MASS DISASTER

AFRICA: The next 15 years

If you are interested in Africa - it's many problems and it's future, you should read the following article which summarizes the results of a conference sponsored by the National Intelligence Council (of the United States). It is chock full of predictions and analysis running the spectrum from terrorism, corruption, democratic growth, economic trends, religious conflict, AIDS impact and more.

Remember that these are predictions. But they are based on a broad knowledge of how Africa is today and has been in the past, so it can serve as a consise and dispassionate window into the "big picture" for anyone seeking to familiarize themselves with the issues. The link goes to the Vanguard - a Nigerian site - so the title is about Nigeria, but the article itself deals with Africa as a whole.

Patterns of Conflict

Africa was the site of much of the military conflict in the world in the 1990s and there is no reason to believe that its share of world violence will change appreciably in the next 15 years. As in the past, most African conflicts will be internal, although the pattern of outsiders intervening in civil wars, either to help one of the protagonists or to protect themselves from the fallout of the conflict, will continue. African governments and rebels will continue to take advantage of the international market for basic weapons and, increasingly, logistics and higher-order military functions such as aerial reconnaissance.

... full text via vanguarddngr.com.

GOOD NEWS: A world less at war, believe it or not

The Centre for International Conflict and Development will publish the third in a series of reports aimed at debunking the myth that the world is becoming a more dangerous place (in terms war) with each passing day. This is something I’ve believed for some time, at least in the per capita sense.

Of course this doesn’t mean things won’t change – as the report is reported to point out – or that the actual conflicts now in progress are less severe. The extremes on both sides of the political spectrum use the bogeyman of ever escalating wars to whip people up. It would be refreshing to read some well researched documents that disprove this corrosive popular opinion.

Not surprising is one of the reasons why people believe that violent conflicts are on the rise…

Even as the number of wars and military spending has constantly decreased, the amount of reporting on both national and international conflict has ballooned.

Some interesting stats…

In the 20th century, which featured two World Wars, a person had a 2% chance of dying in war, but as of today, the chance of dying in a car wreck is three times greater than in any type of war. (The World Health Organisation backs this up. WHO says that in 2000, for example, there were 300,000 people killed in combat or war-related incidents, including even disease untreated because of the conflict, while 1.2 million died in traffic accidents.)

The report says that warfare peaked in 1991, when there were 51 conflicts. In 2000, there were 26 armed conflicts. Then came the Sept 11 attacks, more war reporting than ever before, the invasion of Afghanistan; but in 2002, there were 25 armed conflicts including the new ones sparked by the terrorist attacks on the United States.

Today there are 20 armed conflicts around the world, counting southern Thailand and the invasion of Iraq.

… via bangkokpost.com

… CIDCM website here.

RUSSIA: Siberian forest fires increasing

Vast tracts of pristine Siberian forest are lost every year to naturally occuring wildfires. Global warming, corrupt governments and shady logging practices converge to make the problem far worse. The sheer scale of these forests is amazing, the scale of the destruction equally as troubling. Last year an area equal to half the size of France burned.

In one satellite image taken in June 2003, for instance, some 157 fires across an area of 11 million hectares could be monitored simultaneously. The smoke plumes from this conflagration reached Kyoto in Japan, about 5,000 miles away.

... via The Independent

RUSSIA: Radioactive Wasteland of the Techa River

This is a disturbing and stomach churning article about the environmental disaster that took place, and is still taking place in Russia. This is a must read.

On Sept. 29, 1957, a catastrophic release of radioactivity occurred at Mayak that shot into the air more radioactivity than the blast at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. A cooling system on a radioactive waste storage tank failed, causing an explosion that rained contaminants on an area the size of New Jersey.

Gulnara Ismagilova, a Tatar who was 11 at the time, remembers seeing the sky darken with a greenish fog as she piled potatoes in heaps.

"It was raining the night after the blast, and we could see green spots everywhere," said Ismagilova, 59. "It was some kind of green substance falling from the sky. I can remember seeing blood coming from people's noses and mouths, and people retching."

... via Kansas City.com.