WORLD PEACE NEWS

“BUSH SAYS IRAQIS . ARE STILL RESISTING . DEMAND TO DISARM     IN REPLY TO EUROPEANS     Remarks Are Part of Effort by . U.S. Officials to Make Case . for Ouster of Hussein” NYT’s lead news story headlines of Jan.22.
       And sincerest congratulations to all negotiators from all nations!     Keep it up!   War and consequences would be no fun for anyone!
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A case of inevitable,
          global obfuscation!
       The U.S. Senate’s minority-of-two leader said that Head of State George Bush’s war policy is “unclear” – Jan. 19, over CNN.
       But how might that be otherwise?
       How might anyone grown not see that all national war policies in a world of virtual lawlessness will be unclear – and necessarily obfuscating?
       Isn’t that condition a reflection of the virtual absence of a global, legal decision-making system in what is now a poker game of inter-nation bait-bluff- switch-and-trump?
       Isn’t the name of that game prevail?   And doesn’t prevailing in the war game require a lack of clarity and, beyond that, obfuscation of all other players, foreign and domestic, not in support of sovereign national players?
       Isn’t the silly, nukey, TV-time, rutting-youth, old-wise-man game of war inevitably fluid, tricky, harsh, brutal and potentially suicidal for all peoples?
       Aren’t all nations caught up in such games woefully or willfully dismissive of the sane alternative in a world political unity structured, rationalized and empowered to outlaw war?
–––

Who speaks for the U.N.
      as an observer of war?
Speaking up in debate against U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, U.S. Senator Jon Kyl asserted that U.N. resolutions “must” be made enforceable.
       Sen. Feinstein quoted the U.S. Secretary of State and the U.S. Defense Department Secretary as saying that the “time to make a decision” about attacking Iraq is coming.       Jan. 19, CNN.
       So there we have it.
       Of course one might wonder what Sen.Kyl might say about the sane principle that enforcing U.N. resolutions would require remaking the U.N. as a democratic federation of all nations that are now capable or not of going to war, etc.
       Sen. Kyl might be presumed to be against that.
       But what exactly did he mean besides asserting that the U.N. must enforce U.N. resolutions that the U.S. and allies want enforced?
       Doesn’t that now throw a forbidden light on the woeful fact that the U.N. is, indeed, a more-or-less neutral observer of wars on the wills of nations that pursue them as decision-making of last resort?   [The last there can have a double meaning, you know.]
       Does Sen. Kyl want to be known as a champion of a U.N. Charter that does indeed provide for the kinds of wars that do exist now all over the place?   What does he think about WWIII with nukes?
       ––––      1.22.03

“AN ATTACK ON IRAQ . NOT YET JUSTIFIED, . FRANCE WARNS U.S.     POWELL ON THE DEFENSIVE   Germany and China Join Calls . for More Patience With the . Weapons Inspections”.
          Those are the headlines over the NYT’s lead, 1-column, news stories on Jan 21.
       The U.N. Charter’s Article II bases the U.N. on “the sovereign equality” of its almost 200 Member-States, so of course war is most surely justified by the highest law on earth.   Patience is better than bad law used for justification, as now, of course.
       But that steely justification can be made apparent whenever any sovereign nation wants to risk asserting it, as now.
       If the often silly sovereign-nations collective wants to create a credible law-making&abiding humanity, they’d better get busy quickly to base a new, ratifiable, world decision-making system on the ideas of some kind of a federal democracy, parliamentary, congressional or whatever.   A new world shape-up based on voting people, not on parleying nations emerged more than a century ago as imperative. Stalling for another century might not wash.
       U.S. policy aside, our not attacking so far might be wisely taken as a subconscious signal to all peoples to get on the enforceable-world-law stick. Even more stupid than attacking Iraq was trying to base law on evasion of the basic need to outlaw all war credibly.
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          What   is   democracy?
       “July 3, 1944.     We received a letter from the Writers’ War Board the other day asking for a statement on ‘The Meaning of Democracy.’   It presumably is our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure.
       “Surely the Board knows what democracy is.   It is the line that forms on the right.   It is the don’t in Don’t Shove.   It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat.   Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.   It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.   Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.   It is the idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.   It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee.   Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”
          E. B. White, as printed in his collection of New Yorker editorials.
       Reprinting the above after reading it first more than half a century ago on a ship at sea, we in this different type face feel strongly still that a dose of democracy is badly needed for the political health of many of the diplomats who run the politically disunited United Nations;   and if that would be too late, it wouldn’t be too early to think about what to want to do about it, starting with the editorial reprinted above.
––––      1.21.03

Shall we shuffle onto the U.S.?
       John Roberts calls for the U.N. Security Council to make correct decisions, valid and morally impeccable international law, etc.
       That does not mean, he says in his 370th World Letter, Jan.19, “shuffling off” responsibility to the U.S.   “We live from crisis to crisis because we are unwilling to undertake the reform of global structures,” he asserts.
       What reforms of what structures are fingered – in addition to “immediate acceptance” of the stillborn U.N. ICC that serves as distraction to the creation of a world democracy that could establish real courts?   However ratified and empowered-to-sit against bonafide losers of wars, U.N. courts exist as bones of contention and examples of what happens when a rule of world law is not but should be proposed to exist by a nation or nations.
       We need “a complete rethinking of the current reliance upon the governments of sovereign states to uphold international law.”
       Of course we do.   But that’s getting to be as useful to say as what world-governmentalists have been saying since long before WWII.   Specificity as to means and structures are now required.
       How can we have any rethink if the U.N defines international law as regarding the highest law as entitling the sovereign U.N. Member-States to go to war?   The Charter must be respectfully junked if its main principle is to give way to democracy, government of, by and for all people governed.   How can U.N. courts work if both sides to a suit must first agree to be bound by the courts? Don’t courts need the support of a single, political entity in order to mesh with law making and enforcing elements?
       Cm’on John, let’s talk about calling for creation of a world constitutional convention to set down for debate what might be credible.   And let’s note that advocating debate on what might be possible is not the same as noodling one or more controversial elements of a whole that needs to be an integrated, empowered federal democracy of some ratifiable sort.
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       Let’s all permit, encourage, everyone to pay attention to the basic fact of our time on earth.
One way or another,
          the time is now!
       Seventy percent of Israelis want separation from the Palestinians and giving up most of the settlements.
       As for the balance of killings going on now, Thomas Friedman wrote on Jan.15, “...for Israel 10 minus 2 is 8, and for the Palestinians 10 minus 2 is 12,” And, “... as futile as the Sharon strategy has been, the Palestinian strategy has been worse.”
       Conclusion: “If there is no separation, by 2010 there will be more Palestinians than Jews living in Israel and the occupied territories. ...The Israelis will control the whole area by apartheid, or they will control it by expelling Palestinians, or they will grant Palestinians the right to vote and it will no longer be a Jewish state. Whichever way it goes, it will mean the end of Israel as a Jewish democracy.”
       Yes!   And meanwhile, every human being lives in a world where the mindless killings of pre-war and war occur almost daily.
       What is now for everyone to do?   What to do?   WHAT TO DO?
       How about doing what humans always have done when they are forced by facts to admit what the best resolution is?
       And what have humans always done in cases of universal threats of war, hard times, misery and angst for all?
       Humans have always formed political unities, tribes > national-governments.
       Almost always humans have been able to make, judge and enforce law against mad, mindless, futile, mutual killings by hostile groupings.
       Now the time is here for the formation of a world democracy – on pain of much worse for all than is going on now in the Mideast.
       A mighty wave of resolve needs to build worldwide against the infantile fatuousness of the Treaty of 1648!
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“EXILE FOR HUSSEIN . MAY BE AN OPTION . U.S. OFFICIALS HINT A ‘TRADE TO AVOID A WAR’     Moment of Decision Is Near . on Iraq, Bush Aides Say – .   4 [other] Warheads Disclosed”, “in a sign that Iraq might be more forthcoming.” Those in quotes above are the main NYT news-story 1-column headlines, Jan.20, and an excerpt six paragraphs into the p1 text.
      Global miasmas may be lifting a little.
       But there’s a long way to go before world law, order and justice can be legalized and phased-into a world federal democracy.
       Above all in our time of ultimate weaponry, humanity needs for survival a credible rubric for outlawing the all-nation destructiveness of war.
       If humanity is left standing after the current marching around the mulberry tree of death, let’s not forget how close we all are coming now.
       Let’s not forget and go trudging stupidly along in the same old stinking rut of fraudulent “collective security” among war-ingrained nations!
       Let’s not forget!
       –––– 1.20.03

Alaska drilling gets war-talk boost?

Environmentalists had limited success in limiting oil-drilling in Alaska’s Prudhoeland – until now.     But “...the Bush administration today proposed opening up part of the nation’s largest remaining block of unprotected public land to oil and gas development,” the NYT of Jan.18 reported.    Is there a war connection?
       Of course if war goes ahead against Iraq, and even if it doesn’t, a tightening of oil supplies would affect prices negatively.   Supply-and-demand realities drive supply initiatives.
       Maybe if, in the interests of all our mutual needs, “the world” might be coming to agree that “something needs to be done” about the tough nuts that need to be cracked in order to address energy problems, etc., that might help to calm public angst over consequences of rising oil demands.
       On the other hand, if good ideas spinning around preachments of global cooperation without world political unity are like surplus gas, no one will have to walk except for exercise.
       In other words, beware of grandiose expectations, even if promised with visions of world cooperation to achieve goals not shared by all players.
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Does $1.6 trillion over 10 years please?
       Frank Rich uses his 5-column op-ed Jan.18 to deplore what he called the national bait-and-switch economic policy. He coolly points in alarm at a switch running to $1.6 trillion estimated Iraq-war-cost-max, over ten years.  Of course it could run to much more than that, to everything maybe, if we’re left holding the Persian Gulf bag this time out.
       But no one we know quails, not even at Homeland Security being cut out of not-enough-money alarm.
       Angst is another thing. Rich ends his jeremiad with notice of an anxious nation whiling away its time watching the “Joe Millionaire” TV show, etc.
       So you’ve got to agree with the heavy burdens of what he points his stick at. Anyway, he’s moving up in the hierarchy to not-writing op-eds any more.
       What’s really troubling, it might seem for a few people, is the need for something gentle, fair, quick, simple and money-neutral to be proposed, something like creating a world federal democracy that would cure all ills at home and abroad pronto.
       Well, if you can go op-ed waving a stick at things no-good-bad, why can’t you wave a stick at a peace thing no good-good-too?   After all, something good-&-true-enough to stimulate movement in the direction of an enabling world political unity had better turn up soon.    Right?
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       Disarmament   gaining   panache   globally?
On the subject of carrots and sticks, U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl said during the Lehrer News Hour Jan.13 that “There’s plenty of carrots... The trouble is that we don’t have any sticks.”    Kyl referred to U.S. frustration in being unable to bring a certain U.N. Res. 1441 scofflaw to heel. That is, North Korea was poised to make 50-to-100 nukes out of plutonium it already has to hand.
       Subsequent talks with North Korean representatives must have been successful because not much has been heard from North Korea in recent days.
       But could that be because talk internationally is coming to the view that the U.S. call for disarmament of some rogues [maybe under a credible world federal democracy?] is a very good idea – for all nations?
–––– 1.19.03

Would it really be proactive enough for Iraq
to be much more proactive ?
       “...Following Dr. Blix's meeting with HR Solana, Mr. Solana said that ‘we (the European Union) support the work of Mr. Blix, we trust him and we are going to provide him and his mission with all the means of assistance at our disposal.   I would like to say that he has also conveyed to me his concerns that cooperation with Iraq is not sufficient.   That it is not enough, for the regime of Saddam Hussein, simply to open doors. The position of Iraqi authorities has to be much more proactive.’"           From   <EUinfo@delusny.cec.eu.int>, Jan.17.
       How about all nations being proactive enough to support a world democracy able to cope with wars?
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ARMS INSPECTORS VS. THE U.S. ––
Clash   highlights   similarities
       “WASHINGTON, Jan.17 – The Bush administration and the United Nations weapons inspectors differed sharply today on the effort to disarm Saddam Hussein, with the inspectors saying they needed more time, possibly months, while the White House said evidence was rapidly accumulating to justify military action. ...”     That’s the lead paragraph in the NYT’s lead news story Jan.18.
       The fatal similarity between the U.S. and the U.N. inspectors’ positions is that both are driven by the logic of a U.N. Charter providing for anarchy, virtual lawlessness, among nations not being governed under a single rule of enforceable law.   The U.S. logically says that war must start now because the invasion die is cast now and the weather will be too hot to fight later, etc.   And the U.N. inspectors logically say it’s vital to wait for proof of Saddam’s intentions.
Both may be seen as right and wrong if the actual structuring of a rule-of-enforceable-world-peace-law is, in fact, a vital facet of invasion.
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If you as a child survived the painless, dim, dark, motionless, endless days-in-bed of having typhoid fever, you like me would carry into your last years vague memories of care and dedications of those people who helped carry you through to life.
       With varied part-memories relating to individual survival experiences, we all now look to futures heavy with imponderables about the needs of support mechanisms, the availability of medicines, clean sheets, knowledgeable, competent, willing care in an ever more complicated, overcrowding, querulous world.
       Someone old and well enough not to worry much might come to worry about the fate of cousins.   All living people may come to see ourselves as interacting cousins in a great, raucous, rambunctious, error prone, scruffy, ego-centered, vital, loveable human family.
       It might seem that our first order of being awake might be to end our witless practice of doing harm intentionally, in perceived self-defense, to obnoxious others – and in neglecting to create adequate care systems, systems able to create overall feelings of everyone’s satisfaction.
       Family members not overwhelmed with the notion of the potential for human well-being might use what we all have inherited in the ways of order, justice, law, science, etc., and above all the world political unity that could knit together a global entity making it usual for every sentient to master the forces of common sense and common decency.   We all might as well strive to do what we can about our all being alive in our very own human mess of a family.
–––– 1-18-03

What if we plan
       to terminate folly?
“UNITED NATIONS, Jan.16 – United Nations weapons inspectors discovered 11 empty chemical warheads today at an ammunition storage dept in southern Iraq, while another team entered the homes of two Iraqi scientists unannounced, carting away documents.     ...[Another] trove included 11 empty 122-millimeter chemical warheads and ‘one warhead that requires further evaluation’ ...”      From lead paragraphs, top of NYT p1 Jan.17.
       OK. That’s the way the news is.     But what if leaders began to consider that weapons inspections be commenced all around the world where similar weapons suspicions might be rife? What if many weapons found were ready and loaded to go? What if the readiness of a resigned U.N. mentality to pursue futile tactics against the world’s war condition apparent since the end of WWII remains unchanged?     On another hand, what if the structuring of debate concerning global remedies under enforceable, ratified world law becomes the practice of the day?
       Ah, but ratified, enforceable law can’t come to exist as long as the U.N.’s sanctioning of national sovereignty stands as a permanent font of human miseries!
       True, of course.   But what if human leadership develops to seek to make world law adequate to cope? Couldn’t that release a wave of hope that could sweep away the biggest global political follies of today?
___

Is the big argument against world government that it is beyond the capacity of any government to get things right?
       OR does belittling of The World Government Imperative signal the certainty of WWIII with you know what consequences for the bubble-headed notion of national sovereignty and everything else?
––––1/17/03

Mayor leads on schools
       The bellwether NYT, New York Times, devoted 4 of 6 right-side columns of the top half of its page-one today, Jan.16, to the Mayor who said he staked his reputation on his leadership in upgrading New York City Schools.
       What Michael R. Bloomberg had put on the line had not been put there by any previous New York City Mayor.
       The Mayor of one of the biggest governments in the U.S. acted as a hero.
       Appropriate education is the beginning of the understanding that human survival requires appropriate education and appropriate education opens the vision of a world political unity that can and will be adequate to carry our species of life safely through our age of weapons of mass destruction.
       That last, it is suggested here, might be something for the Mayor to stake his reputation on during his second term in office.
       And politicians globally might do well to count the beans in Mayor Bloomberg’s weeks, months and years as they come and go.
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Where there is no vision and a deficit in data...
       “‘It’s surprising that there hasn’t been a national system [for collecting data about violent deaths], especially when you look at the national toll that homicide and suicide take both in terms of costs and in life lost,’” said a state injury-and-aid official, Science Times, Jan.15, pF7.   It’s noted, too, that “a wealth of data related to traffic deaths has allowed federal and local agencies to enact measures – like laws on seat belts, air bags, car design and speed limits...”
       But all that’s not surprising - in view of how government is structured to help citizens-with problems – as contrasted with how everyone helps the car, war, tourist, news, entertainment, manufacturing and other buinesses.
       Newthinking there might begin to help explain why governmentally constructive databases on the needs of individual people globally are things of a dicey future for all peoples, seeing that nothing like a credible constitution for world government, good or bad, exists yet.
       A ratified and empowered federal democracy able to outlaw war isn’t even a correct topic of ordinary debate.   And running for the hills and digging deep retreats have long since become the stuff of sad jokes.
       Worse!   A grim Soviet official impressively said decades ago that in a nuclear war, the living would envy the dead.
       Even our own Mark Twain said, “Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead.” And that was before the pre-nuclear U.N. Charter was even contemplated.
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       Who is responsible for “OVERLOOKING STOCK MANIPULATION”? That in quotes is title of a strong ad by the advocate of freedom and justice of the Washington Legal Foundation, NYT, Jan.13, op-ed page.
       Another question whose time might be overdue might be: Who is responsible for   OVERLOOKING   HUMAN   IMPERILMENT?
       Or are answers in the word “everyone” too obvious?
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POLITICAL UNITY HAPPENS
    MUCH QUICKER TODAY
       Stephen Newhouse, Chairman of Morgan Stanley International, is the author of an article entitled "It Takes Time to Build a United States" and published Jan. 13 by the Financial Times.
       Newhouse compares the construction of the EU with the rise of the US: "Critics of the speed at which pan-European institutions are developing should note that it was not until 1862 that the US adopted a single currency.   There was no real central bank in the US until the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, several previous attempts at a national central bank having been squashed by Andrew Jackson nearly three-quarters of a century earlier.   The point is simply that strong unions are not built in a day.   On a relative basis, the progress made by the EU in a short time is impressive.   In fact, considering the language and cultural barriers, not to mention the historical enmities that a European Union must overcome, the current level of integration and co-operation is remarkable.”
       Very true--and this can only be a good omen for the project of a democratic world government in the 21st century!
           PETER HUVOS: Jan.13
____

Peace>world government=small potatoes
       The following excerpts are taken from p1 of the Science Times of Jan.14.
       “...It is the quark-gluon plasma that physicists here [at the Brookhaven National Laboratory] are trying to make and study.
       “Using the 2.4-mile length of RHIC [the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider], they accelerate the nuclei of gold atoms ... to nearly the speed of light and then smash them together.   The miniature fireball, up to 10,000 times as hot as the sun, briefly liberates the quarks and gluons – in theory at least.”
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THRIVING BUREAUCRACIES

identify themselves by managing to overcome their driving, understandable prejudice against establishing “oversight” of themselves and of their main elements – as every inquiring reporter knows.   So?
       It might seem that Paul Volcker, former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board and, much more recently, chairman of an independent commission on U.S. governmental organization, did brilliantly for his commission and himself, Jan.13, at the National Press Club, in emphasizing that oversight is the thing.
       It might seem that the recent rescue of the faltering U.N., rescue owing to the unanimity of the Security Council P5 in still simmering Iraq-War affairs, redounds favorably to the U.N.’s frequent deference to the P5 in enforcement matters.
       And why shouldn’t the armyless U.N. defer to the Powers in enforcement matters?
       [Anyone who needs an updating must look elsewhere, the assumption being that every potential world citizen is loaded with the facts.]
       But back to Volcker and his timely visionary, carefully hedged report harping on the way to keep hidebound bureaucracies up to tolerating oversight, not to mention a free press and hewing to not being bypassed by a buggybloc for the creation of a ratified federal democracy.
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A MODEST MESSAGE TO THE LETHARGIC NEWS MEDIA:
“Do you want your
disaccreditation reversed?”
       Ted Morello, perhaps the most authoritative and informed former president of UNCA, the U.N. Correspondents Association, was the only one who ever asked the U.N. correspondent for World Peace News - a World Government Report that question, above.
       And Morello asked it more than once during the months when WPN’s answer was a more-or-less unqualified yes.
       The searching question might have been regarded as bizarre, too, because the U.N. had stalled about, and then denied, WPN’s request for a review of the disaccreditation.   Finally WPN despaired of the U.N.’s ever coming around to offering to re-accredit on an understanding usual in many national democracies.
       Before, during and after the disaccreditation rumpus, WPN published – and it dot-orged many times – its editorial, news-gathering, question-asking view.   It respectfully suggested that the U.N. state that it would allow continuing news questions going to the U.N. position on press freedom and on why the U.N. didn’t advocate that the U.N. be endowed with federal, democratic means legally and practically adequate to deal with war and its causes.
       Why right now, in view of the way events play out, does WPN publish the update being read?
       A cogent reason goes to oppose the diplomatic, collective-security, national-sovereignty, war-allowing ideas on which U.N. structure and practice are founded.
       Further, the time already is now when the issue of a successor to the current two-term U.N. Secretary-General, a quintessential, nation-pleasing diplomat, is being bruited.
       Since the time of the U.N.’s founding on diplomatic principles, the news media globally have hewed to the importance of finding an adequate diplomat to head the organization.
       Isn’t that finding an impossible job?   Should news media globally peg the search for the next Secretary-General to diplomatic standards when diplomacy is the faulty practice that often leads to war, not to outlawing it under enforceable, ratified, world law?
       That question is asked for a secondary reason.
       The first reason is to assert again that world peace requires a new think in the direction of ratifying rules for, and for the phasing-in, of a world federal democracy that could assure everyone’s security from the planned, accepted, honored, Charter-enshrined all-consuming idiocy of war.
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THE DEATH PENALTY TAKES A HIT
        Almost always against the death penalty and in favor of almost all major liberal peace dicta except that which lets means and crucial details go unspecified, this citizen lines up with a majority celebrating tainted Illinois Governor Ryan – as, in recent days, he went about emptying death rows in his state before he retired from office.
       One of religion’s and morality’s most useful and correctly celebrated precepts adds up to the possibility of re-examination.   Even in a world jammed with self-servers and les miserables standing for national sovereignty, most people will come to honor a yet undrafted world constitution setting all people free as equals before world law.
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HOW NOW, AMBASSADOR?
       After decades as a gleaning reporter, in Q&A at the U.N., “we” recall a great majority of ambassadors who came on unwilling to comment – as was their right – on the false, arguable, saving and plain facts surrounding what has been called The World Government Imperative.
       Now, at this make-or-break time for the human species of life, it might seem appropriate to suggest that all ambassadors weigh the proposition that seemed accepted in some few quarters at the end of WWII:   that there is no major national interest that supersedes one global interest in the creation of a ratifiable entity that could outlaw WWIII.
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DON’T SCATTER YOUR SHOTS
       Don’t preach democratically controlled financial structures in order to outlaw fraud that disables your nation in its competitions with other nations if, at the same time, you want to preach democratically controlled world government in order to end wars and war profiteering that could upend your species of life?   Don’t say this if you want to be focused and therefore effective in saying that?
       Don’t worry!   It’s a puzzle that works its own interconnecting solutions as time and events reveal priorities.
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“OFFICIALS REVEAL // THREAT TO TROOPS // DEPLOYING TO GULF      BOMBING PLOT SUSPECTED      Military Sharing Intelligence // With Private Firms Moving // Personnel and Weapons”
–-
“CHINA GAMBLES // ON BIG PROJECTS // FOR ITS STABILITY CHONGQING, China – ...they are burrowing through mountains to create 600 miles of superhighways, four new railway lines, an urban light rail system and a new airport. ...”
       Those are page-one, above-the-fold headlines and an excerpt from the second paragraph of an NYT news story, Jan.13, and, above, the three headlines over a top-of-p1 news story.
       Do they say anything about the parlous state of the future in a world warped by a deadly condition of anarchy among nations, loaded and loading with weapons of mass destruction?
       Why is it wrong to think that the ten-or-so leaders of the most powerful nations would serve their own peoples best by conferring on the creation of a world federal democracy that could and surely, justly would outlaw war and deal with war’s causes?
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           WORLD PEACE IS THE STATED GOAL
BUT KNOW THE NGO DIFFERENCE
CONSIDER IF YOU WILL the choice between two U.S. based NGO “peace” organizations, the World Constitution and Parliament Association, which convenes impressively in various places throughout the world, and the American Movement for World Government, of which worldpeacenews.org is an autonomous part, and which stays close to its world-peace-oriented knitting at its base in the City of the politically disunited and chaotic United Nations, which enjoys headquarters in the United States.
       Both NGO’s have in common the belief that the world must be governed democratically, federally, justly, and that world government might grow from enforceable world law, usefully debated and agreed upon.
       But the AMWG and the WCPA are opposites in believing, in the WCPA case, that world peace can spin off an amended governmental constitution that was first written decades ago in Innsbruck by NGO’s, and in believing, in AMWG’s case, that a credible world legality must now be drafted at a small world constitutional convention representing all national governments, the big ones individually and the small ones in continental blocs strictly minus the ukase of nations otherwise represented.
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A   BIGGEST   QUESTION?
       “You [NYT editorialists] discourage the United States from declaring Baghdad to be in violation of United Nations requirements and then going immediately to war.   But how many chances are we to give Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi government? ”   That’s the opening paragraph in the lead NYT letter Jan.11 and it asks a horrific question for all combatant nations to ask each other.
       Aren’t we all stupid, stupid in any overall sense of our disparate histories, for not making great ado [not even to comtemplate greater hullaballoo] in favor of structuring a world federal democracy able to settle international disputes intelligently?
       P.S.:   It is hoped and trusted that the U.N. in the main goes along with the U.S. and almost all of the informed world, and not vice versa, in ending the dumb business of dumb wars.
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PEACE IN WESTERN ZEN s
          and in the U.S.& U.N.
“Mr.Victoria [the author of Zen at War] sees hope for Buddhism in a Western-style ‘engaged Buddhism’ that increasingly seeks to combine meditative practice with work for social progress and peace.”
           That’s the penultimate paragraph of a touch-all-bases news story on Zen, with a 5-column drawing, taking up three-fourths of pB9 in the Jan.11 NYT.
       But let’s everyone note that Western Zen, the U.S. and the U.N. have in common that none of them advocate up front the creation of a world federal democracy that could effect lasting peace under enforceable and duly ratified world law.   [Right or wrong, this WPN worldpeacenews.org thinks that the U.S. comes at least a little closer than the U.N.-as-is to wanting to be able to help create a peaceable world under a rule of duly ratified world law.]
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IS the word blum USEFUL? – What might it mean?   How about, it means something done for fun or for evile purposes?   Example of its use.   He or she is or isn’t a blummer.   For the etymology of the word blum, consider the worldpeacenews.org website of World Peace News - a World Government Report.   WPN suspects that anyone who might use governance when government is meant of having one or the other characteristic of a blummer.   Beware of blummers.   As someone once might have warned, a blummer is “a little feller who might put a penny on a railroad track just for the fun of hoping to upset a whole train of thought.”
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2 op-eds, 2 human ills; 1 cure?
       In the NYT Jan.10 ‘we’ read about South African black/white resentments that threaten the peace so acutely that “it will take something other than force to break the cycle of hatred...”.
       In an abutting op-ed we read that “it’s baffling to see” disease control groups in South Africa “buying into junk science in ways that will lead to many more AIDS deaths.”
       Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof writes about “The Secret War on Condoms” and Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Cape Town, writes, under the headline “The Roots of Afrikaner Rage”, about some blacks preferring to live without that [hate] burden.   Both detailing writers are broadly sympathetic, convincing.
        Anyone who looks at the many race and disease problems analyzed might see them as requiring the services of an overall adjudicating, conciliating, mending and empowered authority.   In the light of the interconnectedness of threats posed now to humanity as a whole, rational and effective remedies loom as imperative – now.   No nation or bloc can cope.   The response to work should be global.
       There the should-be nags.   Sure, some world authority should be made able to cope. Which?   How can anyone conscious of the war news think that the burdened and conflicted U.N. league of nations could be made able to do more and better than it has been stretched to do already?
       The problems spill over.   They must be addressed creatively, on pain for all.   But by whom?
       Might answers come down to another question routinely avoided by the media, academe and of course the financially strapped nations busy with our wars, etc.?
       Must not the terrible blunder made in creating the U.N. as a league of nations be addressed seriously and, for the first time, creatively?
       Might not a rational and empowered federal democracy be the only way that all peoples will be able to cut through the miasma of hates, diseases, untruths and wars that spreads thicker and thicker and thicker by the year?
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What’s the alternative to the treaty system?
       No comment is required!
But why is “no-comment” appropriate?
       That’s because no comment is required!
       Right!   And it would serve no useful purpose to pursue answers because that is how things are done about treaties broken by unsatisfied nations.   Everyone knows that what is is.   Take North Korea saying yesterday, Jan. 10, that it would no longer be bound by the NPT, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
       The news was full of explanations about why North Korea said what it said and what that would mean for world peace.   But apparently no one asked why it was so hard for a person not to pay for a bought car and so easy for a nation to break a treaty.
       Why does almost no one ask why no remedy?
       It’s not news is why.   Everyone knows that the same-day news was something like Bill Richardson, formerly the American Ambassador to the U.N., meeting with North Korea’s Han Song Ryol and Mun Jong Chol in New Mexico to see what could be done about the Korean crisis.  Until now, that wasn't a crisis. Now it is agreed to be a crisis.
       That reminded a former reporter at the U.N.how foolish he felt for trying to ask U.N. officials questions about the U.N. structure.   Even when the reporter accidentally met Bill Richardson in a hallway once and tried to get him to say what he thought about diplomacy and how it is played now with treaties and such, it met a polite and seemingly also embarrassed no-comment.
       That was better than the U.N. stiffing questions, making believe that valid questions don’t exist.   But what you get out of questions ignored is as good as can be, and that can’t be changed.   You get nothing from trying to get something from the reality that what is real is real and can't be changd. Anyway, that is what you come to understand.
       But is it right?   Isn’t the reality at the disunited United Nations changeable?   And if it isn’t, why not create a new really united ! United Nations that can cope across the board?
       Many valid questions go to why a federal democratic constitution based on all people as voters isn’t better, more secure, more intelligent than all nations being beholden to a U.N. Charter based on national sovereignty.
       Each nation now is charged by the Charter with the devil-take-the-hindmost principle calling on them each, separately, to preserve its own security through a reality that provides for a powerless U.N.!
       And it is protocol that none may question the reality? !      None may question the fraud on humanity implicit in the U.N.’s version of “collective security”? !
       The U.N. system of law is set in the concrete of the non-enforceability by the U.N. of international, treaty law.   According to the U.N. law of sovereign nations, the U.N. may not mess with treaty law.
       But it’s only said to be no use in asking why the system doesn’t work to end the scourge of war and why it's a scolding offense to ask about what can be done to fix or replace the foundering U.N. triple-hull-of-concrete.
       Questioning is only said to be inappropriate because it's naughty and disconcerting to do it and because the way it is is the way it has to be.   It’s like where there is no vision the people perish and you are to forget questions.
       That’s tough.
         But we’re all not going to suck it in.   Right?
––––

         Mister  European Union  President
PETER HUVOS e-mails news published in the Financial Times, Jan.9, that the EU convention in progress on the future of Europe proposes creation of the office of EU President – as one way to provide an “opportunity for the reformation of the European Union as a genuine political community.”
       That sort of thing has favorably impressed advocates of creation of a genuine world political unity.
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FELLOW VINEYARD WORKER Doug Mattern and Dr.Terrence Paupp write in their email, from <worldcit@best.com>, Jan.9, that “The United States is on the verge of launching a war upon Iraq.   If such a war is undertaken, it will violate international law and further undermine American democracy.”
       They conclude by calling for “...a new respect for international law and the Charter of the United Nations.”
       But doesn’t Art.II of the Charter state that the U.N. is based on the sovereign equality of U.N. Member-States and doesn’t that mean that peace and international law are options for treaty-making among sovereign nations with varying takes on what national and world law should be – and doesn’t that mean that war doesn’t violate world law because international law is treaty law and not world law and because the U.N. itself bases its existence on the virtual inevitability of war among sovereign nations?
       How can it be blinked at so universally that the signal mark of sovereignty is the right – and the ability – to go to war?
       Don’t some struggling facts indicate that if humanity wants peace knowledgeably, all peoples must get together to advocate workable means under enforceable law?
        Might not every functioning human adult have happy cause to come to informed hope for the creation of a peaceable world once humanity gets over the national- sovereignty hangup enshrined in the dopey U.N. Charter and the often dopey U.N. bureaucracy?
       How could the U.N. bureaucracy fail to be dopey often when leaders feel that, for the organization’s survival, it has to suck up to national money sources that pay to make the establishment exist?   That is to say that, unless people who consider themselves friends of the U.N. organize the common sense to begin to talk about taxes as income and the creation of a world federal democracy as imperative, forget about the U.N. as hopeful.
       On the other hand, of course, the U.N. Security Council P5 does in fact begin to show the wit required for the creation of you know what, in or out of the U.N.   There, it might be guessed, some few national governments have begun to wrestle lawjackets onto some of their dinosaur diplomat happysters.   And here the name Lavrov comes up too.]
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On the sharpening point of the expanding diplomatic gulf between the words governance and government, as yanked into view from the following happy, gently doctored e-mail, let’s take an iota of cautious, thankful, seasonal hope.   From mail Jan.9:
       “Hi There:   It was good talking to you on New Year’s.   I’m enjoying the gift of the word calendar you sent.   It’s something different for a calendar to make you think and give a little challenge to the brain.   I also found this poem in one of our beloved childhood books, “The Moon is Shining Bright As Day” – by Dorothy Aldis:
       “Dog means dog, And cat means cat; And there are lots of words like that. / A cart’s a cart To pull or shove, A plate’s a plate, To eat off of. / But there are other Words I say When I am left alone to play. / Blum is one. Blum is a word That very few Have ever heard. / I like to say it, “Blum, Blum, Blum” – I do it loud Or in a hum. / All by itself It’s nice to sing: It does not mean A single thing.”
       And a happy New Year to you!
       Still, the difference between Blum and, for instance, Governance is serious these days of war talk.
       Governance, the word, is sometimes abused to mean Government.
       Blum is fun while Governance can be used to try to deceive the naive.   Governance is a good word.   It means what government does.   A world government could outlaw war.
       World governance shouldn’t be abused to mean that it can do easily what it can’t do at all without government.
–––

As many do, Joe Foss withheld world - governmental comment
       “I always had the attitude that every day will be a great day.   I look forward to it like a kid in a candy shop.”   The Joe Foss quote used by the Associated Press in his obit defined Joe Foss fine.   Clips were received today, Jan.8, from WPN’s Brother John of Stuart, Florida.   AP’s quote would have tickled the Guadalcanal ace+.
       ‘We,’ the most junior of the 42 pilots of VMSB [scout-divebomber] 141, talked many times to Foss and his CO, commanding officer, “Duke” Davis. Once we talked to them together – after our departure from San Diego aboard the packed luxury liner Lurline.   It was packed with thousands of marines, their warplanes and other gear including the bombs that would be dropped at Guadalcanal, aimed at Japanese warships and ground emplacements.
       A long talk with the VMF [fighter] 121 CO, commandinf officer, and his exec occurred once. – With nothing much else obvious to do, they exited the barbershop aboard ship together. Davis and Foss favored the new [companion divebombing squadron] 141 pilot with talk that was cheerful, breezy, pleasant, inquiring and responsive.   Another fairly long talk with Foss took place as the 141 pilot walked toward and Foss walked up from the outdoor latrine at the marine-pilots’ rest-and-recreation home at Noumea, New Caledonia, after both their initial tours on what was code-named Cactus.
       On both occasions and others, the WWII 141 pilot, having spent its NYU/extra-curricular days listening to and debating with many inspired, university-teacher world-governmentalists [with what turns out to be lifelong seriousness], must have amused – or bored the hell out of – the cheerful Foss.  But, had the superb marine ever said a discouraging word about the world political-unity advocacy, his fellow MAG [Marine Air Group] 12 pilot never heard about it.
       After his one Guadalcanal tour the former come-lately 141 pilot landed up on the only F4F squadron ever posted to the airstrip cut through tall coconut trees in British Samoa. It was called Fale-olo, and was ten or so miles from Apia, along the coast from the town.   The thatched fale served as a ready room.
       There the former divebomber, now a fighter pilot, talked to the popular Davis several times.   He was still the 121 CO.   Foss returned to Cactus a couple of times, increasing his shoot-downs to 26.
       As one of Davis’s 121 pilots flying out to sea from Samoa, looking for action that never came and flying to Pago Pago for bottled goods, etc., ‘we’ listened and talked to Davis at briefings. Later, after the war, while he was the CO at the Mojave, CA, marine air base, he came on upbeat as ever.
       In visiting Samoa on tour more than a decade ago, the former Lurline passenger now worldpeacenews.org, with Sue, of course, landed in a small tour plane at the fine new airport where Fale-olo had been – and we departed from the land of myth and Robert Lewis Stevenson in a much bigger commercial plane.
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FROM the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Movement for World Government – a message to readers:
       Your work is important in stimulating momentum towards creating World Peace      through World Government.
       AMWG is committed to goals as set forth by one of our founders, Stewart M. Ogilvy:
       “Government, as no other word, describes the machinery we are seeking – a mechanism comprising individual human beings engaged in making, administering, adjudicating, and enforcing law.
       “The modifiers ‘democratic,’ ‘federal,’ and ‘world’ indicate the restrictions we want imposed on that government.   It must be a government of, by, and for the people.   It must be limited in authority to world affairs, i.e., to transnational affairs, yet it must protect the integrity and cultural diversity of its component nations.”
       The American Movement for World Government continues its effort through its Websites, amwg.org and worldpeacenews.org and through the publication of the quarterly, 8-page tabloid World Peace News – a World Government Report.   At those Websites and in the autonomous paper you can read of ideas that might enlighten the public on the necessity for a governed world, a world governed in the sense that any federal democracy is self-governed.
       You can register your membership in the American Movement for World Government by sending your annual dues, $35 per person, payable to the AMWG, addressed to Dorothy R. Tilson, 435 W. 119th St., #9G, New York, N.Y. 10027-7110.
       The AMWG is a 501C3, non-profit, membership organization, dedicated to education on the need for world government and on the means for attaining it, and is financed by private contributions.
          DOROTHY R. TILSON
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FORMER UNITED STATES PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER wrote the following to Former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Robert Muller, October 24, 2002:
       “Rosalynn and I are pleased to congratulate you on receiving the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation’s 2002 World Citizenship Award.   Since your prizewinning essay on world governance, written 54 years ago, you have devoted much of your life to the peacekeeping efforts of the United Nations, directly assisting three secretaries-general. ...”
       The letter is reprinted in a 29-page brochure by Dr. & Mrs. Muller, titled “The Absolute, Urgent Need for Proper Earth Government from Four Thousand Ideas for a Better World.”
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       The evil way of the world’s nobility:
Respect for all & a strong foreign policy
       The following in quotes is our E. B. White quotation for today, Jan.8.   The New Yorker, always a joker, published it on April 19, 1943.   Notice how these first words in White’s book presaged what did happen in the preliminaries and in the establishing of the U.N. Charter as the highest “law” in the world:
       “The time is at hand to revive the discussion of companionate marriage, for it is now apparent that the passion of nations will shortly lead to some sort of connubial relationship, either a companionate one (as in the past) or a lawful one (which would be something new). If you observe closely the courtship among nations, if you read each morning the many protestations of affection and the lively plans for consummation, you will find signs that the drift is still toward an illicit arrangement based on love, respect, and a strong foreign policy. ...”
       In case anyone might be interested, let the worldpeacenews.org writer now be forthcoming enough to confess that he’d felt stirrings of the need for a governed world since his freshman year at NYU Heights in 1937-8.

          Will we reap the same reward?
IS THE U.S. GOING THE WAY
   OF THE BRIT’S EMPIRE?
“There is some talk these days, whether in the New York Times Magazine or on the latest US News & World Report cover, of a new ‘American empire.’   A parallel to the British Empire even can be found on this [European] side of the Atlantic, in a book review published by The Observer on January 5.
      " Reviewing Niall Ferguson's Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Peter Conrad concludes his arresting if not compelling thesis.
       "Ferguson believes that the British stumbled across a system of 'world government', and he expects the Americans, who extorted the promise of decolonization from Churchill before they joined the war against Hitler, and then promptly pocketed the colonies that were set free, to assume the same altruistic responsibilities.   Empire imposes a 'global burden,’ as Kipling made clear in the poem he addressed to the white men of the United States; it must mean more than the franchising of McDonald's and Mickey Mouse... Alas, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney seem quite ready... to 'take up the oil man's burden'. It remains to be seen whether they will 'reap his old reward'...”
       “A democratic UN-based world government seems a nobler goal than any kind of new ‘empire’:   it would involve neither a ‘white man's burden’ nor an ‘oil man's burden,’ but simply a ‘21st century human being’s survival duty’".
          PETER HUVOS, Jan.7
       Right on!   Except as being noted these days over this worldpeacenews.org. E. B. White, as a lead editorial writer in issues of The New Yorker from 1943 to 1946, accurately pointed to fatal U.N. founding-principle, U.N. Charter and U.N. bureaucracy flaws.   Today’s EBW excerpt, top, above, is #2.   Yesterday’s was #1.   Al Kaplan found at Strand’s and gave us a copy of White’s superb editorials.   White’s book is titled The Wild Flag.   This wild flag turns out to be irises, flowers that all people can like – and salute – equally.
       As for Mr. Ferguson’s new and obviously thoughtful book with its great caveat for us Americans, ‘we,’ however, are not aware of any post WWII British colony pocketed from the British by the U.S. - with the possible exception of Guam if it had been British – or British Samoa, which is not now and never was a U.S. colony.   Pago Pago is the U.S. base in the Samoas.
       Too, it’s news to this American that anyone ever thought of the British Empire as a world government that could make, judge and enforce law.   Yes, of course, Britain could and did make, judge and enforce law globally.   But it wasn’t a world government in the sense of its being a world political unity representing all citizens with voting franchises.
       But there again, WPN may be on shaky grounds.   The assertion that earth now might be much more peaceable than it is IF ancients had been able to lead-and-follow in the establishment of an open, decent, honest, federal democracy capable always of keeping roil down among many more than half of all free-and-equal people governed is arguable.
       And you can say this smarmily for the British & etc.: many of our U.S. laws, customs, outlooks, immigrants and the bulk of our language came from overseas.
       When we think of our language being put in dictionary order by one Samuel Johnson in London, upstairs, on an immense wooden table, in dim light, we almost feel like genuflecting in profound respect.   Most of us are what we should be, mindful of the humbling notion that all people stand on the shoulders of others.   There’s little “Rule U.S.!” here.
       Many citizens pride the U.S. on its ethnic diversity.   It’s too early to depend on that’s being enough for the U.S. to try to lead in taking a shot at creating a world democracy.   But we might be getting ready to take a redux at the reality that a world federal democracy-to-be would be based on all people voting, not on war-vulnerable nationalist quirks and poorly thought-outdrives.
       Who knows?   The slight hope might seem to be growing.   For success, of course, it needs a global groundswell in favor of Willkie’s “One World or None” and Lincoln’s fix on democracy of, by and for all people – or on almost anything world-federal-democracy said in favor of world law in any language.      TL
––––

E.B.White knew what to do
       – even then!
       The U.N. was botched in 1944-45 at Dumbarton Oaks – so that is one good reason that you hear that we don’t know what to DO now.
       But we damn well had better find out what to do now – because people are correct to think that a lot rides on finding that out.
       In that connection, it says here, E. B. White, a chief editorial writer for The New Yorker magazine, from May 1, 1943, to January 1, 1946, had a lot to say while the U.N. was being botched at birth.   He knew how it was done and he knew and wrote about what could have been done to save all peoples from the international warful chaos that engulfs us all now, it is asserted here.
       The New Yorker’s chief editorialist in the issue received today, Jan.6, writes that “we don’t know what to do” except to leave the mess to "diplomacy."   Everyone might suspect that’s not right because diplomacy, not the statespersonship of getting up a world political unity, is what landed us where we are.
       Here is what Hendrik Hertzberg had to say today, excerpted, starting at a paragraph’s start, p28.
       “What’s a superpower to do? ... America’s main goal – and China’s, and South Korea’s – must be to prevent North Korea from following through on its threat (implied but not yet explicit) to convert the [its] fuel rods, which would allow it to build as many as a half-dozen bombs within months...   War?   Not a good idea, even though the offending facility itself could be quite easily ‘taken out.’ ... Isolation and sanctions, the Bush Administration’s initial idea?   The first would be redundant, the second both cruel and ineffective; and neither could even be properly tried without the cooperation of Beijing and Seoul. ... That leaves diplomacy, the worst choice except for all the others. ...”
       Judging from E. B. White’s WWII comments, diplomacy is part of the isolation and sanctions package of peace-through-war-think.
       About what to do, White had this to say in his June 1, 1946, editorial, the last words in the collection:
       “Government is the thing.   Law is the thing.   Not brotherhood, not international co-operation, not security councils that can stop war only by waging it.   Where do human rights arise, anyway?   In the sun, in the moon, in the daily paper, in the conscientious heart?   They arise in responsible government.   Where does security lie, anyway ... It lies in government. ... Control lies in government, because government is people.   Where there are no laws, there is no law enforcement.   Where there are no courts, there is no justice.
       “...Perhaps government is impossible to achieve in a globe preponderantly ignorant, preponderantly ‘foreign,’ with no common language, no common ground except music and childbirth and death and taxes.   Nobody can say that government will work.   All one can guess is that it must be given an honest try, otherwise our science will have won the day, and the people can retire from the field, to lie down with the dinosaur and the heath hen – who didn’t belong here either, apparently.”
       So now at least and at last we all may think about what it has meant for humanity that its basic survival lesson was ignored at Dumbarton Oaks – and that now all nations might be given one last chance to begin to advocate, honestly and knowledgably, that, to start, a world constitutional convention might be able to settle on an enforceable world legality that could get all peoples to cope with our mutual and imminent danger of nuclear war.   What to do?   Propose the world negotiation that could produce a workable solution!
–––

La Verkin to U.N.: Stay Away!
       An article on page 3 of today's LeFigaro (Jan. 2), entitled "A City in Utah Closed to the United Nations", provides a sober reminder of the hurdles faced by AMWG in the new year.
       The French journalist who wrote the reminder travelled to La Verkin, a Utah town which had voted a decree "outlawing" the UN within its perimeter.
       A billboard proclaims:   "Yes to freedom under God's control!   No to a world government under UN control!"
       A town official named Dan Howard decries the “socialist menace" represented by the UN, which in his view "permitted the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, as well as the Cuban revolution.   The goal of the UN is to create a world government, yet very few of the 189 member nations are free countries."
       This article underscores the value of WPN's frequent clarifications of any misconceptions of the UN, and WPN’s explanations of how a democratic UN-based world government, far from suppressing freedom, would dramatically strengthen it throughout the world!
          PETER HUVOS
––––

John Roberts Concluded, Jan.4
       ...the new world order that Bush senior talked about during the first war against Saddam Hussein turns out to be one of the old fashioned kind of power politics.
       Instead of a world without war, the world's leaders have recreated the world of 1914 and 1939, with a few modifications.   There are more possibilities of making a better world but unfortunately there are also far greater dangers.   But let no one think that the greatest dangers now come from the successors to the atom bombs that concluded the Second World War.
       The cities of Germany were bombed and burnt to destruction without the help of atom bombs.   The firestorm that the Royal Air Force caused in Hamburg killed more people than one atom-bomb could do.   The firestorm in Tokyo foreshadowed even more devastation than the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought at the end of the war.
       The Second World War showed that the choice was between continuing to make war or to institute a new and policed world of law.
       After 50 years the most serious attempt to achieve it - the International Criminal Court - is still being opposed and sabotaged by the United States.   This all constitutes the greatest betrayal of the people of the world that has ever been perpetrated.
       Enough already!
       Why shouldn’t world federalists harp – as World Peace News - a World Government Report does harp – on the all-nation need to call a world constitutional convention to set forth guidelines for the creation of a world political unity that could cope?   Looking to the future will be what counted if a corner is ever turned toward the creation of a world federal democracy that can cope.
       How absurd it is to say that any one nation of almost 200 in the U.N. can sabotage a condition that none rise to want to rectify governmentally?
       How absurd it is to seem to look at the stillborn ICC as an example of what the world needs in a world federal democracy that could be!
       A desperately needed and appropriate ICC could be created as a part of a world federal democacy.   Now the ICC is no more than a neutered example of a model counterproductively pushed forward out of an all-nation, U.N. denial of the World Government Imperative.
       And the ICC “implemented” now arguably would be a fatal push of all nations into a small black hole tucked away in the Milky Way someplace. Let’s all get off something that can’t and isn’t working and into a world political unity that can cope.
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Chuck WOOLERY e-mail, Jan. 1
       ...Abolishing militarism won’t be necessary when it becomes obvious that any military will be no match for super powered civilians or civilian groups.   The economic cost of maintaining future militaries will pale in comparison to the economic and political costs of using militaries and other government agencies attempting to find out which civilians are their biggest concern.
       It is civilian companies that research and develop military technologies.   Any advances for the military will first (and even later through theft) be available to civilians.
       Advances in technology and the fragility of life means that offensive capacities (by military or civilian) will always have an advantage over existing defensive technologies. This perpetual advance in powerful killing capacity will make world domination by any one person, group or nation increasingly impossible.   The ubiquitous spread of powerful technology is the balancing of power that will lead the majority of people in the world demanding a peaceful and just world federation to reduce the likelihood of individuals, groups or nations abusing such power.
       The pace of technology change suggests we should be thinking in terms of thousands of years but rather thousands of days.
       Squelching of rebellion will never be assured.   Humans are too creative and devious if spurred to it.   Squelching the conditions that incite rebellion however is possible.   It’s called the rule of law‚   (Laws made and enforced by a democratic process, applied equally to all, and protective of a basic set of inalienable rights.)...
       Chuck Woolery, Chair, World Federalist Association Chesapeake Region, 315 Dean Dr.,Rockville, MD 20851-1144. Home: 301-738-7121 Mobile: 240-401-1098
       Email: chuck@igc.org
––––

Never let peacemaking go unrewarded!
       Sacagawea, the young Indian woman carrying her infant on her back while trekking, often served in dealing with hostile tribes as America’s “first great peacemaker.”   She helped Lewis & Clark negotiate the Great Unknown of the West.   And she left a legacy to ponder.
       The leadership's fare-thee-well, after the exploratory goal of the expedition into the unknown was achieved, can be seen as a heedless article of behavior used by the bureaucracies of many big, busted corporations, governments, the U.N., etc.
       [See Sacagawea, “A Guide With Attitude,” the bottom NYT editorial , Jan.4 – and many things that Shirley Hazzard and others have written about U.N. attitudes.]
       When the hard, pioneering expedition finally approached the Pacific, Sacagawea was almost left behind and denied “a once-in-a-lifetime sight of the great waters,” but, complaining, she was finally “indulged” – and otherwise largely ignored.
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World-Fed Glossop says ICC a harbinger
       “...in central St .Louis we held a big event (with a band ... many informative brochures, and several speakers) to celebrate the beginning of the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, a permanent tribunal which will be able to prosecute individuals - even national rulers...accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes... ... On the 15th of July in London the World Congress of the World Federalist Movement (prodded by a few other Esperantists and Ron [Glossop]) adopted a resolution urging all World Federalists to learn the nationality-neutral international language Esperanto. ...”
       Enclosed with a holiday-greeting note with the above was a copy of the annual WPN fundraiser.   On it, in response for WPN’s request for a comment on his “take,” WPN long-time subscriber Ron, <rglosso@siue.edu>, amplifies a strong position that WPN sees as tending to come into confluence with the position of the American Movement for World Government, to wit:
       “I am pleased at the progress occurring with the ICC.   The U.S. is showing how some kind of forceful government is necessary at the global level but also why that government must be democratic at the global level so that it has legitimacy and cannot be controlled by small organized groups in one country.   I am more concerned about what the U.S. is trying to do unilaterally than by what the U.N. is not doing (and which it could do if the U.S. would support it)”
       Agreed that the U.S., in our own and everyone else’s interests, should support a freely drawn and freely ratified legitimacy for the phasing in of a world federal democracy - an advocacy for which the U.N. has strenuously, compellingly, obdurately opposed.   Ever since its early years its many-nation leaders have even shunted the U.N. Charter’s periodic call for review.
       One sad thing that the U.S. bureaucracy [and everyone] knows for sure is that the U.N. was created as an insubstantial League, and thus all nations ride not on the U.N. as a whole but on the timely irony of the U.N.’s veto-capable P5, the 5 Permanent Security Council members.
       Hallelujah, the P5 has shown genuine leadership in the interests of all peoples.
       Thus, above all, the U.S. and all nations need to persuade themselves and every citizen to create a world federal democracy with legislative, executive and judicial authority.
       As things rattle along now, one P5 veto could raise hob with lethal games being played by The Powers.
–––

Look to the Ides of February
       Jim Hoagland of the Washington Post made note on TV’s Washington Journal, Jan.3, that critics still criticize President Bush on the basis that what he did in getting U.N. inspectors back in Iraq “is not enough.”
       Indeed, all peoples still slosh around in the frigid swamp of what might befall as late as February – on decisions concerning actions of the U.N. Security Council.
       As distinct from the disunited United Nations bureaucracy, the Security Council is expected to give or withhold its go-ahead to an Iraq war, heavy with the possibility of unintended consequences.
       In this, of course, President Bush’s role might come to making plain that “disarmament,” in its global sense, is the human problem.
       Disarmament of all nations under enforceable law, during a phase-in period, under a ratified world political unity, could protect the skins of all people from the ravages of a burgeoning war.
––––

           There is a good alternative to war
Rep. Charles B. Rangel had an NYT op-ed. Dec.31 with the headline and text-breaker “Bring Back the Draft” and “If we go to war, all // Americans should //share the burden.”
       Good, but.   It reminds WPN of the time many years ago when we met and talked to him on the 11th floor of 777 U.N. Plaza and had the chance to ask him about The Vision Thing.   He cheerfully pooh-poohed it.   Now that it [world political unity] is coming around into visibility again, he says nothing noticed here that his thought on that has changed.   That’s unexceptional, of course, as far as his political acumen is concerned. But as a fellow veteran, we take a dim view of any soldier who has been there and who goes along, for others, into that bad night of war.
––––
           DOWNLOADED
The Tobin world tax & the U.N.
This is an addition to the annals of People Will Say Almost Anything to avoid the burden and the dire, heavy, urgent need to advocate the creation of a credible world legality for the creation of a world federal democracy.

        This World Tax Thing came up yesterday, Jan.2, in at least two downloaded annexes, both old but prescient.   The one download Tobin critique, about this 2-year-old-world-tax hoorah, originated in The Netherlands, and carries the kicker, “Anti-Globalist Miracle Cure”.
       But first let’s note that the originator, Prof. James Tobin, can be found as saying that he doesn’t think that his [silly, world-government-avoiding and therefore indirectly world-government denigrating - WPN’s words] thing would work.   In other words the whole thing, as it relates to the politically disunited & disaccrediting United Nations, is a gas.
       “The United Nations wants to use the Tobin tax to enforce global taxation (this kind of globalisation of course is even worse than anti-globalisation) and thereby create a fund that will allow it to control the financing of third world development.   [That’s crazy but the objective, if taken as sincere, is astoundingly noble – WPN Ed.]   The UN needless to say portrays its plans in high-flown moralistic language, but its critics detect a sinister conspiracy on the part of a group of unelected [U.N.] bureaucrats to build a world government.”
       Hey!   That’s not only needless-to-say, it’s stupid.   It’s simply stupid to say that the U.N. bureaucrats ever openly or covertly did or said anything that could be pinned on them as actually doing anything to create a world government.   But note, the annex downloaded yesterday, Jan.2, is by Jeremy Hetherington-Gore, Tax-News.com, London, and it is dated September 2001.
       The 1, 2, 3 of the front-loaded humor of the above knock-about concerning the blithely, news-personnel-disaccrediting U.N., is, as seen by worldpeacenews.org, as follows:
       A ratified world federal democracy, just as every other legalized and empowered government, would be able to levy taxes according to due process of enforceable law.
       The U.N., under its current bureaucracy, is not in any basic way a democracy.   It has said clearly in many ways and words that it must defer to the U.S. to want to establish the U.N. as an empowered federal democracy.   The politically disunited U.N. doesn’t have an army, not to mention a doomsday army, see.   And it has disaccredited a press that has harped on the fraud of its many dysfunctional pretenses.
       All sentient people might look into meanings and consequences of the above.
       It just might be long past time for the advocacy of the creation by ratified law of a world federal democracy that can write, judge and, yes, enforce law able to end war and levy world-law-legislated taxes in the interest of all peoples.
       Further to the current state of the blithering, irresponsive, almost-200-nation U.N. bureaucracy, documentation can show that it has stiffed questions at U.N. briefings going to the points of the above.
–––

       Advocacy and relevancy
Free speech means that all ideas expressed will be taken under consideration.
       Isn’t a rub there that some ideas expressed will be irrelevant to the advocacy being pushed?
       Sure.   And who is to decide what is and what isn’t relevant?
       Everyone who is willing to debate relevance should decide, that is, everyone who is willing to debate what is and what isn’t a contribution to the forward movement of the advocacy being pushed by the group.
       But most people in a group advocating creation of a world federal democracy, for instance, might think that "peace-requires-law-and-law-requires-government" is not debatable – because the assertion is obviously valid.   What then?
       Then, in the perceived cause of the forward movement of the advocacy, the group should risk disallowing an anticipated waste of time on an alleged irrelevancy.
       But doesn’t the risk of suppression of irrelevant ideas open questions about what ideas are, in fact, relevant?   Wouldn’t the group taking the risk be likely to deny itself some of its best ideas?
       Of course.   Depending.   That is the danger of law-and-order irrationally applied. Whether or not the judgment of the group is flakey will go to determine the quality of its effectiveness and validity, not to mention its existence.
       That means that an informed group advocating the creation of a world federal democracy will focus on the means to achieve its goal.   It will not be diverted from the relevance of its developing means to achieve goals peacefully, tellingly, democratically.
       And good wishes for the years to come.
––––

Wouldn’t you know?
Unidentified world political unitarians
    rattle the peace on New Years Eve 2003
       This grim-faced, shouting-all-at-once, hell-for-leather bunch of heedless “intellectuals” typically raised, razed and shattered neighborhood airways last night in Manhattan.
       Had any physical damage been done it would have been dwarfed in scope and world-federal-democracy focus by the two-and-a-half hour boisterousness that upended the benign composure of an enclave of what allegedly is one of the most peaceful, respectful, law-abiding, sparkling-big-ball-dropping environments in all the world of word-sharp conciliation.
––––

          Smile, Einstein, smile!
Probably the time between ticks in a clock placed one place in the universe is different from the tick-time in the same clock placed otherwise in the universe, etc.
       So – Einstein, modify your E=MC squared!
       Heh, says the ignorant layman, Einstein’s equation is a generalization that will continue to hold more heavy water than all the discoveries of its critics.
       Regardless, isn’t it pertinent to guess that this question hitting on Einsteinism bears importantly on our species’ mortality:   Will anyone be around on earth when E= finally comes to resolution?
       There Einstein has the scientific noodles and all of the rest of us – because he was the first great scientific light to pitch all our needs for world government at length, man.
____

     From Peter Huvos in Paris:
Today's International Herald Tribune (Dec. 30) carries a timely column by Jim Hoagland entitled "Think of 1919 and 1991: Texts for a History Course for 2003".
       Hoagland recommends several history books which invite parallels to a possible attack on Iraq, such as Anthony Beevor's The Fall of Berlin 1945.   Three other recent books are of special interest:
       (a) "The most ambitious" is Philip Bobbitt's The Shield of Achilles, "a meditation on global strategy through the ages.   It heralds the replacement of the nation-state by the market-state."   (We at AMWG, the Americn Movement for World Government are not that pessimistic. PH )
        (b) "The most contrarian" is Charles Kupchan's The End of the American Era, "which argues that imperial overstretch will cause the United States to lose global leadership (a strong possibility) to a vitalized European Union (now there's a stretch!) rather than to global anarchy."   (Again, we at AMWG are convinced there is a third way...)
       (c) Finally, Hoagland recommends Strobe Talbott's The Russia Hand, with its "incisive" sketch of Putin.   Too bad Hoagland did not mention Talbott's advocacy of world government in a Time column, "The Birth of the Global Nation," a decade ago.
       [Bravo, Peter.   Talbott, Hoagland, please take note if so inclined. TL]
–––

Shall we shuffle onto the U.S.?
       John Roberts calls for the U.N. Security Council to make correct decisions, valid and morally impeccable international law, etc.
       That does not mean, he says in his 370th World Letter, Jan.19, “shuffling off” responsibility to the U.S.   “We live from crisis to crisis because we are unwilling to undertake the reform of global structures,” he asserts.
       What reforms of what structures are fingered – in addition to “immediate acceptance” of the stillborn U.N. ICC that serves as distraction to the creation of a world democracy that could establish real courts?   However ratified and empowered-to-sit against bonafide losers of wars, U.N. courts exist as bones of contention and examples of what happens when a rule of world law is not but should be proposed to exist by a nation or nations.
       We need “a complete rethinking of the current reliance upon the governments of sovereign states to uphold international law.”
       Of course we do.   But that’s getting to be as useful to say as what world-governmentalists have been saying since long before WWII.   Specificity as to means and structures are now required.
       How can we have any rethink if the U.N defines international law as regarding the highest law as entitling the sovereign U.N. Member-States to go to war?   The Charter must be respectfully junked if its main principle is to give way to democracy, government of, by and for all people governed.   How can U.N. courts work if both sides to a suit must first agree to be bound by the courts? Don’t courts need the support of a single, political entity in order to mesh with law making and enforcing elements?
       Cm’on John, let’s talk about calling for creation of a world constitutional convention to set down for debate what might be credible.   And let’s note that advocating debate on what might be possible is not the same as noodling one or more controversial elements of a whole that needs to be an integrated, empowered federal democracy of some ratifiable sort.
––––

THRIVING BUREAUCRACIES

This from Hank Stone, president of the Coalition for a Democratic World Government:

        CDWG Friends,
        I've been retired for the last two months, and in that time have written the attached dialogue about what I think is wrong in the world, and what should be done about it. As you might imagine, I think democratic world government is needed!
       It's pretty long, and no rule says you have to read it.   But I do respect your opinions, and send it along JUST IN CASE you have time for this.
       Am interested in any comments, and especially blunt criticisms, since I want to fix what's wrong with it.
       In any case, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
        Cheers!
        Hank

        World Peace News – a World Government Report, for its part, thinks that advocating the creation of a ratifiable constitution for a binding legality for the creation of a democratic world government comes close to perfection at this time for a non-governmental organization anywhere in the world.
       Most of the rest, God help us, will be up to bumble-prone diplomats and non-diplomat officials batting around in the unfamiliar forest of actually drafting that new and ratifiable world constitution.
        Of course official, hands-on types may come to consider knock-offs now aiming the legal shots of national governments – and, worth mention, they might come to consider the wit and nonsense of some of the most pithy of the thousands of the more reputable for-example drafts stacked up in the archives of the world now.   Hey, let’s all think anew in the cause of saving the skins of our threatened species of life.
––––

    WHO [in, for instance, the Chile democracy] can be expected to be among those who oppose creation of a world democracy able to outlaw major crime disrupting whole nations, etc?

       “Chile Sect Thrives Despite Criminal Charges”.   That’s the 4-column, p3, top, NYT, Dec.30, headline under a 4-column photo of “The southern entrance to Colonia Dignidad, a paramilitary religious enclave 250 miles south of Santiago...”
       The first and the last paragraphs of the richly detailed news story and the underline of a 2-column “wanted” photo concerning a “Paul Schafer ” are below:
       “PARRAL, Chile – The group’s reclusive leader is accused of sexually abusing scores of young boys.   Former political prisoners say they were imprisoned and tortured in underground dungeons in the group’s compound.   An American who disappeared on a hiking vacation is reported to have been executed there.   More than 50 other charges are pending against the group and its leaders, ranging from kidnapping and forced labor to fraud and tax evasion.”
       “‘That [mentioned throughout the long news story] means we may never be able to get rid of them,’ said Mr. Viera-Gallo, who represents this area in Chile’s Congress.   ‘This thing just keeps turning around and around in circles.   They are so powerful, with so much protection, that they have the ability to keep these cases going in our courts indefinitely.’”
       Here’s the 2-column “wanted” underline [placed over a 1-column map of where {fortress} Colonia Dignidad is on a map of part of Chile, northwest of Argentina]:   “A wanted poster of Paul Schafer, who heads the sect. He is accused of...”
       The above is meant to add to WPN’s advocacy for the creation of a globally ratified constitution for creation of a world democracy.
       It is argued that just as enforceable national, federal, democratic law has proved its immense value over anarchy within sovereign nations, so creation of a world democracy would prove to be better for everyone’s security and well-being than the international anarchy that now manages to pose the most serious problem for everyone’s humanity.
–––

Be a one-or-two-person band for DWG
       “Discovering and compiling statements on which we in the movement for DWG [Democratic World Government] have consensus” has been in the works, according to an e-mail Dec.30.   The purpose “is to help us all engage the general public in a consistent way – making a distinction between our own opinions and statements on which we agree.”        Good – but if we agree in principle on the consensus definitions of democratic and government:
       Given advocacy as non-governmental, given that "consensus" moves in and out of fashion, given that the effectiveness of an advocacy is more related to the words of individuals doing the advocating than anything else, it may seem that the best way for advocates of a world democracy is to play away always as small music bands.
       Seek to learn and play as well as teach, debate carefully, pause, listen, persist, practice, read, consider the best stuff to be read, ask, consult, etc., etc.   Avoid consensus cast in concrete.   Be supple, not rigid;   be cheerful, not grim;   be open, not dogmatic. Above all, admit the just views of those addressed.   We all have things to teach and learn.
       Advocates, individually, serve as experts apart working in concert.
       How-to advise might be for one-or-two person bands to keep on doing, trying, looking for better ways, ideas, expressions, apt words, approaches, deeper understandings, and playing on.
       Each advocate should play to his or her own strong suit, background, experiences – organizing, speaking, writing, writing letters to editors.   Pool efforts, study to know what all people are into together.   Consensus for advocates is important, but it is not as important for advocates as it is for lawyers, doctors, scientists – or governmentalists.
       As advocates, we do well to realize that motivating, not structuring [in the sense of what legislators do], is our game. We err gravely to think that we can be definitive, exact, governmental, builders, actors according to blueprints, according to ratified constitutions, authorities.   Judge progress not so much by how many letters are printed but how many letters each of us writes and sees fit to send to those in government, to the media, to authorities, to whomever, etc.
––––

           Calm Powell Sunday Dec.29
PREEMPTIVE WAR versus
PREEMPTIVE POLITICAL UNITY
       WHICH CHOICE IS HUMANITY MAKING  now?
THE LINES above proceed from the perception that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s phrase “preemptive war” is, as he emphasized, “not right” as of “now”.
       Further, the above proceeds from the assumption that “preemptive diplomacy” isn’t right for now either.   Diplomacy is widely understood as the doomed practices of war-capable nations trying to establish lasting peace.
       What then is the right word to follow preemptive if the creation of a peaceable world situation is the purpose being pursued?
       Powell didn’t speculate Dec.29 in interview with Tony Snow of the Fox TV Network and, later, in several interviews put on by NBC, CBS, CNN and maybe others.
       From the narrow perspective of worldpeacenews.org and World Peace News - a World Government Report – in all interviews seen as specified above and in all interviews that could have been with Mr. Powell – he came on state-of-the-art splendid.
       The no-no question here is of course:   Did Mr. Powell imply that preemptive world political unity – the creation of a world democracy – is the basic preemptive alternative to WWIII?
       The announcement concerning any nation’s decision to choose to advocate “preemptive world democracy” is not for any one government official to make, obviously.
       But the self-defeating limitations of the current world condition of legal lawlessness [oxymoron intended] require that nations themselves must agree that a rule of just law is better than the evening-of-international-odds through wars unending.
       In this, peace as war depends on “leadership.”
       Therefore, here on earth now, leadership might be seen as leadership in the advocacy of drafting a ratifiable legality for the creation of a world democracy enabled to preempt the current trend to WWIII.
___

THEY don’t know what to do!
          Who they?
       They are all super-nationalist and super-globalist leaders hung up on the need for security.   Pity them - and us all.   We and they can’t go into the MAD trap. MAD means mutual assured destruction.   That’s why they seem to say that they don’t know what to do to avoid a nuclear “exchange.”
       But why don’t they do what needs to be done if that’s so easy?
       That’s because doing what needs to be done would be hard, not easy.   That’s because most people don’t want to do what needs to be done.   That’s because they don’t want to accept how to do what needs to be done.   What needs to be done is to unite people at lethal odds politically.   That would mean pooling international sovereignty in everyone’s best interests, yes.   A world constitution would have to be drafted and then ratified by all peoples capable of threatening other peoples with war.
       But that would mean giving up national sovereignty!
       It would mean doing what people have always done for security.   It would mean pooling sovereignty under workable and globally ratified law.   It would mean everyone’s not being sucked up into the MAD trap.
       But all that would mean that everyone would have achieved only a stay against the inevitable if life on earth becomes impossible for natural or other causes?
       Yes.   MAD mandates making security possible for the foreseeable future – but only if all peoples come to understand the need to do what peoples have always done when forced by doom to pool sovereignty.
       And act with common sense?
       That’s what knowing what to do comes down to now.   Not tomorrow.   Now.
––––
Had enough of anarchy already?
       “SEOUL, South Korea, Dec.27” [from the second and third paragraphs under the lead NYT news story, Dec.28.   It reports that North Korea says it plans to expel U.N. weapons monitors and restart a nuke-fuel lab]:
       Top (U.S.) officials..., “...pressing the Russians, Chinese, Japanese and South Koreans to persuade North Korea to abandon its confrontational stance, conferred today while the administration reiterated that Pyongyang must reverse course.
       “‘The North Koreans would like nothing better than a dust-up with the United States,’ a senior Bush administration official said.   ‘That’s the game they’ve played for years.   We’re not going to get into that.’”
       Right!   Excellent!   But!   let’s get into calling for North Korean, U.S. and all-nation cooperation in setting up a ratifiable world democracy that can and will outlaw the present warlike condition of all nations being pushed out of shape by the current state of MAD anarchy among all nations and all peoples.
       P.S.:   As the headline on the second lead of Dec.28 might seem to indicate, Russians might be expected to approve of serious efforts of the P5 and all other nations in the creation of a less MAD-than-now, ratifiable world political condition.
––––

           A THIRD WORD OF CAUTION
       “Two words of caution from an elder in the field:   (1) don't let us establish a hierarchy of contributions: no "better than", "less than", or "but first you must.....".   (2) be the ocean; welcome every river.
       Get on with it.”
       That came over e-mail again on Dec.28 – and it came perplexingly, according to worldpeacenews.org.
       About the contradiction between getting on with it and the vast uncertainty about what ‘it’ might be:
       We ask, Get on with What?
       We do know that we’re talking about a great variety of inputs from members of the Coalition for Democratic World Government and others. And we agree that all should be welcome.
       But we also know that much that proceeds from the CDWG has nothing at all to do with calling for the creation of an all-nation constitutional conference of governmental representatives, mostly en bloc – or calling for anything else that would promote a rationality for a reasonable start toward the actual, feasible, ratifiable creation of any kind of a world government.
       If our CDWG isn’t fixed on doing what our title implies, we are wise to regard as equal all waters, pure or at least potable, that come down in all manner of streams to the river of opinion about options.
       But if the CDWG decides to move forthrightly in accord with our name’s well-stated purpose, then the first thing we might want to do is discourage the false notion that every little stream that flows into the river is actually toward the end of uniting all nations in some kind of ratifiable federal democracy.   Right?   Welcoming every little and big stream comes mandated by the reality that everyone is, in fact, involved.   But advocating that we make no clear, definitive distinctions between what is relevant and what is distracting or even, worse, even harmful to forward movement, will leave us where we are stuck now.
––––

“QUOTATION OF THE DAY [NYT, Dec. 28] ‘If they kick out the inspectors, the world has absolutely no eyes – no cameras, no inspections.’ VICTOR D. CHA, a Korea expert at Georgetown University, on North Korea’s nuclear program. {pA1}”
       Sure.   And doesn’t that indicate that the world needs, in the best interests of all people, creation of a federal democracy with eyes, cameras and inspections of all arsenals – and common sense attuned to ratified, enforceable world law in global affairs?
       ____

“Humanity is caught in an interim during which its world of sovereign U.N. Member-States is slowly dying and its new world federal democracy is not yet fully conceived.”           That’s what an alter-ego said to World Peace News - a World Government Report, two days before New Years Eve.
––––

What about the U.N. campus?
       How will the $billion+ expansion of the U.N.’s Manhattan “campus” onto a block formerly occupied by a tiny park and a Con-Ed facility south of 42nd Street factor into evolving views of the politically disunited U.N. entity?
       That’s a question that drives interest here.   Quo vadis, the disunited United Nations itself?
       Some will wonder if the expense and the usurpation of a scarce vest-pocket-park space and riverfront land might be used better for something else.   That might be, for instance, building to house university studies concerning the open-minded reconciliation of global facts with a world of anarchy among nations spavined by fear, global myths, vast inequalities, vaster egos, and even vaster needs and vaster supernationalist, superglobalist opinions.
       Who spends as much money as is planned on a malformed institution with such ambiguous, contradictory, often uncoordinated, often impossible, undemocratic, unrealistic, poorly-planned, under-financed pretenses and with often successfully opposed and abandoned goals and false starts?   Is throwing office space at the U.N. enough? Can it serve to get the U.N. to define a decision-making system for itself and for the Humanity it should and sometimes does manage to serve in fits and starts?
       Why should the U.N. be in one U.N. Member-State and not another?   Why shouldn’t it or its replacement be out on its splendid own, easily reached island someplace? Are Uncle Sap and the City, the State and Humanity wise to risk what might be seen, however falsely, as lurching for some kind of U.S. or other hegemonism?
But that’s a sad and touchy question, given the lackadaisical attitude that the U.N. expressed for trying to move its bureaucracy onto Governors Island at a time when that might have been feasible .
       This next paragraph is the last in the news story about the state-of-the-City-U.N.-U.S. plan, reported in the NYT Dec.26:
       “The United Nations hopes to obtain a long-term $1billion loan from the United States for the project.   In all likelihood the [City and N.Y.State] United Nations Development Corporation, would issue bonds for the separate development of the 35-story [office] tower. But first the agency would have to go to the State Legislature for permission to build on a public park.”
––––

World Peace News - a World Government Report noted in an open letter months ago to the U.N. it has abandoned hope that the U.N. will renew or openly review its press accreditation. The U.N. did renew the press accreditation of another correspondent whose accreditation had been terminated later for the same published reason. The U.N. had terminated both as reporters-correspondents for the absurd reason that both are "non-governmentals." Name one real reporter working for one real news medium who is not employed professionally by a non-governmental entity? The re-instated correspondent had called the disaccreditations in a letter to the Secretary-General's spokesperson "stupid." This matter goes equally to the happy fates of both correspondents. It also goes to the fact that the U.N. is not a democracy that can presume to honor strict adherence to free-press dicta. What follows from that might become apparent regarding the quality of U.N. Q&A.

––––

        Chuck Woolery <chuck@igc.org> sent the following e-mail on Dec.27.
       ... the AIDS threat is growing.   It's not the only infectious threat.   Smallpox will return.   West Nile Virus will continue to spread and mutate...and other pandemic infectious diseases will certainly come.   The greatest threat to human security isn't terrorism, global warming or a nuclear exchange.   Nothing short of a democratic world federation can effectively prevent threats AND most effectively deal with those that can't be prevented.   To amplify ... We need bold leadership as well.
       For every big, serious, global, international ill, yes, there is a solution approachable, to start, by getting on urgently, quickly with the creation of a small, all-nation-represented, constitutional convention.
       Hold it in a barn – but hold it before its time vanishes with global storms.            worldpeacenews.org.
___

Past Events of Note & Cheer:
       “The Christmas Day storm left a foot of snow to clear yesterday from a local road near Benton, Pa., west of Scranton.   In Albany, a 21-inch blanket brought back memories of great winters of the past. ...”
       “New teams of United Nations inspectors have already examined the Tuweitha nuclear installation and more than 150 other formerly secret sites in Iraq.   These sites reveal the scope of Saddam Hussein’s goals:   to rewrite the political map of the Middle East.”             Those are the underline of a 3-column winter scene at the top of the p1 of the NYT of Dec.27 and of the summary of the second lead of the day.
       They invoke on this computer now the idea of a regular emphasis of – now get this – of not the past as noted above but the future as speculative.
       Of special note, it will seem here, perhaps, will be the celebration, in a year, circa 2252, of the creation of the Parliament of All Humanity. During years immediately running up to that time, planning for that joyous celebration will be pursued diligently, globally.
       Oh, the Parliament that will have been put into existence will have some severe threats to cope with, too – but nothing like those symbolized by global Tuweithas and the 150 formerly secret sites in Iraq and many more elsewhere on earth.
––––

INSTEAD OF ISSUING WARNINGS
        TO   EACH   OTHER,
as now, just suppose that Pyongyang and Washington issued invitations saying that each supports a small convention representing all nations for the purposes of drafting an enforceable legality to be offered for ratification to all nations under stipulated rules for the purpose of creating a democracy able to settle global disputes without war?
       Wouldn’t that be better than what’s coming to a boil now – insofar as settling disputes by force globally?
       Sure.   But it wouldn’t work.   Everyone knows that.   Why be absurd?
       How can everyone know that what works among feuding peoples within nations sometimes won’t work ever globally, or in five or, say, ten phase-in years?   And how do we know that what is absurd in some minds today won’t be celebrated some day – as are many national democracies today?
       We can know that some things are so profoundly unpopular as a world democracy entailing creation of a global sovereignty that they are virtually unworkable!   And just because what sometimes seems to work within nations for settling disputes without war is no guarantee that it could work globally.
       No one knowledgeable might say that a world democracy could be drafted and ratified by representatives of all nations and be guaranteed as workable.   But that isn’t the question.
       Wouldn’t trying be better than playing chicken internationally?   Wouldn’t Washington and Pyongyang – and every other nation – do all peoples better than now by calling for expressions and referendums, hoping that news media would catch on that a world democracy might work – – and that war with modern weapons could be as bad as inventors thought that war with them might be?
––––

WHERE THERE IS NO VISION of a democratic, federal world political unity, the NYT reader and others globally will see headlines similar to the one over the second-lead news story Dec.24:
“North Korea Begins to Reopen
     Plant for Processing Plutonium”.
     Of course, on the upside, world peace can still be based on the assumption that the world will be one politically, federally, democratically – ratifiably – some day.
––––

Anatomy of segregration, jokes, nationalism, government, life & death
       White on white is fun; black on black is fun – White on black causes pain; black on white causes pain – pain causes anger; anger, war; war, death.   Gray on gray with zest and humor produces jokes, gives life; life is full of jokes – and the peace of differences.
––––

People in power must swipe the sane and urgent values of people not in power in order for the swipers to feel good about staying in power.   That’s the name of political progress, as everyone knows.
       So what else is very well known globally about 9/11 and the vision thing?
       Does someone someplace burp up with the notion that the world must be governed?
––––

IS ANTI-TERRORISM WAR?   If so, should people globally calling for the creation of a World Constitutional Convention structured to be able to outlaw war be called war – or peace?
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       In Europe, on the friendly cooperation in the creation of the biggest wireless phone company in the world, Vodafone, is encouragement given that the same friendly approach could result in the creation of a federal democracy able to act in the interests of all peoples with and without but aspiring to have phones?   World Business, Dec.19, p1.
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IN ADAPTING GLOBALLY, governmentally, to the fact that all people are cousins to no more than the 40th remove, what more can be said about the splendid adjustment made in recent weeks [now almost final and however belatedly] by the superpower-cum-peacemaker?
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It ain’t an overt appeal for creation of a world constitutional convention but this headline on p1 of the NYT on Dec.12 speaks to the essential common sense needed to start to get on with the creation of a democratically governed world:   “Reluctant U.S. Given Assent // For Missiles to Go to Yemen”.   Right?   In this what's wrong is missiles and what's right is outlawing them.
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       An ABC of the NYT news, Dec.21
Page #A1, bottom left, second paragraph:
       “...The Europeans, including those who support Mr. Bush on Iraq, are openly worried that without a vigorous Middle East peace negotiation under way, a war to oust Saddam Hussein in Baghdad could spead turmoil throughout the Arab world.”
       To say nothing about the rest of the world – if balance-of-power, anarchy-play flies out of control.   [We all know the remedy!]
       Page B1, text and below-the -fold picture across the full page, the headline, first and second paragraphs:   “Public Has Lots of Opinions on Trade Center Designs    The priest in the long wool coat was awestruck by the diorama featuring two deep black holes with crystalline towers soaring above them.   ‘I found this one astonishingly profound,’ he said.”
       That priest spoke to the profound projection of all humanity in an ungoverned world?
       Page #C1, bottom right with 2- column picture of George Soros “outside a Paris courtroom in November, when the insider trading trial began.   Mr. Soros, who was in the United States yesterday, called his conviction unfounded and said he would appeal.”
       In which it is revealed that high finance and trading might land you in a merry mixup quicker than even playing around with the creation of a federal democracy able to outlaw war with weapons of vast destruction.
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Signatures, Surveys and all that
       An opinion survey of people who indicate interest in the CDWG, Coalition for Democratic World Government, was suggested to Gary K. Shepherd,   <gshepher-@lib.siu.edu>, “by what Mr. Gauntt [in California] said about the importance of disarmament as a step in the process of creating a union or federation of nation-states.”
       Mr. Shepherd continued his e-mail Dec.20, writing “So I am proposing that a survey be done of professional military officers, asking them whether they would favor or oppose such disarmament, why they feel the way they do, and what they feel the main steps to take toward accomplishing such a disarmament, along with what they see as the main obstacles.   I would submit that military officers might have a better understanding of just what an enormous job disarmament might really be than anyone else possibly could.”
       Congratulations to the CDWG for its enterprising ways.
       As a founding CDWG member, along with Lucile Green and others, and as a WWII Navy/Marine single engine warplane pilot, SBD, F4F, F4U, retired as a Major, 011691, born just before the WWI armistice was signed, and someone who has never conducted a survey but who has talked to marine aviators all five+ U.S. years of that war, and later at meetings of squadrons, air groups and the Marine Corps Aviation Association, I feel that I may have something to think about as to suggestions already on the CDWG table.
       On the other hand, that might lead to tedium.   Let WPN say only that none of the dozens, hundreds, of military officers I have talked to about world government, NONE would give an iota of approval for any disarmament scheme separate from the world federal democracy that could outlaw armaments in the due process of governmental legislation. Outlawing war at a time of a world peace that had been certified knowledgeably, credibly and honestly is, of course, as everyone knows, the most pithy essential of our time on earth.   Here adherence to free-press practice, still only a dream at the disunited, diplomacy-bound U.N., has a role and a duty that the CDWG might run seminars on.
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Ole! the Mapleleaf vs. the Bald Eagle, or better yet –
       Why can’t global nationalists be more like US global governmentalists?
trouncing each other with insults – but lovingly?
       “As a Canadian, it struck a chord in me to read of a poll taken in the little ol’ country to the north of the U.S.A. about the views of the inhabitants regarding their neighbours to the south.   The regular brush-offs accorded to Canadian prime ministers by American Presidents... etc., etc.
       “...Canada is different ... and welcomely so.   It certainly has defects, like any society, including suppression of the native Indians and conquest of the French settlers but it does not have the canker of negro slavery to poison its history.   Nor does it have the legacy of the Mafia and gangsterism of the scale of the Prohibition era in the States.   But more significant, over the past few years, its divergence from American isolation and imperial posturing has become more marked.”      Those are from the first and last paragraphs of a 7-paragraph essay, Dec.21.
       Don’t eat them, Granduncle!   They’re very old and unrefriged!   too–
       For yea these decades, worldpeacenews.org has gone to the freezer against JRmundialist@aol.com on the vast superiority of the global dicta of the American Movement for World Government over anything forthcoming from Those Blessed Isles to the west – or is it to the east? – into the sunset?
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This dissent against the Post’s ICC dissent      favors the United States of America
       “...This gives the United States [and all nations - WPN Ed.] a superior right over the (ICC) to investigate and try persons within U.S. jurisdiction.   As a backup, the U.N. Security Council can block any ICC investigation indefinitely. ...”      That’s from a nub of a Washington Post dissent against U.S. rejection of the ICC, International Criminal Court.
       The politically disunited U.N. and the veto-endowed P5 on the U.N. Security Council [as the Post’s John Washburn editorializes accurately in an e-mail-reproducing the editorial on 12/19] give the U.S. [and all nations] priority over the U.N. ICC.
       And that, Virginia, is the way it is in a world of deadly anarchy among nations earmarked by the U.N. Charter as sovereign – [and often warlike!].
       Against the Post, it is right-on to imply that the international-court reality, as defined above, is all wrong.   Above all, in our time of nuclear weapons, humanity desperately needs law against war criminals.       All people salute!
       But, in that, doesn’t humanity have the prior need for the creation of enforceable world law?   Doesn’t the creation of enforceable world law [especially including war-criminal law] require the existence of an enabling world federal democracy?
       Answers are fully yes in the following dissent against the Post and Mr. Washburn's ICC positions.
       The following is a dissent against the Post’s dissent against U.S. opposition to the ICC.        The WPN dissent from the Post flows from WPN's 3-decades of editorial positioning at the U.N. that humanity requires the creation of a world democracy able to enforce law. [Why the U.N. itself has dissented from world-governmentalism crudely, and often covertly too, is another topic. But it is a topic.]
       The absurdity of the Post’s support of the ICC comes amusingly in the Post self-contradiction directly following the Post quotation cited at the top above.   That following quotation, contradicting what went immediately before, is:   “The court is broadly accountable.”
       “Accountable” above means, impliedly, among other things, according to the reading of WPN, World Peace News a World Government Report, that the ICC is a good idea.
       The ICC is not a good idea.   It is a distracting excuse for what is a sane advocacy of a peaceable world under a ratified world constitution that would help create enforceable world law against people fairly judged to be world outlaws.
       All people desperately need enforceabe law against war criminals, etc.  But we do not need what the unsubstantiated U.N. ICC pretense, however ratified by 87 nations, provides for now.  World law against war criminals suffers delay by the ICC obstruction.   First is needed lawfully enforceable world law.   That’s because world law against criminals stacks up as a part of world law.   If world law isn’t enforceable, what can there be but nothing to enforce criminal or any other law?
       Ah, Horatio, there’s the rub.    If world criminal law is to be enforceable, all other world law must be too.     Like sovereignty, national or international, enforceable world law forms a governmental pie that can't be cut.
       That rub should not seem new to anyone living now.
       It goes to the semi-century-old argument between U.S. world federal governmentalists, especially including the AMWG, American Movement for World Government, and between the U.S. UNA, United Nations Association.   [As not unusual in such arguable circumstances, defections in both camps have thrived or at least existed over time, but that’s another topic.]
       So what triggers the above now?
       The UNA’s media-director Mabel Brodrick-Okereke, 212/907-1320, mbrodrick@unausa.org, helpfully writes, in an e-mail 12/19, along with a copy of the Post’s ICC editorial dissenting from the U.S. position, the following:   “John Washburn has written a Washington Post editorial defending the International Criminal Court.  Please let me know if you would like to interview him about his editorial or about the [ICC] in general.   Thanks.”
       WPN would indeed like to interview Mr. Washburn.   Enthusiastic thanks are extended to the UNA for the invitation!   Such a pro-con ICC interview could indeed go to help some e-mail understandings about ICC complications and representations.  Thank you sincerely, Ms. Brodrick- Ekereke.
       cc:     the UNA, the WFA, the WFM, the U.N. Security Council, the U.S.of A., all U.N. Member-States and non-members, the Internet, e-mail, the Web, and everyone else.
       ––––

     Happy years ahead –
IF we rise to the challenges
        of a governed world.
       ...For me, two things have become clear.   One clear challenge is to make the U.N. relevant, as President Bush stated.   Unless it has the power to be relevant, it will go the way of the League of Nations, as Bush said.   This means, of course, that the U.N. needs the power to appropriately enforce its resolutions.
       The other challenge is one that our successors will face too.   The U.S. will face an acute social security, medical-care crisis in ten or more years.   Paying for the military (that is, for being the world’s policeman and for mounting a missile defense system, etc.,) will severely squeeze funds for all other programs, education, health, parks, housing (and, I almost forgot) homeland security.
       The alternatives are tax increases and lower life styles or going for multilateralism, world government, in order to enable cuts in our non-productive military.
       Merry Christmas – and Peaceful New Years.
          ED RAWSON.
       For years recently past, Mr. Rawson was the treasurer of the World Federalist Association.
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        “A war against terrorism is not a war that can be won on the battlefield because there is no battlefield.   It is not a war that can be won by throwing more money at the military or by building the most dominant military force in the world.   (We already have that.) Nuclear weapons certainly will not be able to deter terrorists, particularly since they are virtually unlocatable.   Nor will missile defenses be of any value against terrorists, who will use low-tech stealth approaches to go under the high-tech missile defenses.   And the threat of preemptive war...will ... provoke other countries to seek clandestinely to develop their own deterrent forces.”
          That’s from “Security in the Post 9/11 World” by David Krieger, “Original Message [Dec/17]...<mailto:dkrieger@napf.org> ...” forwarded by Chuck Woolery <chuck @igc.org.” [Dec.19].
       From the last paragraph:   “...This new approach to security ... must be built on ... aid rather than on military power.   It must ... reverse inequities in the world and seek to provide basic human rights and human dignity for all.   These policies must adhere to international law, and end the double standards that have helped to produce extreme misery...”
       Quotes added by the president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, Santa Barbara, come from Philip Berrigan and Albert Camus:   “I die with the conviction...that nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself.”   “Peace is the only battle worth waging.”
       As WPN sees it, one trouble with doing anything much about world woes is that enforceable international law does not exist in the sense that national law does exist. Another perhaps even more troubling trouble is that reality makes it easy to point to inequities, etc., but exceedingly difficult to get on with starts of remedies through the creation of a world federal democracy.
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       “...How do we get from competing nations to cooperating nations? ... ...that sounds like one large step...but...one can identify not one but TWO very large steps.   The relatively easy second step is the development of a world federalist institution to which all nations would belong... The much more difficult first step...is...to persuade a world of ..competing nations to give up competition and instead start cooperating with one another?”         Excerpted, that’s from an e-mailing from Hal Schaffer, John Roberts and John Bunzl. Bunzl is the founder of the International Simultaneous Policy Organization, London.
      But a world democratic federalist might say that specifying exactly what is proposed to use what means to reach what goals under what law comes first.
       That done, humanity would at least have something concrete to debate about what exactly all citizens might want to do together in order to effect what we all want to do differently.
       Harping on dire conditions and on theoretical remedies without harping on driven structural means and immediate goals helps, of course.   But without focus on concrete, specific, feasible, fundable political means to create a structure, starting with a draft of a ratifiable, serviceable world constitution, we stay in the cranking-up mode. Needed first is a credible advocacy for the creation of a world constitution – so we will begin to specify exact means.
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JOKE and do
       BEWARE   OF   GENERALIZATIONS!
Mr. Right Powell very Wrong on 1948
       “...‘There was nothing about the 1948 election or the Dixiecrat agenda that should have been acceptable in any way to any American at that time or any American now.”           That calumny and ignorance appear at the end of paragraph 3 under the NYT lead-story headlines, Dec.19, attributed to the U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.     The 1-column headlines are:   “POWELL CRITICIZES // LOTT FOR REMARKS; // JEB BUSH JOINS IN     UNUSUAL FORAYS BY BOTH     Chafee Is First G.O.P. Senator // to Call Outright for Leader // to Resign From His Post”.
       And please excuse the U.N.-disaccreditable World Peace News for pointing out that the losing candidate in 1948, Thomas Dewey, Governor of New York, was a clean-cut supporter of a Wendell Willkie style endorsement of U.S. cooperation – and even leadership – in the creation of a just world federal democracy.   Consult the backfile of weekly Perris Progress, published then by the WPN publisher now. So there. If the U.N. has no stomach for leadership, let us hope that the U.S. does – and will do justice to a one-world-democracy leadership.
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              N.Y. VfP   goes   deductible
       “We’re finally going to have a bank account for our chapter.   Now, you may make your tax-deductible donation in check.”      That’s point #3 in the agenda for the meeting of Veterans for Peace, and Holiday Party, Dec.22, at Maurice Kaufman’s place, 100 W 78th St., #3A, Manhattan [it has a spacious and well-appointed living room] 212/679-3482 or 212/580-3210.   “Please bring a bottle or dessert to the party, if possible.”
        WPN-a World Government Report is anxious to pluck the news out of the VfP announcement.   As a member and a cognizant of other vet groups since WWII, we think that VfP is the most likely of the lot to confront the reality that peace requires government, world peace, world government.   That’s what we always say.
       Meeting point 2c:   “A major national veterans’ peace rally in DC is planned for sometime in Feb. or March.”
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Preliminaries are here until law is nailed down tight
       Below are two, three actually, sentences plucked out of the end of the number 2 NYT editorial of Dec.18:
       “...Building 10 ground-based interceptors in Alaska over the next two years and 10 more by 2006 is likely to cost billions of dollars that would be better spent on testing and other defense needs.   If the past history of defense contracting is any guide, it may also wed the Pentagon to an antimissile system that becomes obsolete before it is ready for use. ... It would have made more sense to wait until a more fully tested and reliable technology was available.”
       Yes?   No?   Yes!   But a moment’s world-peace-news.org thought leads us to this opinion:   Building the problem-festered site in Alaska may turn out to do no harm to anyone at any time and so, too, it may turn out to be a brilliant U.S. ploy aimed at the conscience of the world.     The world needs to get on with the calling of an all-nation conference to draw up for possible ratification a constitution for creating a world federal democracy able to outlaw war.
       We, riding on the planet, have two ways to go.     Let all peoples clearly choose one way or the other!   All peoples are to be trusted in time – collectively, democratically.
–––

Three great e-mails Dec.17:
       “be the ocean; welcome every river”   “‘It is possible That you can do but very little;   It is important That you do that little.’”
“All these inputs are valuable and will be addressed.”
       Those above, starting with the three in quotes, are from an e-mail by Dr, Stella Cornelius, director of the Conflict Resolution Network ... crn@crnhq.org <www.crnhq.org, AUSTRALIA, ... ORIGINAL MESSAGE, from HANK STONE ... to Gary K. Shepherd ... ...cc: Alexander,Titus...Anderson,John ...Barner,Tim ... Boschen,AllenC. ...Cornelius,Dr.Stella... ...Cort,Howard...Daley,Tad... Davis,Garry...Davis,Troy...Daniel Durand...El-Roy,Amos...Ewbank, John.
       The Stella e-mail: “Everyone – and certainly those on this e-group – has/have their own program for peace and conflict resolution, human rights and social justice.   We could learn about each other and allow ourselves to be inspired.   One way is to visit websites... Any number can play; cost free; credits appreciated but ignore copyright if ‘the heart is pure.’
       “Two words of caution from an elder in the field: ... don’t let us establish a hierarchy of contributions; no ‘better than,’ ‘less than,’ or ‘but first you must’ ... ... ‘be the ocean; welcome every river.’”
       All very well and good – from the viewpoint of the advocacy of conflict resolution, human rights and social justice within the U.S.
       But this question does come from the viewpoint of the worldpeacenews.org advocacy in favor of the creation of a warless world:   Does anyone seriously in the peace racket advocate that you publish and otherwise spread about the gist of every Sermon delivered every Sunday morning just because it advocates peace?
       All those are streams feeding the river of conflict resolution [not to mention inherently, structurally feckless U.N. resolutions] pertinent to the creation of peace on earth?
       No, of course not.
       Comment you have read comes from the brow of World Peace News -– a World Government Report, publication of the American Movement for World Government, AMWG.   Forget that.
       But carefully consider the assertion that what does not go to the structuring of what may be able to provide for world peace should be sharply distinguished from gallons of the water that flow into the ocean of loudly proclaimed good wishes.
       The following is the second of the aforementioned e-mails of Dec.17.
       It comes from Stone, president of the Coalition for a Democratic World Government. “Original Message – From: Gary K. Shepherd...to Stone ..cc ... Smyth ...December 12... re: Saving the World.
       Shepherd:    Hi, Ideas are the least of our problem.   I can name you at least a dozen, divided up into short, mid and long term...
       Stone:    I see the problem with us doing nothing, since we get rusty to the point where we become completely useless.   [Oh, not completely useless.   Debate can always serve the splendid purpose of catharsis - Ed.]
       On the other hand, motion for the sake of motion has been the story of the failure of the world government movement to date.
       I applaud the work you have been doing, and that others have been doing – it’s not that.   I applaud the ICC.   I applaud the coming together of the E.U.   I applaud the conferences on human rights and population and democracy.   I applaud the creation of the U.N. as a valiant try for the times.
       Still there is a global need that is ridiculously large compared to all of our efforts. And the man in the street, some of them quite intelligent, conceive of world government as a bad thing – even evil.   People’s misconceptions, or the difference between their conception of W.G. and our own, could be an area in which we can have an effect.
       What I think we need is a project that can inspire us to action, that’s so compelling that it will draw to itself the people and financial support that it needs, and that, when successful, will seed more and more of such projects.
       So asking people to give money, or give information, or to communicate in general, or to hold meetings, misses the mark for me.   Also, doing something that one or more of the coalition groups is better positioned to do seems like a misstep.
       If we have an idea for a project, I’d like to have there be a business plan to go with it, answering such questions as:
       –Is CDWG [the Coalition for a Democratic World Government] the right organization to take the action?
       –What is the particular effect we hope for?   In whom?   To what end?
       –What resources?
       –From whom?
       As the world population grows, and the world oil supply starts to run out, there will be more calls for war by the U.S. to protect “our” oil supply.   That’s where I think we are. Those things we’ve been doing as a movement did not cause these problems, but they didn’t prevent them either.   Whatever we do, I hope it will not be more “business as usual.”        Hank.
       That’s well, beautifully put.   And, take it from someone who latched onto the world government idea before WWII, there are fewer things in our way now than in past decades.   One good thing is that the cogent ideas expressed by Hank arguably do carry a little more credibility than before.   Another is that the fantasies of the U.N. founders have been exposed for even the slowest to see.
       Of course one big thing, U.S. political unity, something we had going for our world-government uppityness from the beginning, now melds into the U.N. establishment’s deference to the U.S.   That’s going on more meaningfully than ever and it’s going with willingness to make common cause with the U.S.   This then is the big thing:
       STRUCTURING THE WORLD-GOVERNMENT ADVOCACY SO THAT IT WILL DRAW APPROVAL OF ALL THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE WORLD IS CONSISTENT WITH OUR SAYING HEARTFELT THANKS TO WHATEVER GODS THAT MAY BE, THANKS FOR OUR BEING CITIZENS OF A DEMOCRACY, HOWEVER BATTERED.
       IT, ALONG WITH EVERY OTHER FUNCTIONING DEMOCRACY, IS A MODEL FOR THE DEMOCRACY THAT WORLD POLITICAL UNITY AND WORLD PEACE REQUIRE.   THAT ASSERTION'S TIME IS COMING QUICKLY.
       Caveat: Many fine world-government leaders have already faltered and given up for weariness and despair.   Let all who opt to contribute stay the course.
       An excerpt from a “paragraph of the third e-mail, titled “EU-NATO declaration on ESDP,” also received Dec. 17, follows:
       Comments thereupon:
       The European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP) is founded on ... “Respect for the principles of the Charter of the United Nations...in order to provide one of the indispensable foundations for a stable Euro-Atlantic security environment, based on the commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes, in which no country would be able to intimidate or coerce any other through the threat or use of force and also based on respect for treaty rights and obligations as well as refraining from unilateral actions....
       Along with other principles on which ESDP is founded, that sounds fine – as long as peacemaking in this world can be thought to depend on the U.N. treaty principle of the politically disunited U.N. Charter oxymoron, “collective self-defense.”   Does it work?
       And suppose it might be considered curious to depend on a U.N. treaty rather than on a world federal democracy, a democracy that could presume to outlaw war under a constitutional rule limited to dealing with global problems such as war and its causes?
       Let’s not be sure that, just because we may confidently think that U.N. ‘collective self-defense’ is working or could be made to work, it will continue to work to seem to have prevented WWIII. MAD is enough to do that, we may hope.  So let’s be open-minded to a newthink on the premise that balancing power doesn’t and can’t work but a rule of constitutional law can.   Let’s think of the possibility that some kind of world democracy could be structured to do what the U.N. was mistakenly presumed to be able to grow to do.
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“It’s the sorry season.   Pun intended.”
          That’s the first, apt and snazzy line in the p1 Metro Section column, Dec.16, and it applies not only to things Metro but to things national and global.
       Take the justifiable, intelligent bowings-out from doing duty on the backward-looking 9/11 commission.   Take humanity’s bleak future.   Take the insouciant fluffery that all literal cousins able to read don’t know what is going wrong in a world of nations with itchy fingers and sharp knives anxious to settle absurd scores.   Take a sorry world citizenry not knowing or, worse, not able to know, or much worse, not awake enough to want to care or to reach for solutions, or even much worse than that, take a world citizenry awake and knowing but not gutsy enough to go for the creation of a democratically, peacefully empowered world federal democracy of some ratifiable sort able to outlaw war under law just to all!   Let’s face it that our species of life is remarkably craven, self-centered, laid back and inept, however loveable and sociable locally.
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        In twisty national democracies globally, what an irony it is that it can be said an issue such as homeland security can be snatched as a vote-getting issue by one political party from another!
       Everyone knows that in a world with such hates and war weapons as exist, security exists as global and with war outlawed – or it doesn’t exist at all.
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City War not unlike World War?
       Solutions can and will be found if the media report facts and if the facts support the perception that solutions must be found.
       There simply had to be a solution to the strike threat of New York Metro transportation workers.   Paralysis?   No!
       So who would have thought that the complicated, binding, after-the-announced-deadline solution agreed on Monday, Dec.16, featured a $1000 payment the first year but no pay raise now but a total 6 per cent pay raise over three years, three per cent for each of the last two years?
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        The 2-column, second NYT lead, Dec.17, was headed, “Republicans Say Lott // Lacks Bush’s Support.”   That is, segregation in the U.S., by race, is as dead as a U.N. resolution in the world.
        So it might well be hoped that, with newthink, world wars can be outlawed, too?
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       Former U.S. Vice President AL GORE put on a bright, notable, entertaining, gay little spoof over TV, broadcast Dec.15.   [Flash, Dec.16 news: Gore quits Presidential race.]
       Probably, it might seem, 2002 news now won’t make much difference to the outcome of the U.S. Presidential election in 2004.
       From the viewpoint of the world’s need to be somehow decently governed in world affairs, as distinct from interconnected national politics, a question arises.
       Did the spoof make sense politically, given the urgent need for all people to want debate on the shape of world politics to come?
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           How do you stop copycatting?
Long Qatar runway becomes topic too.
       Putting Saddam on a hit list, just as other leaders have been put on other hit lists, livened some TV comments on the need to deal somehow with the global hit-list problem, Dec. 15.
       Likewise the growing gap between the rich and the poor within nations and internationally came up with certain new elements of war/peace connections.
       The calm and precisely-spoken foreign minister of the Mideast country with “the longest runway” for military and other aircraft, Hamad bin Jassim of Qatar, spoke with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer at riveting length.   More than once he said Qatar was a cooperating friend of the U.S. – and of other countries, especially Qatar’s neighbors in the Mideast.
       Oil-endowed Qatar, basic to U.S. planning for invasion of Saddam’s Iraq, would continue to be governed by democratic principles, by the will of the majority of Qatar citizens.   Decision making on evolving war-peace-making principle, he said, calls for open, serious and wide-ranging debate in order to clarify choices yet to be made.
       In remaining a cooperating friend of the U.S., Qatar’s foregn minister Jassim said that Qatar is well aware of its need to be friends with its neighbors – thus, his emphasis on the need for open global debate on solutions.   Qatar must work hard, carefully, democratically to remain an understanding friend of all .
       Nothing he said to the strong probing, open-minded and closely-listening Blitzer seemed in any way inconsistent with the advocacy for the creation of a world constitutional convention of all nations as friends.   All should consider their own positions wholistically, realistically.
       All might seen to need a legislature, a parliament, a global government in order to deal, carefully sensibly with “foreign” affairs.
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        U.S. Senator Richard Shelby told Wolf Blitzer, Dec.15, that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction.   But which nation doesn’t have at least two vials of anthrax or something stashed away?
       Wolf also heard that the U.S. is going to look silly if Iraq isn’t credibly shown to have nuclear weapons.
       And in Wolf’s “Final Round,” well past noon, a New Republic man said he didn’t understand why both former U.S. Senator Mitchell and former U.S. advisor Kissinger both up and quit their 9/11 commission leadership jobs.   Did they think money, etc., is more important than duty in the nation’s best interest?
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Former denizen of Turtle Bay,
New York City’s sad expatriot,
World Government elegist
  E. B.White
despairingly hopeful to the last, living in a farm house with his devoted wife and assistant, on an island off the coast of Maine, had been a word-based emotional bright light to some but not many forlorn sailors and marines at sea, and to other U.S. combatants, thanks to his words, writ small in a small magazine format, distributed by the Government, in group packages, during WWII –
       IS FITTINGLY MEMORIALIZED
as someone who had deep feelings about life in Turtle Bay [and about life generally] in a long retrospective starting on page one of the Weekend section of The New York Times of December 13.
       Attracted to a long-held interest in the E.B.White canon, especially by his world-governmentalist views of U.N. inadequacies as expressed in his circa WWII The New Yorker magazine notes and comment collected in a book titled The Wild Flag, the writer here had corresponded briefly after WWII with White and had talked to his wife by phone shortly before his death in Maine.       The following, in single quotes, are words written by White and selected for reprinting in the NYT article Dec.13, written in White’s style by Steve Dougherty:
       “White cast ‘a battered tree, long suffering and much climbed, held together by strands of wire,’ as a symbol of hope.   ‘In a way, it symbolizes the city: life under difficulties, growth against odds, sap-rise in the midst of concrete and the steady reaching for the sun.’”
       ‘“The Lafayette Hotel mentioned [by White previously in a piece of his writing] has passed despite the mention’”
       “ ‘A single flight of planes ... can quickly end this island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges.’ ”
       “But White did seem to end his elegy for the city he loved - but left - on an uplifting note. He found promise, he wrote, in the United Nations building then rising on the ‘razed slaughterhouses of Turtle Bay.’   He compared the new ‘Parliament of Man’ to a lofty urban renewal project that would ‘clear the slum called war.’ ”
       “ ‘If it were to go, all would go – this city, this mischievous and marvelous monument which not to look upon would be like death.’ ”
       Buried someplace in its memorabilia papers is a letter from White making two points.   Understandably, he is too old and worn to bear the public advocacy of the cause he had espoused in his book The Wild Flag – a flag in a small and battered army, mindlessly embattled, hope still vanishing.   But, however faint his voice in that farmhouse on that island off the coast of Maine, he did have best wishes, for those who persisted in a seemingly lost cause. Its complete loss would augur the worst for all people globally.
       ––––

WWI> WWII> WWIII> U.S.Senate?
       In putting skids to the League of Nations, in the League’s rejection by the U.S.and then bypassed by the world, the U.S. Senate piled grease onto the skidway.
       WWII happened.   Now that the U.N. [as distinct from its P5] has deferred attention, in the main to the U.S., that same Senate draws the attention of the world as concerns The Big One as yet unstarted.   In that connection, the fourth paragraph of Joyce Purnick’s p1 column in the NYT Metro Section, Dec.12, catches this Senate-watching eye, given the premise that the Senate’s mindset wasn’t remarkably different when the League failed as when the U.N. Charter was first conceived:
       “... Trent Lott... said that he has favored no significant changes of any kind over the past 50 years, each of which has caused ‘problems’ for him.   He is not alone, but a lively debate looms on Capitol Hill.”
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After 1200 years, in the European Union,
Charlemagne comes up again
          ON THE ISSUE OF SOVEREIGNTY
       “Even before the [recent EU] decision on expansion, the first since Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995, the union was engaged in an ambitious, open-ended experiment to redefine what it means to be a European.   Both its believers and its skeptics say member nations are relinqishing sovereignty on a scale not seen since the Emperor Charlemagne tried to unify the continent 1,200 years ago.”
       Can what’s happening turn out to be the creation of a European nation-state – with a population a little larger than that of the U.S.?   Does this suggest that international political unity is in the air?   When – if ever – will a credible world governmental or world intergovernmental movement arise in that direction?   World Federalist youth in Europe have pushed such a trend for decades.
       “The European Union prides itself on process and consensus, which means serial meetings before decisions can be made.   So a formal treaty will be signed in Athens in April” welcoming new EU members.
       The excerpts quoted above are from a page-banner-wide International NYT news story, Dec.14, pA10, with a 3-column photo, and headlines and a text-breaker:   “European Union Acts to Admit 10 Nations      Will Grow to Population of 450 Million and Economy of $9Trillion” and “Sovereignty relinqished as not seen in 1,200 years."
       In the modest opinion expressed here now, the U.N. as a whole must get off its duff in the cause of human survival and face the problem of humanity's survival in a new time of weapons of mass destruction – or get out of the way and hope that common sense will prevail at the point where world law can be made binding.
––––
War IS what we all join up to make!
       So doesn’t it make sense, too, for the U.S. to be saying now that the way to grease the wheels on the wagon of one nation is inappropriate for others?   That’s because each armed and arming nation does find itself caught in an inherited condition of global lawlessness.
       That’s the way it is.   All nations feel forced to gauge their actions and reactions according to estimates and actions of unstable others.   That’s the way it is now.   It can’t be better!
       Wouldn’t it be better if all agreed to blame our mutual and benighted condition on international anarchy?
       Yes, surely, maybe, if we create new things right.
       Things?
       Things like agreeing that the biggest problem among nations is anarchy, virtual lawlessness.   Let’s remember well what Abraham Lincoln was famous for saying: A house divided against itself cannot stand.   So an epiphany is called for on the global level too.
       An epiphany?
       Let’s all come to agree that the Treaty of 1648 establishing national sovereignty has become the biggest problem we all have among ourselves.   That biggest problem is anarchy.
       The only solution is the creation of some kind of a world federal democracy.
       To start, it wouldn’t solve many or any problems maybe – except for war. War would be outlawed.
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D0   YOU   KNOW   GOOGLE?
       Terribly ignorant, negligent and hopeful about all things computer, World Peace News - a World Government Report accidentally turned our page on yesterday.   It’s on the Google website.   It’s under “world peace news.”
       Earlier we’d turned to Google and other search engines for visibility help.
       Now seeing the Google WPN page for the first time, we are amazed and gratified at what we take to be happy and accumulating consequences.
       We stir our own creaky entity to note trivial tropes on what appears, and also to make a caveat or two for our own edification, and, most importantly, to cite Google enthusiastically – and to cite all Founders and Operators involved, plus all other as-yet-unviewed search engines, etc.
       We’re told that Google is reputed to be the biggest.   Whatever.   We’re mightily impressed.
       The first entry under “world peace news” is worldpeacenews.com. We – worldpeacenews.org – are the second entry.
       Listed too is “AMWG,” also called the American Federation for World Government. We, WPN, are the publication of the American Movement for World Government, AMWG. Blame WPN for ignorance, negligence but not for the hopefulness now being fulfilled beyond expectations.
       But be aware that blame is not the name of the world-peace game we attempt to play, nor are youths or fogies like us shooting up on TV and other more dangerous games anyplace.
       Tallyhoo.   We begin to see the light shining on search engines.   In our ivory tower, geriatric as we are and disaccredited by the U.N. as a hanky-panky-kiddy-car loaded with the assertion that humanity needs to be governed by a ratified, all-nation world federal democracy, we’re just plain ignorant, you see.   But one thing we do herald above others: It’s all up to the U.S. Senate to announce and ratify for the United States of North America.   We’re a Marine vet with medals and patriotic so we’re confident about exactly what we hope to find out.
       At the bottom of our Google “world peace news” page is our bottom line – in the guise of our phone number, 212/686-1069.   But please don’t call!
       We have e-mail too.   What we don’t have is cash flow.   We ask ourselves, could that be because we haven’t brought that up here?   One thing at a time, we say.   Everything in its time.   Being run ragged with things to try to communicate about the world’s need to create a one-world democracy is all we can point a cursor at now.   We’re small.   And we try.
       But our mad little mom-’n’-pop shop is being run ragged enough already.   As we said, please don’t call.   Look up Google.com or go to the movie Ararat, that’s the name of a mountain important to Armenians and everyone – and just see how miserable and all-mixed-up stupid wars and godawful terrorisms can get.
       Caveat:   We’ve heard that there are millions of listings more or less like those under world peace news – and that’s more than anyone can expect to be able to swallow, even in the structuring of an adequate global decision-making- system.
       Caveat #2:   If you are of an age and an inclination to run yourself ragged too, proceed cautiously and with joyous holiday greetings from world peace news.org.
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“IRAQ ARMS REPORT // HAS BIG OMISSIONS, // U.S. OFFICIALS SAY”
      That’s the lead headline in the NYT’s lead, 1-column news story, Dec.13.
       How shall we look at the fix humanity has created for itself by its booming growth in a world without the law?
       Do we make world law at last or do we foul our environment with war using weapons of mass destruction?   The following is paragraph #3:
       “The omissions themselves pose a new challenge for the Bush administration: it needs to decide whether to declare that Iraq has failed to meet one of the most important requirements set by the United Nations and to whether to try to use that failure as a justification for American military action.”
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IN A SURPISINGLY COLD WINTER of surprisingly quick changes in temperatures in a bedroom of one or more significant others, this question:
       What do we say in conciliatory tones on the occasion when we awake feeling frozen and an other has pulled up new blankets on himself alone?
       Do we blame him for not seeing that his new blankets should cover us too?
       Or, going by his logic, do we come to understand that he bases his defense on the perception that everyone in the bedroom has the godgiven common sense required for getting and spreading additional covers against the cold?
       No quick and easy answers among a variety of people may seem possible – but that sharpens the need to reconcile difference on the international level, especially when war and the law are at stake.
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RULE OF WORLD LAW COMING
      ... Ratification by more than 60 nations brought the International Criminal Court to mark a milestone in progress against massive atrocities against civilians.
       Unfortunately, despite American leadership in establishing the International Military Tribunal and related criminal courts at Nuremberg and elsewhere, and our espousal of equal justice under law, the United States stands on the sidelines, insisting that under no circumstances will it accept a foreign tribunal with authority to try any US nationals.   US intransigence disappoints many allies, including the entire European Community, Canada and Great Britain, and flies in the face of recommendations by some of America’s most respected legal experts.   Veiled threats that the US will somehow erase its signature from the treaty for the Court evokes ridicule, as does the determined effort by conservative congressmen to derail the court by imposing US sanctions against nations that support the new court.   Such unparalleled and bellicose manifestations of unilateralism betray our ideals and undermine our prestige.
       The Rome Treaty, on which the Court’s statute is based, can only be ratified after two-thirds of US Senators give their consent.   Americans will have ample time to debate the merits of the new court, and to see how it works.   Remaining aloof and sulking, or trying to sabotage the court, can only be counterproductive and demean our stature as a world leader supporting the rule of law.
       Let all join in celebrating the historic step forward in the slow march toward civilization so that the true voice of America is heard loud and clear.
             BENJAMIN FERENCZ,
14 Bayberry Ln., New Rochelle, NY 10804 – benferencz.org
      On this one, for world-political-unity reasons, WPN has stood with the U.S. administration.

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VfP for disarmament & good works
“In the 11 years of UN sanctions imposed upon Iraq, well over a million unoffending Iraqi civilians have been tipped into their graves. Against this, the Iraq Water Project is an effort by Veterans for Peace to help ease and eventually end the suffering of Iraqi people caused by the sanctions. VfP sends teams of veterans and nonveterans dedicated to nonviolent conflict resolution into Iraq to help rebuild water treatment plants destroyed by war and sanctions...”[The VfP Water Project is part “of the LIFE for relief and development organization that has permission to conduct humanitarian work inside Iraq from both the U.S. and Iraqi governments.”]          From a VfP flyer:
       ...In your next edition you might want to give a boost to the VfP Iraq Water Project.
       If the U.S. poured $billions into such critical humanitarian projects instead of that obscene military budget, we would disarm terrorism against the USA.
       The VfP is our kind of a veterans organization.   This is the first veterans organization I’ve joined except for a short period with the Veterans Committee.
       I’m a bit discouraged by how stupid mankind has been to let us – the Earth Community – slip into the quicksand of so many horrendous crises.   Our self-aggrandizment, ego, greed and insensitivity seem to be overwhelming the many positive achievements of man/womankind.   I think that we may have taken more than one wrong road at more than one crossroads.   But tell me if I’m wrong.
       For more than five decades I’ve been convinced that world federation could bring the world together and let reason in global affairs prevail.   But now I fear that our fear, greed and complacency destroy much fertile ground on which to plant for world peace.The great disparity of wealth and the excessive power of money and corporations are just two reasons why a federated world seems impossible.
       I’ve always been an optimist with great hope.   Some rosy scenarios do exist.   But too many ifs intrude.   We have to keep trying, though.   Think globally, act locally and vice versa.
          FRED DUPERRAULT,
500 W Middlefield Rd. #45, Mountain View, CA 94043.
       Right on, Fred, for you and our VfP.   But we must say that we have been dismayed that all the many VfP leaderships, from its beginning, have seemed to dismiss the world-federal-democracy advocacy as inappropriate for the VfP, not to mention everyone else.
       What in this world goes on that a majority of humanity seems indifferent to the view that good works, law, order, justice and every other human good, will come to nothing if world peace through law – if the world peace that requires world political unity fails?
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      Does the ICJ help – or distract?
THREE NYU ALUMNI and a faculty member will be among the 15 judges of the U.N. International Court of Justice meeting here in February, the NYT reported, Dec.11, pB9. The Universities of Paris and Cambridge are reported to have three each, while Harvard and London U have two each.
       From the viewpoint of global here-and-now significance [as different from advocating what should be], “it” doesn’t say whether or not any of the judges think that the ICC distracts from or adds to the likelihood that a U.N. court system will be created with real-life jurisdiction comparable to that of courts operating within big, up-and-running national federal democracies.
       Nor is there open speculation about what can happen when hell-bent nations with proliferated nukes snort at the idea of any real, universal ICJ jurisdiction.
       It’s a nifty responsibility dodge, of course, that the U.N. ICJ “naturally” requires that for a case to be taken each ICJ litigant in an active case must first have agreed to be bound by the ICJ’s verdict.   [Blame all peoples, not the ICJ, for not having fixed that absurdity.]
       Of course everyone knows that the ICJ, as the newer ICC model, is a good advertisement for the need for the creation of a world federal democracy [or something better] that will some day be able to rule democritically [sic] on the world constitutionality of this or that plan to outlaw war.
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Do we know:    peace requires government?
       “...Mr. {U.S. President} Carter’s speech, during a gilded ceremony {in Oslo} that represented a high point in his extraordinary life journey, included a warning to Baghdad that it meet the United Nations demand for the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.   [Is that demand published?]
       “‘The world insists that this be done,’ he said.”           With a splendid 4-column, night, top of page-one, photo of the President on a balcony waving to the Nobel peace crowd, Carter had modestly, ingratiatingly topped off a career that saw him as a long-at-sea commander of a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine, and now as a, if not the, leading world peacemaker.    See second paragraph, the NYT, Dec.11.
       That no doubt gives great satisfaction to all “peace lovers,” including world democratic federalists.   But stickler world federal governmentalists might think, “Hey, wait a minute, and dwell on this question:   ‘Shouldn’t Nobel, the U.S., the U.N., President Carter, etc., etc., begin to point up the perception that the U.S., in going to the U.N. for the 15-0 P5 approval vote, signaled that all nations had better get on with world political unity lest time trump piety and land humans in our worst pickle ever?”
––––
       U.N. defers to the P5
The U.S. doesn’t want to police the world.   The U.S. isn’t politically created to want to do so. Consciously or not, our vast armies speak to concern for the consequences of lawlessness, anarchy, among all the many war-capable nations.   Added to that:
       The U.N. wasn’t structured to govern the world.   Its leaders disclaim ambition to try. Sensibly, from the viewpoint of the existing world’s balance-of-power reality, the U.N. itself suggests that its Member-States accept the world-peace burden.   That puts the burden on the backs of the mightiest.   And since peace might require creation of some kind of overall, empowered federal democracy, the futures of all individual peoples might seem to be up for grabs.
       The above opinions in bold type are extensively, publicly and compellingly documented.
       BUT OF COURSE!
       [In the following, P5 stands for the “Permanent” 5 U.N. Security Council veto powers.   They voted 5-0, in a 15-0 SC vote, to approve planning to require Iraq to disarm.  [Iraq has a record of making and widely threatening to use new weapons of mass destruction.]
       So.   Isn’t the biggest question for all sentient people:   Doesn’t the P5 – and not any form of democracy – loom as the most vital world decision-maker?
       Of course, the inevitable followup is:   Is it good not to have to send to ask why the balancing of power – and not some form of ratified constitutional law – still characterizes rampant world disorder?
       Everyone might suspect that unbalanced power dooms humanity.   Therefore, wouldn’t those who favor P5 hegemony in the current global crunch, those who don’t and those who don’t care, do well to think anew?   Might everyone serve the common good to think up and establish some way of creating world law to take the place of military force as dominant? What's really with nations deathly afraid of political unity while complaining about the unfair, discriminatory consequences following on the absence of political unity? Balanced power does have a way of becoming unbalanced.   On the other hand siren lullabies assure the weary and despairing that the rule of a benign dictatorship is better than world chaos and world war.   That being reasonable, isn’t it desirable too that the U.N. be outfitted with a real legislature and a fully functioning judiciary?   Would that be feasible?   No.
       Regardless, isn’t the question now – as wonder flourishes – about where and how the effort to disarm Iraq will end?   What next?
       Do all people accept balance-of-power as foreordained in our scrambled genes and tensed-up minds – or do we rise to the sense that one world democracy can work to outlaw war?
       Do Mideast events force an up or a down?   Is our not knowing answers a solid reason for not caring about perceived difficulties of satisfying our own self-interests?
       _____

An Initial U.N. Insight Returns
       “There might be something” definitive from weapons inspectors reading materials provided by the Saddam Government “within 24 hours,” Rolf Ekeus, former head of inspectors, said to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer in CNN interview at around noon Dec.9.   The situation was fluid, speculation was in order.
       At the time, it seemed, that at least more than half the people in the world, judging from TV, must be waiting to hear whether or not Saddam was acting against U.N. resolutions and hiding weapons of mass destruction.
       That Ekeus knew as much about possibilities as anyone then not with the inspectors on the ground in Iraq seemed apparent from his knowledgeable, carefully hedged and enlightening comments.
       Yes, his calm and collected manner seemed to say, resolutions were not laws;   the process under way might lead toward that end.
       Yes, the process was the best that could be hoped for under existing circumstances.
       Yes, it could be hopeful, but nothing was certain.
       Yes, he was the same moderate, unflappable, authoritative, carefully-spoken diplomat who headed the team conducting the first successful efforts at finding and destroying incipient weapons of mass destruction – toward resumed efforts yet to be determined.
       Yes, this former, 31-year U.N. correspondent remembered Ekeus as authoritative at U.N. news briefings at the auspicious start of UNSCOM.   But then he left to become Sweden’s ambassador to the U.S., and the U.N. effort in Iraq dribbled on and then collapsed.
       He’d answered several of WPN questions, fully and with satisfying attention to their elements, especially including those that went to the play of balance-of-power politics in a new time of unequaled power being developed worldwide.   [Read the WPN file.]
       He was succeeded by Richard Butler, an Australian diplomat, who has been reported as scouting the world-government advocacy and, in time, publicly expressing the thought that U.N. resolutions were the same as laws.
       And now, with Blitzer?
       Ekeus’s wait-see-and-hope comments to Blitzer were in response to Blitzer’s questions that also ignored the past, following-on U.N. preposterousnesses.
–---

Could a world unity bell naughty cats?
       The following by John Roberts is from an e-mail Dec.9.
       “Will there have to be yet another transitional government, this time for the United States?
       “Following the transitional governments for Kosovo and Afghanistan and projected arrangements for Iraq, political commentators are now openly wondering about the same remedy for America.   The present postion is that as long as the U.S. keeps to all U.N. resolutions this may not be necessary but there are still grave problems indicating such a course of action.”
       [Friend Roberts then goes on with an exigesis of U.S. “scandals,” the presidential election, Enron and other finance and business scandals.   The Brit scholar concludes:]
       “...the agents of globalization such as the W.T.O. ... make it all but certain that nothing less than a transitional government will be capable of bringing back honesty and democracy to the engine of industrial and commercial growth in the world.   But, as was asked in another connection, who will bell the cat?”
       Good question, and one that Britain passed by answering fully for itself ages ago.
       But, ah, John, PLEASE shall we stop horseplaying around with such as ours above and get on with serious efforts to create a credible convention able to realize the need for the world to be governed in world affairs?
––––

UNESCO for a world parliament!
       “I hope you are both well and in good spirits.”   [This is from a postcard 11/22.]
       “Greetings from India and City Montessori School, Lucknow, winner of UNESCO prize for Peace Education and longtime-advocate, vociferous advocate, of World Parliament.
       “Chief Justices Conference here in 2 weeks.   We expect them to make a good conference. [That’s Chief Justices of Supreme Courts worldwide.]
       “Over past 6 months here, I’ve seen elephants, cobras, camels and lots of monkeys, and have tasted good vegetarian cuisine.           EUGENIA ALMAND”
       Might some newly enterprising and very bold U.N. correspondent ask U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan about this?   Should the U.N. make way for a World Parliament?   Wouldn’t that be happily playing footsie with creation of some kind of a federal world democracy itself?
––––

“Antiwar Veteran [John Kerry] Eager for Battle”    “‘...it’s going to be very difficult for some folks in Washington who did what they could to avoid serving in Vietnam.’”
       Across the top of NYT pA24, Dec.9, those are the headline and a 3-column photo of someone “building his early presidential campaign on his foreign policy views and credentials...”   Long ago, WPN - a World Government Report reported on a Soka Gakkai extravaganza at the immense Madison Square Garden – during which Kerry was a featured speaker.
––––

Last words in the lead editorial, Dec.9, deal with alleged “undermining programs that protect American security.”
––––

WHAT IF New York City was gone?
       “...he strongly implied that American intelligence has been right in contending that Iraq came close to building at least one Nagasaki-sized atom bomb by 1991...”
           That’s from the second paragraph, quoting “An Iraqi general who is a top adviser to President Saddam Hussein,”   NYT, Dec.9, top of p1.
       But breathe easier.   That possibility seems to be passing.   All peoples’ future might seem to be brightening.   BUT still:

          In the world and at the U.N.:
WAR & DEMOCRACY are at ISSUE
       The Problem:   The U.N. is not a democracy and must become one if the often ignored possibility of WWIII is to be averted.
       From very-small-minority U.S., U.N. and other viewpoints, a world political decision-making-legality needs to be constitutionalized from scratch under a U.N.-blessed U.S.-Senate and world- ratified federation of all nations.
       Troubles:   As indicated by the shakey state of freedom of the press [i.e., the perceived rights of all peoples to express lawful political opinions freely], the enabling ideas of national and international democracy erode under world pressures to settle disputes by military means.
       At the same time, the biggest post-1945 trouble is that total world war could totally undermine humanity.
       Given current events, the drift to WWIII may seem inevitable to some – but hopeful heads might agree that the world-democracy idea can and should prevail in the interests of human allegiances to freedom under democratic-and-serious forms of government.
       The above is not written by a harebained kid anxious for anything in life but tranquility but by an old WWII U.S. marine divebomber and fighter pilot, a run-of-the-mill author and U.S. newspaperman, who now begins to wrap his thoughts around the possibility that his mom-’n’-pop boxers might be forced by evolving circumstances to throw in the towel in a perhaps-losing bout to say stuff such as the above in World Peace News - a World Government Report cum worldpeacenews.org.
       More of this later – perhaps.
       ––––

December 7, from the Newspaper of Record
       The Quotation of the Day: “‘There are lots of other important things to do in life.’   PAUL H. O’NEILL, in announcing his resignation as Treasury Secretary. [A14].”
       Yes, of course, and one of the most important is to decide on and float a reconciliation between national economics and the international war/peace-making that increasingly impacts on economics along with the warlike state of the human condition.   In a world of globalization, economic policy falls hostage to political policy.
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        “Hans Blix, a United Nations weapons inspections chief, called on the United States to share intelligence to help in the search for Iraqi arms sites.”   That’s the lead world news summary, p2.
       Given that the U.S. and the Security Council got inspections started, wouldn’t it help for Blix to advocate that all Member-States and the U.N. itself begin to deal probingly, publicly, openly with the seminal connection between anarchy among nations and the need for inspections?
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        “A civilian was killed and several were injured on Sunday when an American B-52 bombed feuding factions in western Afghanistan, a government minister said.”
––––

        “The appointment of Elliot Abrams to lead Middle East policy in the White House places him at the center of the administration’s divided stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
       Still, it might seem, there’s this to be said for appointing a hawk to make peace:   he or she sometimes can attain a surprising, unlikely mindset to be effective in foisting intelligent overall reconciliations that can go to establish law, order, justice and peace.
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       In an underline of a 2+column photo, p4, Elisa Carrio is quoted as saying, “‘Argentina needs new political and economic institutions, because the ruling class is spent.’”
       Ascetic, blunt, political and visionary, she is out to bust the mafias, according to a 3-wide-column text under this headline, “Lilita Isn’t the New Evita, but She Admires Her.”
––––

       Bob Woodward’s Bush at War gets taken apart by Frank Rich.
       But neither Woodward or Rich – or anyone else much, for that matter, pays attention to the 1648 Westphalia Treaty that bollixes what’s happening in the new and roiling world of weapons of mass destruction.
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TALBOTT   SCORES   AGAIN
       “Today’s International Herald Tribune carries an op-ed by our ‘ally’ Strobe Talbott, the Brookings Institution president and former Clinton adviser.   He once wrote in favor of world government...
       “In the IHT piece, Dec.4, entitled “Back towards multilateralism as usual”, Talbott expresses his relief at the U.S. Administration’s decision to work through the UN in the Iraq crisis; he also points to the irony that ‘Bush’s threat to act independently of the UN may have actually saved that body from precisely the irrelevance that he had warned against .'"
       “Talbott’s article in TIME (July 20, 1992) had included this great sentence:   ‘It has taken the events in our own wondrous and terrible century to clinch the case for world government.’
       “One could add that 9/11 and the Iraq crisis are the first major events in the 21st century to further clinch the case.”
       Let’s now go to the IHT article by Talbott, forwarded by e-mail Dec.6 to worldpeacenews.org and World Peace News - a World Government Report.   The Talbott piece inspires this derivative headline:

BUSH’S   TACTIC   WORKED
       Excerpt:   “...In late summer, there seemed to be a growing determination, personified and articulated by Vice President Dick Cheney, to dispense with the United Nations and do whatever it took, with whoever would join an ad hoc coalition, to bring down Saddam.   Bush kept that option open when he went to the UN on Sept.12.   He warned the UN that it risked becoming irrelevant and going the way of the League of Nations.
       “...In a strategy designed largely by Powell, Bush said he would prefer working through the UN Security Council and using a tough new resolution as the instrument for forcing Saddam to disarm or, if Saddam refused, as the basis for military action.”
       So – WPN hopes – what had gone down will lead to the U.N.’s awakening to the reality that not the U.N. as a whole but the Permanent Five and the Security Council are tops in world decision-making. The U.N. blunted whatever edge it might have had. It bridled and diddled at having the gumption shown by President Bush and his adminisration.
       Where does that leave the movement for the creation of a constitutional world federal democracy structured to be able to outlaw war, etc.?
       It should seem obvious, it seems here, that the next step is for a big, credible nation, or a bloc of nations basing their advocacy on good will for all living things, might well now call for creation of a small world constitutional convention to produce a universally ratifiable world constitution.
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“Animals live better than us.”
       That’s the first sentence in the third paragraph of a p1 NYT news story Dec.5 headed, “Uprooted Iraqis // See War as Path // to Lost Homes”.
––––

“In a world brimming with bad news, here’s one of the happiest trends: instead of preying on people of different races, young Americans are falling in love with them.”
       That’s Nicholas Kristof, Dec.6, in a column headed “Love and Race.”
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U. S.   DEMOCRACY   TRIUMPHS;
       Clinton stems flow to WWIII?

Just as the issue of SLAVERY became the basic U.S. issue at the end of its Civil War, so SECURITY from war now becomes the War-on-Terrorism issue, possibly shunting the quickening global flow to WWIII.
       Witness, the page-one NYT headline, bottom-right, Dec.4:
“CLINTON SAYS (his) PARTY - FAILED MIDTERM TEST - OVER SECURITY (emphasis added) ISSUE”.
       SECURITY.      What IS security in a world of war-capable nations?
       Until now, the Security-from-wars issue has been trumped in the world political arena by National Sovereignty as nailed down as conventional wisdom in 1648.   [No one – no one ever almost “wants to give up” any sovereignty, personal, city or national.   But what if existence is at stake?]
       Even U.N. leaders, hired to try to stand for ending “the scourge of war,” boggle at the imperative to note the glaringly, bruisingly obvious:   the U.N. wasn’t structured to be able to end war and its ultimate threat to life on earth.
       The U.N. isn’t a democracy.   It can’t stand for free press.   It has no army, no air force, no navy, no wish to destroy itself by advocating trashing a Charter providing for wars.
       So now – paying a steep price for having too little rambunctiousness to do more than toy around at a discrete distance from the need to come to terms with the structuring of a ratifiable, peaceable world political unity – he, President Clinton, boldly comes out for opening up consideration of what he didn’t advocate clearly at all as the U.S. President.
       That’s an amazing switch of emphasis! – if world political leaders from all nations begin to see its world-peace-enshrining significance.
       But all leaders and followers can ignore that the former U.S. President did now seem to imply what he wouldn’t say emphatically as President.
       Would that President Bush and Laura continue to give thought to the central issue of our time on earth!
       Clinton’s toying around with World Government when he was President was extensively covered by this publication: World Peace News- a World Government Report, autonomous publication of the American Movement for World Government, honcho of worldpeacenews . org.
       The former U.S. President’s public stand in a post-midterm pep talk to his party-leaders [now that he’s without hands-on responsibility] – is capsulized under the Dec.4 headline as, quote: “‘...We have to have a clear and strong national security stand. ... ...we were missing in action on national security and we had no positive plan for America’s future.’”     Let us note that:
       Clinton’s timely opening, perhaps inadvertent, owes its clout to U.S. peace pressures created in a garden variety national federal democracy, something officially deemed by the U.N. as beyond feasibility for itself.
––––

       Do we see here the
BEGINNING   OF   THE   BEGINNING?
       “...there has been nothing to compare with the moment today when two teams of United Nations inspectors in blue jeans and baseball caps emerged briskly from the early morning fog before one of Saddam Hussein’s presidential palaces and demanded that its imposing iron gates be rolled back for an immediate search.”
       That’s from the first paragraph of a news story in the NYT of Dec.4, above the p1 fold, topped by a 3-column photo of the palace’s vaulting, grandiose interior.
       So let’s everyone let this first exercise become the beginnng of what could turn out to be enforceable, democratic, federal world law.   Let it roll on in its hold to a human vision of an open, serious world constitutional convention of all nations.
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          Unfinished war story
       Students.   Closed meeting.   New York.   New School University.   Dec.5, noonish.   NPR radio.   New School President Bob Kerrey, once deemed Presidential, in trouble.
       Kerrey said to have agreed to questioning if meeting closed.   Students now talk in disagreement with their president for agreeing with President Bush.   Kerrey in trouble with students.   Meeting continues.   Maybe meeting not closed no more no more?
       Who’s right here?   Not the students?   Not the president or the President?   Not no one? Not all people, past and present?   No!
       War or – much, much better yet – a world constitutional convention representing all nations, held in order to make it plain that the world must be governed federally, democratically, ratifiably, – with war being outlawed under enforceable law?
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The BIG world war/peace question Dec.5 might have seemed to come down to this:
       How important is the difference in the credibility between nations, big and small, that own arsenals with weapons of mass destruction?   How big is that difference between nations that threaten to use those weapons and nations that don’t?
       Although answers can’t be anything but discursive, they are vital because allies and others shaping up for war often focus on Saddam’s Iraq as being the prime threat.   And – even a sure-thing, small war can grow to threaten everyone.
       The current focus on unconditional disarmament is of course exemplary.   But, for lasting effect, must not that focus become global and legal as well as military?   More questions:
       Don’t nations often change sides after, during, and in wars?   No matter what is said or done about this phenomenon, what can be done to guarantee the continuation of the human experiment on earth?
       What is the alternative to the creation by all nations of a federal democracy that could outlaw war?   What better could outlaw war than an empowered, federal, world democracy?
       Then why don’t we and our leaders get on with calling a world constitutional convention?
       Isn’t that because everyone reasonably feels, correctly, that support for the oulawing of the use of weapons of mass destruction doesn’t yet exist among the peoples of the world?
       Isn’t that something for everyone to be ashamed – and truly afraid – of?
___

       What Creates Security?
“Clinton Says Party // Failed Midterm Test // Over Security Issue”
       That’s the headline over the news story in the bottom-right corner, of the NYT front page Dec.4.
       Right on.   But former President Clinton might seem to show more aplomb and less judiciousness than is called for, given his own halting, conventional and timorous presidential advocacy in favor of security.
––––
Can our cultures connect the dots?
Journalism.   Universality.   Democracy.   Justice.   Capitalism.   Government.   Federalism. Morality. Birth Control.   Compassion.   Literacy.   Health, etc.
       “A program sponsored by the International Labor Office and the World Bank that is under way in the Philippines has offered hope for a solution to an enduring problem of developing countries: providing health insurance to poor people.”
       That’s the lead of a 4-column news story, above the p1 fold in the NYT’s World Business, Dec.4.
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George Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate leader, on record as opposing the very idea of the creation of a world federal democracy that could outlaw war, and Henry Kissinger, baggaged with Vietnam, Cambodia, and Latin-American-issue-secrecy positions, etc., were named to head a U.S. commission to report on 9/11 causes.   At first President Bush opposed creation of the body perhaps likely to impinge negatively on world security concerns.
–––

DIPLOMACY
Concern and Caution:
         U.S. Continues to Urge Israeli Restraint”
With sizes reversed for accent purposes of the following comment, the above are the NYT 4-column headline and top “kicker,” page A15, Dec.3.
       A 2-column photo extending from the bottom of the page up to the headline comes with the following underline: “A Kenyan official, wearing coveralls that Israeli investigators gave him, collected evidence yesterday at the scene of the bombing that took place last week at the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel in Mombasa.”
       The name of the reporter who wrote the news story and its [news analysis] first two paragraphs follow.   “By Steven R. Weisman    WASHINGTON, Dec.2 – The attacks last week on an Israeli passenger jet and tourist hotel in Kenya, followed by the killing of several Israeli voters in the Jordan Valley, brought another wave of condemnations, pledges of support and sympathy from President Bush.   But in the days followng the assaults, American officials say the Bush administration has continued to urge Israel to exercise restraint in considering any military retaliation against suspected terrorists.
       “The tension between these impulses – solidarity tempered by a request that Israel exercise caution in response – reflect a moment that is complex and precarious for Mr. Bush and his aides, who are preoccupied by the possibility of a war against Iraq.”
       Precisely.
       And the reason that diplomacy is big above in the size-reversed headlines, in contrast to the rest of the headlines, is to emphasize an assertion that what’s at play in the complex, precarious world of war/peace is that diplomacy does not work well – or, sometimes, it does not work at all. It fails at making and keeping peace, as it most often must.   But diplomacy is what the fatally flawed U.N. Charter mandates.
       What could cope better than the diplomacy that now accents global war/peace decision-making without the law?
       Democratic world federation would cope better.   It could be that all nations could at least outlaw war in a duly, freely, peacefully organized world constitutional convention drafted and signed off on individually, and later duly ratified.   Implementation by all could and might overcome difficulties according to the terms of a ratified world constitution,
       The difficulties entailed in drafting and proceeding thus may be miniscule in contrast to the difficulties of small wars without end and a possible III with weapons of mass destruction.
       Peace under a rule of generally acceptable world law could turn out to be better than the simple-minded wars, small and two global so far plus a whiz-bang possibly in the offing. Wars accrue along with the atavistic practice of diplomacy – and wars can be oulawed.
––––

        “And just as China at its peak was blindsided by the rise of the West we’re likely to be blindsided by the rise of China.”
        That’s Nickolas Kristof, Dec.3, near his insightful conclusion.
       So?   So is our humanity’s way now any way for us to run our world?
       Would world federal democracy – left up to a world constitution and the voting of all people regardless of nationality, etc. – make much better sense than wars unending?
       Mightn’t we all try whacking that little question into our own reckoning?
       Doing that wouldn’t be a snap!
       But consider the testimony of nuclear physicists on the problem.    The next war could end humanity, a denouement that even the U.N. bureaucracy piously rules unthinkable – and very, very, very naughty!
–––-

Is death for all like death for the unlucky, for youths, for the relatively few collectively damaged?
IS    W A R    W A R?
       Susan Sontag examines at length – at length even for the Dec.9 issue of The New Yorker – the idea that war can’t be abolished.   She dwells on wars’ history and on what has been said and depicted about its horrors and satisfactions.
       But slighted are differences between wars that can kill all people and wars that can’t.
       Past wars held out the shining hope of profit and glory and security for survivors.   Now an allout world war is often credibly seen as a potential killer of everyone.
       In fact, it is widely seen now, there is no place to hide.   Everyone knows that radiation can get you wherever on, or in, earth you go.
       As long a time ago as 1945, the U.N. was created, many people thought, to end the scourge of war.   Of course, then and now, the U.N. was and is a facade for those of us who deny that peace and security require the creation of just government.
       This World Peace News – a World Government Report, publication of the American Movement for World Government, scoffs tolerantly, amusedly at the immature notion that what seems almost accomplished now by some national federal democracies can’t and won’t be used freely as a model by a critical mass of people of goodwill, by every sentient person, finally, on an international, global level.
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Lead news-story headlines in the NYT today, Dec.2, bespeak progress in the direction of world political unity able to terminate the war-anguish vivid in p1 photos.   The leads by the numbers are:

  #1    IRAQ’S NEIGHBORS // SEEM TO BE READY // TO SUPPORT A WAR        BUT ARABS SET CONDITIONS     Leaders Want a Short Conflict // With Few Civilian Deaths – // Sign of U.S. Headway
  #2     U.N. TEAM GETS TO WORK, // WARY OF BOTH IRAQ AND U.S.
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   National sans International
visions Dec.1 on the TV shows
       Solid TV personality Tim Russert and U.S. Presidential aspirant John Kerry did a reasonable Q&A based on U.S. national interests – BUT they came to a great big world/peace zippo because they came to their enlightened opinions based on national-interest viewpoints rather than on national-interest viewpoints based on the prior need for the creation of a functioning world federal democracy [or something better] able to deal successfully with the current catastrophic consequences of lawlessness among nations.
––––
Peter Huvos   e-mailed the following:
       “The International Herald Tribune published an op-ed by Richard Perle yesterday (Nov.28):   it may have been on Thanksgiving Day, yet I felt anything but thankful upon reading this anti-UN piece entitled "Who Says the United Nations is better than NATO?". (On the other hand, I did feel thankful upon finding the last WPN issue in my mailbox!)”
       Here’s a bit of Perle, as picked up by WPN’s Huvos from the International Herald Tribune and Bloomberg Television:

Who says the United Nations is better than NATO?
By Richard Perle (IHT)
       I am very troubled at the idea that the United Nations is the sole legitimizing institution when it comes to the use of force.   Why the United Nations?   Is the United Nations better able to confirm legitimacy than, say, a coalition of liberal democracies?... ...
       Votes are bought and sold at the UN.   It is an institution that I once heard Helmut Schmidt refer to as a "sandbox for the Third World."   That's a patronizing view of it - but it has not yet reached the point where anyone would be wise to rely on its ability to protect the interests of any one of us. ...
       I hear it said that the UN is imperfect but it's the only one we've got.   It seems to me that if you've got a fire extinguisher that you know won't work, you don't approach a fire with it because it's the only one you've got.   You find another way to put out the fire!   The UN has its role, but the mistake is in relying on the UN to do things that the UN cannot do. ...
- Richard Perle, during Trilateral debate in Prague.
       Well, just look at the mess-up that anarchy-among-nations has got humanity into?
       Of course it’s nonsense to say that a coalition of liberal democracies, any more than the politically disunited U.N., is a legitimizing force in the image of what could become a world federal democracy – or in the image of what is a single national government with significant legitimizng power.   That’s for the first paragraph excerpted from Perle.
       Why doesn’t Perle cite specifics on his allegation that votes are bought and sold at the U.N.? That would be wonderfully enlightening, no doubt.   Isn’t it bordering on fatuousness here to drag in the common knowledge that the world is, in fact, a dangerous place?   That fact has been central to the age-old World Government Imperative.   Paragraph 2 excerpted above.
       Paragraph 3 excerpted above:   You’ve got to admit that Perle is right about the silliness of relying on useless fire-extinguishers, any more than relying on the poor U.N. excuse for fronting for an adequate world federal democracy.   And Perle is right, too, about the U.N. having a role. Its role, judging from what he says, is to be a poor excuse for arguing that the U.N. role is to front shamelessly for a Charter that sanctifies governmentlessness – and therefore war, even WWIII, among nations.
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Remember Bill   Cox!
       The only Alternative to an all-wrong Hobson’s Choice is a world federal democracy.
       “Shares of United Airlines’ parent company fell sharply on doubts that the carrier would be able to stave off bankruptcy.”
       That in quotes is a news-summary on the front page of the NYT, Nov.30.
       Citing an assertedly credible hypothetical, had Bill Cox’s world government advocacy been heeded, United Airlines filing for bankruptcy would not be considered now.
       More than a decade ago Bill Cox, a United Airlines pilot, chairman of the U.S. pilots association’s committee to abolish hazardous airline cargoes, a Yale graduate, and president of the American Movement for World Government, went around the world asserting that it is in the best interest of the U.S. and all nations that a responsible federal democracy be established under a freely drafted and ratified world constitution.
       Had he and his movement (that had split away from the recessive World Federalist movement) been successful, the airline industry and the world economy, etc., would not now be subject to the many downers symbolized economically by United Airlines.
       And that may be the least of the pickles that accrue from the all-nation indifference to the AMWG advocacy:   It is written in granite someplace surely that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
––––

Smuggling   humans   sparked   by   wars
       The mass movements of peoples is going to be one of the most important problems for the 21st century.
       I was in Turkey last month for a meeting of the Club of Rome during which I met Professor Nilufer Narh, author of “Transit Migration and Human Smuggling in Turkey”.   The article appears in the current edition of the journal Insight Turkey.
       Until the 1980’s, Turkey was recognized as a “sending” country in terms of people leaving Turkey to seek better lives.   But that changed when conflicts in the Middle East meant that people fled into Turkey to avoid violence.   Turkey is a bridge between Europe and Asia.
       In some years, more people fled into Turkey than Australia received in a decade.   Some refugees were settled overseas and in Australia.   As many as half a million still reside in Turkey.   More than 600,000 Iraqis fled into Turkey with the onset of the Iraq-Iran War  . About 25,000 Bosnians fled into Turkey when fighting began in the Balkans.
       On top of the refugee crisis, there is also the problem of people smuggling.   This is now big business around the globe.   More than 50 per cent of illegal migrants now are assisted by smugglers. The trade poses relatively low risks, for, unlike drug or gun smuggling, principal investors get paid up front. ...
          KEITH SUTER,
Wesley Mission, Sydney, social policy consultant, in an e-mail Nov.25. suter@wesleymission.org.au.
––––

In exile from Iraq:    Transparency & democracy, yes;    secrecy & dicta, no.
       A senior Council on Foreign Relations fellow, director of the CFR Center for Preventive Action, says in an NYT op-ed Nov.29 that it was wise to abandon efforts to set up a provisional Iraqi government in exile.
       Was it?   No.   No, it wasn’t, even if it was wise to abandon the failed and unwise practices in place.
       Success as [an e-mail excerpted by worldpeacenews.org yesterday] requires a different approach to the setting up of an Iraqi government in exile.
       The e-mailer, Troy Davis, in commenting about what went wrong before, points to what he thinks is needed now:
        “– the future leaders [had been] picked by foreign governments (UK, US), – all was done in secret, – and the government was supposed to be created ex nihilo [out of nothing].   We [Davis] suggest the exact opposite is the only way that the Iraqi opposition ... can regain [gain?] the public trust: – the government should be created in a broad-based totally transparent constitutional convention.
       “Imagine BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera broadcasting live into the living rooms of the West and the Arab world the constitutional discussions of 400 Iraqi men and women (including representatives of Iraqi communities abroad, not just the traditional parties), with the obvious echoes to the American Founding Fathers in 1787.   Saddam of course should be challenged to also broadcast the proceedings ... though he would refuse...”[if he continues to be an iron pants].
       Davis fils says about Saddam,   “Let’s use against him the only weapons with which he cannot compete:   democracy and transparency.”
       With respect for the Fathers in 1787 – and with a well-done for the e-mail – WPN does not shy from noticing that the U.S. Constitution for the creation of a federal democracy was done in locked-door secrecy during the blazing, post-war summer of 1787.
       Carpe diem, seize the day, hour, minute, then and now, qualifiedly and judiciously, openly, please and thanks for listening.
––––

ON SOME THINGS
Einstein’s blooming mind explained betimes
       After the new and quickly expanding horror of WWII’s A-bomb end, “Einstein used his great celebrity to support social and humanitarian causes...” an Editorial Notebook notes, NYT, Nov.29.   “He campaigned against racism, nationalism ...while calling on nations to renounce nuclear weapons and form a world government.”
       In honor of Einstein “for his epochal achievements [not especially including his world-government advocacy], the American Museum of Natural History has jumped the gun on centennial celebrations with an Einstein exhibition.”
       At the exhibit, “...trained ‘Einstein explainers’ hover to help anyone who looks befuddled.   The visitor [for instance] also gets to understand the core idea of general relativity – that Gravity is not a force exerted by one body on another but rather the result of objects warping the geometry of space-time.   This is brought home by watching how a heavy ball distorts a trampoline-like surface and causes other objects to roll toward it.”
       Oh Einstein!   Where art thou now that museums and everybody need your explanations more than ever before?
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“IN   MEDIA   RES”
Res means matter.   Res indicata pro veritate habetur.   (That’s a legal maxim, Bartlett’s): A matter which has been (legally) decided is considered true.   In quotes is the title of a column Nov.29 by Paul Krugman.
       He starts out by saying that the “reaction from most journalists in the ‘liberal media’” to Al Gore’s saying the obvious, that “‘The Media is kind of weird these days on politics”’ was “embarrassed silence.’’
       Mr. Krugman added that he didn’t “quite understand why, but there are some things that you’re not supposed to say, precisely because they are so clearly true.”
       That’s why!   That explains why “a world government report,” for instance, isn’t supposed to say the obvious, that the world needs to be governed.
––––

Constitutions, a modest precis
       CONSTITUTIONS for government tend to be honored, respected, understood and enforced up to the degree that citizens governed honor, respect, understand and are guided by their constitutions and want them enforced – in the light of times that often can do with change and enforcement.
       Elites, making up the most stable, educated and sometimes changeable elements of the citizenry, thrive or suffer to the degree in which constitutions are hewed to, changed or finessed by the kaleidoscopic whole.
       Just because constitutional law exists doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s adequate – or, if needing change and unchanged, that citizenries won’t suffer.   In change, changers should be mindful of their immense responsibility not to mess up in the name of doing good.
       Constitutions need not be fixed if they work better than changes would make them work or if risks are too high.
       In this an adequate constitution would work much better for all governed globally than a U.N. Charter works for all people, ungoverned globally, as now.
       City, national and world constitutions might be seen as complementing, not opposing, each other.
       Here sovereignty, the existence and use of war weapons, chains of law and command, become the most vital aspect of just law enforcement. Failures of adequate law, with emphasis on review on pain of stated penalties, leads to the rise of illegal alternatives.
––––
SHAME ON YOU! ... for parroting the media’s distortion of the facts of the Security Council’s good work on the Irak Resolution in your article [on the 15-0 vote in favor of the U.S. Resolution]. You just missed the opportunity to recognize that the UN could live up to its role when things are developing right, in that case thanks to France. ...
       My best to you, though you made me really mad on this one.
         ELIANE LACROIX-HOPSON,
708 West 192nd St. #6B, NY, N.Y. 10040-2450.
       We’re sorry we made you mad, Eliane.    There’s much too much of that going around. But we don’t understand why you say that we missed an opportunity to recognize that the U.N. as an entity should be credited for persuading the Veto Five to withhold its veto.    Of course we think that the 15-0 was salubrious.   And we agree that the U.N. under Mr. Annan did go along with it – much more because of the U.S. and good sense rather than France and the same good sense.        We’d guess, though, that France was subject to a little friendly persuasion. too - from the viewpoint of all humanity and the need for an empowered world federal democracy. Now there’s something people, if not the U.N., might agree on! After all, you can’t expect entrenched U.N. diplomats to want to kick diplomacy out and take up on world statesmanship.     Can you?
––––
The following is from a Troy Davis e-mail, Nov.27.
       ...The success of Preemptive Democracy depends entirely on the perceived legitimacy and credibility of this alternative government to Saddam's government which then becomes an usurper government. Though such plans have been around for a long time, all previous "recipes" to create an Iraqi government in exile suffered from 3 fatal flaws:
       – the future leaders were picked by foreign governments (UK, US),    –all was done in secret,    – and the government was supposed to be created ex nihilo [out of nothing]. We suggest the exact opposite is the only way that the Iraqi opposition ... can regain [gain?] the public trust: –the government should be created in a broad-based totally transparent constitutional convention.
       Imagine BBC, CNN and Al-Jazeera broadcasting live into the living rooms of the West and the Arab world the constitutional discussions of 400 Iraqi men and women (including representatives of Iraqi communities abroad, not just the traditional parties), with the obvious echoes to the American Founding Fathers in 1787. Saddam of course should be challenged to also broadcast the proceedings...though he would refuse [if he continues to be an iron pants].
       Ultimately, the best way to get rid of Saddam - who is much weaker than most people realize today - is to delegitimize him and use against him the only weapons which he cannot compete with: democracy and transparency.
       That’s fair stuff, Troy, including your concluding line [which implies that the world needs to be governed]: “...the UN context ... does not allow legal ways to oust any government, however tyrannical it may be.”
––––

A Thanksgiving Day to Remember
       Americans All, yes!,   we should give thanks today for coming on fantastic wealth and power. But, for it to endure for us and for all nations, it must be shared, under insights firmed up with all the rest of our One World or None.   War knowledge can not be repealed.   The best way to get on with a justly governed One World is to understand functionally that creation by all nations of a world federal democracy gives us all what probably is the best if not the only way to go.   Give thanks that it’s still not too late for our species of life to tout our best answer to our dire challenge to unite – or perish from the earth.
––––
          Coming Attractions Today
       “AntiGravity To Be Part Of Opening Festivities For Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade™    New York Company Will Get Parade "Jumping" On Their AntiGravity Boots      November 25, 2002 -- New York, NY -- At 9:00 AM on Thursday, November 28, 2002 AntiGravity will be part of the opening festivities for Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade™ from the parade's starting point at 77th Street & Central Park West. Members from AntiGravity will appear on their "AntiGravity Boots" at the beginning of the Parade route and will use them to perform amazing acrobatic stunts as part of the official kickoff of the Macy*s Thanksgiving Day Parade™. This performance will be televised nationally on NBC. ...”
       That is from a forward-looking e-mail.   And no doubt is held here that Thanksgiving Day Parades TM Future will hype anti-gravity athletes in celebration of The Federal Democracy Imperative.
––––

       A birdie on one page Nov.27
       Tom:
       He suggests that certain lines be appropriated by President Bush – for a letter to the Leaders of the Muslim World, to wit, concluding:
       “Friends, unless you have a war within your civilization, there is going to be a war between our civilizations.   We’re just one more 9/11 away from that.   So let’s dedicate this next year to fighting intolerance within so we can preserve our relations between.    Sincerely, G.W.B.”
       Yes, all nations must dig in against a return to Dark Ages, as Tom says – [given that we’re not in Dark Ages now].   But How?
       By preaching to each other about each other’s clear, unique and manifold pratfalls?   NO! By (and this goes for what follows, too) by meeting, thinking, and striving forthrightly to accommodate, mutually, toward creating a world constitution that would do what the U.N. was often supposed to be able to do but can’t.   We must create warlessness through a credible world-federal-democracy. Our best strategy is to think honestly of all peoples as with faults, and therefore, above all, as created by reality as free and equal before just and enforceable world law.
       Maureen:
       She nails Prince Bandar as Arab Gatsby; as Bandar bin Sultan-Gatsby enamoured of Daisy; and as Bandar Bush.
        In her precise terms, “All the millions the Saudis have spent since 9/11 on a charm offensive could not save them from Newsweek’s [coverage of] ... fresh tracks between charitable checks [that] Princess Haifa wrote and two hijackers.”   “...Many influential people in Washington were averting their eyes...”
       Maureen ended her take this way:
       “The Bush crowd was praying it wasn’t a last-days-of-disco scene similar to the one when the shah of Iran was overthrown by Islamic fundamentalists, and the jet-setting Iranian diplomats had to pour all the liquor down the drain at their embassy.   Will the Arab Gatsby end like the original – ‘bourne back ceaselessly into the past’’’?
       Bourne back, rather, into a future in which politicians, diplomats, presidents, general army officers and statesmen congregated in a new international capital, in a new tidying-up ot the messy and unacceptable shenanigans of the world federal democracy-to-be.
––––

Cool heads will prevail globally and an Iraq War won’t occur in the foreseeable future.    That’s the guess and the hope here now.
       Still, it seems to the encouraging import of Peace on Earth, Good Will to All Peoples, to consider a high-hopeful take on an NYT op-ed, Nov.26, by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “An Iraq War Won’t Destabilize the Mideast”.
       Although that informed opinion won’t lift the gloom of caring mothers of young people who might otherwise wind up in uniform with guns in the Mideast, it does add to hope that humanity’s fate might have lightened a nanonotch.
       After all, if Baghdad’s neighbors are geared to adjust naturally to a war hyping the current unacceptable condition of anarchy among nations, isn’t it logical for all people to believe that all hope for ourselves won’t go down the WWIII tube with nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction and a basically inoperable U.N. decision-making system?    [The Veto Five could have done their 15-0 thing better and more expeditiously outside than inside the hobbled, disunited U.N., right?   And that does not mean that humanity doesn’t suffer mightily now from the lack of a global system able to at least act to outlaw the scourge of war.]
––––

          History  oils along

“U.N. MONITOR SAYS // IRAQIS ARE DENYING // HAVING ARMS CACHE    REPORT MADE TO COUNCIL   // Baghdad Seems Helpful, but It // Is Raising Fine Points and // Skeptical Questions”
          Those are the 1-column headline on top of the NYT’s lead news story of Nov.26.

Following above and below, for the last year and much more, on questions put by this website:
       What if the Big Power skepticism about that cache proves to be unjustified – or justified?
       And that is to ask other oily questions too.   For starters, take “U.S. Fails to Curb Its Saudi Oil Habit, Experts Say”, 3-columns, bottom of p1.
       Here we have a first paragraph that says   “...When [as now] reliance on Saudi supplies prompted calls for the United States to diversify its sources of oil, America remains as dependent as ever on the Saudis, according to government and industry officials.”
       A fourth following paragraph comments that “Relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States have been strained since the participation of several Saudis in the Sept.11 attacks last year prompted close scrutiny of the country’s role in fnancing and otherwise supporting Islamic radicalism. But the Bush Administrations’s strategic options are clearly limited by American dependence on Saudi oil.”
       But WHY do these oilies, etc., negate the option for the U.S. and all nations to say Hey, this is stupid in that it leads Powers to rely on the use of violence to grease rubs?
       Wouldn’t it be best for some nation or nations to lay on the table globally a fair, credible idea for the settlement of world disputes through a democratic federation of all nations?   To work of course such an idea would have to be based on enforceable, duly, freely ratified-by-all-world law?
       Wouldn’t it be a hell of a lot better for everyone to option deep into that one – illuminated by past human events – rather than to go pell-mell into something that everyone alive might bitterly regret?
       That’s only a question.   But what if it might be something to think and act about – now?
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The  U.N.   is not The Five
       Consider the gaping difference between the politically disunited United Nations and its five+ veto-equipped Security Council member-states.
       The Veto Five are not an incidental part of the ever wishful and spavined behemoth.   They are the power and the dated glory.
       The happy 15-0 centrality of the Security Council’s back-room vote on Saddam’s lonely status sings a new, hopeful but jerky tune.
       The dividing devil lurks knavishly in the new and eased state of affairs.
       The Vision Thing – that is, the new world’s ratified federal democracy thing – still isn’t even up on the scope of those who mindlessly whistle owlishly as they sidle along the other side of the urgent common sense of a ratified world political unity.
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       WELL! – What Bob Woodward told Tim Russert, Nov.24, about President’s Bush’s
habits of mind in keeping his eyes open in his search for ways he could support the quest for practical ways to achieve the biggest goals for all people, about Colin Powell’s survival in Capital bean-counting, about Bush’s restraint in impulse-vs-reason clashes, his willingness to moderate and even go against hawks in crucial affairs, all this plus his obvious lack of racial bigotry, his sotto voce support for principled freedom-of-the-press, give hope to wait-and-see spectators including World Peace News and its worldpeacenews.org.   We are not ones to minimize the struggle of an open, embattled mind in a radically conservative and rigid, one-note, war-touting splinter of confirmed ideologues.
       As “we” found out beyond all U.N. quibbling, press freedom, even if often uninformed, etc. is basic to any approach to the creation of democracy.
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Security, freedom flame out where
          sovereignty and war bollix unity
       This question was asked of a prestigious “National Security and Civil Liberties” panel set-to at the International Spy Museum in Washington, rebroadcast over C-Span Nov.24:    If you were an all powerful God, what would you do in the best interests of both national security and press freedom?
       No one on the mixed panel of experts you’d know rose to wonder about why the topic was not international, too. If it were, wouldn’t that have made it permissible for someone to wonder about security and freedom differences in national and international contexts?
       In fact, a world democratic federalist might argue that sharp differences of opinion on the principled need for world political unity would be rendered moot and even silly in an international, global context.
       Oh?
       Well, might not any college kid rise to say that a sovereign global democracy could provide for security and freedom in the same sense that our garden-variety of national democratic federations of “states” often provide for security and freedom for all people living within their own separate contexts? And, by definition, wouldn’t a world federation of “states” outlaw war, too, thus guaranteeing the possibility for all people to live in freedom and security?
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“ARMS INSPECTIONS // ARE SET TO BEGIN // AT SITES IN IRAQ      U.N. Team Arrives Today      THE MAIN CONCERNS ARE MOBILE // WEAPONS LABS AND URBAN // OR UNDERGROUND PLANTS”.
       Those are the 1-column headlines on top of the NYT’s lead news story of Nov.25.
       So far so-so.   But now the main concern of some folks pends on anxious waiting for news about what all people do next to create the world political unity that can outlaw the godawful practice of war-as-last-resort.
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“North Korean Radio Asserts // Country Has Nuclear Arms ... On Thursday, the United States, Japan, South Korea and the European Union agreed to suspend the fuel oil shipments to North Korea, starting in December, in response to the country’s violation of a 1994 nuclear weapons agreement.”
       Those above are the headline and third paragraph - in an urgency box pegged “Atomic Anxiety” - NYT, Nov.18, pA12.
       Was that the last flare-up of this news story in a world of sovereign nations?
       Now, honestly.
       PS: There’s still time for all nations to wake and shine to The World Government Imperative. Or maybe you think that nuclear proliferation and war can be discouraged like roaches in a world divided against itself?
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How swing the tools of war overhead?
For the first time, out of Kauai, Hawaii, a dummy missile was brought down in a 155-mile intercept. NYT, Nov.22, pA22.
For first times, stones, knives, flint-tipped arrows, bullets, gas, bombs and old-fashioned fire brought down opponents in war. But where does it assert that improved weapons of war assure sustainable goals? Only mutually used and good law can assure that.
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Good Sense at Baghdad, etc.?
“BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov.22 (AP) – Confusion persists within the Iraqi government over how to meet the [U.N.] Security Council’s demand for a full account of chemical, biological and nuclear programs in the country, a United Nations spokesman said today.
       “The report is due 11 days after international experts resume inspections of Iraq next week in search of storage or production facilities for weapons of mass destruction.   The government says it no longer has such weapons programs.   The first 18 inspectors are to arrive Monday.
       “‘...They [meaning the Iraqis] seem to have a lot of confusion as to what the declaration should include,’ said a United Nations spokesman, Hiro Ueki.
        “...Hans Blix...said earlier this week that Iraqi officials expressed ‘particular concern’ about providing a report on its chemical industry, which can include factories that can be used for weapons or peaceful purposes. ...”    NYT, Nov.23, pA10.
       Interesting – and no doubt portentous.   But it would be a breach of common sense to say that our humanity’s basing its survival on world-anarchy law-dreams isn’t more confused than the Iraqis.   Right?
––––

       Of course! it’s O.K. to love anarchy.
       We’ve all been like that when we were born and began to see what’s what.   But what about learning to be at what seems here to be at
          the other pole from the axes of evil?
       It tickled this democratic world federal governmentalist to a shout of epiphany when we read what A.O.Scott wrote in his review of Junkerman’s POWER AND TERROR   Noam Chomsky in Our Times, with music by Imawano, in the Weekend section, pE19, Nov.22.
       Chomsky just doesn’t always get it.
       Get what?
       Listen to this in Scott’s conclusion:
       “Even though Mr. Chomsky’s arguments are presented with meticulous empirical detail (as well as with modesty, patience and occasional bursts of wit), there is an abstract theoretical air about them. His moral clarity [‘motivated in a contempt, rooted in the anarchist political tradition for the operations of power’] has its appeal, but it often seems to evade the complexities of the world as it is. It would be much easier if the world were neatly divided into imperial states and helpless, subject peoples (or, for that matter, into forces of freedom and axes of evil), but the categories have a way of getting tangled up – in the Balkans, in Asia and certainly in the Middle East – something that Mr. Chomsky, for all his intelligence and discipline, does not always grasp.”
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       This big new show at the Met: “Proposes rigorously ethical models for political leadership and a universal etiquette of patience and self-restraint;... Promotes physical and psychological healing and establishes diplomatic ties with the afterlife;... For the average person, it shapes a stimulating vision...so that everyday life feels both exotic and resassuringly familiar;... ...it records history, the record of where we came from and where we are going.”   WEEKEND Fine Arts, Leisure, p1, pE29, Nov.22.
       Now why shouldn’t Fine Arts do something like that for world political unity?
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Vaclav Havel, a world governmentalist, said that “Europeans should be more conscious of America’s responsibility as the linchpin of global security, and understand ‘the occasional insensitivity, clumsiness or self-importance that may come with this responsibility.”’   NYT too, pA12, under “Bush at NATO Meeting Firms Up His ‘Posse’.
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“Thurmond, Set to Retire, Awaits a 100-Candle Cake”     That’s a 2-column, top, p1, headline, Nov. 22.
       All hail the genial U.S. senator who once “spoke for more than a day to oppose a civil rights bill in 1957”.
       His remarkable failure to block the creation of civil rights law illustrates that it’s much easier, even in a functioning national federal democracy, to create civil rights than it is to help create enforceable world law outlawing the supreme folly of war with weapons of everyone’s destruction.
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GARRY DAVIS called Nov.18 to tell about what is happening in Uttar Pradesh, India.     He said that the Citizens Montessori School will hold an event there in Lucknow, Dec. 6-8, at which he will speak for the creation of a world federal democracy, of course.
       Davis, the daddy of the post-WWII world-government movement, was invited to speak by the CMS, an activity initiated and spurred on by students and other young people.   It claims a Web-and-other visibility of up to 2 billion worldwide and is reported to have attracted the approving interest of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
       Supporting youngsters got world political unitarians active in the CMS by first asking diplomats available to them about the need for world political unity.   The answer there was that, of course, diplomats weren’t interested.   [Their work is to make peace among sovereigns.]
       Then the CMS kids dinged judges, supreme court and others, and so now the CMS is into its third booming meeting.
       If you tune in to CMSeducation.org. and hear/see information of interest to World Peace News and to its worldpeacenews.org, please pass it on.   Pass it on.
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You betcha!   Here’s a picture to Celebrate – The Nobel Peace Prize “committee’s chairman said last month that awarding the prize to Mr. (U.S. President) Carter was intended in part as a criticism of Bush administration policy on Iraq.”
       That, in the underline of a 3-column photo in the NYT, p1, top left, Nov.19, went with President Bush and President Carter pictured together enjoying a happy moment.   What the picture related to was a greeting to other Nobel Prize winners – at the White House.   The top-page super-pix came unrelated to a news story.   So?
       So let’s look at international war/peace politics with relaxed thinking.   People are people. Presidents, too, must relate variably to different people’s insights, instincts and drives.   People agree and disagree.   In the Nobel context, etc., a gulf of ambiguity leaves room for anything that might make light of confusions generated by the Prize and other screwups.   Everyone and Presidents might see aspects of humor in all this.   That is to speculate that differences might in time come to the same thing.   Above all, the minimization of differences might lead to life-saving world political-unity.   Right?
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BLAST any asteroid that shows the temerity to be on a collision course with us on Earth?
       NO!
       What you do is gently shove it onto a slightly different course, with a small atomic bomb, say, so the threatening asteroid will miss us by a nautical mile or more.
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John Sexton takes the lead
Are Jesuits world governmental?
       Education is the highest vocation?
HOW  global NYU minds?
      Formed mentally by 12 years of Jesuit schooling, a former student at Fordham University, the new president of one of the biggest and most central universities in the world, New York University, John Sexton, is open for dialogue and has a strong, open, and inquiring mind.
       Not only strong, open and inquiring.   Voluminous.   His 4+full-tabloid-page text of his inaugural speech illustrates that compellingly.
       So what’s new, afoot in education globally?
       NYU President Sexton’s enthralling text is published in NYU Today, dated October 30, with tabloid full-pages 4&5, ending on a page 7 that also carries a following box headed “The Open Mind”.   Here spill fully the visionary, inspired-mind beans.
       This former NYU BS-degree graduate (science, humanities, business) entertains high hopes that President Sexton will lead NYU – and Columbia, and all other universities globally, etc. – to explore and teach about the manifold complexities of creating a governed, universally ratified and peaceable world federal democracy – or something along that line with a more appropriate handle, etc.
       Unite France politically, that’s what the University of Paris is reported to have inspired at the first milennium’s turn, remember, for that sovereign nation’s birth – and it’s what George Washington and those guys did to create the United States (united states) of America.   The flaming question here and now is: can that be done for humanity?
       The new NYU leader uses, in his very long inaugural text, many words and phrases that a student of world government might recognize as basic, work-a-day, enduring, exact, specific:   Change, faith, courage, hope, of course.   Then we catch the importance of listening in depth to others, to the importance of examining ideas.   The need to reject the dichotomy of the existence of research as disconnected from teaching.   The city and world – as campus.
       Education in a transforming world.   The interconnection between rights and responsibilities. Peering into the deep recesses of the human mind.   The need for a wider collaboration beween philosophy, policy and law.
       The very idea of NYU and Columbia collaborating towards the creation of all universities in a League of World Universities!   All citizens of all governments as one vast community.   The need to challenge and stretch our thinking.
       The need to go to the heart of what it means to be a human being.   All that – and more.
       On page 7 where Sexton’s text terminates, there’s the box headed “The Open Mind”.   The TV PBS program’s decades-long proprietor, Richard Heffner, collaborated with the new NYU president to produce a coverage called “The University as Enterprise”.   See nyu.edu and WNET.   Explored at length are “topics of deep cultural, intellectual, or political interest.”
        That brought to the mind of the former NYU student the times before, and, for a while, since 1970 when Heffner collaborated with the most visible U.S. world federal governmentalist, Norman Cousins.   Cousins followed on Einstein in that role. [While he still ran The {world-governmental} Saturday Review, Cousins had an admiring gofer in the former NYU B.S.]
       At the time, Heffner helped Cousins stand for world political unity.   They generated a sort of high-minded advocacy gravitas.   That sort of thing ended in the cold heat of the Cold War.
       So these questions:   What next?   Will NYU go for – gofer – specifics as emphasized in The Saturday Review – and in answers to Heffner’s radioed and TVed questions?   Will NYU under Sexton foster the unifying of the world’s political future in the model of the University of Paris’s uniting French provinces?
       Is the NYU president and his team including the world’s biggest student enrollment in what has been called the largest university in the world – sited at what has been called the center of the world – interested in that make-or-break challenge?
       And was it revealing of a basic global reality that NYU’s President Sexton didn’t mention the role or the history of the politically disunited United Nations?
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        On the outlawing of WahWah III
When the U.N. leadership advised that anyone who wants the U.N. to become a federal democracy must first convince the U.S. to want that too, did the leadership realize what that would mean for its own future as a world-peace activist?
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Assassination the best option?
       Referring to the Iraq-reactor-destruction-at-Osirak option, Nicholas Kristof argues, Nov 15, that it and/or assassination now would be better than invasion of Iraq.
       Let’s agree that he has the important point that the high gamble of war-that-could-escalate should be avoided out of the common sense of the balance-of-power politics that nations feel bound by now?
       But doesn’t the approval by world leaders now of what may be inevitable “in the long run” anyway, world government, offer what is by far the best option – although it is globally ignored as impractical?
       Doesn’t it border on frantically mad to closed-mindedly dismiss as best the option illustrated by federal democracies within nations?
       Why do we dismiss this option except out of a lemminglike will to be ruled by a political correctness that is atavistic at best and species-suicidal finally?
       Does no credible nation have the will to propose the solution to the irrational will and abilities of nations to engage in war – and not to go to enforceable world law to settle major global disputes?   Wouldn’t a credible endorsement in favor of creating a federal democracy that could cope with the itch to go to war end its horrible stupidity?
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What’s straight war think?
       “...By the time Bush swung towards a multilateral U.N. approach to Iraq, most Democrats found the new position difficult to disagree with, but almost impossible to take credit for – John Kerry’s valiant efforts on the Senate floor notwithstanding.”
       So here towards the windup of “Why Democrats Can’t Think Straight About National Security”, in the November issue of The Washington Monthly, the reader finds the oft-expressed implication that the multilateralism Kerry valiantly stood for in the Senate is an isolated instance of what the Democrats [and everybody?] should have been standing for all along in their own and the nation’s interests.
       Is the implication – and the substance of multilateralism as implied – valid?   Yes? – and No?
       Yes, meaning that of course multilateralism is needed for the world political unity that goes along with outlawing – or at least dreaming about ameliorating – war.
       But No! in that multilateralism is a far bullshoot from the creation of a democratic, federal world political unity that would be ratified and, if implemented, prompt satisfaction for having created straight thinking about what could eradicate a potentially terminal scourge.
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       How will the page-one show play out?
Possibly – Bedazzled by its new advocacy
       status;
   Understandably – Bothered by its certified unempowerment;
      Inevitably – Bewildered and bemused, as everyone,
       by the convolutions
       of the world’s war systems,
the U.N. Secretary General “Annan Presses // Bush to Avoid // A Rush to War”. NYT, Nov.14, p1-A21.
       So?   What happens if the world’s presses press the view that Iraq does tell the truth about its weapons of mass destruction, or if it tells a part-truth, or if it fibs – or if it tells a bold, bald, bare-faced lie?
       And what if the obvious is bruited, that the U.N., too, must continue to resort to disingenuousness, with the support of elements in our own U.S. – disingenuousness in order to get along by going along in perceived interests of us and many nations and of humanity itself?
       What if, if this or that or the other cuts loose?   Who knows how reactions to complexities will play out?
       Regardless, what could be known is that dire doubts about wars might be dispelled better by a ratified and respected world federal democracy than by the current balance-of-power mindset in a world of anarchy among thisa and thata 200+nations.
––––
David Horowitz, U.N. correspondent for 50 years and former UNCA president, 99 years old, died Oct.27.   He practiced what he more than once hinted as a friend to WPN, that it should moderate its brand of inquiry into the U.N.’s role:   seek understandings with U.N. decision-makers, be less critical.   That certainly worked well for him and for other correspondents known to World Peace News - a World Government Report.   The NYT carried an obit, Nov.14.
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In war, it’s either you or your enemy
       “The World Court Project initiated a recent Colloquium at the Royal United Services Institution, an imperial relic opposite the Horse Guards in London’s Whitehall which yet keeps up with the modern world.   This was on ‘Proportionality in Armed Conflict’ and brought together several distinguished speakers... ...So what conclusions...? ...my long-held conviction is that in no way can the inhumanity of war be made tolerably humane, except in a few quite exceptional situations... ...Honest and conscientious military commanders will try to keep to the rules... ...but in the final outcome their brief is to annihilate an enemy and uphold the national law... ...To imagine that international law in its present state of development can adequately restrain such determination is an illusion.   The most urgent task of politicians is to ... equip it [international law] with the means to make it effective and just.”           From John Roberts’s ‘Antidote to racism and nationalism - world citizenship,’ e-mail, Nov.14.
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IS THIS good ENOUGH?
       “ . . . we must recognize that innovative international approaches are needed to address growing sources of global insecurity, remedy its symptoms and prevent the recurrence of threats that affect the daily lives of millions of people.”
       That’s unexceptionable and from Lloyd Axworthy’s foreword to his “...The Human Security Solution” – in the Canadian government- supported PEACE magazine, October-December issue.
       The former Canadian foreign minister, now at the University of Bitish Columbia, writes that, “It is not enough simply to oppose, wring hands and wail, or rely on outdated and badly-crafted UN resolutions. There must be an alternative, based on the perspective of the victim – in this case, the Iraqi people, who face double jeopardy from their own sadistic government and now from the United States.”
       But this Axworthy alternative doesn’t suggest that leadership arise to create a lawful world democracy that could work to remedy world ills that threaten, not only Iraqis, but all other peoples equally.   A U.S.-critical, agovernmental call for law and justice wails blessed piety in the face of terror for humanity.
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          Hope arises out of days of daze?
Pumped up U.N. a chimera?
    Hail Tom Friedman!    He sees “Light in the Tunnel”    That awakening light lumens: “How the U.N. got its groove back”.
       Friedman is oh-so solid in his uncertainty,   “I wonder what (crazy thing) will happen next weekend,” he concludes Nov.13.
       In line with what we of the “World Government Report” have been postulating for lo these many years, Friedman puts his balanced view of swift developments this way:   “...The American administration most skeptical of the U.N. ends up breathing a whole new life into the organization. And the countries most worried about American unilateralism – France, Russia, China and a nation that just barely missed making the short list for the axis of evil, Syria – end up legitimizing an American threat, if not the American use of force.”
       Bleak, insouciant, dismissive, burden-shucking U.N. advocacy, often heralded here, that anyone who wants the U.N. to be able to make, judge and enforce law must first get the U.S. to want that too, seems to be catching on in a most unexpected way.
       So what does that say about what will happen this coming weekend and shortly beyond? Will one-united-world leadership develop through the veto-bound Security Council’s balance-of-power hankypluck?   Will that one-world leadership settle credibly on the certainty that world peace requires equal justice, fair law and honest, constitutional government?
       If so, may we of the sloppy, inchoate movement for world government fore-ask, now that the idiocy of war is being put away in its long box, will war stay put?   Will everybody and especially every national leader come to see that no federal democracy can long endure without all those self-government particulars that Abe Lincoln compellingly capsulized in his short take right after the three-day bloodbath that gave increased political unity to the riven, divided, all-mixed-up, ever-aspiring U.S.A.?
––––

On the where of right and wrong
       You say - I say.     You say WAR WILL BE OUTLAWED! - I say you are out of this Earth’s planetarium.   WAR WILL NOT BE OUTLAWED!
       You say WAR WILL BE OUTLAWED, WORLDWIDE, IN THE SAME WAY IT IS OUTLAWED BY MY OWN NATIONAL LAW   (And Please notice the connection between what constitutions can say about not having war any more) - I say Oh! that’s different, WAR IS ALREADY OUTLAWED HERE TOO and so YOU have egg on YOUR face.
       You say Tell that to your President - I say I did.
       You say What did he say? - He said that I, being right, should think about where you and I are both right and wrong.
–––
Captives all in the U.N.'s unsafe world
       “EUROPE... The Netherlands: Bosnia Inquiry Opens    Parliament began an inquiry into why 200 Dutch peacekeepers failed to prevent the execution of more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys in 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave to Srebrenica, which was under United Nations protection.   The inquiry had been postponed until an official investigation ... was completed.   That report, which was published in April and prompted the government to resign, concluded that Dutch political and military leaders had sent the soldiers on an ‘impossible mission’ and that many other mistakes had been made.   Marlise Simons (NYT)”   Nov.12, pA9.
       So let’s all nations get cracking on rectifying the godawful mistake of depending on a conbobbled U.N. to perform as a ratified, democratic, world federal government!
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The Way to Start to Go Toward World Peace
       “The Pentagon says it is planning to change its main role in Afghanistan, focusing more on providing security and rebuilding services than on hunting fighters for the Taliban and Al Qaeda.”
          That’s a page-one summary, NYT, Nov.12, of a news story, pA14.
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          On press-freedom annals
IT HAPPENED AGAIN - concerning a DO - GOOD   CONFERENCE Nov.12.
       First WPN got a call and then an e-mail from a PR agent.   We said yes to the invitation. Yes, we might attend but, time being limited, we would prefer to do an interview with a spokesperson. We gave facts about our editorial policy.   The pleasant young lady who’d called to invite World Peace News - a World Government Report called back about interview possibilities, giving the name of a notable person who, she thought, might be available, and the agent talked pleasantly about the Conference Nov.12.   In passing she told us that, yes, in inviting us, she had been clued by our listing in the U.N. handbook of correspondent members.
       Later her boss called to disinvite us.
       Now what could we have said?
       And who had reacted by perhaps implying that a black ball be put in our little box?   And why?   And why?
       What, if anything, has all this got to do with the freedom of the press in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
       In publishing the above, WPN very consciously tries to define, for any advocacy that might be interested, the parameters of our narrow newsgathering purview.
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       “Tiptoeing to Defeat”        Bob Herbert’s column Nov.7 eulogizes President Johnson, etc.: “But that was another era.” “He never ran away from the poor and working people.”
      “Republicans didn’t lose control of the Senate on Tuesday.   The clueless Democrats lost it.”
       They once had “energy and ideas and values they believed in and the courage to lead.”
       Aren’t consequences the same in our time of clueless trumping feckless, when critical masses resonate to inaction and windy, wild protestation – instead of carefully considered action?
       Action about what?
       Action about the world’s quickly becoming one – or, on the other hand, of our being given, individually, to deflated moaning Vale, Vale, Vale?
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War   will    be   outlawed!
       At play: The U.S. Secretary of State made 150 phone calls to nation-state leaders worldwide, lining up support for the 15-0 Security Council vote giving the U.S. a green light to precipitate the disarming of Iraq.   U.S. leaders approved Powell's actions and the15-0 vote.   NYT, Nov.9, page one.
       That does not mean that the U.N. confederation is able to or that it tried to give the U.S. the structural attributes of a hegemon.
       But it does mean that, in view of perceived security needs, the U.S. did request and did receive the go ahead implicit in the 15-0 veto-bound Security Council vote.   That requesting and that receiving, before going to war to disarm threatening Iraq, surely speaks for recognition of the principle that war can be abolished through some kind of world political unity.
       In a specified time, world unity could work, under enforceable world law, to disarm all nations and settle global disputes constitutionally, not through war or violence or corruption of any kind.
       That, capped today, has come about in recent weeks – at the small and arguably acceptable price of setting a global direction to create a political unity that can outlaw war ratifiably, securely, sensibly, democratically, federally.
       All hail the players!   They have served humanity well.

Does practicality sometimes beget defeat?
       Will Nancy Pelosi of California, following on after Richard Gephardt of Missouri, tend to illustrate the assertion, in the U.S. House, that The World Federal Democracy Imperative is for real at all polls?   Doesn’t security require government overall – or require the perception of hegemony in war?
       Metaphor:   That’s just as Sununu defeated Shaheen on the issue of forced disarmament in Iraq – in New Hampshire.
       The premise here, right or wrong, is that disarmament requires the Imperative – or hegemony
of a nation-state or bloc of nation-states.
       NYT, Nov.9, page one, with a 3-column, 3-line bold lead that follows on resoundingly with “Security Council votes, 15-0, // for tough Iraq resolution; // Bush calls it a ‘Final Test’”
       ––––

THE VAST DIFFERENCE between what the U.N. resolution, Nov.9, on Iraq, seemed to mean to the U.S. and to the U.N. calls for the clarification it surely will get soon. What doesn’t excape notice is that the resolution has little of the specificity that a law passed in the due process of a world federal democracy might have had in the way of calming roiling waters.
____

       “Recalling Happier Days at the U.N.”   That’s the headline of a column about tour guides, NYT, Nov.8, pB1.   It ends with one of them asking a group of her visitors “‘if they knew what an antipersonnel land mine was and how much one would cost,’ she said.”   “‘One of the kids said to me, ‘It costs you your life.’   Everyone was silent.’”
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        All persons might feel accurate in saying about the recently past electioneering is that all world-peace-making advocacies proffered to voters for consideration were premised on the continued existence of anarchy among nations, not on the need to create a world federation of all nations.   Alas.
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Can there be world peace & justice?
       “...World peace and justice do now seem more achievable under America’s hegemony than anyone else’s;   but is there a peace-and-justice referee other than itself that the United States is willing to respect?   And, if not, can it learn to judge its impact on the rest of the world by any lights but its own?”           That’s the conclusion of the short lead letter in The New Yorker, Nov.11, p18, written by someone from Burnaby, B.C., George Case.
       On the morning after the election Nov.5, that above might seem an especially apt way of saying that hard times are here and that peaceful solutions will require more of "the vision thing” than ever before in human history.
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       With ears to the ground, no doubt
U.N. runs world political unity out;   U.N.
   lets   ‘jazz-Charter-back to-life’   get by
       “If we are to change the way the world works, we must reconceptualize it in terms that allow people to see their own interests clearly.... those who profit most from existing arrangements are also in control of governments, the mass media and what passes for popular culture. ...  At present the UN System is unable to speak truth to power... .. .it is mute on ...who loses and who benefits from the violent and iniquitous systems that now span the globe.   Activists must cooperate in bringing public pressure on the UN system to produce reports that support peacemakers.   If that does not work, non-governmental organizations must organize to produce such reports themselves.   To begin with, an annual NGO Report on the Work of the UN System, saying clearly what politicians and the corporate Press will not, might go a long way towards bringing the United Nations Charter back to life.”
          That above is excerpted from the concluding paragraph of “A Meditation on Iraq” by the editor of the Undiplomatic Times, issue #6.   It’s a stiff breeze across the East River, too.   Taking the U.N. to the lee should merit vibrant success and a badge of press freedom from all peoples of the world-to-be.   Harrumph!
––––

Why no remedies in view?
       Panelists from the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Policy Institute, the Carnegie Endowment and the New America Foundation voiced virtual consensus on a C-Spanned live event sponsored by the NAF, Nov.4, that movement toward a peaceable world is on the rocks.   Example after example of that reality came cited with scholarship, focus, relevance and sustained verve.
       Charles Kupchan of the CFR, the first panelist, author of The End of the American Era, seemed to summarize, at the end of the Q&A, much that had gone before.   While doing so, he tossed off notice that “internationalism” is widely regarded and ignored as synonomous with the United Nations.
       That was the only time this writer noticed the U.N. even being mentioned during the fascinating program – and the insightful author’s remark lit a great light.
       Didn’t the panel’s lack of emphasis on the U.N. as an international decision-maker illustrate why panelists discussing remedies for the world’s greatest ills push into the academic closet the view that the world needs political unity?   If the U.N. fades, must not “internationalism” fade too?
       If the U.N. isn’t a key international decision-maker, what is?   If there isn’t any, how can academic panels hope to deal understandably, not to say creatively, with the concept of a global, widely accepted decision-making credibility?
       If creating remedies is to become a credible strategy against universal despair, must not hope for picking up on The World Government Imperative become realizable globally, along with informed and urgent leadership from one’s own and every other sovereign and equal nation-state?
––––

       Epitaph?:   There was something pretty silly about the way we conked out.   We perished as fools for lack of practical understanding that we needed to be self-governed.
––––
       Hail the Semantics-Investigators!
       The death of Allen Walker Read, 96, Oct.15, followed soon after that of his partner/wife’s. His was noted in the NYT, pB9, Oct.18 in a 4-column obituary, with a face photo. Charlotte Read's passing had received due NYT notice, too.
       The splendid semantics-scholarship team, centered at and around Columbia University during the last decades of their lives, listened with understanding and, encouragingly – with strong advice – to the world-government advocacy as spoken by WPN.
       In their memory, this from the NYT:   “General semantics is a branch of linguistics founded by Alfred Korzybski in the 1930’s that theorized that words are abstractions that draw attention away from the particularity of the things they represent.”   Their friends, their students, Luther Evens, et al, would say O.K.

        On the U.N. climate pretense:
CHICKENS HOME TO ROOST
       Usually coming up on the side of opponents of the re-creation of the disunited United Nations as a federal democracy, the leadership of the U.N. may also look in dismay at the expanding fissure between the rich and poor and at the vibrance of those who see themselves profiting from the U.N. Charter’s structure featuring the Security Council’s veto.
       Illustration can be seen in “At Climate Meeting, Unlikely Ally for Have-Nots,” NYT, Nov.1, 3-column, pA6.
       “NEW DELHI, Friday, Nov.1 – ... India’s Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee ... argued that poorer countries could not be expected to invest money in tackling the causes of global warming ... [because] They bear little responsibility ... and [produce] fewer greenhouse gases than industrialized countries, and yet have been harder hit by the natural calamities, from drought to floods, caused by climate changes, and, with weaker economies and pressing needs in everything from health to education, can little afford to invest in clean-air technologies. ...
       “...the conference, the eighth since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change ..., illuminated the challenges in crafting a global response to global warming.
       “But on several points, the south found itself with an unlikely ally: the United States, which under the Bush administration has also blanched at joining efforts to reduce emissions.”
       So there, then, in its highly critical report of the U.N.’s first climate extravaganza in Stockholm, World Peace News [now with the added subtitle - a World Government Report] got it right in deploring the U.N.’s incapacitating, pre-nuclear decision-making structure.   An atavistic league of sovereign nations will, sooner or later, inevitably, find itself incapable of the decision-making that it must pretend to if it and its national leaders want to survive as the font of humanity's “highest law.”
–----
One other reason for a governed world
       Our species of life subsists on a planet in a universe limited in size by the reach of light, sure.
And –
       According to a page-wide graphic-with-text in the Science Times [top two-thirds of p1, Oct.29] some cosmologists theorize that new universes sprout out of older universes.   These new universes are expelled during Big Bangs by “bursts of ‘inflation’ ... fueled by anti-gravity.”
       Post as well as ante Big-Bang speculators of all disciplines surely will continue to marvel at possibilities.
       Might some big speculation be about when and if people will be around when answers arrive on earth?   Some few curious types among us might even come to favor creation of a world political unity for no better reason than to feel satisfied that “closure” might be put to the awesome speculation.
       [P.S.:    Our own presumably tiny universe is so very big that light and other limitations hide almost all of it from the view of our telescopes.]
––––
Mort Lipsky,  AMWG Pillar
       Author of Never Again War, The Quest for Peace and A Time for Hysteria, lawyer and founder of Lipsky, Goodkin & Co., a major New York City accounting firm, Mortimer Lipsky was a founding member of the American Movement for World Government and an active AMWG advisor until his death on Sept.15.    Obituary notices appeared in the NYT of Sept.17 and 18.
       On the flyleaf of his first-mentioned book above [all published by A. S. Barnes and Company of New York and London] are listed his academic achievements, a B.A., M.A, and L.L.B. plus “complete credits toward a Ph.D, at Brooklyn College, CCNY, St. Lawrence University and the New School for Social Research”, which helped spark his unfailingly superb advice and insights, on all pertinent subjects, to the AMWG and its autonomous publication, World Peace News - a World Government Report.   In the 197O’s first, Mr. Lipsky enlightened WPN concerning the reality that “diplomacy,” the practice that “civilized” people use in the futile attempt to create lasting peace among sovereign nations, must be abandoned for statesmanship and world politics in order that a peaceable world will become a reality.
       Early on, as extensively reported in WPN news columns, Mr. Lipsky and WPN cooperated with the then New York City Councilman Eldon Clingan in the passage of a “mundialization” resolution in harmony with the AMWG advocacy.
       Throughout his three books, the principles for our new world, are reiterated, as in Never Again War:   “Live and let live // Every good carries a price. // The price of life is peace. // The price of peace is justice, with freedom.”
       This book is dedicated to Laurie Ruth, “With the fervent prayer that she may, in her time, witness a world united in peace.”   The phrases at the start of first chapters, searching and fervent in the promise to think beyond superficials to the need for nations to deal with reality courageously and fairly, speak to the advocacy of the learned, humanely motivated author who stood as a well-versed guide in AMWG’s often turbulent passages to date.
       Under its title, lending fiery urgency to create obvious solutions in world political unity, “The Day the Bombs Fall," the first chapter starts with words attributed to “The American Catholic Bible”:
       ‘“But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.’”   Other chapter heads:
       “'Depend on it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’"
       “‘Tin will turn to gold and vodka to whiskey before there will be safety in piles of guns and nuclear explosives.’”
       "'Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.'”
       ‘“The existence of the State is the...ultimate power on earth; it is its own end and object.   It is an ultimate end which has absolute rights against the individual.’”
       Diplomacy  “'...devised to lubricate the rubbing edges where the interests and the frontiers of the nations meet–'” is ‘“ A mere cloak for wickedness and folly; a dispensation to Ministers to save them from the trouble of thinking; a warrant for playing all manner of mad and silly pranks, unseen and uncontrolled; a license to play at hazard with their fellows abroad, staking our lives and fortunes upon their throw.’”
       The “Tower of Babel on the East River”: ‘“The High Contracting Parties // In order to promote international cooperation // and to achieve international peace and security // by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to war, // by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, // by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, // and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another'.”
       ‘“One of the clearest lessons of modern times is the destructive power of man’s oldest enemies. Where hunger, disease and ignorance abound, the conditions of violence breed.’”
       ‘“One World or none.’”
       ‘“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace.”
       “‘The war drums throbbed no longer and battle flags were furl’d // In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World.’”
       Among quotes listed at the end of the “Parliament of Man” chapter:   “The world is my country and mankind are my brothers.”   “Within the four seas, all men are brothers.”   “Let us no more be true to boasted race or clan // But to our highest dream, the brotherhood of man.”
       “...We are all of us children of earth – grant us that simple knowledge.   If our brothers are oppressed, then we are oppressed.   If they hunger, we hunger.   If their freedom is taken away our freedom is not secure.”    B U T [talking about getting on with the creation of a viable world federal democracy]:
       “Between the idea and the reality // Between the motion and the act // Falls the shadow.”
––––

Dowd  donneybrooks donkeys, too
       Dear, dear Maureen girl with the golden, diamond-pointed pickaxe, we at WPN love your “Rummy Runs Rampant.”   But we’d like to proffer one modest and slight suggestion about your categorical, third-from-the-last paragraph.   It is, as you have it put in the NYT of Oct.30:
       “The real [Ronnie-boy] Reagan made mincemeat of Mr. Carter and Mr. Mondale as girly-boys who lacked the swagger necessary to lead the world.”
       Now, swagger can be a useful tool after you bumble into war but before you do, war can be no substitute for a vision of the federal, democratic vision necessary to develop a critical mass of people able and willing to explode into a successful and peace-lovin’ world advocacy for law, order and justice for, you know!, for all humanity.   Please excuse the pious language, Maureen.   It stinks. But, really, don’t you think that time is now for everyone to take a lingering gander at The World Government Imperative – or forget all the pious bull-, baloney, for peace under a U.N. that provides for war?
––––

U.S. AND FRANCE // NEAR COMPROMISE // ON ACTION ON IRAQ     ISSUE OF 2ND RESOLUTION      Bush Would Agree to Consult //  U.N. While Still Retaining   //   the Right to Act Alone”
          That’s the lead NYT news story, Oct. 30, and we must admit that, on one hand, it nails down the principle of national sovereignty while acting to disarm Iraq and, on the other hand, the current compromise could provide a venue for a disarming use of the politically disunited United Nations, a use that bodes better than the U.S. sticking to its original resolve to go-it-alone without necessarily consulting with the veto-armed U.N.   That’s win-win.
       Two of many different scenarios might be seen emerging from a compromise over Iraq. Each could end happily for ending terrorism and maybe even the diplomatic advocacy of war as global decision-making of last resort.
       One offspring of the compromise in the works at the U.N. could be the formation of a Gulf type coalition that could bring Mr. Hussein to heel peacefully and with a minimum of body-bags.
       A second salubrious offspring of the compromise could set the global politics rolling in the direction of decision-making structured democratically, federally, instead of higgledy-piggledy.
       In this second scenario, national representatives could meet in a congressional or in a parliamentary setting, or perhaps in a version of one or both and/or various others and settle the Iraq dispute with a big hoorah, i.e., war-talk and gnashing of teeth all around, to start, but with world peace, notwithstanding.
––––

Please remember:
It’s    easy    for    everyone    to    get    it   all    wrong!
       “...The theory underpinning the [U.S. State Deparment] videos, and newspaper ads and radio spots that will accompany them [them being Muslim-as-apple-pie videos, etc., made to be shown in Islamic countries illustrating how well Muslims are accepted here in the U.S.A.], p1, 2-column, top of fold, center, NYT, Oct.30], is that the United States is a misunderstood place.   In reality, the message implies, America recognizes Islam as an important religion and one of the fastest-growing in America.”
       What can be said about the U.S.’s A++ for effort?   Surely the multicultural U.S. has to be a misunderstood place because we are so very varied that we are no one way about culture or anything else.   Beyond that, the U.S., like all nations and peoples, tends to suffer bedevilment from the custom of mis-estimating cussed human nature.   We’uns get all mixed up and exacerbated by political disunity wherever it plays its awful jokes [as at the disunited U.N., for just one small and amusing instance].
––––

FLASH:   The American Movement for World Government voted 5-3-1, Sept.15, against a motion to scold “former World Federalist Association officials who finesse our [the] understanding that World Federation means World Federal Government.”
––––

4 Questions on the U.N. news Oct.29

The news:
       I
“ARMS INSPECTORS // BACK TOUGH TERMS // TO PRESSURE IRAQ   THEY SEEK U.N. MANDATE      U.S. and Britain Are Cheered // by a Position that Implies // a Threat to Use Force”      That’s the headline straddling the middle of p1, top, of the NYT.   Questions & comment, in italics, on the 4 news stories indicated will follow headlines noted after their listing here.
       II
“PUTIN VOWS HUNT // FOR TERROR CELLS // AROUND THE WORLD    ECHO OF BUSH STATEMENT   In Wake of Siege in Moscow, // Military Is Told to Adapt Its // Tactics for New Threats”.   That’s the headline of the lead news story.
       III
“The White House
I R A Q     M A K E S
U. N.     S E E M
‘ F O O L I S H , ’
B U S H    A S S E R T S ”           That headline starts a little above the fold, on pA15, in a 4-column spot including a 3-column photo of President Bush electioneering Oct.28 near the nose of a B-2 bomber no longer in use at the Air Force base in Denver.
       IV
“ The U. N.
Weapons Inspection Chiefs Ask //
For a Tough New Iraq Mandate”
       That’s also on A15 starting a little above the fold.
Questions implying Comment, etc.:
       I
Given the accuracy of NYT news presentations and given the politically disunited United Nations’ virtual lack of military enforcement power, what does it mean for U.N. arms inspectors to seek a U.N. mandate from the U.N. Security Council “to use force”?   Isn’t the idea of the use of force in the name of the politically disabled U.N. vacuous – and doesn’t it tend to suggest that the U.N. isn’t – but something on the world level that should be – created as able to deal peacefully, lawfully, effectively with crises such as the one centering on Iraq?
       It is, of course, reasonable for U.N. inspectors to advocate that coming work in Iraq not conclude with Iraq telling the inspectors to go back where they came from – as once before.   But that brings up an entirely different play of questions, questions that the U.N. itself has undemocratically and ponderously stiffed under the aegis of the incumbent Secretary-General.
       II
New threats?   New threats as in the hundred-plus hostages killed by police in a grievous accident in a Moscow theater in recent days?
       What about the Soviet Representative to the U.N., almost three decades ago, answering a question from this reporter on the point of threats faced by all people then and increasingly now? The question concerned the livid possibility of a nuclear quietus for the human race.   That would be the worst consequence of many threats. So how about building the ramparts against that possibility by creating leadership at the U.N. for its being recreated as a ratified and empowered democratic federation of all nations able to begin to cope?
       That - said the Soviet Representative to the U.N. more than a quarter of a century ago – is a good idea, but, he said, world government [was then] at least 10 years in the future.   [Over the decades, many nations including the Veto Five had Representatives who answered WPN’s questions similarly.]
       III
Bravo for someone saying something seen here as an oblique reference to the foolish incoherence of the U.N.’s lack of a democratic decision-making and law-making-enforcing structure. So let’s all back up, lay off and try to square the piety that the U.N. should be strengthened – strengthened, in fact, with the underpinning that the only hope, finally, for human survival in decency is the creation of a world federal democracy of some globally ratifiable sort.
       IV
So here’s a Blix now adding to the blitz that the U.N.’s widely-and-frequently ignored and patently-hortatory U.N. resolutions never were - and by themselves right now are not – worth more than the force that self-elected member-states decide to put behind them?
       Mr. Hans Blix, the chief U.N. weapons inspector, “...said there would be ‘great practical difficulties’ in removing Iraqi weapons experts and their families from their country to interview them, as the (U.S.) draft resolution provides.   But he welcomed the authority the draft gives the inspectors to decide how, when and where to conduct the interviews.
       “Mr. Blix also advised that it would not be practical to expect Iraq to give a complete declaration of all its chemical and biological weapons capacities 30 days after the resolution is adopted, as the draft demands.”
       With nothing but respect for Mr. Blix for being willing to try to do a hard, basic job of having a loosey-goosey U.N. federation of nations pass a vital, token resolution relating to the fate of a species-of-life at risk of doing itself in because it doesn’t have the wit, wisdom or will to create a ratifiable world federal democratic decision-making system, an outside observer may be excused for asking:
       Aren’t Mr. Blix’s caveats like a thoughtful, loyal, apprehensive soldier saying to the U.N. and the world, “I know we’re in an army – but please don’t put too much pressure on us because we can’t work miracles?”
       If this is so – and it is – isn’t it high time for all nations to cut and run from a U.N. Charter farce and begin to create any kind of world democracy that might cope reasonably to end the scourge of war, specifically of WWIII with weapons of mass destruction?

––––
As “sleeper cells” proliferate...
       “Sleeper cells” seems to be a name fixed increasingly to Qaeda’s-and-Qaeda-like’s increasing quotient for terrorism – during these anguished post-9/11 days.   “Intelligence Experts See // Peril in Sleeper Cells”, NYT, Oct.28, top, next to the lead news story of the day, is the sub-headline.   The lead is headed, “Reserve Call-up // For An Iraq War // May Equal 1991’s”.
       So?
       So terrorism is violence that can spawn war and war generally could spawn WWIII specifically. That specificity could end humanity.
       So let all peoples be careful to look out to know what is really happening in demonstrable fact.   And then maybe let us strive to create a peaceable world democracy able to outlaw war under a ratified world political unity.
––––

        First comes activation of national guards, then follows activation of all able-bodied people globally.
       Aware of the consequences of all-out war with weapons of mass destruction, let us mightily and humbly strive to create a just world political unity able to outlaw war before war voids people.
––

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Survival requires peace; peace, justice; justice, law; law,government;
World Peace Requires World Government.