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“…[I]ndividuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience imposed by the individual state.”
The International Tribunal at Nuremberg
“[A] supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers … is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries”
David Rockefeller at the June 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden Germany
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is among the most powerful, and one of the most secretive international bodies on earth. It is rapidly assuming the role of global government, as 134 nation-states, including the U.S., have ceded to its vast authority and powers…. The central operating principal of the WTO is that commercial interests should supersede all others.
Debi Barker and Jerry Mander – INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT—The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium ?
“Democratic world government is possible in the near future now ….” George Monbiot – The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order.
Of Treaties, Trade and Treason
July 4, 2013 – As Independence Day USA rolled around again with its parades, fireworks and flag-waving oratory celebrating America’s greatness and exceptionalism, the levels of irony and hypocrisy – as expressed in current headlines – had never been higher. Examples are legion, but just a few suffice to give the picture. (Feel free to add your personal favorites.)
Ed Snowden, “the World’s Most Wanted Man,” reportedly remains holed up in the Moscow airport’s transit lounge searching for asylum for the alleged ‘treason’ of blowing the whistle on America’s blatant violation of domestic and international laws, while the countries of the EU vacillate between outrage at and collusion with the newly revealed US system of universal global surveillance. At US behest, France, Spain and Portugal, denied airspace to the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales, which was forced down in Austria for 14 hours while Austrian officials searched his aircraft for the “fugitive” Snowden, who was rumored to be on board. He wasn’t, but the incident of US-instigated ‘air piracy’ inflamed outrage throughout Latin America, with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa threatening to close down the American embassy. As the 4th of July weekend wound down, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia appeared to offer Snowden asylum…if he could get there without the US hijacking his plane.
The Snowden melodrama has given Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the opportunity to label the US “…the biggest villain in our age,” a characterization increasingly shared – and not without proliferating justifications – around the world.
Daily reports of US drone strikes killing innocent civilian men, women and children in country after country have become the ho-hum norm, as the Obama administration claims the right to indefinitely imprison or execute American citizens and anyone else the President chooses without charge, trial or right of appeal, anywhere in the world.
International jurists have labeled Bush, Jr., Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in both administrations international war criminals ripe for prosecution for their wars of aggression and crimes against humanity. Attorneys have advised them not to travel abroad for fear of arrest and prosecution.
Dozens of US lawmakers are revealed to have signed on to the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers ‘pledge’ to not approve legislation to address climate change without cutting taxes on polluting corporations.
Economically and socially suicidal, self-imposed ‘sequestration’ slashes social programs and vital infrastructure maintenance and development, while the military, ‘defense,’ ‘intelligence’ and ‘security’ ‘communities’ dominate domestic and foreign policy and suck-up the lion’s share of the national budget.
‘Too-big-to-fail’ and ‘too-big-to-jail’ banks and financial corporations avoid taxes and violate laws with impunity, while receiving bottomless bailouts from the public purse.
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, conducted by anonymous, unelected lawyers and bureaucrats, continue behind closed doors – inaccessible to democratic public oversight even by Members of Congress with national security clearances – despite the fact that they are known to be intentionally designed to supercede local, state and national US laws as well as those of nine other countries.
Traders, Traitors and the Corporate Security State – “Turnkey Tyranny” v. Open Source Democracy
So, what’s wrong with this picture, and just who are the real miscreants here? And how could millions of sleep-walking Americans possibly celebrate their ‘independence,’ ‘liberty,’ and rapidly eroding ‘freedoms’ with toxic explosives and mindless jingoistic rhetoric when they have just been made aware that they are the main targets of their own government’s global surveillance and militarized population control apparatus on behalf of corporate-driven ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of land, sea, air and space?
Go figure.
Could it be that communication and ‘news’ media, virtually all the institutions of governance, agencies of regulation and mechanisms of imperial military domination are in a state of terminal corporate capture, un-reformable corruption and unsustainable over-extension? The late, great commentator on international affairs, Chalmers Johnson, identified these three symptoms as the unmistakable markers of an empire’s systemic collapse.
The work of Nobel Laureate chemist Ilya Prigogine , as well as that of general systems theory originators Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Irwin Lazlo, Ernest Jansch and others showed that, when systems – whether physical, chemical, biological, social, political, economic or cultural – are in a state of fibrillation and instability, ‘far from equilibrium,’ small inputs can result in sweeping systemic change. Sociologist and world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein has applied these insights to our current civilizational system and concluded in a series of seminal works that we are at ‘the end of the world as we know it.’
Whether this will signal an evolutional leap to a higher level of organization, or a devolutionary regression to social, economic, political and ecological collapse and chaos is an open question, subject in large part to the human crisis response, especially in this pivotal decade.
Yes, Polyanna, We May Still Have A (Slim) Chance
Despite the multiple converging crises of climate chaos, transnational banksterism, proliferating technologies of repression and the peaking of virtually all resources – to mention only a few – there are signs of a mobilizing immune response in the planetary body politik. Better late than never.
Uprisings against ‘austerity’ measures and corporate-driven government repression are spreading across the globe, with Egypt being the latest and largest example.
Multi-national trade and defense alliances to counter NATO and various ‘free trade agreements’ like GATT and the TPP are beginning to form. Some examples: BRICS, the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (in Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Alternate energy technologies like solar, tidal, wind, and co-generation are beginning to be economically competitive with – and even more economical than – fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The technocratic wetdream of a ‘nuclear renaissance’ is fading. In the wake of the on-going Fukushima disaster most of Japan’s reactors remain shut down; Germany is phasing out its fleet of reactors; France is talking about following suit; and, even in the US, four of its 104 nukes are closing, with California’s San Onofre being the latest announced permanent shutdown.
More activists are at work on more issues on every level from village to national to transnational than ever before in history.
Surely even the most depressed and despairing cynics (like me) should be able to take heart from these developments and redouble their efforts, whatever their sphere of activism. One World Government v. Democratic Planetarian Governance – Globalization or Planetization? THAT is the Question.
This is the time – if there is ever to be one – to shift our primary allegiances from our siloed issues and nationalistic agendas to planetary concerns and issues.
Its time to abandon both the official US government fantasy of ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of air, land, sea and space, and David Rockefeller’s preferred agenda of rule by bankers and an intellectual elite.
The existing western power-dominated, post-WWII Breton Woods institutions – the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – have all proven themselves to be obsolete, dysfunctional and illegitimate; sooo 20th century.
The need for new, 21st century processes and institutions of democratic planetary governance has never been greater – and there is no shortage of ideas and models for such desperately needed evolutionary developments.
I commend for your consideration two useful examples:
The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order by George Monbiot (although Mr. Monbiot has recently quaffed the nukes-are-necessary-to-combat-climate-change cool-aide, his thoughts on planetary governance are worth paying attention to.)
Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander, et al. [Download the Global to Local: What You Can Do section from the Alternatives book – It describes steps you can take as a consumer, worker, depositor and investor, and as a citizen to help transform the global economic system and create a better world. ]
As the race between planetization and oblivion intensifies, its time for a planetarian Declaration of Inter-Dependance.
--------------------------
James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan are award-winning media producers as well as educators and community organizers. They co-direct EON - the Ecological Options Network. The EON YouTube channel has over 400 posts and over 2,000 subscribers.
The International Tribunal at Nuremberg
“[A] supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers … is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries”
David Rockefeller at the June 1991 Bilderberg meeting in Baden Germany
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is among the most powerful, and one of the most secretive international bodies on earth. It is rapidly assuming the role of global government, as 134 nation-states, including the U.S., have ceded to its vast authority and powers…. The central operating principal of the WTO is that commercial interests should supersede all others.
Debi Barker and Jerry Mander – INVISIBLE GOVERNMENT—The World Trade Organization: Global Government For The New Millennium ?
“Democratic world government is possible in the near future now ….” George Monbiot – The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order.
Of Treaties, Trade and Treason
July 4, 2013 – As Independence Day USA rolled around again with its parades, fireworks and flag-waving oratory celebrating America’s greatness and exceptionalism, the levels of irony and hypocrisy – as expressed in current headlines – had never been higher. Examples are legion, but just a few suffice to give the picture. (Feel free to add your personal favorites.)
Ed Snowden, “the World’s Most Wanted Man,” reportedly remains holed up in the Moscow airport’s transit lounge searching for asylum for the alleged ‘treason’ of blowing the whistle on America’s blatant violation of domestic and international laws, while the countries of the EU vacillate between outrage at and collusion with the newly revealed US system of universal global surveillance. At US behest, France, Spain and Portugal, denied airspace to the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales, which was forced down in Austria for 14 hours while Austrian officials searched his aircraft for the “fugitive” Snowden, who was rumored to be on board. He wasn’t, but the incident of US-instigated ‘air piracy’ inflamed outrage throughout Latin America, with Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa threatening to close down the American embassy. As the 4th of July weekend wound down, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia appeared to offer Snowden asylum…if he could get there without the US hijacking his plane.
The Snowden melodrama has given Xinhua, China’s official news agency, the opportunity to label the US “…the biggest villain in our age,” a characterization increasingly shared – and not without proliferating justifications – around the world.
Daily reports of US drone strikes killing innocent civilian men, women and children in country after country have become the ho-hum norm, as the Obama administration claims the right to indefinitely imprison or execute American citizens and anyone else the President chooses without charge, trial or right of appeal, anywhere in the world.
International jurists have labeled Bush, Jr., Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld and others in both administrations international war criminals ripe for prosecution for their wars of aggression and crimes against humanity. Attorneys have advised them not to travel abroad for fear of arrest and prosecution.
Dozens of US lawmakers are revealed to have signed on to the fossil fuel billionaire Koch brothers ‘pledge’ to not approve legislation to address climate change without cutting taxes on polluting corporations.
Economically and socially suicidal, self-imposed ‘sequestration’ slashes social programs and vital infrastructure maintenance and development, while the military, ‘defense,’ ‘intelligence’ and ‘security’ ‘communities’ dominate domestic and foreign policy and suck-up the lion’s share of the national budget.
‘Too-big-to-fail’ and ‘too-big-to-jail’ banks and financial corporations avoid taxes and violate laws with impunity, while receiving bottomless bailouts from the public purse.
Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade negotiations, conducted by anonymous, unelected lawyers and bureaucrats, continue behind closed doors – inaccessible to democratic public oversight even by Members of Congress with national security clearances – despite the fact that they are known to be intentionally designed to supercede local, state and national US laws as well as those of nine other countries.
Traders, Traitors and the Corporate Security State – “Turnkey Tyranny” v. Open Source Democracy
So, what’s wrong with this picture, and just who are the real miscreants here? And how could millions of sleep-walking Americans possibly celebrate their ‘independence,’ ‘liberty,’ and rapidly eroding ‘freedoms’ with toxic explosives and mindless jingoistic rhetoric when they have just been made aware that they are the main targets of their own government’s global surveillance and militarized population control apparatus on behalf of corporate-driven ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of land, sea, air and space?
Go figure.
Could it be that communication and ‘news’ media, virtually all the institutions of governance, agencies of regulation and mechanisms of imperial military domination are in a state of terminal corporate capture, un-reformable corruption and unsustainable over-extension? The late, great commentator on international affairs, Chalmers Johnson, identified these three symptoms as the unmistakable markers of an empire’s systemic collapse.
The work of Nobel Laureate chemist Ilya Prigogine , as well as that of general systems theory originators Ludwig von Bertalanffy and Irwin Lazlo, Ernest Jansch and others showed that, when systems – whether physical, chemical, biological, social, political, economic or cultural – are in a state of fibrillation and instability, ‘far from equilibrium,’ small inputs can result in sweeping systemic change. Sociologist and world-systems analyst Immanuel Wallerstein has applied these insights to our current civilizational system and concluded in a series of seminal works that we are at ‘the end of the world as we know it.’
Whether this will signal an evolutional leap to a higher level of organization, or a devolutionary regression to social, economic, political and ecological collapse and chaos is an open question, subject in large part to the human crisis response, especially in this pivotal decade.
Yes, Polyanna, We May Still Have A (Slim) Chance
Despite the multiple converging crises of climate chaos, transnational banksterism, proliferating technologies of repression and the peaking of virtually all resources – to mention only a few – there are signs of a mobilizing immune response in the planetary body politik. Better late than never.
Uprisings against ‘austerity’ measures and corporate-driven government repression are spreading across the globe, with Egypt being the latest and largest example.
Multi-national trade and defense alliances to counter NATO and various ‘free trade agreements’ like GATT and the TPP are beginning to form. Some examples: BRICS, the acronym for an association of five major emerging national economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa; the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (in Spanish: Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América, or ALBA); the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Alternate energy technologies like solar, tidal, wind, and co-generation are beginning to be economically competitive with – and even more economical than – fossil fuels and nuclear power.
The technocratic wetdream of a ‘nuclear renaissance’ is fading. In the wake of the on-going Fukushima disaster most of Japan’s reactors remain shut down; Germany is phasing out its fleet of reactors; France is talking about following suit; and, even in the US, four of its 104 nukes are closing, with California’s San Onofre being the latest announced permanent shutdown.
More activists are at work on more issues on every level from village to national to transnational than ever before in history.
Surely even the most depressed and despairing cynics (like me) should be able to take heart from these developments and redouble their efforts, whatever their sphere of activism. One World Government v. Democratic Planetarian Governance – Globalization or Planetization? THAT is the Question.
This is the time – if there is ever to be one – to shift our primary allegiances from our siloed issues and nationalistic agendas to planetary concerns and issues.
Its time to abandon both the official US government fantasy of ‘full-spectrum dominance’ of air, land, sea and space, and David Rockefeller’s preferred agenda of rule by bankers and an intellectual elite.
The existing western power-dominated, post-WWII Breton Woods institutions – the IMF, World Bank, WTO and the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) – have all proven themselves to be obsolete, dysfunctional and illegitimate; sooo 20th century.
The need for new, 21st century processes and institutions of democratic planetary governance has never been greater – and there is no shortage of ideas and models for such desperately needed evolutionary developments.
I commend for your consideration two useful examples:
The Age of Consent: A Manifesto for a New World Order by George Monbiot (although Mr. Monbiot has recently quaffed the nukes-are-necessary-to-combat-climate-change cool-aide, his thoughts on planetary governance are worth paying attention to.)
Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World Is Possible by John Cavanagh, Jerry Mander, et al. [Download the Global to Local: What You Can Do section from the Alternatives book – It describes steps you can take as a consumer, worker, depositor and investor, and as a citizen to help transform the global economic system and create a better world. ]
As the race between planetization and oblivion intensifies, its time for a planetarian Declaration of Inter-Dependance.
--------------------------
James Heddle and Mary Beth Brangan are award-winning media producers as well as educators and community organizers. They co-direct EON - the Ecological Options Network. The EON YouTube channel has over 400 posts and over 2,000 subscribers.