- Signs of the Times for Mon, 11 Dec 2006 -

• Signs Editorials
• Climate On The Edge
• America - Looking In
• America - Looking Out
• Priming The Middle East
• Starting With Lebanon And Palestine
• Far Out
• Euro Trash
• Fascists Live Too Long
• Wakey Wakey!

Gold closed at 631.00 dollars an ounce on Friday, down 3.2% from $651.20 at the close of the previous Friday. The dollar closed at 0.7574 euros Friday, up 1.0% from 0.7498 euros at the end of the week before. That put the euro at 1.3202 dollars compared to $1.3338 the Friday before. Gold in euros would be 477.96 euros an ounce, down 2.1% from 488.23 for the week. Oil closed at 62.03 dollars a barrel Friday, down 2.6% from $63.67 at the close of the previous Friday. Oil in euros would be 46.99 euros a barrel, down 1.6% from 47.74 euros for the week. The gold/oil ratio closed at 10.17 Friday, down 0.6% from 10.23 at the end of the week before. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow closed at 12,307.49 Friday, up 1.0% from 12,194.13 at the end of the previous Friday. The NASDAQ closed at 2,437.36, up 1.0% from 2,413.21 for the week. In U.S. interest rates the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.55%, up 12 basis points from 4.43 for the week.

Let's take a little break from the housing bubble, debt levels and the impending currency collapse of the dollar to think some more big picture thoughts about the end of the neoliberal era. Where are we? Where should we want to go?

Believe it or not, classical economics, the foundation of neoliberal ideology, was inspired by satanism. I'm not referring to Adam Smith, but to the poet who inspired him, Bernard de Mandeville. Mandeville was said to be a member of the notorious Hellfire Club in London. Mandeville's poem, The Grumbling Hive (also appearing in The Fable of the Bees), published in 1705, puts the argument for individual selfishness at most basic.

The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves Turn'd Honest... tells of a wealthy and powerful beehive whose inhabitants act only in pursuit of gain and esteem. Nevertheless, they espouse an ethic that condemns this behaviour and frequently lament that their society is full of sin. Irritated by their constant complaining, their god decides to make them all virtuous. In a flash, their society comes to a stop: commerce and industry are abandoned, and the bees leave their once flourishing hive and withdraw to live simply in the hollow of a tree. The moral is that virtue can only lead to a poor, ascetic society, whereas the vices are the necessary engines of a wealthy and powerful nation.

In 1714, the poem reappeared as part of The Fable of the Bees, or: Private Vices, Publick Benefits, in which Mandeville explains and defends the claim that private vices lead to public benefits. Mandeville does so by examining human nature in the same meticulous way "a surgeon studies a carcass". This uncompromising examination leads him to conclude that man is "a compound of various Passions, that all of them, as they are provoked, come uppermost, and govern him whether he will or no." The gratification of these passions, Mandeville writes, is wholly selfish. Mandeville defines vice as "every thing, which [...] Man should commit to gratify any of his Appetites," and virtue as "every Performance, by which Man, contrary to the impulse of Nature, should endeavour the Benefit of others, or the Conquest of his own Passions out of a Rational Ambition of Being good." But, since on Mandeville's view of human nature, man is a selfish creature, wholly governed by his passions, people's behaviour will always be vicious, and true virtue can have no role in managing people's destructive desires. Should people become virtuous through divine grace, no one would pursue temporal success and society would go the way of the bees. Thus, virtue has no connection with maintaining society or worldly success. (http://www.philosophers.co.uk/...)

Serving others by serving self. (the alternative: serving self by serving others). In the eighteenth century such thoughts may have seemed novel and promising. Indeed the vice of greed and self-interest did release huge amounts of energy. But now, at the end of that run, some of us may ask ourselves: Is that the best we can come up with?

Can there be an economic and social system based on serving self by serving others that still unleashes creative energy?

As we wrote last week, the main problem with all the modern economic systems, capitalist or socialist, comes from the presence of perhaps 6% of the population with no conscience: psychopaths:

[N]eoclassical ideology has been a boon to those in our midst who are incapable of moral reasoning: psychopaths, those with no conscience. In fact, it could be argued that Neoclassical economics could only be the basis of organizing society if either no one were psychopathic or if everyone were. In our mixed world, where perhaps 6% of the people have no conscience, neoclassical economics is a way station to tyranny since it simultaneously provides a way for the unscrupulous to gain wealth and power while inhibiting the natural conscience-based morality of normal humanity.

What economic system can work if 6% of the population has no conscience whatsoever and no ability to develop one?

All economic systems in recorded history have been exploitative. These can be divided into two types: those based on tribute and those based on capitalism. In the latter can be included all types of socialism that have actually existed from European-style social democracy to Stalinism or Maoism, since they have existed only during the period in which capitalism has been the dominant mode of production.

A word here about "exploitation." Economic exploitation occurs when one group of people expropriates the surplus produced by another group. If we think back to a primarily agricultural economy, that surplus would be food grown or slaughtered. The person who produces the food, the peasant farmer or herder, needs to produce more than his family eats in order for the society to support people like priests or warriors or bureaucrats who don't produce food. Marxist theorists have developed the concept of 'mode of production' to describe the predominant way that surplus is extracted. The 'means of production' are the ways that things are produced.

The difference between capitalism and earlier, tribute-based modes of production is that capitalism extracts the surplus through the normal rules of economic behavior. It is axiomatic. By going to work, borrowing money, buying things we need, surplus is extracted from us workers under capitalism. By 'workers' I mean most of us. That doesn't mean 'blue collar' only, but all those who need a paycheck and who can't survive on their investments alone. If you can survive on your investments, you are part of the bourgeoisie. Other systems, such as feudalism, extract the surplus through extra-economic means, such as at the point of a sword. When surpluses are extracted at the point of the sword, you have a tribute-based mode of production (see John Haldon, The State and the Tributary Mode of Production, London:Verso Press, 1993).

But, if all economic systems in recorded history have been exploitative, what about those before recorded history? The great American anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins, published a book in 1972 called Stone Age Economics. In it, he argues that hunter-gatherers, long thought to live lives "nastry, brutish and short," in fact lived in "the original affluent society," as he titled a chapter of the book.

Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily satisfied. To accept that hunters are affluent is therefore to recognise that the present human condition of man slaving to bridge the gap between his unlimited wants and his insufficient means is a tragedy of modern times.

..."Mere subsistence economy", "limited leisure save in exceptional circumstances", incessant quest for food", "meagre and relatively unreliable" natural resources, "absence of an economic surplus", "maximum energy from a maximum number of people" so runs the fair average anthropological opinion of hunting and gathering

The traditional dismal view of the hunters' fix goes back to the time Adam Smith was writing, and probably to a time before anyone was writing. Probably it was one of the first distinctly neolithic prejudices, an ideological appreciation of the hunter's capacity to exploit the earth's resources most congenial to the historic task of depriving him of the same. We must have inherited it with the seed of Jacob, which "spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north", to the disadvantage of Esau who was the elder son and cunning hunter, but in a famous scene deprived of his birthright.

Current low opinions of the hunting-gathering economy need not be laid to neolithic ethnocentrism. Bourgeois ethnocentrism will do as well. The existing business economy will promote the same dim conclusions about the hunting life. Is it so paradoxical to contend that hunters have affluent economies, their absolute poverty notwithstanding? Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world's wealthiest peoples.

The market-industrial system institutes scarcity, in a manner completely without parallel. Where production and distribution are arranged through the behaviour of prices, and all livelihoods depend on getting and spending, insufficiency of material means becomes the explicit, calculable starting point of all economic activity.

The entrepreneur is confronted with alternative investments of a finite capital, the worker (hopefully) with alternative choices of remunerative employ, and the consumer... Consumption is a double tragedy: what begins in inadequacy will end in deprivation. Bringing together an international division of labour, the market makes available a dazzling array of products: all these Good Things within a man's reach- but never all within his grasp. Worse, in this game of consumer free choice, every acquisition is simultaneously a deprivation for every purchase of something is a foregoing of something else, in general only marginally less desirable, and in some particulars more desirable, that could have been had instead. That sentence of "life at hard labour" was passed uniquely upon us. Scarcity is the judgment decreed by our economy. And it is precisely from this anxious vantage that we look back upon hunters. But if modern man, with all his technological advantages, still lacks the wherewithal, what chance has the naked savage with his puny bow and arrow? Having equipped the hunter with bourgeois impulses and palaeolithic tools, we judge his situation hopeless in advance.

According to Sahlins, one reason for misconceptions about hunter-gathers comes from observation of surviving hunter-gatherer tribes. Sahlins argues that agriculture-fueled civilizations have pushed hunter-gatherers off the best land and on to marginal lands. But even contemporary hunter-gatherers in Australia or the !Kung in the Kalahari desert have been shown to enjoy a plentiful and varied diet. Not only that but the average amount of time it takes a person to meet their needs is no more than about four hours a day. The rest of the time is spent in dancing, ritual and mythologizing.

Despite a low annual rainfall (6 to 10 inches), Lee found in the Dobe area a "surprising abundance of vegetation". Food resources were "both varied and abundant", particularly the energy rich mangetti nut- "so abundant that millions of the nuts rotted on the ground each year for want of picking". The Bushman figures imply that one man's labour in hunting and gathering will support four or five people. Taken at face value, Bushman food collecting is more efficient than French farming in the period up to World War II, when more than 20 per cent of the population were engaged in feeding the rest. Confessedly, the comparison is misleading, but not as misleading as it is astonishing. In the total population of free-ranging Bushmen contacted by Lee, 61.3 per cent (152 of 248) were effective food producers; the remainder were too young or too old to contribute importantly In the particular camp under scrutiny, 65 per cent were "effectives". Thus the ratio of food producers to the general population is actually 3 :5 or 2:3. But, these 65 per cent of the people "worked 36 per cent of the time, and 35 per cent of the people did not work at all"!

For each adult worker, this comes to about two and one - half days labour per week. (In other words, each productive individual supported herself or himself and dependents and still had 3 to 5 days available for other activities.) A "day's work" was about six hours; hence the Dobe work week is approximately 15 hours, or an average of 2 hours 9 minutes per day. All things considered, Bushmen subsistence labours are probably very close to those of native Australians.

... Also like the Australians, the time Bushmen do not work in subsistence they pass in leisure or leisurely activity. One detects again that characteristic palaeolithic rhythm of a day or two on, a day or two off- the latter passed desultorily in camp. Although food collecting is the primary productive activity, Lee writes, "the majority of the people's time (four to five days per week) is spent in other pursuits, such as resting in camp or visiting other camps":

"A woman gathers on one day enough food to feed her family for three days, and spends the rest of her time resting in camp, doing embroidery, visiting other camps, or entertaining visitors from other camps. For each day at home, kitchen routines, such as cooking, nut cracking, collecting firewood, and fetching water, occupy one to three hours of her time. This rhythm of steady work and steady leisure maintained throughout the year. The hunters tend to work more frequently than the women, but their schedule uneven. It 'not unusual' for a man to hunt avidly for a week and then do no hunting at all for two or three weeks. Since hunting is an unpredictable business and subject to magical control, hunters sometimes experience a run of bad luck and stop hunting for a month or longer. During these periods, visiting, entertaining, and especially dancing are the primary activities of men."

The daily per-capita subsistence yield for the Dobe Bushmen was 2,140 calories. However, taking into account body weight, normal activities, and the age-sex composition of the Dobe population, Lee estimates the people require only 1,975 calories per capita. Some of the surplus food probably went to the dogs, who ate what the people left over. "The conclusion can be drawn that the Bushmen do not lead a substandard existence on the edge of starvation as has been commonly supposed."

Possessions are more of a hinderance then a help:

In the non subsistence sphere, the people's wants are generally easily satisfied. Such "material plenty" depends partly upon the simplicity of technology and democracy of pro perty. Products are homespun: of stone, bone, wood, skin-materials such as "lay in abundance around them". As a rule, neither extraction of the raw material nor its working up take strenuous effort. Access to natural resources is typically direct- "free for anyone to take"- even as possession of the necessary tools is general and knowledge of the required skills common. The division of labour is likewise simple, predominantly a division of labour by sex. Add in the liberal customs of sharing, for which hunters are properly famous, and all the people can usually participate in the going prosperity, such as it is.

For most hunters, such affluence without abundance in the non-subsistence sphere need not be long debated. A more interesting question is why they are content with so few possessions for it is with them a policy, a "matter of principle" as Gusinde says, and not a misfortune.

But are hunters so undemanding of material goods because they are themselves enslaved by a food quest "demanding maximum energy from a maximum number of people", so that no time or effort remains for the provision of other comforts? Some ethnographers testify to the contrary that the food quest is so successful that half the time the people seem not to know what to do with themselves. On the other hand, movement is a condition of this success, more movement in some cases than others, but always enough to rapidly depreciate the satisfactions of property. Of the hunter it is truly said that his wealth is a burden. In his condition of life, goods can become "grievously oppressive", as Gusinde observes, and the more so the longer they are carried around. Certain food collectors do have canoes and a few have dog sleds, but most must carry themselves all the comforts they possess, and so only possess what they can comfortably carry themselves. Or perhaps only what the women can carry: the men are often left free to reach to the sudden opportunity of the chase or the sudden necessity of defence. As Owen Lattimore wrote in a not too different context, "the pure nomad is the poor nomad". Mobility and property are in contradiction. That wealth quickly becomes more of an encumbrance than a good thing is apparent even to the outsider. Laurens van der Post was caught in the contradiction as he prepared to make farewells to his wild Bushmen friends:

"This matter of presents gave us many an anxious moment. We were humiliated by the realisation of how little there was we could give to the Bushmen. Almost everything seemed likely to make life more difficult for them by adding to the litter and weight of their daily round. They themselves had practically no possessions: a loin strap, a skin blanket and a leather satchel. There was nothing that they could not assemble in one minute, wrap up in their blankets and carry on their shoulders for a journey of a thousand miles. They had no sense of possession."

Here then is another economic "peculiarity"- some hunters at least, display a notable tendency to be sloppy about their possessions. They have the kind of nonchalance that would be appropriate to a people who have mastered the problems of production.

"They do not know how to take care of their belongings. No one dreams of putting them in order, folding them, drying or cleaning them, hanging them up, or putting them in a neat pile. If they are looking for some particular thing, they rummage carelessly through the hodgepodge of trifles in the little baskets. Larger objects that are piled up in a heap in the hut are dragged hither and thither with no regard for the damage that might be done them.

The European observer has the impression that these (Yahgan) Indians place no value whatever on their utensils and that they have completely forgotten the effort it took to make them. Actually, no one clings to his few goods and chattels which, as it is, are often and easily lost, but just as easily replaced... The Indian does not even exercise care when he could conveniently do so. A European is likely to shake his head at the boundless indifference of these people who drag brand-new objects, precious clothing, fresh provisions and valuable items through thick mud, or abandon them to their swift destruction by children and dogs.... Expensive things that are given them are treasured for a few hours, out of curiosity; after that they thoughtlessly let everything deteriorate in the mud and wet. The less they own, the more comfortable they can travel, and what is ruined they occasionally replace. Hence, they are completely indifferent to any material possessions."

The hunter, one is tempted to say, is "uneconomic man". At least as concerns non subsistence goods, he is the reverse of that standard caricature immortalised in any General Principles of Economics, page one. His wants are scarce and his means (in relation) plentiful. Consequently he is "comparatively free of material pressures", has "no sense of possession", shows "an undeveloped sense of property", is "completely indifferent to any material pressures", manifests a "lack of interest" in developing his technological equipment.

. Economic Man is a bourgeois construction- as Marcel Mauss said, "not behind us, but before, like the moral man". It is not that hunters and gatherers have curbed their materialistic "impulses"; they simply never made an institution of them. "Moreover, if it is a great blessing to be free from a great evil, our (Montagnais) Savages are happy; for the two tyrants who provide hell and torture for many of our Europeans, do not reign in their great forests, I mean ambition and avarice... as they are contented with a mere living, not one of them gives himself to the Devil to acquire wealth."

In agricultural societies, however, the work is hard because the peasant not only has to provide food for himself and his household, but also has to turn over a good portion of the surplus to a landlord of some type. These landlords, then, spend the surplus on weapons, followers and social display. While we admire the fruits of the exploitation in museums, the peasant himself would be better off before agriculture. Those extra four to ten hours of work go to provide someone who doesn't work a sword and a horse to kill and burn the houses and fields of other peasants like himself.

The battles over who gets to share how much of the surplus production of the peasantry make up the history of human society until capitalism arrived in the 1600s. We should distinguish capitalism from commercialism or mercantilism, here. Capitalism did not arise until the 17th century, in spite of the prior millenia of buying and selling things. Capitalism resulted from the coming together of large fortunes with free wage labor to such an extent that it became the predominant mode of production.

We could say that hunter-gatherers didn't know how good they had it, but there is actually evidence that they did. Much of their social structure was designed to prevent the kind of concentration of power that would split off a class of exploitative landlords. Most people think that technological development led to agriculture, which created a surplus that "led" to the ancient urban societies with class divisions, etc. In fact, it may have been the other way around, concentration of power led to exploitation which increased the need for intensified production which led to technological development and agriculture.

If we are looking for a dynamic economic system that prevents accumulation of power by individuals and which allows for the most possible freedom and creativity, then really we are looking at anarchism. The only effective anarchism would have to be one that takes into account the presence of psychopaths. David Graeber offers some suggestions of just what such a system would look like in his Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2004). If we take Peter Kropotkin's definition of anarchism, the impossibility of such a system without the awareness of the psychopaths among us become inescapable:

The name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government - harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. (Graeber, p. 2)

According to Graeber, anarchism,

is also a project, which sets out to begin creating the institutions of a new society "within the shell of the old," to expose, subvert, and undermine structures of domination but always, while doing so, proceeding in a democratic fashion, a manner which itself demonstrates those structures are unnecessary. (Graeber, p.7)

Graeber looks to the methods used by those societies that have found ways to prevent the concentration of power for clues. He points to the work of Marcel Mauss and Pierre Clastres in particular. Mauss, one of the founders of French sociology, opposed the view that "primitive" peoples acted economically much the way we do under capitalism (a view popular among classical economists). Mauss argued that goods were exchanged in archaic and primitive societies by complicated bonds of gift exchange. Graeber argues that these systems can help us find a way of mental prison of neoliberal ideology:

In the end, though, Marcel Mauss has probably had more influence on anarchists than all the other ones combined. This is because he was interested in alternative moralities, which opened the way to thinking that societies without states and markets were the way they were because they actively wished to live that way. Which in our terms means, because they were anarchists. Insofar as fragments of an anarchist anthropology do, already, exist, they largely derive from him.

Before Mauss, the universal assumption had been that economies without money or markets had operated by means of "barter"; they were trying to engage in market behavior (acquire useful goods and services at the least cost to themselves, get rich if possible...), they just hadn't yet developed very sophisticated ways of going about it. Mauss demonstrated that in fact, such economies were really "gift economies." They were not based on calculation, but on a refusal to calculate; they were rooted in an ethical system which consciously rejected most of what we would consider the basic principles of economics. It was not that they had not yet learned to seek profit through the most efficient means. They would have found the very premise that the point of an economic transaction - at least, one with someone who was not your enemy - was to seek the greatest profit deeply offensive. (Graeber, p. 21)

Clastres took this idea and applied it to political systems:

He insisted political anthropologists had still not completely gotten over the old evolutionist perspectives that saw the state primarily as a more sophisticated form of organization than what had come before; stateless peoples, such as the Amazonian societies Clastres studied, were tacitly assumed not to have attained the level of say, the Aztecs or the Inca. But what if, he proposed, Amazonians were not entirely unaware of what the elementary forms of state power might be like - what it would mean to allow some men to give everyone else orders which could not be questioned, since they were backed up by the threat of force - and were for that very reason determined to ensure such things never came about? What if they considered the fundamental premises of our political science morally objectionable?

The parallels between the two arguments are actually quit striking In gift economies there are, often, venues for enterprising individuals: But everything is arranged in such a way they could never be used as a platform for creating permanent inequalities of wealth, since self-aggrandizing types all end up competing to see who can give the most away. In Amazonian (or North American) societies, the institution of the chief played the same role on a political level: the position was so demanding, and so little rewarding, so hedged about by safeguards, that there was no way for power-hungry individuals to do much with it. Amazonians might not have literally whacked off the ruler's head every few years, but it's not an entirely inappropriate metaphor. By these lights these were all, in a very real sense, anarchist societies. They were founded on an explicit rejection of the logic of the state and of the market. (Graeber, pp. 22-3)

The crucial point for Graeber is that the way to counteract power is to prevent the very things that allow some to take power:

But Mauss and Clastres' argument suggests something even more radical. It suggests that counterpower, at least in the most elementary sense, actually exists where the states and markets are not even present; that in such cases, rather than being embodied in popular institutions which pose themselves against the power of lords, or kings, or plutocrats, they are embodied in institutions which ensure such types of person never come about. What it is "counter" to, then, is a potential, a latent aspect, or dialectical possibility if you prefer, within the society itself. (Graeber, p. 25)

Can a counter-power society be high-tech? Are such structures only possible with a low level of technological development? Who knows? It is clear that the exact type of technology we have now presupposed large concentration of power. A better question might be: How would we get there from here? Here is where the imagination comes in. Ran Prieur has been discussing this on his blog recently. In order to make such a thing happen we would need to think and act in new ways. Graeber discusses the role of imagination (and mentions the imagination that is required for empathy) in a "counter-power," or stateless society?

To sum up the argument so far, then:

1) Counterpower is first and foremost rooted in the imagination; it emerges from the fact that all social systems are a tangle of contradictions, always to some degree at war with themselves. Or, more precisely, it is rooted in the relation between the practical imagination required to maintain a society based on consensus (as any society not based on violence must, ultimately, be) - the constant work of imaginative identification with others that makes understanding possible - and the spectral violence which appears to be its constant, perhaps inevitable corollary.

2) In egalitarian societies, counterpower might be said to be the predominant form of social power. It stands guard over what are seen as certain frightening possibilities within the society itself: notably against the emergence of systematic forms of political or economic dominance.

2a) Institutionally, counterpower takes the form of what we would call institutions of direct democracy, consensus and mediation; that is, ways of publicly negotiating and controlling that inevitable internal tumult and transforming it into those social states (or if you like, forms of value) that society sees as the most desirable: conviviality, unanimity, fertility, prosperity, beauty, however it may be framed.

3) In highly unequal societies, imaginative counterpower often defines itself against certain aspects of dominance that are seen as particularly obnoxious and can become an attempt to eliminate them from social relations completely. When it does, it becomes revolutionary.

3a) Institutionally, as an imaginative well, it is responsible for the creation of new social forms, and the revalorization or transformation of old ones, and also,

4) in moments of radical transformation - revolutions in the old-fashioned sense - this is precisely what allows for the notorious popular ability to innovate entirely new politics, economic, and social forms. Hence, it is the root of what Antonio Negri has called "constituent power," the power to create constitutions. (Graeber, pp. 35-6)

How to get there from here? Graeber suggests that uprisings and revolts are counterproductive. Strategic withdrawals of energy from power institutions are more promising as tactics, especially when combines with strategic investments of energy in voluntary, free-will networks:

There is a way out, which is to accept that anarchist forms of organization would not look anything like a state. That they would involve an endless variety of communities, associations, networks, projects, on every conceivable scale, overlapping and intersecting in any way we could imagine, and possibly many that we can't. Some would be quite local, others global. Perhaps all they would have in common is that none would involve anyone showing up with weapons and telling everyone else to shut up and do what they were told. And that, since anarchists are not actually trying to seize power within any national territory, the process of one system replacing the other will not take the form of some sudden revolutionary cataclysm - the storming of a Bastille, the seizing of a Winter Palace - but will necessarily be gradual, the creation of alternative forms of organization on a world scale, new forms of communication, new, less alienated ways of organizing life, which will, eventually, make currently existing forms of power seem stupid and beside the point. (Graeber, p. 40)

And,

Autonomist thinkers in Italy have, over the last couple decades, developed a theory of what they call revolutionary "exodus." It is inspired in part by particularly Italian conditions - the broad refusal of factory work among young people, the flourishing of squats and occupied "social centers" in so many Italian cities... But in all this Italy seems to have acted as a kind of laboratory for future social movements, anticipating trends that are now beginning to happen on a global scale.

The theory of exodus proposes that the most effective way of opposing capitalism and the liberal state is not through direct confrontation but by means of what Paolo Virno has called "engaged withdrawal," mass defection by those wishing to create new forms of community. One need only glance at the historical record to confirm that most successful forms of popular resistance have taken precisely this form. They have not involved challenging power head on (this usually leads to being slaughtered, or if not, turning into some - often even uglier - variant of the very thing one first challenged) but from one or another strategy of slipping away from its grasp, from flight, desertion, the founding of new communities. One Autonomist historian, Yann Moulier Boutang, has even argued that the history of capitalism has been a series of attempts to solve the problem of worker mobility - hence the endless elaboration of institutions like indenture, slavery, coolie systems, contract workers, guest workers, innumerable forms of border control - since, if the system ever really came close to its own fantasy version of itself, in which workers were free to hire on and quit their work wherever and whenever they wanted, the entire system would collapse. It's for precisely this reason that the one most consistent demand put forward by the radical elements in the globalization movement - from the Italian Autonomists to North American anarchists - has always been global freedom of movement, "real globalization," the destruction of borders, a general tearing down of walls. (Graeber, pp. 60-1)

Graeber concludes with some practical suggestions on how to eliminate disparities of income between the developed and the less-developed countries:

Globalization and the Elimination of North-South Inequalities

As I've mentioned, the "anti-globalization movement" is increasingly anarchist in inspiration. In the long run the anarchist position on globalization is obvious: the effacement of nation-states will mean the elimination of national borders. This is genuine globalization. Anything else is just a sham. But for the interim, there are all sorts of concrete suggestions on how the situation can be improved right now, without falling back on statist, protectionist, approaches. One example:

Once during the protests before the World Economic Forum, a kind of junket of tycoons, corporate flacks and politicians, networking and sharing cocktails at the Waldorf Astoria, pretended to be discussing ways to alleviate global poverty. I was invited to engage in a radio debate with one of their representatives. As it happened the task went to another activist but I did get far enough to prepare a three-point program that I think would have taken care of the problem nicely:

• an immediate amnesty on international debt (An amnesty on personal debt might not be a bad idea either but it's a different issue.)

• an immediate cancellation of all patents and other intellectual property rights related to technology more than one year old

• the elimination of all restrictions on global freedom of travel or residence

The rest would pretty much take care of itself. The moment the average resident of Tanzania, or Laos, was no longer forbidden to relocate to Minneapolis or Rotterdam, the government of every rich and powerful country in the world would certainly decide nothing was more important than finding a way to make sure people in Tanzania and Laos preferred to stay there. Do you really think they couldn't come up with something?

The point is that despite the endless rhetoric about "complex, subtle, intractable issues" (justifying decades of expensive research by the rich and their well-paid flunkies), the anarchist program would probably have resolved most of them in five or six years. But, you will say, these demands are entirely unrealistic! True enough. But why are they unrealistic? Mainly, because those rich guys meeting in the Waldorf would never stand for any of it. This is why we say they are themselves the problem. (Graeber, pp. 77-9)

To be continued...

I can't remember if truth ever meant much in my life.  I can count on the fingers of one hand all the times when I really wanted to let someone know the truth, when it was extremely important.  It is rare that I am lacking attention so much that I would attempt to attract it using this extreme, irrational and ineffective method.  With all that, I get very upset if in such situation I am 'found guilty' of telling the truth. 

I began to tell the truth when I understood that no one has any criteria that would allow to distinguish the truth from a lie, with a high degree of precision.  This means that one can tell the truth without consequences, same as lying!  It was a real discovery that opened many extra doors:

- if someone didn't like my truth, I could say it was a lie, and enjoy peace and quiet.

- if someone didn't like my truth, I could maintain that it is truth, and fele [sic] proud of my principles. 

- if someone didn't like my lie, I could say it was truth, and enjoy the other persons's confusion. 

- if someone didn't like my lie, I could confirm it was a lie, and watch the other person felling is proud of his power of perception. 

- if someone liked my lie, I could say that it is nothing but the truth, and bask in the sun rays of another's person's happiness. 

- if someone liked my lie, I could say it is a lie, and have a nice juicy argument. 

- if someone liked my truth, I could say it was a lie, and enjoy the feeling of power and security.

- if someone liked my truth, I could admit it is the whole truth, and enjoy openness and mutual understanding. 

So it looks like I learned to use a truth as certain means, but still has no clue why anyone would need a truth as goal and an end, in and of itself. 

**

I usually say whatever comes to mind, without much thought as to whether it happen to be truth or lie.  It is indeed very simple.  Before, I used to wonder whether truth and lie have some special meaning and significance, but then, I settled on the thought that, from everything that is ever said, very little has any meaning and significance. 

However, if I get myself in the situation when what was said has great importance either for me, or for a person I am talking to - that's incredibly stressful.  Then I have to think, and there is no time to be lazy.  In such situations the truth brings about such an adrenalin [sic] rush, that no lie could stand the comparison.

In spite of their deficiencies in normal psychological and moral knowledge, they develop and then have at their disposal a knowledge of their own, something lacked by people with a natural world view. They learn to recognize each other in a crowd as early as childhood, and they develop an awareness of the existence of other individuals similar to them. They also become conscious of being different from the world of those other people surrounding them. They view us from a certain distance, like a para-specific variety. Natural human reactions - which often fail to elicit interest to normal people because they are considered self-evident - strike the psychopath as strange and, interesting, and even comical. They therefore observe us, deriving conclusions, forming their different world of concepts. They become experts in our weaknesses and sometimes effect heartless experiments. The suffering and injustice they cause inspire no guilt within them, since such reactions from others are simply a result of their being different and apply only to "those other" people they perceive to be not quite conspecific. Neither a normal person nor our natural world view can fully conceive nor properly evaluate the existence of this world of different concepts.

A researcher into such phenomena can glimpse the deviant knowledge of the psychopath through long-term studies of the personalities of such people, using it with some difficulty, like a foreign language. As we shall see below, such practical skill becomes rather widespread in nations afflicted by that macro-social pathological phenomenon wherein this anomaly plays the inspiring role.

A normal person can learn to speak their conceptual language even somewhat proficiently, but the psychopath is never able to incorporate the world view of a normal person, although they often try to do so all their lives. The product of their efforts is only a role and a mask behind which they hide their deviant reality. [Political Ponerology, pp. 127-128]

"I'm the decider, and I decide what's best."
George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States

"The president has adopted a policy of 'anticipatory self-defense' that is alarmingly similar to the policy that imperial Japan employed at Pearl Harbor, on a date which, as an earlier American president said it would, live in infamy. Franklin D. Roosevelt was right, but today it is we Americans who live in infamy."
Arthur Schlesinger, American historian

"There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq. To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a 'just war'."
Pope Benedict XVI

On September 20, 2002, American President George W. Bush  enthusiastically and officially embraced a policy of world domination that his neoconservative advisors had drafted for him. In fact, it was a retake on a discarded foreign policy draft paper that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz had written in 1992, for then Defense Secretary Dick Cheney in the George H. Bush administration.

The new foreign policy paper introduced by the White House in 2002 was entitled “The National Security Strategy of the United States”  and was dubbed by its authors the "Bush Doctrine" of preventive wars and of international unilateralism and militarism. Indeed, under the guise of spreading 'democracy', the new 'doctrine' called for the United States to place itself above international law, ratified treaties and international institutions, and initiate "preventive wars" each time American interests or those of close allies such as Israel, are threatened. The policy paper went even further and proclaimed that the "United States has, and intends to keep, military strengths beyond challenge", with the intent of preserving the United States' position as the world's sole military superpower, not only on Earth, but also in Space. The Bush-Cheney administration even declared its intention to keep the option of using nuclear weapons—not only preemptively but even preventively, whenever and wherever it saw fit to do so. The 'Bush Doctrine' could as well have been called 'How to herald in an era of world anarchy' since it was consciously throwing away more than half a century of efforts to build an international system based on law and due process.

In the 20th Century, two other nations openly embarked upon a policy of world domination, attempting to impose their will upon other countries through the use of military power. First, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler; (1889-1945) and then the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin (1878-1953). —Hitler wanted to make Berlin the 'capital of the world', while Stalin, under the guise of spreading 'communism', hoped to create a world empire under his command. Both attempts collapsed into abject failures. During the process, however, the German and Russian peoples ended up paying dearly for their leaders' pompous and grandiose schemes, while millions of innocent victims in other countries suffered the dire consequences of insane government leaders gone awry.

The problem with megalomaniac dreams of world domination is that they inevitably lead to disasters. The reason is that such mad dreams of conquest, to be successful even in the short run, require the implementation of two dangerous and interrelated policies: first, the repression of civil liberties at the center of the would-be empire in order to crush dissent; and second, a policy of wars of aggression  abroad against countries that resist the new imperial vision. The end results are the loss of liberty at home for most people, all but the top nomenklatura, and a string of costly wars abroad that bankrupt both the state and its citizens. As former senator Barry Goldwater put it: "Now those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth, and let me remind you they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyranny."

The current Bush-led imperial push around the world is contrary to the very principles upon which the United States was established. Indeed, when the United States broke away from the British empire, in 1776, its founders swore to establish a democratic republic that would be the very opposite of an empire. They had a vision for "life, liberty and happiness" for all people of the United States and of the world and abhorred aggressive, despotic and oppressive empires which trampled on peoples' rights and pursue narrow special interests at the expense of the public good. In the words of Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), 3rd U.S. President, "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." In other words, men have always had to choose between despotism and democracy, and both cannot exist at the same time. That is why a country cannot be a democracy and an empire at the same time. It is because, first, running an empire needs a strong central authority with centrally concentrated powers. This is totally at variance with the democratic constitutional order of decentralized and responsible public decision making. And, second, maintaining an empire requires a situation of constant mobilization and of unending wars.

Jefferson's nemesis was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804) who, just as Vice President Dick Cheney today, did not want a true democracy but a king-run presidency and a life-long nominated senate. Only the House of representatives, in his autocratic scheme of thought, would have had recurringly elected members and some input in the working of the government. True power would have remained in the hand of a property oligarchy. Even though Hamilton himself was opposed to arbitrary government and strongly defended the fundamental right of Habeas Corpus, his followers have been more openly inclined to favor the maximum concentration of power in the Executive branch, at the expense of the checks and balances that are required to preserve freedom and civil liberties.

Internationally, Hamilton's followers are now also supreme in formulating American foreign policy. They are back in force in Washington D.C., but this time they are called "Neocons". They not only harbor the view of a near dictatorial executive branch, as Hamilton did, but they have added the absurd and Jocobian pretentious twist that they have received some divinely given right to govern the world. In their insane and delusional brave new world, words do not mean anything and even reality is a mirage to be adjusted according to their own interests or wishes. Indeed, they have discovered within themselves a missionary zeal to spread ("export") American-style democracy and American-style capitalism to the four corners of the globe, irrespective of international law or international obligations under the United Nations Charter, and despite whatever the lucky targeted people think or wish.

For all these reasons, it can be said that the Bush-Cheney administration is more Hamiltonian in scope than Jeffersonian. President George W. Bush has begun to arrogate to himself some of the powers of an absolute monarch, that is, the power to be above the law and to modify unilaterally the democratically adopted laws by Congress. Some of his handy men have by necessity thus developed the theory that an American president can do just about anything, if his intentions are to further national security. For instance, George W. Bush has paved the way for exercising martial law powers, first by de-facto repealing the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act that forbids  the deployment of soldiers on American soil for domestic law enforcement, and, second, by signing last October the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA: HR 6166). Through this act, the President granted himself almost-dictatorial powers to arrest and detain indefinitely any American citizen without constitutional protections. He can, indeed, suspend the right of Habeas Corpus of any person he designates as an "enemy combatant", not only in the United States but also all around the world.

In this neocon brave new world, the future is framed as some sort of a “Perpetual American-led War for a Lasting Peace.”  It is a world in which the United States can whimsically and preemptively, or even preventively, attack other countries with its sophisticated military gear, anytime one of them refuses to tow the line of American imperial interests. What is hallucinatory in all this is the idea that the Neocons have discovered a new Americentric "theory of the world", when in fact they have only stumbled upon a near exact replica of the 19th Century Eurocentric world of empires and of gunboat diplomacy. In fact, they are dreaming about a pre-1648-Westphalia world, where national self-determination and national sovereignty become a privilege reserved in exclusivity to those nations with the strongest armies. The Neocons' brave new world is really a blueprint for a non-democratic American empire, surrounded by puppet regimes all over the map. This could not be further from the democratic ideal of governments of law, not of men. Since the principles of the Peace of Westphalia date from 1648, it can be said that the Neocons' sick obsession with world domination is only three centuries and a half behind the times.

After Sept. 11 '01, when the rest of the world was in deep sympathy with the United States, the Bush-Cheney administration sould have done several things. –1. It should have worked to reinforce international law, instead of attempting to undermine it. –2. It should have been active in reforming the United Nations to make this essential international body more democratic, more representative and more efficient as a conflict solving mechanism, rather than shunning it aside. –3. It should have adopted a policy of isolating the small violent Islamist terrorists by assisting moderate and reformist elements in Muslim countries, rather than throwing gas on the fire of religious extremism. –4. It should have promoted a Helsinki Accords-like agreement in order to remove fears of illegitimate foreign military interventions, rather than whimsically invading sovereign nations. –5. It should have put forward an international Marshall-like plan to raise education and health standards in these countries, while facilitating productive investments and spuring economic development. –6. And, above all, it should have given the example, in behaving according to the fundamental humanist principles of non-aggression, lawful conduct and international generosity.

That it did none of the above is a tribute to its lack of vision and its lack of intellectual fortitude, not counting its lack of basic public morality.

Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at  rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com

Also visit his blog site at www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog.

Author's Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com

The occupation forces besieged the homes of brothers Mohammed Hussein Jalmood and Mahmoud Hussein Jalmood, opened fire on members of the two families in the early hours today, to cover up the crime they air bombed the houses.

People of the area who rushed to the crime scene and removed the bodies from the rubble found that all victims had been shot at close range, which confirms that they were mass executed.

About 32 martyrs were targeted by the American forces intentionally among them 6 children and 8 women.

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Editorial: Take nobody's word for it

Alison George
NewScientist.com news service
09 December 2006

You don't come across many Nobel prizewinners who believe in the paranormal, but Brian Josephson is one of them. After receiving the Nobel prize in physics for his research on superconductivity, his work has taken a very different direction. As well as using mathematics to describe how the brain carries out complex tasks, he is an advocate for cold fusion and other phenomena on the fringes of science. He talked to Alison George about why he thinks scientists have an irrational bias against unconventional ideas.

Why did you decide to give up your highly successful work on superconductors?

In the late 1960s I found my area of research less interesting, so I looked elsewhere for problems to work on. Investigating the mathematics of how the brain works is a much more difficult challenge. I also became interested in eastern philosophy and how that might fit in with physics. I read a book called The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra that pointed out the parallels between quantum physics and eastern mysticism.

I started to feel there was more to reality than conventional science allowed for, and some interesting ideas that it hadn't got round to investigating such as altered states of consciousness. At a conference in Toronto I saw demonstrations of psychokinesis - the influence of mind on matter - and it all pointed to some extension of what science knows at this time.

Did your Nobel prize allow you to investigate areas that are off-limits for other scientists?

It meant I was free to explore, and people felt less able to say "you can't work on that". However, I have had problems with getting funding for collaboration because of the areas I've chosen to work in.

You have become an advocate for unconventional ideas. How did that happen?

I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a "memory" of compounds that were once dissolved in it - which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked irrationally strong reactions from scientists and I was struck by how badly he was treated. To an extent, I realised that the way science is done by consensus could get things completely wrong. I feel that it's important to try and correct the errors that scientists are making.
What errors are these?

I call it "pathological disbelief". The statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it" seems to sum up this attitude. People have this idea that when something can't be reproduced every time, it isn't a real phenomenon. It is like a religious creed where you have to conform to the "correct" position. This leads to editors blocking the publication of important papers in academic journals. Even the physics preprint archive blocks some papers on certain topics, or by certain authors.

Do you believe that cold fusion and the memory of water are real, or are you just open to the idea of their being real?

In both cases there is evidence that makes me accept them as almost certainly real. They're probably connected with aspects of organisation that are difficult to deal with in the usual scientific way. I'm pushing in that direction. I look very carefully at things before I accept them as real.

You draw the line in a very different place to most scientists when it comes to hard-to-prove phenomena such as telepathy and cold fusion.

Can I take you up on something? These things are not hard to prove, they're just hard to get accepted. The evidence for these phenomena would normally lead to them being accepted, but they have an additional barrier in that they are "unacceptable" and often unpublishable. Some people are extraordinarily hard to convince. In particular, people who work in an area in which the phenomena are highly reproducible cannot envisage situations such as cold fusion where - as in many areas of materials science - things are not that reproducible. They take the illegitimate step from "hard to reproduce" to "non-existent". Science is often presented as an objective pursuit, but the history of science tells you that this is far from being the case.

Do you mean that scientists cannot accept these phenomena because it would ruin their view of the world?

It would mean an admission of error. Instead, sceptics can always say that there must have been something wrong with these experiments. This means that you can never really prove anything, and a sceptic doesn't actually have to discover anything wrong to dismiss an experiment.

Is this why you've posted the motto "take nobody's word for it" at the top of your website?

Yes. And the corollary of this motto is that if most scientists denounce an idea, this should not necessarily be taken as proof that the idea is absurd. It seems that anything goes among the physics community - cosmic wormholes, time travel - just so long as it keeps its distance from anything mystical or New Age-ish.

There are lots of pointers towards strange things, such as the quantum interconnectedness of entangled particles, but physicists are very prickly about them, saying you shouldn't read anything into these results. There are in fact a lot of scientists who believe telepathy exists, but they keep quiet about it.

I take it that means you pay a price for speaking out about things like cold fusion, telepathy and the paranormal.

Yes. If you say you accept the reality of the paranormal then this automatically affects your reputation. It's assumed that if a person believes in this kind of thing then his views are not worth considering. It has led to certain people being very prejudiced against me and assuming that there's something wrong with anything I do. I don't have the kind of support network that researchers usually have. But since I can do my research on the mathematics of the brain by myself this is less of a problem than it otherwise would be, though it slows down progress considerably.

Why do you speak out about these things when you know it causes difficulties for your own research career?

They are important for various reasons. For example, cold fusion may contribute significantly to solving the problem of generating clean energy. Had it not been ridiculed back in 1989, we'd probably all now be using energy generated by cold fusion. So it's really important to speed up the process. I reckon that cold fusion will be accepted in the next year or so.

If the evidence about cold fusion is so convincing, why do so few people believe in it?

You have to look properly at the evidence typically blocked from publication by journals such as Nature, and few people are willing to put in the effort to do that. Even better, go along to a laboratory where the work is being done. It's also hard to change how people think. People have vested interests, and their projects and reputations would be threatened if certain things were shown to be true.

Brian Josephson was awarded a Nobel prize for work on superconductivity he carried out as a 22-year-old graduate student at the University of Cambridge. The Josephson junction, which has many scientific and technical applications, is the legacy of this research. Today he leads the Mind-Matter Unification Project at the University of Cambridge (www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10).

From issue 2581 of New Scientist magazine, 09 December 2006, page 56-57
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Climate On The Edge

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Fireball Streaks Over Colorado At Dawn

The Denver Channel
08/12/2006

DENVER -- A bright fireball streaked across Colorado early Friday, prompting a number of e-mails to 7News, and calls to authorities and researchers, but no debris was immediately reported.

"It came in from the east, over the plains, and was seen to disappear over the mountains to the west," said Chris Peterson, a meteor researcher with the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.
The bright light was spotted at abut 6:45 a.m. and was bright enough to be categorized as a fireball, he said.
Click here to find out more!

"Meteors are called fireballs when they are brighter than Venus," said Peterson.

Meteors are common over Colorado but this one was unusual because it was so bright it could be seen as the sky was getting light, Peterson said.

"This one may have been much brighter (than most), more like the brightness of the moon," he said. "Events like that happen every year or so."

Peterson, who operates a Web site on meteors, said he received several witness reports but did not see the meteor himself.

"It was still burning as passed out of view at the lower horizon," wrote one 7News viewer from Dillon. "Normally they come down and flame out long before they get to the horizon."

Peterson said any debris from the meteor would be hard to find.

"You'd just be looking at a handful of rocks," he said. "The rocks would have probably fallen somewhere where there's a lot of other rocks."

Peterson said if any part of the fireball did make it to the ground it might be in northwest Colorado, in the vicinity of Meeker.



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5.0 Quake Off Italian Coast

German Geosciences Research Center
10/12/2006

5.0 Quake Off Italian Coast

Region: Adriatic Sea
Magnitude: 5.0
Origin time: 2006/12/10 11:03:41 UTC





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Typhoon roars out of Philippines, four killed

Reuters
11 Dec 06

MANILA - Typhoon Utor swept out of the Philippines killing four people, including three children, and stranding thousands on Monday after high winds and waves tore up power lines and communication links in the archipelago.

Utor, currently a category 1 typhoon with gusts of around 140 kph (93 mph), was forecast to weaken to a tropical storm by Friday on a path that peters out south of the Chinese island of Hainan by the weekend, according to www.tropicalstormrisk.com.

The National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC) said three children were confirmed dead, including a one-year-old girl whose house was struck by a falling tree in central Capiz province. Four were listed as missing.

Around 50 passengers were rescued when their boat capsized in stormy waters off Batangas province about 120 kilometers (75 miles) south of Manila. They piled onto the vessel despite the bad weather after being stranded on Mindoro Island for two days.

"We were irked at some of the foreigners. They tried to save their baggage first," one passenger, Sheryl Nartates, told a local radio station after three coast guard boats picked all the passengers up.

On the resort island of Boracay, the famous white sands were littered with debris after high winds tore up roofs and trees.

"Some people are crying because they are afraid and in shock," said Roselle Gallano, a waitress at a coffee shop close to the beach front. "Many houses were damaged, some have been tilted."

The governor of nearby Aklan province said one person had been killed on Boracay and at least four were still missing.

Authorities evacuated around 90,000 residents, most of them in Albay province, where more than 1,000 people are feared dead after Typhoon Durian wiped out villages in a torrent of landslides and flash flooding in late November.

Utor, the fifth typhoon to hit the Philippines since September, did not directly hit Albay but the bereaved remain stranded in schools and makeshift shelters and the province is still without power.

On Friday, the Philippines hastily postponed an annual summit of 16 Asian leaders until January, citing concerns the typhoon could wreak havoc at the venue on the central island of Cebu. Utor subsequently swept north of Cebu.

The NDCC said over 500 houses were destroyed and electricity was knocked out in wide areas in the Visayas region.

Storms regularly hit the Philippines. In one of the worst disasters in recent years, more than 5,000 people died on the central island of Leyte in 1991 in floods triggered by a typhoon.



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U.S. Senate rejects earthquake repair money

Thursday, December 7th, 2006 9:06 AM HST Associated Press

HONOLULU (AP) _ The U-S Senate has cut 19 (m) million dollars in proposed earthquake assistance for Hawaii.

That has left the state scrambling to find other sources of federal money to assist agricultural water systems on the Big Island that are still recovering from the October 15th earthquakes.
Major General Robert Lee, the state's director of Civil Defense, says Hawaii is nowhere close to declaring an end to the disaster period.

Senator Daniel Inouye's office says the earthquake assistance money would have helped repair the Lower Hamakua Ditch, the Waimea Irrigation System and the Upper Hamakua Ditch on the Big Island.

Inouye blames majority Republicans for cutting the earthquake relief money after the White House issued a veto threat.

He says the matter will be addressed again next year when Democrats assume control of Congress.



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Tsunami-like blast wave rips across the Sun

David Shiga
NewScientist.com news service
08 December 2006

A blast wave swept across the face of the Sun on Wednesday, rippling outward from the site of a large solar flare. Blast waves that spread all the way across the Sun like this one did are rare, especially when the Sun is in the quiet phase of its 11-year cycle, as it is right now.

The wave was imaged by the Optical Solar Patrol Network telescope at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) in Sunspot, New Mexico, US. Watch a video of the expanding blast wave. The wave compresses and heats the solar plasma as it passes, causing it to brighten.

The wave raced outwards from the site of the flare at 400 kilometres per second, says K S Balasubramaniam of NSO. It occurred near one edge of the Sun's face and traveled to the other edge in about 30 minutes, he says.
This was the second major flare from the same group of sunspots. Another flare spewed out from the group on Tuesday. The fact that this region of the Sun spewed out two major flares just a day apart "implies that there must have been some kind of tremendous energy buildup", Balasubramaniam told New Scientist.

The buildup of energy is thought to be related to the twisting of the Sun's magnetic field. Such a large buildup and release of energy on the Sun is a rare occurrence, and especially unusual around solar minimum, when the Sun is normally at its quietest.
Low point

The Sun appears to be just past the lowest point in its cycle, Balasubramaniam says. The last maximum was in 2000, but the exact time between maximum and minimum varies from cycle to cycle.

The last time a similar blast wave was seen by the NSO telescope was in November 2003, though it might have missed others if they occurred when the Sun was not visible from the site, he says.

The expanding blast wave also caused two dark filaments to disappear as it passed by, one at upper left and the other at lower middle. The filaments are arches of relatively cool material clinging to magnetic field lines above the Sun.

The passage of the wave may temporarily disperse this material, Balasubramaniam says. See a video showing the brief disappearance of the filaments.

Exactly how the release of magnetic energy leads to solar outbursts is not known. Whether flares provide the trigger for the waves or the relationship is more complicated is also not clear. "If we see a lot more of these, it will tell us a lot more about why these things happen at certain times," he says.



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Four undersea volcanoes founded near Phuket

The Nation (Thailand)
11 December 2006

A team of Thai and German marine geologists has found four volcanoes under the sea about 200 kilometres away from Phuket, the team leader announced Monday.

Dr Anon Sanitwong na Ayutthaya of Chulalongkorn University, who headed the survey, said the survey was carried out for 15 days and ended on December 6 with support from the German government and from the National Marine Geology Institute in Keith.
The team survey the seabed for 1,500 square kilometres at the depth of 1,000 to 2,800 metres at the a continental rim about 3,00 kms away from Phuket.

He said the team detected four mud volcanoes in the area.

The first volcano is about 200 kms away from Phuket and its base is about 1-km long in diameter and is 100 metre high. It is located about 650 metres under the sea.

The second volcano is located 50 kms west of the first volcano and is about 1,000 metres under the sea. The third and fourth volcanoes are located about 60 kms northeast of the second volcano and are about 700 to 800 metres under the sea.



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Swiss Halt Geothermal Experiment after Tremor

Planet Ark
December 11, 2006

ZURICH - Swiss engineers halted an experiment to extract geothermal heat from deep below ground after it set off a small earthquake in the nearby city of Basel, the Swiss news agency SDA said on Saturday.

The tremor late on Friday measured 3.4 on the Richter scale and caused widespread fear, prompting about 1,000 calls to emergency services, but caused no injuries or serious damage, the agency said.
Managers apologised for any fears aroused by the mishap, which occurred after water was injected at high pressure into a five-km-deep (16,000-feet-deep) borehole, but said the experiment posed no danger, SDA reported.

The Basel public prosecutor launched an investigation into the government-subsidised project after the quake in the historic city, it said.

The 80-million-franc (US$66.95 million) experiment, known as "deep heat mining", is designed to extract enough super-heated water to drive a power plant providing electricity for 10,000 homes and heat for 2,700 others.



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The Consequences of Damming Rivers in the Developing World

By Bill McKibben
OnEarth Magazine
December 8, 2006

A review of author Jacques Leslie's new book, which lays bare the high environmental and social price that people in the developing world often pay for damming their rivers.
We forget now that the American environmental movement was born not in reaction to smog or to dirty water, but to dams. That John Muir, the great conservationist of the first half of the twentieth century, founded the Sierra Club to fight the dam at Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy, and that David Brower, Muir's successor, built the club into the prototype of modern activism in the struggles over dams at Dinosaur National Monument, Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon. We forget because our big-dam days are over -- almost everything that could be plugged with concrete long since has been. But the rest of the world is still deep in these fights. In fact, in many places they still define both environmentalism and development, as journalist Jacques Leslie's superb account, Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), makes clear.

Leslie has written a volume that is heir, both in organization and in power, to Encounters With the Archdruid, John McPhee's classic profile of Brower and his fight against dam-nation, much of which was written from deep within the canyons of the Colorado. Leslie chronicles three people whose lives have been shaped by the fight over dams. One is a full-out opponent, one an ambivalent expert, and one a bureaucrat trying to deal with the legacy left to him by a century of dams.

The first -- and most beautifully wrought -- portrait is of Medha Patkar, an Indian woman who has been battling the Narmada Dam for decades. Narmada has become the prototype of the big third-world dam: expensive, environmentally ruinous, and essentially impossible to stop. Patkar and her activist group, Narmada Bachao Andolan, came incredibly close -- they forced the World Bank for the first time to back down from funding a dam.

But India was too committed to the plan to be deterred. By a 2-to-1 vote of the Indian supreme court the project went ahead in 2000, and as Leslie's account opens, Patkar has been reduced to trying to keep the dam from going higher. Her favorite tactic: to chain herself to a piece of ground and wait for the waters to rise, daring the authorities to let her drown. This approach (used in California, too, in the fight over the Stanislaus River a quarter of a century ago) draws its inspiration from Gandhi, but Leslie's brilliant and unsparing portrait makes it clear that Patkar is not the happy warrior that we remember the Mahatma to be. Leslie searches for the source of her incredible courage and commitment, talking to her family and the friends of her younger life, and traces much of her relentless drive to the unhappiness of her early marriage, where her obvious talents were suffocated. When she finally left, says one friend, "she was at her lowest level, very depressed.... She couldn't see what she could do."

For Leslie, that description clicked. "Medha's suffering preceded her [Narmada] career. She did not suffer because anti-dam activism required suffering. She suffered first, then found a meaningful expression for it in the valley. Suffering became her fuel and her power and her validation, the proof of her commitment to the cause and the source of her magnetism."

This is convincing, and it describes a fair number of talented activists I've known over the years. It's also the stuff of a great novel, especially as it is deftly interwoven with the suffering of the people whose lives are being wrecked by the rising waters. Its operatic quality sets a bar that the rest of the book never quite meets; Leslie's other characters are less troubled, less charismatic. They retire, they don't try to kill themselves.

Still, their stories are remarkable. Thayer Scudder, "the world's leading dam resettlement expert," has spent an entire career studying dam resettlement as an anthropologist and working as a consultant for international agencies like the World Bank to evaluate new projects -- always hoping for what Leslie calls "one good dam." His first project, as a young anthropologist in the 1950s, was the Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River along what is now the Zambia-Zimbabwe border. It was the first big dam the World Bank ever financed, and it turned into a horror story of everything that could possibly go wrong, especially the resettlement project that Scudder chronicled. At first the Tonga tribespeople refused to believe their villages would be inundated -- how could a wall on the river accomplish that? When they were finally forced away (only after many of their spear-clutching men were massacred by police) it was to barren, unfamiliar, and droughty land. Leslie visits there 45 years later and finds the villagers are still hoping that the dam will be taken down and that they can return to their homes, or at least that Scudder will come back and explain how it all happened. (He can't bear to, perhaps because of the many children in the community named for him or his wife, Molly.) One old man summed up the mood: "There is nothing to do," he said. "Just sit and wait. Maybe die."

Though it's done the Tonga no good, their suffering, at least for a time, helped turn the tide of dam-building in Africa. Chastened by his experience, Scudder became more militant in demanding better resettlement plans before dams could be approved. In fact, he played a major role in blocking a dam slated for the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and he and Leslie revisit the scene of that semi-triumph. They also spend time in Lesotho, the mountainous country surrounded by South Africa, where at the end of his career Scudder is still trying to improve resettlement plans for people who will soon be displaced by a massive dam, even as the water rises. If Patkar is a picture of unflinching courage, Scudder is the emblem of good-hearted ambivalence. He believes, theoretically, in "development," even as he concedes that almost all the dams he's earned good money helping build are, in the end, disasters. "I haven't been associated with many success stories," he said, "and the few successes have been more about stopping something than creating something." That is a chastened epitaph.

The first two-thirds of Leslie's book are mostly about how dams affect the people around them. The third section, set on Australia's Murray River, is more ecological. It tells the tale of how a century's worth of dams have degraded this splendid land even as they helped enrich its people by allowing industrial farming in a dry country. Leslie follows a bureaucrat, Don Blackmore, as he attempts to restore a (quite possibly oxymoronic) "healthy, working river." In particular, Blackmore's task is to persuade the basin's many users to allow "environmental flows" down the main stream of the Murray -- that is, to surrender some of the water now used to irrigate crops so that the ever-saltier, ever-less-living river might have a fighting chance to make a comeback.

Though Blackmore has some success -- and his story in all its particulars will be familiar to those who have followed battles over California water rights in recent decades -- it's not at all clear that the fight began in time. Leslie writes stunning descriptions of vast tracts of dying trees, of dead lagoons where aboriginals lived for tens of thousands of years on the relative fat of the land.

In the end, this book implicitly asks a question that we've mostly ignored for the last hundred years: How hard can we make the planet work for us? A dam is a way to store up the power of the natural world -- to make it water our crops and power our lives at all times instead of periodically. But it comes at a much higher price than the dam pioneers would have guessed; not just the human cost of resettlement, but the ecological costs of stilling the earth's veins and arteries.

And now, though Leslie barely mentions it (one of the very few flaws in his account), we face yet another conundrum. Hydro power is in vogue again because it produces few greenhouse gases. This is not universally true -- build a shallow reservoir in a tropical climate and the rotting vegetation will give off vast quantities of methane, a gas 20 times better at trapping heat than CO2 -- but it is one more reason to dam, to overlook the enormous costs. In the end, there's never a way to get around the question of demand. It is possible -- it is likely -- that we are asking more of the world than the world can provide. In some places that is farce (Hoover Dam gave us Las Vegas) and in other places it is tragedy. How do you decide between the need of a Chinese peasant for electricity that doesn't come from coal, and the need of the Yangtze to flow to the sea?

In a bitter and incantatory epilogue, Leslie points out that the hulking dams of our lifetime won't last forever. Sediment is already piling up behind them, and some day either earthquake or neglect will rupture them, leaving just ruins behind. "They'll be relics of the twentieth century," he writes, "like Stalinism and gasoline-powered cars, symbols of the allure of technology and its transience, of the top-down, growth-at-all-costs era of development and international banks, of the delusion that humans are exempt from nature's dominion, of greed and indifference to suffering.... They'll be reminders of an ancient time when humans believed they could vanquish nature, and found themselves vanquished instead.Tra



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UN downgrades man's impact on the climate

Richard Gray
Sunday Telegraph
10/12/2006

Mankind has had less effect on global warming than previously supposed, a United Nations report on climate change will claim next year.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says there can be little doubt that humans are responsible for warming the planet, but the organisation has reduced its overall estimate of this effect by 25 per cent.
In a final draft of its fourth assessment report, to be published in February, the panel reports that the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has accelerated in the past five years. It also predicts that temperatures will rise by up to 4.5 C during the next 100 years, bringing more frequent heat waves and storms.

The panel, however, has lowered predictions of how much sea levels will rise in comparison with its last report in 2001.

Climate change sceptics are expected to seize on the revised figures as evidence that action to combat global warming is less urgent.

Scientists insist that the lower estimates for sea levels and the human impact on global warming are simply a refinement due to better data on how climate works rather than a reduction in the risk posed by global warming.

One leading UK climate scientist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity surrounding the report before it is published, said: "The bottom line is that the climate is still warming while our greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated, so we are storing up problems for ourselves in the future."

The IPCC report, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, has been handed to the Government for review before publication.

It warns that carbon dioxide emissions have risen during the past five years by three per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent a year average of the previous two decades. The authors also state that the climate is almost certain to warm by at least 1.5 C during the next 100 years.

Such a rise would be enough to take average summer temperatures in Britain to those seen during the 2003 heatwave, when August temperatures reached a record-breaking 38 C. Unseasonable warmth this year has left many Alpine resorts without snow by the time the ski season started.

Britain can expect more storms of similar ferocity to those that wreaked havoc across the country last week, even bringing a tornado to north-west London.

The IPCC has been forced to halve its predictions for sea-level rise by 2100, one of the key threats from climate change. It says improved data have reduced the upper estimate from 34 in to 17 in.

It also says that the overall human effect on global warming since the industrial revolution is less than had been thought, due to the unexpected levels of cooling caused by aerosol sprays, which reflect heat from the sun.

Large amounts of heat have been absorbed by the oceans, masking the warming effect.

Prof Rick Battarbee, the director of the Environmental Change Research Centre at University College London, warned these masking effects had helped to delay global warming but would lead to larger changes in the future.

He said: "The oceans have been acting like giant storage heaters by trapping heat and carbon dioxide. They might be bit of a time-bomb as they have been masking the real effects of the carbon dioxide we have been releasing into the atmosphere.

"People are very worried about what will happen in 2030 to 2050, as we think that at that point the oceans will no longer be able to absorb the carbon dioxide being emitted. It will be a tipping point and that is why it is now critical to act to counter any acceleration that will occur when this happens."

The report paints a bleak picture for future generations unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced. It predicts that the climate will warm by 0.2 C a decade for the next two decades if emissions continue at current levels.

The report states that snow cover in mountainous regions will contract and permafrost in polar regions will decline.

However, Julian Morris, executive director of the International Policy Network, urged governments to be cautious. "There needs to be better data before billions of pounds are spent on policy measures that may have little impact," he said.



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Vast African lake levels dropping fast

By CHARLES J. HANLEY,
AP Special Correspondent
Sat Dec 9, 2006

JINJA, Uganda - At Jinja pier the rusty red hull of a Lake Victoria freighter sat barely afloat in water just six feet deep - and dropping. "The scientists have to explain this," said ship's engineer Gabriel Maziku.

Across the bay, at a fish packing plant, fishermen had to wade ashore with their Nile perch in flat-bottomed boats, and heave the silvery catch up to a jetty that soon may be on dry land and out of reach entirely. Looking on, plant manager Ravee Ramanujam wondered about what's to come.
"Such a large body of water, dropping so fast," he said.

At 27,000 square miles, the size of Ireland, Victoria is the greatest of Africa's Great Lakes - the biggest freshwater body after Lake Superior. And it has dropped fast, at least six feet in the past three years, and by as much as a half-inch a day this year before November rains stabilized things.

The outflow through two hydroelectric dams at Jinja is part of the problem - a tiny part, says the Uganda government, or half the problem, say environmentalists. But much of what is happening to Victoria and other lakes across the heart of Africa is attributable to years of drought and rising temperatures, conditions that starve the lakes of inflowing water and evaporate more of the water they have.

An extreme example lies 1,500 miles northwest of here, deeper in the drought zone, where Lake Chad, once the world's sixth-largest, has shrunk to 2 percent of its 1960s size. And the African map abounds with other, less startling examples, from Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, getting half the inflow it once did, to the great Lake Tanganyika south of here, whose level dropped over five feet in five years.

"All these lakes are extremely sensitive to climate change," the U.N. Environment Program warned in a global water assessment two years ago.

Now, in a yet unpublished report obtained by The Associated Press, an international consulting firm advises the Ugandan government that supercomputer models of global-warming scenarios for Lake Victoria "raise alarming concerns" about its future and that of the Nile River, which begins its 4,100-mile northward journey here at Jinja.

The report, by U.S.-based Water Resources and Energy Management International, says rising temperatures may evaporate up to half the lake's normal inflow from rainfall and rivers, with "severe consequences for the lake and its ability to meet the region's water resources needs."

A further dramatic drop in Victoria's water levels might even turn off this spigot for the Nile, a lifeline for more than 100 million Egyptians, Sudanese and others.

"People talk about the snows of Kilimanjaro," said Aris P. Georgakakos, the study's chief author, speaking of that African mountain's melting glaciers. "We have something much bigger to worry about, and that's Lake Victoria."

Each troubled lake is a complex story.

Lake Chad's near-disappearance, for example, stems in part from overuse of its source waters for irrigation. Deforestation around Lake Victoria, shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, makes the area a less efficient rain "catchment" for the lake, and overfishing and pollution are damaging its $400-million-a-year fishing industry. Kenya's Rift Valley lakes, some just a few feet deep, have always fluctuated in size, even drying up with drought.

But African leaders say things are different this time, because long-term climate change may eclipse other factors.

"These cycles, when they've happened, they haven't happened under the circumstances pertaining now - the global warming, overpopulation, degradation," said Maria Mutagamba, Uganda's water and environment minister.

African temperatures rose an average 1 degree Fahrenheit in the 20th century - matching the global average - and even more in the past few decades in such places as Lake Tanganyika, climatologists say. If greenhouse gases continue to build in the atmosphere, temperatures may be several degrees warmer by this century's end.

At Lake Victoria's receding shoreline, a place of scavenging storks, weedy expanses of water hyacinth, fishing boats derelict on dried lake bed, people see what's happening but don't understand why.

"In just a few years, the lake pulled back from there, maybe 60 meters (200 feet)," said fisherman Patrick Sewagude, 24, pointing to old high-water marks at Ssese Beach, near Kampala, Uganda's capital.

Someone had planted a few rows of corn on the exposed lake bed. Grass was taking over elsewhere. "It's tough. The fish have gone way out. You pull up stones in your nets," Sewagude said.

Back in Jinja, 40 miles east of Kampala, researchers at the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization said falling water levels are the latest blow to the dying biology of Lake Victoria, where pollution has helped kill off scores of unique species of tropical fish in recent decades. Now tilapia, once a prime food fish, are declining because their inshore breeding grounds are vanishing.

"People for many years haven't seen such a sudden change in the lake level," said the fisheries office's Richard Ogutu-Ohwayo, a biologist on the lake for 35 years. "Right now it's very difficult to say what will happen. It's a grim scenario, of worldwide climate change."

Around the lake shore, everyone has his own theories.

"The water's too hot, and the fish are going deeper, beneath the nets," said Modi Kafeel Ahmed, a Jinja fish processor. But the lake has been overfished, too, he said. "If it goes like this another five years, the lake will be empty of fish."

For 30 million people living in its basin, Lake Victoria is a vital source - of livelihoods and food, of water, of transportation, of electric power.

Almost 200 miles across the lake from here, Tanzanian authorities have reduced water supplies to the city of Mwanza because an intake pipe was left high and dry. The same is happening in Uganda, where German engineer Erhard Schulte is pushing work crews to finish refitting Entebbe's city water plant, extending its intake pipe 1,000 feet farther out into the lake.

"The old Britisher who designed the original plant never expected the lake would drop this way," Schulte told a visitor.

Perhaps the worst impact is on power supplies. Tanzanian factories have shut down because the rivers powering hydroelectric dams, and replenishing Lake Victoria, are running dry. Kampala, a city of more than 1 million, has endured hours-long blackouts daily.

Uganda's two big hydro dams, side by side on the Victoria Nile, the lake's only outlet, are victims and - some say - prime suspects in the crisis.

In 2003, facing growing Ugandan demand for electricity, the Nalubaale and Kiira dams produced a peak 265 megawatts of power. In the process, their operators began overshooting long-standing formulas regulating flow of water out of the lake, an independent hydrologist later concluded.

That outside study, cited by environmentalists, contends 55 percent of the lake-level drop since 2003 is traceable to excessive outflow. But the dams' private operators and Ugandan officials strongly dispute that.

Paul Mubiru, Ugandan energy commissioner, says the dams have had a "negligible" impact on Lake Victoria, and points to Lake Tanganyika's similar fall in levels - with no dams involved.

Earlier this year, the operators announced they were reducing the dam outflows, "but our observations show that even with the reduced outflow, the water loss is still on the increase," Mutagamba, the water minister, told the AP.

Falling lake levels, meantime, mean lower "head" pressure at the dams. Their output has dropped to 120 megawatts, pushing Uganda deeper into economic crisis.

It is such unanticipated ripple effects - from abrupt environmental change - that underlie the warnings worldwide about global warming. Scientists find another unexpected example in Lake Tanganyika, where they say warmer surface waters may be depleting fish stocks.

Many African lakes go unvisited by scientists, but what is known is troubling enough, says veteran researcher Robert E. Hecky, of Canada's University of Waterloo. "It is some of the most imperative data we have, that global climate change can be affecting these African water bodies," he said.

A "very comprehensive, very realistic" study of Lake Victoria is needed, preferably conducted by U.N. specialists, said Frank Muramuzi, the head of Uganda's leading environmental organization.

"Businesses are standing still, not working. Fishermen can't get enough fish. We do not have enough water supplies," Muramuzi said. "Rains alone won't bring back the lake levels, because there would still be climate change, a lot of heat, evaporation. It's reached a point where people don't know what to do."



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Australian farmers struggling as drought crisis deepens

by Neil Sands
AFP
Sun Dec 10, 2006

WARRACKNABEAL, Australia - Farmer Marshall Rodda has an aerial photograph from the late 1990s hanging in the family homestead showing his property's two dams bursting with water and surrounded by green fields.

At the time, Rodda never suspected he was commissioning a record of the last time both his dams were full, with Australia's crippling drought reducing one to a cracked dustbowl and the other a shallow pool of muddy water.
"This might last me through to February if I use it wisely," Rodda says, gesturing to his meagre water resources. "Some of the other blokes haven't got any water at all and they've got to truck it in to keep their stock going.

"It's the worst I've seen it in 50 years. There's been pockets of drought around Australia for the last eight years or so but in the last 12 months it's intensified, even areas that are normally OK are having a dry time of it."

Rodda's farm is in Victoria state's Wimmera district, an area renowned for its rich soil that sits in the heart of south-eastern Australia's wheat belt.

But the prosperous rural lifestyle that brought his family here in the 1920s has been transformed into a grim struggle for survival as the worst drought in a century grips Australia.

A burly man, wearing a typical Australian farmer's outfit of flannelette shirt, jeans and elastic-sided boots, Rodda gives an exasperated sigh after climbing down into his empty dam.

"Look at it," he says, crushing a sod of earth to powder in his powerful hands. "Bone dry."

Around him on the dam floor are the remains of shellfish that once lived in the waters and the occasional sheep bone poking out from the cracked earth.

Some areas of Australia have been without significant rainfall for years and figures released last week showed the country's winter crop was down more than 60 percent on 2005.

Farm incomes have also plummetted 70 percent to their lowest levels in more than a decade and Treasurer Peter Costello has warned that Australia faces a rural depression if the situation does not improve.

Rodda has already written off this year's crop after his stunted wheat stalks, normally thigh high, managed only a few inches (centimetres) growth in the parched earth.

"It's not worth taking it to market," he said. "We'll use it as feed for the sheep so we can get some use out of it."

The drought has impacted on every aspect of life in rural Australia, with many small towns now facing a slow death as businesses close and young people move to the cities.

"There was a small motor workshop here that shut down last month," Rodda said. "When times are tough, people make do with what they've got and don't buy new equipment, so this fellow's business just wasn't viable any more."

Those who remain often suffer depression as the difficulties of drought are compounded by the isolation of Australia's vast distances. The mental health charity Beyond Blue has reported a steep rise in suicides among farmers.

Even country Australia's love of sport has been affected, with some local councils scrapping football tournaments because the drought meant players risked serious injury competing on rock-hard sports fields.

Rodda's farm hand, Gilbert Fryatt, sold his own property three years ago because of the drought and now makes his living hiring himself out as a handyman and sheep shearer.

"We weren't making any money and the kids weren't interested in taking over the farm, so me and the wife thought 'why are we going on with this?'," he said.

Asked if he misses working his own land, Fryatt gives a noncommittal shrug: "These things happen."

Fryatt said a major concern for the Wimmera's farmers was that if the drought continued, winds from Australia's desert interior would lift the region's topsoil into vast dust clouds and dump it offshore, permanently eroding the area's fertility.

Despite their hardships, both Rodda and Fryatt remain determined to stay positive in the face of drought.

"You get up in the morning and say 'well all right, we're not doing things that flash. It's not raining today but we can do some dry jobs'," he said, adding ruefully. "Jeez, we've been doing a lot of dry jobs."

He said when Lake Hindmarsh, the largest freshwater lake in Victoria, dried up, a group of farmers decided to make the best of the situation by driving out onto the lake bed and having a barbecue.

Fryatt said that generations of Australian farmers had endured the country's harsh climate and there was a belief that the latest crisis, while the most severe in living memory, would eventually end.

"There's always next year," he said. "We might be doing it tough now but it only takes a good bit of rain to turn it around."



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Ancient global warming suggests high sensitivity to carbon dioxide

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-10 10:33:59

LOS ANGELES, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) -- Global warming from 55 million years ago suggests that climates are highly sensitive to carbon dioxide, according to a study published by the latest issue of Science.

Scientific studies show that a massive release of carbon into the atmosphere caused the ancient global warming event known as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) that began about 55 million years ago.
The resulting greenhouse effect heated the earth as a whole by about 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) in less than 10,000 years, geologic records show.

The increase in temperatures lasted about 170,000 years, altering the world rainfall patterns, making the oceans acidic, affecting plant and animal life and spawning the rise of our modern primate ancestors, according to the study by Mark Pagani, associate professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University.

"The PETM is a stunning example of carbon dioxide-induced global warming and stands in contrast to critics who argue that the Earth temperature is insensitive to increases in carbon dioxide," said Pagani.

"Not only did the Earth warm by at least 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius), but it did so during a time when Earth average temperature was already 9 Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) warmer than today."

However, what has not been clear is how much carbon was responsible for the temperature increase and where it came from.

Scientists have speculated that it might have come from massive fires from burning coal and other ancient plant material, or from an increase of methane from the continental shelves that rapidly turned into atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"According to this work, if the PETM was caused by the burning of plant material then climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is more than 4.5 times per carbon dioxide doubling. And if methane was the culprit, then Earth climate must be extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide increasing, over 10 Fahrenheit (5.56 Celsius) per carbon dioxide doubling," noted Pagani.

This finding contradicts the position held by many climate-change skeptics that the Earth climate is resilient to such carbon dioxide emissions.

"The last time carbon was emitted to the atmosphere on the scale of what we are doing today, there were winners and losers," said Ken Caldeira, a co-author from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology.

"There was ecological devastation, but new species rose from the ashes. Our work provides even more incentive to develop the clean energy sources that can provide for economic growth and development without risking the natural world that is our endowment," he said.



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Antarctica, a living global warming laboratory

www.chinaview.cn 2006-12-11 11:07:41

BEIJING, Dec. 11 -- For scientists at this ice-encircled outpost, global warming is not a matter of debate. It is a simple fact and crucial research questions centre on what its consequences will be.

Antarctica is a prime place for this research because it serves as an early warning system for climate change and is a major influence on global weather.
As about 90 per cent of the world's ice volume and 70 per cent of its fresh water is on the southernmost continent, any substantial warming could cause a rise in sea levels around the globe.

"It's a bellwether for the planet," Tom Wagner of the US National Science Foundation said in an e-mail interview. "Its ice sheets are the main player in sea level rise; there is already evidence that they are shrinking."

It was easy to imagine melting ice sheets this week around McMurdo Station, the biggest US science centre in Antarctica, with temperatures in the relatively balmy range of -2 C and the 24-hour-a-day spring sunshine causing pools of melted water atop a 3-metre layer of ice around the base.

Much of the sea ice is cracked and the nearby Barne Glacier has had several major collapses onto the sea ice in recent days. Still, heavy tracked vehicles can na