WORLD CITIZEN UPDATE
IS IT POSSIBLE TO GIVE UP NATIONAL CITIZENSHIP?
Can you Become a Citizen of the World... Legally?
Garry Davis
"We are living in a geocentric world of nation-states. We look upon economic, social and political problems as 'national' problems. No matter in which country we live, the centre of our political universe is our own nation." -- The Anatomy of Peace, Emery Reves
People write to me at the World Service Authority from time to time asking if it is possible for them to legally and officially withdraw from the nation-state system and raise their allegiance to the global level. In other words, can they legally give up US citizenship and declare themselves World Citizens?
The answer is yes...But why? Before I answer that question, let me tell you that in 1948 I renounced United States Citizenship -- to prove that it is possible to exist in a new space, legally, above and beyond the nations that divide us, i.e., a world space! Well I've proved it. For 64 years I've been a citizen of no nation, only the world! Legally![1]
How did I do it? Following my stint as a B-17 bomber pilot in WWII, first I read the U.S. Nationality Act of 1940, an update of an act of 1868 when the United States was receiving tens of thousands of immigrants from Europe streaming into the US to take advantage of Lincoln's Homestead Act: Stake out 111 acres of land in the wild West, build your own log cabin, till the soil for 5 years, (don’t kill anyone except maybe some indigenous natives who might resent your presence on their ancestral land), and lo and behold, you could become a bona fide US citizen. However, due to the hallowed principle of reciprocity in law, a natural-born United States citizen could legally renounce his or her nationality but to do so represented a certain number of problems, the first three being, how, when and where?[2]
Now when we are asked this primordial questions, we have a totally different take on the answer.
"Why renounce your national citizenship," we ask, "when it no longer exists legitimately?" We receive blank, bewildered stares. "Or put it this way," we continue, "Shortly after the turn of the century around the time of the airplane's debut but certainly after Hiroshima at the start of the nuclear age when wars became omni and genocidal, the United States 'renounced' you as viable citizens. It became a garrison state, a mockery of "We, the people..."
Example: The oath of allegiance now incoming migrants must take today to become US citizens: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God." "The reference to God," we note, "as the sanctifier for this modern garrison state exposes the shameless mockery of 'e pluribus unum,' the underlying basis of the USA's founding two centuries prior. The code now is, 'From many, blind obedience to one'!"[3]
"Or look at it another way even more basic," we continue "Take a human birth. Did you choose your own place of birth? Can you be born into a political fiction? I mean, birth is a biological not a political fact. After all, you come out of your mother's womb into the world itself, a human being, member of humankind, not in a fictional state which claims you, body and soul. And since the technological, then electronic breakthroughs at the turn of the 19th century--with so-called world wars starting in 1914--followed by the "Nuclear Age" and then space travel, wasn't the 18th, 19th century divided system of nation-states rendered increasingly obsolete not to mention totally dysfunctional and now mortal?"[4]
Our fellow human questioner, his (her) eyes wide with bewilderment and anguish, remonstrates, "Yes but they're in bloody power over us what with the national laws, police and damn armies."
"Yes, we know all that," we reply. "But the word 'power' brings up the idea of sovereignty. And most people don't really know what that means. We haven't yet figured out what really happened in that Philly hall in the summer of 1797 when those 55 citizens of their brand-new 13 states bordering the Atlantic Ocean, exercised sovereignty (or political choice) by artificially creating out of sheer imagination a new level of government.[5]
"Are you suggesting, Garry, that United States citizenship is a fiction and not real?" we are asked in astonishment.
"Let me give you a simple example of reality versus fiction," we respond. "When driving a car anywhere in the world you come to a crossing and the traffic light is red, what do you do?"
"I stop of course." is the instant reply.
"And why do you stop?" we ask.
"Because when it's red, that means stop. Green means go. Everyone knows that."
"Does everyone throughout the world stop at the red light at a road crossing?"
"They do if they have a brain in their head."
"Ah, you've just 'renounced' your United State citizenship," we reply, "by stating that 'everyone' knows that when a traffic light turns red, that means "Stop", therefore, not only a local "law," or a United States or even inter-national "law," but a universal traffic reality! In other words, a code of conduct for us human drivers. And no matter where you are in the world when you come to a traffic crossing and the light is red, you stop. and go when it turns green. But the traffic light itself is a "fiction". For instance, did you ever consider that principle behind that everyday global event?
"What do you mean, the principle? It's just commonsense."
"And there you've hit on another 'renunciation' of nationality: 'commonsense.' And does not everyone at that crossing exhibit the same knowledge of commonsense?" we ask.
"Of course."
"Then haven't you defined a universal law based on commonsense or even justice since the traffic light is regulated for every driver who comes to that crossing and for the community of drivers taken together?"
A glimmer of light begins to shine in my friend's eyes. "I'm beginning to see what you're getting at," (s)he says. "The one and the many principle."
"Bingo! E pluribus unum on a world scale![6] Just like a symphony orchestra or a flock of birds. Or humankind. Now let's go back to that meeting in Philly," we continue. "When the so-called Founders carved out a tiny part of the coastal area in the North American continent-part of the world territory actually-in which around 3 millions of their fellow humans resided, and circumscribed it with millions of 'traffic lights' called 'frontiers,' (continually expanding) weren't they denying the self-evident universality, both of their own humanity and that of everyone else's humanity?"
"Yes, but at that time the British, French and Spanish man'a'wars were still out in the Atlantic ready to knock off the states one by one if they didn't unite," s(he) replies.
"The fictional 'states' yes, but not the people, and because of this fundamental difference, the founders were obliged to make a crucial and fatal compromise in the legal text they were preparing to impress on the 3 millions inhabitants now living no longer in mere colonies."
"I'm listening," s(he) returns nervously no doubt wondering where all this led.
"Now a major dilemma had arisen: Who was going to represent the new fictional nation they were creating vis-a-vis the nations poised in the Atlantic and the rest of the world of similarly fictional nations, large and small? Well, they figured it had to be the president when he was acting as the 'Commander-in-Chief' of the army and navy in time of war. But then, who would be representing the citizen's rights? In short, which was 'sovereign,' the people or the nation? Remember, there was no bill of rights in the original Constitution they wrote. In time of war between nations, only the nation was considered 'sovereign.' And as the army and navies of the world operate in the anarchic space between nations, the national citizens were left without civic representation but on the contrary became mere subjects to the imperial state in which, as the prime executive, the president would be a virtual dictator. The people, in brief, in time of war would at his singular command. But the nation-state, by definition, is a war state. The rational? "National Security."[7] Now, are you beginning to understand why and when the United States 'renounced' the entire citizenry...right at the very beginning of its founding. Now today, when wars between nations have become global and genocidal since 1945, you want 'out' when you were always 'out' right from the start since in a world of anarchy, the fictional nation-state is in a continual state of war...with the people."
"Wow!, s(he) replies. "That's quite a revelation!"
"But happily, there's an antidote, not only rational but the only road to a world without war. James Madison proposed when drafting the famous Bill of Rights between 1787 and '89 that there had to be included a legal remedy for the people when the president put his Commander-in-Chief war hat on. And it bears directly on your question of renouncing your United State citizenship because in effect it recognizes your already inalienable right to claim your own sovereign humanity."
"So what is it exactly," s(he) asks eagerly.
"It's the Ninth Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the most revolutionary right ever included in any national constitution.[8]"
"And why is that?"
"Because it refers to that right we already discussed when stopping and going at the traffic light at the entire discretion of the driver of each and every car in the whole world community. In other words: world law at the command of each national citizen!"[9]
"Amazing! World law! Part of the US Constitution? How do you figure that?"
"Ah, because of Madison's genius The Ninth Amendment doesn't spell out any particular rights. But what it does reveal is that the eight rights he did spell out are not all there are BUT all the other human rights -- and here is the universality built in to the US Constitution -- are 'retained by the people.' That simply means they are inalienable which in turn means universal. So, you see, the United States of America 'renounced' or rather, recognized you right from the start as a sovereign human being! But, and here's the catch: Since inalienable rights belong to the people, YOU MUST CLAIM THEM YOURSELF AS THE SOVEREIGN IN QUESTION. AND THESE ARE BRIEFLY, 'LIFE, LIBERTY, AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS' AS PRESCRIBED IN THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.[10]
"And in political terms that simply means claiming world citizenship as the Founders claimed national citizenship in the 18th century to embody those inalienable rights. And, almost miraculously, that claim is the beginning of a higher level of government.[11] So rather than renounce that now invalid and deadly national allegiance caught historically in an anarchic political world,, simply exercise your inalienable sovereign power by claiming the higher one relevant to fundamental and inalienable human rights.
"That's 'world government!' And that's what law-making is all about!"[12]
"Where do I sign up?"
"At www.worldservice.org"
Postscript: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
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[1] "...a reverence for our great Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of conscience, must convince all those who reflect on the subject that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end." Thomas Jefferson, Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, 1775; "Every man... possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will." Thomas Jefferson, 1790
[2] My latest book, World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court, (World Government House, 2011) (www.worldgovernmenthouse.com) goes into these questions in detail
[3] "Any method of maintaining international peace today must eventually fail if it is not grounded on Justice under Law and the protection of the Individual under due process of law." World Habeas Corpus, Luis Kutner, 1968, p. 73
[4] [12] "Our so-called 'contemporary' political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system...They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable -- a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein." The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler, Bantam Edition, p. 414
[5] Tom Paine, who sparked the revolution with his essay "Commonsense," wasn't taken in by the subterfuge noting that "Independence is my happiness and I view things as they are without regard to place or person; my country is the world; my religion is to do good and all men are my brothers."
[6] "Government can be safely acknowledged a temporal blessing because, in terms of the power it wields, there is nothing inherent in it. Government is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Its authority is the free and revocable grant of the men who have promised conditionally to submit to it. Its organs, however ancient and august, are instruments that free men have built and free men can alter or even abolish." Earl Warren, Chief Justice, Supreme Court.
[7] When the so-called "enemy" is "terrorism" the war becomes total virtually incriminating the human race itself as exclusive national citizens.
[8] The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. --The Ninth Amendment
[9] "The inalienable human right of the United States citizen to add world citizenship -- as the founding fathers added United States citizenship to that of their state allegiances -- is incontestable and indeed the highest act of patriotism. For only in that planetary social and political level can the lesser members be protected and nurtured. The US Constitution itself, in the Ninth Amendment, provides for the rational extension of civic rights and responsibilities to the highest level as foreseen implicitly by the original founders." (From Dear World, A Global Odyssey, World Government House, 2000)
[10] "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness..."
[11]"I no longer find it compatible with my inner convictions . . . by remaining solely loyal to one of these sovereign nation-states. I must extend the little sovereignty I possess, as a member of the world community, to the whole community, and to the international vacuum of its government . . . I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world." (Original renunciation of US nationality May 25, 1948)
[12]"As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or 'containers' to bring a semblance of order to the world -- a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism." Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave
Sovereignty & Humankind - New Year's Statement
Friday, December 30, 2011
The nation-state system, imported from former pre-industrial/electronic centuries, has become dysfunctional due to a condition of anarchy between each and all states which is the breeding-ground of war.
World wars, therefore, began in 1914. The so-called Nuclear Age, however, exploded on our human psyches and hearts with the bombing of Hiroshima changing the dimension of war from relative to absolute, i.e. genocidal. Therefore "sovereignty" in today's instant communicative world pertains to humankind itself. This in turn involves each and every human on planet earth, not to mention most other creatures co-inhabiting the planet.
The Ninth Amendment to the US Constitution refers to "unenumerated rights retained by the people."*
James Madison added it after providing the first eight rights.
If rights are "retained by the people," they are "inalienable." i.e. sovereign human rights and universal.
Madison's foresight in adding the 9th Amendment was to provide an antidote to the US president's power when acting as the "commander-in-chief" in time of war by virtue of article 2, Section 2 of the Constitution: "The President shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States..."
The US president -- as all heads of state -- thereby has become a legal dictator as Commander-in Chief "in time of war." All lower level officials in the government thereby become involuntarily complicit and obedient to his command in the name of "national security."
Thus, having declared a war on "terrorism" in 2001 which is a condition and not an enemy, the United States today is not only a virtual garrison state but an indictable "enemy of humanity."
The only document defining sovereign human rights is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations December 10, 1948 as a "Common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations..." Article 21(3) provides that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."
In conjunction, Article 6 of the UDHR, provides that "Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law." Ipso facto, the law before which "everyone" has the right to recognition must be world law.
All humans, as "sovereign citizens," therefore are already world citizens.
The World Government of World Citizens (see www.worldservice.org) has founded the "World Court of Human Rights" on June 12, 1974. (See www.worldservice.org/wsalstat.html).
The evolution and statute of this court is described in the author's book: World Citizen Garry Davis goes to Court." (See Catalogue, sites above and below).
Conclusion: The essence of "sovereignty" is political choice. As we humans are all "planetary citizens," our claim to sovereignty is not only legitimate but essential for survival itself.
World Citizen Garry Davis
*"The enumeration of certain rights in the Constitution shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
**www.worldgovernmenthouse.com
Message to all "Occupyers":
"Verticalize," then "Syntegrate"!
By Garry Davis
"As nations are torn apart and restructured, as instabilities and threats of war erupt, we shall be called upon to invent wholly new political forms or 'containers' to bring a semblance of order to the world -- a world in which the nation-state has become, for many purposes, a dangerous anachronism."
When I placed my hand on the Gideon Bible in the US Embassy in Paris May 25, 1948 and took the Oath of Renunciation of US nationality, I became a legitimate "occupier" of planet Earth!
The words I then recited were simple but prophetic reaching back thousands of years to the ancient Greeks, Stoics and Raja Rishis of South India:
"I hereby swear that I desire to make a formal renunciation of my American nationality, and pursuant thereto hereby absolutely and entirely renounce my nationality to the United States and all rights and privileges thereunto and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to the United States of America."
When I dropped my hand, I had legally freed myself from the 19th century Age of Nationalism...and war itself...at least in this lifetime.
But it wasn't enough. Though I was in my own stateless "space," the national myth no longer binding me, I was still a full-bodied member of the human race and eager to fulfill that sacred and challenging destiny wherever it would lead me.
That same day, therefore I issued a press statement, carried by AP, Reuters, INS and other wire services, that "I should like to consider myself a citizen of the world."
In short, I had "verticalized" myself to the global level. Who, indeed, could deny me that sovereign right? Moreover, I became a "world citizenship government-in-microcosm." "Every man possesses the right of self-government. Individuals exercise it by their single will." (Thomas Jefferson, 1776) "My country is the world." (Tom Paine, 1776)
No longer "in" a nation, when I walked out of the US Embassy "territory," and onto the Champs Elysee, I started my personal "occupying" of "world territory"!
I was happy and felt free as a bird in full flight!
But the French government immediately roared: "Out! Or our national gendarmes will put you 'inside.' Permanently!"
Out, but where? Out to sea? Up in a balloon? The moon? Que faire?
As my final date for departure arrived, I was surprisingly if contradictorily "saved" by the United Nations which "verticalized" in the middle of Paris: Place de Trocadero, the Palais de Chaillot where its General Assembly was to hold its session. In brief, France had ceded a tiny piece of alleged French territory to the UN...for three months! The absurd charade was on! With pack on back, on the morning of September 11th, I "left" France taking the Metro to Place Trocadero and, "entering" the UN's "international territory," claimed to be its "first citizen."
In short, I "occupied" it as a human being!
A New Age for citizenship was born! We had a "proper home!" Seven thousands journalists were in Paris awaiting the opening sessions. I became the "story" of the day...and even that year.
That first sojourn on the UN "territory," however, lasted only 7 days. French gendarmes in collusion with the UN’s Secretary-General staff, "invaded" the territory, bundled me and my tent into a police car (familiar?) and transported me "back" to France. Illegally! (Or perhaps "allegally"). But 7 days were enough. The issue was joined: world citizenship inclusivity versus national exclusivity.
I became world famous.
But if I, still "stateless," could claim to be and function as a world citizen on world territory, why not everybody else? Indeed, as I wrote in my last blog, we, humanity, are already THERE! Rather, HERE!
The letters started trickling in, but soon became a torrent. Three years after WWII with Europe still in ruins and Hiroshima fresh in everyone's minds, the "cold war" starting between the USA and the USSR, the refugee world proliferating, many recognized world citizenship as the "way out" of the war game entirely. And it is! Even the UN proclaimed it on its final day in Paris.
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly unanimously voted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "common standard of achievement for all people and all nations."
As legitimate members of the world's "people," we World Citizens eagerly grabbed it and ran.
Over 750,000 fellow humans joined me by registering at the International Registry of World Citizens I founded on January 1, 1949. "World territory" was filling up!
Then on July 10, 1949, a giant leap forward occurred and is the real lief motif of this blog: The city of Cahors in Southern France passed a resolution signed by the mayor declaring it a "world city." Thus began the "Mundialization" movement which has since spread to over 900 cities throughout the world. (See, www.worldservice.org/mund.html).
From that day when Cahors "mundialized," every citizen in a "mundialized" city "verticalized" to world territory!
Lastly, on September 4, 1953, from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine, after numerous jail visits thanks to my stateless status, on the advice of top civic rights lawyers, and with the mandate of the UDHR, based on our claimed global sovereignty, I declared the World Government of World Citizens. ("The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." Art. 21[3], UDHR).[1]
Fast forward to 1986. On August 22, 1986, I filed with the DC Municipal Office my "world citizen" candidacy for mayor of the capitol of the United States!
Mayors, I thought then and now, (2011), legally responsible for their citizens welfare and safety, are the veritable key to a world of order and wellbeing, NOT the now totally dysfunctional nation-state system. Luis Kutner, the passionate advocate of World Habeas Corpus[2], wrote that,
"The time-clock of World-Man is now ever-set at one half-hour from annihilation. Man, who has achieved the ever-expanding greatness of physical science, of ultimate outer space Satellite control, of intercontinental missiles, can annihilate total World-Man in minutes...Since total man is a unified being, with an international dimension, a basic unifying principle is necessary to unify the freedom and liberty of man."
My candidacy for mayor was formally accepted by the DC government despite the fact that in 1977 I had been classified an "excludable alien" by the US Immigration Department and succeeding courts clear up to the Supreme. (See www.worldservice.org/petition.html).
My platform in brief was "World peace through world law" claiming that Washington, like Moscow, was targeted by nuclear bombs and could only be protected by the world government.
I received 585 votes.
My rationale was simple: Most people lived in cities throughout the world. That's why we're called "citizens." Cities are real; nations are fictions. Cities have become the prime targets since WWII. Think Hiroshima, Nagasaki, London, Coventry, Tokyo, Berlin, Jerusalem, etc. Cities are now targeted...everywhere. That's where we, or most of us, live. Nations don't "die." They have no blood, no heart, no being. They are man-made creations usurping part of the planet's territory. But cities "die," or are destroyed in national wars.
You can't live "in" a nation. Because a nation is a passive fiction of pure imagination whereas a city is dynamic with ancient codes of communal living based upon the "one and the many" social philosophy. One could even describe national citizenship given today's instant communication and space research as not only oxymoronic and transient but mortal. After all, World War II was the first war where cities gained the deadly status of "targets" on war's "front lines."
I know. From the pilot's seat of a B-17, at age 23 I bombed some of them myself. (The victims, incidentally, were civilians, man, women, children, not Nazi soldiers.)
And that brings me to mayors of cities, God bless 'em...elected by the citizens...responsible to the citizens...no matter where on the planet.
On November 2, 1985, for instance, the World Conference of Black Mayors[3] passed a Resolution stating in part that "...it is unconscionable that spending of the arms race consumes more of the world's resources, while human needs go unmet; and...the increasing militarization of the world and the threat of an arms race in space is unacceptable...and the cost of the arms race has endangered the economic and social resources from domestic needs such as housing, jobs, public transportation, health care, human welfare, and education..."
Talk about 99% vis-a-vis 1%!
And on Saturday, June 18, 2011, the United States Conference of Mayors gathered in Washington and passed a resolution calling for the "speedy end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."
All mayors talk the same human language: water supplies, traffic problems, street and electrical maintenance, recycling waste, local administration and on and on. Today over 900 cities throughout the world have "mundialized," that is, declared themselves "worldly" like Cahors. Makes perfect sense. When you can fly around the globe in two days and the Space Station does it in 1 and 1/2 hours, We, humanity, "left" the nation-state system over 200 years ago when the horse was the fastest way to get around. Are we crazy to continue the war game when, as the good and wise mayors are now complaining, it is killing our cities (not to mention our world) with us in them?
The message is clear:
MAYORS OF THE WORLD ARE ALREADY UNITED! AND HAVE BEEN CLAIMING IT!
In brief, they are ALREADY de facto World Citizens.
Read what the City Council of Burlington, VT claimed on June 20, 1992 after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in my last blog: "Occupy...Earth?"
Brave, relevant and inspiring words, but what is missing? Like all good resolutions, it is static, not dynamic. Nothing happens. Where's the "beef?" How do the good citizens of Burlington or Shanghai or Berlin or Rio de Janeiro "declare their citizenship responsibilities BEYOND THE BOUNDARIES OF OUR CITY, STATE AND NATION? " And to what should they declare it to? The UN? Sorry, neither cities nor citizens allowed. (I found that out personally). Only nation-states...eternally talking. There's got to be something "out there" to ACCEPT that global responsibilities.
Here then is the simple yet revolutionary answer: Citizenship and government are corollaries! There was no recognition formerly of the overall world government to sanction the citizens' good will pledge... "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..." provides art. 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The authors of the UDHR unfortunately didn't use the present tense. They assigned peacemaking as a "shall be..." not as "is."
But to the mayors of all the cities of the world, and to their citizens gathering today in town squares and parks, the World Government of World Citizens NOW IS! How do I know? Because, following the sanction of the UDHR declared by the entire body of nations in the UN, I myself declared it on September 4, 1953 from the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine! (See www.worldservice.org/ells.html).
If the mayors of our cities recognize their avowed responsibilities to represent their citizens' wellbeing, given the "global village" they actually live in this century, they must REGISTER THEIR GLOBAL ALLEGIANCE TO THE ONLY DECLARED AND OPERATING WORLD GOVERNMENT EXTANT.
Moreover the over 900 cities already declared "global" are thereby inhabited by literally millions of already declared "world citizens" as have the citizens of Burlington, Vermont.
The wait is over. Our human future is at stake. We are at that historic juncture where it is all or none in terms of survival. THE BOMB is ticking away! It is pointed at US the real "occupiers" of world territory. The species itself is in danger of annihilation...and by its own hand. The "shift" in consciousness is taking place NOW.
Citizens of the World, we are already the human occupiers of planet Earth!
Claim it before it is too late!
Only then can we passengers communicate to one and all via the internet and all the myriad technical marvels finally eradicating space and time between humans the "operating manual" for Spaceship Earth.
And that's known as "Syntegration."
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[1] See www.worldservice.org/ells.html
[2] Oceana Publications, Inc., 1962
[3] Founded by Johnny Ford, Mayor of Tuskegee in 1972
OCCUPY...EARTH?
By Garry Davis
It's our world; when do we get our turn in running it?
Last Saturday, as I walked out of "World Government House" where I live and work in South Burlington, and climbed into my Accord to join the local Vermont group at the Burlington City Hall park supporting the now global "Occupy Wall Street" movement, I wondered what would be appropriate for me, a world citizen since 1948, to contribute in a meaningful way. Following Amy Goodman's daily "Democracy Now!" reports of the same happenings in cities around the United States and the world, I was struck by the lack of positive programs brought forth by speakers and signs. Everyone knows what we are against, but what are we for?
But even more basic, who are we...together?
In my briefcase were copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, applications for registrations of world citizens, my World Government Passport and a dwindling supply of "I am a World Citizen" buttons, as giveaways, always gratefully accepted by young and old alike. Was it enough? What key element was missing? Then I had a flash of inspiration. Cities! We were all gathering in cities around the world! That's it! I remembered that almost two decades ago the Burlington City Council unanimously adopted the Resolution declaring itself a WORLD CITY! Eureka!
Jumping out of the car, I reentered World Government House, ran upstairs to my office and IMac, hit the "Q" button and typed: "World City Burlington." Up flashed the Resolution of June 20, 1992 adopted by the City Council of Burlington declaring it a "World City" following the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. I quickly printed up a bunch of copies and drove down to city hall for the rally. A few dozen people had gathered milling about some with signs "We are the 99%!" and "Down with Capitalism!" I went to the speaker area and said I had a short but relevant announcement to make. Given the no mike system, I simply announced to the crowd that the City of Burlington 19 years ago had already taken a major step required, if we, the people were to take back our planet from corporate control. I then read the opening paragraphs of the Resolution:
"WHEREAS the City of Burlington, Vermont, recognizes the greatly increased interdependence of the people of the world in this age of pollution, deforestation, natural resources depletion, overpopulation, and hunger; and WHEREAS, we seek to free humanity from the scourge of war, and to use the world's resources of energy, and knowledge for the benefit of the people; and WHEREAS, we realize that the common interests of the world's people can only be advanced through cooperative effort on a global scale, as exemplified by the recent Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro; and WHEREAS, we affirm that we can best serve our city, state and nation when we also think and act as world citizens:
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE CITY COUNCIL: That the City of Burlington hereby recognizes its status as a
World City
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the citizens of Burlington recognize their sovereign right to declare that their citizenship responsibilities extend beyond the boundaries of our city, state, and nation; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the citizens of Burlington are urged to pledge their efforts to the establishment of world peace, economic justice, and ecological security based on just world law..."
Burlington was not the first "World City," -- that honor goes to Cahors in central France on July 7, 1949. Since that historic moment, more than 1000 cities and towns have declared themselves World Cities including Boston, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Toronto, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo, Nivelles, and Konigswinter. See list at http://www.worldservice.org/mundcity.html. Also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundialization.
As soon as I finished, I was mobbed by people reaching for handouts of the resolution.
"We are already actual citizens of planet Earth at birth." I said to one and all. "So we have a right to claim it, and to govern it. But as long as we are kept locked behind these invisible lines called nations, we are artificially divided, and senselessly war against each other. But as soon as we recognize our common human sovereignty, and realize that we are all one, all citizens of planet Earth, we gain enormous power, the power of the sovereignty of the whole. Only then can true justice and democracy prevail.
"Thomas Jefferson and America's founders," I added, "argued that corporations need to be regulated for the public good. Just as good cells in the human body, vital for our growth and well being, turn cancerous when the mechanisms of regulation fail, so corporations, can become the source of our destruction, unless we find the human power to bring them into balance and proper regulation for the common good. Our only hope of bringing them into balance is for we, the people, to take responsibility for governing our world.
"It's one thing to militate about what we don't like," I concluded, "war, injustice, the failing economy, devastation of our environment--and hope someone else solves it for us. But we are the leaders we've been waiting for! We are the sovereigns, we, the people, are the ones who create governments."
I handed out the "I am a World Citizen" buttons. The kids especially love them. "Cool," they would say fastening them to their coats.
"At our web site," I added, "you'll learn how you can join with your fellow humans in taking back our planet, even to setting up our own World Court of Human Rights and more. You can even download its Statute and the apps for the human rights documents we issue."
Buckminster Fuller reminded us: "If you want to change anything, don't fight the existing reality; create a new reality and you render the existing reality obsolete..."
And Mahatma Gandhi wrote "Be the world you want," while Renaissance man Steve Jobs had boldly suggested: "Be the future you want."
"Occupy Wall Street"? OK, but it's high time for us to take the Big Leap to land on the political space beyond so-called national frontiers.
In fact, guess what, we, humanity, are already occupying it!
World Citizen Garry Davis and the "99%" Movement
"The best way to forecast the futureis to invent it."
The late Steve Jobs lived, worked, designed and produced in the Here & Now. He did not march in crowds. To the contrary, he was alone when he invented the miraculous tools you and I use daily which amazingly unite us as one wherever and whoever we are throughout our one world. And by his inventions, he "created" the future in which we now live.
In short, he thought of himself as the "center" of the world which he – and hosts of sage humans in the past - accepted as one and without artificial divisions.
Realize that you also are not actually "in" the United States for it does not exist in reality. It is a political fiction created 224 years ago to cope with a largely pre-industrial agricultural world for 3 millions humans when the horse was the fastest means of transportation.
You and I here and now are members of a race living on the planet we call Earth. (Fellow members are circling it every hour-and-a-half at 17,000 mph.)
No human, therefore, in the 21st century, is "in" a nation-state. First technology, then electronics, then nuclear, and finally space have rendered nations obsolete. Their dysfunction was startlingly revealed as of 1914 when so-called world wars (between nations) erupted planet-wide.
Now, humanity itself faces nuclear annihilation through sheer ignorance of who we are as a species. In short, we cling anxiously to the very national deathtraps which can only promise omnicide.
Yet you, who have gathered in New York's Wall Street and indeed around the world are ironically demanding "justice" and "democracy" which, in politics terms, are called sovereign human rights sanctioned by the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, from the same nations which endorsed it unanimously December 10, 1948.
Therefore, you already "outrank" the politicians from which you are demanding justice. Buckminster Fuller wrote that ""You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
A world government of, by and for the citizens of the world was declared over 58 years ago mandated by over 750,000 citizens throughout the world and based on articles 21(3) and 28, UDHR. (See: www.worldservice.org)
Finally, the geo-dialectic codes of human society – identified historically as "the one and the many," or morally, "do unto others as you would they do unto you" has now reached the global level where the "One and the many" – i.e. the individual citizen allied dynamically with humanity - are united in time and space representing a historic "shift" in consciousness and in human society itself.
The result is finally world peace, world freedom and world abundance as Buckminster Fuller, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, etc predicted in their earthly lives.
Archive of Recent UPDATES:
CALLING ALL WORLD CITIZENS!
FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2011
WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?
IT'S ONE WORLD NOW!
Citizens in the streets of the world are crying out for "JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS and DEMOCRACY."
Yet even when the old rulers fall, they've been replaced by the military or other rulers who just dish out more of the same -- oppression, bureaucracy, riches for the few, exploitation of nature, and money policy based on unsustainable growth, debt, and war. Why? Because such universal concepts as "Democracy" and "justice" cannot be realized in an 18th century, dysfunctional, war-dominated and artificial political entity called a "nation."
As long as we allow the old order to artificially divide us into nationalities, the true power of the people will never be realized. Humanity entered the 21st century with its survival in question. But humanity also entered this century with the knowledge and tools to make a successful "Crossover" to One World Now! Today, we must think and act as citizens of the world on behalf of all generations to follow. The only way we can truly claim our power is to move beyond protest and rebellion and become the creators and founders of a new way for we-the-people to run our small planet. We must choose a positive way to transcend the entire broken system of nation-states and ask the question, "How can we, as sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"
The first step has already been taken. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), adopted unanimously by the United Nations, stated "Everyone is entitled to a social and international order" which can protect human rights and freedoms. It called on "every individual" to take "progressive measures both national and international" to secure these rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt, the US delegate to the UN, went further and 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..."
So, in 1953, with 750,000 people signed up as World Citizens, I declared the "World Government of World Citizens."
The new government established the World Service Authority (WSA) in Washington DC, as the microcosmic beginning of a new model for a people-powered world. It started by providing a service for individuals to identify themselves as world citizens by obtaining world ID's, Passports, Birth Certificates and other documents based on the UDHR. The declaration of Human Rights was the great gift of the 20th century to human governance.
Buckminster Fuller, design-science philosopher, wrote that "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." In 1993, inspired by the genius of Buckminster Fuller, cybernetician Stafford Beer, Commissioner of World Cybernetics (1987-1994) invented a protocol for self-organization and self-government of we, citizens of Earth. Its formal title is "The World Syntegrity Project." You can observe the results of the grassroots "Infoset" meetings from 14 cities on 4 continents--with over 500 volunteers "syntegrating" to answer the question: How can we, sovereign world citizens, govern our world? (See http://www.worldservice.org/syn.html.)
"Syntegration" is a transparent, proven method to unite our wills, both as individuals and together as members of a world community of fellow humans---much like a symphony orchestra is composed both of individual instrumentalists and functions as a whole at the same time.
The aim of the worldwide grassroots meetings was to provide subject matter for the eventual elaboration of a flexible, ongoing and dynamic "world constitution" wherein each and every citizen could play a vital and useful part.
With the digital one world technology, world citizen agreements, knowledge and actions are today already inter-connected in the frontierless "technosphere"—the planetary real-time knowledge-enriched collective intelligence commons of humanity. With satellites, we are experiencing the first waves of citizen-centered connectivity, and the World Syntegrity Project 4.0 offers world citizens a ready tool to go from unstructured NO to coherent YES. The basis of YES for humanity is already expressed and codified in the above-mentioned Universal Declaration of Human Rights. "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." (Art 21[3], UDHR) Our agreement to think and act as a world citizen is expressed in the Statement of Allegiance (see appendix 1 or web-site registration form for world citizen registration).
The aim of WSP4.0 then is to provide a world governance space to enable world citizens to focus on and achieve specific Crossover actions based on the recognition of humanity and Planet Earth as sovereign.
When you meet in a "World Syntegrity" gathering, you are already in the "Global Commons" as world citizens seeking the agreements and actions that realize the challenges of the core question ([3]). When connected with the communication power of the 'one-world technosphere,' it unites those who "enter" OUR GLOBAL SPACE with all other world citizens who together acknowledge and affirm its legitimacy. The collective intelligence of humanity can thus be focused effectively to find and enact the Crossover actions that enable individuals-in-society to make it successfully to a viable 21st century future.
The totally democratic structure of the meetings in the geometric form of the icosahedron allows 30 individuals of diverse backgrounds, cultures and social status to join in a disciplined framework to arrive at a whole-system answer to the World Citizen Question: [4]
The protocol is available from WSP 4.0 for world citizen use. We are looking for co-researchers-in-action to build the continuous learning system that connects the syntegrity follow-throughs with other world citizens to enable coherent, transparent, sociocratic, simultaneous Crossover.
The results of the original 1993 "Infosets" were transferred daily to the WSA's site, www.worldservice.org for all the world to peruse. What became most striking from the first round of World Syntegrity Project "Infosets" was the similarity of concerns addressed in diverse parts of the world.[5][3] In many cases, infoset participants in far-flung locales arrived at nearly identical conclusions. Ecological preservation, multicultural diversity, drug legalization and economic responsibility were just a few of the issues addressed in common by the various infosets. This was in 1993—before the omni-presence of the World Wide Web. These same issues are now real-time, front-line news—20 years further along, and, mostly, 20 years further down the wrong road. The nuclear option, for one, is still ticking away on the national Armageddon clock.
Any group of world citizens are offered to use the WSP protocol within the terms of reference of the world government principles inherent in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Pledge of Allegiance.
Let us suppose that in Cairo, Alexandria, Tunis, Tripoli, Damascus, Tokyo, Baghdad, Jerusalem, Gaza City, Tehran, Baghdad, Riyadh, Jeddah, Geneva, Manchester, etc., etc., 30 people gathered for three days using the icosahedron as model to "play" the game, "Syntegration," generating answers to the prime question:
"How can we, sovereign world citizens living in world cities co-govern our way forward to a viable society/world partnership?"
WSP 4.0 will connect the answers, concepts, people and action, over the next 3 years to: make explicit, measured, forward movement on core societal needs/goals relating to the survival and benefit of humanity living in/travelling through our cities; locate the principles and policy agreements that make sense to align Crossover initiatives; seek global world citizen legitimization of these results; develop capacity and competence for citizen-centered societal governance; co-operate fully in enabling a successful Crossover of all our World Cities to a viable future; join other world citizens and create the outcomes that matter together.[6]
Article 19 of the UDHR, to which all Member-States of the UN are subject, provides that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion..." while Article 20 provides that "Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association." The issue is one of sovereign right. Every national constitution with the exception of Saudi Arabia, provides that its original power derives from the people themselves.
As "World Citizen No. 1," I here (re)announce this updated world peace-affirming program. We are enjoining a citizen-centered world future to enable World Citizens, at all levels, to tackle the issues of human survival facing humanity. Having worked 60 years to articulate the principles, practices, and protocols of world citizenship, we are now re-activating the World Syntegrity Project to amplify and integrate the values of human sovereignty in transcending the nation state prisons we are all in.
We are already FREE and our POWER IS NOW!
All aboard Spaceship Earth!
Launching of WSP4.0 Crossover Facility. Resourcing Offer from World Syntegrity Project.
Each world citizen syntegration increases the value of all world citizen syntegrations. To establish the effectiveness and viability of the WSP in its Re-Activate phase (2012-2015), a resourcing schema is presented below. The start-up funding requires a Booster funding to achieve and sustain the Momentum required for effectiveness in the 21st century. That funding will evolve in a 3 year agreement with our key allies.
Foundation Stewards:
These are individuals/groups of individuals who identify themselves as world citizens and commit the funds necessary to implement the syntegrated agreements around a Core Crossover question that matters to them most. They participate in the Launch Event and make available the requisite resources for the 6 month follow-through to bridge the time between launch event and next resource infusion.
These will identify themselves on a case-to-case basis. We seek a launch fund of 480,000 euros to ensure the competence and capacity of our digital socio-infrastructure. For 2012.
Viable Future Investors.
These are individuals and organizations who will partner with world citizens to accomplish a priority Crossover. (e.g. FROM heavy TO light footprint; FROM fossilized infra-structures TO renewable infra-structures, etc.) They co-create the solution with a high-talent world citizen team and are entitled to claim a R * 0 * I * achievement in ROI currency[7]. We seek only partnerships with for profit organizations willing to take responsibility for their own organization’s Crossover mandate(s).
Problem-Holders.
The World Syntegrity Project is available to enable world citizens in world cities to make significant Shifts in their city-planet relationships. These problems, held by local governments, and addressed by local world citizens, provides feasible answers for citizen-centered responsibility in major Crossover issues. (e.g., migration; C02 reduction; disaster resilience, etc.) We invite urban leadership to use the world talent living in their city to integrate a citizen-centered whole planet element in their Crossover strategy.
Local Champions.
Six world citizens can host a World Syntegrity project. 30-42 people have the breadth of experience/influence and depth of commitment to liberate the social energy required to make rapid social-system Shifts. At the moment, we can only provide the quality service the ReStart Up of WSP 4.0 demands for a minimum market price of 30,000 euros. This is an extremely low service fee—for a protocol that cuts Start to Results time by more than 50%; delivers 30-40 high-agreement solutions; and is immediately eligible for significant large funding.
The lowly-resourced.
If you are six world citizens with a Common Quest of world citizenship, and have the involvement of the key people you want to succeed with, send us your question, the participants who have agreed to join in, and the place FROM which the six of you want to move TO the place you want to get to as world citizens in the coming 2-3 years. We're already seeking funding for you!
For further information, contact:
Garry Davis at worldlaw@globalnetisp.net
David Gallup at info@worldservice.org
David Beatty at: david@reflection-action.nl
=================================================================
APPENDIX
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
I, the undersigned, do hereby, willingly and consciously, declare myself to be a Citizen of the World. As a World Citizen, I affirm my planetary civic commitment to WORLD GOVERNMENT, founded on three universal principles of One Absolute Value, One World, and One Humanity which constitute the basis of World Law. As a World Citizen I acknowledge the WORLD GOVERNMENT as having the right and duty to represent me in all that concerns the General Good of humankind and the Good of All. As a Citizen of World Government, I affirm my awareness of my inherent responsibilities and rights as a legitimate member of the total world community of all men, women, and children, and will endeavor to fulfill and practice these whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself. As a Citizen of World Government, I recognize and reaffirm citizenship loyalties and responsibilities within the communal state, and/or national groupings consistent with the principles of unity above which constitute now my planetary civic commitment.
[1][1] If you want to see a prime example of 18th century thinking, read Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' statement of June 10th on the subject of NATO).
[2][2] "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." Buckminster Fuller
[3] The generic question is always: How can we as sovereign world citizens govern our world? The current 21st version of that question is: How can we, as world citizens living in (a large city..or a watershed.. or around an ocean...or...or...) ____________, Crossover FROM ______ national TO -global government in the shortest possible time without ecological offense of the disadvantage of anyone?
[4] "Crossover" signifies that the dimension of World is core to where we are moving as a species. WSP 4.0 focus for the next 3 years is to enable citizens of the world to make the specific, significant FROM-TO decisions relevant to their situation and its place in the World. All Crossover Questions include Planet as relevant recursion and all Coherent Sets are government-in-action experiments. WSP 4.0 is in a learning-in-action phase and is currently designing a Continuous Improvement Learning System for syntegrated world citizenry.
[5][3] See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights attached
[6] This, of course, has to be designed and implemented. Thus a Crossover Question: How can we, as sovereign world citizens, co-create a reciprocal value-exchange economy to accelerate successful Crossover to self-governing non-hierarchical systems of government on planet Earth? Each question comes out of the hosts of the event, a unique variation of our Earth generic question: How can we as sovereign world citizens govern (in) our world together? This question is asked in an area of application (e.g. Artic Ocean; particular country; World Tourism Association, etc.) and is open to others to join, co-create, co-own responsibilities and rewards, etc.
[7] R*O*I* is Release and Realization of Inspiration. It is measured in terms of the distance covered from the present outcomes of the system TO the whole system solutions located and leveraged in the opening event. Return-on-Investment indicates that there will be a share-holding structure which enables all participants (and sponsor) shareholders to convert their holdings back to national currency.
Memorial Day - The Yearly Camouflage
MONDAY, MAY 30, 2011(Doonesbury's strip yesterday pictured Ms Trudeau asking Gary in the first box "You marching in the parade tomorrow?" "I guess so," he replied. Then in the next cut, he added, "It's a bit demoralizing. Memorial Day is for remembering, but no one wants to be reminded we're still at war." )
Starting from World War II, while the number of dead has been totaled,[1] the number of veterans from the world's wars remains unknown. But as national wars continue uninhibited for lack of world laws to stop them, it is obviously growing. Moreover, with nuclear arms "on the table" for nine states, humanity's survival itself is in grave doubt.
I, for one, would gladly enlist my fellow veterans worldwide, we who did the killing on the "fields of glory," in a global police force mandated by a framework of world constitutional law-not the United Nations Charter-representing all citizens of the world.(See http://www.worldservice.org/sowg.html)
After all, as Trudeau suggests, if Memorial Day has any real meaning, the unanswered question of "Why war?" and its geodialectical corollary, "How peace?" must be equally honored and, indeed, practiced. Or, as the editorialists, mourning families and politicians of all levels like to profess, simplistically, "They will have died in vain." (Like my own elder brother, Bud).
Some relevant items re our world community from the New York Times: 5/29/11: Thomas Friedman: "...the Egyptian revolution is not over. It has left the dramatic street phase and is now in the seemingly boring but utterly vital phase of deciding who gets to write the rules for the new Egypt."
Tkmur Kuran, professor of political science, Duke: "The preconditions for democracy are lacking in the Arab world partly because Hosni Mabarak and other Arab dictators spent the last half-century emasculating the news media, suppressing intellectual inquiry, restricting artistic expression, banning political parties, and co-opting regional ethnic and religious organizations to silence dissenting voices."
Then Anthony Shadid's "Can Turkey Unify the Arabs?" "Even amidst the din of the upheaval in the Arab world, that new sense of belonging represents a more pacific and perhaps more powerful undertow pulling in direction that call into question more parochial notions."
"None of the borders of Turkey are natural," said Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, "Almost all of them are artificial. Of course we have to respect them as nation-states, but at the same time we have to understand that there are natural continuities."
"It's been almost 100 years that we've been separated by superficial borders, superficial cultures and religious borders, and now with the lifting of visas to Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, we're lifting national boundaries," said Yusuf Yerkel, a young academic on Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's staff.
"Across the region, the Arab revolution has inspired a rethinking of identity, even as older notions of self hang like a specter over the revolts' success. In its most pristine, the revolution feels transnational, as demands for justice, freedom and dignity are expressed in a technology-driven globalism." Young people don't buy into this idea of a clash, and they don't buy into this idea of fixed identity. They know how to negociate these so-called polar opposites, and they’re looking for something new."
Still not a word about war's elimination via global government buttressed by fundamental human rights.
Then in the mail was Ted Turner's United Nations Foundation "Spring 2011" newsletter. President Timothy E. Wirth letter announces that "we are working with the UN and our partners to address the world's toughest challenges with 21st-century solutions." And what are the "world’s toughest challenges"? Well, "to promote democracy, protect human rights and deliver humanitarian aid using new and creative approaches."
"To accomplish these goals," he writes, "we need a strong U.S.-UN partnership." (As Eleanor Roosevelt herself, the US delegate to the UN, told this writer, 63 years ago, the UN is only a "bunch of nation-states and has no power in itself to do anything except talk").
Further down the page, he mentions "the programs underway to help women and children lead healthy lives, to combat climate and to empower the next generation of global leaders." No mention of war being eliminated via world law and government or the nuclear danger but on the contrary, "that the UN is making our world a better place for every one of us..." and "that a strong UN is critical." (75 wars, big and small, have been fought since 1945 when the UN was formed. See http://www.worldservice.org/posipapr.html; "Position Paper, The United Nations vs. World Government").
However, happily, on p. 7, we read of a "Program Inspires Future Leaders" called UNA-USA Global Classrooms." "On Feb. 5, more that 700 students from 41 New York-area schools had the unique opportunity to debate and propose solutions to pressing international issues at the Global Classrooms." Sharon Shambourger of Life Sciences Secondary School in Manhattan, a model UN advisor for seven years "has attended more than a dozen Global Classrooms conferences and "watched students mature from rather school/neighborhood-oriented, to truly global citizens." (WSA will send them application forms for the World Passport).
I attended a historic "Meeting of the Elders" on May 8-9 at the Menla Mountain Retreat & Conference Center in the Catskills, NY. The notice announcing the reunion proposed that "The Elders will reflect upon how, through their ancient wisdom, they can help bring about a deeper understanding of the original instructions that constitute the key to preserving this sacred balance. Numerous indigenous cultures of the Western hemisphere have kept alive a prophecy that foretold how native peoples will come together and reunite as one, known as the prophecy of the Eagle and the Condor. In the South, Center and North, many native peoples share its foretelling about balance and harmony, and about how intellect and spirituality should come together as one. Our Elders tell us that we will unite and get our strength back like many arrows that will not be broken. They remember the history to keep the fire alive. We have to come together to be one, to have complete understanding."
From Columbia came the Kogui, the Wiwa and the Arhuaco; from North America, the Hopis, Algonquin, Havasupai, Tewa of the Colorado River Tribes, Southern Ute, Navajo, Shoshone, members of the International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers, Havassupai, Tewa, and Bear Clan Mothers.
At the close of the meeting on Sunday evening, after humbly requesting permission of the Mames to address the Elders, I was permitted as a "World Citizen" and "indigenous to planet Earth" to do so. I was deeply honored.[2]
[1] 160,000,000 war dead in the 20th century: Wikipedia
[2] When 16 year's old, at Kennebec summer camp in Maine, I became "blood brother" of a Passamaquady (Abenaki nation) chief at a traditional camp fire ceremony.
WSA P R E S S R E L E A S E
FOR GENERAL RELEASE
2/21/2011
Contact: David Gallup, 202-638-2662
CITIZENS OF THE WORLD, SYNTEGRATE!!!!
WASHINGTON, DC -- A new "Syntegration" process is being developed to offer a viable way for citizens to have a direct say in running our world. Around the world people are rebelling against despotic governments which grow out of an increasingly dysfunctional national system That system artificially divides humans living on the planet, and allows despots to oppress them in the name of national security.
"The nonviolent revolutions sweeping forth from Egypt, the cradle of civilization, show that people are sick and tired of the status quo. People know what they don't want," said Garry Davis, founder of the World Service Authority (WSA). "but what is the alternative? How can that disaffection be harnessed to bring a more democratic, prosperous and peaceful future? The first step is to have a vision, a model for a better way to run our world. How can we, the people, run an increasingly complex and diverse world in a way that protects our freedom, sovereignty and the safety and well-being of our precious planet?
To answer this question, Davis's WSA engaged the world-renowned cybernetician Stafford Beer, to design a process based on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome structure, which "releases group creativity and synergy while at the same time permitting participants to maintain individual integrity."
That revolutionary decision-making process he called "Syntegration."
Launched in July 1993 by the World Service Authority, in 30 cities throughout the world, as the World Syntegrity Project, the prime question posed was "How can we, sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"
The resulting answers were transmitted worldwide via the internet. (See http://www.worldservice.org/syn/htlm).
The present coordinator of WSA's World Syntegrity Commission, Dr. David Beatty, claims that "All human societies and their environments are rapidly moving into a state change in climate, one that requires radically different ways of living together on our Home Planet. These Shifts require new ways of governing our relationships, our economies, our very identities as humans. And fast!" He adds that "The recent global financial crises reveals the inability of nation states and international financial organizations (e.g IMF, World Bank,) to redesign these premises. The dysfunctions of the national systems set in place over the last 200 years are increasingly evident."
The current events witnessed by viewers throughout the world of riots in Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya, Jordan , Iran, etc. against despotic regimes, represent a historic "shift" in consciousness of people, especially young, desperate for change based on human rights.
Presently controlled by wealth and bureaucracy, the nation state structure cannot handle the One World dynamics of climate change. The failure of the major national leaders to reach agreement in Copenhagen and the continuing non-commitment of the major polluting nations to change their policies are glaring examples .
According to Beatty, the fossil-fueled infrastructures and lifestyles of the Western nations are no longer viable designs for humans or the biosphere our lives depend on: food systems, water systems, energy availability, and bio-diversity. "Are all in 'red-alert' status" he claims, "and in combination with sudden and long-lasting climate changes undermining the premises on which modern civilizations are built."
"Economies built on growth, debt, and money as-a commodity" he adds, "generate wealth for a few and destitution and debt for the many. When we don't deal with these faulty foundations, social pressures increase, resulting in conflicts, millions of refugees, and collapsing civic society."
In short, we have to step up our basic civicism to a planetary level or face further dissolution. However, one of the few roads forward is that of the world citizen movements. The World Service Authority, founded by World Citizen Garry Davis, in 1954, following the registration of over 750,000 individuals in over 100 countries, has been responding to the needs of sovereign world citizens, creating frameworks for law, partnerships, supports-based on the Declaration of Human Rights. The World Syntegrity Project is now being revived by WSA under the direction of Dr. Beatty's World Syntegration Commission to advance its solution to the desperate demand for both "freedom" and "democracy" for billions of humans on the planet.
A "TOPDOWN" & "BOTTOM UP" WORLD
By Garry Davis
January 1, 2011
Among the myriad problems facing our human race and indeed each one of us as we turn the yearly clock is that of "ownership" of the planet itself on which we all live. In short, the major issue on which most minor issues are based is territory![1]
Where all action takes place: local and global. Or relative and total.
But whose territory is it, the nations' or humanity's? OR EACH CITIZEN'S? Without territory, there is no such species as humanity or political entity as a nation or you and me as individual humans not to mention every other living "being" on planet Earth. But if we consider that only nations "own" the planetary turf, then we, humanity are doomed. And deserve it just like the struggling silkworm in a suffocating cocoon neglects to break out into the clean and limitless air.
But we humans better claim it NOW before some brain-warped "cocoon-leader" pushes the BUTTON! and BOOM! There goes the territory...ours! Planeterally-speaking.
The metamorphasizing of citizenship before the national doomsday machine implodes alone can justify our human existence on this home planet.
Besides, now we're legally on world territory! The International Criminal Court's [ICC] Statute cites "enemies of humanity" for indictment. Consider the implication. What heretofore was only a fact (humanity) is now a recognized element of global jurisprudence! (If an international criminal court can claim in its Statute the existence of humanity, it has legitimized it!) Humanity, however, is defined as "all human beings collectively."[2]
And we, you and I, are charter members of humanity, are we not?[3]
So, already a de facto human being, now you and I have become de juris humans!
But we, as individuals, must claim it! That is, bond civically to our humanity, our species as we are already bonded generically. And we do that simply by exercising the fundamental right of political choice[4] by claiming world citizenship as an addition to our lower levels of citizenship down to the city or town we live in locally.
And guess what! You've just made a "global civic contract of world peace" with every other human who has made the same claim![5]
This then joins together in a true social pact both "bottom up" and "top down" unity.
All nations, of course, claim an exclusive part of world territory. But that claim is not only fictional but illegitimate condoning and perpetuating a condition of anarchy between them.
Result: war, the latest being a lawless condition called "terrorism" unwinnable and eventually destructive of all social codes leading to totalitarianism.[6]
Think back to 1789, for instance, when the United States government was formed. Its founders also claimed a part of the world territory naming it "The United States of America." The actual land, however, was still "sovereign world territory" but now partly circumscribed by United States law, deemed "exclusive" of the rest of the world's territory and "owned" by the newly-endowed "United States citizens." In that pre-industrial, pre-electronic, pre-nuclear and pre-space world in which the horse was the fastest mode of transportation, when 98% of the population were farmers, "territory" was relative to both local and national needs, views and loyalties yet while certain sages like Tom Paine claimed that "My country is the world."
"Top down" allegiance stopped at the nation's shoreline or other man-made national frontiers up to the 20th century.
But now in this 21st century coming up to its 11th year, with THE BOMB ticking away over our collective heads, with open space reaching the stars also over our collective heads now populated in the speeding airbus circling the planet every hour and a half, "Top down" government is survival-relevant for humanity itself.
Because that's where you and I live. (one single world territory) -- minus fictional national (18th, 19th and 20th century) frontiers.
(If you have trouble with the word "fiction," just think about the universality of nature and problems like "global warming," Carl Sagan's "nuclear winter" and solar power promoted by Buckminster Fuller as unlimited untaxable energy.[7]
Moreover humanity is sovereign. It obviously has political choice. But who speaks for it? Answer: you and me...as humans with a voice...and global awareness.
Now do you understand why, if you want to live through this and the next few years, you MUST I.D. yourself as a "citizen of humanity," i.e. a "world citizen" (probably the most ancient idea in the history books).[8]
It's no big deal. Socrates claimed it. Erasmus claimed it. H.G.Wells, Mahatma Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin, Martin Luther King, etc., even F.D.R, Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama claimed it. Choosing your political allegiance is the essence of fundamental human rights. All the UN member nations have already sanctioned that choice via the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, etc."
And all human beings are living on world territory! (Look down once in a while to check).
So what are you waiting for? Fear? Ignorance? Don't know how?
Today, over 1,000 towns and cities throughout the world have "mundialized," that is, declared that they exist on "sovereign world territory," and that their citizens are legal world citizens as well as citizens of their local constituencies. The first town was Cahors, France in July, 1949.[9] Indeed many cities in the United States--the first being Richfield, Ohio, followed by Akron, Oberlin, Boston, Amherst, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, etc.--as well as Burlington, VT, next door, have likewise "mundialized" since 1949. (See the list at www.worldservice.org/mundcity.html).
Millions of us have already claimed it. ("Bottom up" authority). And we have official documents to prove it: World Citizen cards, World Passports, World I.D. Cards. The lot.[10]
The fateful and decisive moment has come with the advent of a new year to make the evolutionary leap, the "metathesizing" transformation from the "cocoon" of 18th 19th and 20th century, dysfunctional nationalism to the freedom of world space surrounding the planetary soil to and on which we all have arrived at birth.
You don't have to be a prophet or a sage to understand this demonstrable if challenging truth. Every child over ten sitting at a computer going "online" knows it's one world and he/she is a functioning part of it. Every mother no matter where, what skin color or religion knows with the miracle of birth the truth of the one human family of which she is a sacred source and preserver.
Every aware human.
So, it's time to practice "Bottom Up with Top Down" political thinking.
Two final thoughts: We humans are both conceptually and perceptually endowed. We evaluate metaphysically while functioning physically. The first is identified by such qualities as "spirit," "understanding," "wisdom," "reason," "love," "fairness," "justice," "kindness," and the like. The second is identified by "DNA," "species," "physical," "organic," "biological," "earthly," "systemic" and the like. The universal code identifying all social intercourse is the dynamic relationship between the one and the many. "Do unto others, etc." is a "code" of social behavior. "E pluribus unum," "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite," In short, the "geo-dialectic" of human activity wherever and whenever humans congregate.[11]
Viewed "vertically," (or ontologically) the oneness of the human species is self-evident (as seen from the Space Station, for instance.) Viewed "horizontally," (or teleologically) the "we-they" aspect dominates "dividing" humans culturally, socially and civically.
World law then combines both the vertical and horizontal (ontological and teleological) aspects of human civilization. Our political thinking therefore must encompass both methods. Example: the mayor of a city represents the total civic population as a whole yet must also represent each citizen within the code of civic justice and personal responsibility. The code word then for world law is a "meta" politics deemed "systemic."[12]
A new and revolutionary technique of communication and problem-solving utilizing both "bottom up and top down" thinking combined with the frontierless medium of cyberspace, thanks to the internet, known as "syntegration" was inaugurated in 1993. Based on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome structure[13] and reconfigured by the eminent cybernetician Stafford Beer as a dynamic tool for humans to reach valid and reasoned solutions to complex problems, the "Syntegrity Project" was then created, tested and practiced by 30 teams throughout the world in answer to the single question: "How can we, as sovereign world citizens, govern our world?"[14]
This coming year and 2012 promises to be one of joyful global coherence and fulfillment given such programs as "mundialisation" combined with "the Syntegrity Project" where in both "Top down and bottom up" thinking and participation allied with the ongoing and power-oriented identification of world citizenship[15] for the general world public join "not to fight the existing reality" as Buckminster Fuller sagely advised, but to "create a new model to render the old model obsolete."
We are "the new model," "bottom" and "top" linked gloriously together, and looking outward every night at the ever-expectant heavens.
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[1] "5. A field or sphere of action, thought, etc." Webster's College Dictionary, 1991
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court
[3] "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights..." Article 1, Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
[4] "Everyone has the right to a nationality and everyone has the right to change his nationality," Article 15[2], Universal Declaration of Human Rights
[5] See www.worldpeaceisyou.com
[6] War Is A Crime, David Swanson, 1969
[7] "Big government can see no way to collect taxes to run its bureaucracy if people are served directly and individually by daily cosmic-energy-wealth income. Money-makers cannot find a way of putting meters between people and the wind, Sun, waves, etc." (Critical Path, p. 219, St. Martin's Press, 1981)
[8] World Citizenship and Government, Derek Heater, (St.Martin's Press, 1996)
[9] See http://www.mairie-cahors.fr/actualite/BAT_LIVRET_MUNDI%20BD.pdf
[10] See www.worldservice.org
[11] See www.worldservice.org/memor.html
[12] "Our so-called 'contemporary' political systems are copied from models invented before the advent of the factory system...They were designed in an intellectual world that is almost unimaginable -- a world that was pre-Marx, pre-Darwin, pre-Freud and pre-Einstein." The Third Wave, Alvin Toffler, Bantam Edition, p. 414
[13] Icosahedron
[14] See www.worldservice.org/syn.html
[15] A documentary and feature film on world citizenship is projected this year to "change the story." See www.OneFilms.com
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Changing Lives One Smile at a Time -- A Global Peacemaking Mission
By Garry Davis
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Want to make a child smile? Anytime and Everywhere? One who was born unable to do so since birth? A child barely able to swallow, who often has to wear a paper bag over his/her tiny face to hide an ugly cleft lip; a child whose mother cried for days after birth, humiliated, bitter and aggrieved that her baby was so malformed? A child who would not go to school for fear of being humiliated and scorned by fellow students? A child who would never marry? Who could die before her/his first birthday? (1 in 10 children born with a cleft condition!)
Also want to make the mother and father, and yourself so happy that joyful and grateful tears are shed by one and all when the nurse brings the infant back from a mere 45 minute operation repairing the pre-birth damage and the parents first look at that sweet whole face, for the first time smiling back? Grateful tears unite all witnesses to this daily blessing.
Operation Smile has been on what can only be called a "world citizen's children mission" since 1982. I just viewed its hour-long video showing the "before-and-after" result of the amazing and delicate work on each child's horribly disfigured face by the team of dedicated medical volunteers. My own eyes were also full of tears as I watched the mothers and fathers gaze with amazement and joy at the beautiful new face of their drowsy child. One father remarked tearfully that it was as if the child had just been born anew.
Operation Smile "operates in more than 60 countries worldwide," according to Kathy Magee, its CEO, "to provide quality surgical care and give new smiles for children suffering from facial deformities." Millions have already benefited from this humanitarian operation which costs a mere $240 and takes but 45 minutes.
But millions still wait in hope and anguish outside the small clinics in poor countries, babies in their mother’s arms with fathers standing patiently by their side.
"Children are probably the only 'language' that all of us have in common throughout the world, " said Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia at a recent dedication ceremony of a new center attended by physicians and leaders from over 40 countries. "The combination of medicine and children, I really believe," he added, "has the ability to unite nations and people."
I write the day before the mid-term elections in the United States. Considering the billions of dollars being spent uselessly on TV ads throughout this seemingly endless marathon with its total irrelevance to global problems— the ongoing nuclear threat, the debilitating national armament race, the worldwide economic meltdown of national currencies, the ever-disappearing glaciers in the Arctic and Antarctic, the debilitating poverty of one-third of humanity—the news of children and their parents being made happy and useful throughout our global village seemed to me to be an eminently worthwhile and timely topic-as well as a meaningful anti-dote.
I would even suggest that aid from one or two of the billionaires cited by Forbes, whose total worth exceeds $3 trillion, would immeasurably help expand Operation Smiles's humanitarian work in the name of the world's innocent children who know no frontiers other than the common despair of their present disfigurement, which, one might say, is symbolic of the adult world's social and political disharmony leading possibly to the elimination of all human faces. (It's worth noting that 78 of the billionaires are women seven of whom are "self-made").
The most recent billionaire closest in age (23) to the children themselves, however, is, coincidentally and mayhap, fortuitiously, founder of the fast-growing social-networking site, Facebook: Mark Zuckerberg with $1.5b.
Given Facebook's philosophy and ingenious process of "joining" people face-to-face worldwide a la internet (including yours truly), a perfect compliment of what Operation Smile is accomplishing one-by-one with children's faces, linking each in a worldwide common bond of new-found joy and usefulness, Mark Zuckerberg, to this writer's mind, becomes a most logical benefactor to help advance this critical work in the name of a nascent humanity to which both the children and the Facebook "constituency" may enjoy life in happy global togetherness.[1]
How about it, Mark?
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[1] Convention on the Rights of the Child: (excerpts)Preamble
The States Parties to the present Convention,
Recalling that, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations has proclaimed that childhood is entitled to special care and assistance,
Convinced that the family, as the fundamental group of society and the natural environment for the growth and well-being of all its members and particularly children, should be afforded the necessary protection and assistance so that it can fully assume its responsibilities within the community,
Recognizing that the child, for the full and harmonious development of his or her personality, should grow up in a family environment, in an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding,
Bearing in mind that the need to extend particular care to the child has been stated in the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child of 1924 and in the Declaration of the Rights of the Child adopted by the General Assembly on 20 November 1959 and recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (in particular in articles 23 and 24), in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (in particular in article 10) and in the statutes and relevant instruments of specialized agencies and international organizations concerned with the welfare of children,
Have agreed as follows:
Article 23
1. States Parties recognize that a mentally or physically disabled child should enjoy a full and decent life, in conditions which ensure dignity, promote self-reliance and facilitate the child's active participation in the community.
2. States Parties recognize the right of the disabled child to special care and shall encourage and ensure the extension, subject to available resources, to the eligible child and those responsible for his or her care, of assistance for which application is made and which is appropriate to the child's condition and to the circumstances of the parents or others caring for the child.
3. Recognizing the special needs of a disabled child, assistance extended in accordance with paragraph 2 of the present article shall be provided free of charge, whenever possible, taking into account the financial resources of the parents or others caring for the child, and shall be designed to ensure that the disabled child has effective access to and receives education, training, health care services, rehabilitation services, preparation for employment and recreation opportunities in a manner conducive to the child's achieving the fullest possible social integration and individual development, including his or her cultural and spiritual development
Article 24
1. States Parties recognize the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health and to facilities for the treatment of illness and rehabilitation of health. States Parties shall strive to ensure that no child is deprived of his or her right of access to such health care services.
2. States Parties shall pursue full implementation of this right and, in particular, shall take appropriate measures:
(a) To diminish infant and child mortality;
(b) To ensure the provision of necessary medical assistance and health care to all children with emphasis on the development of primary health care;
(d) To ensure appropriate pre-natal and post-natal health care for mothers;
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2007 New Year's Message
Sovereign Humanity Is In Mortal Danger!
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
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
10. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia 12/5/06
11. President Bashar al-Assad, Syria 12/4/06
12. Queen Elizabeth II, United Kingdom 12/4/06
13. President Hosni Mubarrak, Egypt 12/5/06
14. President Roh Moo-hyun, South Korea 12/4/06 Acknowledged
The rest will follow.
Injunction against Nuclear Weapons Heads of State
Letter to Heads of State and Press ReleaseMay 1, 2006
To Presidents and Prime Ministers
George W. Bush, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Ehud Olmert, Pervez Musharraf, Abdul Kalam, Hu Jintao, Kim Jong Il
Conscious of my rights and responsibilities as a member of the total world community, I cannot standby while governments pursue a policy of nuclear attack regardless of the seeming justifications they may devise. Such an attack is not only criminal under international law, but morally and biologically indefensible. Nuclear Weapons are weapons of mass destruction. They are indiscriminately destructive and they poison our atmosphere, causing deaths around the world for many thousands of years. They threaten the very existence of humanity. Prevention of such an attack and eliminating the threat and capability to launch nuclear war is therefore a necessary requirement for the safety and wellbeing of the human community, as well as for its environment on planet Earth. Due to your publicly-declared nuclear policies which threaten humanity, the undersigned, as a stateless World Citizen and as a representative of a global constituency of sovereign citizens, will seek your indictment as individuals for the following crimes under the statutes of the International Criminal Court at The Hague:
(a) The crime of genocide;
(b) Crimes against humanity;
(c) War crimes.
The indictment's Table of Authorities will include, inter alia:
- the St. Petersburg Declaration, 1868;
- the Hague Convention, 1899;
- the IVth Hague Convention, 1907;
- the Aristide Briand Pact, 1909;
- the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928;
- the Nuremberg Principles, 1945;
- the United Nations Charter, 1945;
- the Tokyo Charter, 1947;
- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948;
- the World Health Organization Constitution, 1948;
- the Covention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948;
- the Geneva Convention, 1949;
- UN Resolution 16653 (XV), Nov. 24, 1961;
- the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966;
- the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966;
- UN Resolution 33/71, Dec. 12, 1980;
- the Rights of the Child Convention; 1989
Included in the injunction will be a mandamus for total disarmament of all nuclear weaponry and facilities as well as damages which would be assigned to social needs of the human community along with protection of the global environment. Article 27 of the Statue of the ICC – "Irrelevance of official capacity" - codifies the legal fact, which has been part of the body of international law since 1950, that "...as a Head of State or Government. . .a member of a Government or parliament. . .shall in no case exempt a person from criminal responsibility under this Statute. . ." In short, you enjoy no personal "immunity" from international legal indictment as individual heads of state.
The Preamble and Article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights furthermore mandate that global law and its institutions outlaw war itself throughout the world. Such evolution in the application of law is essential for the safety and well-being of the human community as well as its environment on planet Earth.
Yours sincerely,
Garry Davis
Enclosures:
Writ of Certiorari: SC-81-428 Brief filed March 15, 1985; ICJ: Davis v. Reagan and Gorbachev Dissenting Opinion; W.H.O. (ICJ), 1994: Associate Justice C.G. Weeranamtry
Cc: Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations; World Judicial Commission, WGWC; Heads of State; World citizenry
PRESS RELEASE
World Citizen Garry Davis to file injunction suit citing 9 nuclear heads of state as "war criminals" in International Criminal Court
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Former B-17 bomber pilot and founder of the World Government of World Citizens, stateless World Citizen Garry Davis (84) will personally file in the International Criminal Court in The Hague an injunction against Presidents and Prime Ministers George W. Bush, Vladimir V. Putin, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Ehud Olmert, Pervez Musharraf, Abdul Kalam, Hu Jintao and Kim Jong Il for their overt nuclear policies which he claims criminally threaten humankind.
In a letter dated May 1 to the nine national leaders, Davis claimed that "In view of the 'indiscriminate destructive' capacity of nuclear weaponry as well as the generational effects which will continue to kill over time, we humans, conscious of our rights and responsibilities as members of the total world community, cannot allow a policy of nuclear attack by whatever seeming justification of states. Such an attack is not only criminal in terms of international law, but morally and biologically indefensible. Prevention of such an attack, therefore, is imperative." He noted that the Nuremberg Principles "in legal fact, since 1950 part of the body of international law, thereby nullify your personal 'immunity' from international legal indictment as individual heads of state. . ." and that "the outlawing and total elimination of all nuclear arsenals are implicit for the safety and well-being of the human community as well as its environment on planet Earth."
In his letter, he listed the Table of Authorities his brief will utilize to buttress the indictment: - St. Petersburg Declaration, 1868; - the Hague Convention, 1899; - the IVth Hague Convention, 1907; - the Aristide Briand Pact, 1909; - the Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1928; - the Nuremberg Principles, 1945; - the United Nations Charter, 1945; - the Tokyo Charter, 1947; - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948; - the World Health Organization Constitution, 1948; - the Covention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 1948; - the Geneva Convention, 1949; - the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; - the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1966; - the Rights of the Child Convention, 1989.
A team of international lawyers headed by Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at Illinois University Law School, and Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights are assisting in preparing the brief.
Davis is not new to this legal process. As a stateless person, on August 28 1981, he submitted a writ of certiorari* to the U.S. Supreme Court which presented the case for world citizenship via the 9th and 10th amendments of the US constitution. When denied by the high court, he filed a Petitition for Rehearing in October, 1981 which claimed that the 9th amendment provided the only "legal remedy" for the citizenry to countervale the discretionary powers of the US president when acting as Commander-in-chief.** This too was denied.
His next attempt at building a case against war and for world citizenship was on March 15, 1985 filed with the International Court of Justice in which he cited Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev as "war criminals"*** under the Nuremberg Principles. He was denied "standing" at this UN-mandated court.
The International Criminal Court, founded in 2002 by the Rome Statute, adopted July 17 1998 and ratified by the 60th state on 11 April 2002, opened its legal doors on 1 July 2002 at The Hague. Its Statute granted the court authority to try national citizens for "crimes aganst humanity," "war crimes," and "crimes against peace" defined by the Nuremberg Principles of 1945. As of March 2005 98 countries have ratified or acceded to the ICC Statute.
Neither the United States nor Israel have ratified the ICC's Statute. However, Art. 17 denies admissability of a case if "(d) The case is not of sufficient gravity to justify further action by the Court."
Support against the nuclear policies of the nine states is worldwide and growing as threats against Iran by the Bush Administration for its avowed nuclear policy have become daily headlines. The world of physicists and scientists in general has grown exponentially in recent years in particular following George W. Bush's Nuclear Posture Review policy of pre-emptive and first-strike nuclear attack against so-called "rogue" states. Over 300 physicists, including 9 Nobel Prize Laureates (appended) have signed petitions condemning the nuclear policies of whatever state. (See letters attached to Senator Dianne Feinstein and George W. Bush signed by 10 members of the US Senate. )
*See www.worldservice.org/petition.html;
**See www.worldservice.org/scpetitn.html;
*** See www.worldservice.org/intcourt.html
Who Represents World Citizens?
2006 Message to World Citizens from World Coordinator
Copyright (c) 2006 by Garry Davis
In politics, the nation-state insidiously controls not only the dialogue but also the electoral process.
Note for instance the platforms of the recent United States candidates for president. Neither advocated a world constitution to outlaw war. Quite the contrary, both John Kerry and George W. Bush were for an increased military budget and the updated version of Reagan's "Star Wars," while the Pentagon continually strives to "master" space above all our heads.
Neither candidate endorsed a government beyond the nation to deal with environmental devastation despite the overwhelming dangers the human race itself faces due to global warming, ocean pollution, ozone layer depletion, rain forests burning and species, both plant and animal extermination. It is as if both they and the U.S. voters lived on another planet. But worse, the general public's loyalty to this national political illusion blinds it to the solution of humanity's ills taken together, i.e. world law based on human rights. Small wonder that less than 50% of the U.S. public votes in presidential elections.
The primal question national voters should ask: Can Bush, Blair, Chirac, Barmak, Putin, Khatami, Mubarak, Kirchner, de Silva, Lagos, Chen Shui-bian, Schuessel, Verhofstadt, Paccheco, Klaus, Rasmussen, Gonzales, Koehler, Papoulias, Kalam, Katzav, Talabani, Yudhoyono, Ciampl, McAleese, Koizumi, Abdallah II, Sirajuddin, Al-Qadhafi, Fox, Clark, Balkenende, Obasanjo, Stoltenberg, Musharraf, Macapagal-Arroyo, Kaczynski, Sampaio, Abdallah Al Saud, Mbeki, Juan Carlos, Gustaf, Leuenberger, Bashar al-Asad, Sezer, Khalifa, Chavez, Mauh, Wanawasa, et al, address much less resolve world problems-- your problems --as heads of state? In short, are we humans politically represented on the level where our own and humanity's problems reside?
The question answers itself.
Moreover all national leaders, while sanctimoniously maintaining their own mandate as executors of exclusive law, confess their impotence on the global level. The contradiction is blatant and transparent.
As Heads of State they are only constitutionally sanctioned to preserve the existence of their particular fictional states and not the state of the world in which they and their co-citizens live in reality.
Then why do we, the innocent victims of state domination, continually look to them in their never-ending meetings for solution? Are we not sheep being led to the slaughter all the while wondering who to elect as the next "butcher?"
What is lacking here?
In every other field but politics, individuals operate globally: the post-office, telephone and television being prime examples. Today, the Internet is coming along as a fast fourth.
The world's so-called peace movement lacks global political representation!
Why are "peace" groups all talking only to themselves? What are the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates doing about eliminating war-making...about creating the legal conditions of peace? And the former nuclear scientists? And the former generals and admirals and Peace Corps workers? And the philosophers, poets, gurus, and sages?
How is it that the arms race continues unabated while people starve? How is it that we can communicate with one another instantaneously worldwide and cannot travel without the absurdity of national passports and visas? How is it that all national leaders talk, talk, talk about human rights and yet they are violated by EVERY nation EVERY second?
In short, why are most world citizens not playing hardball politics?
Let's face it, no national parliamentarian, congressperson or state head can represent us, the people of the world.
Why not?
Because millions of us already identify ourselves as World Citizens as an inalienable right.
Well-intentioned peaceniks write and talk of "nations" being unwilling to "relinquish" their national sovereignty. But nations do not have sovereignty. Ultimately, it is you and I -- now reborn into world citizenship -- who have civil sovereignty. This is the axiom of civil democracy. Nations cannot "relinquish sovereignty" because it is not theirs to begin with: sovereignty belongs to the people. Indeed, with amazing insouciance, most national constitutions already declare this obvious truth as its very sanction.
With this axiom in mind, it is necessary also to look at this word "relinquish." If sovereignty already resides in the people, there can be no such thing as "relinquishing" it. It is inherent in us by the very fact of being human. The whole connotation of the words "relinquish" or "cede" is negative and totally unsuited for expressing the immensely creative and historic steps which the people of the earth must now take -- and you have already started to take -- in the direction of evolving a planetary government.
Those steps are 1) declaring your world citizenship publicly; 2) identifying that declaration with documentation; and 3) exercising the franchise of representation on the global level.
For years, the ogre of all the world government "movements" has been the "red herring" of "relinquishing" our rights, "ceding our claims," "renouncing our sovereignty," all of which makes the would-be follower immediately fearful that he or she will be losing something of valuable self-interest. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The people of the earth would lose nothing of real self-interest by a civil world government. Quite the contrary, they would gain enormous freedom from needless suffering and taxation. Indeed, the nation-state has already renounced the citizen when the head of state wears his/her constitutionally-mandated Commander-in-Chief hat in time of war (which has today become quasi-permanent).
The only persons who would lose their usurped rights would be precisely those national leaders whom we are asked to believe in as the initiating-source of world government. Their right to destroy the earth over petty conflicts, for instance, would definitely be taken away from them. And along with that, the need for spies, diplomats, consular personnel, frontier guards not to mention the soldiers, sailors, and marines dedicated to killing each other as well as innocent civilians, and indeed, the army of money changers and profiteers therefrom.
Naive? Yes indeed. But what a boon for humanity!
The phrase we should use instead is "delegate sovereignty." People, as declared World Citizens, can then delegate their decision-making functions, their functional sovereignty, to others -- declared world legislative candidates -- to perform and exercise the immense benefits and services of a democratic world government.
Up to this point in history -- starting in recent centuries -- people have seen fit to delegate their sovereignty only to the level of national governments. But now, it is necessary that the people not "relinquish" their sovereignty, but reassert and extend it to the level of functional human unity as a legal and political institution.
Happily, the communicative tools now exist to perform this vital function.
World government, then, need not occur only when nations begin to "relinquish" their "national sovereignty." It begins when citizens wake up to the fact that they are by every right world citizens, that they have not only the right but the imperative to set up their own political machinery on the world level, and when they then take that step can actually begin to prosper and benefit from a world government into action.
We must be clear therefore that the formation of world government need not in any way depend on the actions or "recognition" of national governments. (See Memorandum on World Government by Nataraja Guru in "Document" section).
In essence, we must stop being a slave to the mentality of nationalism and the word "nation." We must stop falling into the mind-set that affirms old world order relationships even as it seeks to transcend them. Who then represents us, the sovereign world citizens?
The question is as self-evident as the answer. We, the human beings concerned, are not represented in our entirety, as members of the human race, because we have not yet democratically chosen our own world citizen representatives! And why is that?
BECAUSE NO WORLD CITIZEN CANDIDATES HAVE YET DECLARED THEMSELVES PUBLICLY AVAILABLE!
Governments start by individuals claiming de facto citizenship. Ref., the United States of America. That is precisely what my candidacy for World President, declared in 1983, is all about. The office of World President of our government would be largely ceremonial and symbolic. (George Washington was an "amateur" president being the first!) Once established, with follow-up subsidiary instruments: a world parliament, world judiciary, world executive, etc., it follows that positive law has been finally allied with the perennial truths of unity and universality taught by humanity's sages from time immemorial. In other words, a vote for World President is not only a vote for a person, not even a vote only for a political office, but a vote for a set of truths or conceptual values such as justice, freedom, benevolence, cooperation, and the gamut of social and economic rights as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (See http://www.garrydavis.org for a World Ballot).
The specific mandate for global government as well as global elections is already provided for by Article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
"The will of the people shall be the base 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."
This is a global sanction and mandate for declared and registered World Citizens to elect declared and registered fellow World Citizens.
It may come as very exciting -- or perhaps quixotic --news to the world public that such a government, though embryonic, will be 53 years old as of September 4, 2006. (See The Ellsworth Declaration in the "Document" section).
A number of world identity documents, including so far a World Citizen Card, a World Birth Certificate, and a World Passport (upgraded in January to ICAO* standards) issued by the government via its executive agency, the World Service Authority, are already recognized by many nations.**
Taking its initial lead from such documents as the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Optional Protocol to the latter Covenant, and other basic doctrines of international law, and having adopted the neutral international language Esperanto as its future official language, this legitimate government bids well to represent the most significant civil world democratic initiative of this new century.
The missing link to complete the instrumentation of world representation will soon become available: an Internet site, sponsored by the World Service Authority.
Declared candidates for world public office will be able to signify their availability to the world citizen constituency: http://www.worldcandidates.org (under construction) mandated by the aforementioned human rights article.
The site will not only provide a place for candidates to expose their program, experience, educational qualifications, etc., but also the actual ballots for both World President and World Parliamentarian can be downloaded. A link to the World Government site will access on-line individual registration, the fee paid by a recognized credit card.
The Internet is already being utilized for local and national electoral processes, three U.S. states permitting registration of citizens directly on their state websites. Every nation and every candidate for national political office must have a website in these days of electronic politicking. Indeed, this World Government site included from the outset (1995) the World Referendum, its five questions dealing with global subjects never asked by national pollsters.
Numerous world constitutions written since 1945 will be reproduced on the above-mentioned site along with references to fundamental human rights in both national constitutions and international covenants. A section on historical references to world citizenship and a world state will lend substance and credibility to the concept throughout humankind's evolution to a peaceful world. A library of excerpts from rare books dealing with the subject of world law will be accessible. An index of individual advocates throughout history to the present will complete the site.
If this millennium has any historical mission, it is evidently both to protect the planetary environment and to eliminate the scourge of war from the human community. Otherwise, as Einstein and James Lovelock have warned us, war or Mother Earth or both will eliminate us humans in toto.
*International Civil Aviation Organization standards for Machine-Readable Travel Documents
**http://www.worldservice.org/visas.html
World Citizen Garry Davis Launches New Ebook: World Peace Starts With You!
If you want world peace, says 84-year-old peace activist Garry Davis, it starts with your claim to world citizenship first and foremost. "We, the people, are the ultimate source of sovereignty," he writes in the opening email to his vast internet list. The nation-state leaders, he claims, "are on the wrong level."
His latest book,* World Peace Starts With You! can be downloaded for $9.95 at http://www.worldpeaceisyou.com.
The 34-page book makes the case for personal world peacemaking with graphic explanations of world law--biological and conceptual--, a modern history of how world citizenship evolved, why human rights and world territory are corollaries, the new global concept of political asylum, the documentary proof of being a human, why world government is neither domination nor illusory but eminently serviceable and already in practical use through its issuance of documentary evidence--based on fundamental human rights--such as the World Passport, World Birth Certificate, World Citizen Card, World Political Asylum Card, World Marriage Certificate and World ID Card.
"Whole libraries are filled with books about world peace," says the former B-17 bomber pilot, "but none relate this problem directly to the individual's initiative or action. Yet the opposite of world peace is obviously world war which concerns every person on the planet. So shouldn't we, the world's people, have the choice between the two?"
Davis founded the World Government of World Citizens in 1953 following the registration in 1949 of over 750,000 individuals in over 50 countries as "citizens of the world" in the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris. "This claim was the exercise of personal sovereignty," he maintained, "from which all governments derive."
The mandate for the claim of global citizenship, he adds, was provided by article 21(3) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government..."
World Peace Starts With You! is a "How to..." book which includes application forms for world citizenship avowal and registration with the World Service Authority(R), the service organization or "global city hall" of the new government. Also included are forms for applying for the World Passport (based on Article 13, UDHR) which has been upgraded to conform to modern norms of identity documents, world birth certificates, world political asylum certificates, world marriage certificates and world (picture) IDs.
Testimonials and quotes from past and present notables about world government, humanity and world peace including Einstein, Tom Paine, Stafford Beer, Horace Mann and E.B.White, etc. complete the timely contents.
For a download sale, Davis includes a free bonus of his 1988 US presidential candidate speech at Middlebury College, VT in which he presents his global political platform. Present-day politicians as well as national voters would be well-advised to check it out given the potential of a global holocaust using nuclear weaponry.
A final section outlines the programs and activities of the World Service Authority, headquartered in Washington, DC.
An "Affiliate" program for the resale of the book is included for those readers who wish to pass it along to their friends. The internet banking facility, Clickbank, provides a free membership to service this profitable program.
*See www.worldgovernmenthouse.com or www.worldservice.org/cat.html for a complete list of books
A World Citizen Looks at Iraq Today
I am writing the day before the "deadline" for the announcement of the new Iraqi constitution. How does a world citizen interpret this event? First, the writing of a national constitution in a century of instantaneous world communication plus the possibility of nuclear destruction of humanity seems an exercise in futility.
The obvious question supposes: Is a national constitution given the absence of a world constitution endorsed by the sovereign people of the world for peace IN THE WORLD COMMUNITY relevant at all? Put another way, is a national constitution spelling out the modes of order for a particular people relevant to that people's biological and conceptual unity with humanity without at the same time acknowledging that overarching unity?
I have not seen the Preamble to the proposed Iraqi constitution. Does it mention the sovereignty of the people of Iraq itself as the sanction for such an enterprise? Does it recognize the need for and reality of de facto world law as enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? (Ref. Article 21[3]: "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government." And Article 28: "Everyone is entitled to a social and internationa order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declarartion can be fully realized").
The news today in the New York Times is principally on the US troops fighting an "insurgency" in Iraq, whether there should be a "timeline" for withdrawal or as a top general, Peter Shoomaker claims in the same story, that the army is prepared for the "worst case" scenario, that the "required level of (US) troops in Iraq would last until 2009."
No commentary on this subject has put the Iraqi war in the context of a global community in which humanity is a viable and dynamic species poised on the brink of a nuclear holocaust amidst other environmental problems led by global warming and radio-active pollution due to nuclear waste.
The myopic view expressed by opponents of a "deadline" for a pullout or an extended occupation of Iraq by US troops is exposed by the argument that a "vacuum" would be generated by a pullout leading to a civil war among the various contending religious and political forces inside Iraq.
Let us suppose, however, that a new force representing world law would replace the military troops. Such a force has already been created. It is called the Sovereign Order of World Guards. Its recruitment began in 1956. But its history is ancient beginning ages ago with the women of Greece and told by the story of Lysistrata. Peace "armies" of concerned individuals abound throughout history. Today, in Sri Lanka a "peace army," under extremely limiting conditions, has been instrumental in maintaining a quasi-peace between the Tamils of the North and the rest of that country. Civilian peace groups even gathered in Iraq prior to the US invasion in 2001.
The SOWG, unarmed and willing as are the US troops as well as the suicide bombers to consider themselves dispensable in the name, not of a nation-state or a religious fanaticism, but of sovereign humanity itself, would constitute a moral and rational counterbalance to the now-opposing local forces. Representing the wellbeing of all the Iraqi people dynamically allied with their brothers and sister humans throughout the world would instantly change the character of the internal struggle for superiority. Killing an unarmed Sovereign World Guard would constitute not only an act of moral deprecation but be useless in terms of advancing a relative politics on the ground, as it were.
As for instituting "democracy" IN Iraq, minus a recognition of the essential oneness of the human family NOW, that goal is utopic and irrational.
The "cradle of civilization" which identifies the land between the Euphraties and Tigres rivers from which historically present-day humanity derives, must claim its age-old heritage by recognizing and enshrining in the forthcoming constitution its partnership with the world as such. Otherwise, it cannot but be relegated to that dustbin of history.
Garry Davis
What is your most important question concerning world peace?
World Service Authority(R) 1012 14th Street, NW, Suite 205 Washington, DC. 20005
FOR GENERAL RELEASE May 19, 2005 Contact David Gallup 202-638-2662
World Citizen Garry Davis Launches Teleseminar Web Site To Promote World Government
www.askgarrydavis.org seeks questions from Internet public on subject: "World Peace Starts With You"
WASHINGTON, DC At 9 pm (est) May 25th, 2005 callers from around the world can call 866-414-2828, enter code no. 641848 and listen to World Citizen Garry Davis speak on the theme: "World Peace Starts With You."
Davis, a World War II veteren, with over half a century's experience in individualist peacemaking, an array of books on the subject* and founder of a government of World Citizens**, stated from his South Burlington, Vermont office, "World peacemakers must utilize the latest marketing techniques to reach the world public where the real solution to human problems is to be found in, by, and for the individual human."
Emails have already been sent to individuals in numerous databases including those of voters in the World Referendum posted on the World Government Web site, www.worldservice.org. asking: "What is your most important question concerning the subject of world peace?" Davis promises to answer the questions, time permitting, on the upcoming teleseminar, a first of many.
The teleseminar marketing system is being used extensively by authors, lecturers, merchants of all categories, to promote and sell books, products and self-help income-producing techniques to anyone with a telephone and an email. Given the ubiquitous nature of cyberspace, and the quasi-universal use of the telephone worldwide, promoters of every kind have eagerly adopted the new technique reaping virtually instant awards from the waiting public.
Web sites already abound on the subject of world citizenship and world government. Davis' numerous radio and TV appearance as well as his talks on the university circuits (see bio) bespeak his credibility and experience in this critical domain heretofore lacking a voice in this growing medium.
The opening email minces no words of the former B-17 bomber pilot's basic premise: "You must raise your political sights if you want a peaceful world," he claims. "It is our world. It is our lives at stake. The nation-state system is dysfunctional. War itself is the major symptom. And exclusive national citizenship perpetuates war, a collective suicide pact. Human rights, by definition, are global."
Davis maintains that the very nature of teleseminars wherein 100, 500, or 1000 individuals wherever they are in the world can "unite" in time and space permits an instant "world peace action" by the callers claiming to be world citizens then and there and that by so doing they are "making world peace" between themselves.
The www.askgarrydavis.org site also informs the caller that Davis will attend the Book Expo America on June 3-5 in New York at the BookSurge Booth where he will sign his latest book, Letters to World Citizens, at 11-11:30 Sunday, June 5th.
*www.worldgovernmenthouse.com
**www.worldservice.org
Letter to Prospective US State Department Public Diplomacy Officer
March 19, 2005
Ambassador-designate Karen Hughes
Department of State
Washington, DC
Dear Karen Hughes,
We listened with great attention to your acceptance speech, televised on CNN, to head the "Public Diplomacy" office of the United States State Department.
We were especially pleased to hear that "The United States has much to learn about being better global citizens." and that "we have much to learn about becoming better citizens of the world." We were immediately reminded of the first secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson?s words written in 1790 that "Every man possesses the right of self-government--Individuals exercise it by their single will." Tom Paine, whose political philosophy was summated by "my country is the world, all men are my brothers and my religion is to do good," would have been rightfully proud of your statements.
The geopolitical corollary of world citizenship is, of course, world government the lack of which assigns "citizenship" to mere verbiage or at worst, obfuscation. Nonetheless, we, who have already claimed our right to world citizenship and therefore world government, are encouraged by your statement that, in your new appointment, you will "look forward to working with my fellow citizens to share our country's good heart and our idealism and our values with the world."
As Secretary Rice prefaced in her introduction to your candidacy, "Karen Hughes is uniquely qualified for nurturing America's dialogue with the world and advancing universal values." Responding to the Secretary?s compliment, you confirmed that "Too few know of the values we place on international institutions and the rule of law." That core value, the rule of law of, by and for the people, implied by the unenumerated rights "retained by the people" of the 9th Amendment, is, of course, the sine qua non of a peaceful world.
Moreover, should you be confirmed, as all government officials, you will, of course, be obliged to take the formal oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution derived originally from the sovereign people as noted in the opening three words. While swearing to defend it "against all enemies foreign and domestic" so help you God, you will, however, not be constrained nor prohibited by it to add world citizenship as a complement to your lesser citizenships from the municipal to the national.
That which is not prohibited by law is of course tacitly condoned. Indeed the very constitutional principle implies its extension to the anarchic global level in order that the rule of law protects freedom for one and all. As the Founders wisely and uniformly agreed, the 10th amendment itself sanctions and enshrines the principle of dual or concentric citizenship thereby eliminating the anarchic condition between the several states yet preserving each citizen's state allegiance within the fledgling American community.
We add that freedom, without the sanction and framework of law as the Founders constitutionally provided, is the breeding ground of fear, division, distrust and eventually, war. United States' history, unfortunately, is a testament to that perennial truth.
In our modern times when global problems abound, when communication is quasi instantaneous, and war itself, since 1914, has gone global with nuclear instruments threatening humanity itself, the 1948 human rights declaration of the United Nations provides in article 15(2) the sovereign right of the individual to exercise his or her political choice while article 21(3) confirms unequivocally that "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
Your proposed noble mission then, Ambassador-designate Karen Hughes, as you yourself aver and as we World Citizens interpret it, is to "advance not only the cause of greater peace and security but also the cause of greater opportunity and a better life for all the world's people."
Know that, as fellow citizens of the world, you have our full support and appreciation in the firm conviction that humanity itself will be beneficially served by your forthcoming vital human trust.
Please accept, Ms. Hughes, the expression of our most respectful and highest regards.
Yours faithfully,
(Signed)
Garry Davis
World Coordinator
Cc: George W. Bush, President, United States
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
Members of Congress
Kofi Annan, Secretary-General, United Nations
Heads of State
Coordinators, Commssions of World Government
Enclosures
Sovereignty & the Iraqi People
The Iraqi people did not "lose" their sovereignty because of the US attack and occupation. Saddam Hussein, as dictator, had prevented their exercise of it long before the US invasion.. The United States government, therefore, did not "gain" sovereignty over the Iraqi people by invading Iraq. One nation invading another for whatever reason does not "gain" sovereignty over that nation's people by default.
The United States government, therefore, cannot "turn over sovereignty" to the Iraqi people on June 30th. It never possessed it.
Sovereignty derives from the people, not an occupying state power nor an oppressive regime. The U.S. Constitution, ironically, enshrines and confirms that inalienable principle in its opening words: "We, the people? " Once composed, the founders had to take the document to the sovereign people for ratification.
In short, governments come from people, not vice versa.
The Bush administration is merely the executive branch of a national government. Therefore it possesses no sovereignthy to "turn over" or "relinquish." Indeed, the United States citizenry despite the congressional vote of October 11, 2002.had no direct role in the Bush's administration decision to go to war with Iraq in the first place. Polls revealed that upwards of 70% of the public were opposed. Moreover, in that Bush's mandate as President is, as well, contraversial with only 24% of the electorate having turned out to vote in the 2000 presidential election and the Supreme Court finally assuring his presidency by its 5-4 vote to halt the recounting of the Florida electoral ballots, his claim to represent Iraqi's "sovereignty" is at best a blatant subterfuge and at worst an inexcusable confession of ignorance of its meaning.
Thus the June 30th alleged "turnover" of sovereignty by the Bush administration is a fraud and a tacit admission of its guilt in starting the war in the first place. Moreover, in its awkward attempt to smooth over its incredibly inept foreign adventure, it now spins the "deadline" by assuring both the Iraqi and American people that it will "build the largest US embassy in the world" in Baghdad as if that diplomatic white elephant?which will cost the US taxpayer another $40b?will somehow guarantee a "peaceful transition." No adult Iraqi can fail to see through the scam and feel increasingly hostile.
U.S. politicians have recently been comparing Iraq with Vietnam but for the wrong reasons. The comparison is valid but only in terms of the fundamental principle of sovereignty itself. The Vietnamese did not "lose" their sovereignty during the Vietnam war despite the US invasion and benighted attempt to conquer that nation by force. Recognizing belatedly that the Vietnamese people, however divided between North and South, were and still sovereign, resolutely defending their home soil against "foreignors," the United States had to shamefacedly resign its fraudulent mission?after terrible losses of innocent both male and female lives?and flee in disgrace and undignified chaos.
Emery Reves, in Anatomy of Peace*, spelled out succinctly how to "make" peace:
"Just as there is one and only one cause for wars between men on this earth, so history shows that peace - not peace in an absolute and Utopian sense, but concrete peace between given social groups which had previously been at war - has always been established in one way and only one: by setting up some sovereign power over and above the clashing social units, integrating the warring units into a higher sovereignty." (Emphasis added)
The conclusion is clear and self-evident. The Iraqi people do not live on the moon. And like everyone else, they are born of human wombs and die as humans, however they nominally, religiously and relatively divide themselves. And they live together in our common global "village" with us. We welcome them as such. Indeed, whatever happens in Iraq on a daily, even hourly basis is instantaneously transmitted to the entire Earth's human population via satellites above all our heads..
Writers of a national Iraqi constitution, while necessarily defining the housekeeping requirement of local civic power, are thus obliged in this century to acknowledge intrinsically the global citizenship already extant and mandated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21(3) which provides the sanction for such an inclusion:
"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 or by equivalent free voting procedures."
The mandate is clear: humanity is the ultimate sovereign on planet Earth.
The term "cradle of civilization" identifying this ancient land peopled by today's humans can be defended only by bold and wise exercise of their innate sovereignty in a new constitutional framework as world citizens together with whatever lower levels they themselves choose. In today's anarchic national world community this recognition of interdependence would mirror that human "civilization" already united in our century by technology, communications, travel, etc. thus justifying the prophetic words of unity of humanity's sages from time immemorial.
Garry Davis
*Harper & Brothers, (1945)
2004 New Year's Message
From World Citizen Garry Davis
2004 ? Humanity's Legitimate Power
By sheer reasoning and biological fact, the only "superpower" on planet earth is humanity.
Each and every human, despite relative differences, is already bonded at birth to humanity's existence, well-being and survival.
Today, with the threat of Armageddon facing humanity itself by virtue of nuclear weaponry being used as a threat by the dysfunctional, belligerent nation-state system, its fundamental legitimacy is by definition self-evident and irrefutable. The human family cannot war against itself.
Each and every individual in today's 21st century world is thus in a dynamic, civic contract with humanity to insure its very survival.
The individual political acknowledgement of that unconditional and
sovereign contract is world citizenship.
Millions of ordinary citizens, therefore, having recognized their sovereign right of political choice, and claimed world citizenship, in so doing have not only legitimized themselves on the planetary level but have protected in principle all lower levels of civic accord.
In short, the individual's claim and assertion of world citizenship viewed communally is the public confirmation of humanity's inalienable legitimacy.
As the corollary of citizenship is government, the socio/political manifestation of world citizenship is world government so declared into existence on September 4, 1953.1
Moreover, the two and a half billion children of the world, innocent of adult folly, likewise have the inalienable right and will to grow up in a world of peace, justice and freedom from the threat of nuclear holocaust as well as war itself. They too are legitimate members of the human family in one human world.
Already, following the end of World War II, numerous popular initiatives throughout the world community have attempted to evolve political instruments in the name of sovereign humanity.
In the coming year, certain of these will act as democratically-elected world parliaments reflecting the public will for peace, well-being and freedom. "World laws" will be enacted by these global parliamentarians outlawing war itself, protecting the world's environnent and recognizing politically the perennial geo-dialectical principle of one for all and all for one on the planetary level.
In short, humanity's inherent power and legitimacy will finally begin to manifest itself fully on planet Earth.
The ancient prophecy of the Millenium will thus come to pass.
********************
References:
"When in the course of human events?.." begins the Declaration of Independence of 1776.
"Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world?" begins the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Pope John Paul II in his homily of January 2, called for a "new world order?based on the dignity of human beings" and "an integrated development of society?"
Jesus Christ, in the Sermon on the Mount, prayed that "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven?"
Baha'u'llah: "The earth is but one country and all mankind its citizens."
Jurists the world over have already endorsed the concept of world law and its institutional framework.. Former vice-president of the International Court of Justice from 1997 to 2000, C. G. Weeramantry, for instance, acknowledges that. "Every person today is not only a citizen of his or her own country but a citizen of the world. And it is in that context that a modicum of information about world governmnet needs to be communicated."
Unlawful by Definition
"No legal system can confer on any of its members the right to annhiliate the community which engenders it and whose activities it seeks to regulate; in other words, there cannot be a legal rule, which permits the threat or use of nuclear weapons. In sum, nuclear weapons are an unprecedented event which calls for rethinking the self-understanding of traditional international law. Such rethinking would reveal that the question is not whether one interpretation of existing laws of war prohibits the threat or use of of nuclear weapons and another permits. Rather, the issue is whether the debate can take place at all in the world of law. The question is in fact one which cannot be legitimately addressed by law at all since it cannot tolerate an interpretation which negates its very essence. The end of law is a rational order of things, with survival as its core, whereas nuclear weapons eliminate all hopes of realising it. In this sense, nuclear weapons are unlawful by definition."
Judge Weeramantry, quoting B.S.Chimni, "Nuclear Weapons and International Law: Some Reflections."
The World Government House
POB 9390
South Burlington, VT 05407
Email: worldlaw@globalnetisp.net
Internet: www.worldservice.org
50th Anniversary of the World Citizen Government
World Government of World Citizens, 1012 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20005
Press Release
For General Release: September 3, 2003
World Government Passes Half Century Mark
A half century ago on September 4, from the city hall of Ellsworth, Maine, a new government was declared by a
stateless World Citizen: the World Government (of World
Citizens). It was based on three common world "laws":
One God (or Absolute Value); one world; one humanity.
It was mandated by over 750,000 individuals from over
150 countries who had already claimed the sovereign civic
status of world citizenship via the International Registry
of World Citizens opened January 1, 1949 in Paris. It
was therefore premised on the actuality and legitimacy of
the human race beyond the alleged sovereign nation.
The new government also claimed "territory" which
encompassed the world itself thus fulfilling the prophecy
of the Millenium.
The Nuclear Age had begun 8 years prior on August 6,
1945 with the United States bombing of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki shocking the world public into awareness of its
indiscriminate destructive power.
Thus began a "contract with humanity" to which each
human was bound whether conscious of it or not. For if
humanity died, all humans died whereas when individual
humans died, humanity still survived. Einstein the
"father" of the Nuclear Age warned at the time that if the
human race did not now eliminate war itself, then war would
eliminate the human race.
The new government certified the global contract
overtly by providing individuals with documents based on
fundamental human rights sanctioned by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the General
Assembly of the United Nations, December 10, 1948.
As individuals become aware of the new government's
existence, they take advantage of its global identification
services and legal assistance provided by its World
Judicial Commission. Today, millions of human rights
documents have been issued by the government's
administrative agency, the World Service Authority(R), with
main offices in Washington, DC and Tokyo, Japan.
On the negative side, humanity still faces grave
threats. Nuclear proliferation among 9 nations has grown to
over 20,000. Seventy-five wars, large and small have been
fought between nations killing over 25 million with a
refugee population exploding to over 50 million. Air, water
and soil pollution is increasing. Rain forests are burning.
Global warming is a scientific fact. Cultures clothed by
national fictions clash where humans kill humans
indiscriminately. Mass poverty amidst excessive wealth of
the few creates explosive social crises resulting in
increasing acts of vengeance.
Yet positive signs of human ingenuity and fellowship
abound. Communication is virtually instantaneous globally.
Thus awareness cannot be stopped at national frontiers.
Laws are promoting justice beyond the national
jurisdictions. Space itself is inviting human exploration.
The Space Station makes a global revolution every 29
minutes. While still rampant in parts of the world disease
is slowly giving way to scientific breakthough cures. While
national leaders remain enmeshed in 18th century fictional
feudalisms, nongovernmental organizations representing
every human interest abound. Finally, humanity's sages have
come roaring from their forest and monistic retreats to
sound the prophetic alarm of Armageddon if the
perennial principles of unity and universality are not
manifested politically.
Should humanity survive the next 50 years, it can thank
today's citizens of the embryonic world government.
New Year's Message 2003
New Years's Message
January 2003
by Garry Davis
A half century ago, come September 4, a new government was declared on planet Earth, the World Government (of World Citizens). It was the fulfillment of an age-old prophecy for it was based on the sovereignty of God's laws, the oneness of humanity and the reality of one world.
The locale was the City Hall of Ellsworth, Maine. A mere hundred people were in attendance. But the popular mandate was over 750,000 individuals in 50 countries who had already exercised their sovereign right to choose the status of world citizenship along with their lower levels of civic allegiances.
The member-states of the United Nations through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
?proclaimed by its General Assembly December 10, 1948?have also implicitly endorsed its founding provided by article 21(3): "The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
A further sanction of its creation came from one of humanity's latter-day sages, Nataraja Guru, the parampara disciple of the revered Shri Narayana Guru of Travancore, India. The perenniel social contract of "one for all and all for one" politically identifying the new government is the key geo-dialectical formula raised to the global level.
Since that 50-year-old sovereign declaration, hundreds of thousands have registered their claim to world citizenship and been identified as such by the global government's administrative agency, the World Service Authority.
By claiming citizenship of the world, each and all are making peace with and between fellow humans beyond all artificial and institutionalized divisions.
As of August 6, 1945, with the advent of the so-called Nuclear Age, the very survival of humanity became questionable.
The only valid message at the outset of this new year relevant to humanity's survival therefore is the urgent reiteration of the World Government's sovereign existence and dynamic evolution.
For, if war between nations is to be avoided?whose breeding-ground is anarchy ?the number of declared and registered World Citizens must be increased by millions.
I myself have been, since May 25, 1948, both politically stateless and a declared world citizen.
Statelessness is also the political condition of humanity.
And to all registered World Citizens, you must ACT NOW in that capacity as representatives of humanity's and your own survival, security and happiness.
The destiny of the human race along with our fellow species on Earth depends on each of us.
Yours for peace in one world,
Garry Davis
Our Global Anti-Terrorism Question
Our Global Anti-Terrorism Question for the 21st Century
January 2002
by Garry Davis
To begin with, I am not a lawyer, only a single, declared citizen of the world. But I have submitted two briefs to the United States Supreme Court and one to the International Court of Justice at The Hague on the subject of world law and its legitimacy. All were denied a judicial hearing. More about these below.
World law in its infancy can be found in the Nuremberg Principles. They were adopted by the tribunal set up by the Allies after World War II to indict and try the Nazi leaders. They were the ?losers? of that war. I was a B-17 bomber pilot in the 8th Air Force in this war, therefore, as a US citizen, I was one of the ?winners.? Among the other "crimes" we Allies created for the trials was "Crimes Against Humanity." These have been used ever since to indict, try, convict and punish certain individuals. But I have major problems with this ?crime.?
First of all, any word used in criminal cases must have a legal definition.
"Humanity," however, has not been defined legally. Can humanity then be legal? If not, then how can it become a plaintiff? And if so, then who represents this ultimate plaintiff? World lawyers?
Secondly, if an individual is charged with a "crime" against humanity, the charge itself automatically renders him/her guilty. For humanity obviously needs no defense, being inclusive. Also since the individual is part of humanity, anyone charged with a "crime" against "humanity" would per se be both part of the plaintiff and the defendant, an obvious contradiction in terms!
Then there is another problem. Most of the people charged with this "crime," have obviously not killed humanity as such, but only other individuals. Indeed, if humanity were "killed," there would be no one to try or be tried by. So where is the "crime"?
Throughout the world of jurisprudence, the threat of causing death is considered a crime in itself, a felony. And herein lies the final dilemma. Since August 5, 1945, a real threat against humanity itself became evident. We humans had entered the so-called Nuclear Age. The nuclear "gun" was and is pointed at everybody, i.e. humanity. Its proliferation continues to this day. Nine nations possess nuclear bombs but the USA and Russia dominate in terms of numbers on-line: 7,500 and 6,500 respectively. Today's headlines citing India's and Pakistan's quarrels about who "owns" Kashmir, concern humanity itself considering the possession of nuclear weaponry by both nations. Neither death nor radio-activity, however, is a respector of nationalities or indeed religions. Needless to add that the first atomic bombs, the "Big Boys," exploding over Hiroshima and Nagasaki?a US-condoned extra-legal and indiscriminate ?terrorist? act setting the stage for the ultimate one? were pop-guns compared to today's nuclear megatonnage, enough to wipe out all vestiges of living matter on the planet many times over.
A deadly psychological repression of the danger to humanity itself has insidiously conditioned the world public via the use of the ultimate oxymoronic phrase "national security." The common syndrome is fear. Its latest manifestation is the current "war against terrorism." That the presidents and prime ministers of these nine nuclear states all justify their possession of nuclear weaponry in its name is the ultimate political terrorism directed against us, the citizens of the world. Indeed, the trust of their citizens is not only being betrayed by these so-called leaders, but worse, they are the prophetic purveyors of humanity's demise. Should anyone of them push the nuclear trigger, humanity itself could cease to exist.
Are they not then the real "criminals against humanity"?
Today, President George W. Bush and his fellow national leaders are "pointing" a nuclear "gun" at me and you. The same "gun" is also aimed directly at humanity.
That is a global felony .
This nuclear threat is the penultimate crime on our home planet. We, humanity, therefore, have become the legitimate "plaintiff." (The ultimate "crime," of course would be the destruction of the planetary environment itself.)
These nine national?not world? leaders then, whatever their politics and personal inclinations, thereby menace humanity itself.
Should they not be indicted, tried, convicted and punished as war criminals? But this raises the obvious question: by what court? The ICJ, despite its pretension to justice, is not empowered to try the very states or its principal officials which chartered it.
Then, you will ask, are not these national leaders protected by their very official positions? Well, no official is above the law. In modern times we have seen indictments against Pinochet, Milosevic, Fujimori, Marcos, Stroessner, Bhutto, Babangida, Suharto and the list goes on.
Already, the very court established by the nations at The Hague, the International Court of Justice, in 1999 condemned nuclear weaponry as "illegal" with the incredible caveat that if a state itself was being "destroyed," the use of nuclear weapons would be justified. In other words, to "protect" the fictional state millions of human can be destroyed and radio-activity released to condemn future generations.
This decision will live in infamy as it affirms national sovereignty in lieu of humanity?s sovereignty.
What can we, the citizens of the world, do to prevent this ultimate catastrophe?
The answer is self-evident: Outlaw war.
How?
The opposite of "Crimes against humanity," is self-evident: "Compact with humanity," i.e. world law by, for and of the citizens of the world community.
If government has evolved to the national level from the 17th to the 20th centuries?the last being the bloodiest of all? but not to the 21st century global level where our technology and communications already are, then government must evolve to deal with OUR major problems which are global in scope.
In short, legalize humanity.
All the political tools have been available since 1948 when the General Assembly of the United Nations proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a "common standard of achievement for all people and all nations?" Article 21(3) implicitly sanctions the evolution of a democratic world government:
"The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government."
And how is this peoples? general will to be expressed?
"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 voting procedures."
So far so good. The major lack, however, is candidates for world public office. Suppose, for example, Mr. Mandela or any respected leader publicly declares himself or herself a "candidate" for world public office, where is the global electoral framework in which such a potential candidate could legitimately campaign?
In January, 1949, I founded the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris. It was designed to be the first electoral machinery for such global public office. Over 750,000 individuals registered in a period of 13 months, an incredible mandate for a global parliament. Even enlightened national parliamentarians at the time formed an NGO called "Parliamentarians for Global Law" later changed to "Global Action." The legitimate political outcome of that first world citizen registry of 1949 is the World Government of World Citizens declared in September, 1953.
I began this article by citing my two briefs to the US Supreme Court and one to the International Court of Justice. In all three briefs, I affirmed the sovereign right of the individual to choose his or her political allegiance as the basis of all democratic government, as sanctioned implicitly by the 9th Amendment to the US Constitution. (In the petititon to the ICJ, I pointed out the illegitimacy of war itself and that both President Reagan and Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev were war criminals for threatening my life with nuclear weaponry.) I noted that most national constitutions claim that the government power derives from the sovereign people. Moreover the right of political choice is the very foundation of government itself. This is as true today as it was in 1776 when Thomas Jefferson crafted the Declaration of Independence in which the "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" could only be protected by government "with the consent of the governed."
Moreover, if it is legal to exercise one's sovereign right of political choice as did the US Founding Fathers and that choice is world citizenship, then the legitimate status of world citizenship prevails over that of national citizenship by definition.
The modern-day legitimacy of world citizenship by definition outranks all state leaders.
As humanity and all humans enter the 21st century, the primordial question each of us must answer is: Shall we continue the ancient war game in a nuclear-triggered world which could eliminate the race in toto, or shall we survive individually and as a species by outlawing war via the proven method of law?
The decision is ours, not God's, not nature's, not possible ET's, and certainly not national leaders, but ours as actual citizens of planet Earth, our only home.
And the time to make it is NOW!
*****************************
Garry Davis
garrydavis@worldservice.org or info@worldservice.org
Internet: http://www.worldservice.org; www.worldcitnews.org
The Language is Out of Synch:
Notes for a "Middle East Peace"
The Language is Out of Synch?
Notes for a "Middle East Peace"
August 2001
by Garry Davis
The language is wrong, out of synch with reality: "Palestinian," "Jewish," "Arab," "Israel," "Moslem," "nation-state," and all weaving around the holistic word, "Peace."
Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, along with their myriad supporters, keep dwelling on "peace negotiations" when the very two words are irreconcilable: an oxymoron.
To negotiate means to "deal with or bargain with another or others, as in the preparation of a treaty or contract."* In other words, it implies two or more sides. But peace cannot be "negotiated" between opposing and factious elements. The very word implies an a priori unity, a given commonality. "Palestinians" and "Jews" as such, cannot, by definition, be united. The very language separates and opposes them. But are they already united by another term? Well, yes. It's banal, being self-evident, but true nonetheless: "human." Hearts beat in rhythm, red blood courses throughout the body, sleep returns nightly, energy flows again daily, organic functions go on despite temporal, cosmically irrelevant politics. And further up the scale, they both respond to human values: justice, fairness, reason, love.
"Peace" then is the consequence of a lawful contract between humans abiding in the same area. The area in question is part of a larger area called "Planet Earth." Both Jews and Arabs share a common humanity and live on planet Earth. Banal but true. As for the word "Israel," three simple questions will reveal its fictional character: 1, Do you have to be a Jew to live in "Israel"? 2. Does the state of "Israel" define a Jew? 3. Can the state of Israel defend judaism?
Then take the words "Allah," and "Jehovah." as a language issue. Two Gods? Of course not. Both Judaism and Islam are monotheistic, i.e. one God. Are not then synagogues and mosques, not to speak of temples and churches, all devoted to the same Deity? God's territory on earth? Are they not all sacred "territory?" How then can they be separated by man-made states? "God" and "world law" are consistent. "God" and "nation-state" are contradictory. Again, the language is out of sync. When Jews and Arabs pray to "Allah/Jehovah" do they seek His/Her help in promoting their particular political positions? Do they really think the Creator of the universe cares about their insignificant problems? Or when they pass from this realm, do they go to a Jewish or Palestinian "heaven?" I understand the seeming irreverence of these questions to the religious-minded. But then such a reaction is part of the language problem.
Then what about "Abraham." The Patriarch? The forefather of both Jews and Arabs. Now there's a common link. But who talks of him, Who wants to be reminded? The same family tree? Cousins all? That thought would surely expose the artificial dividing-lines. What would The Father say about a "Jewish" state or a "Palestinian" state, each with its own "defense" department with incidentally the Israel PM's finger today on 2-300 nuclear bombs almost enough to eliminate humanity itself? ("Nuclear defense," the ultimate oxymoron, is the most entrapping and insidious misuse of language.)
I suggest a "peace" language to respect the common ancestor: "The Abraham Federation" uniting both Palestinians and Jews as part of a "world citizen state!" After all, he would opine that cousins feuding over the same territory is a no-win situation.
Then what about that of-so-familiar "Middle East peace" language? Is there such a thing in a "nuclear instant communication age?" We all accept the term "interdependent world." How can there be "peace" in the "Middle East" while there is potential war in the rest of the world? You'd think in listening to the recent trialogues of Camp David and succeeding statements from both leaders that Arafat and Sharon were living alone on planet X rather than on Planet Earth while host Clinton, with his thumb poised on 7,000 online nuclear warheads only wanted to get his name on the plus side of the history books?.if there are any.
If it's peace people really want, the language must be consistent with the word. "Peace" is not a condition in itself; it is a consequence of prior conditions. These are four in number. The first is in terms of a Principle. Referring back historically, the US Founding Fathers had to find a unifying principle before they could propose an ideology, a strategy and tactics for evolving a new meta-government over the separate states. "E pluribus Unum" sufficed "From many, one." The last word defines the principle: Unity. Connotations of morality, social and political as well as biological conditions are intrinsic in the word. Once agreed on Unity, they could then turn to the second condition: ideology.
They came up with "natural law" connoting "natural (human) rights." All 3 million humans on the eastern seaboard whatever their state affiliations (except blacks, Indians and women) possessed natural (human) rights. From there it was an easy step to the third condition for peace: strategy. How to turn "natural rights" into political rights? They already knew all about the simple legal process from having applied it on lower levels of political organization: evolve a common code of conduct or laws, give it a "housekeeping" format to prevent abuse. Ipso facto: the "constitution" of the embryonic-only agreed to at first by the 55 convention members-"United States of America."
From there the fourth condition came naturally and finally into play: "tactics." Enter the public, the grassroots, the sovereign people, the ultimate beneficiaries of the process. It's all there in the history books. The Federalist Papers, constitutional conventions in every state; public debates, articles in the press, statements by elders; reference to precedents like the Iroquois Federation, and finally, popular ratification by peoples' congresses. In short, effective and beneficial utilization of the communication tools of the day. Remember, in 1787, no radio, no television, no satellites, no Internet. Yet they managed to pull it together: PEACE. (Until the Civil War, in which the first principle: Unity was denied).
Do you understand now how confused and totally inadequate is the language politicians use today?
Then what about Jerusalem? Do I, as a World Citizen, have any say as to its status? Do you, the reader? Does the world public? You'd better believe it! Jerusalem, like Mecca, like Benares, Amritsar, indigenous burial grounds, temples, mosques, churches, synagogues, indeed, like the Earth itself, is beyond sects, beyond religion, beyond relativist claims. It is sacred territory, held in trust for humanity, a world city. It cannot be assigned in perpetuity to a particular people no matter how spiritual they consider themselves or what historic claims they make. Like hereditary monarchy, both claims are absurdities. Spirituality is by definition universal, not secular or even religious, certainly not political. Only the living have a right to governorship. And the living are defined holistically, humanly, not partially or relativistically. The Jewish, Muslim and Christian prophets all knew and taught this truth.
Pertinent questions to both Arafat and Sharon would be: Are you more interested in preserving the State of Israel and in declaring the State of Palestine than in a real condition of peace between the humans living in that part of the world called the "Holy Land?" And do you both not have a responsibility as fellow humans to consider "peace" on the level of the world since you both will either suffer or enjoy its lack or benefits? Obviously, if the whole is in danger, all the parts are also in danger. What is Israel's and/or Palestinian's security in a world where war is still a dominant legal option? The bottom line question is: Are you really speaking for your "people" in language consistent with their real problems?
In short, a meta-language (read: global) is required for peace. The technical/environment/biological world already uses one: cyberspace, space age. Genomes, bioregions, synergy, humanity, etc. But the political language is still a carryover from the 18th horse-and-buggy, gas lamps century,: "nation-state," "political parties," "national constitutions," As Einstein wrote parenthetically: "As of August 6, 1945, a mental paradigm shift is required." Translation: a "meta-language" is required to meet the new world complexity and common danger of elimination.
The time is late. We, the sovereign world public, by sheer will to survive, have finally figured things out. Our world is already one; humanity is already one, and we partake of a common history, destiny and Origin, call it what you will. Identified appropriately, Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Sharon, we-together with your people, our fellow world citizens-will have peace.
*Webster's College Dictionary, 1990
"Unite the Electric Grids!" -- Buckminster Fuller's Vision for a Peaceful World
November 1999
The visionary engineer, dubbed "the Leonardo da Vinci of our century." wrote in "Critical Path," "The energy grid is the World Game's highest priority objective."
When asked by a 12-year-old what one thing he would do to save the world, his immediate reply was "Unite the electric grids!" To the bewildered questioner, he explained. "There is no want of energy in the world, only a want of vision. The sun is pouring billions of kilowatts of power on the Earth every second. Then there is hydro, geo-thermal, bio-mass, wind, ocean differential and other sources of clean renewable power. About half of the grids that exist in the world today are connected and one-half remain unconnected. The latter are in the developing world. Link up all the electric grids and you would have a continuous source of abundant and clean renewable energy immediately available throughout the planet. The immense benefits of unlimited energy for all is immediately apparent. First, you protect the environment. No need to cut down the rain forests or pollute the ground and oceans with oil, coal and radio-activity from nuclear plants. Then when everyone has sufficient energy, birthrate decreases at exactly the same rate that the per capita consumption of inanimate electrical energy increases. Living standards rise as population declines especially in the developing countries. In short, the world's population will stop increasing when and if the integrated world electrical grid is realized. With everyone sufficient in energy needs, poverty disappears, greed, crime, strife is reduced to zero. Wars become unnecessary and therefore obsolete. Peace reigns on Earth."
National Energy Ministries and electrical engineers throughout the world are slowly becoming aware through a non-profit San Diego organization, G.E.N.I. (Global Energy Network Institute) that Fuller's solutions to major human problems depend to a large extent on clean renewable energy supplies.
According to Peter Meisen, founder/president of G.E.N.I., only 28 per cent of the annual world military expenditures could pay to end hunger, stabilize populations growth, prevent soil erosion, provide clear energy, retire developing nations debt, stop ozone depletion, prevent acid rains and climate change, provide safe water, eliminate illiteracy, stop deforestation, eliminate nuclear weapons, provide health care and AIDS control, remove land mines and provide refugee relief and shelter.
A U.S. Africa Energy Conference-"A Partnership for the 21st Century- is scheduled for December 13-15 in Tucson, Arizona, co-hosted by US Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson. Major objectives will be to address "citicial issues on investment in clean energy development and use, energy integration, sustainable energy development..."
"Tool designers change the world, not politicians," was one of Buckminster Fuller's favorite assertions.
He was a passionate advocate of world citizenship and world government.
For further information about G.E.N.I.and Fuller's work: www.geni.org; www.bfi.org; www.cruzio.com/~joemoore; www.worldgame.org
WORLD CITIZEN UPDATE
November 3, 1997
The Cassini Launch - A Crime Against Humanity?
Has President Clinton committed a "crime against humanity" in authorizing the launch of the Cassini Space Probe? Does the US president's constitutional powers vest him with the legal authority to threaten humanity with plutonium pollution? How far "out" does national law extend? To outer space? Were the sovereign citizens of the world consulted before the U.S. president pushed the Cassini launch button?
Let's back up to 1945 when the Nuremberg Trials indicted, tried and convicted Nazi leaders after World War II. Seven Principles were defined by the victorious Allied powers. Among these, the first states that "any person who commits an act which constitutes a crime under international law is responsible therefor and liable to punishment." Then Principle VI provides that "crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity are punishable as crimes under international law."
In a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly in 1950, the Nuremberg Principles became part of international law.
Until the Cassini launch, the accusation of "crimes against humanity" has only been applied to individuals committing acts of violence against other individuals during wartime: Klaus Barbie, Karl Eichman, Papon are prominent examples besides the original Nazi leaders. Never mind that when humanity itself is assigned the role of "plaintiff," the accused is by definition guilty since no defense is valid against humanity's security. And never mind that for a crime to be committed, there must first be a code of enforceable law defining the crime. Positive world law does not yet exist. Moreover war itself is not considered criminal under the same international law since nations consider war a legal option for their so-called security.
But the Cassini launch itself is recognized by experts both inside and outside of NASA as a real, not theoretical threat to humanity itself. Its navigational program will use the planet Earth as a giant "sling-shot" when it swings back from Venus in order to gain enough momentum from earth's gravity to propel it to Saturn. The distance from the Earth on the "fly-by"? A mere 496 miles. Its speed as it makes the turn? 42,300 mph. Its cargo? 72.3 pounds of Plutonium-238, the deadliest man-made substance in existence. "One pound of Plutonium," says Dr. Helen Caldicott, "if uniformly distributed, could induce lung cancer in every person on Earth." NASA itself has estimated the chances of a Cassini accident that would release plutonium as one in three hundred and forty-five. How it arrives at the figure is not public knowledge. In its own "Environmental Impact Statement" for the mission, it states "In a worst case scenario, decontamination costs would be as high as $200 million per square kilometer...Up to 50,000 kilometers could be impacted involving a total decontamination cost of $10 trillion." It doesn't say where you put the contaminated soil or indeed how long it would remain contaminated and as for the civilian population, it claims that "approximately 5 billion of the estimated 7 to 8 billion world population at the time could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure."
Numerous experts warned President Clinton of the dangers to humanity if he authorized the launch. Myriad NGOs protested to no avail. Former NASA safety experts consider Cassini a catastrophe. Horst Poehler, NASA contact scientist wrote "Remember the old Hollywood movies when a mad scientist would risk the world to carry out his particular project? Well those mad scientists have moved to NASA." Alan Kohn, NASA safety expert from 1964-1968, says that "the plans for the Cassini Flyby with a Plutonium package is unconscionable. No space mission is as important as the life and health of the public." Under the international law describing "crimes against humanity" President Clinton is solely indictable. The buck stopped at his presidential desk despite the Pentagon's insistence. Of course, if the actual crime is committed, it is too late for humanity. There may not be anyone around to bring the charge, even Bill Clinton himself though no doubt high government officials will be safely tucked away in some hollowed-out mountain retreat . However, the threat itself is already a global felony.
But where is humanity's court of law? Not the International Court of Justice to which neither humanity nor any individual has legal standing. Not even the national supreme courts whose mandate stops at national borders. No, we must go where humanity lives...in the municipal courts, worldwide. The carefully crafted brief must be introduced simultaneously in local courts preferably in cities which have already declared themselves "global" or "mundialized." Local judges may either throw the case out claiming it "frivolous," or simply reject jurisdiction. Then we appeal. And appeal. And appeal. In the meantime, public opinion is being alerted and focused. The top level-a "World Court of Human Rights" for which the statute has been already written-will be evolving with public, NGOs and even certain national government support.
Nineteen ninety-eight is the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The right to life is codified in Article 3: "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.? It is also the 50th anniversary of the birth of the modern-day world citizenship movement.
There is no time to lose. The Cassini spacecraft is already on its deadly mission and due for the "flyby" in 1999. World public opinion must now focus on this historic and potentially lethal issue. The spiritual overtones of this indefensible launch into space just three years before the 3rd millennium merits the full attention, concern and energy of every conscientious human being on the home planet. President Clinton must be legally forced either to abort this deadly mission or to order its navigation program altered so that Earth and its population are no longer endangered.