Friday, February 21, 2003

Bush Finally Explains the War on Iraq (02/21/03) Sustainability and Humanity's Future Alan Fricker writes: As a concept sustainability has captured our imaginations and aspirations.  As a tangible and identifiable goal it eludes us.  Having developed indicators to measure and monitor economic, social and environmental conditions, we want now to measure sustainability.  Our emphasis on the physical, the objective, and the rational however sees only the external manifestations of sustainability.  The internal manifestations of sustainability, the non-material, the subjective, and the experiential, are put to one side, since they are messy, interpretive and time-consuming - the world of hermeneutics.  Sustainability however is more than a ‘thing’ to be measured, since it is about ecological integrity, quality of life and transformation or transcendence.  Rather than ask how we can measure sustainability, it may be more appropriate to ask how we measure up to sustainability. (02/21/03) Panic is Near if "The Gold is Gone" Kelly Patricia O Meara writes: Gold. It's been called a barbarous relic, and those who focus on its historic role as a standard of value frequently are labeled "lunatic fringe." Given the recent highs in the gold market, it looks like the crazies have been having a hell of a year. With the stock market taking its third yearly loss, gold returned nearly 30 percent to investors, moving from $255 an ounce to six-year highs of $380. Just about every analyst and "expert" on Wall Street willing to mention any of this has been quick to explain that the increase in the price of gold is due to impending war with Iraq. But hard-money analysts are arguing that should the United States go to war it will be of very little consequence to the price of gold -- a momentary blip -- because gold is a commodity and its price a matter of supply and demand. The "lunatic fringe" long has argued that the price of gold was being manipulated by a "gold cartel" involving J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve, but that the manipulation had been sufficiently exposed to require that it be abandoned, producing the steady upward increase in the price of the shiny, yellow metal. In fact the "gold bugs," as they're known, are so sure of their research that not only do they believe the price of gold will continue to climb, but many are expecting to see prices of $800 to $1,000 an ounce. Until recently, most in the gold and financial worlds scoffed at such a prediction, but last month the Bank of Portugal made an announcement that shocked those who credit official gold-reserve data and added fuel to the contention of the gold bugs that the "gold-cartel" manipulation is in meltdown. (02/21/03) 12:12:17 AM

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