World-News

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/08/387/


Informant: binstock

When President Bush and Democratic leaders put together the bipartisan coalition behind the federal No Child Left Behind Act, they managed to sidestep, override or flat out ignore decades of sentiment that education is fundamentally a prerogative of state and local government.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807G.shtml

About 1,800 US troops are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) caused by penetrating wounds. But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more - at least 30 percent of the troops who've engaged in active combat for four months or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan - are at risk of potentially disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and mortars, all without suffering a scratch. For the first time, the US military is treating more head injuries than chest or abdominal wounds, and it is ill-equipped to do so.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807F.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=brain+injuries

When former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged President Bush to make Bernard B. Kerik the next secretary of homeland security, White House aides knew Kerik as the take-charge top cop from September 11, 2001. But it did not take them long to compile an extensive dossier of damaging information about the would-be Cabinet officer.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807E.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Bernard+B.+Kerik
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Giuliani

Was Mission Democracy weighing on Richard A. Boucher's mind, as he sat in deafening silence through a two-day regional summit in New Delhi this week? The US assistant secretary for South and Central Asian affairs, as an observer at the Fourteenth summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), could not have been unmindful of President George Bush's counsel to host-state India on a "crusade for democracy." Not a few here had bristled at Bush spelling out the names of India-friendly nations, where the "strategic partner" of the US was expected to intervene for the sacred cause.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040807B.shtml

Nicht nur bei UN-Bericht: In den Vereinigten Staaten steht die Wissenschaft unter Druck von Regierung und Industrie.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/25/25036/1.html

Revolutionäre Garden und Premierminister Blair erneuern das Bild vom Schurkenstaat Iran.

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/25/25038/1.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18011007/


Informant: ranger116



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Gonzales

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRKS-uSLxls


Watch this video of a congressional hearing. This congressional hearing was an investigation of the General Services Administration, for using government money to target Democratic candidates in the 2008 election. Lurita Alexis Doan, Administrator of the General Services Administration, is being interrogated by Congressman Bruce Braley, Democrat of Iowa. The subject is a briefing that was presented by Karl Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings, at the Office of the General Services Administration in January. This briefing was prepared by the White house political office headed by Karl Rove. Lurita Doan's testimony consisted of repeatedly claiming that "I don't remember".

The powerpoint presentation, that was made at a GSA briefing, listed Democratic candidates to be "run over by GSA trucks" , and Democratic candidates to have an "anvil dropped on their heads" by GSA. One slide shows a picture of a human figure being hit by a truck, which is marked with the initials "GSA". Another slide shows a picture of a human figure with an anvil falling on his head. The anvil is marked with the initials "GSA".

Would this hearing have ever taken place if the victim had been a smaller third party for limited government, instead of the Democrats? Is this just "the tip of the iceberg"? If YOU said something about "running over a public official with a truck", or "dropping and anvil on his head" would you not be charged with a crime?

For some reason; other than the C-Span live cable coverage, we saw no news coverage of this event.

Try a Google search on terms like "Bruce Braley" "Lurita Doan" , and see how hard you must search for major media coverage, such as from ABC, NBC, CBS, UPI, or AP etc. Visit the home pages of all of the above. Call, or email, them, and ask where this story is!

For example, see if you can find anything about this on any of the pages below: http://www.nbc.com/ http://nbc.resultspage.com/search?ts=custom&p=Q&uid=&w=Doan
0 Search Results for Doan

http://www.cbsnews.com/

The REALLY BIG STORY is the fact that the media has been silent about this. Can we trust our sources to tell us all of the important truth? Watch the big media jump in after the internet has already broken this story! Watch them change the subject by creating a big investigation of those who are guilty, but for some other minor "decoy scandal".

John Perna

--------

GSA Chief Violated Hatch Act, OSC Report Finds

An Office of Special Counsel (OSC) report has found that General Services Administration (GSA) Chief Lurita Doan violated the Hatch Act, which bars federal officials from partisan political activity while on the job.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052307E.shtml



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=General+Services+Administration

Channel 4 video report

A new report warns that climate change could provoke border conflicts and social collapse.

http://www.channel4.com/player/v2/player.jsp?showId=5738



The World's Water

Leonardo DiCaprio probes the water crisis and reminds us that "access to clean water is a basic human right."

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/04/06/the_worlds_water.php


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Leonardo+DiCaprio

27-year-old Robert Daniels is being held against his will in a Phoenix hospital ward reserved for sick prisoners. If state officials have their way, he could be there for the rest of his life. He has been forced to live in a hospital cell in complete isolation.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/06/142246


From Information Clearing House

A British document speaks for the terrorist and reveals what the US hoped to hide, reports.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21516985-601,00.html


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=torture
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Hicks

Allegations spark fresh speculation of secret deal
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2052599,00.html


From Information Clearing House

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070406/ts_alt_afp/usiraqpoliticssheehan


From Information Clearing House

Click:

News of the future operations can be revealed just three days after four soldiers, two of them women, were killed in a carefully planned ambush in Basra, taking the British forces death toll in Iraq to 140.

http://snipurl.com/1fpjs



Pawns in a losing game: Britain's policy in tatters

Fifteen British hostages are freed, at cost unknown. Meanwhile, six soldiers pay with their lives in Basra. Raymond Whitaker, Anne Penketh and Angus McDowall ask: just what are our soldiers dying for?

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2432474.ece


From Information Clearing House

A local hospital source and a resident said six people, including two children and a woman, were killed in the missile strike on a home in the centre of the city, 110 miles south of Baghdad.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070407/wl_nm/iraq_dc


From Information Clearing House

Thousands of people have marched in protest over a leaked White House proposal that would require illegal immigrants to pay thousands of dollars to become legal US residents.

http://snipurl.com/1fpjm


From Information Clearing House

The release of the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran has robbed the U.S. of a pretext to attack Iran, but the U.S. has not given up plans to attack Iran militarily, said Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov, president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems, a Russian think tank.

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11708925


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Leonid+Ivashov

A SYDNEY spray painter, Ahmed Jamal, was treated like a dog and handcuffed continuously for three months while imprisoned in Iraq as an alleged insurgent, his brother said yesterday.

http://snipurl.com/1fpiz


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Ahmed+Jamal

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released the following statement regarding the Defense Department's proposal to send 12,000 National Guard combat forces to Iraq and Afghanistan.

http://reid.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=272015


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Harry+Reid

A former captain in the Scots Guards who has served in Afghanistan and Iraq describes both operations as a political and military shambles in a book to be published next week.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2432462.ece


From Information Clearing House

Video

The film features many of the leading thinkers and intellectuals of our time including Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Tariq Ali and more. The film examines a bold new foreign policy paper introduced by the White House in September 2002 entitled: "The National Security Strategy of the United States."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/video1020.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Noam+Chomsky
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Chalmers+Johnson
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Tariq+Ali

War Pimp

By Marc Santora

Giuliani Says Nation at War Requires Him
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17502.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Giuliani

By Robert Fisk

Sami al-Arian is 49 but he stayed on hunger strike for 60 days to protest the government outrage committed against him, a burlesque of justice which has, of course, largely failed to rouse the sleeping dogs of American journalism in New York, Washington and Los Angeles.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17503.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Sami+al-Arian
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Fisk

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/20991



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Swanson

http://wearenotbuyingit.com/1/index.php


Informant: shaman_nation



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=impeach
http://omega.twoday.net/search?q=impeach

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/6056/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Watada

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/07/377/


Informant: bigraccoon



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Big+Oil

http://www.ufppc.org/content/view/6058/


Informant: jensenmk

From ufpj-news



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=military+contractor

Jetzt das Klima retten!

„Plant for the Pla­net" ist eine Aktion der Um­weltorganisation der Verein­ten Nationen (UNEP) zum Klimaschutz. Eine Milliarde Bäume sollen in diesem Jahr im Rahmen der Kampagne weltweit gepflanzt werden.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681280ms40

Das Interview mit dem Exekutivdirektor des UN-Umweltprogramms (UNEP), Achim Steiner, führte Gabriele Hermani.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681276ms40



Der einzige Weg zum Frieden: Versöhnung

Ein großartiges Politik-Lehrbuch. Wenn die Europäer wirklich eine Politik des Friedens und der Versöhnung betreiben würden, dann könnten sie sich diesen Mann zum Vorbild nehmen. Zu einem neuen Buch über den Erzbischof von Galiläa Elias Chacour - von Rupert Neudeck.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681277ms40



Mana - die Macht der Dinge

"Wie filmt man Glauben? Wie dringt man zu etwas vor, das sich nur im Inneren des Geistes abspielt und macht es für den Zuschauer sichtbar, so dass es ihm nicht einfach nur erklärt wird, sondern er es sinnlich begreifen kann?" Nach „Bleep“ bringt Udo Grube nun einen weiteren Film zum Themenkreis Wissen, Weisheit und Spiritualitat ins Kino. Ab 10. April 2007 im Kino!

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681279ms40

Argumente zur Atomenergie I: Atom und Klima März 2007 Die Betreiber von Atomkraftwerken haben einen letzten Strohhalm für ihr Überleben entdeckt: Klimaschutz. Die Mehrheit der deutschen Bevölkerung kennt die immensen Nachteile der Atomkraft: Das Risiko eines Super-GAU, die Möglichkeit eines Terroranschlags, das ungelöste Atommüllproblem, die exorbitanten Kosten etc..

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681275ms40

Wasser wird wertvoller als Gold

Kein Zweifel mehr: Steigende Temperaturen und sinkende Wasserspiegel sind die größten globalen Probleme unseres noch jungen 21. Jahrhunderts. Und das eine hängt mit dem anderen zusammen. Tatsächlich jedoch sind wir noch weit entfernt davon, diese Zusammenhänge zu sehen und uns ernsthaft darauf vorzubereiten.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681273ms40



Klimawandel trifft zuerst Arme

Da die ärmeren Regionen der Welt schon jetzt am stärksten unter dem Klimawandel leiden, müssten die Industriestaaten umso dringlicher handeln, forderte der BUND.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681281ms40



Naturwunder sterben den Hitzetod

WWF zeigt die Auswirkungen des Klimawandels in zehn bedrohten Ökoregionen.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681285ms40



Greenpeace: "Der neue Klimabericht zeichnet eine apokalyptische Zukunft"

Nach einer Woche zäher Verhandlungen ist heute Morgen in Brüssel der zweite Teil des vierten Klimasachstandsberichtes der Vereinten Nationen verabschiedet worden.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681286ms40



USA: Oberstes Gericht rüffelt Bushs Klimapolitik

Die Umweltpolitik von US-Präsident George W. Bush hat vor dem Obersten Gerichtshof der USA eine Niederlage erlitten.

http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681292ms40



Blaues Gold wird immer kostbarer

Kauf einheimischer Lebensmittel kann Wasserverbrauch senken helfen.
http://sonnenseite.kjm4.de/ref.php?id=d8741681294ms40

RELEASE

Black Box Voting, Voters Unite, Democracy For New Hampshire and Others - Advocating For Vendors Or Voters?

Saturday, April 07, 2007

CONTACT: Kathy Dopp, kathy.dopp @gmail.com

To quote Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com:

"If I find someone working *against* EI [election integrity], whether on purpose, or accidentally, or out of fear or anything else, I will call them on it, since such behavior impedes the process towards American EI."

FACT 1: Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) software is more expensive, less secure and less reliable than publicly disclosed software and open source (free publicly disclosed) software.

FACT 2: COTS software is trade secret.

FACT 3: There is no legal means to require public disclosure of all COTS software on voting systems.

FACT 4: There is no technical means to ensure that COTS software does not contain any malicious or buggy programs that would deny voting rights or manipulate vote counts.

FACT 5: There is no practical method, given today's voting machine development methods and designs, to ensure that any voting system software actually ran on a voting machine during an election.

FACT 6: There is no infrastructure (equipment, systems, and technologists) available to verify that any voting system software actually ran on a voting machine during an election. (This infrastructure could be developed over time but could only be effective if more secure publicly disclosed voting machines were implemented with this goal in mind.)

FACT 7: Any COTS voting system software could be used to rig elections or to deny service to voters. COTS software is manufactured in China, Canada, India, and many other countries from which hacking attacks against US military and government computers have already occurred. Trusting COTS software is trusting tens of thousands of employees in thousands of companies all over America and the world.

FACT 8: The vast majority of software on current electronic voting systems (DREs, optical scanners, ballot marking devices, and central tabulating devices) is COTS software.

FACT 9: There is no need to use any COTS software on voting systems. Voting systems without COTS software could be developed and would be less costly, more secure, more reliable, and more verifiable.

FACT 10: There are no voting systems available today without COTS software, but fully publicly disclosed and open source voting systems could be developed and implemented especially if the government provided incentives or stopped spending taxpayer dollars on trade secret COTS voting systems.

Are voting system vendors or Common Cause or People for the American Way (PFAW), who pushed for paperless electronic voting in 2002, pushing for trade secret voting system software? Not publicly.

It is "Election integrity" groups and their followers who are demanding changes to proposed federal legislation which would otherwise require public disclosure of all software; in order to enable the use of trade secret COTS voting system software!

Election integrity groups who signed formal letters requesting amendments to enable the use of trade secret COTS software on voting systems, include:

Alliance for Democracy Audit AZ Black Box Voting Broward Election Reform Coalition Coalition for Voting Integrity (PA) Democracy for New Hampshire Las Vegas (NM) Peace & Justice Center Main Street Moms (theMMOB.org) Missourians for Honest Elections New Yorkers for Verified Voting (NYVV) North Jersey Impeach Group Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Reach Out America, Nassau Co. NY Velvet Revolution Voter Action Voters Unite Voting Integrity Alliance of Tampa Bay (VIA Tampa Bay)

In their own words:

"There must be no undisclosed voting system software. However, HR
811's proposed HAVA Section 301(a)(9), as currently written, fails to exempt software that is truly Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) from public disclosure. The bill must be amended to require true COTS software, such as the Windows operating system and standard printer drivers, to be escrowed and available to officials under confidentiality, but not publicly disclosed."

And

"The prohibition of undisclosed software does not provide any exemption for COTS software (commercial off the shelf). No existing voting equipment meets this requirement because they all use COTS, and many use Microsoft software. Microsoft will never share its code, and this requirement would make every piece of voting equipment in use today illegal, requiring jurisdictions to replace equipment at a high cost, unfunded by HR 811."

Note: Neither of these statements recommend prohibiting the use of federal dollars on trade secret COTS voting systems; or recommend increasing the time frames to develop fully disclosed voting systems. Black Box Voting, Voters Unite, Democracy for New Hampshire, Verified Voting of New York, Voter Action, Alliance for Democracy and others recommend exempting COTS software from full disclosure or requiring legally unenforceable requirements for partial COTS software disclosure.

Let me be clear: The position of Black Box Voting, Voters Unite, Democracy for New Hampshire and these other election integrity groups is that your federal tax dollars should be used to pay for trade secret software on voting systems; and they want that codified in federal law!

What benefits do these election reform groups imagine would be obtained from trade secret voting system software? Not one of the groups who publicly endorse trade secret voting system software has made public justification of their position since they formally adopted it on February 13, 2007.

Note: Common Cause and PFAW in 2002 likewise ignored the advice of technologists and helped vendors to push for implementation of in-auditable electronic-ballot voting machines. The new election integrity groups are similarly thumbing their noses at a large group of computer scientists and technologists to push for secret, costly, less secure, less reliable, and less verifiable COTS voting system software.

Democracy for New Hampshire objects not only to current proposals requiring full software disclosure, but also objects to current proposals which mandate manual counts of paper ballots in the 2008 election! In her own words, without justification, peer review or collaboration with other election integrity activists, Nancy Tobi of Democracy for New Hampshire states:

"10. Section 328. Effective Date for Audits. Impossible effective date [2008] for implementation among states for whom no such audit function currently exists."

Why are election integrity groups insisting that taxpayers purchase voting systems with trade secret software and adopting positions against independent verification of the 2008 election?

Your guess could be as good as mine. I have worked with dozens of computer scientists and technologists to understand and explain the issue of voting system software disclosure to layman since 2003. Here is a recent article on the topic of voting system software disclosure written by with the help of numerous technologists:

http://electionarchive.net/docs_other/dopp/VotingSystemSoftwareDisclosure.pdf

What is the solution? Paperless DRE machines should be immediately replaced with optical scan paper ballot systems before the 2008 election. The 2008 election should be manually audited in sufficient amounts to ensure accurate election outcomes. After that, no further federal funds should be spent on trade secret voting systems; and all voting systems, including DREs, optical scanners, and central election management systems should be replaced with fully independently auditable, fully publicly disclosed voting systems.

--------------- END --------------


References:

Brad Friedman's Quote
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?linkpg=http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4370&linkid=33127

Resources which describe the complexities of verifying the integrity of software running on voting systems include these:

"Avoid Another HAVA Train Wreck: Software Disclosure Requirements are a Good Long Term Goal but Need to Be Redrafted in Current Federal Election Integrity Legislation." By Kathy Dopp and dozens of technologists and computer scientists
http://electionarchive.net/docs_other/dopp/VotingSystemSoftwareDisclosure.pdf

David Wagner, computer scientist in his testimony before the House Admin committee
http://electionarchive.net/docs_other/HearingTestimony/wagner.pdf

Holt's HR 811, A Deceptive Boondoggle -- 10 Blunders to Fix by Bruce O'Dell
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bruce_o__070221_holt_s_hr_811_a_dece.htm

Their formal letters objecting to fully publicly disclosed software as proposed by Representatives Holt and Tubb-Jones, and Senators Clinton and Nelson:

"Thirteen Issues with the Holt Bill (HR 811)" by Nancy Tobi of Democracy for New Hampshire also takes current election reform bills to task for requiring independent manual counts of ballots in the upcoming 2008, claiming that any requirement for manual audits should be postponed until 2010.
http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/13_problems_Holt811_Tobi

"Essential Revisions to HR 811" by John Gideon of Voters Unite is signed by Black Box Voting, by Verified Voting of New York, by Voter Action and many other major election integrity groups.
http://www.votersunite.org/info/HR811EssentialRevisions.htm

Because I have noticed that both Voters Unite and Democracy for New Hampshire have made edits to their written statements without acknowledgement in the past, I have made copies of the April 7, 2007 versions of their public position statements here:
http://electionarchive.net/docs_other/PositionStatements/13_problems_Holt811_Tobi.htm

and

http://electionarchive.net/docs_other/PositionStatements/HR811EssentialRevisions.htm


Kathy Dopp
kathy @uscountvotes.org
http://electionarchive.org
National Election Data Archive
Dedicated to Accurately Counting Elections


"Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day," wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1816



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=election+reform
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Kathy+Dopp

Earth Meanders by Dr. Glen Barry
http://earthmeanders.blogspot.com/
April 7, 2007

Climate change is the collapse of the global atmospheric system's processes and patterns and represents a massive environmental challenge to maintaining a habitable Earth. Yet climate is but one of several planetary scale ecological crises that threaten existence and are occurring now concurrently.

While climate change is so omnipresent that it interacts with and exacerbates virtually every other environmental crisis, it remains but one symptom of a much more malignant systematic breakdown in the global ecological system. Global heating could stop being a major issue tomorrow (it will not) and there are at least half a dozen ongoing ecological catastrophes that could still destroy the Earth and civilization such as it is.

It is critical in a post-natural ecological world that these global crises are understood to be connected and addressed holistically if there is to be even a sliver of hope of a human future. Threats to global security and sustainability now are primarily a result of failing ecosystems caused by ill-advised human procreation and development endeavors at the expense of natural ecosystems.

This essay will briefly review the other deadly ecological crises stalking the human race, identifying their stand alone potential to wreak havoc, along with their ability to in conjunction with climate change bring the whole biosphere and human and other complex life toppling down. Consider this a primer to non-climate related threats to global security and sustainability.

Climate Briefly

Climate change is of course the 800 pound gorilla in the room, causing so many problems and exacerbating or somehow interacting with nearly all others. The atmosphere is in shambles after a few centuries of European inspired treatment as a waste dump. Humans and their gaseous wastes have dramatically changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere and the way it functions.

The incessant scientific warnings of climate change caused extinctions, floods and droughts, rising seas, climate refugees, etc.; if anything, is a major understatement of the potential for grave negative global change if we do not decarbonize the economy including pursuing renewable energy with vigor, dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions ASAP, and embrace energy conservation and efficiency as signs of great virtue.

Global heating and all the attendant changes in ocean currents, atmospheric circulation and temperature and precipitation patterns may well kill us off by itself. But sadly, climate change is not the only or perhaps even the major global ecological issue threatening global ecological sustainability, sustainable development, equity, justice and international security.

Again, we could end carbon emissions tomorrow and the Earth is still on a trajectory to ecologically overshoot its carrying capacity. The social movement to save the Earth and seek to enter an era of global ecological sustainability is a multi- front battle with overwhelmingly poor odds and terrifying consequences for failure. We will live with the Earth or die.

The Threats

Where to start? How to characterize the disintegration of the Earth organism? How to capture the full range of emotional, scientific and ecological ways of knowing the end of being? How can a mere list of planetary system breakdowns capture the horror of mass starvation, death by dehydration, parents watching their children raped and taken into slavery as social order disintegrates along with the trees, air and water? It cannot.

Yet if there is to be any ecological hope, we must try to build upon the growing awareness of global warming, making it clear that there is a systematic failure of the global ecosystem occurring. The Meaning of Life is survival of our and other species, and we are failing in numerous regards.

Water

The world faces a water crisis that while made worse by warming is the result of centuries of aquatic resource misuse. There are already one billion people without access to clean water, 3,000 children die a day from bad water and the whole crisis could be mostly fixed for $20 billion. Water scarcity shows all indications of being the world's first ecologically induced mass murderer, yet most have little inkling of how dear water is.

Surface waters have been treated as waste dumps as long as humans have settled. The state of the world's lakes and rivers is dismal, with biodiversity in such systems decimated, and humans clinging to the banks of water bodies that they continue to shit and pollute into. Diminishing wetlands and depletion of aquifers which they help replenish mean that in essence we are mining our fossil water supplies.

Toxics of every sort pervade freshwater. Climate change has meant cycles of flooding booms and drought busts in terms of water supply are more common. People have built in and developed regions they never should have given their arid nature. There is simply not enough water in the right places to meet all its present uses including agriculture while ensuring all humanity access to water as a basic human right. Much suffering and death lies ahead unless water conservation takes center stage.

Land

Huge areas of the Earth's arable land have been converted from forests and other natural ecosystems to farms, industry and human settlements. Over 80% of the world's ancient forests have been lost and the rest are going now; at tremendous expense to the Earth's biodiversity patterns and terrestrial biogeochemical processes. Humanity uses the majority of the photosynthetic potential reaching the Earth. Terrestrial ecosystems which interact with the atmosphere, water and oceans have been so fragmented that the flows of energy and nutrients they facilitate are virtually gone.

Everywhere you look there are indications of sick land. Soils are eroding to such an extent that lack of fertile soil may in itself topple nations. Bee populations are dying with potentially huge implications for pollination. Amphibians are similarly slipping away, perhaps the frog in the coal mine. Toxics are bio-accumulating in virtually all organisms, with unknown impacts individually much less synergistically.

There are simply more humans occupying the global land base by several times than it can carry. Farmland continues to deteriorate, while genetically altered materials threaten what natural ecosystems remain with genetic pollution and superweeds. Much despoiled land full of weedy invasive species will be hard pressed to regain productivity much less an abundance of complex interacting species any time soon. Biodiversity is being lost before we even knew it existed, what its characteristics were, and its place in broader functioning of the Earth System.

Oceans

Some two decades ago as I was in the Peace Corps in Papua New Guinea, a friend with much greater ocean experience than I, the land-locked mid-westerner, assured me that the oceans were so vast, and its life so bounteous and resilient that it could never be much reduced. Just as with the vast American forests, oceans which could never be depleted are now becoming so.

Two-thirds of fish stocks in the world's high seas are overfished, problematic for the vast numbers of humanity that depend upon wild caught fish as their primary source of protein. Bottom trawling fishers mine the ocean floor, scraping away marine habitats with the fish. Tremendous amounts of unintended fish species are caught and thrown away as by-catch. Climate change has changed the chemistry of the world's oceans, making it acidic; as well as changing ocean currents which spread heat around the globe.

The world's oceans are in their last death spasm and will soon become largely lifeless. It is occurring across all trophic levels. Populations of plankton and phytoplankton, the basis of oceanic food webs, are crashing. Top predators such as sharks are so persecuted that entire marine food webs are unraveling. Huge regions of formerly bounteous marine habitats fall victim to coral bleaching and are becoming toxic dead zones.

Security and Sustainability in a Post-Natural Ecological World

As an undergrad studying International Affairs/Political Science in the mid-1980s, we spent endless hours examining the Soviet and Cold War threats to "Global Security" (which mostly meant democratic capitalist's interests). I would imagine much is the same today with global terror. It was not that other threats were not acknowledged or imagined, but the focus was NOT generally a concern that environmental issues could threaten global or regional security - much less the sustainability and existence of the Earth and humanity.

Today global ecological collapse is THE threat to global security and sustainability. Humanity is poised upon the precipice of its and creation's demise, even though climate change and the whole raft of other inevitable negative results of too many people consuming too much while destroying too many ecosystems has not yet begun to reach their full potential for cataclysmic mayhem.

Perhaps the greatest impediment to remedial policy is how frighteningly difficult it is for persons of different generations or mindsets to accept that humanity and society's enterprises have become the Earth's dominant force. And they are systematically dismantling the Planet's life-giving ecosystem engines.

In our post-natural ecological world of tawdry ecosystems surrounded by and encroached upon by endless human sprawl, we have to understand that climate change and other planetary, ecological and social ills are humanity's greatest security threat. We are not talking a change in political regimes, the fall of a civilization, or arcane social policy; we are speaking of the end of the world.

Cataclysmic crisis calls for dramatic change. As a start, and only a start, stopping burning coal, ending ancient forest destruction and restoring natural forests, and having far fewer children to actually shrink the population are the three biggest societal things that could be done to save the planet. We will never live securely and sustainably given actions of lesser magnitude than those that seek to protect and restore the Earth System.

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Plant trees, lots of them, you can never plant enough!
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