SMALL ARMS ARE THE REAL WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

While a nervous world focuses on putative terrorist threats and nuclear strikes from Iran and North Korea, small arms are killing far more people than all the bombs and missiles in national arsenals, writes Mark Sommer, host of the internationally-syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities . In this article, Sommer writes that small arms are the real weapons of mass destruction and are undermining the stability and security of whole societies in the process. A prime contributor to the phenomenon of failed states, small arms are a pre-eminent threat to global security and public health. Yet uprooting the virus of small arms trafficking will be dauntingly difficult precisely because they are cheap, easy to fire and conceal, and everywhere available. Unlike landmines, they move readily from hand to hand and can be aimed at any target for any purpose. Efforts to track and curtail the trade have long been thwarted by well-organised private gun lobbies and powerful nations that make use of small arms to fuel counterinsurgencies or proxy wars. After years of ignoring the problem, the UN General Assembly recently launched an effort to enact a treaty that would regulate trade in small arms. Yet many governments, including that of the United States, are reluctant to allow the enactment of a regime that would constrain their ability to freely distribute them. Not until the global public demands the imposition of constraints on the small arms trade will governments rein it in, albeit reluctantly. And not until that public fully realises that small arms in the wrong hands are the ultimate terror weapon will we give this public health pandemic the priority it deserves.

SADDAM, YOUTUBE, AND THE CITIZEN SURVEILLANCE EFFECT

The flip side of the ubiquitous spy camera tracking our every movement in department stores, government offices, and corporate headquarters is \'\'inverse surveillance\'\', the private citizen\'s new-found ability to invade the privacy of public figures who have so long and with such impunity invaded their privacy, writes Mark Sommer, who hosts the internationally-syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' (www.aworldofpossibilities.com) and directs the Mainstream Media Project. In this analysis, Sommer writes that nearly universal access to portable audio and video recording devices can now catch a politician\'s random moment of indiscretion or conspiratorial whisper and disseminate it to a global public to the everlasting embarrassment of the subject of scrutiny. What does this radical transparency do to leadership itself when, taken out of context, almost any act can appear incriminating? On the one hand, micro cameras and recording devices in the hands of ordinary people give them the power of a citizen\'s arrest with a potential impact that extends far beyond throwing someone in jail. In that sense, it is an essential counterweight to ever greater concentration of power and surveillance in the hands of elites, a levelling device that places public figures on notice that they can never be assured that malfeasance will not be discovered and tried in the court of public exposure. It\'s a power whose potency even those wielding it may not yet fully realise.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN AUSTRALIA, CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH EPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//: THE GREEN GOLD RUSH

The conundrum that has long obstructed progress on global warming and a broader transition from a petro-centric to a biocentric economy -- can environmental imperatives be addressed within a profit-driven economic system? -- may finally be giving way to a tidal wave of global green innovation, writes Mark Sommer, host of \'A World of Possibilities,\' an award-winning,internationally syndicated radio programme that can be heard at www.aworldofpossibilities.com. In this article, Sommer writes that November\'s flush of Democratic victories was less an endorsement of the party than a rejection of the oil-igarchy that has blocked effective action on a wide range of issues. In its wake, the pent-up demand for new products and services to serve a post-carbon economy may now begin to trigger a potent market-driven response from industry, academia, consumers, and after all others, policymakers. The greening of the global economy will likely be led not by the environmental activists whose persistence was so essential to raising initial public awareness but by some of the very corporate behemoths who were rightly criticised for their inaction and some of the very conservatives (though not of the Bush variety) who have long held that environmental goals and economic realities are innately incompatible.

HIGH ENERGY PRICES FUEL SOLAR BOOM

After decades of frustratingly slow growth, rising energy prices are hastening the dawn of a long-heralded solar renaissance, writes Mark Sommer, host of the internationally-syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. Though still outdistanced by the rapid rise of wind power, silicon-based solar technologies are finally becoming sufficiently efficient to be competitive with conventional energy sources, Sommer writes in this article. Industry experts predict that based on recent advances, further improvements in efficiency will continue, but a real breakthrough to widespread use worldwide awaits development of a technology beyond the painstaking silicon-based manufacturing process. Solar advocates argue that in an era of permanent oil decline, if the photovoltaic industry sustains growth averaging 50 percent or more per year for the next two decades, it will contribute as much as 20 percent of the global energy budget. This is an ambitious, even unlikely rate of growth, but it also presumes no significant technological breakthroughs. And given that necessity is the mother of invention, solar energy may yet surprise us all.

BIOMASS: A WIN-WIN ENERGY SOURCE

Fully developed, biomass could reduce reliance on hydrocarbons of all kinds, foreign and domestic, not only as fuel for light-duty vehicles but as a raw material for biodegradable manufactured plastics. At the same time, rightly utilised, biomass could be harvested not from food crops but from the stalks and stover of grains that would otherwise go to waste. In the process, it could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fuel a rebirth of long languishing rural regions worldwide. Unlike oil, coal, uranium and other conventional fuels, the processes that produce biofuels are not intensely toxic to humans or the natural environment. Moreover, unlike fossil fuel and nuclear plants, biorefineries are most efficiently run when they are small-scale, decentralised, and locally-managed, with raw materials drawn from as little as a thirty-mile radius of the plant. One of the benefits of biofuels is that they offer the possibility of returning the sources of energy, income and political power to each locale. In an era when centralised power is revealing itself to be ever more inefficient and untrustworthy, an energy system of distributed power driven by biology rather than mineralogy might provide not only heat and light but, as a beneficial byproduct, a greater measure of democracy.

SUPPORT FOR DEATH PENALTY SOFTENS IN US

Support for capital punishment is starting to soften even among some long-time death penalty advocates, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of the award-winning internationally-syndicated radio programme \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article Sommer writes, alongside Iraq, Iran, and China, the US remains the sole advanced democracy still cleaving to what much of the world views as state-sponsored homicide. At 64 percent, Americans\' support for the death penalty is 20 percent higher than Canada and 40 percent higher than Australia. Nonetheless, it is at its lowest level in 27 years and is lowest among youth, indicating that a shift may be in the offing. Surprisingly, this shift is occurring most of all among some of those who until now have been adamantly opposed to abolishing the death penalty: Republican officeholders. The reason they are changing their minds is less ideological than pragmatic -- a realization that too often the wrong man is executed and the exorbitant cost of prosecution is stealing resources from law enforcement programmes of more proven effectiveness.

ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM: COMPOUNDING POVERTY WITH POISON

Environmental racism is a global phenomenon that follows closely in the wake of economic globalisation, writes Mark Sommer, director of the U.S.-based Mainstream Media Project and host of the award-winning international radio program, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' In this article, Sommer writes that for the affluent global minority, \'\'out of sight, out of mind\'\' leaves the conscience largely untroubled.The media often cooperate by giving only fleeting coverage to distant industrial accidents. The catastrophic leak of lethal chemicals at a Union Carbide facility in Bhopal, India, two decades ago left 3,000 people dead and 500,000 injured in the worst industrial accident in history. But while the victims of the World Trade Centre attack, which killed as many but injured few, attracted enough attention to transform the global agenda, Bhopal was soon forgotten. Outsourcing manufacturing jobs to low-wage sites in China, India, and elsewhere not only lowers labour costs but enables manufacturers to avoid environmental regulations that would otherwise make their products non-competitive. In its headlong lunge for industrial supremacy, China is placing the poorest of its own citizens at greatest risk by siting and operating manufacturing plants with scant regard for their lethal effects on the surrounding air, water, and soil.

DIGITAL DEBRIS: ELECTRONIC WASTE AND THE HAZARDS OF COMPUTER RECYCLING

Electronic waste is the fastest growing disposal problem in the world. From the industrial backwaters of mainland China to rapidly industrialising regions of India and Pakistan, a wide range of electronic devices and appliances are being received and recycled in conditions that imperil the health of the recyclers, their communities, and their environments, writes Mark Sommer, who directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts \"A World of Possibilities\", an award-winning internationally-syndicated radio programme, where a three-part series on electronic waste can be accessed and downloaded.. In this article, Sommer writes that most of the components in these devices are recovered by poor, often migrant scavengers and sold for reuse. But in the process they and the environments around them are exposed to heavy metals like mercury, lead, beryllium, cadmium, and brominated flame retardants that leave lethal residues in bodies, soils, and watercourses. Governments and electronics firms have long known about the hazardous effects of this \"effluent of the affluent\" and as early as 1989 drafted the Basel Convention, an international treaty dealing with the global trade in toxic wastes. In 1994 it was strengthened to ban the export of all hazardous wastes from rich to poor countries, even for the purpose of recycling. Alone among developed countries, the US has refused to ratify the Basel Convention and has consistently sought to undermine its implementation. Yet as with so many other global agreements, the rest of the world has ceased waiting for the US to lead and has instead taken the initiative itself. The EU has already implemented the Basel Convention, banning the export of all hazardous wastes to developing countries for any reason, while readying a comprehensive set of regulations that will require electronics manufacturers selling to its 25 member countries to bear the responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products, taking them back at the end of their useful life and phasing out their toxic components.

BEYOND IDEOLOGY: US “SILENT MAJORITY” SEEKS NEW POLITICS

Domestic divisiveness within the United States represents a far greater danger to the American democratic republic than any threat from foreign terrorists, writes Mark Sommer, host of the award-wining internationally syndicated radio programme, \"A World of Possibilities\" and co-creator, with William Ury, of BothAnd (www.bothand.org). In this article, Sommer argues that as currently framed, the war on terror is the ultimate either/or paradigm: \"You\'re either with us or against us.\" But this frame has divided Americans both from one another and the rest of the world in ways that could prove fatal to the country\'s future if it does not soon reframe the struggle in more inclusive ways. A different kind of Middle America - both principled and pragmatic, strengthened rather than weakened by its differences -- could bring fresh energy to a paralysed body politic by creating a vibrant new process outside the dead zones that are the White House and Congress today. By combining the best of many perspectives into creative, effective syntheses, they may yet produce hybrid solutions with the vigour to withstand our all-too- human fractiousness.

BUSH VICTORY ONLY HASTENS END OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

In the near term, the re-selection of Team Bush would seem to give neoconservatives free rein to pursue their imperial dreams. But a host of factors beyond their control threatens not only to slow their momentum but to bring the empire to an earlier end than even its opponents assume, writes Mark Sommer, who directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts an award-winning syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities.\'\' The crux of the American empire\'s vulnerability is its a wilful and increasingly desperate denial of facts and a blindness to the limits to its own power. Some US analysts already doubt that the world will tolerate another \'\'American century\'\' and see a gradual waning of American power over the next thirty years as other great powers like the EU, China, and India challenge US dominance. But the American imperial project may not even last that long. The pace at which negative trends are moving both within and towards the American empire could greatly accelerate this time-line. Wealthy and powerful as it still appears, the Bush regime is pursuing self-destructive policies that together could create \'\'the perfect storm\'\' in a dynamic not unlike the collapse of the Soviet empire.

THE FUTURE OF THE CAR, AND THE EARTH

If oil lubricates the global economy, its increasing scarcity is driving the development of new technologies, writes Mark Sommer, directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and is host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. In this article, Sommer writes that with crude oil prices soaring and turmoil in oil-rich regions, transition technologies like electric-gas hybrid vehicles are starting to look like a cheap price to pay for salvation. But while current demand for hybrids is rising rapidly, it could yet collapse if its early promise is not followed up by auto makers with major expansion of production capability to meet rising demand, increased R&D to refine the technology, and a wider range of vehicles and models to meet varied user needs. In the case of hybrids, the customer is literally in the driver\'s seat. If we insist on fuel-efficient vehicles and forcefully address our demands to both auto makers and government regulators, we\'ll get them sooner rather than later. And by increasing sales volume, we will drive prices down to achieve mass market affordability. In the process, we will save more than money. We\'ll save ourselves, the author states.

THE FUTURE OF THE CAR, AND THE EARTH

If oil lubricates the global economy, its increasing scarcity is driving the development of new technologies, writes Mark Sommer, directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and is host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. In this article, Sommer writes that with crude oil prices soaring and turmoil in oil-rich regions, transition technologies like electric-gas hybrid vehicles are starting to look like a cheap price to pay for salvation. But while current demand for hybrids is rising rapidly, it could yet collapse if its early promise is not followed up by auto makers with major expansion of production capability to meet rising demand, increased R&D to refine the technology, and a wider range of vehicles and models to meet varied user needs. In the case of hybrids, the customer is literally in the driver\'s seat. If we insist on fuel-efficient vehicles and forcefully address our demands to both auto makers and government regulators, we\'ll get them sooner rather than later. And by increasing sales volume, we will drive prices down to achieve mass market affordability. In the process, we will save more than money. We\'ll save ourselves, the author states.

WIND POWER: CLEANER, UNLIMITED, AND CHEAPER THAN OIL

Renewable energy advocates say that wind offers the best near-term option to reduce the demand for oil, coal and natural gas, writes Mark Sommer, host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, A World of Possibilities. In this analysis for IPS, the author writes that recent technological breakthroughs have greatly increased the efficiency of wind turbines, driving the price per kilowatt/hour down to levels competitive with oil. And if the hidden costs and subsidies incurred by oil and coal were factored into the comparison, the true cost of wind energy would be far lower. The foreign wars waged, the occupations and military bases built to protect supply lines, the degradation of air, water, and human health make the true cost of a barrel of crude not 40 but 200 dollars, or more. Yet for all the promise of wind power, its rapid development is still thwarted by numerous obstacles, which are less technological than political. The multinational companies that dominate the energy industry and national energy policies today are well aware that oil, coal, and natural gas are finite resources but are determined to squeeze the largest profits they can before switching to other sources. Their favoured alternative is not wind power but nuclear power.

CONSUMER-LED STRATEGIES RECYCLE PAPER AND SAVE ANCIENT FORESTS

Alarmed by the unrelenting destruction of the world\'s remaining old growth trees and frustrated by unresponsive and ineffectual government regulators, ancient-forest activists are turning to market-based strategies to pressure leading paper producers and retailers to shift to recycled and tree-free paper products, writes Mark Sommer, director of the Mainstream Media Project and host of award-winning syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities.\'\' Over the past few years, the Paper Campaign, a US-based grassroots coalition of environmental groups, has targeted the world\'s top three paper products retailers in a concerted effort to shift market signals. In November, 2002 Staples announced its commitment to rapidly phase out all wood and paper products made from endangered forests, achieve 50 percent post-consumer content within two years, and phase out all products with 100 percent virgin wood fibre. Using recycled rather than virgin wood-fibre papers is one step in the right direction, but paper can be and is being made economically from numerous other fibres besides trees. The most promising of new options is kenaf, a fast-growing, single-season crop that can reach 18 feet in several months under optimal conditions and can be manufactured by existing paper mills.

GREEN BUILDING: RECONSTRUCTING COMMUNITY, REUNITING PEOPLE AND NATURE

In advanced industrial nations we spend 90 percent of our lives in the Great Indoors with little connection to the Great Outdoors. Modern construction techniques have successfully shielded us from Mother Nature, and one another, and too often at the expense of our well-being, writes Mark Sommer, a journalist and host of the award-winning syndicated radio programme \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that in response to the growing divergence between our architecture and our well-being, a new generation of architects and designers is emerging with a different vision and strategy, setting new standards for construction based on principles that reunite humans with one another and nature. What has gone wrong with the buildings we inhabit is a reflection of the deficiencies of modernity itself -- its isolation from nature, brutal disregard for community, and uncritical embrace of a narrow economic calculus. The post-modern sustainable building movement places the conservation of resources and reconnection between people and nature ahead of privileged isolation and private profit. But to be widely adopted, it must also satisfy the bottom line, albeit one that gives greater weight to social and environmental benefits.

A FAIR GLOBALISATION FOR ALL: IT CAN BE DONE

The world stands at a historic moment of decision, write President of Tanzania Benjamin William Mkapa and President of Finland Tarja Halonen, Co-Chairs of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation. In this analysis, the authors write that it is in our power to take a correct turn, which would make the world safer, fair, ethical, inclusive, and prosperous for the majority, not just for a few, both within countries and between countries. But it is also in our power to prevaricate, to ignore the road signs, and let the world slide into further political turbulence, conflict, and war. The authors propose a process by which the benefits of globalisation can be enjoyed at all levels, beginning with empowered local communities and improved national governance. Unfairness currently characterises the system. Equal rules for unequal players ensure unequal outcomes. Some rules, such as on farm and textile and trade, specifically disadvantage developing countries. The lack of a level international playing field is deepening mistrust and perpetuating social divisions. The real question is not whether globalisation can work, but how. The positive must be enhanced, the negative minimised. Only when everyone has a stake can the prosperity we expect from globalisation be sustainable. Only then will our collective peaceful future be founded on solid ground.

LIQUID GOLD RUSH: PRIVATISING GLOBAL WATER RESOURCES

The issue of water and who controls it has suddenly taken centre stage in world affairs, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts of \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\', a syndicated radio programme. Nearly a billion of the world\'s six billion people lack dependable access to affordable drinking water, and this figure is expected to triple within the next 25 years. Several trends are contributing to this growing scarcity: increasing use by water- intensive industries, inefficient irrigation, desertification, global warming, and chemical and organic pollution. At the heart of the debate over the future of fresh water is whether it is a commodity like oil or gas, to be bought or sold on the open market to the highest bidder, or a human right, a resource so essential that a minimum allowance should be provided to every person as an acceptance of his or her right of survival. But there is no substitute for water. To deprive up to a third of the planet\'s population access to safe and affordable water is to sentence that portion of humanity to slow death by deprivation and disease.

H2O BUSINESS TURNS PUBLIC WATER INTO PRIVATE WINDFALL

In a seemingly unquenchable thirst for new wellsprings of profit, multinational food and drink industry giants are rapidly draining public water supplies worldwide into a billion-dollar bottled water industry, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of award-winning internationally-syndicated radio program \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\' The issue, Sommer writes in this analysis, is whether industry giants are drowning in profits at public expense. When there are effectively no rules and no enforcement, when the profit margin puts drug dealers to shame, and an inalienable common resource is privatized at public expense, then we must reconsider the very basis of the enterprise. Pure fresh water is growing ever more scarce as population and pollution accelerate. But the most effective response is not to sell the last liters like fine wines to the fortunate few but to upgrade public water systems worldwide, at far lower individual and aggregate cost, so no one needs to resort to \'\'private\'\' water.

ILLUSION OF ISOLATION FEEDS TERROR

If the first casualty of the US war on terror was truth, the second was trust, writes Mark Sommer, director of the US-based Mainstream Media Project and host of award-winning syndicated radio programme \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. In this article, Sommer writes that telegraphed through the policies and pronouncements of an imperial but increasingly isolated superpower, mistrust is spreading like a virus through the global body politic, infecting not only trade relations, diplomacy, and public life but personal and professional relationships. The decades-long decline in civic participation in democratic countries is both a symptom of this fearful isolation and a boon to authoritarian leaders as it fragments all opposition and undermines confidence in its capacity to reverse the course of history. While in itself this reaching out is a purely personal act, it has enormous political implications, opening up a horizon of shared life and shattering what is in fact the mere illusion of isolation. To say that we are all connected is not a merely a wish or spiritual aspiration but a simple material fact. Recognising this is itself a source of profound reassurance.

BUSH TEAM TARGETS NGOs ‘GROWING POWER OF AN UNELECTED FEW’

The Bush administration and its unelected advisers at the American Enterprise Institute have launched a concerted attack on international NGOs for actions they say are subverting national sovereignty, weakening corporate power, and thwarting US freedom of action in global affairs, writes Mark Sommer directs the US-based Mainstream Media Project and hosts an award-winning syndicated radio programme, \'\'A World of Possibilities\'\'. For a regime whose own legitimacy stands starkly in question after what many Americans view as a stolen election and whose hidden sources of power in government agencies and corporate boardrooms are all unelected and inaccessible to the broader public, the charge that NGOs represent \'\'the growing power of an unelected few\'\' is supremely ironic. Indeed, Sommer writes in this analysis for IPS, the unaccountability and unchecked power of state and corporate elites are precisely what have spawned the antiglobalisation movements of recent years. Yet having challenged the legitimacy of the Bush administration and its corporate sponsors, NGOs do indeed need to address the challenge of establishing their own legitimacy as representatives of a broader public.

A MARKET-BASED STRATEGY TO DEMOCRATISE THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Billions of us watch in apparent helplessness as global corporate and political elites manipulate the world economy to suit their exclusive interests, writes Mark Sommer, an internationally- syndicated columnist and radio host who directs the Mainstream Media Project, a US-based effort to bring new voices and innovative ideas to the broadcast media. But the rest of us are not helpless, the author writes in this article for IPS. We actually hold in our hands levers of power far more potent and effective than those unrepresentative governments offer their disillusioned electorates. Each decision we make to buy a given product or service ripples through the global economy to support certain policies and institutions and not others. In recent years we have seen boycotts produce the desired shift in the policies of numerous brand-name multinationals. To match the scale and power of the global economy, we must apply this strategy worldwide, wielding our collective purchase power through a deft combination of both boycotts and buycotts to penalise irresponsible corporate and governmental policies and reward those that support a healthy economy and society.