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U.S. Officials Concerned by Israel Statements on Iran Threat, Possible Strike

Mon, 2012-02-06 20:39 — Kathy Gilbeaux

The Washington Post - February 2, 2012

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, right, walks with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Tel Aviv last October. Barak said that time is running out for stopping Iran’s nuclear advance, as the country’s uranium facilities disappear into newly constructed mountain bunkers.

U.S. officials fear that an attack by Israel could trigger Iranian retaliation not only against the Jewish state but also against American interests around the world. A prolonged conflict could disrupt oil shipments, drive up energy prices and devastate fragile Western economies, U.S. officials say.

Administration officials have hinted that the United States might not intervene militarily in a hostile exchange between Israel and Iran unless the conflict began to threaten U.S. forces or Israeli population centers. In an interview last month on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Panetta said that in the event of an Israeli strike, U.S. military officials’ primary concern would be “to protect our forces.”

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http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/blog/antarctica-log-2--no-lie-can-live-forever

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Richard Branson's Blog on Climate Change

Fri, 2012-02-03 09:54 — mdmcdonald

Taxonomy upgrade extras:

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UN Documents Propose Mandatory Sustainability Reporting

Wed, 2012-02-01 00:05 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Albert Gomez

environmentalleader.com - January 31, 2012

Two influential documents – the Rio+20 negotiating text and the recommendations of the U.N. secretary general’s High Level Panel on Global Sustainability – both propose tighter sustainability reporting requirements for businesses, according to Chatham House fellow Paul Hohnen, writing in the Guardian.

In “Resilient People, Resilient Planet – A Future Worth Choosing,” published yesterday, the U.N. panel said one idea to consider is mandatory reporting by companies with market caps over $100 million. The paper also said that business groups should work with governments and international agencies to come up with a framework covering sustainable development reporting.

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The New Land Rush

Tue, 2012-01-31 21:01 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Janine Rees

Image Gallery - REUTERS / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

by Terry J. Allen, from In These Times - utne.com - January-February 2012

A 21st-century land rush is on. Driven by fear and lured by promises of high profits, foreign investors are scooping up vast tracts of farmland in some of the world’s hungriest countries to grow crops for export.

As the climate changes and populations shift and grow, billions of people around the globe face shortages of land and water, rising food prices, and increasing hunger. Alarm over a future without affordable food and water is sparking unrest in a world already tinder-dried by repression and recession, corruption and mismanagement, boundary disputes and ancient feuds, ethnic tension and religious fundamentalism.

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U.S. Fears Serious Famine in Troubled Sudan Region

Sun, 2012-01-29 00:42 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Argil carries water to her family who are fleeing after fighting broke out, near the Blue Nile state capital al-Damazin (Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah Reuters, REUTERS / September 5, 2011)

dailypress.com - Andrew Quinn - Reuters - January 24, 2012

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States fears a large-scale famine in Sudan's restive border states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile and is boosting pressure in Khartoum to accept aid or face a unilateral assistance operation, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

"We are feeling a lot of pressure, if there's no international access, to look at ways in which assistance would be carried across the border without their approval," Princeton Lyman, the Obama administration's special envoy for Sudan, told reporters.

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Preliminary Results of Assessments Done in South Sudan

Sun, 2012-01-29 00:25 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Preliminary results of assessments done in South Sudan . . . CERF allocates $104 million to 13 underfunded crises (including South Sudan and Haiti) . . .

(Juba, 7 January 2012): Humanitarian agencies are mounting a major emergency operation in Jonglei State in South Sudan to help people affected by the recent wave of inter-communal violence. “The Government of South Sudan has declared Jonglei a disaster zone and asked humanitarian agencies to accelerate life-saving assistance. We’re responding to that call,” said the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan Ms. Lise Grande.
. . .

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http://resilienturbanism.tumblr.com/post/7573475902/reframing-resilience

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Reframing Resilience

Sat, 2012-01-28 13:48 — mdmcdonald

First, there is great value in a systems approach as a heuristic for understanding interlocked social-ecological-technological processes, and in analysis across multiple scales. Yet we need to move beyond both systems as portrayed in resilience thinking, and the focus on actors in work on vulnerability, to analyse networks and relationships, as well as to attend to the diverse framings, narratives, imaginations and discourses that different actors bring to bear.

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Resilience Alliance

Sat, 2012-01-28 13:29 — mdmcdonald

There are many definitions of resilience from simple deterministic views of resilience anchored in Newtonian mechanics to far more dynamic views of resilience from a systems perspective, including insights from quantum mechanics and the sciences of complexity. One baseline perspective of resilience sees it in terms of the viability of socio-ecological systems as the foundation for sustainability. For those that are ready to look beyond resilience as the ability to return to the "normal state" before a disaster, take a look at:

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