The Mondo

"Our conventional money is..created by a global hierarchy where developing countries don't have a chance at influencing the rules; it is enforced at the national level through a hierarchy under the authority of a Central Bank; a money whose interest feature encourages accumulation and concentration of wealth..But money and monetary systems are not God-given realities, like air or water, but rather are an agreement within a community to use something as a medium of exchange. As such like social contracts or business arrangements, they are subject to review and amendment."
Bernard Lietaer, A World In Balance

"Given that the world has never been more interconnected, it is essential that we work together because we're in this crisis together."

President George W. Bush, Camp David, 10/18/08

"And therein lies the central truth of globalization today: We're all connected and nobody is in charge."
Thomas L. Friedman, The Great Iceland Meltdown, NYT, 10/19/08

"Together, we should show the way towards an international response. We need a new global financial order."
Jose Manuel Barroso, President, European Commission, 10/18/08

"Most of our valuable assets are not on the books. We need to reinvent economics. The financial crisis is an opportunity,"
Robert Costanza, professor of ecological economics, University of Vermont



The world financial system is in crisis. The flow of the world's currency is stalled. We need a starter button to get the current flowing. And that starter button is world money. We need a world currency in sync with the reality that we are now living in a Global Village.

The purpose of this blog is to initiate a world currency that is at the same time local and global-that will meet the economic demands of each and every local community as well as the total world community.

One of the major factors causing the current world economic system to be so dysfunctional is the mishmash of monetary systems, with 200+ national currencies unattached to real wealth, "floating" in a lawless void above real people.

What is the dominant failure of the national monetary system?

"..official money is kept purposely scarce in the mistaken belief that scarcity is what gives money value", wrote Thomas H. Greco, Jr. in his provocative and enlightening book, Money, Understanding and Creating Alternatives to Legal Tender.* "As a result," he continues, "the official monetary system does not provide an adequate supply of money to allow for a fair distribution of the products of the economy or even to provide everyone with a subsistence level of income. Monetary scarcity also makes it possible for money to be 'lent' at high rates of interest and enables those who control its creation to determine the course of the economy and the financial fate of the people. The tragic result is that important work remains undone and human needs often go unmet because of the lack of money."

The seeds of a solution are already in place, Greco says, in the various currency and mutual credit systems that have been created by local communities. At some point, he suggests, such systems could be networked together into "a web extending over a wide geographic area and including a very large population. It could conceivably be a global network, embracing virtual communities whose members are scattered around the globe."

Such an evolution of a global social currency is essential, for while trade has grown truly global, the very basis of trade itself is split up into 200+ itsy-bitsy engraved colored printed paper arbitrarily called "money."

"There is no textbook on world economics, though economics as a science-if it is really a science-should necessarily be most directly concerned with the happiness of humanity as a whole. Instead, economists visualize a world consisting of differently-colored patches of territory from within which each man is thinking hard economically so as to defeat his neighbor."
Nataraja Guru, Values Magazine, Vol 4, No. 2, Gurukula Press, Varkala, India

Let's apply our own world citizen imagination to the problem of world trade. First, we start with the world public itself as a unit, a whole. It's called "humanity."

Humanity first claimed its rights and identity as a whole in 1948 when the United Nations, responding to worldwide citizen demands, proclaimed unanimously the Universal Declaration of Human Right (UDHR). Article 1 declared:

"All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." ("..and sisterhood" of course).

Now, skipping to article 25 (though I enjoin you to read ALL the others,) we learn that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate to the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability. widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control."

(Emphasis added).

Sounds great! But are governments going to hand us these rights on a silver platter? Are they going to create a world economic system that actually fulfills the rights promised? Or is it our responsibility, as citizens of this world, to implement the UDHR and claim our rights?

Art. 21(3), like the American Declaration of Independence, declares that the people have the authority to design government to our own choosing, "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.." It goes on to provide that "every individual and every organ of society" shall take "progressive measures, national and international, to secure the universal and effective recognition and observance" of these rights.

If we accept these principles, then isn't it our human right and our duty to institute new global financial systems that will indeed provide us with an adequate standard of living and provide the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness? If money is a notion humans created, then don't we-the-people have the right to create our own currency?

People have created complementary currencies for the exchange of labor and barter of goods at a local level in coops and communities. Can we now take it to the global level? And if we do, will it have purchasing power?

"The power of money lies in the fact that it is readily acceptable in the market in exchange for whatever one may need or want," explains Tom Greco, Jr.

So far, so good. But what is behind it? What makes it "readily acceptable"?

"When trust is present, money flows smoothly from lenders and borrowers, allowing new enterprises to start, existing ones to expand, and daily business to move along without a hitch. When it's absent, we find ourselves in a world where lenders hoard capital, borrowers are left empty-handed, and the economy's gears grind to a halt-a world, in other words, like the one we're now living in." (The Financial Page, The New Yorker, Oct. 20, 2008).

Originally, in order to create trust in money, it was based on something of value like gold. But the world economy evolved way beyond the limiting factor of the supply of gold. What could we base money upon that is sufficiently abundant to fuel a prosperous world economy?

Bucky Fuller in Critical Path identified money as mere "crystallized energy." What exactly did he mean? Using simple deduction, he was claiming that energy itself is a universal "currency"readily available to one and all in ever-renewable quantity. So why not base "money" on renewable energy? he asked. Not upon limited oil or coal or nuclear but on solar, the greatest and closest energy unit readily available without which we humans wouldn't exist. Doesn't it "arrive" every morning? Talk about "trust"! It's built-in to our very existence. There are others as we all know by now: hydro-electric, wind, (due to solar power), biomass, etc. Even the planet's inner heat, not to mention conservation.

If we think of currency as a current energizing the flow of goods and services in our world, then, what would be the most logical, self-evident, world monetary energy unit? Kilowatts! Indeed, that's what Bucky himself suggested in his book Critical Path in the chapter on the World Game.

But his fertile and practical imagination went further. He created a strange-looking map of the world which revealed that the five major continents were joined except for 30 miles at the Bering straits. He called it the Dymaxion Map. "Link up all the electric grids, the 'railroad tracks' of energy, " he advised, "and, after using the sun to generate it you could transmit via direct current the kilowatts instantaneously (electricity travels at the speed of light) throughout the world and make everyone energy billionaires!"
(And, incidentally, also protect the environment! And the planet;
And eliminate war;
And reduce the population! [Population goes down as standards of living go up];
And reduce crime..
And disease..
And general misery).

Well! Why not?

Because our political thinking is still stuck in the 18th and 19th century national frontier world, that's why not.

The sun, however, doesn't recognize national frontiers.

We world citizens, in order to properly issue and use the new currency based on solar energy, will create a "bank," a world energy bank** to issue " kilowatt money" or "Mondos."

And since kilowatts are both local and global units of value, the Mondo will be at once both a local and global currency.

In addition to being pegged to renewable energy, an even more overarching requirement is for money to reflect the value of nature itself.

"I believe the 21st century," Achim Steiner, head of the U.N. Environment Program told Reuters at the International Union for Conservation of Nature in Barcelona, "will be dominated by the concept of natural capital, just as the 20th was dominated by financial capital."

Professor Robert Costanza of the University of Vermont, estimated a decade ago that the value of the services provided to us by nature amounts to $33 trillion a year. His estimate, widely quoted, helped open the debate of money's "other dimension."

"To establiah an equitable, efficient, and ecologically sustainable society," wrote renowned economist Dr. Shann Turnbull, World Citizen News, VIII, June/JUly, 1994, "we need money with the same characteristics. To achieve this objective we need to reinvent the nature of money in accordance with ecological principles."

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality" wrote Buckminster Fuller. "To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

In order to give the currency immediate global/local trust, we would initially relate it to a monetary "value" the world public already recognizes and respects in our present time period. The principle here is known as the "double negative," or an application of the science of geo-dialectics. (see www.worldservice.org/memor.html) (A current example is the issuance of a World Passport by our government based on the human right of freedom of travel. Obviously, if travel were free throughout the planet, there would be no need of passports. At present, however, with national frontiers crisscrossing the planetary territory, the World Passport serves to "neutralize" while apparently conforming to, that artificial, manmade system.)

With regard to paper money, in a world of mutual abundance, (forecast by Fuller predicated on design-science) it would eventually become a useless artifact of historical significance only valuable to collectors. (A few "Star Trek" episodes have depicted time travelers who were surprised-after defrosting-to discover that there was no more money on Earth in the 24th century!)

In order to immediately establish the intrinsic value of trust, the exchange rate at the outset would be set to 1 Mondo = 2 Swiss francs. (or equivalent in any negotiable national currency.)

As incoming national currency is exchanged for Mondos, it will be immediately established, both conceptually (solar and/or natural trust) and perceptually as the Mondo can always be reexchanged for national currencies if so desired. However, given its universality, the Mondo will evolve into being recognized as both more practical in actual use as a medium of exchange for goods and services whether local or global. Being both universal and local, there would be no exchange charge in its use.

We also envision it as a "world peace currency" that, like other trade and barter systems, would be outside the current national monetary systems and thus not taxed for war purposes. In that way it becomes per se a true world citizen currency.

World Citizens will be advised to use the new world currency between themselves as an appropriate medium of exchange for whatever goods and services they may provide each other. As the bank's currency will be backed by the initial capitalization, it will have immediate exchange value. Thus incoming national currency will be exchangeable for "kilowatt dollars."

The present "capital" in "world money" (Kilowatt dollars) of the World Government of World Citizens, as mentioned in my last blog, is a scant $K5,000 minus the bills distributed freely at the Earth Summit, i.e. $K1,000. In order to raise the initial capital for our "Mondo Mutual Bank", we will thus offer 4,000 of the original kilowatt dollars (signed by yours truly, laminated and officially sealed with "Mondo Mutual Bank"), for $100 per bill which will constitute a "share" in the new "bank." (Maximum 10 to a person.) (There is admittedly an aspect of philanthropy as well as endowment in this offer given its historical significance.) Thus our initial capitalization will be, in principle, $40,000 (a modest beginning) for the issuance of the new "Mondos" or "kilowatt dollars". (As national currency is subsequently exchanged for the Mondo, bearers of the original Kilowatt dollars will eventually be able to renegotiate them for national currencies if they so desire.)

The Mondo bills will be printed in English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Chinese and Esperanto with holographic enhancement. The logo will be the world wherein a human figure touches the circumference. The background will be the starry heavens. An intricate computerized design will constitute the first eighth part of each bill. Other features will insure its unconterfeitability. (The Dutch company Joh Enschede, in the Netherlands, was approached several years ago to be the printer of our world bills. After much detailed discussion, we received its agreement eventually duly authorized by the Netherland's government.)

"Imagination," wrote Einstein, "is more important than intelligence." Everything created on earth had to first be imagined by the human mind. With today's headlines dealing in unimaginable numbers, i.e. "trillions," our proposal herein seem ridiculously insignificant in comparison. But, with full confidence, we must "walk the talk" boldly yet humbly with Bucky's words inspiring us onward:

"Essence of the world's working will be to make every man able to become a world citizen and able to enjoy the whole earth, going wherever he wants at any time, able to take care of all the needs of all his forward days without any interference with any other man and never at the cost of another man's equal freedom and advantage."

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*Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Co., White River Junction, VT, (2001)
**Its "locale" will, at the outset, be allied with the World Service Authority's account in the Bank of America and titled "World Government Treasury Account."

Isn't it time for world money?

"Money can be anything that people in a community will accept as carrying on the basic functions of providing a unit of value, a medium of exchange, and a store of value."
Shann Turnbull, Coordinator of the World Economic Commission, WG
Building Sustainable Communities NY: The Bootstrap Press, 1989

"The quantity of physical , cosmic energy wealth as radiation receiving aboard planet
Earth each minute is greater than all the energy used annually by all humanity."
Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, St, Martin's Press, 1981

" Transparency in monetary policy is a goal we should all support.
When economic trouble hits, free markets and free trade often are blamed, while the harmful effects of a fiat monetary system are ignored."
U.S. Congressman Ron Paul
(Statement at Hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, February 15, 2007)

There are about 200 nation-states on planet Earth. Each one has its own currency. Given our instant communication technology, they are all "floating" in the digital world at any instant accessible to one and all with a computer with the capability of "going online." In short, you and I can buy and sell national currencies sitting in our kimonos at home. It's called "speculation." Buy low, sell high. Become a millionaire or even a billionaire like George Soros without producing any real wealth or providing any real community service.

National currencies have become simply a "product."

"...those who have learned to make money with money-which money can never be anything but a medium of wealth exchanging-have now completely severed money from its constant functional identity with real wealth. With their game of making money with money the money-makers and their economists continue to exploit the general political and religious world's assumptions that a fundamental inadequacy of human life support exists around the planet."
Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, Chapter, The World Game

Our government has its own currency: World Kilowatt Dollars.

"In this cosmically uniform, common energy-value system for all humanity" Fuller wrote, "costing will be expressed in kilowatt hours, watt-hours, and watt-seconds of work. Kilowatt-hours will become the prime criteria of costing the production of the complex of metabolic involvements per each function or item. These uniform energy valuations will replace all the world's wildly intervarying, opinion-gambled-upon, top-power=system-manipulatable monetary systems. The time-energy world accounting system will do away with all the inequities now occurring in regard to the arbitrarily maneuverable banker-invented, international balance-of-trade accounting"

The first printing was at Queen City Press of Burlington, VT, in 1992. The quantity was 5,000 bills, numbered, on quasi-security paper (not cloth), not engraved and signed by yours truly. Admittedly, it was a rush job as we were scheduled to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June, 1992 where our government had rented a 2 meter stand from which we issued our World Passport and other human rights documents.

The 5,000 bills were placed on the table facing the crowd which gathered around curious as to what the World Government and its agency, the World Service Authority was all about. As chief informator, I was explaining from morning till the evening close its principles, history and operation. Many world passports were issued directly from the stand. Many of the onlookers complained that "You Americans are rich while we Brazilians are poor." It was hot. The sun was blazing outside. Suddenly it occurred to me on the third day, that the World Kilowatt Dollars could serve a powerful educational purpose. I picked up a handful.

"You claim you are poor and we, Americans are rich," I started. "But that sun out there is pouring billions of kilowatts on your land every second.* That's energy and power. And that's what money represents: crystallized energy as a great thinker, Buckminster Fuller, wrote. "These bills I hold in my hand represent solar energy. They are the first world money. I'm going to give each person here one 10 kilowatt dollar bill as a free gift. This is a limited edition. You might not be able to spend it in your local grocery but hold on to it. It will become a collector's item in due course."

Eager hands stretched out immediately. Everybody wanted the "world money." The news spread around the conference grounds: "The World Government is giving away free money!" This continued throughout the entire Summit. I was continually reminded of Bucky's words of wisdom that

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Today's US economic news is replete with examples of crisis and disaster. Bailouts of prestigious institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Lehmann Bros., Merrill Lynch, the American International Group costing billions of fiat dollars are signposts of a global systemic breakdown. Again, Fuller exposes the underlying cause:

"There can be no planetary equity until all the sovereign nations are abolished and we have but one accounting system-that of the one family of humans aboard Spaceship Earth."

Moreover, practical innovator that he was, when asked what one program he would propose to effect such a revolutionary change in people's thinking, he replied

"The first step in bringing about the desovereignization will be the closing of the gaps in the world electric power grid. The world-unifying electric power accounting will be the beginning of the omnienergy accounting for world economic management." (See www.geni.org)

The World Government of World Citizens will open its own bank in the near future, the Mondo Mutual Bank Ltd. Discussions are being held now with world-class economists on this vital subject led by our own Coordinator of the World Economic Commission, Shann Turnbull.

In our next blog, we will report on the progress of this vital addition to World Government services. In the meantime, World Kilowatt Dollars are available in the "catalogue" section of our main web site: www.worldservice.org. Also, in our 2nd book, World Government, Ready Or Not!, the chapter, Who Owns The World? further elucidates the subject of world currency, etc.

*Because energy is wealth, the integrating world network means access of all humanity everywhere to the total operative commonwealth of earth." Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path.

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World Government is 55!

"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On this date, September 4th, since 1953, the founding year of our world citizen government, we have posted the above-quoted article 55 times either in press releases or "Letters to World Citizens." (See www.worldservice.org/ells.html.)
Given today's international headlines describing the leaders of the United States and Russia once again glaring at each other-over a tiny country, Georgia, fingers poised on upwards of 6,000 nuclear weapons apiece, many of them hair-triggered-this posting is the most important of any news item you, dear reader, can reflect on in our turbulent and potentially apocalyptic times.

Why?

First of all Nation States are political fictions - when we photograph our planet from space we see that these borderlines don't really exist; we (or our forefathers) have made them up. The leaders of these political fictions stay in power by protecting "us" against "them" in a condition of world anarchy. Thus the nation-states themselves perpetuate the condition of anarchy which breeds war:

"The real cause of wars has always been the same. They have occurred with a
mathematical regularity of a natural law at clearly determined moments as a result of clearly definable conditions:
1. Wars between groups of men forming social units always take place when these units - tribe, dynasties, churches,
cities, nations - exercise unrestricted sovereign power.
2. Wars between social units cease the moment sovereign power is transferred from them to a larger or higher unit. In
other words, wars always ceased when a higher unit established its own sovereignty, absorbing the sovereignty of the
conflicting smaller units."
(The Anatomy of Peace, Emery Reves, 1945)

Second, given the actual physical oneness of the world community, only a world government by definition can eliminate the anarchy between nations and divert us from our current path toward omnicidal war and environmental disaster.

No candidate for national public office, including the two who today in the current United States aspire to be president, can even mention "world security" as the essential component of their political platforms. For they are on the wrong power level. While the BOMB is virtually total in its destructive power, a national president's power and perception is, by definition, local, i.e. limited to its nation's "security."

And therein lies the danger for we've put in the hands of our political leaders absolute nuclear power, the very use of which is not only criminal in a legal sense but socio/politically, morally and humanly insane.

If we are to prevent humanity's demise, it is essential that we, the people of the planet, recognize our sovereignty on the global level thus acknowledging systems and institutions that not only reject the absolute power of national leaders like President Bush and Prime Minister Putin (or their successors) and all the other leaders of nuclear power states, but fulfill the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the 60th anniversary of which arrives December 10th. (Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized." Art 28, UDHR)

The evolving citizenry of the World Government, in its 55 years of existence, by definition, transcends national boundaries. It represents both the whole community and the particular individual. Simply to declare oneself a "World Citizen" is to claim the world as one's immediate community to be recognized by world law and protected by its accepted legitimacy.

In that public sovereign declaration, the individual effectively "outranks" the national leaders. (Thomas Jefferson: "Every man possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will.")

In my last blog, I contrasted the Olympic games and one world principles with the presence of President Bush and Prime Minister Putin together in the Beijing "Bird's Nest" applauding and encouraging the trusting, while competitive, athletes.

Today, back in their furtive, fear-driven national bunkers, they eye each other through the deadly illusion of their respective nuclear gun sights.

While, ironically, the international Space Station continues silently circling the planet every 90 minutes at 17,000 mph, the human crew gazing at the earth in wonder and awe at its majesty and cosmic role being played out against the indifferent heavens for the past 4.5 billion years.

Will we humans ever wake up to the reality of our human situation in time to avoid a final holocaust? National soldiers are programmed to die for their particular country. How many of us are prepared to die that humanity survives? An intelligent species cannot organize its survival until and unless it first recognizes its fundamental unity. This is the message of all sages of the past. "One for all and all for one" is the prime formula for survival not to mention well-being and happiness.

But more relevant, do our children, all 2.4 billion of them, deserve to die before reaching maturity because of our own immaturity?

And so, despite skepticism, humiliation, doubt and daily fear of failure, we, lovers of humanity, carry on our sacred mission begun 55 years ago today.

The happiest birthday for me is to continue carrying the torch, ignited in 1948, which illuminated both the dangerous course we are still on, and the incredible potential we human beings have to build the world of our dreams, a peaceful and sustainable world governed of, by and for all on this, our home planet floating majestically in the starry sky.

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A Really World-Class Act

I was one of the 4 billion+ humans watching, with Robin Lloyd, Coordinator of the World Women Commission of our global government, the "One World, One Dream" Olympic opening in Beijing 6578 miles from my living-room in South Burlington, VT.

Myriad thoughts pulsed through my mind as I watched the teams from every corner of the planet parade by the fortunate 91,000 spectators. My first thought was the excruciatingly painful contrast of the dates 63 years ago-August 5th and 9th-when the "Nuclear Age" burst upon our world by the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

The hand-waving, the smiles on every face, white, brown, black, red or any color in between, the overwhelming sense of unity and joy, not to mention wonder at the glorious spectacle spreading before our eyes, the elegant, colorful costumes, the precision of the dancers and performers, and the splendiferous finale!-that giant blessed world with the planets soaring above magically circling like friendly observers-all coalesced into the reality that, indeed, the world was one and peopled by us, the human race. Would "lucky" 8/8/08, inserted willfully by the Chinese government between those two dreadful moments, when 260,000 humans were obliterated in a gigantic flash of fire with radiation continuing its devastation for years thereafter, mitigate that human tragedy?

But then, here were Putin and Bush, Sarkozy and Hu Jintao, all with nuclear bombs at their fingertips, now powerful enough to obliterate the human race, ordinary spectators among the others applauding when their national teams entered the vast arena. Indeed, news of armed conflict between Georgia and Russia, and continuing alleged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan competed ironically with the worldly extravanganza opening via satellite before more then half the world's eyes.

"Wouldn't it be great to see our world flag being carried by that Olympic speed skater who tried to renounce his U.S. citizenship in Athens and declare himself a world citizen?" Robin remarked as tiny Naura marched by.

"Oh, you mean, Nathaniel Lincoln Mills,"* I replied. "Yes, we talked with him later about putting together a World Citizen Olympic team with him as the captain. He found the idea very timely and appealing. In the meantime, he agreed to fronting a World Sports Commission for the government. In fact, he told us, 'There's a phenomenon already of world-class athletes moving across national boundaries to compete in the Olympics. Take Maria Mutola, for instance. She's a middle-distance runner from Mozambique who's on the U.S. team. She's won more than a dozen championship titles. Then there's Bernard Lagat, born in Kenya, a world-class runner for the U.S. who won Olympic medals for Kenya in Athens and Sydney. The U.S. team here, 596 members, includes three dozen foreign-born athletes including British rower Jen Goldsack. Then Becky Hammon joined Russia's 2008 Olympic basketball team after she didn't make the U.S. squad. And Qatar, which wants to host the 2016 games, has gathered the Somali runner Mohammed Suleiman who finished third in the 1,500 meters, and Angel Popov, a Bulgarian weightlifter who won a bronze in 2000. You see, a sort of globalisation is beginning to invade the Olympics despite the nationalistic fervor.'"

"And high time too!" we both agreed.

As we continued to watch the elaborate and inspiring show, my mind's eye returned to the Olympic's beginnings in 776 BC in Greece. They were celebrated until AD 393, in short, for 1169 years. According to Wikipedia, interest in their revival was first shown by the Greek poet and newspaper editor Panagiotta Soutsos in 1833. But the first modern international Olympic festival didn't happen until 1859 sponsored by Evengerios Zappas when nation-states were in their infancy in response to feudalism. The Olympic motto from its beginnings-Citius, Altius, Fortius-Faster, Higher, Stronger-obviously applied directly to the athletes' prowess, not to their political allegiance or where they were born on the planet.

They were humans. That was sufficient. Indeed the Olympic Charter is clear on that point: "The goal of Olympism is to place sport in the service of the harmonious development of humankind, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity."

The bottom line was expressed by one Sharon Andrews in response to a Christian Science Monitor story on August 4 by Crista Case Bryant and Danna Harman entitled Now more than ever, Olympic teams go multinational.

"I found this a fascinating story-a background piece so typical of the Monitor in its depth. As world-class athletes move across national boundaries to compete, we will not only see the true meaning of world class, but will also see the emergence of a world citizenry that can become ambassadors for peace, as the athletes learn to love and appreciate multiple cultures and nationalities: Bravo!"

My (and Robin's and Nathaniel's) sentiments precisely.

Now, about that nuclear Damocle's sword hanging by 8 nationalistic threads above our heads....

*See: www.OlympismProject.org

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A Conference on Dignity/Humiliation Missed

"The desire for recognition unites us human beings."
(Dr. Evelin Lindner, Making Enemies, Praeger Security International, 1954)

Henrik Arnold Wergeland was a renowned Norwegian poet and prose writer who worked against discrimination. The Minister of Culture in Norway, Trond Giske, as part of the Wergeland Heritage,has announced 2008 as the "Year of Diversity" in Norway. "This vision is relevant for a number of cooperation partners in Norway," he added, "such as the Oslo University, International Summer School, the Nobel Institute, the Peace Research Institute of Norway, the Oslo University and the Nansen Academy".

As I write, in celebration of the "Wergeland Year," the 11th Annual Conference of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies is taking place in Oslo, Norway coordinated by its founder/director Dr. Evelin Lindner. As a member of the Conference, I was invited by Dr. Lindner who graciously wrote, "We appreciate highly your willingness to contribute to our workshop. Your participation is of extreme importance to our meeting and we are certain that your contribution will have important reverberations not only for your work, but also have fruitful impact in your wider field."

Anticipating a problem on obtaining a Norwegian 15-day visitor's visa on my World Passport, I wrote to King Harald V on April 23, 2008:

King Harald V
Det Kgl, Slott
N 0010 Oslo 1
Norway

Your Majesty,

I write to inform you of my proposed visit to Norway, at the invitation* of Dr. Evelin Lindner, founder/coordinator, to attend the 11th Annual Conference of Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies to be held in Oslo beginning 23rd June as part of the "Wergeland Year for Human Dignity." (I enclose my talk at the 2007 Workshop at Columbia University).

Prior to my request for the requisite visitor's visa, in order to avoid any misunderstanding, I take the liberty to quote a personal bio penned by Dr. Lindner to fellow participants:

"(Garry Davis) is a former US Presidential Candidate, and peace activist who created the first 'World Passport.' A former World War II bomber pilot and Broadway actor, he renounced his American citizenship in Paris in 1948 to become a 'citizen of the world.' Davis founded the World Service Authority, which now issues the passports-along with birth and other certificates-to applicants. Davis first used his 'world passport' on a trip to India in 1956, and has been variably admitted into...countries around the world after using his world passport. Up to 150 countries have accepted the world passport at one time or another. In France, his support committee was co-founded by writers Albert Camus and Andre Gide and the Abbe Pierre (quoted from wikipedia)".

The World Passport above-mentioned derives from an article in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations December 10, 1948: "Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country." The Charter further obliges Member-States to "Observe and respect fundamental human rights.." in articles 55/56.

I attach a partial list of "Honorary World Passport" holders among whom you will find eight Nobel Peace Laureates. Apropos, a group of "Global Elders" chaired by Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela and including Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Yunus, Aung San Suu Kyi and Kofi Annan, initiated by Sir Richard Branson and human rights activist Peter Gabriel, have launched a human rights campaign "to empower global citizens to protect the first ever comprehensive agreement on human rights among nations."

"Human rights are not a privilege," the Group claimed, "They are everyone's entitlement..So as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Rights, we now have the opportunity to enforce the Declaration's principles assuring that every single woman and every single child enjoys the rights of all human beings."

I am reminded that the Norwegian Constitution in Article 110c provides that "It is the responsibility of the authorities of the State to respect and ensure human rights. Specific provisions for the implementation of treaties hereof shall be determined by law."
I have the honor and pleasure to enclose my book, World Government, Ready or Not!

Please accept, Your Majesty, the expression of my most cordial and respectful one world regards,

Etc."

On May 4th, upon presenting myself at the Norwegian Consulate in Washington, D.C., I was refused a visa on the basis that Norway "does not recognize the World Passport as a valid travel document." Ditto for the Swedish consulate the next day. (I mentioned to the Swedish Secretary that, following the Peenemunde raid on August 24, 1944, I was interned in Sweden along with my B-17 crew.)

The irony of this refusal is implicit in the following points re the evolution of the World Passport itself:

First point: The WSA World Passport is the only successor to the Nansen Passport, created by Norway's Fritjof Nansen in 1919 following the Soviet revolution in 1917 when tens of thousands of so-called "White Russians" had to flee to Europe to escape death from the Communists. Nansen was Norway's delegate to the League of Nations and both a humanitarian and explorer. He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1922 for this action.
Second point: When World War II began in 1939, the League was disbanded and the Nansen Passport Office closed never to reopen. But the refugee population proliferated following the war.
Third point: The UN itself did not authorize the reestablishment of a passport agency for the world refugee population now in the millions. (The UNHCR does not issue passports to refugees).
Fourth point: A treaty was finally signed in 1956 by certain nations authorizing them to issue a "Refugee Travel Document" to individuals to whom they arbitrarily assigned refugee status. Millions of refugees were excluded and remain today either in camps or in prisons. (UNHCR "official" figures: over 20,000,000).
Fifth point, Following the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948, as a "common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations," the World Service Authority was founded in 1953 to promote and service articles sanctioned by the declaration, specifically article 13(2), the right of freedom of travel. Thus the first World Passports were issued as of July, 1954.
Sixth point: To date, over 750,000 World Passports have been issued on public demand with both de facto and de jure recognition from over 150 nations, including Norway.*
*See www.worldservice.org/visas.html The World Passport is filed with the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal.

(Note to Norwegian and Swedish citizens: Both King Harald V and King Carl Gustav XVI have since been "issued" honorary World Passports which acceptance has been duly acknowledged via return postage. While King Gustav acknowledged the accompanying letter, King Harald has not yet deigned to reply. It should be noted that while neither king enjoys executive power according to their constitutions, one of the most globally-publicized functions of both is to present the yearly Nobel Laureate prizes to the self-declared "world citizens" selected by the Nobel Committees whether for "peace" or other world community accomplishments).

It also goes without saying that the participants of the Conference on Human Dignity and Humiliation did not travel to Norway identified solely by World Passports.

(Additional footnote and final irony: Norway has given refuge to a certain number of Iraqi refugees who fled from the ongoing conflict in their country. Recently the World Service Authority has been receiving World Passport application forms from them downloaded from its internet web site-www.worldservice.org).

Personal afterthought: (Posted 7.1.08) While the conferencees in Oslo have a humiliation case at their intellectual and actual doorstep as it were, this particular issue herein described is minor compared to critical issues of humiliation worldwide such as nuclear weaponry, global warming, male-female relationships, homelessness, poverty, rival tribalism and war, etc. etc. Then the question of who is being humiliated and who is humiliating is complex with many levels. Are we, who take human rights seriously attempting to claim them being humiliated by national "leaders" and their underlings who defend the fictional frontier world or are they in turn being humiliated by their own affiliation with, say, the United Nations which in principle provides the very human rights agenda for we, the citizens of the world?

At least, Dr. Evelin Lindner and her coterie of globally-minded intellectuals have opened this critically-important and dynamic discussion. More power to them!

A Serious Proposal To Hillary Rodham Clinton

First of all, Mrs. Clinton, let's face it; you don't really want to be the Vice-President of the United States. It's a puppet position and it's just not you. Sitting in the chair of the Senate and banging the gavel from time to time like you were accomplishing something important is not your cup 'a tea. No, Hillary, you are too important for that wimp job. In fact, ever since Bill became prez, you became a world voice, a molder of public opinion far beyond America's frontiers. The present campaign reinforced that global image.

There is another and far more compelling role for you to play in these historic times.

And that takes us back to WWI when the women's movements against war and for world government began.
But almost daily we hear news of women everywhere agitating against war, against poverty, against global warming, and etc. Some are in national power; some are in international movements such as "The Council of Women World Leaders" and "Peace X Peace," "Code Pink," "Connecting Women for Peace." And WILPF. Some are Nobel Peace Laureates. The women of the world are beginning to wake up not only to their global unity and responsibilities but to their giant and invincible power vis-a-vis the threats to humanity itself. Surely you, Hillary Clinton, know many of them yourself.

They are where the real action is!

Hillary Clinton, history is calling upon you to join the world's peacemakers, especially pioneers such as Jane Adams, Rosika Schwimmer and Lola Lloyd. Pioneers who had the passion, foresight and enormous drive to change their world against the madness of war and destruction to one of justice, freedom and peace under law.

Eleanor Roosevelt is a prime example of the woman's role in world politics. Leading the US delegation to the United Nations from 1945 to 1948, she chaired the Committee commissioned to define and proclaim the Universal Declaration of Human Rights now arriving at its 60th anniversary December 10th.

It was a mandate for the legitimatization of world citizenship for all humans on planet earth.

Let's face it, Hillary Clinton, a United States president alone cannot solve global problems however intelligent, earnest, patriotic and willful he is. The administrative level just doesn't cut it in the 21st century when the problems we all face are global.

That first day in the Oval office, Barack (or John) will suddenly be faced with an anarchic world community in which his commander-in-chief hat will be useless. His political tool, the US Constitution, simply doesn't provide for world peace as part of his executive power.

Hillary Clinton, if you want to be truly powerful, you must "go global!" You must "represent" the entire world community.

How?

You are a politician. How can your immense talents, experience and wisdom in that profession be applied to the issue of world peace?

In your best-selling book you wrote: "Let us build a village worthy of our children" and you said: "Children have many lessons to share with us-lessons about what they need, what makes them happy, how they view the world. If we listen, we'll be able to hear them."

So what do the children say? 30,000 students at the City Montesssori School in Lucknow, India have called for a "world parliament" in order to legislate world laws to outlaw war. You can read their appeal at: http://www.cmseducation.org/article51/children_appeal.htm

The notion of a world parliament is an ancient idea first proposed by the Greeks. Wise men and women throughout the centuries have enthusiastically endorsed the idea. But our highly technical world, for the first time in our human history, possesses the instant communication methods to actually realize it. Indeed, the world citizen constituency already exists. Then the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures." (Article 21.3) Article 28 provides that "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized."

The moment for this MAJOR HISTORIC CHANGE IS AT HAND! We, the citizens of the world, have already claimed our sovereign will for world peace through law.

Hillary Clinton, we need your wisdom, encouragement and ACTIVE support WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF YOUR CHOSEN PROFESSION. Indeed, what mission is more important for those whose very destiny is to lead humankind other than world peace?

Therefore, we, the citizens of the world government founded September 4, 1953, enjoin you to declare yourself a candidate for a WORLD PARLIAMENT-to be.

How can you declare yourself a candidate for something which does not yet exist?
Back in the early 1970's Willie Brandt, when Chancellor of West Germany and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, made an announcement that he's a "candidate" for a "European Parliament." Everybody was shocked, has he gone mad? There is no European Parliament journalists reminded him. "Don't you think I know that?" he replied. Willie Brandt tosses his hat into a political ring which does not exist-no machinery for it. It implies that citizens can vote beyond their nation? Heresy! This upsets the whole business of national sovereignty and yet Willie Brandt is imagining it! Five year later all the citizens of the Common Market are voting for direct representatives to the European Parliament! Willie Brandt's courage in stepping out and saying 'I am a candidate' for something that does not exist signaled a political milestone which finally lead to the creation of a European Parliament!

Einstein reminded us that "imagination is more important than intelligence."

On November 22, 1948, with friends, this writer interrupted a session of the General Assembly in Paris calling upon the UN to establish "one government for one world."

In her column, My Day, on December 15, 1948, five days following the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, US delegate and Committee Chairperson Eleanor Roosevelt wrote the following:

"How very much better it would be if Mr. Davis would set up his own governmental organization and start then and there a worldwide international government. All who would join him would learn that they have no nationality and, therefore, not being bothered by any special interest in any one country everyone would develop what he believes to be a completely co-operative feeling among all peoples and a willingness to accept any laws passed by this super government."

Seven years later we did just that. (See www.worldgovernment.org)

Einstein ended his incredible life with these words: "We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

Hillary Rodman Clinton, remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

I Interview Sleep

Me: You've been in the news recently and there seems to be some confusion as to how some of us humans can find you once we close our eyes. Lots of scientists have been researching you, getting people's brains all wired up and bodies filled with goodnight pills, etc. Then there's the question of how many hours humans should, uh, invade you. Mind a few questions?

Sleep: (Yawning) Go right ahead, that is, if I don't have to wake up.

Me: Don't worry. I'll be quiet. First, what actually happens to us humans when we're in you?

Sleep: What you've got to understand right off is that you all spend about one-third of your life in me. That's a big hunk of living. Or rather, out of your wakeup world.

Me: Yes, we know all that. That's precisely the reason we need some clear answers from you. For instance, just where is it we go when we're in you?

Sleep: Go? There's no going anywhere. You're right there where you plopped down. It's awareness that skips town. Goes back into the Big Pool, what you humans call "god."

Me: Now wait a minute. You mean when we're in you, we become God?

Sleep: Whoa! Not you per se. You remain just a big blob of flesh and bones filled with water. But you're still breathing. Heart beating, blood flowing, etc. In short, alive but unconscious. You see, I've got to get rid of your brain waves, where you store your phony "identities" and such, in order that the water, which is about 70 per cent of you, is able to accept a new supply of energy.

Me: Do you mean to say that we get filled with energy when we're in you?

Sleep: Yeah, something like that. But, it's not that simple. You see, energy's got to come from somewhere outside your body. But it just can't enter, kerplop! Like a baseball And suddenly it's inside the glove. There's gotta be a medium through which it can pass.

Me: Wow! This is getting complicated. But where does the energy come from and what is the medium by which it enters the body?

Sleep: I really find it amazing that you humans in thousands of years haven't yet cottoned onto the fact that the whole universe is full of energy.

Me: Well, some of us have. Einstein, for example, and Bucky Fuller who claimed it was 'synergy' and a Swiss named Theodor Schwenk who proved that water had inter-surfaces which stored energy.

Sleep: There you go! And it's those very inter-surfaces which contain the energy which flows into you-the human battery-when you're in what your scientists call 'deep sleep.' Why do you think all of you are 70% water? Energy can't enter solid bone. But nothing happens when you're just dreamin'. That's only your brain having a bit a fun with you. You gotta be out cold, blotto.

Me: But you mentioned a 'medium.' So what is that?

Sleep: Well, you might not believe it, and a lot of you will surely deny it-but you're not just a bundle of bones and muscle and national citizens. That's just the outer shell. Or say, the lowest framework or skeleton. You've got what some of you call an 'astral' or 'subtle' body. Some of you have called it a 'karmic' or 'Buddhic' body. It's like an outer shell, mistylike, but invisible.

Me: Hey, I've read something about that. Sort of explains ghosts and stuff. But so what happens to that 'body' when we're in you?

Sleep: Well that subtle or etheric body has to separate from the physical body in order to receive the cosmic energy from outside. It stays linked up like a tube but it's able to sort of drink in energy like a sponge. How do you think you can function the next day without a new supply of energy? Incidentally, when the physical body is kaput, the astral goes out through the tube. But that's another story.

Me: What a marvelous system! And just think all of us humans go through the same process every night throughout our whole life..

Sleep: Yep. But you sure don't act like it during the day. The minute you come out of me and awareness pops back in, you screw it all up for about sixteen hours until you have to enter me again.

Me: How do you mean, 'screw it up'?

Sleep: You go crazy with phony identities, political, religious, cultural. The works. Especially you men. Look at your world: wars, phony frontiers, destroying the planet with carbon, etc. Most of you haven't even discovered the obvious fact that you're one species yet. You still think in national tribal terms. Goes back to the ancient days. When two human tribes met, say, separated by a mountain or a sea, they either fought or merged. If they merged, it was probably because the chiefs figured that one plus one equals three, a peaceful society itself being the added digit.

Me: So what is your advice to our race today in order to become a single world society.

Sleep: Simple. Everything's been arranged already, that is, cosmically. First, get a good night's me. And when you wake up, and awareness-which incidentally, is global itself, comes flooding back, use the cosmic energy you've been given freely to thank Whomever it is always catering to your basic needs on earth. Hey, I've got my own job to do and I have to perform every night not only for you humans but for billions of other living beings throughout the cosmos. The least you could do is recognize you're all really just a bunch of big batteries which run down every day no matter who you claim you are when you're awake. In short, drop the pretense-kings and commoners, etc. and ignorance you're anything but human organisms living on one rather insignificant planet among billions. Otherwise, someday you'll all be permanently in me 24/7. Your kids dig this better than you elders. For their sake, wise up,

Me: Whew! Thanks a mil. I'll try to get the message out.

********************

Now about that 3 A.M. phone call

Brrrrrr!

Hello, White House. How may I direct your call?

Let me speak to the president.

Who's calling, please?

The Coordinator of the World Government of World Citizens.

I'm sorry, sir, the U.S. president is asleep. It's 3 a.m. here in Washington. Can it wait until morning?

No. This call is important, VITALLY IMPORTANT! U.S. national security is involved. And I know it's 3 a.m. dammit.

Would the vice-president do, Sir? He's still playing poker in the West Wing.

No way. It's the president or nobody. It concerns an issue of global significance.

Oh that. OK. Hold the line please. (Pause)

Hello. (Yawning) What's up Garry? This is a helluva time to call.

But Madame, you practically ran on the 3 a.m. call.

All right, all right! So what's so important it disturbs my sleep?

Well, Madame President, I thought you should be the first to know.

Know what? This better be good.

The World Parliament in Tasmania just passed a resolution outlawing war ten minutes ago.

Oh my God! What? No! I don't believe it. That would sabotage our entire nuclear missile strategy along with our Iraq, Afghanistan and maybe Iran planning. The Joint Chiefs will befurious not to mention Limbaugh.

But that's not the worst of it, Madame President. The global parliament has cited Nuremberg, you remember, the '45 trial, and in particular, the 'crimes against humanity' wicket and enjoined the ICC to issue indictments against all heads of state possessing nuclear weapons..including the US and Israel. Better prepare yourself. It could get nasty.

(Sounds of falling and glass breaking).

Madame president, Madame president, are you all right? Hey somebody! Help!

(No answer).

Yep, that 3 o'clock a.m. call could be a real kick in the teeth. The poobah in the White House who answers it must be well prepared to cope with such a catastrophic event. Will it be Hillary, Barak or John? The Commander-in-Chief's chapeau would be on a stand right beside the bedstead where GHB reluctantly hung it ready to be fastened onto the next eager warrior's head. (The United States voters have a real problem trying to decide who it will fit best. Dwight Eisenhower, who had already experienced war's glory and shame, had no problem knowing how tight it squeezed a working president's mind, but actually got a little too tight for his and the peoples' comfort in his waning days. Remember "Beware the military-industrial complex"?).

But wouldn't it be a cryin' shame for our national presidents if world peace broke out all of a sudden like? If we world citizens finally got our trip together, elected some world parliamentarians amongst ourselves then just went ahead and passed some world laws based on the Golden Rule? Boy, wouldn't that make all those generals, diplomats and border guards mad! Where would they find work? But I bet there'd be dancing in the streets in all the world's cities. Just think of where all that war money ($12 b/month alone for the Iraqi occupation) could be transferred? Why I bet all those hungry kids could finally have enough to eat and maybe get cured of what ailed them.

The Nobel Peace Laureates who gathered in Rome for their 7^th World Summit in September, 2007 almost got it right when they claimed that "Nuclear weapons are more of a problem than any problem they seek to solve. In the hands of anyone, the weapons themselves remain an unacceptable, morally reprehensible, impractical and dangerous risk." But despite the critical nature of the danger to humanity as such, they pledged feebly "to challenge, persuade and inspire Heads of State to fulfill the moral and legal obligation they share with every citizen to free us from this threat." (Note no mention of world law or government "to free us from this threat.")

Indeed, The BOMB doesn't respect "Heads of State" any more than it respects humanity itself.

This humiliating "call upon Heads of State"by the Laureates, however, chosen by an elite group of Norwegians, as icons of world peace to save humanity from "a 3 A.M call to the White House,"(or the Kremlin)can only be viewed by us average blood-and-sweat mortals as a monumental cop-out of world responsibility. Why call upon the very humans who willfully have their collective thumbs poised on the nuclear trigger to save us from them? The vaunted Laureates somewhat redeemed themselves, however, by at last calling upon "the citizens of the world to join us in this work." (So why don't they, as fellow "citizens of the world," also register with our world government?)

(An aside: I always thought it must be embarrassing if not downright humiliating to accept the accolade of "Peace Laureate" when the BOMB was still pointing at humanity and war was still "the last resort" of the nationalistic addiction to anarchy while billionaires racked in more ill-gotten loot and kids with their desperate parents hungered by the millions. I often wondered what Alfred, who started the prize-giving (to ease his conscience about inventing dynamite-while making millions from it) would have thought about all that upscaled "dynamite" playing havoc in today's world. Evelin Lindner, in her epical book, Making Enemies, defines humiliation as "enforced lowering of a person or group, a process of subjugation that damages or strips away pride, honor, or dignity," By singling out one person a year for the Nobel, isn't the Nobel committee actually humiliating every other human equally-or maybe more "equally" deserving of that so-called distinction?

And why don't they, the Peace Laureates themselves, call the White House, the Kremlin, the Palais l'Elysee, 10 Downing Street, and all the other presidential domains at 3 a.m. some morning and tell 'em what's what in our name? Tell them-with no diplomatic gobbledygook-that we, the people, ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE, that we're taking over our world just because it is OURworld. And their national "wargamesmanship" is terminated ONCE AND FOR ALL!

Indeed, what other message is worthy of a 3 a.m call to a national president with 6,000 nuclear weapons at her manicured fingertips?

Or maybe his.

Humiliation

Is it a precursor to conflict?

"The 21st Century requires different politics, a different world order: an order of humanism, peace and justice. This order must be based on human values and on the moral principles expressed - in particular- in the great universal religions and on the rules of international law. The acknowledgment and defense of human rights must be the touchstone of national and global order, as well as the criterion of democracy and political humanism."
(Statement, First World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, 1999)

Daily news via television of soldiers raping women (in Somalia, Kenya, the Congo, Darfur, etc. ) evoke emotions of shame along with indignation and anger. Viewing the women huddled together in refugee camps, their eyes deadened by the violence soldiers invaded on their bodies, we too are humiliated in sympathy. We must ask, what is it about soldiery the world over going back into ancient times which motivates this debasing action? How can fellow humans regress to such a bestial and pervasive condition?

The New York Times is running a series on PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.) The Times found 121 cases where Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, after their return from war, committed a murder in this country or were charged with one. "Clearly, committing homicide" wrote the authors, "is an extreme manifestation of dysfunction for returning veterans, many of whom struggle in quieter ways, with crumbling marriages, mounting debt, deepening alcohol dependence or more minor tangles with the law."

All the TV ads promoting the army, navy or Marines speak of courage, pride, power, economic opportunities, respect from others, especially family and women, and above all, "patriotic service" to the mother country.

They do not talk of dignity, human values, peace, respect for others, human rights or morality. Killing or being killed, of course, is never mentioned. Nor do they tell you that the army's first task is to discipline you to obeying without questioning. To accomplish this dehumanizing act, the recruit must be systemically humiliated ad nauseum. And so to "boot" camp: Humiliation's Playground. There, as a lowly recruit, you will be subjected to violent, irrational and deliberate diatribes from the "drill sergeant." Neither can you talk back to his personal insults but you must "prove" your ability to "take it," to "suck it up" as the Marines say, in the full knowledge that he is attempting to destroy your own reason and moral sense. It is the opposite of education. It denies every social code you have been taught almost from birth.

But hold on! Even before deliberately annulling the recruit's moral and rational center, his own decision even to don a soldier's uniform in the first place is to humiliate himself, to agree to become less than human, a soldier, dispensable to killing and being killed.

"These guys today," said Hector Villarreal, a criminal lawyer in Mission, Texas, who briefly represented a three-time Iraq combat veteran charged with manslaughter, "I recognize the hole in their souls."

What is the reason for this systemic humiliation? Obviously your primal duty as a soldier is to kill another human. You cannot therefore consider him/her/a child as "human," but only a member of the "enemy."

"A common and natural result of an undue respect for law, is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, private, powder-monkeys and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their will, ay, against their common-sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclined. Now, what are they? Men at all? or small movable forts, and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous men in power....[B]ehold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments..."
Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

The primal thinking is tribal or relativistic: we-and-they. We are already conditioned to this way of thinking through competitive sports, in school, the "team" syndrome tied in to the mythical "winning" paradigm. It prevails throughout the educational system-my school against their school-my town team against their town team, and finally, my country against their country. "Winning" and "losing" are the geo-dialectical interdependent polar "opposites" defining this paradigm.

Humiliation or loss of pride, self-respect, or dignity is the built-in consequence of this way of thinking.

When the "winners" of wars humiliate the losers, the inevitable consequence is the need to "get even." Ot better, to "win" the next battle. Thus the deadly duality persists. Was not WWII the result of the Versailles Treaty demeaning the vanquished German nation?

Extrapolating this win/lose syndrome to our global community we must ask how does the "win/lose" paradigm pervade the human race itself-as a whole? In other words, can humanity itself be "humiliated" by losing? The question seems absurd because if humanity "loses," there will be no one left to be humiliated.

But now we all know-even the smallest child-that humanity, in this nuclear age, indeed, can "lose." First, the national soldiery, already disciplined to unleash the destruction at its fingertips at their "enemies" if given the order by their national masters, can launch the final holocaust via nuclear weaponry. And the national so-called leaders themselves are cognizant of this deadly duality. Second, the world citizenry itself, in its unbridled and irrational demand for increasing energy, can pass the "tipping point" causing the environment to "win" the "war" for the 14-billion-year's old planet, totally disinterested in humanity's short-lived survival.

When, as a 22-year-old United States bomber pilot, I was flying over Germany during World War II dropping bombs on cities and civilians, underneath the intense concentration of formation flying in a group of 12 B-17s, I too felt morally degraded as a human being. My profession was acting. On stage, facing an audience, I was joyful, fulfilled and felt worthy of life itself. My relation to my audience was one of mutual respect, appreciation, even love. Each performance was a mystical bonding experience, eternally fresh. To me the theatre was a temple of joy and wonder, justifying my humanity. But as a wartime pilot I had lost my humanity, my soul, if you will. I had become a mere killer of fellow humans. My rationale, (the "Allies'" rationale): "Win the war against the Nazis" was my sole unthinking motive in life at that moment. Despite the thrill of flying and the atavistic tribal certainty of being one of the "good guys," against the "enemy," by definition, "evil," it was as a "national citizen", a subject to an ancient tribal syndrome: win or die. No longer was I only a happy entertainer. I felt debased, used, humiliated.

Together with my two brothers, I had surrendered my true human identity to the false god of war.

Then came Hiroshima, August 6, 1945 and THE BOMB!

Politically, my sovereignty as a human being was at once annulled by THE BOMB's very existence. My sacred rights-and that of my fellow humans-to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" was vitiated by the presence of a total weapon in the arsenals of competitive, warring nation-states.

In short, what was my new earthly ID vis-a-vis THE BOMB? What is yours? Indeed the mere existence of THE BOMB suddenly blasted into our very souls: What then is humanity's? Suddenly the realization that humanity itself was threatened forced us to realize that humanity REALLY EXISTED! Our political orientation viewing the world from our particular nation was suddenly exposed as deadly and obsolete. Especially following the death of my own brother at the invasion of Salerno I was forced to reevaluate my very human purpose living on planet earth. Of course I was not alone in this quest.

Why indeed, did Einstein himself claim that " a new type of thinking is essential if mankind is to survive and move to higher levels?" "Today the atomic bomb," he wrote, "has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking...In the light of new knowledge, a world authority and an eventual world state are not just desirable in the name of brotherhood, they are necessary for survival...This must be the central fact in all our considerations in international affairs: otherwise, we face certain disaster."

Along with Einstein's warning, Stafford Beer, former president of the World Association of General Systems and Cybernetics wrote that "Man is a prisoner of his own thinking and his own stereotype of himself. His machine for thinking, the brain, has been programmed to deal with a vanished past."

The "vanished past" is obviously the horse-and-buggy 18th century nation-state imposed on the instantaneous, one world 21st century. But does not the nation-state system itself, in dividing humanity artificially into its tribal units with anarchy separating them, generate and perpetuate conflict? And is not humiliation embedded in our very primary political allegiance to the dysfunctional and warring nation-state system now proven obsolete by the aspect of omnicide? In short, given the nuclear threat to humanity, is not THE BOMB the ULTIMATE HUMILIATION today embedded within this admittedly dysfunctional politics ?

Absolute in its indiscriminate destructive power, THE BOMB exposes our national citizenry as virtually and literally impotent. In this century, when, via technology and electronics, time and space have utterly collapsed between us, the nation-state leaders, feeling their power fading, tighten the screws to our fictional state coffins in the false name of "security."

The dichotomy could prove mortal.

That is our problem. Do you need more evidence? Note the platforms of the US presidential candidates, both Democratic and Republican, now vying for their citizens' votes. Do any of them claim to have a program to outlaw war once they are in office? They do not because they cannot. They are on the wrong political level. Do they claim to eliminate the nuclear threat if elected? The next US president will swear "to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic" the same oath George Washington took in 1789. But whereas the first president only commanded muskets and short-range cannons, the next US president will command an army and navy with an arsenal of upwards of 6,000 nuclear missiles enough to wipe out all living matter on our planet.

He or she will become the "Commander-in-Chief of National Humiliation."

My words are dictated by my status as a willfully stateless person. That is, I personally owe no allegiance to any nation-state nor can any sovereign-state claim my allegiance. National allegiance, in truth, is a collective suicide pact. My perspective since May 25, 1948 when I legally renounced my United States citizenship at the US Embassy in Paris is "outside the box looking in" as it were.

I speak, therefore, clothed with the sovereignty of one single human being born as you from another human being onto our common planet Earth. The first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

If you are a former reader of these blogs, you know already that in order to meet this ultimate threat to me and my humanity, I have claimed as my primary political identity: "citizen of the world."

So, as THE BOMB itself is global in its power, so am I, and so are you, if you but claim it.

This claim is legitimate. Why? Because each one of us has the sovereign right as human beings to identity ourselves politically or otherwise.

Einstein wrote that "Imagination is more important than intelligence.." while Emery Reves pointed out in The Anatomy of Peace, "There is no 'first step' to world government; world government is the first step."

My inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, required a valid political framework consistent with my identity as a world citizen.

A mandate came from a surprising but official source. Following our interruption of a UN General Assembly meeting in Paris on November 22, 1948 demanding "one government for one world," in her column, My Day of December 15, 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt, the US delegate and chairperson of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Commission, wrote "How very much better it would be if Mr. Davis would set up his own governmental organization and start then and there a worldwide international government. All who would join him would learn that they have no nationality and, therefore, not being bothered by any special interest in any one country everyone would develop what he believes to be a completely co-operative feeling among all peoples and a willingness to accept any laws passed by this super government."

Indeed, the wife of the US president, Franklin Roosevelt, was only confirming article 21(3) of the human rights declaration proclaimed by the General Assembly December 10th of that year: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.."

After registering over 750,000 individuals claiming world citizenship from January 1, 1949, therefore, on September 4, 1953 from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, I declared the World Government of World Citizens. Its administrative agency is a Washington, D.C. corporation called the World Service Authority. Its web site is www.worldservice.org.

It was the only rational reply to THE BOMB's proliferating existence throughout the national world where anarchy prevailed in the we-they deadly win-lose equation.

It is the win-win solution for we humans who, after all, derive from an omniscient, ubiquitous and omnipotent SOURCE.

At Lucknow, India, there is a high school of 30,000 students, CMS, the largest in the world. From day one, upon entering, each and every student is made aware that he or she is a "citizen of the world." Becoming computer literate almost from their first grades, they are already globally aware of the imminent danger of a nuclear holocaust brought on by national politics which artificially separates them from their fellow students worldwide. They already know that war itself-bred by a condition of anarchy between nations-must be outlawed by world government. To them, that is a given. Their brains are NOT "programmed to a vanished past" but are operating in the eternal NOW.

And they are demanding of us adults to OUTLAW WAR via the world government.

For, they assert, they and their 2.4 billion fellow students can be served by nothing less.

By claiming our rightful human heritage as Citizens of the World and its institutional corollary, the World Government NOW, by reasserting our dignity as fellow humans we annul our global humiliation and THE BOMB as light eliminates darkness and as wisdom dispels ignorance.

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