in Afghanistan, the country can claim to have done its part. It lost more troops than all but three other countries before withdrawing its last combat forces in the fall.
The room, filled with diplomats, some senior soldiers and a number of Afghan dignitaries, went deadly quiet. When Mr. Bajolet finished, there was restrained applause — and sober expressions. One diplomat raised his eyebrows and nodded slightly; another said, “No holding back there.”
“From the end of the recession in 2009 through 2011 (the last year for which Census Bureau wealth data are available), the 8 million households in the U.S. with a net worth above $836,033 saw their aggregate wealth rise by an estimated $5.6 trillion, while the 111 million households with a net worth at or below that level saw their aggregate wealth decline by an estimated $600 billion.” Pew Research, “An Uneven Recovery, by Richard Fry and Paul Taylor.
Since the recession was officially declared to be over in June 2009, I have assured readers that there has been no recovery. Gerald Celente, John Williams (shadowstats.com), and no doubt others have also made it clear that the alleged recovery is an artifact of an understated inflation rate that produces an image of real economic growth.
