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 7th 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.
