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POPSWelcome Back to the 19th Century Apologists for Russia can point to lots of mitigating circumstances, starting with the biggest one of Christmas Day 1991, when the hammer-and-sickle flag over the Kremlin went down for the last time, and up went the Russian tricolor. Poof, and a whole empire from the Baltic to Kazakhstan was suddenly gone. Yes, that chilled the Russian soul, and so did Georgia's love affair with the United States. How dare Georgia, the birthplace of Stalin, sidle up to the EU and NATO? In the greater scheme of things, though, Georgia's geopolitical crimes pale against a simple historical truth: 8/8 is payback for 12/25, when the Soviet Empire expired. That, as Mr. Putin has told us, was the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," and ever since he was anointed neo-czar in 2000, he has been working hard, and as time went by ever more ham-handedly, to reverse the verdict of the Cold War -- to regain what Russia had lost. By JOSEF JOFFE WSJ Europe
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POPSWe Almost Forgot To Pump Oil "Whooee, what a crazy story this will make when I tell my environmentally committed board of directors. If I can get them to stop planting trees long enough to hear me, that is. Ha! Not likely! Who wants to take time away from helping preserve the world around us to listen to me rattle on about petroleum profits? Certainly not anyone at BP, that's for sure! Oh, look! I'm waist-deep in cash right now! I didn't even see all this money piling up around my desk. I guess I've just been so focused on developing cost-efficient, clean-burning hydrogen cells that I wasn't even paying attention."
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POPSCommon Wealth: Sustainable future We are in one another's faces as never before, crowded into an interconnected society of global trade, migration, ideas and, yes, risk of pandemic diseases, terrorism, refugee movements and conflict. We also face a momentous choice. Continue on our current course, and the world is likely to experience growing conflicts between haves and have-nots, intensifying environmental catastrophes and downturns in living standards caused by interlocking crises of energy, water, food and violent conflict. Yet for a small annual investment of world income, undertaken cooperatively across the world, our generation can harness new technologies for clean energy, reliable food supplies, disease control and the end of extreme poverty.
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POPSDanger: Demographic Change Approaching But its focus on the developed world sometimes causes it to downplay the serious economic, socio-political, environmental, and security challenges posed by high population growth in developing countries—and by a global population that is expected to top 9 billion by 2050.
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POPSWhy Big Oil is not to blame for fuel prices FTA: "Russia's flag-planting PR stunt on the Arctic seabed last year was not about some new-found concern to protect the environment - it was about oil." "If governments decide to plunder these profits through windfall taxes, we all lose." This article describes the issues in it's simplest form. There's boocoodles of oil and multi-options for other sources of energy. I'm hoping the American Spirit, (not the politicians & the small-minded), will take this opportunity and go with it.
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POPS The Geopolitics Of $130 Oil Stratfor Analysis
* The period from 9/11 until today that has been defined in terms of the increasing complexity of the U.S.-jihadist war—a reality that supplanted the second phase and redefined the international system dramatically. With the U.S.-jihadist war in either a stalemate or a long-term evolution, its impact on the international system is diminishing. First, it has lost its dynamism. The conflict is no longer drawing other countries into it. Second, it is becoming an endemic reality rather than an urgent crisis. The international system has accommodated itself to the conflict, and its claims on that system are lessening. The surge in commodity prices—particularly oil—has superseded the U.S.-jihadist war, much as the war superseded the period in which economic issues dominated the global system. Rather, it means that a new dynamic has inserted itself into the international system and is in the process of transforming it. Stratfor intelligence company delivering in-depth analysis
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POPS10 Simple truths about oil Fact #4. The OPEC nations, those in the Middle East and including Venezuela, control 77% of the world’s known oil reserves. Like Russia and Mexico, where the oil industry is controlled by the state, it is generally poorly managed. Several Big Oil companies that were induced to undertake exploration and development in Russia and Venezuela actually had their assets nationalized or stolen at prices well below their investment and value. Fact #5. Energy is the master resource. All nations with any hope of growing their economies require it, mostly in the form of electricity, but also for oil’s role in transportation. The failure to have a national long-range energy policy that is based in reality can severely impact energy prices.
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POPSCall for G8 to help stem corruption in Africa: Zambia President Mwanawasa's administration is promoting private sector development for third world countries, but needs help to stop corrupt leaders from stealing the aid and other monies needed for development. This is something that has frustrated me for a long time. So much money has been given to aid African countries, with the goal of delivering food, water, healthcare and education to the people and hopefully help them become self-sufficient, yet time and again corrupt "leaders" steal the money. When I read this news article today I was relieved to learn that ethical leaders in Africa are also frustrated by the corruption, and that they are trying to find ways to thwart it. Hopefully the G8 have the ethics needed to heed the plea and do the right thing.
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POPSThai politics laid bare by a rapier wit The jaded view of Thai politicians sounds like an apt description of our own politics, at least in the US and Canada, although things here may not be as grim as they are in Thailand. More from the source: "The new constitution. Can it really bring a positive change for Thailand? One fervently hopes, but history shows that every time new ideas and ways of life arise, a backlash of the old ways rears its head and gobbles the change. Indeed, those who are superior to us in background, breeding or station have absolutely no desire to see any changes at all. In fact they would prefer that we did not even discuss such things and are prepared to take any necessary measures to ensure that the rest of us desist from doing so."
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POPSCoca, cocaine & Coca-Cola collide in Columbia
Coca Sek, a soft drink made and sold by Colombia’s Nasa Indians, apparently is a Coca-Cola knock-off gaining popularity. Now Colombia is being pushed by the International Narcotics Control Board to comply with a 1961 treaty requiring “uprooting all coca bushes which grow wild” and to stop distribution of products with any trace of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine. Coca-Cola, the Narcotics Control Board, and Colombia’s food-safety agency deny Nasa accusations that Coca-Cola is behind the ban. The Nasa say that Coca-Cola is made with coca leaves-ban it, too. The 1961 treaty allows coca leaves to be sold internationally, under the condition that all the cocaine alkaloid is removed, so a US firm legally imports coca leaves from Peru to sell to clients. “Many Indians in the Andes - where coca is revered as a sacred plant and a matter of national pride in several countries - are angry that the United States is importing coca leaves legally while their own coca products are banned.”
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