World Citizen Update

from Garry Davis

"We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age. Not since the first atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has the world faced such perilous choices... (t)he failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a larger failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth." --Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

On January 18, 2007, the "Doomsday Clock" of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was reset from 7 minutes to 5 minutes from the fatal hour of midnight: humanity's untimely extinction.

Eight heads of state possess nuclear weaponry as an alleged "defensive deterrent" in a politically anarchic world.

Einstein in 1945 warned us that the nuclear device is not a war weapon because, unlike a missile or bullet, its destructive power is "indiscriminate." In short, it is a killer of society itself, the very physical and temporal environment of human life. Only a world government, he concluded, could outlaw it and save humanity. Einstein also reminded us that "Imagination is more important than intelligence."

On November 22, 1948, 3 years after the end of WWII, we World Citizens interrupted a United Nations' General Assembly session in Paris "in the name of the people not represented here." We told the delegates "the sovereign states you represent divide us and lead us to the abyss of total war." And that "our common need for world law and order can no longer be disregarded." If the UN failed us in this critical task, we said, "Stand aside, for a People's World Assembly, will arise from our own ranks to create such a government."

History is replete with the concept of a governed world and world citizenship. But today we live in the first age when humanity itself is threatened.

What do we mean by "humanity"? Is it a conscious being? Can it think? Does it feel?

Would you or I die for it as national soldiers willingly die for their "nation" and as national presidents and supreme court judges pledge to defend their national constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic"?

Can humanity, by itself, appeal to its constituent parts. . .us, as individuals, for its survival?

Or must each one of us, conscious of our dynamic relationship to it, speak AND act for humanity in our waking life? Finally are not we as individuals expendable whereas humanity obviously is not?

So the ultimate question comes down to: Is humanity our "collective human consciousness?"

Indeed, if consciousness is already global, then simply being human is to be global from birth. An actual "citizen of the world."

Humanity then must be a conscious global "government"! The so-called "brains" of Gaia, the living Earth to which we, as humans, already owe our primal allegiance.

Indeed Einstein's very last words were: "We appeal as human beings to human beings; Remember your humanity, and forget the rest."

Horace Mann, the great educator asked: "What have you done for humanity today?"

Abolitionist Charles Sumner stated that "The age of chivalry has gone; the age of humanity has come."

Transcendentalist Theodore Parker went further: "Humanity is the Son of God."

While Teilhard de Chardin wrote that "The 'noosphere,' was "a global net of self-awareness, instantaneous feedback, and planetary communication..."

And Nataraja Guru, in his epic Memorandum on World Government claimed : "Humanity is one."

That's the mental quantum leap and activist command for 2007! That in fact--and this is the crucial point--humanity is already a biological and conceptual "World Government."

Primal human allegiance to a conscious humanity then is the absolute wisdom criterion for human survival. Not "democracy" or "success" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo, the "Middle East" or whatever aggression and militarism by any nation-state anywhere on the planet.

But "Success" by, for and of the people of the world for whom planet Earth is home.

Faithful to our 1948 pledge to the UN General Assembly, and the world's people, as citizenship and government are corollaries, --Emery Reves claimed in 1945: "There is no first step to world government; world government is the first step."(1) --we World Citizens declared our global government in 1953 which has been operating for over half a century. The World Government of World Citizens then is the institutional down-to-earth verification of humanity's "world government."(2)

"Because we can be served by nothing less."(3)

(1) Anatomy of Peace, Harper & Brothers, 1945

(2) Its 4th Edition World Passport is now available with information on a CD-Rom disc distributed to all Member-States of the United Nations (See the Catalogue at www.worldservice.org/cat.html.)

(3) The Oran Declaration (See My Country Is the World, www.worldservice.org/cat.html)

Note: The World Coordinator has addressed a complete documentation on the World Government of World Citizens to the following heads of state:

1. Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, Iraq 12/5/06

2. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Israel 12/5/06 Acknowledged

3. President George W. Bush, USA 12/5/06 Acknowledged

4. President Hu Jintao, China 12/4/06 Acknowledged

5. President Jacques Chirac, France 12/4/06 Acknowledged

6. President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Iran 12/4/06

7. King Abdullah II, Jordan 12/5/06

8. President Emile Lahoud, Lebanon 12/5/06 Acknowledged

9. President Vladimir Putin, Russia 12/5/06 Acknowledged

10. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia 12/5/06

11. President Bashar al-Assad, Syria 12/4/06 Acknowledged

12. Queen Elizabeth II, United Kingdom 12/4/06 Acknowledged

13. President Hosni Mubarrak, Egypt 12/5/06

14. President Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea 12/4/06 Acknowledged

The rest will follow.