One of the key issues to be considered by the NATO leaders is who will pay for the buildup of Afghan forces as ISAF draws down its troops. Afghan security forces are expected to total 350,000 by 2015, according to CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is attending the summit along with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, can only afford to cover a fraction of the cost of building up his country’s forces. The cost of building up forces is expected to total roughly $4 billion annually by 2014, Bergen said.

France’s new president, Francois Hollande, is widely expected to announce the withdrawal of French troops from Afghanistan by year’s end.

Toulouse prosecutor Michel Valet said the gunman killed a 30-year old Hebrew teacher, his two children aged three and six, and another child. A 17-year-old was also shot and in hospital for treatment.

“The attacker was shooting people outside the school, then pursued children into the school, before fleeing on a heavy motorbike,” Valet told reporters.

All signs coming out of Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv are pointing towards a pre-emptive military strike against Iran in 2012. But a number of key indicators are also pointing towards an unsuccessful, unlikely operation, whose failure could result in a military and economic tailspin from which the United States and Israel are unlikely to recover.

Currently, the US is following a trajectory of past unsuccessful empires that were unable to sustain themselves resulting in an eventual collapse from within. The US is currently running up a budget deficit which is not only threatening to bankrupt its entire economy, but also threatening the hegemony of its sole instrument for advantage and influence on the world stage – the US dollar. Any threat to the supremacy of the dollar is also a threat to the empire.

read complete aricle here – http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=28511

There were Tens of thousands there and according to the poll, the average participant in the rally was a male (64 percent), university graduate (70 percent), below 45-years of age (62 percent) with an average income (56 percent).

A stage at the end of the 0.43 mile avenue featured placards reading “Russia will be free” and “This election Is a farce.” Heavy police cordons encircled the participants, who stood within metal barriers, and a police helicopter hovered overhead.

The impact of Tropical Storm Lee was felt extensively in already swamped Pennsylvania, as authorities shot down innumerable roads and thoroughfares. Several emergency shelters were opened for the displaced residents. Similar situations were observed in Maryland and New York. The wrath of diminishing storm was also felt in other areas spreading from Connecticut to Virginia. State officials were calling in resources from the National Guard, neighboring fire departments and specialized flood cleanup contractors to assist with the storm devastation.

States of emergency were declared in Pennsylvania and New York early Friday by President Obama.
Officials told the evacuees that they should expect to stay at the shelters until Sunday or Monday. It is going to take sometime before authorities begin to manage the damage, which included a fractional bridge collapse in the north Pennsylvania, automobiles, homes and other buildings as well as inundated sewage processing plants.
Wilkes-Barre Mayor Tom Leighton said, “We’re going to have some damage, but you won’t know until it’s over.”

In certain parts of Pennsylvania up to inches of total rainfall has been recorded in just over a week. People in many rural areas and small towns of central Pennsylvania scurried to move their families and their possessions out of danger as water levels sometimes rose at alarming speed.
About 6,000 to 10,000 people were evacuated from the low-lying regions of Harrisburg. In Luzerne County, Pa., including Wilkes-Barre, all communities along the surging river that witnessed flooding caused by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 were ordered to evacuate.
In Wilkes-Barre, crews used sandbags to close the holes in the intricate flood control system of the city. Lee is blamed for at least four deaths in Pennsylvania.

In Binghamton, New York, waters from Susquehanna River swamped the streets. The water levels at a downtown plaza were reported to have climbed to the middle of the lampposts. Buses and after that boats were pressed into action to evacuate the stranded residents. Helicopters of National Guard were put on standby.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said, “It is going to get worst.” He warned residents to leave when the evacuation order is issued.

Essentially the method of thinking stems from the idea that your business is not an isolated unit which only functions in order to make money. Your business impacts on the people who work for it and their lives, the people who you come into contact with in terms of customers and suppliers, the local community you are situated within, and the environment at large. Corporate social responsibility is therefore about considering how you impact on all of these and how that can be positive and good for the business as well.

Taking these things into consideration can often impact positively on your bottom line. For example, if you recycle by using an office shredder then your paper consumption should go down, and if you pay attention to the use of electricity by turning off lights in infrequently used areas of your building then your energy bills should also reduce. Paying attention to what your suppliers are doing can also play a part – dealing with energy efficient companies may also reduce their costs to you. All of this ethical work is something to be proud of as well so let your customers know and the good will generated will be a positive and valuable outcome.

So what else can I do apart from turning off lights and buying a shredder?? Well, if you need help – perhaps with a larger organisation – then find a local CSR advisor who can make an assessment of your current position and put together a programme of improvements. Think of it as a business benefit and you won’t go far wrong.

Mr Mitchell, currently in Kenya assessing the situation, revealed that the situation is only getting worse as time goes on, so it is vital that everyone who “can help” across the world does just that to prevent the crisis turning into a catastrophe.

The UK has already pledged £52.25m in emergency aid but with areas only now starting to open up to foreign aid that had previously been shut off by Islamist groups, that figure is bound to make just an imprint on the problem, rather than the sort of major impression badly needed by those affected.

A large proportion of that money is expected to be spent on reinforcing the infrastructure at the Dadaab camp, which is currently holding four times the number of people expected to arrive there after fleeing from the worst-hit areas. With over 1,500 new arrivals coming into the camp each day, the need to improve what is already there is massive. The collected funds will also help a total of 300,000 Kenyans who are struggling in the absence of specialised ration packs designed for young children and breastfeeding mothers.

The scale of the crisis has made the celebrity world sit up and take notice, and it won’t be too surprising if the coming months see a fund-raising event on the scale of Live Aid or Comic Relief, which always finds support among the likes of UK-based comics Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer.

The key element of social control is the strategy of distraction that is to divert public attention from important issues and changes decided by political and economic elites, through the technique of flood or flooding continuous distractions and insignificant information. The strategy of distraction is also essential to keep the public interested in the essential knowledge in science, economics, psychology, neurobiology, and cybernetics. “Keep the public’s attention distracted away from the real social problems, captivated by issues of no importance. Keep the public busy, busy, busy, no time to think, back to the farm and other animals (citing text ‘silent weapons for quiet wars). ”

2 – CREATE PROBLEMS AFTER OFFERING SOLUTIONS.

This method is also called “problem-reaction-solution.” This creates a problem, a “situation” due to cause some reaction in public, so that it is the principal measures that want to accept. For example: let develops or intensifies the urban violence, or arrange for bloody attacks, so that the public is the principal of safety laws and policies to the detriment of freedom. Or also: create an economic crisis to accept as a necessary evil recession of social rights and the dismantling of public services.

3 – STRATEGY gradation.

To make it accept an unacceptable extent, simply apply it gradually, a dropper, for consecutive years. This is how radically new socioeconomic conditions (neoliberalism) were imposed during the 1980s and 1990s: the minimal state, privatization, precariousness, flexibility, mass unemployment, which is insufficient to pay decent tickets, so many changes that caused a revolution would be had been implemented at once.

4 – THE STRATEGY OF DEFER.

Another way to make an unpopular decision to accept is to present it as “painful and necessary” in obtaining public acceptance for the moment for a future application. It is easier to accept that a future sacrifice of an immediate sacrifice. First, because the effort is not used immediately. Then, because the public, the mass, always has the tendency to expect naively that “everything will improve tomorrow,” and that the sacrifice required may be avoided. This gives the public more time to get used to the idea of change and accept it with resignation when the time comes.

5 – ADDRESSING THE PUBLIC AS younger children.

Most of the advertising directed at the general public uses discourse, arguments, characters, and particularly children’s intonation, often close to the weakness, as if the viewer were a very young child or a mentally impaired. The more you get bringing mislead the viewer, the more it tends to adopt an infantile tone. Why? “If you address a person as if she had the age of 12 years or less, then, due to suggestibility, it will tend, with some probability, a response or reaction also lacks a critical sense as of a person 12 years or younger (see “Silent Weapons for quiet Wars”). ”

6 – USING THE EMOTIONAL ASPECT MUCH MORE THAN A REFLECTION.

Make use of the emotional aspect is a classic technique to cause a short circuit on rational analysis, and finally to the critical sense of individuals. Moreover, the use of emotional register allows you to open the door to the unconscious to deploy graft or ideas, desires, fears and fears, compulsions, or induce behaviors …

7 – Keep the public in ignorance and mediocrity.

Making the public is incapable of understanding the technologies and methods for their control and their bondage. “The quality of education given the lower social classes should be as poor and mediocre as possible so that the gap of ignorance that lies between the lower classes to upper social classes is and remains impossible to reach the lower classes (see ‘Arms silent for quiet wars). ”

8 – stimulates the public to be complacent mediocrity.

Promoting the public to think that fashion is the fact of being stupid, vulgar and uneducated …

9 – STRENGTHENING THE REVOLT BY self-blame.

Make the individual believe that he alone is to blame for their own misfortune, because of the failure of their intelligence, their abilities, or their efforts. Thus, instead of rebelling against the economic system, the individual themselves helpless and blame themselves, which leads to a depressive state which one of its effects is to inhibit its action. And without action, there’s revolution!

10 – THE BEST GUYS KNOW WHAT THEY KNOW IF SAME.

In the course of the last 50 years, advances in science have led to accelerated growing knowledge gap between the public and those owned and used by the ruling elites. Thanks to biology, neurobiology and psychology applied, the “system” has enjoyed an advanced knowledge of the human being, either physically or psychologically. The system has been able to better understand the average person than he knows himself. This means that in most cases, the system has more control and great power over individuals than the individuals themselves.

“More people, more money, more consumption, but the same planet,” Clay told AFP, urging scientists and governments to start making changes now to how food is produced.

Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.

“For 20 years, there’s been very little investment in family planning, but there’s a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices,” said Bongaarts.

“We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning,” said Casterline.