Global Roundup



Humiliation underscores the present fictional crisis between nations claims World Citizen Garry Davis, World Government founder

Press Release, August 21, 2008

WASHINGTON, D.C. Statement by World Citizen Garry Davis, World Coordinator of the World Government of World Citizens: As the German nation, after World War I was "humiliated" by the conditions of the Versailles Treaty leading eventually to World War II, so the Russian nation was "humiliated" along with its disintegrating army and navy following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Or so Prime Minister Putin admitted yesterday in his response to criticism by Russia's geo-dialectical rival, the United States of America, of "belligerency." "Nobody respected us, "admitted a Russian general gleefully on the road to Tbilisi, 10 miles inside the artificial frontier of Ossetia, Georgia.

But humiliation is now rampant throughout the ongoing crisis. President Bush, wars going on on two fronts and despite his hair-triggered 3000 nuclear bombs at his juvenile command, together with his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, are equally humiliated because of their virtual impotence vis a vis Putin's or Medevev's tanks on the alleged Georgian ground who claim they are within their justifiable "spheres of influence." Then there are the civilian casualties.

Talk about humiliation! We civilians are all humiliated when thinking of what our fellow citizens have gone through and are suffering whether they are in Ossetia, Akhaldaba, Gori, or any other small village being plundered by maurading soldiers, and wondering if it will happen to us wherever we are on the planet.

Despite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights plus the conventions deriving there from, not to mention their membership in the United Nations where its Charter condemns unilateral aggression by its members, the nation-states continue to dominate our collective tribal thinking while, in stark contradiction the news of the latest symptoms of national humiliation invade instantaneously the world's media allowing us global citizens a minute-by-minute audio/video program of their archaic and anachronistic deadly shenanigans.

So when and how does humanity react to this incessant and deadly precursor to conflict: humiliation syndrome?

The present Olympics presents us with the vivid immediate answer. Yes, the games are competitive. Yes, there is a sense of sadness when an athlete loses a race. BUT THERE IS NO HUMILIATION TO HAVE RUN OR SWAM OR JUMPED ONE'S BEST. Because THERE ARE RULES WHICH ARE JUST FOR EVERYONE COMPETING. And each and every athlete agreeing to compete has already agreed to abide by the rules. And just to be a competitor is a major achievement.

At the Olympics, each and every athlete is a de facto citizen of the world. Indeed the very theme of the present games confirms that citizenship: One World, One Dream. There are no rules, however, in the international political arena. Anarchy reigns supreme. And the very United Nations perpetuates that disastrous condition despite its allusion to fundamental human rights.

On May 25, 1948 when claiming the status of a citizen of the world, we predicted the national conflicts would continue to World War III if a world government was not established for humanity.

Others followed in the intervening years. Now millions must claim that dehumiliating status for, as the first article of the UDHR claims "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." The opposite of humiliation is respect. Attention Prime Minister Putin and President Bush and fellow state leaders.

WE THE PEOPLE ARE SOVEREIGN! RESPECT HUMANITY!

Columbia -- Thoughts from World Citizen Garry Davis

February 2, 2003

Seven humans left Earth on January 16, 2003. They did not return. Forty miles from the planet's surface, seven human hearts stopped beating shortly after 9 a.m., February 1st, 2003. As the news of their tragedy spread throughout the human world, multitudes of other hearts began to beat in the sympathy of shock and grief. Hearts have no nationality, nor do tears, prayers...or souls. These need no passports or visas to reach heaven.

The twelve children tragically bereft of their expired parent, bonded in sudden sorrow, are the mirror of the anguish of our two billion children remaining on earth who face the heritage of possible nuclear holocaust or the daily ravages of poverty and disease.

The seven astronauts saw our home planet as it was: whole, indivisible and solitary. And marveled. Astronauts in the past, including Neil Armstrong who said, on July 16, 1969, as he stepped off Apollo's ladder onto the moon's surface, "One small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind" have undergone revelational changes in their political constructs when viewing the planet from hundreds of miles in space. National frontiers and their rationale of which alleged security and war are the dominant, appear to many space travelers not merely fictional but symptoms of a mindless often fanatical social disorder.

Payload commander, Lieutenant Commander Michael Anderson, when asked in an interview why he risked space travel, said "For me, it's the fact that what I'm doing can have great consequences and great benefits for everyone, for mankind," Kalpana Chawla, aerospace engineer, in a 1998 interview with India Today, said, "When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular part of land, but from the whole solar system." The view from space inevitably leads to a "one world" reality. Space is, after all, 83 miles from each and every human.

"Should the human exploration of space continue?" remains the burning public question of the day. But the answer is dynamically connected to a prior question of humanity's survival as a species. If space exploration is a viable mission for the human race as such, then world peace is the determinant condition of an affirmative answer.

Both parts of the equation in turn relate to our primordial allegiances in this century when leaving Earth itself is part of our daily yet striking reality. World citizenship, with its familiar governmental guarantees, is thus the essential reciprocal social and human prerequisite.

President George Bush spoke movingly yesterday to the world's people saying that "The same creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven we mourn today."

That same creator also knows the names of all humans who, in Bush's words, "assumed great risk in this service to all humanity."

In the name of the seven whose hearts no longer beat with ours yet whose spirits remain with us, who gave their lives that humanity continues to survive, let world citizenship be our credo for the risks we all face in the coming days. To remain fettered by a less than holistic or planetary mindset is a denial of the universal spirit of the human heart and soul.



UN Secretary-General Confused By Sovereignty Issue

SG Kofi Annan, in his seminal address at the September opening of the annual meeting of the U.N. General Assembly, while condemning state sovereignty "in a world transformed by geo-political, economic, technological and environmental changes..." sidestepped calling for a world government as a sensible replacement.

His conclusion that "State sovereignty, in its most basic sense, is being redefined by the forces of globalization and international cooperation..." both indict the UN itself as impotent to deal with the real world and implicitly affirms the necessity for global government to do the complex job.

But rather than follow through on his indictment with a bold call for world law and its institutions-indeed as Article 28 of the UDHR calls for-true to diplomatic obfuscation, and career duty, in a veiled confession of present do-nothingness, he promised belatedly that "As secretary-general, I have made it my highest duty to restore the United Nations to its rightful role in the pursuit of peace and security..." (Emphasis added.)

The first President of the General Assembly, Dr. Herbert Evatt, was more blunt: "The United Nations was not set up to make peace," he wrote in a letter to Paris World Citizens in 1948, "but only to maintain it once it was made by the Great Powers..."

Today, however, the "Great Powers" have been reduced to the "Great Power," the United States, the biggest "Caesar" of all time whose military budget for the year 2000 is $268 billion!

Now Mr. Annan, hat in hand, must abandon the UN's "international territory," on NY's East River, "enter" the US and repair to Washington to plead with Jesse Helms, iconoclast chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, for US back dues. What irony!

Maybe, in the interests of true sovereignty and political correctness, the SG should reread article 21(3) of the UDHR: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."



Hemp Grows on World, Not National, Territory

Anyone who has studied for ten minutes the 1937 United States' laws re the growing of hemp learns surprisingly that this miracle crop is not illegal if it is identified as "industrial." The DEA, however, which has been given the legal authority by the executive branch to issue the permits, has arbitrarily and unjustly lumped hemp with marijuana, a substance dubbed "illegal" only since that same year.

That hemp's history dates back to ancient times, is cited in all the holy writings from the Bhagavad Gita, Buddhist, Sufi, and the Bible, was obligatory for farmers to grow in American Revolutionary days-both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were parttime hemp farmers-has over 5000 practical uses, protects the soil and is a satisfactory substitute for wood and paper being 75% cellulose and 25% fiber, does not deter the US Government from falsely linking it to marijuana and thus forbid its growing.

But, viewed globally or holistically, is the United States itself "legal?" Or is it an antiquated 18th century political fiction which has outlived its usefulness? Its present-day nuclear policy clearly suggests the latter.

Hemp, after all, grows on planetary turf, world territory, not on a fictional "national territory." The fundamental issue. therefore, is not whether the US government claims the growing of industrial hemp "legal" or "illegal," but whether any national government has the legal right to deny a product proven eminently useful to humankind, its right to life and global service.

Here we have another clear-cut argument for world environmental law.

Moreover, article 11(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides that "No one shall be held guilty of any penal offense on account of any act or omission which did not consitute a penal offense, under national or international law, at the time which it was committed." (Emphasis added). There is no international law prohibiting the growing of industrial hemp. The proof is that over 50 countries are presently growing it. (Imports of hemp products to the United States, ironically, are growing exponentially.)

That the so-called US "Drug War" is an artifice and a fraud perpetrated by official ignorance and greed is apparent to all who study its origins as well as its results. The true facts are open for all to see. Indeed US prisons are warehoused with citizens with horror stories rooted in so-called drug abuse. Aided and abetted by the police, courts and even the army, the DEA has become an overt collaborator with injustice and oppression sanctioned by governmental fiat.

Apparently, present-day US officials have learned nothing from the last major governmental prohibition which led to the 21st Amendment...after the rise of the Mafia.



The Comprehensive Nuclear Ban Treaty, Fact or Fiction?

The CNBT against nuclear testing has been signed by 152 nations but ratified by only 41. But suppose all 152 nations ratified the treaty as well as the rest of the nation-states closing out at 200? Would the world community be any more secure? Not on your life! Every single nation-state would still assume the legal "right" to wage war itself against any and all "enemies." After all, that's what nations do best.

But there is a problem. When the weapons are nuclear, who precisely is the enemy? Both the General Assembly of the UN and the International Court of Justice have named it: humanity.

When the US Congress failed to ratify the CNBT, although President Clinton had signed it two years before, a report by nuclear arms experts commissioned by Japan warned that "...it is urgent that the United States, along with Russia, China, India, Israel, North Korea and Pakistan ratify the pact against nuclear testing...to prevent arms control from unraveling further." Note the final word.

India's rationale for testing while millions go underfed -at the same time seeking a permanent UN Security Council seat-considers "possession of nuclear weapons an attribute to great-power status." So much for India's ancient tradition of wisdom teaching and practice.

There is an worldwide public denial in this irrational and perhaps ultimate human drama. Because humanity has not yet been destroyed, no one can accept that it can be. Thus the argument goes, "Well, it hasn't happened yet, therefore, it can't happen."

This fallacious reasoning is an indication of a species going mad.

The analogy of the frog in the water pot over ever-increasing heat until finally it boils to death is depressingly relevant.



Marriage Is a Human Right

"Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status...." (Article 2, Universal Declaration of Huma n Rights.)

"Men and women of full age, without any limitations due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and found a family....Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses." (Article 16, [1] and [2] Universal Declaration of Human Rights.)

Certain states arbitrarily prohibit marriage due to religious laws (Jewish and Muslim), sexual discrimination, refugee status, etc. As Member-States of the United Nations, however, they are obliged to "observe and respect fundamental human rights." (UN Charter, article 55 & 56).

Human rights, however, must be claimed by the humans concerned.

Registered citizens of the World Government of World Citizens can now apply for an application form for a World Marriage Certificate based on the above human rights.

Recently Russian refugee residents of Israel prohibited from marrying by the strict orthodox Jewish laws have discovered this unique global service of the WGWC through its agency, the World Service Authority(R).

The WSA has issued over 30 World Marriage Certificates to non-Jewish Israeli residents since May, 1999. All recipients receive a copy of the UDHR in either English, Russian, Arabic or Hebrew.

The application form can be downloaded from this Website. (See Documents).