PEACE IS STRONG ENOUGH
I DREAM OF A DAY
I DREAM OF A DAY ... WHEN WE ALL REMEMBER
I DREAM OF THE DAY ... THERE IS PEACE ON EARTH
W O R L D P E A C E
March 5
Dear Thomas Liggett,
Thank you so much for working for peace by World Peace News.
I am a citizen here in Norway, who find it necessary working for peace.
We have all the right to grow up and live in a world without war and violence.
We are all world citizens - "born free".
This is therefore an invitation to you, to put your voice to the global
call - for a world without violence - a world in peace.
http://www.worldpeace.no/GLOBAL-DISARM-CALL.htm ... in 60 languages
Peace on earth is not depended on miracles, but our will of action.
My wish is therefore, that we now ...
- Bring forth the white flag,
- Stop producing and using weapons and force against each other ... simply
- Disarm !
Because the dream of living peacefully together, is living in everyone of us.
- We have all been children once.
Then it is to bring the dream forth, and make it true.
You can put your voice to the call here ...http://www.worldpeace.no/ARE-YOU-IN.php...
The United Nations goal is clear: A world without violence and lasting peace.
Creating this, all the leaders of the UN countries were gathered September 2000.
They adopted The Millennium Declaration:
2. We have a collective responsibility, in particular to
the children of the world.
4. We are determined to establish just and lasting peace
all over the world.
5. Ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for
all. Through broad and sustained efforts.
8. We will spare no effort to free our peoples from the scourge
of war.
30. Give greater opportunities to the civil society in general to
contribute.
It is therefore a goal - one day call upon all the world leaders - to disarm
at United Nations General Assembly.
...
Very gratifying is it, that individuals from 123
countries, from
all continents, have given their voices to the call ...http://www.worldpeace.no/I-AM-IN.php...
With love and support for your work
Jan Jacobsen
Voksenhollveien100
0790 Oslo, Norway
––––3.10.10
EarthstarRadio@aol.com
Feb.
26
Global Ethic vs. National Interest
I'm very impressed with the work of the UN Parliamentary Assembly Campaign. The
UNPA is advocating for the type of worldwide democracy that Professor Glen Martin
describes as "authentic democracy", it is drawing attention for
the need to have a democratic world constitution (or democratic world
charter, if you prefer), and generally challenging the viability of
the present global (war) system which we all know means we must either radically
change, or replace, the UN.
The UNPA is stimulating thought and interest among parliamentarians both to expand
democracy worldwide, and in this process bringing out the fatal
shortcomings of the UN, and making it harder and harder to accept the dominance
of the Big Bully nations over "we, the people" and over the smaller,
weaker nations.
UNPA efforts, in my opinion, open up the discussion about the need for "we,
the people" representation and democracy, and challenges the existing (undemocratic)
UN structure which rather quickly leads to questioning the UN Charter,
and enhances the attractiveness of the Earth Constitution which could become
the foundation for activists to unify in goals and purpose.
Roger
Kotila
USA
West Coast Coordinator
EARTH FEDERATION MOVEMENT
–––3.9.10
jackloel@yahoo.com
Mar. 7
We Can't Afford Afghanistan or Our Military Industrial Complex,
If We Want to
Advance as a Nation
Peter G. Cohen for BuzzFlash
While Moody’s is saying that the U.S. could lose its gold-plated AAA credit
rating, if the budget deficit is not reduced, President Obama is requesting $33,000,000,000
FY 2010 supplemental to fund the troop buildup in Afghanistan.
This is in addition to the war-funding budget for 2011
of $159,300,000,000. What can this huge sum accomplish? Will we end up bribing
thousands of opposition fighters not to blow up our troops by putting them on
the payroll as we are now
doing in Iraq? Will we ever be able to overcome the intense desire of most Afghanis
to have us leave? Will we be able to rebuild an area so fractured by war and
death into a friendly nation? Who will benefit? Is this all for large corporations
to exploit Afghan’s mineral resources, or to build a gas pipeline from
Turkmenistan?
How are we more secure? It is unlikely that the Taliban would again host al Qaeda
after seeing the destruction of their country. Does anyone benefit from this
war other than those who make the munitions and want to keep the Pentagon budget
unlimited? Tragedy abounds; must we invade every nation that lacks a decent government?
Obama says that we must cut back on spending, yet the “security budget” is
untouchable. These huge sums are not to be questioned even though they play a
leading role in our budget deficit. Of course we want the best for our troops
as long as they are fighting so far away. ...
Peter G Cohen, artist and activist, is a veteran of W.W.II, and of SANE’s
Ban the Bomb campaign. He is the author of www.nukefreeworld.com
––––3.8.10
From letters received recently:
Feb.
20
“It’s always good to receive the World Peace News. Thanks for your
enthusiasm and dedication. Reading the many thoughtful comments in WPN
is always
encouraging.
“Some day there will be a rallying of a critical mass of world citizens
disenchanted with super nationalism and meaningless patriotism. The fear
of political change and cultural exchange will lessen if we speak boldly to the
public as
well as to the choir.
“All the best from
Fred & Lois
Duperrault”
Mountain
View, California
–––
Feb.
28
“...The Ferencz philosophy emphasizing the ‘common sense’ of
a democratic world government, and much else in this latest WPN issue ring
true. Today’s violence and fear are crushing, but who said: when all else
fails, man turns to reason?
“With faith in that ultimate enlightenment and with joy in your friendship,
I remain your grateful fellow federalist.
“Warm wishes...”
Virginia Meloney
Syracuse, New York
–––3/7/10
"European Union@United Nations"
March 4
Launch of EU reconstruction aid in Haiti
On Tuesday, 2 March 2010, the European Commission released an initial € 100
million (US$ 137 million) to help the Haitian authorities repair roads and rebuild
government buildings and schools. Part of the grant funding will also be used
to cover government salaries and to support Haiti’s civil protection and
fire fighting capacities.
"Even if the humanitarian crisis in Haiti is not over, we now have to launch
the phase of reconstruction of the country," said EU Development Commissioner
Andris Piebalgs. "As the world's biggest aid donor, the EU has a special
responsibility to make its action effective by dividing roles between Member
States and the Commission."
This is the first installment of more than € 300 million committed by the
European Commission for Haiti’s reconstruction. The plan leverages on the
Commission's expertise in budget support, infrastructures and technical assistance. It has been prepared with the Haitian government, "who must be in the driving
seat of the reconstruction process," said Piebalgs.
EU Member States and the Commission are currently preparing a comprehensive EU
package to be presented on 31 March in New York as the EU's contribution to Haiti's
overall reconstruction strategy.
Together, the European Union and its Member States have now committed over € 600
million euro (US$ 822 million) in aid to Haiti.
–––
EU emergency response to the earthquake in Chile
Following last week's powerful earthquake in Chile, the European Union immediately
adopted a € 3 million Primary Emergency Decision and deployed a team of
humanitarian aid experts.
The EU has also offered in-kind assistance, including
mechanical bridges and
tents. The EU Civil Protection Monitoring and Information Centre (MIC) is also
prepared to deploy a coordination and assessment team, including earthquake damage
assessment specialists. The first part of the team (6 experts) will be tasked
with liaising with the Chilean authorities, coordinating incoming European assistance
and participating in the needs assessments. The exact date of its departure depends
on when the Chilean authorities will accept the offered assistance.
According to preliminary arrangements, the team is scheduled to arrive in Santiago
on 5 March for a two-week mission. The team will likely be deployed together
with a Technical Assistance and Support team (TAST) module, so that it can be
self-sufficient on site. MIC plans to deploy an Advanced Medical Post (AMP) with
Surgery as well.
–––3.6.10
“European Union@United Nations”
Feb.18
EU Commission President Barroso urges EU leaders to relaunch negotiations on
climate change treaty
European Commission President José Manuel Barroso informed EU Heads of
State and Government today of the next steps in the European Commission's work
on climate action: to step up its campaign to relaunch the negotiation process
on a climate change treaty with the core goal of bringing all partners closer
to the EU's ambitions and commitment to a multilateral agreement. The new Commissioner
for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard, will soon visit key international partners
to find new ways to reinvigorate the international process.
In a letter, Barroso notes that "the international
front is as important as ever to tackling the threat of climate change. We need
the international process
to continue, building on what we could agree in the Copenhagen Accord and finding
new ways to instill trust back into the process." He states that an
important
element in the strategy is the implementation of the "fast start" financing
for developing countries agreed in December. He emphasized, "We should
not forget that those who were working more closely with us in Copenhagen were
the
developing countries, particularly the poorest and most vulnerable."
––––3.5.10
Pre-Partisan America, 1789-1801
By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/50199
Feb. 18
I'm not a big fan of post-partisan America, a notion that seems to amount to
running the government through two political parties but taking care that one
of them not perform in any significant way better than the other one. But
I am a fan of the idea, which nobody ever seems to consider, of actually disempowering
parties.
That idea has a precedent in the first dozen years or so of our republic whose
Constitution never planned for party rule, although nonpartisanship would obviously
have to look very different today. I suspect we could imagine ways of making
party-free government work if we tried. At the moment, however, Americans'
political thinking is so party-saturated, that any talk of opposing parties is
met with the question "Which one?" or with the statement "Yeah,
I'm for a third party too!"
Read the following blog post by John Caruso titled We've tried nothing, and we're
all out of ideas
<blockquote>"John Feffer bewails the lack of any alternative to the
Democratic Party:
"'We don't have our own party, which would say yes to things we like. True,
we have the Green Party and assorted groupuscules. But I'm talking about a viable,
national party that secures the votes of the 16 percent of Americans who identify
themselves as progressives, and can win a governing majority by crafting arguments
that appeal to the two-thirds of Americans who support progressive ideas.'
"Got that? We don't have a national party that says yes to things
we like, except for the national party that says yes to things we like. But
the Green Party doesn't count because it's not 'viable'—meaning it hasn't
somehow managed to garner the votes of the 16% of Americans who identify as progressives,
but who refuse to vote for it until the 16% of Americans who identify as progressives
have already voted for it.
"Call me pedantic, but I can't help but sense a subtle logical flaw here.
"Liberals like Feffer (and he's far from being the only one) apparently
want to see a new 'progressive' party spring to life fully formed like Athena
popping out of Zeus's skull, somehow instantly gaining ballot access in all 50
states and going directly from non-existence to 16% of the national vote in a
single election cycle – though they themselves won't actually vote for
this miracle party until the next election cycle, once it's a known "viable" quantity. And
until all of that happens, they refuse to throw their vote away! On anyone
but the Democrats, that is.
"I sometimes imagine a dialog with a drowning liberal:
DROWNING LIBERAL: Help! Help!
ME: You seem to be drowning. Here, let me throw you this life preserver.
DL: No! How do I know that life preserver is viable? It might dissolve
on contact with salt water! I won't grab it unless I see twenty million
other people use it first!
ME: Well, that's up to you. But I have to say that no matter what, I think
it'd be better than what you're holding on to now.
DL: You mean this anchor?
ME: Yeah, that.
DL: Well, it's very easy to say that, but how can I be sure? That life
preserver may never have been tested in the water, whereas this anchor is obviously
a viable seafaring device! Sure, in some ideal world the life preserver
might be better, but this anchor is serving its intended purpose in the actual
ocean right now! And furthermore <glub glub glub>.
"You might be tempted to feel sorry for poor DL,
but don't worry—there are
millions more exactly like him." </blockquote>
But, of course, the life preserver really does dissolve. Ballot access
rules, debate rules, corporate media policies, unverifiable elections, and a
legalized system of bribery and patronage make it very difficult for a new party
or an independent candidate to compete without first finding their way into the
arms of the same corrupting forces that have possessed the Democratic and Republican
parties. And if we could create clean financing, useful media, verifiable
vote-counting, and fair access for candidates, it would go a long way toward
fixing the Democratic and Republican parties. It would also make it possible
for the Green party and other parties to compete. But it would, in the
same way, also make it possible for independent party-free candidates to compete.
...
––3.1.10
J.F.K & world unity
Following is a below-the-fold 3-column, page one,
NYT news story start, Feb.17,
with this headline:
“Even Before Filming, Kennedy Series Stirs Anger”.
From the text:
“A new mini-series about John F. Kennedy’s presidency ... is being
prepared by the History channel... prominent critics ... want it brought to a
halt.
“The critics, including Theodore C. Sorensen, a former Kennedy adviser,
say they have read the scripts for the project and that those contain errors
of fact and emphasis...
“Given the resumes of the players in the debate it is understandable why
everyone sees agendas everywhere. On one side is Mr. Surnow, an Emmy Award-winning
producer and friend of prominent conservatives like Rush Limbaugh. During Mr.
Surnow’s tenure as executive producer, his hit series ‘24’ was
criticized for its seemingly permissive attitude toward torture.
“On the other side is Mr. Greenwald, the founder of the advocacy media
company Brave New Films, who has created documentaries like ‘Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism,’ a condemnation of the Fox News
Channel, and ‘Iraq For Sale: the War Profiteers.’”..
But that’s not what the following here is about. The circulation of WPN,
World Peace News - a World Government Report, worldpeacenews.org,
is small. We
mail about 450 copies of the 8-page quarterly and print 2000. We’re for
the world-government choir mainly. Subscriptions $20 for 3 years.
So what I found out about JFK’s take on the
world-political-unity advocacy I found out from JFK himself on his electioneering
stump at the passenger space
at the Bakersfield, California, airport, in the late fifties or early sixties. At
the time I was the publisher and factotum of the magazine California Crossroads,
out looking for news to write about.
Of course everyone who is interested knows JFK
was not what you would call a
world governmentalist – until his last two university speeches in Washington.
In one of them and maybe both he warned that all people had better outlaw war
with
ultimate weapons before it terminated us. Then came his assassination, probably
having nothing much to do with the sane world-government advocacy of which he
approved.
But for him and me, on the other side of the airport tarmac, finally walking
out of the passenger space fast, as he talked from his not unusual understanding
as I, arguing, tried to take notes. After a good half hour, JFK cut out in the
direction of his vehicular transportation yelling at me the most telling words
that I think I ever heard yelled at me: “But the Soviets would never go
for it.” I think he said Soviets but it could have been Russians that he
had shouted as the space between us widened.
What a tragedy for everyone, that assassination.
It might come to mean that humanity might have lost its future to those hideous
bullets .
––––2.25.10
So where might you come down on the NYT’s Feb. 24 lead news story,
page one, written by Ian Urbina?
“FEARING LIMITS,/
STATES WEAKEN /
GUN REGULATION
“A REACTION TO OBAMA
“Easing Gun Control and/Challenging Federal/Oversight
“When President Obama took office, gun rights advocates sounded the alarm,
warning that he intended to strip them of their arms and ammunition.
“And yet the opposite is happening. Mr. Obama has been largely silent on
the issue while states are engaged in a new and largely successful push for expanded
gun rights, even passing measures that have been rejected in the past.
“In Virginia, the General Assembly approved a bill last week that allows
people to carry concealed weapons in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol,
and the House of Delegates voted to repeal a 17-year-old ban on buying more than
one handgun a month. The actions came less than three years after the shootings
at Virginia Tech that claimed 33 lives and prompted a major national push for
increased gun control. ...”
Gentle reader, WPN, which doesn’t pack a live one, takes this NYT lead
story as an excuse for us to write about where we come down– except we
stay up and focus on the big play: worll govamint.
–––2.24.10
Climate Change ?;
“
Safe” Planet ? too
Can a “safe” earth be created if humanity hasn’t
even created enforceable law to try to lower the pollution that many people breathe
every
day, etc.?
Regardless of the ultimate answer, let’s
consider the devastation that this humanitarian, Yvo de Boer, experienced, as
noted in the lead NYT editorial
yesterday, Feb 22:
“Yvo de Boer’s resignation on Thursday after nearly four tumultuous
years as chief steward of the United Nations’ climate change negotiations
has deepened a sense of pessimism about whether the world can ever get its act
together on global warming. Mr. de Boer was plainly exhausted by endless bickering
among nations and frustrated by the failure of December’s talks in Copenhagen
to deliver the prize he had worked so had for: a legally binding treaty committing
nations to mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases. ...
“But his resignation does remind us that the UN. process is tiring, cumbersome
and slow. It reinforces the notion that some parallel negotiating track
will be necessary if the world is to have any hope of achieving the reductions
scientists
believe are necessary to avert the worst consequences of climate change. ...
“The underlying thought is that the ultimate goal is a safe planet, and
that absent a top-down global treaty, that goal is probably best achieved by
aggressive, bottom-up national strategies to reduce emissions. Not that these
are a sure thing; the United States, embarrassingly, has no national strategy. Until it gets one, it can hardly lecture anyone else. Nor
will the world stand
a ghost of a chance of bringing emissions under control.”
–––2.23.10
Japan to Reject / Ban by U.N /
On Fishing / For Bluefin
That’s bluefin tuna and the NYT headline
above from page 8 of the Feb.20 Business Day newspaper section probably creatively
provokes little livid interest
in areas of world commercial fishing and other issues of great related moment.
But the unrealistic supposing in some involved
areas of security that the sustainability of a human decision-making system,
such as the U.N. was once supposed, by starry-eyed
optimists, to morph into governed world. That turned out to be a U.N. structure
up for grabs of big nations.
The inevitable fact is that the U.N. turned out
to be what was called for in its Charter, a structure of nations that had no
intention of ever supporting
a constitutionally governed world.
That leaves many strong nations, now more
than ever stressed by consequences of anarchy among nations, to feel forced to
look to a politically disunited
U.N. unable to ban anything much. Under enforceable law, it turns out there
is
no such
thing.
Of course nations such as Japan will reject
bans by the agent of disunited nations.
Finding a solution to the bluefin tuna survival problem, etc., can’t well
be a matter for the U.N. That’s because global problems are now worked
out in war or diplomacy. We live by our own actions. In standing world principle
and in hard reality of the sad miseries of a U.N. Charter providing for no effective
mandate to make, judge and enforce world law, global political problems are worked
out in the shrouds of balance-of-power principle.
So let’s refrain from bawling because
of our own economics and pride that
cause our debilitating debts and deficits.
–––
PLEASE
REMEMBER
IN YOUR WILL
WORLD
PEACE NEWS
300
EAST 33rd St, NYC 10016
–––– 2.22.10
Let’s search for a metaphor to –
Stir world hope?
“An Accidental Leader Stirs Hope in Nigeria”.
That is an NYT 3-column headline, page one, above the fold yesterday, Feb.20. It heads a news story by Adam Nossiter. That may, with good luck, stir at least
a glimmer for some hope worldwide in a bloc of people with political faith.
But wait – and hope. Good as well as bad accidents happen all over the
global place. Let’s at least be cheered by Mr. Nossiter’s news story
start. His exact lines are:
“ABUJA, Nigeria – The circumstances of Acting President Goodluck
Jonathan’s accession to power are so odd that even he looks bewildered
as he takes a self-effacing bow in this boiling, fractious nation.
“He has not been elected. He has not exactly been appointed. He did not
seize power in a coup, unlike any of his predecessors. And as a mild-mannered
academic in a black fedora, he seems an unlikely fit in Nigeria’s tough-guy
environment. ...”
Oh. By the idle way, the last paragraph is:
“‘In politics, he’s been more of a listener; he consults a
lot,’ said Mr. Douglas, the aide. ‘He calls all these people “sir,” anybody
who is older than him by one day.’”
–––2.21.10
Treat them legally
as war prisoners
Should we cooperate in letting uninformed legal-talitarians tie the nation up
in a big squabble over where a war terrorist should be tried, in a civilian or
in military court?
In neither, says Andrew C. McCarthy, who was the lead prosecutor 15 years ago
in one of the biggest U.S. terrorism trials, as recalled in a page-one 2-column
news story Feb. 20.
Since that trial, Mr. McCarthy changed his mind. Importantly. The long whole
NYT news story, jumped to page 12, might be read for background and explication.
On page 12 there is a two column, three-quarter length
photograph with the underline, “‘A
war is not a crime, and you don’t bring your enemies to a courthouse,’ Andrew
McCarthy said.”
Following directly are excerpts in the NYT text by Benjamin Weiser:
“...last Dec. 5, Mr. McCarthy, who is no longer in government, joined a
group of speakers ...rallying against the Obama administration’s decision
to bring Khalid Shaikh Mohammed to Manhattan for a civilian trial.
“‘A war is a war,’ Mr. McCarthy declared. ‘ A war is not
a crime, and you don’t bring your enemies to a courthouse.’
“In the debate over how and where to prosecute
Mr. Mohammed and other Sept.11 cases, few critics of the Obama administration
have been more fervent in their opposition than Mr. McCarthy, a 50 year-old lawyer
from the Bronx who had built
a reputation as one of the country’s formidable terrorism prosecutors.
“Now he has a different reputation: harsh critic of the system in which
he had his greatest legal triumph.
“Mr. McCarthy has relentlessly attacked the administration for supporting
civilian justice for terrorism suspects. He has criticized the military commissions
system and called for creation of a national security court. After the arrest
of the suspect in the Christmas bomb plot, he wrote, ‘Will Americans finally
grasp how insane it is to regard counterterrorism as a law-enforcement project
rather than a matter of national security?’”...
“...his supporters argue that his background distinguishes him from pundits
on the left and the right. It certainly adds credibility to what he has to say,’ said
Michael B. Mukasey, attorney general under President George W. Bush and also
the presiding judge in the 1995 trial of the sheik.”...
“...The trials have been cited by the Obama administration to justify its
support of civilian prosecutions of terrorists.
“Mr. McCarthy said he understood why the office pursued the prosecutions. ‘I
mean that’s the ethos of the place is that you want to do the cutting-edge
case.’ But, looking back, he said, he questioned the focus, particularly
given that al Qaeda kept escalating its attacks. He cited the 2000 bombing of
the destroyer Cole in Yemen, which killed 17 American servicemen, and Sept. 11.”...
“...In a November 1998 essay for The Weekly Standard, he offered one of
his earliest public pronouncements of where his thinking was going. ‘In
the main, international terrorism is a military problem, not a criminal-justice
issue,’ he wrote. ...”
“...At the December protest rally, he said, he felt a rare sense of camaraderie
as he stood with families, firefighters and police officers. ‘It just seemed
to me like since 9/11 we’ve been drifting away and away from the moment
of clarity we had,’ he said, ‘and then I was back with the people
who got it.’”
––2.20.10
I wanna get off!
The following is a whiff of a modest reaction to
what’s at the top and
at the bottom of page one of the NYT, Feb.19, Friday, today.
At the top is an appalling 4-column, left/center photo
taken by Alberto Martinez/Austin American Statesman, Via Associated Press. The
photo is of the smoking wreckage
in front of a huge building where IRS agents work. A suicidal, certainly crazed
computer engineer is reported to have caused the wreckage when he piloted a small
airplane into the building.
To the right of the photo is a rare NYT 3-line, 2-column, headline, “IN
SURPRISE MOVE, / FED SIGNALS PIVOT / TO NORMAL POLICY”. The Fed had “raised
the discount rate on loans made directly to banks by a quarter of a point, to
0.75 percent from 0.50 percent, effective Friday.”
The start of the bottom of the page has three consecutive
news-story summaries:
Not the Himalayas, but It’ll Do,
U.N. Climate Chief Resigns, and 3.
New Iran Arms Evidence Cited.
1. The Dalai Lama happens on a pile of snow during a walk in Washington.
2. His name is Yvo de Boer and his resignation deepened the climate change situation.
3. You already know about all that.
–––– 2.19.10.
jennifer.parmelee@wfp.org
Feb.15
PRIVATE SECTOR LOGISTICS SUPPORT
WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
IN
HAITI EARTHQUAKE RESPONSE
Santo Domingo – Three of the world’s largest logistics companies – TNT,
UPS and Agility – have been playing a vital role in delivering food and
other humanitarian supplies to victims of the Haiti earthquake, the United Nations
World Food Programme (WFP) said today.
WFP is the humanitarian community’s lead agency for logistics and has been
coordinating the delivery of supplies into Haiti from a base in Santo Domingo
in neighbouring Dominican Republic on behalf of organisations involved in the
relief effort.
UPS and TNT staff have been assisting with receipt and transport of relief cargo
at Santo Domingo airport and in the WFP Dominican Republic operations centre,
while Agility has been working to support planning, coordination and communications
among all humanitarian organisations at the airport. ...
“This is a perfect example of how the humanitarian community and the private
sector can come together to save lives in an acute emergency,” said WFP
Haiti Emergency Coordinator Carlos Veloso in Port-au-Prince. “The quick
integration into our logistics system of these three companies is a product of
past experience and serves as a model for private sector involvement in humanitarian
emergencies.”
UPS, TNT and Agility work together in Logistics Emergency Teams (LETs) through
which assets in locations closest to a disaster zone can quickly be made available,
giving an invaluable boost to the humanitarian response. All staff, services
and assets have been donated free of charge by the three companies.
–––2.18.10
FIX THE COURT
MONSTROSITY
IF you want to help with fixing the “work” of the Supreme Court and
U.S. global leadership possibilities toward the creation of a sanely governed
world. In other words, consider the NYT’s lead editorial today, Feb.17.
The last two paragraphs are:
“...Although Democrats have led the drafting, this is a bill that should
receive bipartisan support. All Americans should be concerned about corporations
using their vast financial resources to obtain taxpayer bailouts and government
contracts. The prospect of foreigners helping to choose our presidents and members
of congress should be troubling to all ideological camps. And the transparency
provisions should appeal to anyone who cares about clean government.
“The Schumer-Van Hollen bill is expected to be introduced later this month.
Congressional leaders should put it on a fast track so it can be in place in
time for this year’s midterm elections. It could help keep special interest
money in check until the real solution comes: a Supreme Court ruling reversing
the deeply antidemocratic Citizens United decision.”
–––
John O. Sutter josutter@juno.com
Winter 2010 Toward Democratic World Federation
Feb.15
Fellow Democratic World Federalists,
The Winter 2010 T.D.W.F. is finally wending its way to those of you in the
United
States. (Supporters overseas should be receiving them after a week or so.)
Program Officer Zac Maricondia and I finished the editing Tuesday evening, the
9th. Although we would have hoped to get the issue back from the printer
Thursday in plenty of time for processing and mailing before the long weekend,
no such luck. After Administrative Officer Nahmyo Thomas printed out the mailing
labels and brought the new issue from the printer in the afternoon, Secretary
Mary Harris and I completed the sealing and labeling, after which we sent it
off to the bulk mailing facility in the evening – too late to be dispatched
before the long weekend.
We hope that you like this issue, which features Board Member Dr. Tad Daley,
advocate of a nuclear weapon-free world, who will be the speaker at our 2010
Good Government Luncheon Lecture. Because of the growing interest in world
government in academia we have republished Professor Lawrence Wittner's "Who's
Afraid of World Government?" and my response, and have identified the Democrat
and Republican leaders of Congress who called for World Federation back in 1949. We
also have an article on nuclear weapons by Board Member Prof. Ron Glossop; an
article on the Lisbon Treaty and the European Union by the Streit Council; thoughts
on the American Empire by Supporter Dr. Robert Hanson; another Global Anarchy
Watch by Zac; and some admonitions by Mary.
Happy Valentine, Chinese/Vietnamese New Year, and President
John
O. Sutter
"
Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government
recommended...is impossible to accomplish." – James Madison, The Federalist
No. 14.
–––2.17.10
HEROES, COWARDS,
GAFFES, MINDERS
“WASHINGTON – Last winter, when Attorney General Eric J. Holder Jr.
called the United States ‘a nation of cowards’ for avoiding frank
conversations on race, President Obama mildly rebuked him in public.
“Out of view, Mr. Obama’s aides
did far more. Rahm Emanuel and Jim
Messina, the White House chief of staff and deputy chief of staff, proposed installing
a minder alongside Mr. Holder to prevent further gaffes – someone with
better 'political antennae,’ as one administration official put it.
...”
In quotes above are the opening paragraphs by Jodi Kantor and Charlie Savage
of a pertinent, 3-column news story, above the fold, in the NYT of Feb.15.
Jollying aside here, the news story deals with and stimulates other true examinations
of vital lines of thought globally. One line of thought at least as potent as
race might emerge on human avoiding frank conversations concerning the likelihood
that ultimate war weapons now proliferating and some already aimed hither and
yon will figure in a no-kidding Armageddon.
Of course avoiding that talk will continue, as Einstein, the world’s
great
world governmentalist predicted right before he died writing about something
he had advocated all during his adult life:
“...Not one statesman in a
position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out
any promise of peace, the course of supranational
security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to
political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into fames,
exact their victims...”
–––2.16.10
On fixing big messes
Law is basic but it must cover all involved, be appropriate, clearly understood
and be widely supported, enforceable.
Fixes that last will be governmental, reasonable, humane, deal with obvious threats
to all affected populations.
Quick fixes based on local conditions will expire quickly. Big fixes of big messes,
those based on environmental, geological conditions, shifting geological plates,
bad weather, receding beaches, erupting volcanoes.
In other words, forget it. Messes ye shall have with ye, especially if your’n’ abide
borderless politics encouraging overpopulation along with exploited resources,
lawmakers, gendarmeries, neighbors and floutlaws.
–––– 2.15.10
Let jobs go blah?
U.S. unemployment remains a, if not the, main reason why The Nation
drags far
behind our own and our global leadership potential.
We rig up solutions built on stimulating the usual government economic leaders,
not built on the splendid FDR example of a new U.S. agency massively charged
to offer the specific hope of a suitable job for every person who applies to
the U.S. to get a job.
Sure, such a plan built along Depression conditions in the late 30’s would
be more expensive and difficult now than it was then. But the abject failure
of the federal government now, as illustrated by the weary Senate’s token
efforts, gives many citizens anger expressed against pouring billions to stimulate
sectors that fritter.
It’s one bad thing for government to rely on nukes for world peace but
another to sluff off the unavailability of jobs. Jobs are also essential for
government to make the big changes needed to create
government of, by and for
all the people.
––––– 2.14.10
Who is or isn’t this or that?
About a well known author
Living in Washington, D.C.
If you are Christopher Hitchens, “the Orthodox Protestant Atheist,” (a
writer who presumably never ventures out into world-government thickets), you’re
not very specific in any Christian context either .
That’s what a reader in the Tikkun Daily might conclude. The paper put
out an email Feb.12 with a comment on an interview that Marilyn Sewell, a Unitarian
Univeralist minister, had with Mr. Hitchens.
A Sewell-Hitchens exchange is:
“
Sewell: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist
faith
of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories
from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement
(that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make any distinction between
fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?
“ Hitchens: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth
was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice
our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”
Do you, reader, take the Hitchens reply as meaning only that doubt may exist
that many or any Christians exist ‘in a meaningful sense’ ?
OK if so. If not, perhaps, Hitchens gives a serious person
who seriously says that he or she is or is not a religionist can be counted as
being accurate about
specifics
In that, rigid social accuracy can be considered adequate
but political accuracy
could require documentation in order to confirm accuracy.
The above is brought up in the presumption that
religion and accuracy will be factors in the creation of a self-governed world
democracy.
–––– 2.13.10
The E.U. shapes up
as what some see as a
potential united states of
the politically disunited U.N.
The six-month rotating European Union presidency was transferred from Sweden
to Spain early this year.
Spain has outlined goals for its new leadership, while
Sweden has reflected on
achievements during its time at the E.U. helm. Excerpts follow from a 6-page
e-mail received Feb.11 as a commentary by The (Clarence) Streit Council for a
Union of Democracies.
Streit excerpts:
Outlook for the Spanish EU Presidency: ...
The
long-standing President of the European Commission (currently José Manuel
Barroso, (was) reelected to his second of two 5-year terms...
A
new ... President of the European Council (recently-chosen Herman Van Rompuy),
serving a 21⁄2-year term; and a revised rotating Presidency of the
Council of Ministers, with member states each serving 6-month terms.
Spain
took over the rotating presidency in January, at a defining moment for
the EU – with the historic Lisbon Treaty coming into force, the new permanent
President of the European Council (Herman Van Rompuy) and High Representative
(Catherine Ashton) taking office, and efforts continuing to help Europe escape
its worst economic recession in decades. ... As the first presidency under the
treaty, the relationship Spain develops with the new EU officials will set precedents
for future rotating presidencies. ...
Prime Minister Zapatero has promised to work towards “a new model of balanced
and sustainable economic growth” for Europe. ...
In particular, Spain aims to rebalance the asymmetry in the EU’s Economic
and Monetary Union (EMU), which established a centralized monetary institution
(the European Central Bank) but did not give the EU sufficient power to coordinate
national economic policies.
“If the European Union really wants to be a political union, which works
for its citizens, it has to have a much more solid economic government…with
tools,” Zapatero said. ...
(Topics of special concern);
Economic Recovery and Growth
Implementing the Lisbon Treaty
Citizen Participation and Security
European Foreign Policy
A new New Transatlantic Agenda?
Outcomes of the Recent Swedish EU Presidency
When Sweden took over the rotating presidency of the
European Council of Ministers
last July, the EU faced many challenges: EU institutional insecurity, the
global economic crisis, and disagreement over climate change, to name just a
few. Nevertheless,
Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt noted at the end of Sweden’s six
months that it had achieved what it set out to achieve. The Treaty of Lisbon
was finally adopted and entered into force on 1 December, the EU’s financial
market was given a new supervisory architecture, and the EU developed a common
position on climate change, as well as other significant achievements:
The Lisbon Treaty
Financial Architecture
Climate Change
The EU as a Global Actor
EU Enlargement
Other Accomplishments
The Swedish presidency oversaw the adoption of an EU strategy for the Baltic
Sea region, as well as adoption of the Stockholm Program, based on the vision
of a safer and more open Europe. The Stockholm Program will guide European justice,
police, and immigration cooperation for the next few years, with a focus on safeguarding
individual rights, increasing legal security, and improving cooperation among
states to combat cross-border crime.
...under the Swedish presidency, consensus was reached on stricter penal regulations
and increased punishments for human trafficking, including a plan for better
cooperation with non-EU countries to keep people from becoming ensnared. In addition,
the EU adopted a strategy on how to make information-sharing among crime-fighting
authorities more efficient and legally secure, while strengthening protection
of individuals’ personal data. The European Council also made progress
on negotiations for a common asylum system, and agreed on the establishment of
an asylum-support office in Malta, which receives many immigrants from Africa.
In the health sphere, a proposal to promote member-state cooperation in stimulating
the pharmaceutical industry to develop new antibiotics was pushed forward, as
well as work to establish transatlantic cooperation on antibiotics issues. In
response to the current H1N1 flu pandemic, the EU adopted an anti-flu strategy
covering access to vaccine, informing the public, global cooperation, and contingency
planning.
In addition – after decades of negotiations – an agreement was reached
on all but the language issue on the design and regulation of common EU patents,
which will promote innovation and improve global competition for European industry.
––
The Streit Council for a Union of Democracies
1629 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
202-986-2433
–––
The Filibusters and World Leadership
By David Swanson
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/50007
Feb. 11
... They (recess appointments) get around the pesky will of the majority of
the
American people.
Here's a lovely post from the DailyKos praising the president of the AFL-CIO
for encouraging the president of the United States to appoint officials during
a recess in order to get around the Senate.
We've grown used to hearing "progressives" urge Obama to make laws
with signing statements and executive orders. The treaty he's using to
occupy Iraq never went to the Senate for ratification. His list of Americans
to assassinate was never authorized by Congress. The Fourth Amendment and
habeas corpus are not as dearly treasured as people pretended they were when
doing so could make a Republican president look bad. But recess appointments
is a new one.
When it comes to unconstitutional senate rules like the filibuster, progressives
and the president consider them sacrosanct. It's far more important not
to question a rule that lets senators representing 11 percent of Americans block
all legislation than it is to pass any of the horrendously bad bills under consideration. One
must uphold the rules, be principled, fight fair with "the other side." The
other side is, of course, one of the two parties, even if both parties are opposing
the will of the people.
But when it comes to a president, rather than Congress, rules are for pussies. Democratic
party loyalists, just like those on "the other side" have a different
attitude toward abuses of power when it is a president abusing power rather than
congress. That this results in both "sides" year after year shifting
more and more power to presidents is not a concern for either "side". So,
when Bush appointed John Bolton during a recess to get around the Senate, that
was a horrible thing to do, not because it set a dangerous precedent (it set
a good one apparently) and not because Bolton's policies would mean massive death
and suffering (what does that have to do with winning elections?) but because
Bush did it. If Obama had done it (and who at this point would dare assert
that Obama won't appoint Bolton to something?) well, then it would have been
fine.
Now, the Senate is an institution that almost always opposes the will of the
American people. Appointments are blocked by single senators and other
maneuvers that are anti-majoritarian even within the hideously corrupt institution
of the Senate. Obama could appoint someone to office that Americans would
approve of in a referendum, but that at least a few millionaire rednecks in the
Senate would never allow. But the president is already LESS accountable
to the American people than are senators. The solution here is to improve
the Senate, not worsen the presidency.
Anyone failing to fight for the removal of the filibuster rule can shut up immediately
about the will of the majority. If we don't want individual senators blocking
appointments or bills, then change the rules and don't allow that. If we
want Senators to follow the will of the people and overcome the corruption of
money, media, and party, then we need to establish clean elections, undo corporate
personhood, end the doctrine of bribery as "free speech," create independent
media, and at the very least set an example by not ourselves obeying the antidemocratic
orders of party leadership.
We can't do these things, you say? Then what is the point of having given
the Democratic Party what they do not admit they have: complete power?
Recess appointments? Really? This will fix soulless, spineless, sell-outs? And
nothing worse will come of it?
If looking to the distant future is too difficult, just ask yourself this: Would
you want President Sarah Palin making recess appointments? Proceed accordingly.
–––2.12.10
F E A R F A I L S
when nations
with nuclear weapons
tell
only others to nix proliferation
Why so? Wouldn’t the use
of nuclear
weapons in war abolish everything human?
Yes of course. But nations with nuclear
weapons
send a nutty message when they
advocate that nations without nuclear weapons “BE
AFRAID”. If big,
powerful nations are nutty about war, why shouldn’t all nations join in?
Everyone should be and most sentients probably
are already afraid, anyway to the extent of feeling that threats to proliferators
only exacerbate the drive
to join in weapons mania. People tend to be like lemmings.
The lesson here is that all nations, not
just the ones still fixed on proliferation, should be afraid of missing the message
that human sustainability requires nothing
less than world government that could outlaw war and its mad tools.
––––
European Union@United Nations
Feb. 9
EU Parliament approves new European Commission
Today, the European Parliament (EP) elected the new European Commission by
488 votes to 137, with 72 abstentions, in Strasbourg. The vote took the form
of a
single ballot on the whole College of Commissioners, consisting of one Commissioner
from each of the 27 EU Member States.
The new Commission will stay in office until 31 October 2014. (The first Barroso
Commission was voted into office in November 2004 by 449 votes to 149, with
82 abstentions.)
In these present, exceptional times, with the economic crisis, climate change
and energy security issues, second-term European Commission President José Manuel
Barroso said in a speech to the EP that now was "a time for boldness." We
need strong European institutions to tackle these challenges, he argued, and
it was up to the Commission and Parliament acting together "to ensure that
the EU is more than the sum of its parts."
According to Barroso, the broad priorities are clear: making a successful exit
from the financial and economic crisis; leading on climate action and energy
efficiency; boosting new sources of growth and social cohesion to renew our
social market economy; advancing a people's Europe with freedom and security;
and opening
a new era for global Europe.
"I believe in a Europe that is open and generous. A Europe that is particularly
dedicated to the Millennium Development Goals," he said.
He also believes in a Europe that shows solidarity with others, as has been
shown recently in Haiti, where the EU has contributed in an important way with
emergency
aid, and it will also contribute with significant reconstruction aid.
But the EU can achieve more with better coordination at European level, and
he will make proposals in this sense, exploring the new opportunities offered
by
the Lisbon Treaty.
And the European External Action Service will also be a very important instrument
to make our foreign policy more coherent and effective, he added.
High Representative Ashton voices concern on Iranian nuclear activities
In a statement today, Catherine Ashton, the High Representative of the Union
for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the Commission,
underlined the "concern of the EU at the announcement by the Iranian President
on 7 February and the notification made to the IAEA on 8 February of the Iranian
plan to enrich uranium up to the level of 20%.
Iran's enrichment activity is contrary to several UN Security Council Resolutions.
Taking enrichment to the level of 20% adds to the deficit of confidence in
the nature of Iran's nuclear programme. This has already been aggravated by
Iran's
unwillingness to engage in meaningful talks."
On the basis of its dual-track approach, the EU will continue to review all
aspects of the Iranian nuclear issue and "stands ready to take the necessary steps
to accompany the UNSC process," noted HR Ashton.
–––2.11.10
Passing the moon up –
On to Mars & beyond
Does that spring from speculation about President Obama’s “new space
program” – and wouldn’t it be wise of Americans and everyone
to factor in immense financing?
After all, even rocketing off some day to Mars, the near
planet most like earth, would take days longer in flight than it took Apollo
to hook up with the moon. The longer the flight into space, the more the cost.
Everyone
can be sure of
that. So thinking easy about cost might lead to trying to sell other nations
on a deal. America and other nations might come to agree on setting up an arrangement
to order up a flight to Mars sensibly?
The deal would have a long time to run and be presented publicly as solid, ratifiable,
historic and rightly challenging to most voting people, especially those scientifically
and humanly inclined.
All that might suggest to world political leaders
and others that requirements for that trip by astronauts and explorers to Mars
and beyond would resemble a
federal government formed by all nations to cope with other unsolved problems,
other problems that now often go to threaten –and/or mess up – human
life.
Anyway why not speculate a little?
–––– 2.10.10
Let’s all people
din the unanimity
rule in government!
IT kills action!
IN HIS NYT COLUMN, FEB.8, Paul Krugman comes
out
hammer and tongs, chapter and
verse, with examples and logic
on the deadly subject. In his order, for instance:
“...In the 17th and 18th centuries, the
Polish legislature, the Seim, operated
on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I
do not allow!’’ This made the government largely ungovernable.
...”
“Today, the U.S. Senate seems determined to make
the Seim look good by
comparison.
“Last week, after nine months, the Senate approved Martha Johnson to head
the General Services Administration. ...she was approved by a vote of 94 to 2.
But Senator Christopher Bond ... had put a ‘hold’ on her appointment
to pressure the government into approving a building project in Kansas City.
“This dubious achievement may have inspired Senator Richard Shelby... In
any case Mr. Shelby has now placed a hold on all outstanding Obama administration
nominations – about 70 high-level government positions – until his
state gets a tanker contract and a counterterrorism center. ...”
“...And a tradition has grown up under which senators, in return for not
gumming up everything, get the right to block nominees they don’t like.
“In the past, holds were used sparingly. That’s
because, as a Congressional Research Service report on the practice says, the
Senate used to be ruled by ‘traditions
of comity, courtesy, reciprocity, and accommodation.’ But that was
then. Rules that used to be workable have become crippling now that one
of the nation’s
major political parties has descended into nihilism, seeing no harm – in
fact, political dividends – in making the nation ungovernable...”
“It should be a simple message (and it should have been the central message
in Massachusetts): a vote for a Republican, no matter what you think of him as
a person, is a vote for paralysis. But by now, we know how the Obama administration
deals with those who would destroy it: it goes straight for the capillaries. Sure enough, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, accused Mr. Shelby
of ‘silliness.’ Yep, that will really resonate with voters.
“After the dissolution of Poland, a Polish officer serving under Napoleon
penned a song that eventually – after the country’s post-World War
I resurrection – became the country’s national anthem. It begins, ‘Poland
is not yet lost.’
“Well, America is not yet lost. But the Senate is working on it.”
Ah, yes. And the message is specially for national
drafters of a world constitution.
––––2.9.10
Ode to the First Person
He who pays his soldier’s life debt this year “is quit for the next.” That’s
from Shakespeare, right?
After time in a war now, as noted in the
NYT of Feb.8, we have this by a former “infantry
team leader in Iraq,” Brian Turner. His collection of poems is called
'Here, Bullet.'
“If a body is what you want,
then here is bone and gristle
and flesh,
...because here, Bullet,
here is where the world ends,
every time.”
The 3-column news story, above the fold, from which the quotation comes, is by
Elisabeth Bumiller. Headline: “A Well-Written War,
Told in the First Person.”
Comment here by World Peace News
- a World Government Report, worldpeacenews.org,
goes by the sudden species’ light of the consequences of nuclear war:
Let’s snap out of our funk of denial, all,
and go for a sanely
governed
world.
––––2.8.10
States limit the E.U.
Some informed people seem to think that the European Union is a kind of bellwether
for forecasting the possible developing of a global political unity able to cope
with humanity’s biggest problems.
So? So here’s the start of an NYT news story by Stephen Erlanger yesterday,
Feb.6. The headlines are: “EURO DEBT CRISIS / IS POLITICAL TEST Fiscal
Control by States / Limits Bloc’s Leaders”.
Here’s the start of the text:
“PARIS – What began with worries about
the solvency of Greece in the face of high deficits, fake budget figures and
low growth has quickly become
the most severe test of the 16-nation euro zone in its11-year history.
“Anxiety about the health of the euro, which has
spread from Greece to Portugal, Spain and Italy, is not simply a crisis of debts,
rating agencies and
volatile markets. The issue has at its heart elements of a political crisis,
because it goes to the central dilemma of the European Union: the continuing
grip of individual states over economic and fiscal policy, which makes it difficult
for the union as a whole to exercise the political leadership needed to deal
effectively with a crisis...
“...But even tiding over countries in trouble
will not solve the main flaw in the euro: the sharp divergence of national economies
that share a common currency
without significant fiscal coordination, let alone a single treasury. ...”
–––
PROBABLY A FRAUD?
UN AGENT uk_national@att.net
TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER NOTICE FROM UN
Feb . 6
UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION COMMISSION
HQ, 44 1 AVENUE & 1 AVE NEW YORK,
NY 10001, UNITED STATES
(PAYS OUT $ 2.1 MILLION )
From: MRS LAURA McWILLIAMS
Executive Payment Officer (UN)
http://www.un.org/News/Press/ docs/2003/ik344.doc.htm
Attention: Beneficiary,
This is to officially inform you that your Compensation/inheritance/ Contract
fund payment file presently on my desk had been verified and found out that genuine
and hence certified for immediate settlement. My name is Mrs. LAURA McWILLIAMS
of the International Monetary Fund investigation unit. Your payment file was
forwarded to our office here in UNITED STATES today requesting that your unclaimed
fund be paid to Adams Jacobs .
In the said letter of change of beneficiary/ownership,
representatives of Adams Jacobs enterprises stated that you are dead and as such
your fund should be paid
to him as the next of kin to you.
Because of the elaborate global scam, we decided to contact you for confirmation.
After the board meeting held at our headquarters,we have resolved in finding
a solution to your problem,and as you may know, we have arranged the payment
of the fund through our TELEGRAPHIC TRANSFER from our PAYMENT CENTER IN Europe,
precisely London, United Kingdom in accordance with the instruction given by
our President, and United Nation General Sec.
This payment center will effect transfer of your fund with immediate effect once
you contact the officer in charge of the foreign fund transfer, Rev. Simon
Charles, on this and indicate your readiness to receive the fund by proving
that you are not dead as claimed by Adams Jacobs Enterprises.
CONTACT:
REV. Simon Charles.
UNITED NATIONS COMPENSATION COMMISSION
REPRESENTATIVE IN LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM
Email: agentworker@gmail.com
Tel: +447031898423
It would help World Peace News’s understanding
of the sense of the probable fraud above IF the letter had specifics about the
advocacy not defined in the
above.
––––2.7.10
P A T R O N I Z E D
BUT Albert Einstein, world governmentalist and scientist, knew WHY.
SOMETHING along that line of his frequently mentioned thinking during most of
his adult life may be gleaned from his last well-documented spoken and written
thoughts on the creation and practice of world peace through enforceable world
law.
Prof. Otto Nathan, Einstein’s estate executive, co-author of Einstein
on
Peace and a real-life friend of WPN had kept many examples of that. Very soon
after WWII, Prof. Nathan had hurried to collect and publish all he could find
on the subject for his little-publicized and widely-ignored book. Briefly he
had taught economics at Vassar. He spent the last years of his life in Manhattan
where he’d been a participant in the seminars of World Peace News -
a World
Government Report, worldpeacenews.org. etc.
Einstein’s last written words were:
“...Not one statesman in a position
of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise
of peace, the course of supranational
security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to
political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into flames,
exact their victims...”
Impressed most favorably by freedom of speech in the U.S., having escaped Hitler’s
regime, Einstein indicated that he well knew that “people” were often
bemused and entertained by his well-recorded world-law notions, etc. He didn’t
quarrel for his own amusement. He just smiled acceptingly.
He may even have seemed to many that he wasn’t a bit “bothered” by
people who didn’t understand what he talked so freely about – or
even at all.
So that’s how it could be – and
was – that rich, powerful and
ivy-educated decision makers of many stripes, as well as most people on the pavement,
or wherever, got along just fine. This absent-minded professor Einstein
was a
breath of fresh air and not a pain in the butt. And miraculous to notice,
Einstein
world governmentalists could and can serve some useful purpose too.
So guess what? The rich and powerful went against their own isolationist convictions
and invited Einstein to their public expressions as a way to signal that, hey!,
even preachers about world peace through enforceable world law could be well
met and a dandy facade too.
That’s what real DOERS still might think on occasion.
So who in right minds can think that Einstein was and other world governmentalists,
etc., NOW should be scouted for our seeming to be only victims of PATRONIZING
by worthy doers of things as we find them nationally and internationally now?
––
EarthstarRadio@aol.com
Demonstration for Global
Democracy in Brussels
Feb. 3
What a splendid idea to demonstrate with a "sit-in" in front of the
European Parliament. These types of nonviolent demonstrations may
need to be done on a regular (once a week?) basis in the hope of creating a
growing movement of citizens demanding worldwide authentic democracy.
Professor Glen Martin's latest book ("Triumph of Civilization") makes
it clear that, here in America (and elsewhere), we lack what he terms "authentic" democracy. A
possible solution? Activists such as myself have joined Dr. Martin
in the Earth Federation Movement under the Earth Constitution which is working
toward implementing a democratic world federation independent of the United
Nations, the latter of which is severely restricted in terms of the help
it can bring regarding achieving genuine democracy either in individual
nations, or establishing a democratic world parliament.
The USA, regarding authentic democracy, appears
to have been lost to
the oligarchy. THAT IS WHY WE NEED YOU IN EUROPE (and around the world) TO
STEP UP BIG TIME FOR DEMOCRACY. WE IN AMERICA MAY BE UNABLE
TO REGAIN OUR DEMOCRACY WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP.
Thanks for your dedication on behalf of democracy for all,
Roger Kotila
West Coast Coordinator, USA
Earth Federation Movement www.earthfederation.info
–––
The Disinformation Company www.disinfo.com
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the CEO of TCI learned of disinformation and immediately ordered it closed down.
Needless to say, the founding team managed to keep the site going and it evolved
into one of the most popular alternative news and underground culture destinations
on the web. At the height of the dot-com boom The Disinformation Company was
acquired by one of the high fliers of the so-called new economy, Razorfish – when
the bubble burst so did Razorfish and today The Disinformation Company is independently
owned.
While many of our projects are seemingly ‘progressive’ we do not
close our minds to ideas that are called ‘conservative’ — far
from it. How can someone be truly well informed with only half the story? In
the years since the site was launched in 1996 it has gone through several design
and editorial changes, evolving from a specialized web-search directory to the
current format of a community-based news and content service.
–––2.6.10
THE WORLD ALSO A
POLITICAL MESS?
Does world politics get more fuel here for the think-anew engine that runs on
the idea that the One World economically needs for functioning a One World UNITED
political system?
The following is the start of the NYT lead news story of today Feb.5:
“MARKETS ROUTED
/ AS WORRY GROWS / ON EUROPE DEBT DOW DECLINES BY
2.6% Fears That Continent’s / Problems May
Hurt / Global Economy By JAVIER
C.
HERNANDEZ and JACK EWING
“Just as Americas’s recession begins to ebb, trouble is brewing in
Europe that may prolong a downturn on the Continent and ricochet through the
global economy as it struggles toward a recovery.
“A rout in stock markets that began in Europe spread to Wall Street on
Thursday, amid fears that Europe may be the world’s next financial flashpoint.
Pressure has been mounting across the Atlantic as Greece, Portugal and a handful
of struggling countries that use the euro scramble to pay off mountains of debt
accumulated from years of profligate spending. ...”
–––
Clicks Never Made Here
Citizens for Global Solutions
outreach@globalsolutions.org
Feb. 3
...This May Citizens for Global Solutions will be confronting the United Nations'
role in preventing genocide at our 2010 Annual Meeting & Model United Nations. The
Conference will provide a unique opportunity for participants to confront the
atrocities of genocide on an international level; hear from expert speakers
on the United Nations, genocide prevention and elected officials; and spend
a day lobbying Congress members on the issues that matter most to you. Click
here to find out more and register for the conference.
–––
Feb. 2
(First of three articles on Why We Seek War)
WHY IS AMERICA IN SO MANY WARS?
By
Sherwood Ross sherwoodrt@yahoo.com
America is “a nation that seeks war” and if it doesn’t change
it could end up destroying itself, a law school dean warns.
Given all the wars the United States has waged, “It is preposterous but
true that we do not see ourselves as a nation that seeks war,” writes
Lawrence Velvel, dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. “We
see ourselves as a peace loving nation” and that message is constantly
drummed into the public by government and media.
Since World War Two, an indisputably necessary conflict, Velvel points out
the U.S. has fought the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, secret wars in Laos and
Cambodia, the First Gulf War, Afghanistan, and the Second Gulf War in Iraq.
It has also invaded, bombed or “quarantined” Panama, Grenada, Cuba,
Haiti, Somalia, the Sudan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia and Libya, and has “declared” a
global war on terrorists.
“If the United States were a man instead of a country, we would say he
must be schizophrenic, or at minimum deeply mentally disturbed, to believe he
is peace loving in the face of a record like this,” Velvel writes in “The
Long Term View,” a journal of informed opinion published by his law school.
Velvel further notes the U.S. today spends more on military than perhaps all
the rest of the world put together and definitely more than the next 21 highest-spending
nations combined, including China, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy,
Japan, and Israel.
Not only do Americans always appear to be at war but they believe they fight
only in good causes, he writes. “We believe we at all times fight only
to do God’s work, and that we therefore have to fight or democracy, freedom,
and economic affluence will be lost,” Velvel writes. He says truth cannot
be permitted to intrude “because it would destroy our self image.”
“Certainly much of the rest of the world – probably most of the rest
of the world – does not see us as peaceloving.” Gulf War II, Velvel
notes, is having the opposite impact on public opinion the U.S. intended. “It
has caused Muslims – the Arab ‘street,’ in particular – to
hate our guts even more than they already did.”
Among the reasons USA fights so often, Velvel writes, are economic imperialism,
a desire to remain preeminent, the glorification of war by the media, hubris,
the stupidity of the nation’s leaders and the failure to prosecute them
for their war crimes, and the inability to learn from past errors.
Writing of economic imperialism, Velvel reminds that in 1898 Americans realized
the nation’s capacity to produce had outrun the domestic market’s
capacity to consume and that a vibrant economy required overseas markets and
coaling stations for the Navy warships that would protect overseas trade. “Nothing
has really changed, except that today we call it globalization and defend it
as bringing wealth to all when in fact it has worsened the dire poverty of
many.”...
–––2.5.10
Two leaders came to U.S. rescue –
Two 1-column NYT lead news story headline lines of Feb.3 are:
“A CALL TO TOPPLE / -
POLICY FOR GAYS...
‘THE RIGHT THING TO DO...’”
1000 GENERALS
GOT INTO A
CONGA LINE
“DEFENDING THE LONG GAY LINE”
SO here’s from Maureen Dowd’s
op-ed, same Feb.3, quoting Admiral
Mullen to start:
“‘...I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place
a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order
to defend their fellow citizens,’ Mullen said during the Senate Armed Services
Committee hearing on dropping the archaic ‘don’t ask, don’t
tell’ policy. ‘For me personally, it comes down to integrity – theirs
as individuals and ours as an institution.’...
“In 1993,when Bill Clinton tried to do the right thing by allowing gays
and lesbians in the military to be themselves, a predecessor of Mullen’s,
Colin Powell, directed the embarrassingly public and retrograde rebellion by
the generals against it, leading a conga line of heavy brass over to the White
House to tell the president not to exercise his authority as commander in chief
and order an end to one of the last vestiges of discrimination in the armed forces. Powell helped shape the gutless compromise that those who protect our country
must live by a code of honor even while they’re legally bound to be less
than honest...
“McCain jumped on his even-keeled fellow Republican, Bob Gates, and accused
him of usurping Congressional authority by saying the military was pre-emptively
preparing for a repeal of the law. I guess the former war hero doesn’t
believe in military readiness...
“Three years ago, McCain told a group of college students that he would
drop his objections on the issue ‘the day that the leadership of the military
comes to me and says, ‘Senator, we ought to change the policy.’
“But, on Tuesday,when that day came, McCain ignored the top brass and found
his own military emeritus. He waved a letter at Gates and Mullen, saying it was ‘signed
by over 1,000 former generals and flag officers who have weighed in’ against
changing the policy. ...”
The Dowd textbreaker puts its finger
right on the difficulty of keeping democracy
relevant and responsive and sensible. But it can be done!
Textbreaker: “How many pragmatists does it take to change a dim law?”
–––
David Swanson david@davidswanson.org
Feb. 2
PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS APPLAUD REP. DONNA EDWARDS FOR FILING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
BILL TO OVERTURN US SUPREME COURT RULING ON CORPORATE MONEY IN ELECTIONS
HOUSE JUDICIARY CHAIR JOHN CONYERS, JR JOINS FILING
"Free Speech Rights Are For People, Not Corporations"
WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Donna Edwards of Maryland introduced today
a constitutional amendment bill to overturn the US Supreme Court’s recent
ruling allowing unlimited corporate money in elections. Congressman John
Conyers, Jr. of Michigan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, is a co-sponsor
of the amendment bill.
A coalition of public interest organizations and independent business advocates
praised the Congresswoman’s action. The groups, Voter Action, Public
Citizen, the Center for Corporate Policy, and the American Independent Business
Alliance, say the Court's ruling in Citizens United v. FEC poses a serious and
direct threat to democracy. Immediately following the Court's ruling on
January 21, 2010, the groups launched a constitutional amendment campaign at
http://www.freespeechforpeople.org to correct the judiciary's creation
of corporate
rights under the First Amendment over the past three decades. ...
–––2.4.10
Why no tears?
Why no vision?
Why no living place?
Why no real system?
Why no planning?
Why no future?
Why no hope?
The WPN headlines above come in consideration of news reports about the
dearth
of tears seen on the faces of Haiti’s earthquake survivors.
The fate in Haiti, given our world
at risk, could be the fate of all people after a World War III or some other
global disaster.
Just as there is no firmly established world decision-making system able to hope
to cope overall with Haiti’s long-term need for help on all human fronts,
so there is the same unestablished world decision-making system for all people.
We humans unrealistically are at risk of nuclear war. All people
would be like
the tearless in Haiti now.
It seems that this real possibility might well cause a quiet, calm, serious dedication
to advocate the creation of just government that could function at all levels,
government, that could hope to imagine what’s needed to remedy Haiti’s
earthquake fate and our world of anarchy among nations and narcissism among ourselves.
–––2.3.10
Do the people know best?
Yes, of course. People know whether or not they can have peace of mind about
the essentials of a good life.
No, of course, if the people have no way of making up for leaders who deny the
imperative of outlawing war.
–––
Yeah, but what difference
does it make when we still act frightened of ending war by creating a united
united nations?
–––
War dance heats up
In this moment of talk about world government,
let’s dwell with abstractions,
not with what real people do.
We are all mixed bags of views and values on tendencies, depending on our own
vast varieties of perceptions. So let’s not jump to conclusions about differences
in government when we might conclude that those differences can be summed up
in the words:
Power v. people
In this of course we might, more precisely,
mean to stipulate, from our own various
perspectives:
Power-fixed people, good-to-bad v.
People-fixed people, good-to-bad.
So we might mean to say that,
abstractly, people who run government often truly
believe that, above all, government, in order to work well, needs to focus on
the need for government
to have enough power to govern. Without that nothing. Or with that first,
shambles.
As of now, government produces ever more
visible shambles.
On the other hand, people-fixed people, who don’t
normally run governments, truly believe that government must be of, by and for
the people governed. A Republican
president, Lincoln, drilled that basis home.
Thus both sides shape up as being for
strife among the power-needed side, on the power side and the side high on the
beneficiaries of good government. Neither
side is unaware of the benefits and imperatives of the other side. But competition
and war preparations among nations create the shambles now increasingly visible. In the U.S. jobs, unemployment remain basic issues.
Most sensible to this war condition is the power-fixed side. Why? Because of
shambles as its main consequence first – IF the drives of the people/peoples
are too bruskly ignored.
So here a nice dance goes on: Power/first practices
to recognize and seduce but
not to strengthen people/peoples.
Inevitable result: don’t
ask.
–––– 2.2.10
On terror of terror
The following is from Gail Collins’s column Jan.30
.
“...Last November, the Justice Department announced that the terror trial
of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed would be held in Manhattan. Almost everyone in New
York rallied around. This was seen as standing up to terrorism.
“‘It is fitting that 9/11 suspects face justice near the World Trade
Center, where so many New Yorkers were murdered,’ said Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“Now everything’s flipped. The politicians are running for the hills,
and the issue has been repackaged as standing up to traffic jams.
“‘There are places that would be less expensive for the taxpayers
and less disruptive,’ said Bloomberg.
“And the Justice Department is backing down. The trial will happen somewhere
else. People in Lower Manhattan will breathe a sigh of relief.
“But this feels very wrong. ...”
“Whatever muscles we used in cooperating have atrophied. Barack Obama ran
for president promising to change that, and he hasn’t. Part of the fault
is his. Sometimes at crucial moments, there seems to be no hands on the tiller.
The Republicans are impossible. Many Democrats are both frightened and greedy...”
–––
“
Hank Stone” hstone@rochester.rr.com
Jan.30
Coalition for Democratic World Government
The Coalition for Democratic World Government (CDWG) has been inactive for
the last six years...
Our website (www.cdwg.org) has been allowed to become out of date. The
UNITED WORLD newsletter, put out reliably every two months by Gary Shepherd,
has not been given the advertisement it deserves.
All this is my fault.
But the adventures and requirements of the groups advocating for democratic world
government continue, and may potentially be served by CDWG in the future, in
areas where interconnection is helpful.
Gary Shepherd, Bob Gauntt, Felix Rosenthal and I are working together to bring
CDWG up to date. To do this, we ask two favors:
1) Please check out this list of names and emails of people
working on our global problems. Please send me additions / corrections.
2) If you have the time and inclination to participate in empowering
CDWG, WELCOME! Please let us know.
Thank you for your time and attention!
Hank Stone
–––2.1.10
On cleaning government up
By ban on burqa, niqab
The following is from a letter to the editor yesterday, Jan 30.
“ ...One does not want the government or the family to tell women how to
dress, but the potential French ban on the burqa and niqab is not morally equivalent
to the utter subordination of women as practiced by the Taliban and in Saudi
Arabia,”
–––– 1.31.10
NO PARTNERS
GALORE HERE?
Can political harmony exist in a nation or in a world without war when officials
have problems with finding partners?
That’s not an idle question, perhaps,
because national harmony and global warlessness might seem to be essential conditions
for human sustainability.
The issue above springs from the NYT’s Jan.29 “Quotation of the Day. ‘In
order to dance, you need a dance partner and there ain’t no partner out
there.’”
That quotation is from words of a U.S. senator talking about “prospects
for bipartisanship.”
Of course it might be assumed that the senator knows what he’s
talking
about from his own vital and central perspective. Too many elected officials
globally might agree. And it just might be apt, timely and essential to explore
the assertion that peace is an idle dream after all.
WPN, World Peace News - a World Government Report,
worldpeacenews.org, agrees only that officials having
problems finding dance
or diplomatic partners is typical
of a useful political trope: let the appalling ignorance of colleagues
become
the tune to loudly and sanctimoniously sing.
––––
War Nonsense
The nonsense among nations that war can be stupid but not illegal comes clear
in the U.N. Charter. The Charter says that Member States will be considered
sovereign. Sovereign means higher than anything else in international law.
“Unenforceable” assertions
in a document such as that of the International Criminal Court make wishful its
having the legitimacy of The World Court of
Justice. The ICJ was formed by established nations, the ICC by citizens acting
unofficially,
however effectively or not.
Worse. The ICC’s writ establishes
the assertion that legality can flow from organizations outside of a united nations.
The politically disunited
United Nations was created to be by the up-for-grabs facts to remain a fictitious
reality.
Of course it’s not unthinkable
that the ICC can obtain legitimacy through the actions of a governmental unity
of sovereign nations or through its own
valid significance.
––––
European Union@United Nations euun@gmail.com
Jan.29
EU and NATO join forces on women, peace and security
On 27 January in Brussels, European Commission Vice-President Margot
Wallström and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen hosted a high-level conference
on women, peace and security. The nearly 500 international participants concluded
that all EU and NATO-led operations must comply with UN resolutions relating
to women, peace and security (namely, UNSC Resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888 and
1889), and must be supported by appropriate training, education, monitoring
and evaluation mechanisms.
"I have come to realize that the security of women is the best indicator
of the security of a nation," said Vice-President Wallström. "Unless
we enhance the rights and responsibilities of women globally, our foreign policy
goals will remain unachievable." She added that "the UN provisions
give us a strong legal framework for addressing gender based violence. It is
now time to turn words into deeds."
NATO Secretary General Fogh Rasmussen noted that "we must empower women
and confront victimization if we are to deal successfully with the security
challenges of the 21st century. This is a task not only for NATO, but a challenge
that the Alliance, the European Union, and civil society actors must address
jointly. I am encouraged by the common approach that we have seen today."
–––
PLEASE REMEMBER
IN YOUR WILL
WORLD PEACE NEWS
300 EAST 33rd St, NYC 10016
–––– 1.30.10
Over a long time: trickiness
Governance off-track;
but OK on land-mines
“DAVOS, Switzerland – For
years, the power brokers who gathered in the Swiss Alps to mull over the state
of the
world worried collectively about an outdated system of global governance.
“From the United Nations Security Council and the International Monetary
Fund to the Group of 8, the arguments went, international institutions were unfit
to solve global problems because they no longer represented the balance of power
in the world.
“Then the recent recession finally forced a change. The Group of 8, representing
the largest Western countries and Russia, has shifted power to the larger Group
of 20, which includes the major developing countries as well. The makeup of participants
in Davos has shifted along with it.
“This year, even if most panels are still dominated by executives from
established Western countries and institutions, China is sending its largest
delegation ever to Davos for the World Economic Forum. India and Brazil are well
represented as well.
“While the embrace of the G-20 as a global board goes some way toward addressing
the issue of legitimacy, it has laid bare a trickier problem: forging a consensus
among a larger number of significant players on the international scene with
different priorities and interests.
“Consensus, some here said on Wednesday, might be too ambitious a goal. Instead of multilateralism, Graham Allison, a professor at Harvard University,
suggested what he called ‘manylateralism’; when a sizable group of
countries agree, they should move forward, letting the laggards adjust later.
“Such a strategy has worked even
when the laggards were superpowers. An
international agreement to ban land mines was boycotted by the United States
and some other countries. But in the13 years since it was signed, the United
States military has not used land mines, nor has it manufactured or exported
any. In effect, said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch,
it ended up complying with the ban. ...”
Above in quotes is an NYT 3-column, page B2, Jan.28, news story’s first
half or more – by Katrin Bennhold and Alison Smale.
The purpose of comment here, now, is to set
the context of the drive of World
Peace News - a World Government Report, worldpeacenews.org’s
fix on its
advocacy of the creation of a governed world, nothing more or less. Our
mom-‘n-pop
quarterly tabloid and Web site are “non-profit.” The now-quarterly
advocacy tabloid started up in late 1970, at what is still $20 for a 3-year subscription.
Caveat: that’s for as long as we stay in publication.
Our take on the excellent and vital
NYT take as quoted above leads us to notice the difference between world governance
as it barely exists now and world government
as might be started up at an all-nations-represented program for the creation
of a ratifiable world constitution.
––
UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women unifem.org
Jan.27
PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE WHEN HALF THE POPULATION IS EXCLUDED
FROM NEGOTIATIONS, SAY
AFGHANISTAN’S WOMEN ACTIVISTS
A day ahead of the London Conference, women’s groups
make strong
recommendations
for reconstruction and development.
London — In the lead-up to the 28 January London Conference on Afghanistan
hosted by the UK Government, Afghan women human rights defenders today released
strong, specific recommendations on security, development and governance priorities
for their country. These recommendations provide the only concrete input from
consultation with Afghan women into the key decisions affecting the future of
their country that will be set in London by international actors.
Deeply concerned about the exclusion of Afghan women’s perspectives from
the dialogue surrounding the London Conference, the statement issued today by
the women activists comes as a result of broad-based consultations with Afghan
women civil society leaders at the Dubai Women’s Dialogue and London Dialogue
over the last week, involving the Afghan Women’s Network and supported
by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the Institute for
Inclusive Security.
"As the global community knows, nowhere are women’s human rights more
at stake than in Afghanistan. Therefore it is of grave concern that women’s
voices and perspectives are largely missing from this London conference on Afghanistan’s
future. The international community should stand behind the women of Afghanistan
and elevate their voices, not barter away their rights in the name of short-term
peace and stabilization,” said Wazma Frogh, Afghan Gender and Development
Specialist.
Women’s participation in and perspectives on security solutions for Afghanistan
are of particular relevance given the way that their rights and freedoms have
been a focus of some of the conflict in the country. “Besides the high
levels of violence experienced by ordinary women and girls, there has been a
very high rate of deadly attacks on women human rights defenders and women in
prominent public roles. This makes the determination of the women who have travelled
to London to share their concerns and proposals all the more inspiring, and the
international community needs to hear what they have to say,” said Anne
Marie Goetz, Chief Advisor, Governance Peace and Security for UNIFEM.
The status of Afghan women continues to be one of the worst in the world with
87 percent of them facing domestic abuse. They are also systematically neglected
as key partners for conflict resolution, peacebuilding and recovery. “Afghan
women have the most to gain from peace and the most to lose from any form of
reconciliation compromising women’s human rights. There cannot be national
security without women’s security, there can be no peace when women’s
lives are fraught with violence, when our children can’t go to schools,
when we cannot step on the streets for fear of acid attacks,” said Mary
Akrami, Director of the Afghan Women Skills Development Centre.
Pointedly reminding international donors and the national government that women’s
participation is critical for sustainable peace, and that women can spearhead
efforts to moderate extremism, the advocates demanded that women be included
in all security and development processes, including any negotiations and reconciliation
programmes involving warlords, the Taliban, and other insurgents...
From the London Conference, the advocates hope to see a clear plan that will
provide greater clarity of direction and priorities for the new Afghan administration
as well as the inclusion of gender concerns, and a renewed commitment to implement
existing commitments to Afghan women. Their specific recommendations include:
•
Ensuring women’s representation in peace processes. Consistent with constitutional
guarantees for women’s representation, women must comprise at least 25
percent of any peace process, including any proposed upcoming peace jirgas. They
must be represented in any national and local security policy-making forums,
such as the Afghan President’s National Security Council.
•
Guaranteeing that reconciliation protects women’s rights. The government
and international community must secure and monitor women’s rights in all
reconciliation initiatives so that the status of women is not bargained away
in any short-term effort to achieve stability.
• Implementing gender-responsive security policy. All efforts to enhance
security
in Afghanistan must better serve women.
––––1.29.10
A WAY TO GO NOW GLOBALLY
How and why might
President Obama feel that he put the state of the nation so very calmly and
thoughtfully last night that now he should be encouraged to risk
taking the giant step of addressing the awful state of politics in anarchy,
governmentlessness, among all the scores of nations, many desperate and many
more armed and arming with nuclear weapons.
How any or all world leaders might wisely go about dealing with the livid issue
of war/peace lawlessness among nations might be the trickiest issue.
First, it might be essential to put forth a vision of what will be necessary
to outlaw nuclear war among nations. Perhaps lifting a leaf from the law of nations
that have outlawed war within their own nations will help mightily along that
line.
Next, following on the treaty tradition of nations, it would be necessary for
national leaders to convene a series of world constitutional conventions that
simply would outline binding war/peace and other vital constitutional agreements.
Perhaps there are many more Americans
who would lend vital interest put to President
Obama today, Jan.28.
–––– 1.28.10
MUST WE TRY?
Three very various modern conditions are noticed on the back page of the Science
Times of Jan.26: the syndrome of the habit of hoarding possessions, especially
in old age, to the extent of messing one’s own living quarters; a happy
exception to the exploitation of natural resources in the favor, in Ecuador,
of the nation’s moratorium on development of oil wells in the nation’s “most
diverse array of plants and animals in South America and possibly the planet”; and the probable decision of a wife to become a housewife instead of remaining
a nurse for an injured husband in a well-run hospital.
The small examples here of the
great multitude of things modern humans take up on, good-to-bad, bring up the
larger question: HOW CAN THERE BE ANY DOUBT ABOUT
WHY SO FEW PEOPLE DEDICATE THEMSELVES TO MESSING AROUND
WITH THE FOREIGN, GUMMY
AND HOPELESS WAR/PEACE SURVIVAL ISSUE?
BUT HERE, THOUGH, THAT LAST QUESTION
MIGHT WELL BE ANSWERED BY ASKING ANOTHER
MORE GRIM QUESTION:
Might it be that the last resort will be the last resort unless we all try to
do better? Shouldn’t ALL people, every single one of us young-and-toughsters,
come to mess around with genuine solutions to the myopia of war as decision-making?
After all, after all we might
come to realize that our future and the future of our species ARE involved, our
syndromes,
etc., notwithstanding.
––––
WHAT BUSH DID TO HAITI
By David Swanson
If a group of dedicated scholars, attorneys, journalists, and activists had tried
to generate a comprehensive list of impeachable offenses committed by George
W. Bush as president, and only 35 of them had been introduced into Congress,
one of the many discarded ones, in rough and overly detailed form, might have
read something like this:
In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation
of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the
United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend
the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional
duty under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution "to take care
that the laws be faithfully executed", has both personally and acting through
his agents and subordinates, caused the United States of America to kidnap, imprison,
intimidate, coerce, threaten, confine, abduct, and carry away the elected, constitutional
President of Haiti, and his wife, a U.S citizen, in violation of United States
statutes, to wit:
a. The President, both personally and acting through his agents and subordinates,
prevented the security contractors working for Haiti's elected, constitutional
government led by President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from receiving reinforcements
at a time when Haiti's constitutional government was under attack. The removal
of the security contractors facilitated the kidnapping of President Aristide...
–––
Doug Everingham dnevrghm@powerup.com.au
Jan.25
John Bursill johnbursill@gmail.com
Jan 24
CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ARREST OF 5 SUPREME COURT JUSTICES FOR TREASON
THE FIVE THAT STAND AGAINST ALL AMERICANS, THE “MAFIA” JUDGES
By Gordon Duff
Veterans Today Senior Editor Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran.
Jan.22
Five members of the Supreme Court declared that a “corporation” is
a person, not a “regular person” but one above all natural laws,
subject to no God, no moral code but one with unlimited power over our lives...
Their ruling has made it legal for foreign controlled corporations to flush
unlimited money into our bloated political system to further corrupt something
none of us trust and most of us fear. The “corporation/person” that
the 5 judges, the “neocon” purists, have turned the United States
over to isn’t even American. Our corporations, especially since our
economic meltdown, are owned by China, Russia and the oil sheiks along with a
few foreign banks. They don’t vote, pay taxes, fight in wars, need
dental care, breathe air, drive cars or send children to school. Anyone
who thinks these things are people is insane... There is nothing in the
Constitution that even mentions corporations much less gives them status equal
to or greater than the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government...
...We now have a new government above our government, above our people, one above
any law...
When a corporation commits a crime, nobody goes to jail. When wars
come, they don’t fight, they simply rake in cash... However, when
they want something, billions in tax money for “bail outs” or fat
contracts or special laws, they have always gotten it. It has been
a battle to control corporations for 140 years. Sometimes the American
people have lost, sometimes they have won. Our greatest presidents are
the ones who reined in corporate power and kept the influence of money over humanity
in check. Think of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt,
Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy...
We are already burdened with a representative government that has tied itself
to the money spigot because of the incredible cost of media exposure in
campaigns...
The framers of the Constitution created the Supreme Court, the Electoral
College and originally had Senators appointed, not elected, to protect the wealthy
from having their money and land seized by the masses who would otherwise have
controlled the government. This was the 1780s... Generations have
fought and died to keep life in our imperfect system from 1780. Who would
have thought that 5 people could destroy it all?
Political debate in America is sometimes extreme, often bordering on violence. Feelings
are high... Everything we built has been based on a balance, race,
religion, ethnicity, social standing, political beliefs, regional interests,
all striving and compromising to build something we are all secretly very proud
of, something all of us are willing to fight for and many are. Americans
all agree on one thing, that our government in Washington is out of control and
has been for some time. We all have different ideas on this but agree on
the fact itself. We wonder where the politicians come from, men too often “less
great” than those of the past, in fact, less great than average. Decisions
are continually made that most find puzzling and, in fact, are driven by a rotten
underbelly of corruption and self interest.
Now, 5 members of the Supreme Court, people none of us voted for, a group that
is answerable to no authority and, seemingly, no law or moral code...has, either
through blindness, avarice or insanity clearly done something so malicious, so
unjust and so utterly inconsistent with our Constitution that they, themselves,
have become an “enemy of the people.”
What is their power? What they have done is not within the scope of the
authority given through the Constitution...
The control of the American electoral process has been given to them (corporations). No
serving politician can survive now standing against them. Years ago “they” bought
our newspapers and our television networks. Fact and truth became whatever
they wanted us to believe. “They” gained control of what many
thought and what almost all of us see and hear. That wasn’t enough. They
wanted it all...
The Founding Fathers led America on the path to freedom and eventual democracy. The
Federalists limited the ability of an impetuous electorate to seize power and “reform” America
into chaos and anarchy. This system of government was predicated on the
belief that love of country would always burn brightly in America and with progress,
freedom and bounty was the inevitable reward of our industry. It is only
now too obvious that so much has happened that was unforeseen. It is not
a denial of our traditions to correct wrongs when we find them. This was
how America was created. We are drowning in wrongs, we all finally agree on this.
The time is now. Party politics have failed. Political theories are
little more than empty rhetoric meant to mislead and misinform... All we
have left is “we, the People.” This is how we began and it
is now all we have to move forward. It is time for the states to call for
a Constitutional Convention to establish, not just a Republic, but a Democracy,
by and for the people, the American people, rich and poor, a nation loyal to
itself, not tied to corporations, a vast military industrial complex or endless
foreign alliances...
–––1.27.10
WAR FOR WARS
“...At an international conference in London on Afghanistan this week,
President Hamid Karzai is expected to unveil a plan to try to bring low and midlevel
Taliban fighters in from the cold. Any plan will need strong financial backing.
The cost is expected to be about $1 billion to provide jobs, security and other
benefits for the Taliban defectors. Allies that refuse to send more troops to
Afghanistan should pledge more cash...” That’s the first paragraph
in a NYT editorial of Jan. 25.
So there we have it that this war is not about peace but about success based
on the ruling principle that power among nations is the best bet to arrive at
peaceful solutions.
But here it may be noted that it’s
seriously said that peace requires just overall government, not war for power
or anything else.
The war-peace condition in Afghanistan and the world is crystal-clearly indicated
in the last paragraph of the NYT’s no doubt accurate second editorial yesterday,
Jan.25:
“... Many fighters are unlikely to even think about switching sides until
they see the military balance shifting. That is supposed to start happening this
spring or summer when the bulk of the 30,000 additional American troops are on
the ground. President Karzai, the United States and other partners must have
a comprehensive reconciliation plan before then. They also need to be crystal
clear abut what’s on offer – and what’s not.”
Of course we all at least sense
the difference between war to build peace through
war that’s supposed to come from military strength and common sense, on
one hand and, on the other hand, built on the reality that international peace
could be built by representatives of all nations in structuring a governed world.
The leaders of the peoples, springing
from us, the peoples, surely know about
the world’s war-threat. So all nations and all peoples need to reckon
with the unintended consequences of war. Leaders who mostly study to structure
a sustainable world environment and those mostly taken by their own careers and
quick fixes are like wild horses and/or race horses.
––––1.26.10
Okinawa Okinawa Okinawa
There is resonance for WWII
troops, not because they know much about Okinawa in most cases but because they
were
there when it was up for grabs near war’s end.
And now:
“U.S. Base at Issue in Okinawa A candidate who opposes the relocation of
an American base on Okinawa won a key Japanese mayoral election.”
That in quotes is a news summary
at the Jan. 25 NYT’s page-one’s
bottom and it can be seen by some that any purpose
for any nation fighting is in recreating world politics
as able to yank humanity
off its lethal fix on
war as decision-making. We still continue thinking of ourselves as sovereign
and war-prone. What a tragedy. What a species-rending tragedy for
all people
to
understand how very much at-risk we all are.
––––
Veterans For Peace vfp@veteransforpeace.net
Jan. 18
Remembering King
By
Michael McPhearson
Veterans for Peace
"...There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering
our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit
of war."
“Dr. King wisely saw then what is still true today,
that the world's only
hope ‘...lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit
and
go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty,
racism, and militarism.’
“This is how we ensure international security. This is how we stop nuclear
proliferation and reverse global warming.
“This January 18th remember Dr. King by proclaiming his full message. Do
not stand by while it is watered down to make us all feel good. Celebrate the
journey we have taken, but remind everyone how far we have to go. Will our nation
take up the challenge? As Dr. King said, ‘The choice is ours, and though
we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.’”...
––
VETERANS WORKING TOGETHER FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE THROUGH NON-VIOLENCE.
Veterans For Peace, 216 S. Meramec, St. Louis, MO 63105, 314-725-6005
www.veteransforpeace.org
–––
“
Selective Service System: About the Agency
“WHAT DOES SELECTIVE SERVICE PROVIDE FOR AMERICA ?
“The Selective Service System and the registration requirement for America’s
young men provide our Nation with a structure and a system of guidelines which
will provide the most prompt, efficient and equitable draft possible, if the
country should need it. America’s leaders agree that despite the success
of the All-Volunteer Force, registration with Selective Service must continue
as a key component of national security strategy.”
––– 1.25.10
A good joke & world politics
“...Eager to harvest an energy-yielding
mineral, (‘Unobtainium’),
corporate predators, joined by heavily-armed military contractors, have established
a base on Pandora" (a cyber moon).
That’s a good joke in the
movie “Avatar” – and
noticed
in the David Denby review in The New Yorker of Jan.4.
But talking about consequences of the
hellish Haiti earthquake water-and-food-and-medicine and other shortages, what
does that Avatar joke have to do with the specifics
of structuring of a united world politics designed able to cope?
––––
War ain’t fun no more
Pilotless war weapons, etc., surge today in use in an effort to dull the edge
of the advantage of an enemy using suicide bombers, etc. That’s from
what you can understand from reading the daily press.
For instance, the lead paragraph in a 1-column article under the page-one fold
of the NYT, Jan.23, is:
“WASHINGTON – Since the suicide bombing that took the lives of seven
Americans in Afghanistan on Dec.30, the Central Intelligence Agency has struck
back against militants in Pakistan with the most intensive series of missile
strikes from drone aircraft since the covert program began.”
Should a sentient person take that
news as no more than an inevitable development in a long war?
If the sentient person here is concerned about what the current war against
terrorism might be coming to, not unlike other wars, in that surprising things
do happen in them, will he or she give a thought to the fact that both a drone
and a nuclear bomb are not hand-held weapons and that, therefore, killing is
not a person-to-person experience? Further, learning to make and use drones
and nukes is something all nations can learn to make and use, given available
resources, over time.
And didn’t these conditions exist long before drones and nukes – with
at least one big exception: Never before have peoples been custodians of weapons
that could abolish civilizations.
–––
UNIFEM unifem.org
United Nations Development Fund for Women
Jan. 22
PEACE IS IMPOSSIBLE WHEN HALF THE POPULATION IS EXCLUDED FROM NEGOTIATIONS,
SAY AFGHAN WOMEN HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
Ahead of the London Conference, Women Make Strong Recommendations for Reconstruction
and Development
WHAT: Press Conference – Afghan Women Leaders’ Priorities for Afghanistan
Stabilization and Reconstruction
WHY: In the lead-up to the 28 January London Conference
on Afghanistan hosted
by the UK Government, four prominent Afghan women human rights defenders will
release their recommendations on security and governance priorities for their
country. These recommendations will provide the only concrete input from consultation
with Afghan women into the key decisions affecting the future of their country
that will be set in the London Conference. Afghan women have been too long
neglected as key partners for conflict resolution, combating extremism and
promoting social and economic revitalization. Yet, like never before they are
mobilized to demand their place in defining the country’s future. The
statement by the four Afghan women will be representative of the views of a
broad group of Afghan women civil society activists, who will meet on 24 January
in Dubai. Their message: Women’s rights and security are critical to
achieving stability; to succeed the international community cannot postpone
attention to their interests, expertise and needs. Women have a contribution
to make to peace and good governance and the time to involve them in any negotiations
and good governance reform is now.
The women’s mission is sponsored by the UN Development Fund for Women
(UNIFEM) and The Institute for Inclusive Security.
WHEN: 11 am (GMT), Wednesday, 27 January 2010
WHERE: Central Hall Westminster (John Tudor Room),
Storey’s Gate, London SW1H 9NH
––
Defensive war action
“BEIJING – China said late Monday that it
had successfully tested
the nation’s first landbased missile defense system, announcing the news
in a brief dispatch by Xinhua, the official news agency. ‘The test
is defensive
in nature and is not targeted at any country,’ the item said...”
The above is the first paragraph of a news story in the NYT of Jan. 13 on A14.
–––1.24.10
On The State
“...a great battle about the state is brewing. And, as in another influential
revolution, the first shot may have been heard in Massachusetts (where now a
Republican was elected to fill a seat considered widely as Democratic.)
To World Peace News, the insight at the end of the “Leaders” of The
(U.K.) Economist’s Jan.23-29 edition, under the article headline “Stop!”,
seems reasonable. But WPN would add that the Economist line should add that The
State of all nations existing in an anarchy among ourselves will be unique if
not baldly bizarre.
There’s a very, very big difference between the political unity within
any one nation and, on the other hand, anarchy’s
raunchy disunity in what exists now among nations. What comes down in the politics
among nations is bound
to be distinct from that which comes down in national politics. A rule of law
within a nation is not the same as an international rule of largely unenforceable
opinion.
––––
John O. Sutter josutter@juno.com
Jan. 22
Amend. Amend. Amend… Court says corporations are
people...
This is a CALL TO ACTION FROM
HOWARD ZINN, THOM HARTMANN, MEDEA BENJAMIN, FRAN & DAVID KORTEN, BILL MCKIBBEN,
BILL FLETCHER, JIM HIGHTOWER, TOM HAYDEN, REV. YEARWOOD, & MORE . .
.
Exxon. AIG. Enron. Blackwater. Edison. Halliburton. Diebold –
They've gone
after our tax dollars. Our services. Our jobs. Our schools. Our military. Our
votes. Our future. Our freedoms. And the federal courts have helped them every
step of the way.
Today, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission,
the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution
to buy elections and run our government.
Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme
Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people
rule.
We Move to Amend.
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's
ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:
•
Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations,
are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
• Guarantee the right to
vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
•
Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate "preemption" actions
by global, national, and state governments.
––
The “Move to Amend is a project of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy.
The purpose of the Campaign to Legalize Democracy is to end the illegitimate
legal doctrines that prevent the American people from governing ourselves.”
Campaign to Legalize Democracy movetoamend.org
122 State Street, Suite 405
Madison, WI 53703
–––1.23.10
Money/vote fights
are on in U.S.
“Justices, 5-4,
Reject Corporate Campaign Spending Limit Dissenters
Argue
That Ruling / Will Corrupt Democracy”.
Those are NYT’s banner-page-one-top
headline and 2-column subheadline,
today, Friday, Jan.22.
The dissenting justices on the Supreme Court decision said that “allowing
corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy,” the
lead news story’s writer, Adam Liptak, noted, paragraph two.
The underline on a 4-column photo also
on page 1 is “President
Obama, with his economic adviser, Paul A. Volker, told the banking industry on
Thursday he was ready to
fight.”
The fight would be about proposed
new limits on the size of big banks and
their ability to make risky bets.
––––
No need for “idealists”
such as the President
came on as
White House: Globalists,
(such as types like Einstein, JFK, FDR, Wilson)
Need Not Apply
(so what should anyone expect beyond what we get when diplomacy is left
to “realistic” dudes,
Clinton, Holbrooke, Mitchell?
––––
Letter to Editor
Jan. 20
Just finished reading the two articles in your latest "World Peace News" by
Lawrence Wittner and Ben Ferencz: both wonderfully inspiring pieces. Both
wonderful people, who it has been my pleasure to get to meet and know.
Yours, Jim
P.S.: I intend to read both articles to our next meeting of Citizens for
Global Solutions (this Sat.).
jamestranney@post.harvard.edu
–––
Americans for PEACE
NOW
www.peacenow.org
“ We have come a long way since my friends and I laid the foundations of
Peace
Now in 1978
“It would seem that our ideas and yours won in the Israeli and global arenas.
Even Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, one of the staunchest opponents of dividing
the biblical land of Israel into two states, said recently that he is ready to
accept a demilitarized Palestinian state next to Israel. By doing so, Netanyahu
joined other Israeli prime ministers who came from the right, such as Ariel Sharon
and Ehud Omert,who opposed the creation of a Palestinian state, only to change
their position later.
“But let’s not fool ourselves. Despite such statements, the path
leading to the actual creation of a Palestinian state is still long. In fact,
the path leading to the de facto creation of a bi-national state between the
Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a single state inhabited by two
peoples – is much shorter.
“Some 15 million Israeli-Palestinians live in Israel proper. Another 200,000
non-citizen Palestinians live in East Jerusalem and surrounding areas that were
annexed by Israel after the 1967 war. If you add to them the 3.5 million Palestinians
who live in the West Bank and Gaza, the de facto bi-national state today would
be composed of 55 percent Jews and 45 percent Palestinians. Given the differing
birthrate levels, in several short years that ratio will flip in favor of a Palestinian
majority. The Jewish state will, heaven forbid, vanish.
“By doing nothing, we are following a short
path to an ugly future: Israel
as an apartheid state with a Palestinian majority...
“Stopping the settlement of the West Bank is neither a gesture to the American
administration nor a gesture to the Palestinians. Stopping the settlements
is
vital for the sake of our future, for the sake of our Israeli identity, which
is gradually being eroded as we proceed toward the abyss of bi-nationalism. We
must do it even if we are skeptical as to the ability of the two peoples to reach
an agreement of peace and security.
“Dear friends, these are my concerns for the future. But I don’t
simply worry silently. I write and I speak out about the grave mistakes we are
making. And I encourage others to do the same and become active with Peace Now.
"Why Peace Now? Because they are doing vital work, in
both the United States and
Israel, to keep the chance for peace alive...
" Israel’s Peace Now movement (Shalom Achshav)
and Americans for Peace Now have always led the way in opposing settlement activity,
and for years have been
conducting a consistent public campaign against settlements. The shift
in public opinion in Israel and among world Jewry against settlements is in part
because
of Peace Now’s work – and because of your support...
“Peace Now is the largest grassroots peace movement focusing on a two-state
solution with security for Israel. In fact, the term ‘two-state solution’ has
entered general usage largely through the work of Peace Now and APN – with
your help.
“The opponents on the right look at the Palestinians and see only terrorists.
They view the settlements as exercising Jewish rights in the Jewish homeland.
APN asserts that the settlements are not an exercise in pioneering Zionism. Rather,
they are a threat to Israel’s future.
“My friend, Israel is capable of doing miraculous things, heroic things. I’ve seen them happen throughout my life. Surely a country that can do
countless heroic things can find a way to peace. ...”
A. B. Yehoshua
–––1.22.10
Let us not off-take our 3D glasses?
War can be fun
At least war IS funny
in that smash movie “Avatar”. For instance,
in its very last moments the movie has the hero look up from a scientists’-research
coffin in which he exists for research and wink quickly at the audience.
At the seemingly unending of the dumb show, the bold heroine and the hero make
up and lead a raggle of peaceniks armed with their modern and ancient animal
accessories, etc. They’re in a war against a kooky military commanded by
a nut put down at the end of the all-dreamed-up bunkery.
One thing about the expected victory of good guys and scantily-dressed-girl warriors – if
that’s what it was meant to be – was that not one drop of blood,
real or fake, was seen during all of the long-drawn-out military dreamscape entertainment.
And miraculously peace had been made for war in a dreamed up reconciliation of
two romantically conflicted peacenik squabblers. Here a unity of brave and properly
motivated warrior-poos outdid a professional military in a great military rumpus
of roofus entertainment. Wink.
–––– 1.21.09
Bad news, Jan.20, 2010:
“G.O.P. Surges to Senate Victory in Massachusetts”,
NYT, lead news
story.
The overriding war/peace reality for all peoples is :
The only way for humanity to start to stand up to the major war/peace human threat
is to put down the current reality that the impotent state of international anarchy
dooms us all. The only possible remedy, it seems correctly to many, is the creation
of a well governed world democracy of some ratifiable kind.
––
Sherwood Ross sherwoodrt@yahoo.com
Jan. 19
NETWORKS GIVING AMERICANS
SANITIZED VERSION OF WAR
U.S. television networks have given the public a sanitized, largely bloodless
view of the war in Iraq, an academic authority on communications writes.
"The contrast between what Americans saw on the news and what European and
pan-Arab audiences saw is striking. Foreign news bureaus showed far more blood
and gore than American stations showed. The foreign media were delivering audiences
the true face of the war," writes Michelle Pulaski, an assistant professor
at Pace University, New York. ...”
––
David Swanson david@davidswanson.org
Jan. 19
Advocates Ask Media to Report Fully and Honestly
on Election Outcomes
OPEN LETTER TO THE MEDIA from Mimi Kennedy, National Advisory Board Chair,
Progressive Democrats of America
Who, What, When, Where and Why are the fundamental questions of good journalism. Sometimes
a “H” question is added: How?
We, the election protection community in
the United States, challenge the U.S. media to ask the H question as a matter
of course in election reporting. How is the vote cast and counted in
a particular race being covered? ...
––––1.20.10
All hail the McBrides!
The inspiration of a black man’s tribute to his white mother produced this
textbreaker in an NYT obituary by Dennis Hevesi Jan.18:
“The inspiration for ‘The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute
to his White Mother.’”
The obit’s title is “Ruth
McBride Jordon, 88, a Son’s
Heroine”.
The black son’s first name is James. He wrote the book. The
obit ended
with a quote remembered by the son: “When he asked if he was
black or white, she said:”
“‘You’re a human being.’”
“And what about God?”
“‘God is the color of water.’”
–––
Glad to Be 75
Jan.12
...I’m sending you the response to my letter to Pres. Obama – He
inherited more than he bargained for! I don’t doubt his good intentions,
but, I’ve lived under communism & Russian occupation (1945-1956) & I
told him that the U.S. has no business in Iraq nor in Afghanistan!! We have enough
internal violence and other social problems; corruption in the medical? services, & huge
ignorance by large segment of the population!
I’m glad I’m going to be 75 & I’ll not be around for long & will
not see humanity destruct itself – I wish you the very best with your publication
of World Peace! Idealistic? Yes, but, it’s a refreshing direction! My very
best to you.
Erika Zalay
Manhattan
The above is from a letter to WPN.
_
THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON
December 15, 2009
Dear Friend:
Thank you for writing. I have heard from many Americans about our Nation’s
foreign policy, and I appreciate your perspective.
I am committed to making my administration the most open and transparent in history
and part of delivering on that promise is hearing from people like you. I take
seriously your opinions and respect your point of view on this important matter.
Please know that your concerns will be on my mind in the days ahead.
Thank you again for writing. I encourage you to visit www.WhiteHouse.gov to learn
more about my Administration or to contact me in the future.
Sincerely,
Barack Obama
–––1.19.10
NOW, HOW ABOUT A
PLANET-ENVIRONMENT
JIGGERY - DO DOODLE?
Below are excerpts from the article by Leslie Kaufman on “Preserving
the
Planet, Straining the Relationship Therapists
Report Seeing an Increase in Household
Disputes Over Just How Green to Go” from the NYT of Jan.18, A11.
“...As awareness of environmental concerns has grown, therapists say they
are seeing a rise in bickering between couples and family members over the extent
to which they should change their lives to save the planet...
“‘As the focus on climate increases in the public’s mind, it
can’t help but be a part of people’s planning about the future,’ said
Thomas Joseph Doherty, a clinical psychologist in Portland, Ore., who has a practice
that focuses on environmental issues. ‘It touches every part of how they
live: what they eat, whether they want to fly, what kind of vacation they want.’
“While no study has documented how frequent these clashes have become,
therapists agree that the green issue can quickly become poisonous because it
is so morally charged. Friends or family members who are not devoted to the environmental
cause can become irritated by life choices they view as ostentatiously self-denying
or politically correct. ...”
The “take” of World
Peace News - a World Government Report, worldpeacenews.org,
on the above includes emphasis on the view that avoiding
the need
of all nations to create a governed world shouldn’t muddy
stormy ocean
waters surrounding the under-belly of the world government imperative.
After the human race bows out of all
the human preliminaries and even a cursory review of options, what better could
save us hippity-hops from our most peculiar
bent on trying to survive under the hoot of the Treaty of Westphalia dated 1648?
–––
Bettina Luescher bettina.luescher@wfp.org
HAITI UPDATE – Jan. 17
On Saturday, World Food Program reached nearly 40,000 people today in and around
Port-au-Prince with high energy biscuits. On Sunday, WFP aims to reach some 60,000
people. We started distributing food within 24 hours after the quake. ...
–––
Jean Hudon globalvisionary@earthrainbownetwork.com
Jan. 16
Re: Earth Federation Movement
Below is a letter sent to Jean Hudon.
Dear Jean Hudon,
I find the information that you select to share with activists like myself
very helpful and extremely relevant. I also very much respect
and appreciate that you also include analyses regarding the "deep
politics" of the corrupt system which we are trying to fix.
The Earth Federation Movement (see www.earthfederation.info) has as its goal
to develop a new world body parallel to and independent from, the United Nations. We
feel the UN is undemocratic and part of a global war system. Although
some UN agencies are beneficial to the public and need to be preserved, the obsolete
UN Charter itself guarantees that the UN cannot control the "new world
order" (shadow world government) nor save the world.
The Earth Constitution, drafted over a period of 30 years by visionaries from
the World Constitution and Parliament Association, is designed to return
democracy to "we, the people" and could be the key to an
emerging worldwide peace, environmental, and human rights movement.
Activists such as myself have started to realize that we need more
than worldwide networking, we need a worldwide movement with real authority – and
we need "something bigger" than multinational corporations, international investment
bankers, and corrupted nation-states. That's where the authority of
the Earth Constitution enters the picture.
That "something bigger" leads to the strategy of an emerging
Earth Federation under the Earth Constitution – a gift to humanity from
true visionaries who many years ago anticipated the crises we now face.
Thanks again for your important work and dedication on behalf of mother earth
and the world public interest.
Roger Kotila
Earth Federation
West Coast Coordinator
–––1.18.10
Humanity at risk
As President Obama steps up the war that is inflaming ever wider sectors of the
Middle East, U.S.A. continues its rapid slide toward Third World status. The
two developments are not unrelated. Spending on war does not boost an economy
as does domestic spending – and the Pentagon has been spending trillions
on war. ...
Sherwood Ross
at the start of a news release
Jan.16.
Mr. Ross seems to WPN to overstate his fair point
about the balance of power in the world and we hesitated to note it above. Dealing
with WPN’s main
emphasis, we’d add that balance-of-power thinking that poisons human debate
these horrendous days IS a trap which engulfs all nations.
––
“ European Union@United Nations”
euunwebmaster@gmail.com
Jan.14
Haiti: European Union provides €3 million for immediate relief and
launches
EU-coordinated response to the earthquake
The European Commission has moved immediately to help the victims of the earthquake
which struck Haiti by adopting a fast-track "primary emergency" decision
of €3 million ($4.35 million) for immediate relief activities.
Earlier today, EU Vice President/High Representative Catherine Ashton spoke with
UNSG Ban Ki-moon to offer the EU's immediate support. In comments to the press,
she emphasized, "We must show, as we have done in the past, that we
are indeed a 'global community', able to find the resources needed to save
lives
and to rebuild existences."
The people of Haiti can 'count on Europe'
Relief experts are on their way to Haiti to strengthen the EU's response capabilities
on the ground. In addition, the European Union's Civil Protection
Mechanism has been activated, with its Monitoring and Information Centre
(MIC) coordinating
the activities.
HR/VP Ashton noted, "We are working closely together on the humanitarian
relief side with the Member States. A number of Member States, in particular
Belgium, France and Spain, but many others too, have sent teams and material,
such as water purification, field hospitals and tents. The first
teams have arrived and are active in search and rescue operations.
The UK sent an urban search and rescue team yesterday. A French search and rescue
team arrived in Haiti today, 14 January. The Belgian plane with an
assessment and coordination team together with specialised teams from Luxembourg
is about
to land in Port-au-Prince."
Relief funds are channelled through
the Commission's Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) under the responsibility
of Commissioner Karel De Gucht. The Commission
is one of the largest humanitarian donors in Haiti providing around €28
million since 2008 ($40.56 million).
–––1.17.10
Shall we wake up
to our world’s
human condition?
Well, for instance –
The one-payer fix
may be seen to run
with a keep-war fix
What is meant here is that a big sovereign
nation’s health care “system” can
gravitate into a fix centered on a traditional, overall will to keep using very
expensive, self-pauperizing conditions in the same way that the nation’s
military notions can evolve into a decision-making among nations living in a
delusion that a 1648 fix on national sovereignty still can be functional in
a world where nuclear weapons could abolish all people.
Thinking anew about the survival roles
of flummoxed nations needs to be adapted constitutionally by
all nations lest humanity skid all the way down the greased-up mountainside we,
all people, are
tobogganed on now.
Anyway most people, selflessly and decently led by national leaders, might agree
that some things are radically wrong about the way humanity is shaping up for
a super-super holocaust. It even might be widely agreed that fixing the sad human
condition of a war-preparing species might be considered as a spur to the creation
of a lasting fix on what’s suicidal in our notions now.
––––
pmitchell@hastingsgroup.com
Jan.14
“
DOOMSDAY CLOCK” MOVES ONE MINUTE
AWAY FROM MIDNIGHT
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Adjusts Clock From 5 to 6 Minutes Before Midnight;
Encouraging Progress Seen Around Globe in Both Key Threat Areas: Nuclear Weapons
and Climate Change
.
NEW YORK CITY – January 14, 2010. Citing a more “hopeful
state of world affairs” in relation to the twin threats posed by nuclear
weapons and climate change, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) is
moving the
minute hand of its famous Doomsday Clock one minute away from midnight. It
is now 6 minutes to midnight. The decision by the BAS Science and Security
Board was made in consultation with the Bulletin’s Board of Sponsors,
which includes 19 Nobel Laureates.
BAS announced the Clock change today at a news conference in New York City broadcast
live at http://www.TurnBackTheClock.org for viewing around the globe. The new
BAS Web platform allows people in all nations to monitor and get involved in
efforts to move the Doomsday Clock farther away from midnight.
In a statement supporting the decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday
Clock, the BAS Board said: “It is 6 minutes to midnight. We are poised
to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons. For the first
time since atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, leaders of nuclear weapons states
are cooperating to vastly reduce their arsenals and secure all nuclear bomb-making
material. And for the first time ever, industrialized and developing countries
alike are pledging to limit climate-changing gas emissions that could render
our planet nearly uninhabitable. These unprecedented steps are signs of a growing
political will to tackle the two gravest threats to civilization – the
terror of nuclear weapons and runaway climate change.”
Created in 1947 by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Doomsday Clock
has been adjusted only 18 times prior to today, most recently in January 2007
and February 2002 after the events of 9/11. By moving the hand of the Clock
away from midnight – the figurative end of civilization – the BAS
Board of Directors is drawing attention to encouraging signs of progress. At
the same
time, the small increment of the change reflects both the threats that remain
around the globe and the danger that governments may fail to deliver on pledged
actions on reducing nuclear weapons and mitigating climate change.
The BAS statement explains: “This hopeful state of world affairs leads
the boards of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists – which include 19
Nobel laureates – to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock back
from five to six minutes to midnight. By shifting the hand back from midnight
by only
one additional minute, we emphasize how much needs to be accomplished, while
at the same time recognizing signs of collaboration among the United States,
Russia, the European Union, India, China, Brazil, and others on nuclear security
and on climate stabilization.”
The statement continues: “A key to the new era of cooperation is a change
in the U.S. government’s orientation toward international affairs brought
about in part by the election of Obama. With a more pragmatic, problem-solving
approach, not only has Obama initiated new arms reduction talks with Russia,
he has started negotiations with Iran to close its nuclear enrichment program,
and directed the U.S. government to lead a global effort to secure loose fissile
material in four years. He also presided over the U.N. Security Council last
September where he supported a fissile material cutoff treaty and encouraged
all countries to live up to their disarmament and nonproliferation obligations
under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty…”
RECOMMENDED ACTION STEPS
The BAS statement outlines the need for action on the following:
* Developing new nuclear doctrines that disavow the use of existing nuclear weapons,
reduce the launch readiness of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces, and remove them
from the day-to-day operations of their militaries;
* Finishing the job of consolidating and securing military and civilian nuclear
material in Russia, the United States, and elsewhere and continuing to eliminate
the excess;
* Completing negotiations, signing and ratifying as soon as possible the new
U.S.-Russia treaty providing for reductions in deployed nuclear warheads and
delivery systems;
* Upon signing of the treaty, immediately embarking upon new talks to further
reduce the nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States;
* Completing the next review of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May 2010
with commitments to weapons reduction and nuclear nonproliferation by both the
nuclear haves and have-nots;
* Implementing multinational management of the civilian nuclear energy fuel cycle
with strict standards for safety, security, and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons,
including eliminating reprocessing for plutonium separation;
* Strengthening the International Atomic Energy Agency’s capacity to
oversee nuclear materials and technology development and transfer;
* Adopting and fulfilling climate change agreements to reduce carbon dioxide
emissions through tax incentives, harmonized domestic regulation and practice;
* Transforming the coal power sector of the world economy to retire older plants; and
* Vastly increasing public and private investments in alternatives to carbon-emitting
energy sources, such as solar and wind, and in technologies for energy storage,
and sharing the results worldwide
.
ABOUT BAS AND THE CLOCK
Founded in 1945 by University of Chicago scientists who had helped develop the
first atomic weapons in the Manhattan Project, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
subsequently created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 as a way to convey both the imagery
of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown
to zero). The decision to move the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is made
by the Bulletin's Board of Directors in consultation with its Board of Sponsors,
which includes 19 Nobel Laureates. The Clock has become a universally recognized
indicator of the world's vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate
change, and emerging technologies in the life sciences.
–––1.16.10
On world affairs hopelessness
Hope Exists
Consider the
European
Union
By David Swanson
david@davidswanson.org
Jan.
11
... the first place we should look is Europe, and our guide should be Steven
Hill's brilliant and comprehensive new book "Europe's Promise: Why
the European
Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age."
The European Union (EU) is the world's largest and most competitive economy,
and most of those living in it are wealthier, healthier, and happier than most
Americans. Europeans work shorter hours, have a greater say in how their
employers behave, receive lengthy paid vacations and paid parental leave, can
rely on guaranteed paid pensions, have free or extremely inexpensive comprehensive
and preventative healthcare, enjoy free or extremely inexpensive educations from
preschool through college, impose half the per-capita environmental damage of
Americans, endure a fraction of the violence found in the United States, imprison
a fraction of the prisoners locked up here, and benefit from democratic representation,
engagement, and civil liberties unimagined in the land where we're teased that
the world hates our rather mediocre "freedoms."
Europe even offers a model foreign policy,
bringing neighboring nations toward democracy by holding out the prospect of
EU membership, while we drive other
nations away from good governance at great expense of blood and treasure.
What wonderful news! And yet, how many times during the Great Health Insurance
Reform Debate did anyone take a look at the wheels already invented in Europe,
where single-payer systems and systems built around non-profit insurance companies
and price controls out-perform the for-profit U.S. system in every way? We
would rather suffer more and die sooner than learn from people who live across
an ocean, even if they learned a lot from us, even if we imposed structures on
them a half-century ago that would have benefitted us as well.
Of course, this WOULD all be good news, if not for the extreme and horrible danger
of higher taxes! Working less and living longer with less illness, a cleaner
environment, a better education, more cultural enjoyments, paid vacations, and
governments that respond better to the public – that all SOUNDS nice, but
the reality involves the ultimate evil of higher taxes! Or does it?
As Hill points out, Europeans do pay higher income taxes, but they generally
pay lower state, local, property, and social security taxes. (They also
pay those higher income taxes out of a larger paycheck.) And what
Europeans keep in earned income they do not have to spend on healthcare or college
or job
training or numerous other expenses that are hardly optional but that we seem
intent on celebrating our privilege to personally pay for.
If we pay roughly as much as Europeans in taxes, why do we have to pay for everything
we need on our own, in addition? Why don't our taxes pay for our needs? The
primary reason is that so much of our taxes goes to wars and the military. Recently
much of it also goes to Wall Street and corporate bailouts. And this is
not entirely new. In a given year, our government gives roughly $300 billion
in tax breaks to businesses for their employee health benefits. That's
enough to actually pay for everyone in this country to have healthcare, but it's
just a fraction of what we dump into the for-profit system that, as its name
suggests, exists primarily to generate profits. Most of what we waste
on
this madness does not go through the government, a fact of which we are inordinately
proud.
Europe is not perfection, and indeed has much to learn from us. Notably,
we are ahead of Europe in confronting the endless menace of racism and nativism. Europe
faces many dangers, but any lamented little steps its nations take in an American
direction on taxes and benefits are relative to the great distance that separates
us. Even were Europe to implode tomorrow, which seems far less likely
than the United States doing so, it would have shown us the basic model for a
more
just and sustainable capitalist society in which wealth is more equitably distributed
and most people are happier, less stressed, and less prone to severe frustration
or violence.
The key to this, as Hill demonstrates, is a deeper and richer democracy in which
workers share seats with owners on councils overseeing corporations, children's
assemblies propose new laws to legislatures, everyone is automatically registered
to vote, proportional representation allows more voices to be heard, free media
is provided to campaigns (and newspapers and independent public media subsidized),
and campaigns are financed by the public – using some of those hated taxes
that we prefer to bestow on weapons makers and bankers.
Of course, when I say "we prefer" I'm being tongue-in-cheek. The
point is that Americans, in polls and surveys, would prefer to move much of our
money from the military and bailouts to human needs. The problem is primarily
that our views are not represented in our government, as this anecdote from "Europe's
Promise" suggests:
"A few years ago, an American acquaintance of mine who lives in Sweden told
me that he and his Swedish wife were in New York City and, quite by chance, ended
up sharing a limousine to the theatre district with then-U.S. Senator John Breaux
from Louisiana and his wife. Breaux, a conservative, anti-tax Democrat,
asked my acquaintance about Sweden and swaggeringly commented about 'all those
taxes the Swedes pay,' to which this American replied, 'The problem with Americans
and their taxes is that we get nothing for them.' He then went on to tell
Breaux about the comprehensive level of services and benefits that Swedes receive
in return for their taxes. ‘If Americans knew what Swedes receive for their
taxes, we would probably riot,’ he told the senator. The rest
of
the ride to the theater district was unsurprisingly quiet."
–––
Streit Council
newsletter@streitcouncil.org
Jan.13
What will the Lisbon Treaty – now in force – mean for Europe and
the rest of us?
The Lisbon Treaty – agreed upon by EU leaders in Portugal's capital
in December 2007, but only completely ratified this past October – is a
tremendous step for European unity and harmony, and marks a historic, dramatic
shift in European and global dynamics. The treaty created the positions of European
President (that is, President of the European Council, replacing the rotating
presidency) and High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy,
both meant to present a united EU position. The treaty also increases
the use of majority voting in the Council of Ministers, and increases involvement
of the democratically-elected European Parliament in the legislative process.
In addition, the “pillar system” – consisting of the European
Community (EC), the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), and Police and
Judicial Cooperation in Criminal Matters (PJCC) – was eliminated, giving
the EU a consolidated legal personality for the first time. Finally, the treaty also
made the EU’s human rights charter – the Charter of Fundamental Rights – legally
binding on all EU members...
The Streit Council for a Union of Democracies
1629 K Street NW
Washington, DC 20006
202-986-2433
–––– 1.15.10
Our sad humanity
For documentation, just look at page one of today’s
(Jan.14) NYT.
Top right is a 4-column photo of a woman walking in a row of partly bedsheeted
corpses stretched out on a concrete floor.
The photo underline and several attached headlines are: “Haiti Lies in
Ruins; Grim Search for Untold Dead” “With Port-au-Prince hit by the
worst earthquake in 200 years, the city struggled to rescue trapped victims and
remove bodies.” “‘I Just Want My Wife’s Corpse’,
Survivor Pleads” “Vast Destruction / Hobbles Effort / to Send Aid” and
“In Google’s Rebuke of China, Focus Falls on Cybersecurity” “Wall
St. Ethos Under Scrutiny” “Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List” “Democrats
Fight to Hold Crucial Seat: Kennedy’s”
“EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI IN
WASHINGTON... IN NEW YORK... ON THE WEB...Plus
11 bottom-of-page summary headlines and an op-ed advisory: Gail
Collins PAGE
A37, with a textbreaker: “Bad times in the Bay State.”
For the ever-advocating World Peace
News - a World Government Report, worldpeacenews.org,
the only good news we come
up with is the perceived hope for a slight uptick
favoring a start on solutions in humanity’s old idea of the creation of
a justly governed world based on people as sovereigns in world affairs.
–––– 1.14.10
IN AN UNGOVERNED
WORLD OF TERRORISM
The 7.0 earthquake that devastated
the “poorest and most disaster-prone
nation in the hemisphere,” late yesterday, reported today, Wednesday, Jan.
13, NYT, center
of
page one, 3 columns, with a 3-column photo, surely will command great bundles
of aid from all able nations.
But of course that well might not be “enough.”
The NYT correspondents, Simon Romero
and Marc Lacey, write from dateline Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic, the record
earthquake caused "a crowded hospital
to collapse, leveling countless buildings and shantytown dwellings, and bringing
even more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest
and most disaster-prone.
“The earthquake, the worst in the region in more than 200 years, left the
country in a shambles. As night fell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital,
fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness...
“The headquarters of the United Nations Mission was seriously damaged,
the United Nations said in a statement, and many employees were missing. Part
of the national palace had collapsed, the Associated Press reported. ...”
And so on about many poor Haitian
people who will be badly hurt and perhaps even killed because of the absence
of sustainable help that would be their right IF humanity at large had come to
realize that the world needs – really needs – to be governed as soon
as that may be possible.
We are ALL just people and some things of hurtful consequences such as what happened
yesterday in Haiti is not unlike what might happen to ANY group of people in
the world.
WE, all people, are at risk one way or another. It merely makes good sense for
all people to be as prepared as much as we can be in living in an ungoverned
world and to not care practically about others is like not caring about ourselves,
like that or not.
–––– 1.13.10
Here’s a modest summary of main facts
Of Humanity in our state
of war-peace confusions:
Facts: nuclear weapons; almost 200 member nations existing under an 1648 sovereign-nation
rubric; wars, proxy and otherwise, atomic weapons having been used twice by the
U.S. to end WWII, etc.; a politically-disunited United Nations happily bumbling
along under a Charter now happily endured under the now-spineless 1648 Westphalia
Treaty, made by nations after a 30-year war.
War-peace condition now: it’s dismissive of proposals that the 1648 international
war-peace rubric be replaced by the rubric of a sanely-governed world political
unity made by nations at a conference representing all nations.
Prospects? Don’t ask.
––––1.12.10
War X-rays jobs
Shall we emphasize the above as areas
where an all-nation ratifiable world-peace unity could work to benefit human
lives greatly?
In answer let’s take
a look at the headline news of the lead NYT news-story
of Jan.9 , “85,000 MORE JOBS / CUT IN DECEMBER / FOGGING OUTLOOK”,
page one, and also let’s ponder the sense of the top news summary of the
same day, page 2: “The plan for the wide use of X-ray body scanners on
airline passengers has rekindled a debate about the safety of delivering small
doses of radiation to millions of people – a process some experts say will
result in additional cancer deaths. PAGE A4.”
The money that goes into wars and
preparation for war is money that doesn’t
go into heath care, the making of jobs, the creating of more airline safety methods
and many other imperatives. Right?
Of course our human alternative here
is not to surrender our national sovereignty but to
lead in trying to help pool it justly in a sane world
political unity.
Of course, too, global political leaders
are to be expected to be as loath to discuss the world political unity for a
sustainable world peace as are our own
elected leaders and especially our own appointed aides.
–––– 1.11.10
A life in perspective
“GUS DUR,” almost
blind and dead at 69, had been removed from the
presidency of Indonesia in 2001.
The popular and lighthearted guy, as reported by The Economist of Jan. 9, had
been quoted by attendants commenting on Abdurrahman Wahid’s condition:
“....About his removal from the presidency, ‘I need help to step
up, let alone to step down.’ About losing power, ‘It’s nothing. I regret more that I lost 27 recordings of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.’”
––––
Sherwood Ross sherwoodrt@yahoo.com
Dec. 23
“ U.S. WAR SPENDING EXCEEDS
ALL STATE GOVERNMENT
OUTLAYS
By Sherwood Ross
“
The U. S. spends more for war annually than all state governments combined spend
for the health,education, welfare, and safety of 308 million Americans.
“Joseph Henchman, director of state projects for the Tax Foundation of
Washington, D.C., says the states collected a total of $781 billion in taxes
in 2008.
“For a rough comparison, according to Wikipedia
data,the total budget for defense in fiscal year 2010 will be at least $880 billion
and could possibly
top $1 trillion. That’s more than all the state governments collect.
“Henchman says all American local governments combined (cities, counties,
etc.) collect about $500 billion in taxes. Add that to total state tax take and
you get over $1.3 trillion. This means Uncle Sam’s Pentagon is sopping
up nearly as much money as all state, county, city, and other governmental units
spend to run the country.
“If the Pentagon figure of $1 trillion is somewhat less than all other
taxing authorities, keep in mind the FBI, the various intelligence agencies,
the VA, the National Institutes of Health (biological warfare) are also spending
on war-related activities.
“A question that describes the above and answers itself is: In what area
can the federal government operate where states and cities cannot tread? The
answer is: foreign affairs – raising armies, fighting wars, conducting
diplomacy, etc. And so Uncle Sam keeps enlarging this area. His emphasis is not
on diplomacy, either.
“For every buck spent by the State Department, which gets some $50 billion
a year, the Pentagon spends $20. As for the Peace Corps, its budget is a paltry
$375 million – hardly enough to keep the Pentagon elephant in peanuts.
“Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz and finance authority Linda Bilmes
write in their ‘The Three Trillion Dollar War’ (WW. Norton), ‘defense
spending has been growing as a percentage of discretionary funding (money that
is not required to be spent on entitlements like Social Security), from 48 percent
in 2000 to 51 percent today. That means that our defense needs are gobbling up
a larger share of taxpayers’ money than ever before.’
“And they add, ‘The Pentagon’s budget has increased by more
than $600 billion, cumulatively, since we invaded Iraq.’ With its 1,000
bases in the U.S. and another 800 bases globally, the U.S. truly has become a ‘Warfare
State.’ Today, military-related products account for about one-fourth of
total U.S. GDP. This includes 10,000 nuclear weapons. Indeed the U.S. has lavished
$5.5 trillion just on nukes over the past 70 years.
“No other nation has anything remotely like this menacing global presence.
The Pentagon strengthens its grip by running joint ‘training’ exercises
with the military of 110 other nations, including outright dictatorships that
suppress internal unrest.
“The U.S. spends more on weaponry than the next dozen nations combined
and is by far the No. 1 world arms peddler. ‘The government employs some
6,500 people just to coordinate and administer its arms sales program in conjunction
with senior officials at American embassies around the world who spend most of
their ‘diplomatic’ careers working as arms salesmen,’ writes
Chalmers Johnson in ‘Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire
(Henry Holt).’
“Chalmers goes on to say the U.S military establishment today is ‘close
to being beyond civilian control’ and that despite its ability to ‘deliver
death and destruction to any target on earth and expect little in the way of
retaliation’ it demands more and newer equipment ‘while the Pentagon
now more or less sets its own agenda’ and ‘monopolizes the formulation
and conduct of American foreign policy.’
“How long will it be before this tyrannical, anti-democratic, colossus
that is sucking up as much money for war as all states, counties and cities spend
on peace – and which straddles the globe, boosts dictators and beats the
war drums – turns on its own people?”
–––1.10.10
On the anatomy of corruption
You must complain
But you don’t
want to complain – in
or out of writing. Complaining would imply that you or I or she was complaining
against a whole agency, a whole
system of government. The effort here now is to mitigate corruption, not to focus
on fault of any one main corrupt element in order to punish it.
But your unwillingness
to complain in writing means that the government segment to which you are talking
will not
move forward on your suggestion that it look
into your complaint.
And so deadlock. Nothing much
is done to eliminate corruption, national and international. Citizen representatives
elected to act against corruption find two things: they
feel overwhelmed to deal with a main element of their duty; they find a good
excuse to dodge heinous duty: “You must complain.”
–––
David Swanson david@davidswanson.org
Weapons –
from Woodstock
Dec. 23
Woodstock: 3 Days Of Peace And Music... 60 Years Of Weapons Manufacturing
By Laurie Kirby, AfterDowningStreet
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/48658
WOODSTOCK, N.Y. – I’m proud of my small town’s worldwide association
with peace. Many times during the 24 years that I’ve lived here, I’ve
stood in peace vigils on the Village Green – and provided a bit of local
color for visitors’ snapshots. Tourists and other assorted pilgrims are
drawn to Woodstock by peace as well as by the festival that didn’t happen
here.
So I was stunned as I sat the other day in our excellent public library, examining
an archive which they store in a remote closet. The documents told me that for
six decades Woodstock’s largest employer has been making crucial, custom
components for nuclear missiles.
In the 60s and 70s, hippies graced the Village Green. A mile away, down a banal
country lane, under the benign gaze of a statue of the Buddha, skilled workers
assembled fans that were "critical to the success of nearly every U.S. military
missile program," as the company’s promotional material boasted. And
specially-designed Woodstock fans were busy in the skies over Vietnam in B-52
bombers, making possible the "Christmas Bombings" of 1972, which were
the largest heavy bombing strikes launched by the U.S. since World War II.
Today, Made-In-Woodstock components fly F-15s and F-16s and Apache attack helicopters
over Iraq, rumble through Afghanistan in Bradley tanks, fire warheads from rocket
launchers, and prowl the oceans in nuclear submarines.
The Iraq War provided an upturn in Woodstock’s weapons contracts, as had
the Vietnam and Korean Wars ("Woodstock Company Expands For War Work" was
the headline of a local newspaper in the early 1950s).
The Cold War work of Woodstock’s Rotron Inc. fueled the growth of the town
and provided employment for some of its artists. The company, which also makes
civilian products alongside its core military work, has been a notable supporter
of community efforts such as the rescue squad. Meanwhile (although this only
became known in the 1980s), TCE and other highly toxic byproducts of weapons
production were contaminating the wells of neighborhood homes, who to this day
can’t drink their well water or grow their own vegetables...
What does it mean, I wondered, that for 60 years Woodstock, with its hippie-granola-peace
reputation, has quietly had an economy anchored in nuclear terror and arms manufacturing?
It doesn’t mean that our tiny town is particularly evil. Rather the reverse:
it means that Woodstock – like all towns – is both special and, at
the same time, like everyone else.
All over the United States, in every congressional district, communities depend
upon the war economy. Our own weapons-components plant, though it looms large
in our local economy, is a small fish in the huge and murky pond of military
contractors.
It means that, yes, even in Woodstock, too much of our hard work and creativity
is expended producing products and services that go to war, that is, to desolation
and waste.
And it means that, together with towns around the world, we have a responsibility
to turn our local productivity in a positive direction.
Environmental, economic, and security crises are forcing us to rethink the economy.
War makes all these crises worse. We can help to solve them by promoting peaceful,
green manufacturing and services.
In a recession, people are naturally afraid of rocking the boat when jobs are
at stake. But so many things we actually need are desperately underfunded. Fixing
our infrastructure, for example, and educating our children. When money is put
into these, it creates more jobs (per dollar invested) than war production. ...
–––1.9.10
On disunity GLITCH
“WASHINGTON – President
Obama on Thursday (this is Friday, Jan.8,
and the quoting is from the top of page one of the NYT today) ordered intelligence
agencies to take a series of steps to streamline
how terrorism threats are pursued
and analyzed, saying the government had to respond aggressively to the failures
that allowed a Nigerian man to ignite an explosive mixture on a commercial jetliner
on Christmas Day. ...”
This awful and needed burden to pursue and respond accrued mainly from the failure
of all nations to do for international relations what nations do “naturally” for
ourselves, unite the whole into a political unity able to make, judge and enforce
law.
––––
Population
Connection
action@populationconnection.org
...Recent polls show that a majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum
strongly support the principles in the worldwide consensus reached at the ICPD
(International Conference on Population and Development), including providing
voluntary family planning and reproductive health services.
Millions of lives have been improved and saved through effective and affordable
reproductive health programs, which have proven to prevent the deaths of women
and children, reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, grow economies and preserve natural
resources. ...
–––
Bettina Luescher
bettina.luescher@wfp.org
SITUATION
IN SOUTHERN
SOMALIA
Jan. 5
Rising threats and attacks on humanitarian operations, as well as the imposition
of a string of unacceptable demands from armed groups, have made it virtually
impossible for the World Food Programme (WFP) to continue reaching up to one
million people in need in southern Somalia.
WFP's humanitarian operations in southern Somalia have been under escalating
attacks from armed groups, leading to this partial suspension of humanitarian
food distributions in much of southern Somalia.
WFP is deeply concerned about rising hunger and suffering among the most vulnerable
due to these unprecedented and inhumane attacks on purely humanitarian operations.
WFP is continuing to provide life saving food distributions in the rest of
the country, including the capital, Mogadishu, reaching more than two-thirds
of the
hungry it has been targeting – or 1.8 million people. In addition, resources
and relief workers are being re-deployed from southern areas in the event that
people start moving away from areas where food distributions have been suspended.
WFP is an impartial, non-political humanitarian agency that has been working
in partnership with the people of Somalia for more than 40 years, providing
assistance to the poorest of the poor throughout Somalia’s years of conflict
and before. The recent pressures on our work from armed groups in southern
Somalia are impeding
our humanitarian mandate.
Even in good years, Somalia is only able to meet 40 per cent of the food needs
of its population through internal production. In the last five years, local
production has averaged only about 30 per cent of food needs in Somalia. WFP’s
operation in Somalia is fully funded in the coming months to reach all the
projected beneficiaries.
WFP is working closely with its partners to pre-position supplies and prepare
to provide assistance to any population movements either within Somalia, or
across the country's borders into neighbouring countries.
WFP’s offices in Wajid, Buale, Garbahare, Afmadow, Jilib and Belet Weyne
in southern Somalia are temporarily closed, and food supplies and equipment
have been moved, along with staff, to safer areas in order to ensure that food
assistance
continues to reach as many vulnerable people as possible.
Staff safety is a key concern for WFP and recent attacks, threats, harassment
and demands for payments by armed groups have decimated the humanitarian food
lifeline, making it virtually impossible to reach up to one million woman and
children and other highly vulnerable people.
–––––1.8.10
We insatiate zombie piglets
“Bookstores were filled ... with 20-20 hindsight, explaining how capitalism
went to hell. Blame was spread around: to politicians (for deregulating financial
markets), to bankers (for gambling with exotic derivatives they barely understood)
and to the rest of us (for living beyond our means, like insatiate zombie piglets.)
Hey, Dwight Garner, column, NYT, THEArts ,
page one,
Jan.6. Knock that depreciating
stuff off. We world political unitarians didn’t let up from knocking our
fragile heads against the stone wall of, well, conventional ignorance about what
it will take for our species to survive our mad nuclear age.
____
Resolutions
Resolutions
Resolutions
Here’s 1 of 30 or so of David Swanson’s
widely admirable output:
“I resolve never to let up until each and every person, including the highest
of officials, are held to the same rule of law, war criminals are prosecuted,
illegal wars are ended, illegal prisons are closed everywhere, and illegal spying
is ceased.”
Given its context, this resolution refers to conditions in the U.S.
But if the condition among the “sovereign” nations
of the world remains a state of anarchy, all nations are held to attend to their
own affairs
and avoid international entanglements.
How could there be hope that any one or more
nations would seek to develop the wit and strength to act in accord with the
need for preparing to create a world state able to outlaw war, to set up a
firm rule of law in conflict
with diplomatic needs or in any serious way to end illegality within its own
borders?
Isn’t this where the 1648 condition of national
sovereignty fails now?
––––
On Behalf of Olek Netzer
Dec. 23
INSTITUTE UDN
(United Democratic Nations)
Free democratic nations of the world will form a UDN organization alongside
the UN and without changing their participation in the UN or taking away any
of its legal and actual authority. UDN constitution will have it:
– No UDN member-nation could undertake any military action against any
other country in the world. All necessary military actions will have to be taken
by the UDN majority decision.
– No UDN member nation will have the right to veto its majority decisions.
– All UDN member nations, when in conflict with another nation or insurgents
within their borders, will be obligated to enter into peace negotiations with
their enemy-nations under the auspices of UDN and/or UN committees.
– UDN Peace and Reconciliation committee will be always and unconditionally
active in direct negotiation with governments of nations regarded by it as threat
to peace. ...
–––
“
David Parker” davefparker@shaw.ca
RE: United Democratic Nations
In answer
to part of
the above
Dec. 24
I’m not having a go at you. I’m just expressing concerns...
“Free” sounds great...what is a free democratic nation?...
“No UDN member nation will have the right to veto its majority decisions.” What
if a nation or even one person doesn’t want to be subject to the wishes
of the others?...
Isn’t there some way to form a global cooperative, not to get too socialist,
that transcends borders, racist policies of multiculturalism and freedom of
religious brainwashing but not freedom from it? Why do we give stock to and
legitimize throughly discredited concepts like the UN? United we stand, except
for our military, economic, racial, religious and social doctrines...
People often tell me if you don’t like it leave. Where to? I only know
of the one planet that supports our form of life ...so far. ...
–––1.7.10
Life or death NOTICE
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City Public Advocate Bill
de Blasio might be respectfully asked to unite all City officials in a grand
global effort to militate an end to the fear that all people, City residents
and everyone else, suffer from when and if we and informed officials consider
the consequences of war with nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons we have, that are
being made and that are proliferating.
––––1.2.10
Among many other things
M O V I E S M A T T E R
SO WHAT?
So what that movies have mattered importantly in the fields of war/peace, phoney
mythology and real mythology dealt with in phoney ways, love, sex and all that,
crime, dedication to principle and a GREAT MANY OTHER THINGS.
SO NOW WE MAY WAIT WITH WHEEZES AND GROANS FOR MOVIES
THAT DEAL WITH TAXES, ESPECIALLY TAXES THAT FAVOR THOSE MAKING THEM AND PUNISH
SOME OTHERS FOR BEING POOR WITH
MONEY.
––––12.31.09
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Survival requires peace; peace, justice; justice, law; law,government; World Peace Requires World Government. |
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