Fifty-four years ago this month, on September 4th, a new government was declared: a world government no less. Read all about it at www.worldgovernment.org/ells.html.
But that's not where it really started.
On September 11th, 1948, this writer, having renounced his U.S. nationality on May 25th, was being threatened with imprisonment by the French Government if he did not leave French territory. Once becoming stateless, I had exercised my inalienable right of political choice that very day by claiming world citizenship publicly.
Was this declaration "legitimate"?
Citizenship, by definition, must be grounded somewhere. Nations are mere fictional creations imposed on parts of the world's surface, granted, with historical backgrounds, to encompass their particular humans as "citizens." Legitimate? Their very constitutions all claim that their authority derives from the sovereign people.
Before they became "legitimate" citizens.
Was not my sovereign right to claim a citizenship grounded in world territory undeniable in legal terms as I owed no allegiance to any nation-state?
If a nation-state, however, could "legitimately" claim part of the world territory, why could not a publicly declared world citizen claim the whole parcel? Indeed, world citizenship and world territory are political and environmental corollaries.
Enter a historical anomaly.
The United Nations Charter is not a world constitution in recognition of the sovereignty of either humankind or each human as a "legitimate" member of the race despite its allusion to human rights 17 times.
It is a mere membership organization of separate and equally sovereign nation-states, indeed, the very antithesis of human rights.
But contradictorily the UN claims its own territory! Over which it then presides and even policing. This so-called "territory" is separate and distinct from that claimed by its very individual members.
It's designated as "international territory."
But what is the law "governing" this "international territory"?
It doesn't exist. Why?
Because it has no sovereign citizenship from which derives all positive law.
Now world citizenship is an ancient concept. Google the phrase and you will be amazed at how many illustrious humans in the past going back to Socrates and further to the ancient Greeks and Stoics have claimed it.
On September 11th, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations "expropriated" a tiny section of Paris, Place de Trocadero and Palais de Chaillot, for its exclusive use during that Fall 3 month session.
The front page of the Paris Herald Tribune revealed the French Foreign Minister, Robert Shumann publicly presenting a large key to UN Secretary-General Trygvie Lie signifying France's acquiescence to this "legitimate" relinquishment of part of France-for 3 months.
Faced with jail by French authorities if I did not leave its territory by September 11th, after declaring my intentions to the world press on the evening of September 10th, at around 8 a.m. the next morning I "exited" from France and "entered" the "international territory" of the United Nations at the Place De Trocadero, Paris.
A legitimate World Citizen now had a legitimate place to stay and survive in freedom unfettered by national laws!
I had also become a true world peacemaker as I had no "enemies." Nor further territorial claims!
This is what I wrote at 9 A.M.sitting alone at a table in the deserted restaurant opposite the Palais de Chaillot on that fateful day:
"I am in the restaurant of the U.N. headquarters. Guards have been passing back and forth giving me covert glances. Two helmeted police are standing about ten feet away, probably debating whether they should ask me for pepers...I am sure that the uniform and the official-looking typewriter have scared them off...Another man is approaching but he has turned away as have the two policemen. I seem to want to put off this meeting with the world or rather with this tiny world here until the very last minute. I realize that at ten o'clock there will be photographers and reporters here, but now I feel quite alone. Alone with a great avalanche about to break over my head...This void I am standing in is quite exciting. I sincerely feel that I can be a force toward achieving some measure of world peace..." (The World Is My Country, G.P. Putnam, 1961).
Following an impromptu press conference of several hundreds journalists plus newsreel camera trucks recording the hectic proceedings, I returned to my Olivetti typewriter:
"I have just been through the mill with photographers and now they are taking pictures of my typing here. I am now in a goldfish bowl. Everything I do will be recorded by word and picture. If I thought that the renunciation was an act drawing attention, it was merely a ripple to what I feel will happen now. I must prepare carefully. Much is at stake. Many people are watching. I perhaps symbolize a great deal to many people without hope. I must not in any way destroy that principle. But on the other hand, I must not presume too much. This is perhaps a greater danger than the other...The photographers have just left. I am being made more and more aware of the power of the press and the...Life is now taking pictures. Oh brother, history is being made today. Keep your equilibrium, Garry. Great things can happen today. And tomorrow..."
Thus a human "worldgovernment-in-microcosm" was immaculately born, as it were, that other September 11th "midwifed" by the world press! When questioned by journalists as to my new "status," assistant UN Secretary-General Konstantin E. Zinchenko of the USSR was quoted as having said, "Davis is a world baby. The U.N. Charter did not foresee being a nursemaid. States may join; diapered citizens, niet!"
In brief, the world's public was exposed virtually overnight to the self-evident fact that the space above the entire nation-state system could be (and is) already populated!
By humanity...and each one of us...at birth.
Legitimately.
On that historic September 11th, 1948, from that tiny human seed in the middle of cosmopolitan Paris, the World Citizen population literally exploded on the world scene.
And continues to this day.
Thus, fifty-four years later, the World Government of World Citizens is daily operating through its administrative agency, the World Service Authority (www.worldservice.org) providing vital global public service to one and all.
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