BBC NEWS | Middle East | Al-Qaeda in Iraq 'reduced by 75%'

While the road ahead in Iraq is long and arduous, the BBC reports that the 'surge' with General Petraeus' leadership has apparently reduced the level of violence and severely limited Al Qaeda's influence. Why isn't the American media reporting the same good news. Is it because they see this positive result as bad for the Democrats?

I expect little credit will be given to Bush for this turn of events, but the improvement, thanks to our military, cannot be denied. Now, the harder task is for the politicians and the State Department to move the Iraqis toward resolution of as many of their differences as possible.

"The BBC's Jo Floto in Baghdad says there are a number of other factors behind the security gains, such as a six-month ceasefire announced in August by the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr.

But perhaps most crucial, says our correspondent, has been the emergence of Sunni militias who once fought the Americans and the Iraqi government but are now fighting al-Qaeda.

In his year-end review for media, Gen Petraeus said US figures
showed the number of overall attacks had fallen by 60% since June."

The Futurist's Top 10 Predictions for 2008

These predictions obviously extend beyond 2008 and their overall tenor is pessimistic and problematic. My grandchildren will inherit a very different world than the one I grew up in.

1. The world will have a billion millionaires by 2025.

Is this good news or not? I would argue it is, but the socialists among us will say this represents more unequal wealth distribution.

2. Fashion will go wired as technologies and tastes converge to revolutionize the textile industry.

This is good news because more jobs will be created as
people buy this stuff.

3. The threat of another cold war with China, Russia, or both could replace terrorism as the chief foreign-policy concern of the United States.

Definitely bad news, but should we expect something
different as we have exported our manufacturing base, and lately our financial interests as Asian companies invest in many of America's largest banks and financial institutions to help bail them out of the sub-prime mortgage mess.

4. Counterfeiting of currency will proliferate, driving the move toward a cashless society.

Mixed news here. Criminals are alive and apparently
thriving. If we move more or our financial life online, the security must increase simultaneously.

5. The earth is on the verge of a significant extinction event.

Very bad news, indeed.

6. Water will be in the twenty-first century what oil was in the twentieth century.

More bad news, but big companies will make a lot of money on this....GE for one.

7. World population by 2050 may grow larger than previously expected, due in part to healthier, longer-living people.

Should we expect anything less as medical science and agriculture continue to enable peole to live longer. The strain on the world's resources is the bad news.

8. The number of Africans imperiled by floods will grow 70-fold by 2080.

More bad news for the basket case that is most of Africa.

9. Rising prices for natural resources could lead to a full-scale rush to develop the Arctic.

Mixed news here. On one hand, the expanding
population must have resources, particularly fossil fuels and minerals. On the other hand , more people and development in the cold, but warming, North will displease the environmentalists.

10. More decisions will be made by nonhuman entities.

Not good, but because technology has advanced to this state, robots and other macro and micro devices will pervade our lives.

A Possum in the Neighborhood

Early this morning an opossum paid a visit to our neighborhood. From the neighbor's yard across the stree, it crossed the road and our front yard and evenyually found its way underneath our right side neighbor's deck.

I had never seen one in Vermont before, but they are common now, although when the state was settled, there were none north of Pennsylvania, according to the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department.

Strange to see one, but our Airedales and the neighbor's dog and cat were unaware of it.

Not a Pretty Picture

The Economist writes a gloomy assessment for 2008. It's hard to fathom that rational, albeit greedy, people would loan these huge sums to others with shaky credit. If banking is regulated, should other financial enterprises and complex debt instruments also be bound by similar rules? I'd be the last to want a huge bureaucracy created to do this, but massive amounts of debt writedown, in the range of $200-300 billion by The Economist's and others' reckoning is way over the top.

Financiers and others seem to think little downside risk is possible in a growing global economy. Reality has proven them wrong. Is all this the result of the web-like interconnectedness of financing these days?

American banks Unhappy new year Economist.com

China Grabs West’s Smoke-Spewing Factories - New York Times

The media thrives on beating up on America to be greener, but the real pollution mess has moved to China. The global economic effect of pollution control in China will be significantly higher prices for manufactured goods. If the West moves rapidly down the path of carbon control, how will the world influence China (and India) to reduce its emissions? Not much leverage when these countries are the world's manufacturing mecca.

My guess is that China and India are in a position to hold the world hostage to pay for cleanup in their countries in coming decades by simply increasing the price of goods they produce.

"This mass shift of polluting industries has blighted China’s economic rise. Double-digit growth rates have done less to improve people’s lives when the damages to the air, land, water and human health are considered, some economists say. Outmoded production equipment will have to be replaced or retrofitted at high cost if the country intends to reduce pollution.

China’s worsening environment has also upended the geopolitics of global warming. It produces and exports so many goods once made in the West that many wealthy countries can boast of declining carbon emissions, even while the world’s overall emissions are rising quickly.

The Ruhr Valley city of Dortmund, where ThyssenKrupp once made steel, still suffers from high unemployment because of the loss of jobs to lower-cost countries like China. But Germans can buy Chinese-made iPods, washing machines and cargo ships at prices that, because of lax pollution controls, do not reflect the toll on the environment. And the outsourcing of polluting industries has given them cleaner air and water."

Italy’s Man From God - New York Times

Kudos to Roger Cohen for this piece of investigative journalism which suggests (to me, at least) that the Clintons are once more involved with shady operations/operators, whether knowingly or not is another question. The fact that President Bill Clinton is a senior adviser to a Burkle enterprise that did a deal with Follieri's croup, all facilitated by a senior Bill Clinton aide smells bad. Big, big money involved here.

Following this saga as the Republicans make hay with it should be fascinating. Let's see if the media asks Hillary about her involvement. What Cohen's piece doesn't state is whether any of the people mentioned are donors to Hillary's campaign. Seems likely that they are because so much money is floating around these deals.

Graphical Presentation of Complex Data

I stumbled upon this video (others like it are available on YouTube or at the Gapminder site)and if you're interested in more of this Swede's amazing graphical analysis of statistical data about what's happening in the countries of the world, go to www.gapminder.org.

Google has recently acquired the software and the programmers who created it. We should hope to see more from them on this creative way of 'organizing the world's information.'

Vermont Rejects Sale of Verizon Lines - New York Times

Not an unexpected decision, because the Public Service Board has a statutory interval to decide a case after it's filed, but the game's not over. Maine and NH regulators have yet to decide the case. As a practical matter, all three will agree to fundamentally the same terms and conditions except for some variations, e.g., in the area of service quality standards or technology deployment.

Vermont Tiger: Saying You'll Reduce CO2 Doesn't Make It So

A good bit of information is contained in the linked post about the Kyoto protocol and the failure of the signatories to meet the CO2 emission standards. The U.S. not signing on in 1998 under Clinton and that position continuing under Bush is a good thing. As I see it, the only outcome from Kyoto was a raising of awareness about climate change.

I become more convinced that the economics of CO2 emission reductions advocated by some who would 'save the planet' just plain don't work when compared to other uses of those resources in the next century.

Will Enough Men Stand By This Woman? - washingtonpost.com

I'll bet Mrs. Clinton does not appreciate this analysis by the Washington Post:

"But in several interviews with Democratic men across the country, the stated reasons for their aversion to Clinton seem more complicated, and in many cases, far more visceral than substantive.

They just don't like her, some say. They don't know what she stands for. They believe her word is no good, that she doesn't believe that she can be held accountable. They see her as intellectual snob who lets you know she's smarter. They say she sounds like everybody's ex-wife. They can't tell if she's the loyal, traditional wife who stayed with her husband for love after his humiliating extramarital affair -- or a canny politician who stayed because it was politically expedient. Even: Is she a Yankees or a Cubs fan?"