Astraea.net - "do the right thing the right way" body mind soul

Education, Education, Education. It keeps coming up, but then being pushed down again. During the past few weeks we've seen a flurry of commercial opportunities related to education. For us the most interesting has been work related to a Pestalozzian, or natural, approach to education. And we think that a systemic reengineering of global education to reflect such an approach is the way to resolve global challenges.

We allow ourselves to notice many of the problems of the world - which are not usually appreciated because most people are too busy working to pay the rent or for their holiday to be bothered about other people's concerns. Unfortunately we have a condition, a "disease", that makes it difficult to ignore starving children when we have enough to eat, or a boiling planet while we can breathe. Empathy.

We all benefited from a full education in the traditional model of teacher say, student listen. (I know only one peer who had a Steiner education.) Today most people in rich countries benefit from this. 200 years ago few did; some rich, privileged children but that is all. Unfortunately this approach is grossly inadequate for our world today: The technology we play with, from cars to computers, from washing machines to warheads, requires a thoughtful engagement. The human footprint exceeds the carrying capacity of the planet. We are unable to share, and kill for pride. We eat more than we can stomach. We steal from impotent people under the guise of righteousness (eg WTO). All of this and more, not because we are bad - we are fundamentally good. But because we allow a primitive organism (our bodies) to react as if we live in primordial jungle. Our physiological being is well adapted for this environment in which humans lived not so many generations ago (say 400). Our emotional intelligence lags far behind our technical capacities. We see examples of this dangerous combination everyday in all of our lives. Anger is not useful when you have your finger on a button that can destroy the world. Greed is not useful when the biosphere is over-extended. But we certainly have the capacity and understanding to manage ourselves.

All of the global and local problems that occur in our world seem at their root to require the reeducation of the players involved (including ourselves). Climate change, poverty, pollution, inequality can all be resolved with the technology we have, but not without a mature choice by everyone. And for us to be able to make those choices we need liberation of our mental and emotional intellect, not their control. Children know what is right and wrong and adapt to new ideas and situations, but we brainwash them to grow up as primitive organisms, like ourselves, fighting for more than can be consumed. Compromising honesty by hiding behind "truth". We must reengineer our values to effect change in the generation allowed to get us from jeopardising the biosphere to enlightened coexistence in nature.

The natural approach to education is to learn by experience, to start with self and simple and move out and to complex, and to have a nurturing environment. The simple motto is head, heart and hands" succinctly intimating development of body, mind and spirit, of practical, intellectual and ethical capacities.

Geopolitics

Thailand celebrated the 60th year of King Bhumipol's reign. While the king has modest state powers he has been a guiding light who has helped stabilise society because he is an enlightened role model who has not abused his power but rather invested in the community and reduced inequality.

A June issue of the Economist covering inequality in the US noted that "most Americans are unhappy about the economy". According to the latest Gallup survey, fewer than four out of ten think it is in “excellent” or “good” shape, compared with almost seven out of ten when George Bush took office". They note that blame is generally being placed on inappropriate scape goats: not rich Americans but poor foreigners, free trade, and outsourcing. The newspaper notes that "Congressmen reflect their concerns. Though the economy grows, many have become vociferous protectionists." This is an unsurprising but unfortunate human trait. The dissatisfaction has more to do with expectations and the behaviour of Americans ourselves. For example:

About $ 1 billion in relief meant for victims of Hurricane Katrina was lost to fraud, with bogus claimants spending the money on Hawaiian holidays, football tickets, diamond jewellery and Girls Gone Wild porn videos. The fraud, exposed through an audit by the Government Accountability Office, found a staggering amount of abuse of the housing assistance and debit cards given out by the beleaguered Federal Emergency Management Agency as a way of granting relief to those who lost their homes to Katrina.

Testimony presented to the house committee on Homeland Security revealed that Fema paid housing assistance to people who had never lived in a hurricane-damaged property - including at least 1,000 prison inmates - and made payments to people who were living in free hotel rooms. In one instance it paid out on a property damage claim from a cemetery in New Orleans - to a person who had never lived in the city. In another it paid compensation for a vacant lot. As much as 16% of the relief distributed by the agency was lost to fraud, the auditors said. They also said it was likely they were underestimating the scope of the fraud.

The extent of the fraud was uncovered the day after the first tropical storm of this year's hurricane season landed near Tallahassee, Florida. Concerns remain that despite the torrent of criticism and soul searching after Hurricane Katrina, the agency remains ill-equipped to deal with coming storms. Predictions that this year will bring another season of severe storms has raised tensions along the Gulf coast, where, nearly one year after Katrina, tens of thousands of people continue to live in Fema trailers, their homes still in ruins.

Russia is to repay its entire $ 22.3 billion Soviet-era debt to the Paris Club of international sovereign creditors ahead of schedule. The repayment will be completed by the end of August, finance minister Alexei Kudrin told the Russian Parliament. The move - saving Russia $7.7 billion in debt servicing costs - comes ahead of July's G8 summit in St Petersburg. (A default on the debt, built up during the life of the Soviet Union, triggered a Russian financial crisis in 1998.) Russia is able to fast-track its debt repayments because of its huge oil and gas wealth. It has set aside $ 71.8 billion in revenues from oil and gas exports to support its public finances.

Kuwaitis voted in parliamentary elections which, for the first time, allow women to cast ballots and stand as candidates. The vote was held early, coming at a politically turbulent period in the conservative Gulf state's history because a bitter dispute had broken out between the government and opposition MPs over increasing the size of constituencies as a way of preventing corruption. Women make up 28 of the 252 candidates, as well as 57% of the electorate. Female candidates hope to secure some seats in parliament, despite standing for the most part against seasoned incumbents.

We noticed increased reports of civil unrest in China, apparently driven by increasing disparity between expectations and delivery, especially among students a traditionally volatile group (remember Tienanmen). In June a protest on Shengda's now tightly guarded campus erupted because students degrees mentioned Shengda rather than simply better respected Zhengzhou University which awards the degrees. The protest reflects the reality that the country's exploding population of college students must grapple with petty fraud, substandard instruction and an intensely competitive job market. Students, a traditional bellwether of political volatility in China, have become a fresh source of unrest in a society already angered by land grabs, unpaid wages and environmental abuse. Once a magic ticket into the government or business elite, college has become an expensive gamble for millions of cash-short families who find that even the most prestigious degrees cannot guarantee success in a market economy. The number of college graduates has multiplied fivefold in the last seven years, to an estimated 4.1 million this year. But at least 60% of that number are having trouble finding jobs, according to the National Development and Reform Commission. A growing cadre of highly educated but underemployed urbanites is tailor-made to cause alarm in Beijing, which has always feared student unrest above nearly all other forms of social discontent. One of the Communist Party's greatest successes since Tienanmen has been to create strong support for the market economy among urban residents, intellectuals and their children. That bond has held strong for more than a decade, even as China has been engulfed in other types of unrest, including nearly 80,000 mass protests recorded in 2005 alone. Most such events involve peasants, migrant workers or workers laid off from state enterprises, who often lack media-savvy leaders and rarely demand substantive political change. The situation could change if large numbers of students got involved, though there is no sign that the scattered protests at colleges will lead in that direction any time soon.

A report in June highlighted the closeness of our world, in spite if the apparent differences - France loves MacDonald's! McDonald's operating profit in France last year was second only to that of McDonald's in the United States - even as protesters have sought to cast McDonald's as the embodiment of all that is wrong with fast food and American culture, the French never stopped eating its hamburgers. The French have an overt distaste for Americana in concept, mixed with a kind of admiration for American food, films, music and television programming. There are now 1,035 McDonald's restaurants in France, making it the third-largest European market after Britain and Germany. In some ways McDonald's reflects the contradictions of French society. France has opened to the world, and its companies have long adapted to global rules for selling their products. Yet for many French patrons, McDonald's remains that little piece of America.

We have mentioned MoveOn.org before in the context of grass roots political movements but have been impressed with its growing strength and independence. It does not represent any one candidate but is an open space for enlightened individuals to express their political preferences. MoveOn has revolutionized political fund-raising by joining 3.3 million Americans with a shared agenda into a single Superdonor. During the last presidential campaign, MoveOn spent upward of $30 million saturating battleground states like Ohio with its member-funded messages. The vast majority of that money came in donations of less than $50. In addition to fund-raising, MoveOn is exceptionally successful at mass mobilization. In 2004, 70,000 members participated in the group’s get-out-the-vote campaign. Last summer, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, a few e-mails convinced 16,000 members to open their homes to the displaced; MoveOn is said to have housed more people in the early stages of the disaster than FEMA did.

Risk and Terror

At least seven Palestinian civilians were killed on a crowded Gaza beach from an apparently errant Israeli artillery shell. Hamas had officially been abiding by an intermittent 16-month-old cease-fire, but this outrageous accident started violence anew. Israel stepped up its confrontation with Palestinian militants over the capture of an Israeli soldier, battering northern Gazan towns with artillery and sending warplanes over the house of the Syrian president, who is influential with the Palestinian leader believed to have ordered the kidnapping. Subsequently, Israeli forces detained 8 ministers of the 24-member Hamas-led cabinet and 20 lawmakers, including Deputy Prime Minister Nasser Shaer and Labour Minister Mohammed Barghouti. The crisis escalated as Israeli tanks hunkered down inside southern Gaza at the airport on after warplanes had knocked out half of Gaza's electricity and pounded sonic booms over houses. The unrest continues at the end of June.

Conflict in the lands of the eastern Mediterranean rose at the end of June. Initially catalysed by the missile strike, claimed to be accidental, on civilians in Palestinian territory, both Palestinians and Israelis have been killing each other again. It is an atrocious barbarity, especially from the state of Israel which has the benefit of huge wealth and is supported by America and Americans. The belligerent reaction of Israel is inappropriate, though not surprising. This conflict is most sad. Please find at this link a short piece by Johnny Couchman which summarises pertinent history and asks for a cease-fire.

We feel a particular sensitivity to the trouble in the Middle East because of Ireland's embarrassing history; the brief prologue to Couchman's essay is as follows:

Between 1620 and 1650 some 80% of Irish landowners were dispossessed because they were Catholic - " to hell or Connacht " as they said at the time. The residual bitterness has died but the memory has not. We must learn from history . In Palestine today a people have been and are still being dispossessed by the same bloody methods. When the World starts to pay attention, which with oil insecurity as the catalyst it soon will, beware Israel. Hiding behind their holocaust ( we have forgotten all the other ones ) will not do, UN resolutions will be enforced and the horrible wall will come down. (Read the essay here.)

The story of a most barbaric mutilation of two young soldiers in Iraq brings painful images to the stupidity of violence in Iraq. The tortured bodies of two US soldiers were recovered in Iraq a week after they had been captured in an insurgent attack. Private Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston,Texas, and Private Thomas Tucker, 25, from Madras, Oregon, were discovered, following a tip from a civilian, which ended a manhunt by 8,000 US and Iraqi troops, backed up by air and marine support. The bodies were so badly mutilated that visual identification was difficult. An Iraqi official said they were "killed in a barbaric way", and an Islamist website claiming the killing for the al-Qaida group in Iraq suggested they had been beheaded.

The barbarism is not one sided. Three US troops were charged with murder for shooting three Iraqi prisoners and threatening to kill a fellow soldier who wanted to report the incident. The three men killed were among 200 Iraqis held after a raid on a former chemical factory south-west of Tikrit, Saddam Hussein's hometown, the Pentagon said. They face charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder and obstructing justice, so if convicted of premeditated murder, could face the death penalty under US military law. Though death for death does not make right, but perpetuates the cycle of violence.

Another one of the main lawyers defending former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein at his trial has been shot dead. Khamis al-Obeidi's body was found dumped in the capital, Baghdad, hours after he was abducted from his home. Defence lawyers have frequently complained that they have not been given enough protection, calling the trial's fairness into question. Two other defence lawyers were murdered last year in the early stages of the trial. Obeidi was abducted from his home by men wearing police uniforms.

Three people committed suicide at the increasingly vilified Guantanamo. One of the three men who committed suicide was due to be released - but did not know it because he was not informedbecause US officials had not decided which country he would be sent to. The initial reaction by the US was rather unsavoury: a "good PR move to draw attention", and an "act of asymmetric warfare waged against us". Rights groups said the men who hanged themselves had been driven by despair. Bush was more empathetic expressing "serious concern". There have been dozens of suicide attempts since the camp was set up four years ago - but none successful until now. They had left suicide notes, but no details have been made available.

In other Iraq related news, Bush accused US newspapers of hampering the "war on terror" by publishing details of a secret scheme to track money transfers and said the disclosure was "disgraceful", although it was done with public records. The New York Times, which published the news, revealed that the US government had monitored global money transfers using a banking group. The paper denied publication was a security risk, arguing that bankers would almost certainly continue to co-operate and that terrorist organisations already knew their financial operations were being monitored.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has announced plans to withdraw his country's troops from Iraq. Koizumi said Japan's presence had been "highly appreciated by the Iraqi government and its people". The 600 non-combat troops have been working on reconstruction projects in southern Iraq since February 2004, protected by UK and Australian forces. The decision was unpopular with the Japanese public, many of whom said it violated Japan's pacifist constitution. It was Japan's first foray into an active foreign war zone since World War II.

The UN's two-year budget for 2006 and 2007 is $ 3.79 billion — roughly the same amount that the United States spends on the Iraq war in two weeks. To see the cost of the war in Iraq to date, click here.

Some welcome sense from the US Attorney-General: Alberto Gonzales has warned that home-grown terrorists could pose as much danger to the US as foreign al-Qaeda operatives. Seven men have been charged with plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago, and attack FBI offices. The men, five from the US and two from Haiti, hoped to wage a "full ground war" against the US, according to the charges brought against them. Officials said the men were foiled at an early stage and posed no danger. Unfortunately the media propaganda machine is still going strong in the US. Gonzales said the group of "home-grown terrorists" were inspired by "a violent jihadist message. ... They were persons who for whatever reason came to view their home country as the enemy". According to charges brought against the men, the group of men aged 22 to 32 had sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda, but had no contacts with it. However, no weapons were found in the Miami warehouse, and the seven had not posed any immediate danger. Neighbours in Miami's poor Liberty City area said the men apparently slept in the warehouse where they were arrested. A man claiming links to the arrested men told the news channel CNN that they were a peaceful religious group, who studied Allah. Even Deputy FBI leader John Pistole said the plot had been "aspirational" rather than "operational".

The atmosphere of primitive vindictiveness characterising the war in Iraq, combined with the ease with which one can obtain DNA sequences from some of the most deadly pathogens over the internet, makes the danger of biological terrorism more real. An investigation by the UK's Guardian newspaper which shows the ease with which terrorist organisations could obtain the basic ingredients of biological weapons, by obtaining a short sequence of smallpox DNA - a deadly virus that has existed only in laboratories since being eradicated from the world's population 30 years ago. The DNA sequence of smallpox, as well as other potentially dangerous pathogens such as poliovirus and 1918 flu are freely available in online public databases. So to build a virus from scratch, a terrorist would simply order consecutive lengths of DNA along the sequence and glue them together in the correct order. This is beyond the skills and equipment of the kitchen chemist, but could be achieved by a well-funded terrorist with access to a basic lab and PhD-level personnel. One study estimated that because most people on the planet have no resistance to the extinct virus, an initial release which infected just 10 people would spread to 2.2 million people in 180 days. It is important to realise these risks not because they are likely, but because it may motivate us to encouragemore peaceful behaviour.

Moving to a less bloody theatre of war, the world of investment, a timely Motley Fool article discussed the treatment of investment risk which needs to be considered because financial marlet risk has increased. The Fool suggests a "risk questionnaire" to help manage financial goals. Whether by self analysis or a questionaire, investors must understand how much risk to tolerate. In general, there are three variables that interact to determine how to achieve investment goals: how much you have to invest, how much time you have to reach your goals, and how much the return on your investment will be. Because return is generally proportional to risk, the greater the return you are seeking, the more risk you must be willing to take. In aiming for high returns you must understand the downside is higher too. Today investors facetwo main problems. First, most people have relatively short memories when it comes to answering subjective questions about risk. If the stock market has been going straight up for the past year or two, then people are much more likely to take on more risk than if the market has been performing badly in recent times. Second, people unconsciously manipulate their answers to reach the result they want. If, for instance, you finally get up the nerve to visit a broker because you've decided that you really want to buy into a hot international stock fund, you may well answer the risk questions more aggressively, knowing that the results will then point to the fund you want. Although a good financial advisor will go beyond the questionnaire to delve deeper to determine the most appropriate investments for you, some investment professionals lack the experience or desire to go that extra mile.

Because it's difficult to use theoretical exercises to figure out how tolerant you are of hypothetical market downturns, the best way to figure out your true risk tolerance is to look at how you react when the market actually does decline. When the markets are volatile and make it difficult to look rationally at returns on various investments, it may be best to focus on the other two factors that contribute to reaching your financial goals. Increasing the amount of savings you put toward your goals will decrease the return you have to earn to reach them. Similarly, if you are willing and able to defer your goals for a period of time, then that extra earning period will make it easier to attain your goals with less risky investments. One method to use when you want to change your asset allocation strategy is to direct new investments entirely toward the asset whose allocation you want to increase. For example, if you currently have 80% of your portfolio in stocks and 20% in bonds and you want to move to a more conservative 60%/40% split, you would direct all new investment to bonds until they reached 40%. Unless the size of your contributions is large compared with your portfolio size, it may take several months or even years to reach the new target. Although this gradual approach doesn't immediately match your portfolio to your new risk profile, it does avoid selling existing investments at what may prove to be the worst possible time.

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Energy

Oil prices are still bubbly and additional fizz has been stirred by the Saudi Arabian government warning that world oil prices could triple if the West's stand-off over Iran's nuclear programme escalates into conflict. The Saudi ambassador to the US, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, said such an event could send prices spiralling from their current level of about $70 per barrel. Iran is the Opec cartel's number two oil producer and analysts fear it could halt exports if the dispute worsens.

High oil prices are having widespread effects on all of us. Inflation is being driven partly by higher energy costs and, as described in the Investment section, alternative fuel VC is booming (we even participated in an investment in e-vehicles recently). Sales of fuel-efficient vehicles like the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic and Hyundai Sonata all rose 20 percent or more compared with May 2005. BP is planning to spend $500 million over the next 10 years to finance major work on biofuels to find "longer-term commercial alternatives to oil and gas" and the energy giant is in talks with several universities in the United States or Britain as possible sites for the research center.

A report Energy Technology Perspectives -- Scenarios & Strategies to 2050 (484 pages, paper €100, PDF €80) by the International Energy Agency, a body tied strongly to big oil, proclaimed that oil and electricity consumption across the world could easily be cut by half, with major benefits for the environment, if clean energy technologies that are currently available were applied. "A sustainable energy future is possible, but only if we act urgently and decisively to promote, develop and deploy a full mix of energy technologies... We have the means, now we need the will," said Claude Mandil, executive director of the IEA. According to present trends they expect CO2 emissions and oil demand will continue to grow rapidly over the next 25 years. Extending this outlook beyond 2030 shows that these worrisome trends are likely to get worse, said the IEA report. As we have repeatedly noted, energy efficiency is essential to mitigate growth in energy demand and CO2 emissions. "Improved energy efficiency is an indispensable component of any policy mix, and it is available immediately," said Mandil. Accelerating energy efficiency improvements alone can reduce the worlds energy demand in 2050 by an amount equivalent to almost half of todays global energy consumption, said the report.

The report sketches a bleak picture of current energy trends. Even "taking account of energy efficiency gains and technological progress that can be expected under existing policies", CO2 emissions, oil demand and the carbon intensity of the world's economy will continue to grow rapidly over the next 25 years. "The world is not on course for a sustainable energy future", concludes the IEA report. But accelerated development of new technologies such as clean coal and CO2 capture and storage as well as electricity generation from gas, nuclear and renewables, combined with ambitious energy efficiency programmes for buildings, industry and transport can still reverse that trend. Energy security tops the agenda of next month's G8-summit when leaders of the United States, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan will meet in St Petersburg (15-17 July).

Concurrently the IEA has also outlined the policies that will be needed to implement energy-efficient lighting technologies, helping to reduce energy waste and CO2 emissions. "Light’s Labour’s Lost", the IEA book which documents those policies is part of the response to the G8 Gleneagles Plan of Action that was agreed in July 2005. The low-energy light bulb and other efficient lighting systems could prevent a cumulative total of 16 billion tons of carbon from being added to the world's atmosphere over the next 25 years. The agency said it would not need any technology that is not already widely available and -- far from costing money -- it would save more than US$ 2,500 billion. The light used for homes and offices is a major cause of climate change and also creates "light pollution", which means that city children grow up never seeing the stars. According to the IEA, "Light's Labour's Lost" contains the first detailed global analysis of the energy used for lighting, as well as a detailed review of the technologies, such as High-Brightness (HB) Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs), that could be implemented to reduce energy consumption.

According to a fresh report by the European Insulation Manufacturers Association, a renewed, concerted effort to cut energy use in buildings across the EU 25 would save Europeans about 270 billion euro a year. An extended Directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings could lead to CO2 emission reduction of 460 million tones per year by 2032; more than the EU’s total Kyoto commitment, and create 530,000 full time jobs in house renovations across the EU 25, the EURIMA report points out.

Climate Change and Environment

Humanity could be heading for collapse if there is no "radical rethinking of our cities, consumption patterns, food production and our energy economy" - the bleak message of the Green Week session on the EU's 'ecological footprint'. Currently, the ecological footprint of humans on the Earth is 23% larger than what the planet's ecosystems can regenerate. The footprint is expressed in hectares per person. The responsibility for leading change lies with those with the power and national footprint accounts provide an insight into this question of equity. North America's ecological footprint stands at 9.4 global hectares per person, the EU25+Switzerland at 4.7. (The available world capacity is 1.8 hectares per person.) Rich people have big feet! The European Environment Agency cooperated in 2005 with the authors of the ecological footprint accounting and their Global Footprint Network to develop the 2005 Edition of the National Ecological Footprint and Biocapacity Accounts.

The new executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme has called for a "new era" beyond campaigning in which environmental concerns are integrated fully into economic market regulations. Achim Steiner said that "after 30 years of (raising) public awareness (about the environment) we have the legislation and the facts but we are not touching the core of the economic transactions in our societies". He acknowledged recent oil price rises had brought the sort of focus on energy use long demanded by environmental activists. "Greenpeace squatting outside the White House for three years would not have led Bush to question the dependency on oil in the US the way that oil companies have managed to, by charging the prices they do," he said.

People who work in office buildings can significantly impact climate change by introducing energy-efficiency measures to improve building operations, according to a new how-to guidebook released by the World Resources Institute. The report, titled Hot Climate, Cool Commerce: A Service Sector Guide to Greenhouse Gas Management (pdf), features case studies of how service-sector companies have put programs in place to measure and manage their emissions and achieve energy savings. Among the companies profiled are Citigroup, General Electric, IKEA and Staples. All companies contribute to climate change through their electricity consumption for office lighting, cooling, computers, building equipment, and appliances, as well as fuel use for heating, business travel, and the distribution of products and materials. Electricity and heat (46%) and transportation (31%) are the two largest US sources of CO2, which is the most common GHG.

Earth Policy Institute founder Lester Brown gave the keynote address at the Sustainable Energy Forum entitled Towards a Sustainable World Economy. Read the report by EV World or hear the address here (mp3 12 MB).

Despite popular protest reported in last month's review, a US Senate committee has approved a bill which aims to let internet service providers provide some customers and companies with preferential services. Under the plans, providers would be allowed to give customers faster internet access for a fee. Supporters claim it will save consumers money, while critics fear it will see net providers decide which websites and services customers can visit and use. "Net neutrality" campaigners attacked the plan, saying there should be equal access for all web users, arguing that the wildfire growth of online services has been driven by the ability to deliver services to anyone but if telecoms firms could block or slow down access to their customers unless services providers paid extra, that would be threatened. The committee rejected an amendment which aimed to prohibit phone and cable companies from limiting access to their high-speed internet networks based on site content or financial arrangements. Hundreds of interest groups, a diverse list of organizations - including eBay, Amazon, the singer Moby and the founders of Google and Microsoft, savetheinternet.com, MoveOn, the Christian Coalition, American Civil Liberties Union, the Gun Owners of America, Parents Television Council and the National Coalition Against Censorship - lobbyied for protection from any moves by broadband providers to limit the access of customers. The proposals aims to make it easier for telecoms firms to offer video services around America by replacing 30,000 local franchise boards with a national system overseen by the Federal Communications Commission.

Telecom and cable companies are in effect being allowed to erect toll booths along the information superhighway - and individuals who post their own videos or blogs online could find their websites confined to the internet's B-roads or even blocked altogether. Instead of an open space that has dramatically broadened free speech and democratised access to information, the internet would come to be dominated by the giant internet and media companies that could afford to pay to make their content most easily available. As Google founder Schmidt puts it, these bills "would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet." These companies, he says, "want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can't pay." The mainstream media, especially television and talk radio, which will discuss something as benign as Brangelina's baby or something as polarizing as immigration reform, were conspicuously silent on the matter, which may account for why the public seems largely unaware of it, as well as the apparent deafness of our representatives.

In related news, a dozen high-powered companies inside and outside of the technology industry jointly requested Congress pass a law to protect the privacy of consumers, while insulating them from being "brought to their knees" by class-action lawsuits. The Consumer Privacy Legislation Forum has been formed by twelve companies that believe the perception of the Internet as an unsafe place for personal information has been increasing. Google, eBay, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Symantec, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and Intel joined other companies in signing off on a letter to Congress requesting a federal consumer privacy law, apparently motivated by a desire for protection from civil actions in the event of a privacy breach as much as ensuring Internet users keep using the Web for commerce. The group cited a survey conducted by the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, where 94 percent of respondents nationwide considered identity theft a serious problem. Only 24% believe businesses have sufficiently emphasized protecting information. It is not surprising to see Google in the list because they have a liberal approach to retaining search information. The quid pro quo of this kind of legislation should be limits on what data may be retained and for how long.

Mozilla released an add-on for Firefox 1.5 in early June to coincide with the start of the World Cup. It allows users to theme the browser with national team colors, track World Cup scores and headlines, view videos, chat with other soccer fans, and receive up-to-the-minute match and goal notifications. Called the Joga.com Companion, the add-on was developed by Mozilla Joga.com, the lovechild of Google and Nike, debuted in late March of this year as a social networking community for soccer fanatics with the slogan Joga Bonito (Play Beautiful, in Portuguese). The Joga.com Companion is available as a free download in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese, with additional languages available soon. Firefox joga.com World Cup

MS released one of the biggest security updates for more than a year to fix 12 software flaws. Nine of the updates apply to the Windows operating system and one is deemed critical, a rating reserved for the most serious security problems. At least one of the loopholes being patched is already being actively exploited by malicious hackers. Windows users are being urged to download the patches immediately. This massive patch-up is because Microsoft is not only tackling security problems but also the fallout of a legal case that they lost. One of the security problems being tackled in Office was found in Microsoft's Word software and the virus created to exploit it has been dubbed Backdoor.Ginwui. The virus and loophole were first discovered in mid-May. With this kind of regular security breache and stability issue it is extraordinary that more CTO's and individuals have not sought the benefits of open software like linux, openoffice and mozilla.

The other IT giant, Google, is launching an online payments service competitor to PayPal: Gbuy. Google's propensity to store data on searches leads to the fear that, with Gbuy, Google could get unprecedented knowledge of what we buy and where we buy from, which would then allow it to charge large premiums for its most effective advertising tools.

Concerns over state control of the internet in China were tested by NYTimes reporter Nick Kristoff. He started a couple of Chinese blogs in which he "huffs and puffs" outrageously. In a country that employs some 30,000 Internet censors, it turned out to be stunningly easy. In about 10 minutes, he started Ji Sidao's blog (his Chinese name) on two Chinese Web hosts, at no cost and without providing any identification. Writing in Chinese, he denounced the imprisonment of Times colleague, Zhao Yan, by the Chinese authorities.It was not censored, but instead, appeared promptly on the blog. He wrote even more provocatively a call for President Hu Jintao to set an example in the fight against corruption by publicly disclosing his financial assets. That wasn't censored either. In deperation he mentioned Falun Gong, the religious group that is the Chinese government's greatest enemy: "In Taiwan, the Chinese people have religious freedom. So in the Chinese mainland, why can't we discuss Falun Gong?" That instantly appeared on both blogs as well, although on one the characters for "Falun" were replaced by asterisks. He even described how on June 4, 1989, he saw the Chinese Army fire on Tiananmen Square protesters. The two characters for June 4 were replaced by asterisks, but the description of the massacre remained intact. These various counterrevolutionary comments, all in Chinese, are still sitting there in Chinese cyberspace at http://blog.sina.com.cn/u/1238333873 and http://jisidao.blog.sohu.com. (When State Security reads about it, it may finally order the blogs closed.)

This story is encouraging because it suggests that the State's concern over dissent is loosening, partly because of the practical difficulty of control but also because the State itself is maturing. The inevitable disintegration of the Communist Party's monopoly on information is occurring and soon too political diversity will follow, as economic diversity has grown over the past 20 years. Even 30,000 censors can't keep up with 120 million Chinese Netizens. With the Internet, China is developing for the first time in 4,000 years of history a powerful independent institution that offers checks and balances on the emperors. It's not that President Hu Jintao grants these freedoms, for he has arrested dozens of cyberdissidents as well as journalists. But the Internet is just too big and complex for State Security to control, and so the Web is beginning to assume the watchdog role filled by the news media in freer countries. In today's China, young people use proxy software to reach forbidden sites and Skype to make phone calls without being tapped - and the local Web pornography is relentless and explicit, ranging from sex videos to nude online chats.

Skype's disruption of the telecoms market was illustrated in big numbers last month with the belly flop of an IPO from Vonage in June.

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Two of the world's wealthiest people, Gates and Buffet, signalled their commitment to philanthropy; Gates by announcing he wll step back from daily engagement with MS to focus on his foundation and Buffet by committing the bulk of his wealth (nearly $ 40 Billion) to charity now (mostly to the Gates Foundation), before he dies.

The unprecedented donation by Warren Buffett, the world's second-richest man worth USD 44 billion, of 85% of his fortune to 5 foundations, mostly to the foundation run by the world's richest man, Bill Gates has attracted much comment. Overall we must commend this enlightened act for two aspects (other than the scale): first he is setting an example that more of us must follow, recognising that "he can't take it with him" and he wants to protect his heirs from the corruption that living richly nurtures, second, he's doing it while still alive.

Many thanks to Buffet. Being bold we suggest that there is room for improvement, which may in fact transpire because Gates will spend more attention on the Foundation. Buffet has of course given up an important aspect of this sharing of wealth - how to share it. He has passed the buck on that decision to the Gates Foundation. That we feel is a bit of a shame: While focused giving (or investment) is more productive at a modest level, the scale of this wealth could have been spread far and wide and, as we noted last month that is what the world needs today - "the three richest people in the world have more than the poorest 600,000,000".

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with assets approaching US$ 30 billion, is already one of the richest philanthropic organisations in the world - can they effectively manage more? Bill's business track record was successful but not equitable let alone holonic. The foundation's mission is to improve global public health by targeting diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS that ravage third-world countries (as noted below in Health, it is estimated that developing countries require over $ 25 billion per year to meet health related Millenium Development Goals) rather than providing the means for those countries and people to help themselves, and to bolster education and public libraries an objective which it has had mixed success (see Education section below).

On the subject of social entrepreneurship we will share a bit of history to encourage all of you who occassionally face the sense of futility that changing our world can engender. the subject is the abolition of slavery and appears here because of a number of references to modern day slavery that occurred in June. The Clapham Group: Henry Thornton, Zachary Macaulay, James Stephen, Lord Teighnmouth, Charles Grant, Charles Simeon, John Vennnot and William Wilberforce, not only succeeded in abolishing slavery (the material basis of every civilisation in the world till that time), but also in transforming the worldwide British Empire from being involved in self-serving short-term corrupt practices to being a more sustainable engine that would also at least partially benefit the world over a longer time horizon. In addition, though there had been a few NGOs before then, they started the first real wave of NGOs, as well as a host of commercial enterprises as well as social enterprises. The Clapham Group were able to do this because they were determined not merely to "do good" but also to change political and economic systems, to work at the level of government but also in commerce, and at the same time to work at improving the lot of the common person. We must learn from this group today and seek to change the systems and thinking of our times. We must accelerate the emergence from exclusive profit mentality, industrial medicine and agriculture to an enlightened holonic, integration with natural systems: energy as currency, people as part of nature, spirituality (ethics) a part of existence.

On a more prosaic level you can read here an inspiring story of open space and appreciative inquiry resulting in an Open Space for thousands of people sponsored by the democrat party of Thailand. It is a laudable case study on the power of open systems and the rate and spread of the emergence of enlightened thinking. More encouraging than the usual media.

Health

Branding The Cure, published by Consumers International, the world federation of consumer organisations, warns that there is a “shocking lack of publicly available information about the $ 60 billion spent annually on drug promotion” and concludes that drug company marketing malpractice is occurring on an unprecedented scale and amounts to a major danger to health. "The pharmaceutical industry spends nearly twice as much on marketing as it does on research and development, yet consumers know next to nothing about where this money is going. Marketing regulation must be revised to demand more transparency from drug companies. Only then can consumers make an informed and independent choice about the pharmaceutical products they buy." says CI. The report accuses the global drugs industry of engaging in a range of marketing malpractice, from covertly attempting to persuade consumers they are ill to bribing doctors and misrepresenting the results of safety and efficacy tests on their products. Consumers International says it is increasingly vital that drugs companies offer transparent information about their marketing so that consumers are properly informed about the appropriateness of the drugs they are either sold or prescribed. This is particularly important as industry finds “new and inconspicuous ways” to influence consumer opinion, such as sponsoring patient pressure groups, funding disease awareness campaigns and offering inducements and gifts to doctors.

The top-twenty drug companies refuse to provide information about how these increasingly common practices feature in their marketing codes of conduct. Branding The Cure found that only one (Bristol Meyers Squibb) of the 20 companies studied provides their marketing code of conduct directly to consumers and that only two reported code of conduct violations publicly. It also reveals that 17 of the 20 have been guilty of breaching social responsibility codes of practice in drug promotion and that Pfizer, the worlds biggest pharmaceutical company, provides no specific public information about its marketing code of conduct. For example, the scandal resulting in the withdrawal by Merck of Vioxx, a drug to relieve pain and inflammation in arthritis, in September 2004, though it knew it could increase the chances of heart attacks and strokes from 2000 and has been accused of manipulating study results to play down the risk. More than 6,000 lawsuits have been filed against the company in the United States by people who claim they suffered heart attacks as a result of the drug, or by their families. Also, GlaxoSmithKline, Britain's largest drug manufacturer, is under investigation by German and Italian authorities for alleged corruption of doctors - at least 1,600 in Germany and more than 4,000 in Italy, where the illegal gifts were said to amount to € 228 million from 1999 to 2002. GSK says it has since established marketing codes. New staff have to pass a test on the code of practice. The report points out that in 2004, 87 employees were dismissed or agreed to leave the company voluntarily as a result of breaches of the codes, and that sanctions such as written warnings were imposed in 109 cases. The report calls for tougher government controls and for the companies to put their house in order.

In the UK, controls on junk food advertising could be extended to websites, text messaging, computer games, cinemas and posters under radical plans being drawn up by the government. Ministers fear that plans to clamp down solely on TV advertising would be undermined without a more ambitious approach and are putting together a range of measures to tackle the problem. They plan to encourage shops and supermarkets to offer extra loyalty card bonus points to customers buying healthy foods low in salt, sugar and fat. And GPs may be monitored to see whether they are prioritising obesity among children. In fact, the government is so concerned over the British obesity epidemic that the government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, has commissioned a study into the long-term trends, including the possible use of new "anti-obesity" drugs that reduce the size of the human body.

New research from the US suggests that eating vegetables could prevent hardening of the arteries. Scientists at the Wake Forest University of Medicine recently assessed the effect of diet on heart disease by studying plaque formation in mice in a 16-week laboratory experiment. Half of the mice in the study were fed a vegetable-free diet and half were fed a diet which included broccoli, green beans, corn and carrots. At the end of the study period the researchers measured the cholesterol content in the blood vessels and estimated that the mice fed on the vegetable diet had 38% less build up of fatty deposits of that type which leads to atherosclerosis. The scientists admit they don’t fully understand the mechanism they had observed. However, lead researcher, Dr Michael Adams, said: “Although the pathways remain uncertain, the results indicate that a diet rich in green and yellow vegetables inhibits the hardening of the arteries and may reduce the risk of heart disease.” Dr Adrian Brady, consultant cardiologist at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, added: “There is a public health message that dietary interventions are helpful. Now this animal model shows that maybe there is a long-term dietary involvement that could lead to less plaques.”

Researchers in Singapore believe that the high antioxidant levels present in dark soy sauce could mean that it has a useful role to play in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. Researchers at the National University of Singapore had previously reported that dark soy sauce has antioxidant activity 150 times that of vitamin C and E, and ten times that of wine. In their most recent study, 24 healthy volunteers were asked to eat a single 30ml dose of dark soy sauce with a 200gm serving of plain rice, or a 200gm serving of rice with food colouring (placebo). Three days later the volunteers were crossed-over to receive the other meal. The researchers found that the level of compounds called F2-isoprostanes - linked to oxidative stress - were lower in the blood plasma of the soy sauce group than the placebo group. They concluded that dark soy sauce has a rapid antioxidant effect against lipid peroxidation accompanied by beneficial vasodilatory changes.

We have reported before on the dangers of aspartame advising people to avoid it. Another prominent scientist has warned that the UK's Food Standards Agency and the European Food Safety Authority are continuing ignore research linking the artificial sweetener aspartame with an increased incidence of cancer in animals and humans. Erik Millstone, professor of science policy at the University of Sussex, says that aspartame remains officially "under review" by both the FSA and EFSA. But both agencies, he claims, downplayed the findings of a long-term feeding study of aspartame conducted by the Ramazzini Foundation in Italy in 2005.The Italian study was considered to be carried out under rigorous conditions and involved 900 rats which were tested at five different dose levels (plus controls). The results indicated that aspartame caused a dose-related and statistically significant increase in the incidence of several types of tumour.

An apple a day keeps the doctor away - really! Researchers at University of California have discovered how the flavonoids in apples offer protection beyond their known antioxidant effect (mopping up DNA-damaging free radicals). In their experiments, the California team, led by Eric Gershwin, treated human endothelial cells with an apple extract (produced from fresh Fuji, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious and Granny Smith varieties). They exposed the cells to tumour necrosis factor (TNF), a compound that that triggers cell death and produces inflammation. The researchers observed that the apple flavonoids were able to protect the cells from the effects of the TNF by inhibiting chemical signals that would otherwise damage or kill cells.

A World Bank study said rich countries would have to give $25 billion to $70 billion more each year for developing nations to meet the health-care needs set out in the Millennium Development Goals. Beyond the targets set for 2015 by leaders of the Group of Eight rich countries last July is the momentum of a burgeoning global population the World Bank expects to reach 7.5 billion by 2020 and 9 billion by 2050, the study found.

Doctors at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center believe that yoga may help cancer patients. In a trial of 61 women with breast cancer who were undergoing radiation, half were assigned to a very simple weekly yoga program. The practitioners reported significantly better physical and social functioning, and lower levels of fatigue and sleep disorders, than the control group.

Japan has succeeded in buying the votes that give it control of the International Whaling Commission, in a major step towards bringing back commercial hunting of the great whales. The leading pro-whaling nation secured the support of three more small countries - Guatemala, Cambodia, and the Marshall Islands - to give it a majority in the IWC, and so begin in earnest its attack on the international whaling moratorium. Its takeover of the IWC is a considerable propaganda victory for the Japan, Norway and Iceland, all determined to continue whale hunting. It is the climax of a 10-year campaign to persuade small countries to join the IWC and then vote on the Japanese side. The vote was decried by the environmental lobby as a victory of backroom manoeuvres and cheque book diplomacy. But it is still short of its goal of ending the international ban on hunting the mammal. Japan forced the IWC to declare that a 20-year old moratorium on commercial whaling was "no longer necessary". The declaration (passed by a vote of 33 to 32 amid jeering from conservationist nations) will change the tone of future commission meetings. Fortunately victory in Japan's longer campaign to end the ban may yet be a long way off: the declaration does not affect the moratorium because a three-quarters majority is required for that to be overturned.

In addition, the IWC's credibility is being jeopardised as it now holds that pro-environmental groups are a threat and that whales are to blame for diminishing fish stocks, condemned by one biologist as "like blaming woodpeckers for deforestation".

Unfortunately what is missing from most of the analysis and the rhetoric is the fact that the Japanese fleet is heavily subsidised. Remove this incentive and the economic motivation for whaling would be greatly reduced. If the commission does vote to resume commercial whaling, it should at least put quotas up for auction so that killers and conservationists have right to bid. Since fewer and fewer people like eating whales, conservationists might outbid the few that still like to eat whales.

Japan is also implicated in what appears to be decimation of stocks of tuna in the Mediterranean. A month-long voyage of investigation in the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishing grounds by the Greenpeace vessel, Esperanza, has found a catastrophic shortage of the giant fish. "The crews of fishing vessels, scientists and our own observations are all now pointing in the same disturbing direction," said Francois Provost of Greenpeace France. "We spent a week with the French and Spanish fleets around the Balearic Islands. They did not catch a single tuna. It is the same story to the north of Egypt. Some fish are being found to the south of Turkey but they are small. A catastrophe is in the making," he said. Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Fund and other pressure groups have been warning for years that intensive demand from Japan could rapidly reduce the stocks of Mediterranean bluefin tuna to the same unsustainable levels as their cousins in the Atlantic and the Pacific. Greenpeace called yesterday for all tuna fishing in the Mediterranean to be halted until new, more drastic controls are in place.There have been reports the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas is also preparing to call for a drastic reduction in tuna fishing in the Mediterranean in the next few weeks.

Education

Artificial intelligence may increasingly adopt a human approach to machine learning because of research at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technology in Italy. Humans have to learn their social skills from scratch, taking in new information and evolving their behaviours accordingly as they mature. Robots, on the other hand, are normally equipped with ready-to-go programmed skills. This may be a mistake: Rather than embedding robots with preset rules, artificial-intelligence researchers are working to enable robots to learn the skills and rules as they go. To do this, the robots will evolve their own language based on their experiences interacting with their environments, including cooperating with other devices (i.e., social skills). With the right algorithms and design principles, robotic pets like AIBO will not only learn new tricks without human teachers, but also communicate the tricks to others. Ultimately, different robots will be able to function as systems, cooperating in highly complex and changeable environments with little need for human oversight - deja vu The Terminator!

The Gates foundation has spent millions on reforming schools in America but the results do not match the investment. BusinessWeek reviewed the results of the past six years' efforts. What is clear is that new systems are needed. It is surprising that they have not been able to develop a basic understanding of the objectives of education but rather seem to have been firefighting, admittedly with large cheques. We continue to advocate a natural or Pestalozzian approach, which though 200 years old has been swamped by industrialisation of schooling. This involves three main principles: learning by experience, starting with oneself and one's immediate environment and working outwards, and a culture of nurturing (even love). It is also known by the motto "head, heart and hands" because this approach nurtures physical well-being, intellectual development and spiritual or ethical sensitivity. Money itself is often insufficient as Gates is finding out.

Living

The issue of same gender union appeared on a number of agendas in June. US conservatives are seeking to amend the country's constitution to ban same-sex marriage, which is currently legal only in the state of Massachusetts. Vermont allows same-sex civil unions, giving gay couples the same benefits as married couples on matters such as life insurance, health care and child custody.Bush has again urged the US Senate to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-gender marriage, saying marriage between a man and a woman was the most fundamental institution of civilisation, and needed protection from "activist judges". But opponents say the president is using the issue to win back disillusioned Republican voters. Fortunately the bill is widely expected to fail as it does not have the backing needed; a two-thirds majority is required in both houses of Congress for an amendment process to begin.

Even the Church has recognised the lack of equity of the restriction on liberty that such a bill implies. Last July 2005, the million-strong United Church of Christ has become the first major US Christian denomination to come out in support of gay marriage.The UCC's general synod passed a resolution affirming "equal rights for couples regardless of gender". Several other Churches have endorsed gay civil partnerships but have not given them the status of marriage, such as the Episcopal Church (the US branch of the Anglican Communion) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

North of the border, Canada's lower house of parliament passed a law allowing gay marriages, which is expected to come into force in July.

However, Australia's conservative national government has overruled a local law allowing gay unions. The Australian Capital Territory (ACT) became the first part of the country to legally recognise gay relationships when it voted on the issue. But the federal government has stepped in to invalidate the new law. Attorney General Philip Ruddock said that federal law clearly defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman. He added that the legislation would be invalid although the ACT law ruled that same-sex couples could be given the same rights as heterosexual couples, in an established relationship separate to marriage. But many members of Prime Minister John Howard's conservative government opposed the change and the government formalised federal marriage laws in 2004 to ensure that only men and women could marry. It seems to be an aberration from Australia's normally forward thinking, and may be an attempt by Howard to be friendly with Bush.

In the UK, prison overcrowding is getting out of hand. Labour leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair boasted that more than 1,000 offenders have been locked away in the last 12 months without a fixed release date under the new breed of "public protection sentences". The rapid growth in popularity amongst supposedly "soft" judges of this new "indefinite" sentence for dangerous and violent offenders, introduced by David Blunkett when he was home secretary, has taken the criminal justice system by surprise. The chief inspector of prisons, Anne Owers, has said prisons are already facing problems in dealing with serious offenders who will remain behind bars until the parole board decides they are no longer a risk to the public - until they die if necessary.

The US Episcopal church stunned Christians across the world in June by unexpectedly electing the first female primate in the Anglican church. The Rt Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, 52, Bishop of Nevada, one of the smallest dioceses in the US, for only five years and ordained for only a decade, may be the highest placed woman priest in church history. At the rostrum at the Episcopal church's general convention in Columbus she told more than 1,000 representatives: "It is a great honour and privilege ... I am awed, honoured and deeply privileged to have been elected." Despite warnings from the convention's chairman that there should be no applause or cheering, and an attempt to quieten the representatives with a preliminary prayer, only the bishop's Christian name was read out before the announcement was drowned in cries of astonishment and joy. Women representatives hugged each other and rushed from the hall to telephone the news excitedly to friends. Bishop Schori trained as a scientist and formerly worked as an oceanographer with the US national marine fisheries service in Seattle. She is also a trained and active pilot. All in all, great news.

In another move forward for the Christian Church, a US federal judge has ruled that an alleged victim of an Irish paedophile priest can take the world's first-ever sexual-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican. US District Judge Michael Mosman lifted diplomatic immunity, saying the Vatican seemed to be involved in a conspiracy to move Fr Andrew Ronan out of Ireland and between US parishes. The case stems from the transfer of the late Father Ronan from Ireland to the US in the early Sixties. In a hard-hitting ruling, Judge Mosman noted that "without warning parishioners of a known danger, [the Holy See] placed a priest it knew to be a child molester in a position in which, for the third time, he would have private access to minors". Judge Mosman also said that the Holy See did "not offer evidence to contradict this allegation of its involvement in transferring a known child-molester" and said Fr Ronan could be considered a Vatican employee under Oregon law. The suit claims there was an international conspiracy to move Ronan from Ireland after he allegedly sexually abused a boy while he was working at a seminary in Benburb, Co Tyrone. After he was moved to the US, Ronan admitted to church superiors that he sexually abused three boys at a Chicago school before he was transferred to an area of Portland, Oregon. He was defrocked in 1966. The case seems pretty clear cut, but the Vatican continues to dig in.The Vatican is expected to keep filing motions to delay the case because it does not want its authority structure revealed to the general public.The ruling followed a bitter four-year legal battle in which the Vatican insisted that the alleged victim spend at least $40,000 on translating all legal documents into Latin, which is the official language of the Holy See! The Vatican twice rejected translations by two US Latin professors, saying their translation of "court", "conspiracy to commit fraud", "defendant" and many other phrases were incorrect. The two professors hired by the Anderson firm also had to translate modern terms such as 'fax number' (numerusisographicus) and 'email' (inscriptio electronica) as well as dense legal arguments relating to foreign immunity. The Vatican gave up its three-year battle against the translations last December, perhaps since the attention of the new Pope was brought to bear.

Unfortunately, in the US, firms that specialise in abuse cases are increasingly focusing on the Vatican, as many US dioceses are close to settling hundreds of millions of dollars in claims or else teeter on the verge of bankruptcy. Last year, the Portland Archdiocese, the diocese at the centre of the Ronan lawsuit, became the first Roman Catholic diocese to file for bankruptcy protection on the same day that the archdiocese was due to go to trial in a $ 135 million sex-abuse lawsuit involving a single priest.

Another illustration of why liberalisation and education of recreational drugs would help society manage their unsavoury consequences - while its all underground its very difficult to control and gives unethical people a profit opportunity. US police and health authorities are struggling to track down the source of a doctored, intensely powerful heroin that has killed at least 130 people in and around Chicago and Detroit and sent hundreds more to hospitals in cities from St. Louis to Philadelphia. The additive, called fentanyl, was developed as a commercial painkiller in the 1960's and surfaced as street-drug compound in the mid-80's on the West Coast, where it killed perhaps 100 people over as many as eight years. It made waves again in the early 90's in the New York metropolitan region, where it killed dozens of people who bought fentanyl-laced heroin under the street brand Tango and Cash. Fentanyl, which is 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is not a contaminant or filler, drug experts say, but rather a deliberately introduced enhancement intended to improve the product. It kills by shutting down a victim's respiratory system when too much is taken, an easy mistake because of the potency.

Even the French are succumbing to fast food - between 1978 and 2005, the length of an average French family's meal decreased from one hour and 22 minutes to 38 minutes.

Activities, Books and Gatherings

We have a particular interest in education and found an unusual number of interesting opportunities and news in June, some of which are being developed to commercial enterprise. Most of these are connected with J.H.Pestalozzi, noted by many to be the founder of modern education. Pestalozzi's approach rested on three main ideas: teach by experience, start with self and work outwards, and create a nurturing environment.

Related to this PestalozziWorld is looking for a Chief Operating Officer/Deputy to take over some of the Founder’s functions running children’s charities in India, Nepal, Malawi and Zambia. The applicant should be London based and have an office at home. Such a person may have had a successful business or armed forces career, including management/marketing responsibilities, and now be looking for new challenges. He or she will have a pension or other income and be motivated by a desire to help some of the less fortunate in the developing countries. The new person will be offered a minimal monthly fee. Travel (low cost!) will be necessary as will an ability to work and communicate with many different people and the drive to get things done. Please let me know if you are interested or send us a CV in confidence which we will forward to the founder.

Many thanks to Hazel Henderson for listing our review on Ethical Markets. It is an honour to be invited into her community.

In the month of the World Cup we heard about an entertaining book: "How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization", by Franklin Foer. Apparently, once you start reading it, you won´tbe able to stop, even if football is not your favourite sport.

An interesting site for data miners is GapMinder.org whose dynamic representation of statistics you will appreciate. While it is currently a non-profit educational offering, it is useful for business, market and financial analysis too. You may find that it can add colour to presentations.

holonics
The Big Picture

body

mind

spirit

About
Astraea

Astraea News and Views - June 2006

Perspective

Rudi Bogni on Education, Education, Education from Wilmott Magazine

Geopolitics

Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

IT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

Education

Living

Activities, Books and Gatherings

holonics The Big Picture

body

mind

spirit

About Astraea

Astraea News and Views - June 2006

Perspective

Rudi Bogni on Education, Education, Education from Wilmott Magazine

Geopolitics

Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

IT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

Education

Living

Activities, Books and Gatherings

holonics
The Big Picture

About
Astraea