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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-endtimes22jun22,0,7902314.story?page=3&coll=la-home-headlines

'End Times' Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon

'End times' religious groups want apocalypse sooner than later, and they're relying on high tech -- and red heifers -- to hasten its arrival.

For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.

Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.

For some Christians this means laying the groundwork for Armageddon.

With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus' message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad's true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.

Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.

Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam's holiest shrines.

Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple �� along with two 6��-ton marble cornerstones for the building's foundation.

Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.

So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal's body.
Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God's plan within this generation.

Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown �� as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament �� is as follows:

Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan's armies and preside over Judgment Day.

Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages.

And it's always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope, he added with a sigh. What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race.

Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.

Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.

It didn't. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.

Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life, said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network's Billion Souls Initiative, one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.

As we advance around the world, Davis said, we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that Great Commission. Then, the Bible says, the end will come.

An opposing vision, invoked by Ahmadinejad in an address before the United Nations last year, suggests that the Imam Mahdi, a 9th century figure, will soon emerge from a well to conquer the world and convert everyone to Islam.
O mighty Lord, he said, I pray to you to hasten the emergence of your last repository, the promised one, that perfect and pure human being, the one that will fill this world with justice and peace.

At the appropriate time, according to Shiite tradition, the Mahdi will reappear and, along with Jesus, lead Muslims in a struggle to rid the world of corruption and establish justice.

For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews �� or proselytizing among them �� to advance the Second Coming.

A growing number of fundamentalist Christians in mostly Southern states are adopting Jewish religious practices to align themselves with prophecies saying that Gentiles will stand as one with Jews when the end is near.

Evangelist John C. Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio has helped 12,000 Russian Jews move to Israel, and donated several million dollars to Israeli hospitals and orphanages.

We are the generation that will probably see the rapture of the church, Hagee said, referring to a moment in advance of Jesus' return when the world's true believers will be airlifted into heaven.

In Christian theology, the first thing that happens when Christ returns to Earth is the judgment of nations, said Hagee, who wears a Jewish prayer shawl when he ministers. It will have one criterion: How did you treat the Jewish people? Anyone who understands that will want to be on the right side of that question. Those who are anti-Semitic will go to eternal damnation.

On July 18, Hagee plans to lead a contingent of high-profile evangelists to Washington to make their concerns about Israel's security known to congressional leaders. More than 1,200 evangelists are expected for the gathering.

Twenty-five years ago, I called a meeting of evangelists to discuss such an effort, and the conversation didn't last an hour, he said. This time, I called and they all came and stayed. And when the meeting was over, they all agreed to speak up for Israel.

Underlining the sense of urgency is a belief that the end-times clock started ticking May 15, 1948, when the United Nations formally recognized Israel.

I'll never forget that night, Hagee said. I was 8 years old at the time and in the kitchen with my father listening to the news about Israel's rebirth on the radio. He said, 'Son, this is the most important day in the 20th century.'

Hagee's message is carried on 160 television stations and 50 radio stations and can be seen in Africa, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and most Third World nations.

By contrast, Bill McCartney, a former University of Colorado football coach and co-founder of the evangelical Promise Keepers movement for men, which became huge in the 1990s, has had a devil of a time getting his own apocalyptic campaign off the ground.

It's called The Road to Jerusalem, and its mission is to convert Jews to Christianity �� while there is still time.

Our whole purpose is to hasten the end times, he said. The Bible says Jews will be brought to jealousy when they see Christians and Jewish believers together as one �� they'll want to be a part of that. That's going to signal Jesus' return.

Jews and others who don't accept Jesus, he added matter-of-factly, are toast.

McCartney, who only a decade ago sermonized to stadium-size crowds of Promise Keepers, said finding people to back his sputtering cause has been like plowing cement.

Given end-times scenarios saying that non-believers will die before Jesus returns �� and that the antichrist will rule from Jerusalem's rebuilt Holy Temple �� Jews have mixed feelings about the outpouring of support Israel has been getting from evangelical organizations.

I truly believe John Hagee is at once a daring, beautiful person �� and quite dangerous, said Orthodox Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, vice president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership in New York.

I sincerely recognize him as a hero for bringing planeloads of people to Israel at a time when people there were getting blown up by the busloads, Hirschfield said. But he also believes that the only path to the father is through Jesus. That leaves me out.

Meanwhile, in what has become a spectacular annual routine, Jews �� hoping to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Romans in AD 70 �� attempt to haul the 6 1/2 -ton cornerstones by truck up to the Temple Mount, the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock shrine. Each year, they are turned back by police.

Among those turned away is Gershon Solomon, spokesman for Jerusalem's Temple Institute. When the temple is built, he said, Islam is over.

I'm grateful for all the wonderful Christian angels wanting to help us, Solomon added, acknowledging the political support from Christians who are now Israel's best lobbyists in the United States.

However, when asked to comment on the fate of non-Christians upon the Second Coming of Jesus, he said, That's a very embarrassing question. What can I tell you? That's a very terrible Christian idea.

What kind of religion is it that expects another religion will be destroyed?

But are all of these efforts to hasten the end of the world a bit like, well, playing God?
Some Christians, such as Roman Catholics and some Protestant denominations, believe in the Second Coming but don't try to advance it. It's important to be ready for the Second Coming, they say, though its timetable cannot be manipulated.

Hirschfield said he prays every day for the coming of the Jewish messiah, but he too believes that God can't be hurried.

For me, he said, the messiah is like the mechanical bunny at a racetrack: It always stays a little ahead of the runners but keeps the pace toward a redeemed world.

Trouble is, there are many people who want to bring a messiah who looks just like them. For me, that kind of messianism is spiritual narcissism.

But some Christian leaders say they aren't playing God; they're just carrying out his will.

Ted Haggard, president of the National Assn. of Evangelicals, says the commitment to fulfilling the Great Commission has naturally intensified along with the technological advances God provided to carry out his plans.

Over in Mississippi, Lott believes that he is doing God's work, and that is why he wants to raise a few head of red heifers for Jewish high priests. Citing Scripture, Lott and others say a pure red heifer must be sacrificed and burned and its ashes used in purification rituals to allow Jews to rebuild the temple.

But Lott's plans have been sidetracked.

Facing a maze of red tape and testing involved in shipping animals overseas �� and rumors of threats from Arabs and Jews alike who say the cows would only bring more trouble to the Middle East �� he has given up on plans to fly planeloads of cows to Israel. For now.

In the meantime, some local ranchers have expressed an interest in raising their own red heifers for Israel, and fears of hoof-and-mouth disease and blue tongue forced Lott to relocate his only verified red heifer �� a female born in 1993 �� to Nebraska.

Cloning is out of the question, he said, because the technique is not approved by the rabbinical council of Israel. Artificial insemination has so far failed to produce another heifer certified by rabbis.

Something deep in my heart says God wants me to be a blessing to Israel, Lott said in a telephone interview. But it's complicated. We're just not ready to send any red heifers over there.

If not now, when?

If there's a sovereign God with his hand in the affairs of men, it'll happen, and it'll be a pivotal event, he said. That time is soon. Very soon.

March 19, 2006

(CBS) As a government scientist, James Hansen is taking a risk. He says there are things the White House doesn't want you to hear but he's going to say them anyway.

Hansen is arguably the world's leading researcher on global warming. He's the head of NASA's top institute studying the climate. But this imminent scientist tells correspondent Scott Pelley that the Bush administration is restricting who he can talk to and editing what he can say. Politicians, he says, are rewriting the science.

But he didn't hold back speaking to Pelley, telling 60 Minutes what he knows.

Asked if he believes the administration is censoring what he can say to the public, Hansen says: Or they're censoring whether or not I can say it. I mean, I say what I believe if I'm allowed to say it.

What James Hansen believes is that global warming is accelerating. He points to the melting arctic and to Antarctica, where new data show massive losses of ice to the sea.

Is it fair to say at this point that humans control the climate? Is that possible?

There's no doubt about that, says Hansen. The natural changes, the speed of the natural changes is now dwarfed by the changes that humans are making to the atmosphere and to the surface.

Those human changes, he says, are driven by burning fossil fuels that pump out greenhouse gases like CO₂, carbon dioxide. Hansen says his research shows that man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming reaches what he calls a tipping point and becomes unstoppable. He says the White House is blocking that message.

In my more than three decades in the government I've never witnessed such restrictions on the ability of scientists to communicate with the public, says Hansen.

Restrictions like this e-mail Hansen's institute received from NASA in 2004. � there is a new review process � , the e-mail read. The White House (is) now reviewing all climate related press releases, it continued.
Why the scrutiny of Hansen's work? Well, his Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the source of respected but sobering research on warming. It recently announced 2005 was the warmest year on record. Hansen started at NASA more than 30 years ago, spending nearly all that time studying the earth. How important is his work? 60 Minutes asked someone at the top, Ralph Cicerone, president of the nation�s leading institute of science, the National Academy of Sciences.

I can't think of anybody who I would say is better than Hansen. You might argue that there's two or three others as good, but nobody better, says Cicerone.

And Cicerone, who�s an atmospheric chemist, said the same thing every leading scientist told 60 Minutes.

Climate change is really happening, says Cicerone.

Asked what is causing the changes, Cicernone says it's greenhouse gases: Carbon dioxide and methane, and chlorofluorocarbons and a couple of others, which are all � the increases in their concentrations in the air are due to human activities. It's that simple.

But if it is that simple, why do some climate science reports look like they have been heavily edited at the White House? With science labeled not sufficiently reliable. It�s a tone of scientific uncertainty the president set in his first months in office after he pulled out of a global treaty to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We do not know how much our climate could, or will change in the future, President Bush said in 2001, speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it.

Annoyed by the ambiguity, Hansen went public a year and a half ago, saying this about the Bush administration in a talk at the University of Iowa: I find a willingness to listen only to those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined inflexible positions. This, I believe, is a recipe for environmental disaster.

Since then, NASA has been keeping an eye on Hansen. NASA let Pelley sit down with him but only with a NASA representative taping the interview. Other interviews have been denied.

I object to the fact that I�m not able to freely communicate via the media, says Hansen. National Public Radio wanted to interview me and they were told they would need to interview someone at NASA headquarters and the comment was made that they didn�t want Jim Hansen going on the most liberal media in America. So I don�t think that kind of decision should be made on that kind of basis. I think we should be able to communicate the science.

Politically, Hansen calls himself an independent and he�s had trouble with both parties. He says, from time to time, the Clinton administration wanted to hear warming was worse that it was. But Hansen refused to spin the science that way.

Should we be simply doing our science and reporting it rigorously, or to what degree the administration in power has the right to assume that you should be a spokesman for the administration? asks Hansen. I've tried to be a straight scientist doing the science and reporting it as best I can.

Dozens of federal agencies report science but much of it is edited at the White House before it is sent to Congress and the public. It appears climate science is edited with a heavy hand. Drafts of climate reports were co-written by Rick Piltz for the federal Climate Change Science Program. But Piltz says his work was edited by the White House to make global warming seem less threatening.

The strategy of people with a political agenda to avoid this issue is to say there is so much to study way upstream here that we can�t even being to discuss impacts and response strategies, says Piltz. There�s too much uncertainty. It's not the climate scientists that are saying that, its lawyers and politicians.

Piltz worked under the Clinton and Bush administrations. Each year, he helped write a report to Congress called Our Changing Planet.

Piltz says he is responsible for editing the report and sending a review draft to the White House.

Asked what happens, Piltz says: It comes back with a large number of edits, handwritten on the hard copy by the chief-of-staff of the Council on Environmental Quality.

Asked who the chief of staff is, Piltz says, Phil Cooney.

Piltz says Cooney is not a scientist. He's a lawyer. He was a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute, before going into the White House, he says.

Cooney, the former oil industry lobbyist, became chief-of-staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Piltz says Cooney edited climate reports in his own hand. In one report, a line that said earth is undergoing rapid change becomes �may be undergoing change.� �Uncertainty� becomes �significant remaining uncertainty.� One line that says energy production contributes to warming was just crossed out.

He was obviously passing it through a political screen, says Piltz. He would put in the word potential or may or weaken or delete text that had to do with the likely consequence of climate change, pump up uncertainty language throughout.

In a report, Piltz says Cooney added this line �� the uncertainties remain so great as to preclude meaningfully informed decision making. �� References to human health are marked out. 60 Minutes obtained the drafts from the Government Accountability Project. This edit made it into the final report: the phrase �earth may be� undergoing change made it into the report to Congress. Piltz says there wasn�t room at the White House for those who disagreed, so he resigned.

Even to raise issues internally is immediately career limiting, says Piltz. That�s why you will find not too many people in the federal agencies who will speak freely about all the things they know, unless they�re retired or unless they�re ready to resign.

Jim Hansen isn't retiring or resigning because he believes earth is nearing a point of no return. He urged 60 Minutes to look north to the arctic, where temperatures are rising twice as fast as the rest of the world. When 60 Minutes visited Greenland this past August, we saw for ourselves the accelerating melt of the largest ice sheet in the north.

Here in Greenland about 15 years ago the ice sheet extended to right about where I'm standing now, but today, its back there, between those two hills in the shaded area. Glaciologists call this a melt stream but, these days, its a more like a melt river, Pelley said, standing at the edge of Greenland's ice sheet.

The Bush administration doesn�t deny global warming or that man plays a role. The administration is spending billions of dollars on climate research. Hansen gives the White House credit for research but says what�s urgent now is action.

We have to, in the next 10 years, get off this exponential curve and begin to decrease the rate of growth of CO₂ emissions, Hansen explains. And then flatten it out. And before we get to the middle of the century, we�ve got to be on a declining curve.

If that doesn't happen in 10 years, then I don�t think we can keep global warming under one degree Celsius and that means we�re going to, that there�s a great danger of passing some of these tipping points. If the ice sheets begin to disintegrate, what can you do about it? You can�t tie a rope around the ice sheet. You can�t build a wall around the ice sheets. It will be a situation that is out of our control.

But that's not a situation you'll find in one federal report submitted for review. Government scientists wanted to tell you about the ice sheets, but before a draft of the report left the White House, the paragraph on glacial melt and flooding was crossed out and this was added: straying from research strategy into speculative findings and musings here.

Hansen says his words were edited once during a presentation when a top official scolded him for using the word danger.

I think we know a lot more about the tipping points, says Hansen. I think we know about the dangers of even a moderate degree of additional global warming about the potential effects in the arctic about the potential effects on the ice sheets.

You just used that word again that you�re not supposed to use � danger, Pelley remarks.

Yeah. It�s a danger, Hansen says.

For months, 60 Minutes had been trying to talk with the president�s science advisor. 60 Minutes was finally told he would never be available. Phil Cooney, the editor at the Council on Environmental Quality didn�t return 60 Minutes' calls. In June, he left the White House and went to work for Exxon Mobil.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-sci-warming23jun23,1,200411.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage&track=crosspromo

U.S. Panel Backs Data on Global Warming

By Thomas H. Maugh II and Karen Kaplan
Times Staff Writers

June 23, 2006

After a comprehensive review of climate change data, the nation's preeminent scientific body found that average temperatures on Earth had risen by about 1 degree over the last century, a development that is unprecedented for the last 400 years and potentially the last several millennia.

The report from the National Research Council also concluded that human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.

Coupled with a report last month from the Bush administration's Climate Change Science Program that found clear evidence of human influences on the climate system, the new study from the council, part of the National Academy of Sciences, signals a growing acceptance in Washington of widely held scientific views on the causes of global warming.

The council's review focused on the controversial hockey stick graph, which shows Earth's temperature remaining stable for 900 years then suddenly arching upward in the last century. The curve resembles a hockey stick laid on its side.

The panel dismissed critics' charges that fraud and statistical error were responsible for the graph's sharp upward swing, noting that many studies had confirmed its essential conclusions in the eight years since it was first published in the journal Nature.

There is nothing in this report that should raise any doubts about the broad scientific consensus on global climate change � or any doubts about whether any paper on the temperature records was legitimate scientific work, said House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.), who requested the study in November.

The finding was a rebuke to global warming skeptics and some conservative politicians who have attacked the hockey stick as the work of overzealous scientists determined to shame the government into imposing environmental regulations on big business.

Geophysicist Michael E. Mann of Pennsylvania State University, lead author of the study that debuted the graph, said it was time to put this sometimes silly debate behind us and move forward, to do what we need to do to decrease the remaining uncertainties.

Though scientists have cited various factors as evidence of global warming � including the melting of polar ice caps and measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide � the hockey stick encapsulated the issue in an instantly recognizable way.

It's a pretty profound, easy-to-understand graph, said Roger A. Pielke Jr., director of the University of Colorado's Center for Science and Technology Policy Research. Visually, it's very compelling.

The chart drew little attention until it was highlighted in a 2001 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

After that, the hockey stick was everywhere, Pielke said.

It also became an easy target.

If you are someone who's interested in critiquing climate science, he said, the hockey stick would be a lightning rod.

One prominent attack came from the House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman, Rep. Joe L. Barton (R-Texas), who last year launched an investigation of Mann and his colleagues. Barton demanded information about their data and funding sources � an effort widely viewed as an attempt to intimidate the scientists.

Barton's committee has launched an inquiry into the statistical validity of the hockey stick. Larry Neal, the committee's deputy staff director, criticized the National Research Council panel Thursday for having only one statistician among its 12 members.

The crux of the dispute is that thermometers have been used for only 150 years. To determine temperatures before that, scientists rely on indirect measurements, or proxies, such as tree ring data, cores from boreholes in ice, glacier movements, cave deposits, lake sediments, diaries and paintings.

Mann and his collaborators tried to integrate data from many such sources to produce climate records for the last 1,000 years. Their report was filled with caveats and warnings about the uncertainties of their conclusions � caveats that were overlooked as the research achieved more celebrity.

The panel affirmed that proxy measurements made over the last 150 years correlated well with actual measurements during that period, lending credence to the proxy data for earlier times.

It concluded that, with a high level of confidence, global temperatures during the last century were higher than at any time since 1600.

Although the report did not place numerical values on that confidence level, committee member and statistician Peter Bloomfield of North Carolina State University said the panel was about 95% sure of the conclusion.

The committee supported Mann's other conclusions, but said they were not as definitive. For example, the report said the panel was less confident that the 20th century was the warmest century since 1000, largely because of the scarcity of data from before 1600.

Bloomfield said the committee was about 67% confident of the validity of that finding � the same degree of confidence Mann and his colleagues had placed in their initial report.

Panel members said Mann's conclusion that the 1990s were the warmest decade since 1000 and that 1998 was the warmest year had the least data to support it.

The use of proxies, they said, does not readily allow conclusions based on such narrow time intervals.

The report said that establishing average temperatures before 1000 was difficult because of the lack of data, but said the trend appeared to indicate that stable temperatures could extend back several thousand years.

He also terms global warming "a serious and urgent economic, environmental and national security challenge" and adds that "the problem isn't a Hollywood invention," according to excerpts of planned remarks his campaign made available Sunday.

Then I started reading about global warming in accordance with conservationism in the late 60s and early 70s. This is not a new concept. It may be being used by unethical people to promote whatever it is you think they are promoting, but in and of itself, this is a good and positive way to look this earth we have been given.

I see the earth and ALL of the life here as precious and I am but a part of iI. ** This we know. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth, befalls the sons of the earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself. This earth is precious to its Creator and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on that Creator. Continue to contaminate your bed and you will one night suffocate in your own waste.** Chief Seattle.

Why is it that everything I see as a positive (treating our planet with respect, attending to the poor, the homeless, the morally, psychologically and financially bankrupt, second chances, pacifism, etc.) the right see as a communist/socialist agenda. How could stewarding what God has given and serving his people, even the not so good ones, be a bad thing. I have been pro conservation for as long as I can remember; it is part of my upbringing. When I started reading about global warming I could see how all of the man-made pesticides, additives, chemical waste, all the things I don't need to reiterate here would have a disastrous effect on our environment. So what exactly do you think is going to happen if the majority of Americans believe in global warming. How are we going to become controlled and by whom and for what reason.

Police clean up after a riot in Petit-Bourg on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. (Photo: Dominique Chomereau-Lamotte / AP)

The global economic meltdown has already caused bank failures, bankruptcies, plant closings, and foreclosures and will, in the coming year, leave many tens of millions unemployed across the planet. But another perilous consequence of the crash of 2008 has only recently made its appearance: increased civil unrest and ethnic strife. Someday, perhaps, war may follow.

As people lose confidence in the ability of markets and governments to solve the global crisis, they are likely to erupt into violent protests or to assault others they deem responsible for their plight, including government officials, plant managers, landlords, immigrants, and ethnic minorities. (The list could, in the future, prove long and unnerving.) If the present economic disaster turns into what President Obama has referred to as a "lost decade," the result could be a global landscape filled with economically-fueled upheavals.

Indeed, if you want to be grimly impressed, hang a world map on your wall and start inserting red pins where violent episodes have already occurred. Athens (Greece), Longnan (China), Port-au-Prince (Haiti), Riga (Latvia), Santa Cruz (Bolivia), Sofia (Bulgaria), Vilnius (Lithuania), and Vladivostok (Russia) would be a start. Many other cities from Reykjavik, Paris, Rome, and Zaragoza to Moscow and Dublin have witnessed huge protests over rising unemployment and falling wages that remained orderly thanks in part to the presence of vast numbers of riot police. If you inserted orange pins at these locations -- none as yet in the United States -- your map would already look aflame with activity. And if you're a gambling man or woman, it's a safe bet that this map will soon be far better populated with red and orange pins.

For the most part, such upheavals, even when violent, are likely to remain localized in nature, and disorganized enough that government forces will be able to bring them under control within days or weeks, even if -- as with Athens for six days last December -- urban paralysis sets in due to rioting, tear gas, and police cordons. That, at least, has been the case so far. It is entirely possible, however, that, as the economic crisis worsens, some of these incidents will metastasize into far more intense and long-lasting events: armed rebellions, military takeovers, civil conflicts, even economically fueled wars between states.

Every outbreak of violence has its own distinctive origins and characteristics. All, however, are driven by a similar combination of anxiety about the future and lack of confidence in the ability of established institutions to deal with the problems at hand. And just as the economic crisis has proven global in ways not seen before, so local incidents -- especially given the almost instantaneous nature of modern communications -- have a potential to spark others in far-off places, linked only in a virtual sense.

A Global Pandemic of Economically Driven Violence

The riots that erupted in the spring of 2008 in response to rising food prices suggested the speed with which economically-related violence can spread. It is unlikely that Western news sources captured all such incidents, but among those recorded in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal were riots in Cameroon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Haiti, India, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, and Senegal.

In Haiti, for example, thousands of protesters stormed the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince and demanded food handouts, only to be repelled by government troops and UN peacekeepers. Other countries, including Pakistan and Thailand, quickly sought to deter such assaults by deploying troops at farms and warehouses throughout the country.

The riots only abated at summer's end when falling energy costs brought food prices crashing down as well. (The cost of food is now closely tied to the price of oil and natural gas because petrochemicals are so widely and heavily used in the cultivation of grains.) Ominously, however, this is sure to prove but a temporary respite, given the epic droughts now gripping breadbasket regions of the United States, Argentina, Australia, China, the Middle East, and Africa. Look for the prices of wheat, soybeans, and possibly rice to rise in the coming months -- just when billions of people in the developing world are sure to see their already marginal incomes plunging due to the global economic collapse.

Food riots were but one form of economic violence that made its bloody appearance in 2008. As economic conditions worsened, protests against rising unemployment, government ineptitude, and the unaddressed needs of the poor erupted as well. In India, for example, violent protests threatened stability in many key areas. Although usually described as ethnic, religious, or caste disputes, these outbursts were typically driven by economic anxiety and a pervasive feeling that someone else's group was faring better than yours -- and at your expense.

In April, for example, six days of intense rioting in Indian-controlled Kashmir were largely blamed on religious animosity between the majority Muslim population and the Hindu-dominated Indian government; equally important, however, was a deep resentment over what many Kashmiri Muslims experienced as discrimination in jobs, housing, and land use. Then, in May, thousands of nomadic shepherds known as Gujjars shut down roads and trains leading to the city of Agra, home of the Taj Mahal, in a drive to be awarded special economic rights; more than 30 people were killed when the police fired into crowds. In October, economically-related violence erupted in Assam in the country's far northeast, where impoverished locals are resisting an influx of even poorer, mostly illegal immigrants from nearby Bangladesh.

Economically-driven clashes also erupted across much of eastern China in 2008. Such events, labeled "mass incidents" by Chinese authorities, usually involve protests by workers over sudden plant shutdowns, lost pay, or illegal land seizures. More often than not, protestors demanded compensation from company managers or government authorities, only to be greeted by club-wielding police.

Needless to say, the leaders of China's Communist Party have been reluctant to acknowledge such incidents. This January, however, the magazine Liaowang (Outlook Weekly) reported that layoffs and wage disputes had triggered a sharp increase in such "mass incidents," particularly along the country's eastern seaboard, where much of its manufacturing capacity is located.

By December, the epicenter of such sporadic incidents of violence had moved from the developing world to Western Europe and the former Soviet Union. Here, the protests have largely been driven by fears of prolonged unemployment, disgust at government malfeasance and ineptitude, and a sense that "the system," however defined, is incapable of satisfying the future aspirations of large groups of citizens.

One of the earliest of this new wave of upheavals occurred in Athens, Greece, on December 6, 2008, after police shot and killed a 15-year-old schoolboy during an altercation in a crowded downtown neighborhood. As news of the killing spread throughout the city, hundreds of students and young people surged into the city center and engaged in pitched battles with riot police, throwing stones and firebombs. Although government officials later apologized for the killing and charged the police officer involved with manslaughter, riots broke out repeatedly in the following days in Athens and other Greek cities. Angry youths attacked the police -- widely viewed as agents of the establishment -- as well as luxury shops and hotels, some of which were set on fire. By one estimate, the six days of riots caused $1.3 billion in damage to businesses at the height of the Christmas shopping season.

Russia also experienced a spate of violent protests in December, triggered by the imposition of high tariffs on imported automobiles. Instituted by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to protect an endangered domestic auto industry (whose sales were expected to shrink by up to 50% in 2009), the tariffs were a blow to merchants in the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok who benefited from a nationwide commerce in used Japanese vehicles. When local police refused to crack down on anti-tariff protests, the authorities were evidently worried enough to fly in units of special forces from Moscow, 3,700 miles away.

In January, incidents of this sort seemed to be spreading through Eastern Europe. Between January 13th and 16th, anti-government protests involving violent clashes with the police erupted in the Latvian capital of Riga, the Bulgarian capital of Sofia, and the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius. It is already essentially impossible to keep track of all such episodes, suggesting that we are on the verge of a global pandemic of economically driven violence.

A Perfect Recipe for Instability

While most such incidents are triggered by an immediate event -- a tariff, the closure of local factory, the announcement of government austerity measures -- there are systemic factors at work as well. While economists now agree that we are in the midst of a recession deeper than any since the Great Depression of the 1930s, they generally assume that this downturn -- like all others since World War II -- will be followed in a year, or two, or three, by the beginning of a typical recovery.

There are good reasons to suspect that this might not be the case -- that poorer countries (along with many people in the richer countries) will have to wait far longer for such a recovery, or may see none at all. Even in the United States, 54% of Americans now believe that "the worst" is "yet to come" and only 7% that the economy has "turned the corner," according to a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll; fully a quarter think the crisis will last more than four years. Whether in the U.S., Russia, China, or Bangladesh, it is this underlying anxiety -- this suspicion that things are far worse than just about anyone is saying -- which is helping to fuel the global epidemic of violence.

The World Bank's most recent status report, Global Economic Prospects 2009, fulfills those anxieties in two ways. It refuses to state the worst, even while managing to hint, in terms too clear to be ignored, at the prospect of a long-term, or even permanent, decline in economic conditions for many in the world. Nominally upbeat -- as are so many media pundits -- regarding the likelihood of an economic recovery in the not-too-distant future, the report remains full of warnings about the potential for lasting damage in the developing world if things don't go exactly right.

Two worries, in particular, dominate Global Economic Prospects 2009: that banks and corporations in the wealthier countries will cease making investments in the developing world, choking off whatever growth possibilities remain; and that food costs will rise uncomfortably, while the use of farmlands for increased biofuels production will result in diminished food availability to hundreds of millions.

Despite its Pollyanna-ish passages on an economic rebound, the report does not mince words when discussing what the almost certain coming decline in First World investment in Third World countries would mean:

"Should credit markets fail to respond to the robust policy interventions taken so far, the consequences for developing countries could be very serious. Such a scenario would be characterized by... substantial disruption and turmoil, including bank failures and currency crises, in a wide range of developing countries. Sharply negative growth in a number of developing countries and all of the attendant repercussions, including increased poverty and unemployment, would be inevitable."

In the fall of 2008, when the report was written, this was considered a "worst-case scenario." Since then, the situation has obviously worsened radically, with financial analysts reporting a virtual freeze in worldwide investment. Equally troubling, newly industrialized countries that rely on exporting manufactured goods to richer countries for much of their national income have reported stomach-wrenching plunges in sales, producing massive plant closings and layoffs.

The World Bank's 2008 survey also contains troubling data about the future availability of food. Although insisting that the planet is capable of producing enough foodstuffs to meet the needs of a growing world population, its analysts were far less confident that sufficient food would be available at prices people could afford, especially once hydrocarbon prices begin to rise again. With ever more farmland being set aside for biofuels production and efforts to increase crop yields through the use of "miracle seeds" losing steam, the Bank's analysts balanced their generally hopeful outlook with a caveat: "If biofuels-related demand for crops is much stronger or productivity performance disappoints, future food supplies may be much more expensive than in the past."

Combine these two World Bank findings -- zero economic growth in the developing world and rising food prices -- and you have a perfect recipe for unrelenting civil unrest and violence. The eruptions seen in 2008 and early 2009 will then be mere harbingers of a grim future in which, in a given week, any number of cities reel from riots and civil disturbances which could spread like multiple brushfires in a drought.

Mapping a World at the Brink

Survey the present world, and it's all too easy to spot a plethora of potential sites for such multiple eruptions -- or far worse. Take China. So far, the authorities have managed to control individual "mass incidents," preventing them from coalescing into something larger. But in a country with a more than two-thousand-year history of vast millenarian uprisings, the risk of such escalation has to be on the minds of every Chinese leader.

On February 2nd, a top Chinese Party official, Chen Xiwen, announced that, in the last few months of 2008 alone, a staggering 20 million migrant workers, who left rural areas for the country's booming cities in recent years, had lost their jobs. Worse yet, they had little prospect of regaining them in 2009. If many of these workers return to the countryside, they may find nothing there either, not even land to work.

Under such circumstances, and with further millions likely to be shut out of coastal factories in the coming year, the prospect of mass unrest is high. No wonder the government announced a $585 billion stimulus plan aimed at generating rural employment and, at the same time, called on security forces to exercise discipline and restraint when dealing with protesters. Many analysts now believe that, as exports continue to dry up, rising unemployment could lead to nationwide strikes and protests that might overwhelm ordinary police capabilities and require full-scale intervention by the military (as occurred in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations of 1989).

Or take many of the Third World petro-states that experienced heady boosts in income when oil prices were high, allowing governments to buy off dissident groups or finance powerful internal security forces. With oil prices plunging from $147 per barrel of crude oil to less than $40 dollars, such countries, from Angola to shaky Iraq, now face severe instability.

Nigeria is a typical case in point: When oil prices were high, the central government in Abuja raked in billions every year, enough to enrich elites in key parts of the country and subsidize a large military establishment; now that prices are low, the government will have a hard time satisfying all these previously well-fed competing obligations, which means the risk of internal disequilibrium will escalate. An insurgency in the oil-producing Niger Delta region, fueled by popular discontent with the failure of oil wealth to trickle down from the capital, is already gaining momentum and is likely to grow stronger as government revenues shrivel; other regions, equally disadvantaged by national revenue-sharing policies, will be open to disruptions of all sorts, including heightened levels of internecine warfare.

Bolivia is another energy producer that seems poised at the brink of an escalation in economic violence. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, it harbors substantial oil and natural gas reserves in its eastern, lowland regions. A majority of the population -- many of Indian descent -- supports President Evo Morales, who seeks to exercise strong state control over the reserves and use the proceeds to uplift the nation's poor. But a majority of those in the eastern part of the country, largely controlled by a European-descended elite, resent central government interference and seek to control the reserves themselves. Their efforts to achieve greater autonomy have led to repeated clashes with government troops and, in deteriorating times, could set the stage for a full-scale civil war.

Given a global situation in which one startling, often unexpected development follows another, prediction is perilous. At a popular level, however, the basic picture is clear enough: continued economic decline combined with a pervasive sense that existing systems and institutions are incapable of setting things right is already producing a potentially lethal brew of anxiety, fear, and rage. Popular explosions of one sort or another are inevitable.

Some sense of this new reality appears to have percolated up to the highest reaches of the U.S. intelligence community. In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on February 12th, Admiral Dennis C. Blair, the new Director of National Intelligence, declared, "The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications... Statistical modeling shows that economic crises increase the risk of regime-threatening instability if they persist over a one to two year period" -- certain to be the case in the present situation.

Blair did not specify which countries he had in mind when he spoke of "regime-threatening instability" -- a new term in the American intelligence lexicon, at least when associated with economic crises -- but it is clear from his testimony that U.S. officials are closely watching dozens of shaky nations in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Central Asia.

Now go back to that map on your wall with all those red and orange pins in it and proceed to color in appropriate countries in various shades of red and orange to indicate recent striking declines in gross national product and rises in unemployment rates. Without 16 intelligence agencies under you, you'll still have a pretty good idea of the places that Blair and his associates are eyeing in terms of instability as the future darkens on a planet at the brink.

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Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books).

However, I agree that we should be looking into other energy sources so we can rely on other things rather than oil....which will eventually not be there. In saying that, I do not agree with cap and trade. I understand the need to research alternative fuel sources, but we shouldn't be taxing the crap out of oil to get it done. This is going to hurt everyone and with the economy stinking like it does now......this is going to hit a lot of people hard. Utility bills will skyrocket. People won't be able to afford to heat their homes. They won't be able to afford the gas to drive to work. All goods and services will go up.

BTW, the next time AL Gore's fat ars jumps on his private plane to go somewhere and preach about global warming, I think people should throw stuff at him. You've got Pelosi using military planes to haul her butt around, but OMG....stop global warming. Either there is major hypocrisy going on here or they don't really believe it either.

Still though....it wouldn't hurt us to clean up our act a bit regardless of whether or not global warming is real or just a load of cow dung.

That overshadows anything sexual he has done in my book. He is helping to save the world. You pointed out 1 or 2 dumb things Clinton said, but Bush has said 100s if not thousands. What people do sexually is there own business. It was a very dumb mistake on his part, but we all make mistakes, and he is obviously doing a lot of good in the world now. I don't feel like Bush cares about anyone other than himself. I think his soul is black and he just does what he wants when he wants and doesn't plan ahead. He disgusts me, and I cannot wait until January 2009! I would welcome ANY Republican or Democrat in his place.