Views From My Space

Good news! The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has finally discovered global warming! (Which "lives" in world space as do wars). In northern Norway recently, 1200 kilometers from the North Pole, he had a quick but astounded look at the fast disappearing ice from local glaciers, He was appalled to say the least. Why didn't someone inform him in the secretariat of what had been going on in the real world for over half a century outside the 38th floor of the multi-layered box on the East river ?

So what was the SG's reaction to this 21^st century ongoing disaster? Did he call a special session of UN diplomats to warn them of the coming environmental holocaust and to "do something"? Did he send out an urgent memo to all the national leaders to warn them of the impending global catastrophe? And ask them to "do something"? Seeing those glaciers actually melting before your eyes up there in the Arctic Circle, is a frightening sight. But no way could Mr. Ban Ki-moon have gone back to his 38^th floor office in the UN building and call upon the 191 national leaders to "solve" the problem of global warming. He knew their impotency from direct daily experience particularly in view of the Security Council's lop-sided makeup. In former U Thant's 1977 Annual Report, the 3^rd Secretary-General, spelled out his official mandate:

"The Secretary-General operates under the Charter in a world of independent sovereign states, where national interests remain dominant despite ideological, technological and scientific changes, and despite the obvious dangers of unbridled nationalism..The truth is of course, that the United Nations, and the S.G. have none of the attributes of sovereignty, and no independent power.."

No. He called us "world citizens to take action immediately..to preserve our home."

We world citizens? But hold on. What in the world does the SG of the United Nations have to do with "world citizens"? Isn't there a rather blatant contradiction here? Are we world citizens not "outside" the national space limits by definition? And are we not considered heretics, unpatriotic, dangerous "aliens," to be dismissed as either crackpots, "illuminatees," or worse, not being "properly" documented, to be put away in national lock-ups and/or camps with high fences around them so we can't escape to contaminate the patriotic national citizens? But even more confusing, the obviously distraught SG also called for "world leaders".."to help our succeeding generations to be able to live in a hospitable environment in a sustainable way."

He didn't name any "world leaders," however. How could he? Who, in God's name, are they? Where are they? Surely not in any national president's or prime minister's offices. Nor provincial kings' and queens' palaces. If there were any bona fide "world leaders," wouldn't they already be at the global political helm to solve not only the oncoming environment disaster but also that other knotty global problem: war itself? Surely the SG was not suggesting that the national heads of state, nine of whom have their itchy fingers poised above their separate nuclear bombs, are "world leaders." No, we world citizens, who will get blown up with the rest of humanity if one of them pushes The Button, are not that naive.

"..no attributes of sovereignty and no independent power!" That's clear enough. The obvious reason then that Ban Ki-moon calls on us is that he recognizes that we have the attributes of sovereignty and possess independent power..as declared world citizens. And that "world leaders" do not and cannot refer to national presidents, prime ministers or indeed anyone inside the national frontier dysfunctional system

Emery Reves in 1945 put it succinctly in his classic Anatomy of Peace: "The tragic fact..is that we are neither heading nor thinking in a new direction. Those in power have no time and no incentive to think. And those who think have no power whatsoever."

Therefore, recognizing the global space of environmental warming, the SG naturally bypasses the nation's archaic frontier system and calls upon we World Citizens who are already occupying the global space in which warming and incidentally wars reign supreme.

In short, we are the sovereigns he seeks..and the true "world leaders."*

And so, indeed, is humanity to which we are intrinsically bound.

Reves also wrote about sovereignty in his epic best-seller:

"The fundamental problem of peace is the problem of sovereignty..This is not a theoretical debate but a question more vital than wages, prices, taxes, food or any other major issue of immediate interest to the common man everywhere, because in the final analysis, the solution of all the everyday problems of two thousand million humans beings depend upon the solution of the central problem of war. And whether we are to have war or peace and progress depends upon whether we can create proper institutions to insure the security of the peoples."

When this writer entered upon the UN's fictional "international territory" in the middle of Paris on September 11, 1948, "ceded" by France for three months, I knew, as a declared World Citizen, that the UN would be exposed as a political fiction unable to cope with even one human who, being "stateless," was already beyond its artificially-constricted limits. And so I was preemptively ejected, ironically by French gendarmes who "invaded" the "international territory" at the behest of the frustrated first SG, Trygvie Lie. The Europeans, whose land was still in ruins from WWII, were not taken in by this successor to the League of Nations which, in 1939, blew up in their collectives faces.

So what you have discovered to your chagrin, Mr. Secretary, is that global warming occupies the space beyond your formal mandate as SG. It is worldwide while the UN is, by definition, only nation-wide despite its several specialized agencies which deal with world problems: food, health, air traffic control, etc. And so you must appeal to us whose actual living space is obviously global. But that suggests a further relevant question: In seeking us out, are you not also acknowledging implicitly to be a de facto world citizen yourself? As UN SG you are obviously restricted by the limited space occupied by its Member-States. But not as a fellow world citizen. And having crossed that civic Rubicon with your appeal, are you not then prepared to address the multitude of diplomats you contact daily-as President Obama did explicitly in Berlin before the world public on July 24^th last-as a world citizen? Indeed, are not all our human lives at stake given an impending environmental breakdown not to mention the nuclear bombs pointing directly at humanity itself?

The question therefore is really one of space itself. Whereas the immediate problems "out there" beyond that limited and thus divisive national space are by definition global, your national mandate and power is obviously inadequate to cope with them. To put it bluntly, a new order requires "new" space. And what is always realized and taught by true sages**, everything ever invented first had to recognize the space in which to imagine, operate, invent, experiment and codify the new gadget, institution and/or code of behavior we call "government."

The US Founders first had to recognize the empty "space above" and beyond their then state affiliations. How else could they have even considered a higher legal framework for the 3 million humans on the eastern seaboard of the continent, each of whom considered himself bound civically as well as emotionally to his state allegiance?

Space itself, like the human womb, is the very birthplace of every thing including the stars. The astronauts have words for their experience in circulating the planet every 90 minutes: "wondrous" and "mind-changing."

There are multitudes of individuals calling themselves "world citizens" seeking to "transform"the United Nations into a world government. But they have not yet accepted the world space they have already claimed to inhabit as the first requisite, not a "world parliament," or a "world federation" or a "peoples house grafted onto the effete United Nations." As "world citizens," they are already a micro-world government! Reves put it bluntly: "There is no first step to world government. World Government is the first step." By registering with the actual operating World Government of World Citizens, (now 56) they are publicly "walking the talk" thereby sanctioning the already self-evident human unity codified by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.***

As Eleanor Roosevelt wrote parenthetically in My Day on December 15, 1948, five days following the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly-and as the US delegate to the UN she understood what had to be done: "You call yourself a world citizen, Garry, then asked the UN to become a world government. But you're already in the proper space for it. We, at the United Nations, are not and cannot be. So why don't you start it yourself!"

So welcome aboard! The World's Space Train is gathering speed hoping to overtake humanity's twin dangers: ecological and omnicidal, before it's too late.

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*"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.." Art 21(3), UDHR

**Lao-Tzu, in the 6^th century BC, wrote

"We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends. We pierce doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not." Tao Te Ching {12)

***"All human being 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." (Art 1, UDHR)

# posted by Garry Davis @ 7:18 AM