One little US town is showing the world how a small community can take on big oil and gas. Lafayette, Colo. (pop. 25,733) was unhappily facing fracking within their town area. The citizens banded together with environmental groups and amended their Community Bill of Rights to secure their right to clean air, pure water, and the rights of ecosystems to exist and flourish.

Besides Lafayette’s stand, moratoriums and bans have been enacted in six small cities and towns with a combined total of more than 400,000 citizens.

The Community Bill of Rights was amended on November 6, Election Day. The margin for the vote was nearly 60 percent, and in nearby Oberlin, OH. (pop. 8,286) the vote was over 70 percent in favor.

The vote was held after an employee of Halliburton, the world’s second largest oil field services company, filed a complaint with the elections board that the amendment being proposed by the community would have to include a summary of the measure according to state law.

The petitioners included the entirety of the amendment language, and the city clerk, Susan Koster, threw out the petition challenge, stating, “As a home rule city, Lafayette operates under a citizen adopted charter. In the case of this protest, the petition submitted to amend the City’s Charter complied with the Colorado Home Rule Act.”

Among the other challenges anti-fracking citizens faced were the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s (COGA) $66,974 investment in local media and claims that the “Bowling Green” charter amendment would kill jobs and raise energy costs buy over 80 percent.

The city itself enacted an ordinance that banned fracking. This was a way of dissuading voters from voting for the charter amendment, according to the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF),which helped craft the Community Bill of Rights, because the ordinance was subject to being rescinded by the Council after the election was over. Similar actions had recently succeeded in nearby Broadview Heights and Mansfield, OH, according to CELDF.

However, Lafayette voted to adopt the charter amendment, banning fracking.

One month later, COGA filed suit against the city in attempt to overturn the fracking ban.

Then, energy industry representatives began private meetings with Gov. John Hickenlooper. Eleven environmental groups formally requested to be present at any such meetings.

“Apparently, it is now simply business as usual to shut out the voice of the people when making decisions that effect us all,” said the president of Protect our Loveland, Sharon J. Carlisle. “We demand our rightful place in your smoke-filled, oil- and gas-filled rooms of secret wheelings and dealings.”

Gov. John Hickenlooper

Hickenlooper approved a Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission’s lawsuit with Longmont City in an attempt to overturn that city’s fracking ban last summer, but weeks later admitted fracking was something “no one wants in their backyard.”

Reacting to the COGA suit, Lafayete residents filed a class-action lawsuit against COGA, the state of Colorado and Hickenlooper. The lawsuit is the first of its kind. Although the particular focus of the suit is fracking, it insists on the right of local self governance for citizens, protected through a community bill of rights. The residents’ suit alleges that their right to self governance is guaranteed by the US Constitution, the COGA Act infringes that right, and Colorado officials are guilty of not enforcing the ban on fracking. The residents allege that the ban passed in November was not being enforced.

CELDF executive director, Thomas Linzey, Esq., said of the suit, “This class action lawsuit is merely the first of many by people

Thomas Linzey, Esq

across the United States whose constitutional rights to govern their own communities are routinely violated by state governments working in concert with the corporations that they ostensibly regulate.

“The people of Lafayette will not stand idly by as their rights are negotiated away by oil and gas corporations, their state government, and their own municipal government.”

Halliburton Dubai Headquarters

Halliburton Co. is incorporated in the US, where its headquarters is in Houston, TX., but its chairman and CEO, David Lesar, works and lives in Dubai, where Halliburton’s other headquarters is located.

The company took in $5 billion of profits for the past three fiscal years, and billions in the years before.

Halliburton has recently been the source of several controversies. In 2013, the company pled guilty on charges of destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, incurring a $200,000 statutory fine. In addition, Halliburton has been implicated in the creation of a toxic cloud that forced evacuations in Farmington, New Mexico in 2006, and it may also be implicated in spill in a 2009 Timor Sea off Australia and a 2010 improper cementing in the Gulf of Mexico.

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The BRICS alliance is considered to have been largely dismissed by Western players in recent years, but, with new developments, including this years Russian aggression in Ukraine and recent trade and banking agreements and talks among the BRICS community, analysts are beginning to look at BRICS as a potentially historic challenge to a global order that has been in place since World War II.

Russia lost its welcome in the G8 and saw economic sanctions imposed on it by much of the Western world due to its illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and more recent continued military aggression in Eastern Ukraine. Russia remains a part of BRICS, however, which is causing analysts to pay more attention to a possibility of the inauguration of a new phase of global bipolarity.

BRIC was created officially in 2009, and attracted many attention and investors due to the massive combined total population and landmass of the four original members. Nearly 3 billion people lived in Brazil, Russia, India and China–40 percent of the world’s population–and the nations cover 25 percent of the world’s land. Investors and others saw the potential for rapid growth in domestic consumption as millions of people elevated their socioeconomic status into the middle class bracket.

The BRICS nations recently have signed trade agreements and begun the formation of institutions to rival the current monopoly of their Western and European counterparts IMF and the World Bank, which are much criticized by economists in the developing world.

Russia and China signed a multi-billion dollar Sino-Russian gas deal in May–the so-called Agreement on Cooperation, which was 10 years in the making. The deal undercuts the US dollar in international transactions. Recently, the leaders of China and Russia have been holding talks about the creation of a new credit rating agency to cater to BRICS countries. The BRICS countries have been reported to be near a deal on the New Development Bank, each valued at $100 billion.

In addition, a BRICS development bank was proposed by India, which would directly rival the World Bank and IMF.

The future of global economics has seen many preditions, but it is still uncertain. In 2003, Goldman Sachs reported their speculation that by 2050 the BRIC economies would surpass most current major powers in wealth, due to a dominating supply of manufactured goods and services from China and India combined with Brazil’s raw materials.

More recently, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) also projected that of the three percent annual growth it expects up to 2060, emerging economies will have much stronger, faster growth than already established economies.

Whereas the US economy represents nearly a quartre of global economic activity today, GDP is expected to shrink to 18 percent by 2030. China, which currently produces 17 percent of world GDP, will produce 28 percent in 2030, according to OECD estimates. India, which accounts for 7 percent today, will account for 17 percent in 2030 and 18 percent in 2060.

Europe’s share of world GDP will gradually drop from 17 percent today to nine percent by 2060. Japans economy will similarly shrink.

The OECD itself–composed of 34 countries–which accounts for 65 percent of global GDP will shink to 43 percent by 2060, at which time the combined GDP of China and India will be 46 percent, and other OECD nations will have a combined percentage of 18 percent.

Global GDPs will be affected largely by population growth, the OECD predicts. Personal incomes and living standards will also see the global gap narrowed. Emerging economies will increase living standards and the aging populations of the EU and US will stagnate living standards.

Alternatively, some global economists think that factors besides population growth will factor considerably into future developments, pointing to actual economic progress so far in BRICS countries. In recent years, only China has maintained strong growth rates. The other economies have been hampered by rule-of-law and other challenges.

Some commenters point to models of international organization besides the G7 and BRICS as the hope of international cooperation, such as the G20, where emerging economies are thought to have more of an equal footing with OECD nations, providing what may be a better model of dialogue between the various levels of economic development in the 21st century. The G20 takes into account contemporary and future economic rebalancing and seeks international consensus on universal global issues.

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In one US state alone–Pennsylvania–the effects of abandoned oil wells has been examined by a Princeton University student, PhD student and civil engineer Mary Kang, and the findings are that four to seven percent of estimated man-made methane emissions in Pennsylvania are caused by the abandoned wells. The source of the four to seven percent had previously been unaccounted for, according to the study published.

The study, “CO2, Methane, and Brine Leakage Through Subsurface Pathways: Exploring Modeling, Measurement, and Policy Options,” was published by Kang with the Civil and Engineering Department of Princeton.

Pennsylvania is the oldest oil and gas producer in the US. There are between 200,000 and just under one million abandoned wells in the state.

Robert Howarth, ecologist and methane expert at Cornell University, commented on the Princeton study, saying it was important because it shows how government and industry estimates of oil and gas emissions are actually lower than actual amounts. Howarth added that this study was not illustrative of just Pennsylvania. “I would expect this to be a problem affecting most if not all gas and oil fields,” Howarth said.

Other of Kang’s findings included that properly sealed wells polluted just as bad as unplugged wells. Also, sandstone formations were the most leaky of well locations. Cement seals in both active and abandoned wells crack over time, allowing methane leaks. The gas leaks can travel up to 14 kilometers and show up in rivers and homes.

Methane, radon, brine and other hydrocarbons can migrate into shallow groundwater aquifers, the air, and people homes through abandoned wells. Methane’s global warming potential is 86 times that of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period.

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The non profit organization FIFA will profit approximately $2 billion this year from the $4 billion the organization will take in from the World Cup. This amount is up 66 percent from its takings from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

During FIFA’s 2007-2010  revenue cycle, revenue was $4.2 billion, providing a $631 million surplus, allowing FIFA to increase its reserves to $1.3 billion. Of the $4.2 billion in revenue in 2010, 87 percent ($3.7 billion) came from the World Cup, the main income source for FIFA. After expenses of $1.3 billion, FIFA profited $2.3 billion.

FIFA is spending $2 billion on the 2014 World Cup–$576 million will go to the winning teams. Ticket sales, corporate sponsorships and other revenue are projected to amout to $4 billion, however.

FIFAs second largest source of income is World Cup rights, which in 2010 amounted to $1.1 billion. Marketers, such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Emirates, Hyundai, Sony and Visa, payed an annual fee of $24-45 million for the privilege of using the FIFA-controlled rights, including marketing assets, and sponsors such as McDonald’s and Budweiser payed an annual $10-25 million for even greater access.

Costs for FIFA are topped by operating expenses and governance. In the 2007-2010 cycle, FIFA spent $0.9 billion on itself. The amount of $0.8 billion went to football development, and $0.7 went to operating expenses and $0.2 to “governance.”

Essentially, the organization maintains a non-profit status not by not profiting, but by paying its employees the amount that the company brings in and keeping a reserve fund, so that costs are just covered by gross.

In its 2013 fiscal year, FIFA paid its 35 “key management personnel”–Members of the Executive Committee, the Finance Committee and the FIFA management, in particular the directors–short-term employee benefits of $36.3 million. In 2012, it paid them $33.5 million. However, in addition to the short-term employee benefits, FIFA “contributes to defined post-employment benefit plans.” Pension expenses in 2013 were $2.3 million. However, even after deducting a sum like $36 million, there are questions about the $2 billion will go.

Questions about the corruption within the FIFA organization have been raised recently by the New York Times and others, including allegations linked to leaked conversations in which millions of dollars in bribes were discussed.

In response to strong accusations of corruption, FIFA issued a statement on its website Tuesday entitled “Setting the record straight.” In the introductory statement FIFA wrote, “FIFA is a non-profit organisation which shares the success of the FIFA World Cup™ with the global football community to develop the game from grassroots up and to spread positive values on and off the pitch.”

In the statement, FIFA wrote, “FIFA has covered the entire operational costs of the World Cup to the tune of around $2 billion USD. We don’t take any public money for this, and instead we only use the money generated by the sale of World Cup TV and marketing rights.”

As to the demands FIFA reportedly makes on its sponsors, FIFA wrote, “FIFA does not make any demands for a general tax exemption for sponsors and suppliers, or for any commercial activities in the host country. Instead, FIFA only requires an easing of customs procedures for some materials that need to be imported… .”

Of FIFA’s non-profit status and its massive profits, FIFA wrote, “… the question is: what does FIFA do with the profits from the World Cup? In short, all 209 member associations will benefit in equal measure. In fact, FIFA spends $550,000 USD on worldwide football development – every single day. What is more, we also spend nearly $2 million USD on organising international competitions – every single day.

The 2014 event in Brazil is costing the country an estimated $14 billion, while 16 percent of Brazilians are stricken with poverty. Poor Brazilians living in urban favelas have been evicted during the construction of the new stadiums to the tune of 250,000 people.

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Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the worlds opium–which becomes heroin–and, although the crop is illegal in the country, it remains the main product of agriculture in large regions, especially in the south. Production in 2013 surpassed its previous record, which was set in 2010.

The UN estimates that Afghanistan has produced almost $3 billion worth of opium products in 2013. In 2012, the number was $2 billion–an increase of roughly 66 Percent.

On Tuesday, John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction–the watchdog of US spending in the country–informed Congress that the trade was poisoning the Afghan financial sector, inflaming corruption, contributing to the success of Taliban insurgents and criminal networks, and threatened to damage progress America has made in its efforts to improve health, education and government in Afghanistan. The problems associated with the opium trade also make it harder for aid workers to work–hampering rebuilding and oversight programs.

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The 15-member UN Security Council unanimously voted to lift the 2005 resolution banning rough diamond imports from Cote d’Ivoire, as well as partially lift the 2004 arms embargo on the West African nation.

A review of progress made by the Republic of the Ivory Coast showed that the nation had made headway towards the 2003 Kimberley Process Certification Scheme implementation and better governance of the sector, which had aimed to prevent conflict diamonds from entering mainstream markets.

Another review–of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) of combatants as well as security sector reform (SSR), national reconciliation and the fight against impunity–also showed progress in Cote d’Ivoire. The UNSC therefore voted to lift the ban on small arms and non-lethal equipment, training, technical assistance and financial assistance in order to enable Ivorian security forces to maintain public order without the Sanctions Committee. Heavy weapons imports still require approval by the Sanctions Committee.

The weapons ban was to last until April, 2015 and prohibited “the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to the West African nation, from their territories or by their nationals, or using their flag vessels or aircraft, of arms and any related material.”

The UNSC will continue financial and travel restrictions until April, 2015.

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