Edito - Would the Iranian nuclear weapon be the key towards Middle East peace ? by Marie-Hélène Caillol
Can one seriously think that the day when Iran has a nuclear weapon, its first concern will be to launch it at Israel and be devastated in its turn in the following minutes? However it’s on this implicit (nobody dares to express it for fear of revealing the nonsense of it) but pervasive idea that the gigantic national and economic interests at work in the Middle East establish their destabilizing politics with Western public opinion. Now, let’s ask the following question: Why does Iran want the bomb? The answer is obviously the same as for France, England, the United States, etc…: To live in peace! Which is to say: the day when Iran has the bomb, the conditions for peace in the Middle East are met...
Edito MAP5

GEAB - Controled nuclear dissemination: Urgent action is needed to avoid a direct Israel/Iran conflict
Strategy is a matter of turning quagmires into opportunities. And, indeed, there is a way to turn Iran’s nuclear crisis into a means of stabilizing the Middle-East and offering the world a few decades of strategic stability. The way consists of transforming the obsolete Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty into a treaty of Controlled Nuclear Dissemination...
Download MAP5 (free)

Anticipation - Cargo Cult: Contagion from local authorities to the States, by Luc Brunet
A pure product of societies in which the elite are unaware that cultural processes precede success, Cargo Cult, which consists of investing in an infrastructure with which a prosperous society is equipped by hoping that this investment produces the same effects for oneself, was one of the engines for local authority toxic loans. The expression was popularized during the Second World War, when it was represented by false infrastructures created by unsophisticated islanders and intended to attract cargo boats. In 2012 Cargo Cult will tend to spread at country level.
Download MAP5 (free)

FuturHebdo - 08/03/2062: Virtual People by Olivier Parent
Artificial intelligence and its many developments are finding a new outlet by coming to the help of cultures which are lost or on the way to extinction...
Download MAP5 (free)

Anticipation - Martinique 2015: Earthquake, tornado or eruption? by Dominique Bruch
Between tourism, specialized agriculture and imports, Martinique will be soon at the crossroads of its destiny, with the arrival of the next single assembly. For sure something will move in 2015! It remains to be seen under what form: a review...
Download MAP5 (free)

Point of view - To finish with the economists’ claims regarding anticipation of the crisis
“The question of the Euro” isn’t an economic question, no more so than the current global systemic crisis for that matter. They are complex events involving geopolitical, political, social, financial… and also economic phenomena (but certainly not in more than 20% of these fundamental causes). The “economists’” approach is thus at least 80% blind to the causes of the crisis...
Download MAP5 (free)

Instructions for use - Annual evaluation of LEAP’s anticipations – A 82% success rate in 2011
In January 2011, in the GEAB N°51, issue, the LEAP/E2020 team presented its anticipations for “Thirty two key trends for 2011”. They were split between “Seventeen topics which are going to increase in importance during 2011” and “Fifteen topics which will fade away during the course of 2011”. Before introducing its anticipations for 2012 (published in the January 2012 GEAB N°61 ), and in the setting of an ongoing evaluation of its analyses, LEAP/E2020 wished, as it does every year, to prepare a balance sheet of its 2011 anticipations to establish their reliability.
Download MAP5 (free)

Anticipation - Sound Prospects: broadcasting and a return to the past, by Philippe Schneider
At the moment of the PIPA/SOPA legislation in the United States and especially the media outburst over the Megaupload shutdown, it seems illuminating in the context of copyright development to reconsider the peculiarity of music production’s current economic model and to measure its prospects by 2020...
Download MAP5 (free)

Comment - Anticipating the Political Consequences of the Internet: It’s All about Power, by Mihai Nadin
People took to the streets. Some heavy players in the digital economy flexed their muscle. The press covered the event. Even the United Nations directed its attention to the issue. Frank LaRue, Special Rapporteur, submitted a report on the “promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression.” Recently, ACTA (the Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) was stopped in its tracks because Germany, alerted by public demonstrations, changed its mind, after it had already endorsed the dubious document (like the 22 other country members of the EU)...
Download MAP5 (free)

Spotlight - International Journal of General Systems dedicates an issue to Anticipation
The two founders of anticipatory systems theory — Robert Rosen and Mihai Nadin — suggested that anticipation play a principal role in matters pertinent to politics, economics, social life. This is why the work of LEAP (Laboratoire Européen d’Anticipation Politique) attracted Mihai Nadin’s attention as he was conceiving the IJGS issue mentioned above. He invited Marie-Hélène Caillol to present her thoughts on the matter. Her article elaborates upon the goals and methods of LEAP, which she directs...
Download MAP5 (free)

Fiction - Ian McDonald, the science fiction writer who explores the BRICS’ future... or at least the future of India and Brazil
With two very original novels, the River of the Gods and Brasyl, this writer of Irish-Scottish origin, takes us out of this conventional future that science fiction has promoted since the 1950s, primarily seen through American eyes. In fact, it’s projected several decades hence showing us the future through Indian and Brazilian eyes, two countries which will be incontestably key powers in the 21st century...
Download MAP5 (free)