VICTORIAN HUMANIST

Need for Democratic World Government

The world has deteriorated into feudalism with the USA being the all powerful monarch supported by liege lord countries, particularly the UK and to a lesser extent the European Union. Might is right is the feudal doctrine demonstrated most recently by the USA's devastating bombing of Afghanistan. Little attention is given to solving world problems. As Eisenhower observed when he was President of the USA, the military/industrial complex is the dominant political force in the USA and thrives on conflict.

In the post WW2 world we have seen the USA being half-hearted in its support for the United Nations, the body created to promote peace and prosperity for all. The USA saw the UN as a threat to its political and economic power.

We have seen in many areas how the USA has assisted conflict rather than solving it when such conflict was considered to be in its interest. A major such area has been Palestine where continuing USA support enabled the Zionist Israelis, firstly to establish their own State at the expense of the Palestinians, and from thence to progressively take over more of the Palestine land by their illegal Israeli settlers. In Afghanistan, the USA countered the economic support provided by the USSR to its secular government by actively assisting the fundamental Muslims to create the Taliban force that plunged this unfortunate country into its decades of destruction. As regards Iraq, the USA initially supported Iraq in its attack on Iran after its Shah was overthrown because the USA saw Iran becoming too powerful under the control of their fundamentalist regime. But when the USA saw Iraq becoming too powerful under Saddam Hussain they also then supported Iran, being quite happy for two Arab nations to fight amongst themselves. Then, when Iraq was injudicious in attacking Kuwait, the USA launched a massive attack to curb Iraq's ambition to be the most powerful Arab state at the expense of USA domination in this oil rich region. This war had the major benefit of establishing itself militarily in Saudi Arabia.

On a much lesser scale there is Somalia. When in 1973 I spent a year there as the UN civil aviation adviser, Somalia had just been taken over by its military who had decided that the parliamentary government bequeathed by the UK was not producing any progress. It decided that socialism was the pathway to a modern industrial country, introducing a large scale program to make its citizens literate and endeavoring to stamp out tribalism. The Somali adoption of a socialist path, whilst it encouraged support by the USSR, put the country off-side with the USA. (One example - the Somali president would never sleep in the same residence regularly in case he was assassinated by the US CIA, as happened in the Congo.) In 1975 the Somali government decided to recover its Ogaden territory from Ethiopia. Ethiopia had also been taken over by its military, on the assassination of its Emperor Haile Selassi, had also adopted the socialist path and received support from the USSR.

Ethiopia resisted the Ogaden takeover and a military conflict ensued. The USSR, seeing its two beneficiaries at war, decided to break it up by stopping any military support to Somalia. What do you think happened? The USA promptly gave military support to Somalia thus prolonging the conflict.

How can we reverse this reversion to feudalism? Clearly the United Nations must be given the adequate political, military, economic and media power so that it can promote its mandate of peace and progress for the benefit of all the world's population.

Can we do this? I believe there are enough people in this world wanting such a peaceful, progressive path for all to enjoy that if we can spell out a practical procedure for so strengthening the United Nations, convince them of its practicality by major media campaigns, then it would be adopted.

So what is the practical procedure? One proposal I would submit is to provide the UN with its own media authority - a TV and radio network similar to our ABC and SBS ? to provide particularly for a factual presentation of particular world problems that need peaceful resolution.

Any other suggestions?

Re-Democratic World Government

I very much support James Gerrand in seeking ways to establish a Democratic World Government. Like many others I have been following the debate in the alternative sources outside the traditional areas of political and economic discussion and certainly beyond the apparent ken of both major political parties. It indicates an unwillingness to 'bell the cat', to expose the 'emperor with no clothes': otherwise known as the 'Washington Consensus'. Various local movements like Jubilee 2000, S11, M1 etc., have drawn attention to the gross inequity of globalisation and succeeded to some extent when the MAI was stopped.

The number of publications condemning the current situation, particularly those who have intimate knowledge and concern for the Third World, are legion, some hundreds of well-known and respected social, economic and political commentators, academics and experts in the study of corporate power and its interaction with dominant world policy determinants. It is no secret that nothing moves without the control of the investment international bodies - the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO, all of which are answerable to the 'Washington Consensus'on the basis that those bodies are largely funded by US funds and corporations and therefore are entitled to a majority vote. Opposition to the prevailing orthodoxy of global financial and trade integration is likely to attract retribution on conditions of loans, investment, and severe Structural Adjustment Programs.