The Gaza Mess and the Need for Global Intervention

Today is Monday, December 29, 2008. Already Jewish Israelis have killed more people in their airstrikes on Hamas and Palestinian Arabs in Gaza than Muslim terrorists based in Pakistan killed in Mumbai, India a month ago. While tensions between India on one hand and Pakistan and Bangladesh on the other seems to have subsided, at least for now, they have exploded between Israel and not just Hamas but the Arab and Persian streets. It is time for the international community to unite, invoke global sovereignty, and launch a massive planetary police intervention to stop this local and regional cycle of hatred, revenge, madness, and stupidity once and for all. This situation is so serious it warrants acceleration of human cultural evolution toward democratic planetary union.

First, a quick overview of this Gaza mess. After great violence Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Named after the city of Gaza, the Strip had been a corridor for imperial armies since the Ancient Egyptians and Hittites warred over the area. After the Second World War the Egyptians took the Gaza Strip in 1948 in the wake of the British departure during the First Arab-Israeli War and the Jewish-Palestinian breakup of the region. With the exception of a brief Israeli conquest in 1956, Israel occupied Gaza again in 1967 when it overran the Sinai Peninsula. That occupation weathered a series of bloody wars and uprisings until the Israelis withdrew in 2005.

Violence continued, however, with a Palestinian Civil War in which Hamas, representing radical and militant Islamic fundamentalists including terrorists, won a democratic election and then militarily ousted its defeated rival, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority from Gaza. There was another outburst of Gazan/Palestinian-Israeli border warfare in 2006, which in turn escalated into the Summer War between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel blockaded Hamas in Gaza with dire results for the Palestinians there. A shaky truce ended recently between Hamas in Gaza and Israel. Hamas declared the truce over and began firing large numbers of rockets and lobbing mortar shells indiscriminately into southern Israel. They violated the truce numerous times with rocket fire and occasionally the Israelis retaliated. Most of the time, however, the Israelis endured the frequent provocation without any retaliation.

Although the Israelis left the Gaza Strip in 2005, after Hamas’ violent victory they implemented an air, land, and sea blockade. This blockade turned into a humanitarian disaster with great suffering by the Palestinian people. The blockade was occasionally broken by smuggling and once, in January 2008, Hamas blew open the barriers on its border with Egypt. Not just food, fuel, and medicine but large numbers of weaponry including longer-range missiles manufactured or modified in China and/or Iran made their way through. The blockade led to such widespread deprivation that some accused the Israelis, most the descendents of genocide survivors, of being genocidal themselves.

The Israeli government appeared in disarray with its prime minister, Ehud Olmert, mired in corruption scandals. The Israelis also appeared indecisive and vacillating as they tolerated one provocation after another from Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Israel appeared more interested in talking peace with Syria indirectly through Turkey while ramping up reasons to attack Iran while allowing both the American and Israeli election processes run their respective courses. In the meantime Israel maintained a brutal blockade on the Palestinians in Gaza while asking Hamas to continue the ceasefire. Israel also warned that it would not tolerate Hamas rocket attacks. The rockets kept coming, however, and Israel did nothing…at first.

In the meantime, other players on the world stage quietly performed their roles. It appears Iran created a unified command over Hamas, Hezbollah, and Syrian militaries. There may be a level of involvement with Shia militias in Iraq. There is also a degree of Iranina engagement with rogue but powerful elements in Pakistani military and intelligence forces as well as with anti-US Afghan warlords. As the politics of the Middle East and South Asia are a labyrinth of shifting loyalties and chess-like power plays, there remains much conjecture, speculation, and even wishful thinking. It seems likely there are three primary targets by Iran and its allies: India, Israel, and Egypt. The Persians are too clever to blatantly invade their enemies in open confrontations in which they would likely be defeated. The lessons of Napoleonic France, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan as well as their own history lead the Iranians to choose another path.

Hindu India was at one time conquered by imperial Muslims before breaking up and falling under British dominion. Its post-independence actions against Muslim Pakistan especially over the divided region of Kashmir plus significant Hindu discrimination against India’s large Muslim minority has made India a large target for those who wish to establish another Muslim empire. Unceasing Israeli-Palestinian violence has made Jewish Israel a target and that crossroads of history has always been a target for those with both grand ambition and simple revenge. As an emotional and psychological target it far outweighs its relative value in a normal scheme of things.

Egypt, once a bitter enemy of Israel, made peace with the latter and suppressed its own violent Fundamentalist Muslim insurrection. Egypt mutated into an authoritarian, corrupt regime under President Hosni Mubarak. He is the last major secular leader of a significant Arab state. Mubarak’s Egyptian government is hostile to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran even as it champions the Palestinian people. Islamic Fundamentalists, having failed over the years to overthrow the monarchies of Jordan, which also signed a peace treaty with Israel, and Saudi Arabia, still technically at war with Israel and an enemy of India, is still a bastion of pro-Western support. Egypt is the pivotal hinge of the Middle East, which stretches across North Africa into Southwestern Asia. Iran has its own ambitious designs for regime change. As does the United States and the European Union.

While unforgivable, obnoxious, and deadly, Hamas rocket barrages inflicted little loss of life, injury and property relative to the recent Israeli response in Gaza. As I write Hamas feels justified in attacking Israel because of the Israeli blockade. The Israelis blockaded Gaza after the violence of Hama’s victory over the Palestinian Authority and its subsequent war with Hezbollah against Israel. Hamas refuses to recognize Israel at all. Israel feels justified in responding with overwhelming force, smashing Hamas with a sledgehammer air assault. It can not tolerate any more rocket fire upon its population and territory.

Gaza is densely populated with Palestinians and is small in size. Hamas has little room for maneuver, and also deliberately hides its military units and terrorist cells amid civilians even storing weaponry in mosques, homes, and schools. It is a recipe for disaster. Both sides feel justified in their mutual slaughter. As I write Israeli casualties remain small with a handful killed and injured by Palestinian rocket and mortar attacks. Israeli tanks and artillery mass on the Gazan border while its air force continues to pound Gaza and fly warning flights over southern Lebanon. Over 300 Palestinians are dead in Gaza with over 650 wounded.

The Iranians are organizing a military response to the Israeli assault on Gaza as the Arab and Persian streets explode with anti-Israeli protests. Violent skirmishes broke out on the Gazan-Sinai border between Egyptian security forces and Palestinians. Conflicting reports emerge whether or not Egypt is allowing humanitarian relief to and from Rafah on the Gazan border. Hezbollah and Syrian forces are on alert. Hassan Nasrallah, the Sh’ite mullah who leads Hezbollah, called upon the people of Egypt to take to the streets by the millions against their own government, an act angrily denounced by the Mubarak regime as a declaration of war.

Hamas is highly unpopular among many Arab regimes that support the Palestinian cause, but Israel is even more unpopular. Television images shock the world with dead and maimed Palestinian women and children among flaming and smoking ruins. Israel has little diplomatic support even if its actions are understandable or justified. In today’s age of mass media and digital technology any military assault that appears overwhelming lopsided turns the tide of public opinion against the government and then the people behind such a lopsided assault. This is even when such so-called lopsided military assaults is how one militarily wins battles and wars; one crushes the enemy before they crush you.

Israel fell into the Iranian trap. And it appears they fell into the trap sooner than expected. It was expected that Hamas rocket attacks would provoke Israeli retaliation but more gradually than occurred. At some point it appears that Hezbollah and the Lebanese would enter the conflict, then Iran and perhaps Syria. It would be a final war to the finish with Israel obliterated, forgetting that the Western powers would simply not allow that to happen and would provide the excuse long sought by the US Bush Regime to attack Iran. Forgetting, too, that Israel in a fight to the death for survival would likely resort to atomic weapons. The gamble is that the war-weary and fragmented Western countries are too distracted by economic and environmental challenges to ride to the rescue in yet another bloody misadventure.

In the meantime Iranian forces would assist the hoped for mass uprising by the Egyptian people against their secular regime. Any Iranian retaliation against the West would involve strikes against US and European naval forces, closing the Persian Gulf, mass missile barrages onto US and UK bases in Iraq, and terrorist attacks anywhere. Large and resentful Muslim populations in Europe could explode into riots and terrorism. Events nearby in Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh remain wild cards. Russian and Chinese responses are unknown. It is quite conceivable these interlocking conflicts will spiral out of control and link up with other local and regional wars into one vast cauldron of violence reaching from Congo and Central Africa across the Middle East into Europe and the Indian subcontinent. Israel, Pakistan, India, the United States, China, Russia, France, Britain, and maybe Iran have nuclear weapons. So this Palestinian-Israeli problem has to be settled now or it ignites the planet.

Bluntly, this war is stupid. Each side has their reasons and their justifications, all understandable, and still this war is stupid. Both sides are stupid. There is only one way to win such wars, and that is for one side to exterminate the other, which is no longer acceptable. Stopping short of such mutual extermination leads to resentment, riots, rebellions, revolts, and terrorism by the weaker side and resentment, conquest, occupation, and eventual financial ruin and moral corruption by the stronger side. Those caught up in the passions and emotions of the moment, calling for the destruction of the other, are also complete idiots. No one will win and everyone loses. The locals ignite regional violence and the globals must respond before the wildfire spreads across the continents.

Forcing ceasefires upon combatants who hate each other only postpones the inevitable showdown. It may stop the current violence, but mutually enraged enemies rush to rearm for the next war as soon as the United Nations brokers a truce. Food, medicine, fuel, and clothing resupply the survivors, and agitators who know nothing but endless cycles of revenge and lawless power plays fueled by nationalist hatred and religious fanaticism gear up for the next showdown. War in the name of peace and terrorism in the name of liberation becomes a way of life.

If humanity is truly appalled by the violence in Gaza with the possibility of it triggering nuclear war and planet-wide conflict, if there is little or no room for peace and love in the hearts of so many enemies, if endless violence-ridden ceasefires fail to bring about a peace treaty, then international intervention on a massive scale has to occur. The concept of national sovereignty is a moot point and an obsolete one in today’s globalized and economically integrated age. Heavily armed United Nations forces will need to go in and physically separate the combatants.

Israel and Palestine will be given choices: they will be merged into a new nation as secular republic with a new name that does not represent any religion, or they will be forced into two separate states under UN arbitration of borders. Neighboring states such as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt may have to join the Israelis and Palestinians in surrendering territory as a contribution to world peace and global stability. Or their obsolete national sovereignty will be imposed upon by the demands of global sovereignty. In lieu of any local agreement international arbiters shall carve out new borders for a new Palestinian nation unless they are integrated with the Israelis in a new republic. Perhaps Egypt can contribute the Sinai Peninsula to a new Palestinian republic while Israel gives up the West Bank. These are examples of what is possible. The locals need to get they have been asking for global help, and they also have demonstrated a glaring inability to resolve their disputes peacefully. The rest of the world needs to stand up and stop taking sides in the Middle East and simply state we are not going to let you kill each other anymore and threaten world peace with your endless, mindless violence and stupidity.

The bottom line is this: we the people of Earth need a transparent, democratic world government to overcome our addiction for neverending war and violence. The United Nations and its member nation-states have to step up to the plate with the willingness to enforce peace with armed forces. Yes, it is an oxymoron, but the intention is different. Instead of two mutually genocidal sides waging war to the death, a United Earth uses armed force more as superpolice to stop the crime of war, enforce peace, maintain law and order, and allow the courts and not the street to dispense justice. This is the beginning of the criminalization of war, for war must be criminalized to be abolished. And just as police forces resort to violence as a last resort, our Planet Earth superpolice resort to violence as a last resort to restore order and bring criminals to justice.

The beginnings of a democratic world government lay with the current institutions we have, so let’s use them as we transition with greater deliberation to more purposeful global democratic institutions. We have many challenges, including we have so many co-dependent nation-states, failed states, and stateless nations locked in ongoing cycles of violence without real democracy. And the human-created catastrophes and potential cataclysm in the Middle East, South Asia, and Central Africa demands immediate response from the rest of us who share the same planet.

It is really quite simple. The rest of us tell the warlords of Central Africa and the nationalists and religious zealots of South Asia and the Middle East to stop their mutual slaughter or we will stop it for you. We will go in not as conquerors but as police on territory not to be occupied as it is already humanity’s planet. As one Planet Earth we go in to squash the violence and bring the perpetuators to justice, offer choices and solutions, and impose what can not be agreed to.

It is time for humanity to come together to collaborate and cooperate with intelligence for political integration as we reform our economy. It is time for humanity to work together with respect for one another and zero tolerance for the crime of war. It is time for humanity to come together as one, that individual liberty without responsibility is as backward and undesirable as social cohesion without freedom. We must learn to overcome the hatreds and suspicions which we allow to so bloodily divide us time and time again.

It is time for humanity to grow up and seize life.


William Dudley Bass
Monday, December 29, 2008

© by William Dudley Bass

Restructuring the Human Economy

Temporary solutions such as so-called bailouts and stimulus plans are short-term fixes that, while necessary, may do little to stop economic collapse. Those who wield real power such as the superwealthy families who own or if they don’t actually “own” certainly control and influence the international bank cartel, the Corporatocracy, and the levers of government and business will find themselves atop a vast, crumbling pyramid.

Throughout history those who seek to empower and enrich themselves at the expense of others to the detriment of their bioregion and their economy eventually found themselves and their civilizations on the edge of extinction. There is nothing wrong with accumulating power and wealth. I appreciate both. The problem is the mass accumulation of power and wealth at the expense of society as a whole. When greed throws relationships out of balance the whole system collapses and even the highest and mightiest fall.

History demonstrates when civilizations damage their environment to a certain point, ecological devastation results including deterioration of water and food supplies. Environmental destruction leads to economic disruption. Economic disruption leads to social and political instability. We’re somewhere in this zone now. Often civilizations make choices at this point. Those that embrace radical change usually survive. Those civilizations that continue down the same path collapse. Warfare results. Often it’s a bloody mix of foreign or international wars with internal revolts and civil strife. Government and society break down. Famine ensues. In the worse cases cannibalism and extinction result. Now humanity is no longer separate civilizations compartmentalized by time and place. We are now one global civilization and any collapse will occur on a global scale. There ain’t no messin’ around here.

Significant restructuring of the economy has to happen. We’re talking a radical restructuring of the human economy on all levels across Earth. This, obviously, will pose significant challenges. While we are one species sharing one planet and have developed an increasingly integrated global economy and communications systems, we are still politically fragmented into less than two hundred nation-states and thousands of stateless nations. Wars and violence of all kinds still blaze and smolder in many regions. And yet we must move forward as we as a species have achieved a planetary economy where success and failure impacts all of us.

Three primary events have to occur. Each will provide challenges and shall require numerous steps big and small to resolve. Mistakes will be made, and I stand we shall learn from these mistakes. Together we venture into unknown territory. We have to build the map as we go forth.

The first two primary events are: 1) reintegrate the human economy into the environment of our planet, i.e. our economy has to exist in reality and consider the impact of its relationship to natural resources, to the biosphere, and to climate change; and 2) the Money Power must be brought under public control, i.e. governments especially at the national and international level must regain control of the people’s money, including the control and regulation of the currently independent central banking system as well as the marketplace. Our governments must recapture the ability to coin, mint, and print money as it needs without interest and without taxation. This is a public function taken over by the private sector at the expense of humanity in general and the middle class and poor in particular.

There is a third primary event, one of a political nature that eventually must happen. It is desirable that it occurs first and that is also highly unlikely. Baring an unforeseen catastrophe such as an asteroid impact or global pandemic, this event will come to pass. It would serve us all to take on its challenge with intention and purpose.

This third primary event is local-global political integration. For these economic reforms to work best with any serious chance of deep and lasting impact we must come together across Planet Earth to create and establish a transparent, democratic world government. There are many different models to begin with. Some models consider a global parliament with a planetary prime minister versus a world congress and a world president. Some models propose a bicameral or even tricameral planetary legislature with representatives from different current nation-states or from all the nations including the many stateless ones with a unitary supreme court presiding over a judiciary system. Others prefer pragmatically reforming the United Nations and the Bretton Woods Organizations into a truly democratic world body versus bypassing these and nation-state regimes altogether. Still other variations envision a federal world republic or a union of republics, a global cooperative of local and regional alliances and networks, one unified planetary military force or perhaps abolishing the military as no longer necessary, and so on. It is not impossible nor a utopian fantasy. Democratic world government is the pragmatic next step in our cultural evolution as a species.

In fact, our choice in an age of codependent but still warring nations is not reclaiming national independence and sovereignty but what kind of world government will we have. World government is already well on its way. Our choice is simple. Will we choose to allow for a world dictatorship or work together to build a world democracy? Freedom or tyranny, it is as simple as that. Building new global structures to support a transparent, democratic world government with a dynamic, integral socially and environmentally responsible capitalist economy will confront us with complex challenges. These challenges, however, already have a number of different solutions. We have to agree to implement them…or perish.
With urgency in mind, summary of proposed reforms excerpted from my current book in progress on global democracy and economics follows below. There’s much to consider, and we have a lot of work to do.

Initial proposals, and they are only proposals subject to change, are:

· Recognize all economic and monetary reforms stem from the necessity that all nations of the world must learn to work together in peace and work together in processes transparent, fair, and democratic to resolve a unique convergence of potentially catastrophic challenges. As such when a specific institution is abolished or reform, recognize and prepare for the appropriate transition.
· Recognize that for the majority of the proposals to work and for the system to function we must have global agreement.
· Dissolve the International Bank Cartel, remove the Neo-Conservative and Neo-Liberal influences from economic globalization, and diminish the power of the financial elite and their allies including the Corporatocracy and the military-industrial-intelligence complex. This requires complex reforms across the entire geo-socio-political and economic-financial spectrum as we move from global empire and fragmented, codependent nations to democratic world government and Earth community.
· We support an evolving, dynamic and sustainable economic model of capitalism termed integral capitalism. As such integral capitalism includes elements of libertarian capitalism, entrepreneurial capitalism, natural capitalism, democratic capitalism, neo-classical capitalism, Social Credit, deep ecology, and conscious, ethical capitalism.
· This dynamic, integral capitalism does NOT support or encourage the models of laissez-faire or classical capitalism, finance capitalism, communism, socialism, corporatism, corporate monopolies, fascism, militarism, feudalism, mercantilism, the Neo-Conservative/Neo-Liberal approach to globalization, and bank cartel control of political and economic institutions. Developing a network of relocalized economies and healthy biospheres is fundamental to a vibrant and productive world wide economic infrastructure.
· This model of capitalism integrates both our human economy and our natural planetary environment. Among the goals to achieve are sustainable businesses, companies that are socially and environmentally responsible, networked entrepreneurs, and the development of abundant wealth with the eradication of poverty.
· Wealth has to be redefined to include an abundance of good health, fresh air, clean water, productive soils, and oceans and forests teeming with life. Economic value has to include the full value of, for example, a tree’s ability to exchange carbon dioxide for oxygen, hold soil to prevent erosion, provide shade and shelter for other plants and animals, store water and produce food, not merely how many board feet of lumber can be milled from it.
· We advocate for the development of an educational curriculum in the school systems that include money management, finance, economics, business, entrepreneurship, and related socio-political and environmental issues. Local communities can determine the details and makeup of their curriculums.
· Entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship are to be encouraged versus merely how to get a job and work for someone else. We need both entrepreneurs and employees, however, and not everyone is cut out to be just one type. Building and sustaining our local-global economy will take both people who want to work for other companies and those who want to go into business for themselves. Often one learns by working with others. This emerging Earth economy will also be positively impacted by those employers, employees, and entrepreneurs as they seek to leverage their networks.
· The so-called free market as it currently exists will be phased out and replaced by a fair market that will actually enhance freedom in a regulated and responsible manner.
· Open acknowledgement that markets exist not in a vacuum but within society with the permission of government. As such there are rules and regulations as to how business is conducted in the marketplace and contracts enforced in a court of law. A fair market will be both more cooperative and competitive and will not be dominated by monopolistic powers that abuse the original concept of the free market to dominate and control the market in a socially and environmentally irresponsible and even criminal manner. Different local, regional, and global regulatory bodies for the marketplace are to be determined. A singular central bureaucracy is to be avoided in favor of smaller, flexible, transparent regulatory bodies that serve the public by keeping the marketplaces fair, responsible, and as free within the legal and regulatory container as possible to prevent monopolistic domination and destructive practices.
· The Money Power will be brought under public control. This public control will be transparent and managed by the checks and balances between the public institutions of the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. A similar working model is civilian control of the Military Power as it exists in the United States, India, Canada, the European Union, Australia, and Japan.
· Conferences and wisdom councils are to be held around the world to address economic concerns, to debate and deliberate over various proposals for economic reform, and work with various transitory institutions and eventually the Earth Department of Treasury and Commerce (DOTC), the Global Parliament or World Congress, and the local-global banking industry to implement such reforms.
· All central banks of the various nation-states including the Federal Reserve System and the European Central Bank will be abolished as independent and quasi-independent institutions. They shall be reformed and brought under government control and accountable to the public.
· The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization will be abolished and/or reformed and brought under government control with democratic bodies accountable to the public in charge.
· Taxation will be abolished as will all tax regimes including the American Internal Revenue Service.
· In each country a new merged Department of Treasury and Commerce will be a top Cabinet-level department within the Executive Branch of government. It will be headed by the Secretary of Treasury and Commerce, a person appointed by the President or Prime Minister and then confirmed by the Legislatures.
· As such the Treasury and Commerce will be the top single economic and financial institution in each state overseeing all other institutions as well as trade and commerce and the regulation thereof.
· As democratic world government evolves, oversight committees within a proposed Legislature of Earth composed by elected representatives from provinces around the world will serve to oversee a planetary DOTC and the banking institutions in the name of transparency and accountability. An office of accounting and audit will be established.
· In the USA, for example, the Judiciary has a responsibility to insure that public control of the Money Power is maintained by the Legislature and the Executive in alignment with the Constitution. This is a model for other nations to emulate as we move toward increasing political integration.
· Regulators must be prevented from becoming captive to the very industries they regulate, as what happened in the free markets of America where today’s US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency is paid largely by elements of the Bank Cartel it seeks to regulate and thus allowed scandals & abuses to occur. Regulators have a responsibility as public servants to monitor and regulate the Money Power.
· An Earth Precious Metals Reserve under the direction of a Comptroller-General will be established. The EPMR would serve to maintain a public reserve of precious metals while allowing private ownership yet also prevent a private owner or group thereof to concentrate and control the bulk of precious metals. The EPMR will be under Treasury and Commerce, its Comptroller-General appointed by the President and the appointee confirmed by the Legislature, and the Legislature will have an oversight committee to monitor the EPMR. The EPMR will be separate from the proposed Central Bank of Earth.
· At some point during the establishment of a democratic planetary regime the Central Bank of Earth (CBE) will be established and placed within Earth’s Department of Treasury and Commerce. There will be a corresponding oversight committee in the world legislature to monitor the CBE. This will be the one and only central bank for the planet. The Central Bank of Earth shall be under public control, public ownership, publicly transparent, and accountable to the public. The CBE will be directed by Governor-General with a Board of Governors. All Governors will be appointed by the President and then those appointments must be approved and confirmed by a majority of the Legislature. The Governor-General of the Central Bank of Earth serves under the direction of the Secretary of DOTC who in turn serves under the President and Vice-President or Prime Minister.
· The power to determine and set weights and measurements is reserved to the Legislature of each nation. Eventually it shall be so by a future world body. The name and structure of this proposed legislature such as the World Congress or the Global or Earth Parliament is yet to be determined.
· The Legislature has the authority to authorize the coining, minting, printing, and definition of money including currency. The Executive branch can make a request of the Legislature, which shall then consider the request.
· The Department of Treasury and Commerce has the sole responsibility to print and issue money at the direction of the Legislature. Currency flows into and through the Central Bank, but the Central Bank does not have the power to itself print.
· The Legislature has the authority to determine, standardize, and set the value of money and then authorizes the Executive including the DOTC and the CBE to make and implement monetary policies with that established standard of value.
· Even before an actual democratic world government is established, there shall be one unified world currency to replace all of the different national and regional currencies. Local communities can still engage in barter and exchange programs of their choice, but the currency shall be the Earth Dollar or whatever the new world currency is called. There will be no more floating and competing currencies.
· This unified world currency shall be a fiat currency uncoupled from various commodities such as oil and gold as commodities fluctuate in value, in quantity, and are finite. Recognize, too, that gold has lost and will continue to lose its historic value in the same way wood, bone, stone, copper, bronze, iron, steel, and whale oil lost their cultural primacy.
· The one unified world currency shall have a set and determined fixed measure of value just as permanent as 60 seconds = 1 minute and 60 minutes = 1 hour and 24 hours = 1 Earth day remains the determined and fixed measure of time. This fixed measure of value shall not be wavered from. This measure of value for our money is fixed regardless of how much currency is in circulation. Our money will have a declared value per government declaration and societal consent. The declared value will be free of commodity coupling. There can be no inflation and dollar devaluation if the measure of value per dollar remains fixed in value regardless of how much is in circulation and especially as there will be no competing national and regional currencies. We thus create a new instrument to generate an abundance of wealth.
· Although taxation and tax regimes shall be abolished, in principle in case unforeseen emergencies arise the Legislature reserves the sole authority to tax. Even then, in case of some unusual contingency, the tax shall be temporary in nature and limited to a defined time period at which point it can be reviewed for another temporary time period.
· Otherwise there is no longer any need to tax. The government of, by, and for the people shall print what it needs to finance what is deemed necessary rather than imposing taxes upon itself by taxing the people and their enterprises.
· As provincial, city, and county jurisdictions can no longer tax as they are integrated into a planetary economy under a democratic Earth republic, their governing institutions form a public service paid for by the people from the presses of the publicly owned and accountable Department of Treasury and Commerce. This is not a hand-out of money to federal to local, although it may appear as such on the surface. Instead it is payment by the public to local governments for services rendered. Payment is with a single unified currency of fixed value that is printed by individuals and their institutions in service to the general public.
· Once governments regain control over the Money Power and regain the right to coin, mint, and print the peoples’ money there is no longer any need for interest. Rather than privately owned “independent” central banks controlled by superwealthy families creating money such as US Federal Reserve Notes to lend out at profit even to governments we have the opposite: publicly owned and controlled central bank systems under government regulation accountable and transparent to the people and a Treasury that prints Earth Dollars debt-free into circulation with velocity.
· Local, regional and global community banks are encouraged. They will exist independent of the central banking system yet regulated by them and DOTC. They can not print their own money, however, and fractionalization has to be reformed.
· As such money, being an artificial construct backed by law as a form of societal agreement, makes the evolutionary step of entering into the public domain of the universal human Commons. And like all resources both natural and artificial, keeping in mind that all things “human” are still part and parcel of the “natural” environment, our money as a common resource shall be regulated by law and used responsibly under hopefully wise stewardship. I say “hopefully” because we humans all have different opinions and beliefs and we all make mistakes. Otherwise with money as part of the Commons we lose all incentive to accomplish anything. The bigger picture, however, is that money is energy, there is an abundance of energy, deprivation, lack and poverty is absolutely unnecessary, and is as common and vital as air. And yet we must take care of our air. The seemingly unlimited amount of air, while abundant, is still limited to Earth’s atmosphere, and we must take care not to pollute and destroy our air any further. The same with money. Keep it clean for all to use.
· With a unified world currency fiat money of fixed value will be the norm. Money will not be pegged to or limited by the value of other finite resources but is as abundant and yet as finite in and of itself as is air. A so-called double-rope system of fiat and precious metals can be discussed, and the proposed Earth Precious Metals Reserve holds a large quantity of gold, silver, and platinum in reserve as a hard asset. But there will be no establishment of a universal gold or silver standard or even oil as such finite resources can not sustain either the local-global economy of billions of human beings and the scale and complexities of expensive projects and systems costing enormous sums to build and maintain such as public infrastructures, energy systems, education, and space exploration and settlement.
· Rather than being completely abolished, fractional-reserve banking practices are to be reformed. Primary reforms include abolishing privately-owned independent central banks and breaking up the International Bank Cartel by establishing, for example, an American Central Bank within the USA and eventually the Central Bank of Earth as a publicly-owned institution placed within the Department of Treasury and Commerce. Business and financial education in the school system is also a component of banking reform.
· Open-disclosure, transparency, and clear boundaries including clear channels of exchange are established as everyday banking practices. Privacy is respected; secrecy is not. Banking practices including warehousing vs. investing and lending shall be clarified, transparent, and defined. Money can flow back and forth per agreement but the flow is transparent and the agreements disclosed.
· Accounting reforms will not focus merely on the so-called FIRE industries (finance, insurance, and real estate) or measuring the production, profits, and costs of manufactured goods and services, etc., but shall include the value of natural resources, the health of our biosphere, the value of children and stay-at-home parents, infrastructure repairs, health care and prevention, education, and the quality of our trees in storing water, protecting soil as well as wildlife and other plants and exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen will be considered. It shall be remembered that financial, banking, and accounting services originated to serve all other businesses both public and private, not supplant and dominate them. If our financial wizards don’t know how to measure the monetary value of clean air for us to breathe or clean water to drink or a tree to behold, well gosh darn it, go figure it out. If all those sophisticated and complex FIRE instruments and structures can be made up and designed by brilliant sorcerers for clever sophisticates to leverage to generate enormous wealth they can go figure out the value of all the things they once ignored and in fact we all once ignored in our mad rush over the cliffs. Any and all such FIRE instruments must also be grounded in reality with real relationships to tangible, hard assets.
· During the transition, debt will be reconsidered and forgiven. With the institutions of nation-state governments integrated a democratic world government and the dismantling of the current central banking system, no longer will governments need to pay off their debts to the Bank Cartel. None will any longer exist.
· Corporations are legal business structures created by human beings. Corporations are not persons and do not and shall not have the same rights as individual human beings. Corporations exist by privilege and operate in the marketplace within the law. Human beings have the right to form corporations and other business entities. People have the right to work and a right to conduct business and generate money within the framework of law, they have the right to protect legally acquired assets with corporate structures, but their corporate creations themselves have no such rights. Any law in any nation-state including both international and local jurisdictions that grant corporations the same rights as human beings and granting corporations the status of personhood shall be abolished as we transition into a transparent, democratic planetary republic.

Let me be clear about a few things. These are my proposals. Some of them echo the proposals of others. Some I drafted after much research and consideration. Regardless of visions crafted and specific steps actually taken nothing, NOTHING will work for long if we fail to reintegrate our economy with our environment, if we fail to bring the Money Power under public control, and if we fail to achieve democratic world government. Success comes from humanity working together in peace to restructure not just our finances and our economy but our local communities and our global politics. Among people worldwide it is not a matter of will or if we can or even when, but what is our next step?
First, we have to agree to collaborate and cooperate together. At least the majority of Earth’s nations have to agree to work together. Second, we must agree to the broad outlines of “the three big events” that need to happen. Then rather than jumping away in quantum leaps we determine what little bitty steps we choose to take and the stand we make together to do so. And on and so on. And we must do so fast with courage, a willingness to make mistakes, and a degree of co-intelligence. A burning house doesn’t wait for the fires to be put out and a forest fire creates its own storm. We all have work to do, and you know it. Let’s go.

William Dudley Bass
Thursday, December 11, 2008

© by William Dudley Bass

Tearing into the Second Great Depression

No beast slouching to Bethlehem here, folks. We’re tearing into the Second Great Depression. We’re accelerating as we go, too. The nations of the world are racing to get through it as fast as possible. And yes, although some are using the term “Great Recession,” this event is far more complex and destructive than a mere economic downturn that drags on for a couple of quarters. We’re upon the cusp of a depression, the Second Great Depression. It will be as different from the first as the Second World War was from the First World War.

One of the most bizarre aspects of this approaching perfect storm, excuse me, we are already in it, is the number of talking heads in the mainstream mass media telling us it’s not so bad and don’t worry, as things will get better simply because we’re “resilient.” Many factors converged to trigger this economic and financial catastrophe. Pragmatic steps need to be taken fast. If not, then this growing calamity will demand a drastic and radical response.

Bail-outs are short-term fixes that consume trillions of dollars. Trillions! The so-called bail-outs, officially loans with interest, are no different from giving an alcoholic a free bottle of whiskey. Yet we want to keep that alcoholic alive long enough to get him into a hospital and then into rehab. We DO want to keep that alcoholic alive, don’t we? So give him the damn liquor and give it to him now so we can keep alive long enough to fix him. Then, by golly we better fix ‘im or he’s gonna die. And that’s gonna cost a bunch to deal with. It is imperative to keep our economy alive long enough so we can reform and rehab it, and thus ourselves. We are all alcoholics in this mess. Greed got the best of many of us. There’s a reason the blazing hot industries of finance, insurance, and real estate got stamped as FIRE. Even I got caught up in the greed of those wild times and made three decisions with real estate and investments I now regret.

There are a number of short-term fixes and short-term reforms being bandied about. Even implementing them is proving challenging. Yet implement them we must. If we are to tackle problems even more serious than our economy such as environmental catastrophe and a proliferation of war we need to restructure our entire economy. And to do so on all levels from the global to the local and back.

The American bail-out plan being pushed by the Bush Regime, supported by the incoming Obama Administration, and imitated by other countries in peril is officially known as TARP, for Troubled Assets Relief Program. Its acronym also stands for a sheet of fabric one throws over a frame for protection from the elements, whether a stack of firewood, a leaky roof, or a shelter while camping. Or to hide something. Jokes about TARP buzz about. One camp calls the bail-out a scam defrauding the taxpayers while fat cat banksters profit while the other argues it is necessary to save those same taxpayers, that to save Main Street we first have to save Wall Street, and that the government may even profit. The truth lies somewhere in the middle of these opposing points of view.

Earlier this month, the NBER, the National Bureau of Economic Researchers declared official what many already knew, that the United States was in recession and has been since December 2007. The NBER is a private group that charts economic trends with a focus on marking the start and end of downturns. They like to wait “a long time” so they can make accurate checks of various economic measurements. In some cases warning signs go back into 2006 as the housing bubble overheated.

An economic year is divided into four quarters of three months each. A significant economic decline across a span of several months is termed a recession. In conventional thinking the economy has to experience two quarters of decline before it becomes a true recession, but the NBER claims this is a common myth and a fallacy. Another popular misconception is that after the first two quarters a recession becomes all “psychological.” This approach borders on dismissal of all things mental and denies the role of other negative events impacting the economy. Psychology is an important component of the human economy. The failure to fully understand and appreciate it is as harmful as divorcing our economy from our planetary environment. For example, the actual uncoupling of the economy from the environment with the resultant ecological and social problems including pollution, deforestation, desertification, resource depletion, energy consumption, and global climate disruption first began in the human psyche before it became manifest in physical reality.

Our current “Great Recession” officially started in December 2007, although some see warnings as far back as 2006 if not earlier even while the economy continued to heat up. This is the eleventh recession since the end of the Great Depression and the Second World War. According to statistics of the NBER, the longest two recessions lasted sixteen months each and the shortest only six months. Two other recessions lasted eleven months apiece and two others ten months. Three recessions lasted eight months each. The last recession lasted officially from March through November of 2001 and was punctured by the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

A depression, however, is an unusually severe recession. A number of recessions in the United States and Europe during the 19th Century were called “panics.” Panics tended to be painfully sharp, sudden, and wild, coming in the wake of boom and bust cycles or after a binge of speculation crashes. Some of these panics were depressions. A great depression, however, is not only unusually severe but also quite prolonged and is often accompanied by social and political turmoil.

So far there has only been one Great Depression in Modern and Post-Modern world history. It officially began in the wake of the American stock market Crash of October 1929 and lasted well into the World War II years. The official story is the Great Depression began in the USA on Wall Street and spread around the world. In actuality, however, the agricultural sector of the United States was already in depression while the financial sector boomed during the so-called Roaring ‘20s. The depression began spreading to the industrial sectors in early to mid 1929 before the stock market crashed that October. In other countries such as Germany, devastated by defeat and loss in the First World War, were in depression even earlier and certainly by 1928. Countries from South America to Asia to Europe were experiencing economic decline toward the mid to late 1920s and began to fall into depression in 1928 and 1929. Canada’s depression began in early 1929 as well.

The Germans pulled out of the Great Depression under the Nazis in 1936. The Soviets pulled the USSR up so quickly although at great cost in human life after World War I and the resultant Russian Civil War that it did not suffer from the Great Depression. The Italians made their “trains run on time” after the Fascists took power in 1922. In the industrial capitalist democracies, however, the Great Depression dragged on until the early 1940s. It was over in the USA by 1942. The prolonged nature of the Great Depression led to many in the West gravitating toward Communist and Fascist dictatorships as an alternative to capitalism, and it led to direct government intervention into the marketplace in the West including the United States and Great Britain. In fact it led to such an unprecedented level of government intervention that many European and American governments including the administration of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt were called “Socialist.”

Much wisdom and experience has been gained since those terrible years. Governments and central banks are now quick to intervene. We enjoy for better or for worse a mixed economy. Many are confident the depth and breadth alone of our interdependent global-national-regional-local economic web will sustain us through any crisis of our making. Our global civilization has evolved to a level of complexity and redundancy that provides incredible strength and flexibility. We human beings are confident in our ability to figure out solutions to our problems.

And yet we fall into the unknown. We appear headed toward a financial and economic firestorm of global proportions with new challenges never before faced. All the chickens are coming home to roost. Environmental catastrophes rear their heads, not just global climate disruption with melting polar ice caps but the on-going deforestation, desertification, and mass species extinction with industrial and chemical pollution with toxins in our food, air, soil, and water, combined with poverty, hunger, disease epidemics, population pressures, and energy issues. These challenges combine with a world roiled by increasing levels of violence from domestic violence and crime waves at home to international wars and terrorism.

The entire structure and mechanism of finance capitalism with private or at best quasi-public control of the Money Power has to be restructured. The power of the International Bank Cartel and their Central Bank System has to shift to the public sector. Public control of government at all levels from the international to the national to the state and even town, county, and village levels has to be recaptured from the intimidating power and monetary influence of corporations and banks. The government has to regain control of its military-industrial-intelligence complex and the people regain control of their government. We need to shift toward a sustainable economic system that is reintegrated into Earth’s environment. We need to replace finance capitalism with a dynamic, integral capitalism that is socially and environmentally responsible.

National governments, including America's, have to regain control of the public’s money, set a fixed rate of value for currency, and print what it needs as it needs without interest and without unnecessary taxation. The marketplace is where the public does business and therefore it is our social responsibility to regulated it with the tools of government to make trade not only truly free but fair and responsible. And the nations and peoples of Earth all need to work together to develop a democratic planetary economic system that works for all people at all levels from local communities to global alliances. All this will take time even if agreed upon. If we can all work together across our planet to resolve these challenges we can keep this Second Great Depression short … and peaceful.

William Dudley Bass
Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Sources:
“Depression.” Investopedia, 2008. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/depression.asp

“Great Depression.” Investopedia, 2008. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/great_depression.asp

Isidore, Chris. “It’s Official: Recession since Dec. ’07,” CNNMoney.com, 2008. http://money.cnn.com/2008/12/01/news/economy/recession/index.htm?postversion=2008120112&eref=edition_business

Lanman, Scott. “Fed Says Economy Slowed Across U.S. Since Mid-October,” Bloomberg.com: News, 2008. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a._I8H.dghFQ

Matthews, Steve and Timothy R. Homan. “U.S. May Be in for ‘Great Recession,’ Longest Postwar,” 2008. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ar0v6PP3HCpk

Nelson, Cary, ed. “The Great Depression,” http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/depression/depression.htm

“Recession.” Investopedia, 2008. http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/recession.asp

Smiley, Gene. “Great Depression,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, 2008. http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GreatDepression.html


(C) by William Dudley Bass

Mumbai: Will Humanity Seize an Opportunity or Blow It?

South Asia and indeed all of Earth is in the crosshairs at this moment. What is at stake is far larger than a terrorist attack however horrendous. What is at stake is world peace. And world peace with liberty, prosperity, health, and the promise we will rebuild our economy and develop new sources of renewable energy.

We are in the midst of a slow-moving world war unlike any in our history. It is a mind-bending morass of multiple conflicts marred by atrocities on each side with the rise of Fundamentalist Islamic extremism on one side and the massive growth of the Euro-American Global Empire on the other. This ugly war is marked by corresponding increases in both radical Muslim terrorism and an alarming deterioration of democracy within the United States, Canada, and Europe. This war has spawned hate groups around the world and has brought out the worse among the world’s great religions. Not just Muslims but Hindus, Christians, and Jews jockey for power as the Fundamentalists among them commit injustice and provoke outrage.

And this Global Long War on Terror, or whatever term this conflict comes to be called, has presented opportunities for welcome change. There are more peace groups, human rights groups, social justice groups, environmental groups, and humanitarian groups than ever before reaching out across religious and political lines toward one another. There are more and more people in the great middle who are sick of the violence, the hatred, the destruction, and the endless cycles of revenge.

Perhaps the most dramatic is the recent election of Sen. Barack Hussein Obama to the American Presidency. While Obama is no dove, he has after all threatened to attack both Pakistan and Iran; he is much more pragmatic and seeks to end this war. He is much more interested in restoring America’s great name as a beacon of hope, liberty, and opportunity. He is much more interested in ending this war so he can focus on not just national but global economic recovery as well as pressing environmental and energy challenges. These are all related. Finally, Obama understands global problems are indeed national and local problems and for humanity to solve them the nations of the world must learn to work together in peace. War and its destruction is the worse distraction.

My heart goes out to the victims of the Mumbai massacres. We are still not clear who the terrorists themselves are despite heated allegations. Evidence presented by governments with agendas in emotionally charged situations is sometimes suspect and must be independently verified. Such transparency increases national security while secrecy diminishes security. It does appear at this point the human beings who committed the atrocities are a mix of Pakistanis associated with Muslim Kashmiri terrorist groups and Indian Muslims seeking revenge for the Hindu slaughter of Muslims. It is not yet clear.

But we do know who these people murdered. That is clear. They killed their fellow human beings who were Jewish, Christian, Hindu, and also Muslim. They killed people who were Indian citizens as well as citizens of other countries including China, Israel, America, and Europe. They had specific targets and yet they murdered indiscriminately and tortured some of their hostages before killing them, especially Jewish captives. As my mind reels from the horror and senselessness of it all my heart opens to all. To truly heal we first must forgive. We must forgive ourselves as well as those viewed as “the enemy.” That does not mean to ignore them and not seek justice. And it is not just forgiveness we seek but justice itself. Justice, however, does not mean war.

Allow me to rephrase that last sentence. For we are at war. We are already at war whether we like it or not. We are at war of other’s choosing. Our choice, however, is do we respond with more and more military force and increasing violence? Or do we refrain from all-out war against whole nations and work together to target terrorist bases and address the long-festering economic, ethnic, religious, and educational problems that breed terrorists?

There is much to be enraged about. There is much to seek revenge for. Every group of people in this complex global conflict has suffered outrages and atrocities including mass murder. Many people have historic grievances that go back millennia, grievances that still burn today. And we all need to rise above hatred and vengeance, acknowledge our emotions, our hurt, our anger, our shame, our rage, and break through to work together anyway. Anyway. Or else we will end up much, much worse with this so-called Global War becoming a true world war on the scale we used to associate with such a term.

Imagine this scenario. It may be a worse-case scenario, but it is likely. Some would dare say highly likely. This scenario unfolds below:

More terrorists associated with Pakistan including Muslim Kashmir attack India. These terrorists and their allies may also overthrow the current Pakistani government whose leader desires peace. We have an alliance of Afghan and Pakistani Taliban especially among the Pashtuns with al-Qaida and the Kashmiri Muslim separatist terror group LeT, the Lashkar-e-Taiba (sometimes spelled Lashkar-e-Tayyiba), and both Afghan and Pak tribal warlords. Bangladesh, the former East Pakistan, also harbors anti-Hindu Muslim separatist terror groups that attack inside eastern India.

With tension ratcheted up by the terrorist assault on Mumbai, the latest wave of attacks is too much for India. Violence breaks out between mobs of Hindus and Muslims set on revenge. As waves of Hindu-Muslim communal violence washes across India and spills into Kashmir with many thousands dead on both sides, Indian military forces invade Pakistan and go on alert on the Bangladeshi borders.

Massive tank and infantry battles break out all along the border as India drives into Pakistan as Pak troops spill over into Kashmir in support of LeT. The Pakistani military and intelligence forces and the Taliban and tribal insurgents cease fire and join hands against the Hindu Indians. Despite this new intra-Pak Muslim alliance Pakistani groups remain highly suspicious of each other as they jockey for power and vent their rage against India. But Pakistan is already falling apart and is losing on the battlefield.

The United States has a deep interest in who controls Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. So does India. So does Iran. So do a number of other regimes and terrorist groups. Meanwhile, Afghanistan is galvanized by the Muslim war against India and anti-Western sentiment peaks there. The United States and NATO rush troops and supplies into Afghanistan to prop up the pro-Western government there. Their use of the Central Asian ‘Stans provoke an outcry from the Russians, but they allow it to happen as they welcome the distraction for NATO. American naval forces shift their focus from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean. Meanwhile as Pakistan begins to crumble Bangladeshi-Indian border battles break out with Muslim terror attacks in eastern India. Furthermore, ancient Persian imperial ambitions awaken inside Iran. Elements of the Iranian regime seek to take advantage of this break-up of Pakistan and the unification of Muslims against Hindu India to join the Paks and Afghan rebels to conquer as much territory as possible in the name of a new Muslim caliphate.

Pakistan launches nuclear missiles into India. India retaliates. Some bombs are duds. Some work too well. Tens of millions if not hundreds of millions are killed and injured in an atomic holocaust that engulfs both sides. Not only are entire cities destroyed but great masses of tanks and infantry incinerated on the battlefield. Clouds of radioactive fallout drift around the entire planet. Enraged Indian forces bereft of command, go rogue. Some invade Bangladesh. But not much is left.

China, professing to protect the security of its borders and to restore its “rightful borders” but also seeking to crush Tibetan separatism once and for all invades India. Chinese forces “liberate” Arunachal Pradesh in far eastern India and drive into Assam. Chinese troops also take their disputed chunk of Kashmir, occupy Nepal at the request of their Maoist allies, and drive toward Dharamsala to capture the Dalai Lama. Indian military resistance is fierce, harder than the Chinese had imagined, but is decapitated and disorganized after the nuclear exchange with the Paks. The United States is in no position to interfere as they scramble in the Middle East. Nor the Russians, for that matter. And the Chinese forces are exposed to massive radiation.

Israel, relieved that Muslims launched nukes first in this war, attacks Iran with nuclear weapons. Iran launches retaliation all across the Middle East, sending swarms of missiles against American and Allied forces in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as against Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Iranian allies in Lebanon and Syria including Hezbollah swarm Israel with tens of thousands of missiles as Hamas explodes out of Gaza with rocket barrages and waves of desperate and enraged people. American forces retaliate against Iran. Egypt gets pulled in. Ethiopia goes back into Somalia. Eritrea attacks Ethiopia. Muslims riot all across Europe. Christians and their secular governments strike back. Millions die across the Middle East alone.

Events spirally quickly out of control and not just there. The impact of this mass collapse ripple as far away as Venezuela, Brazil, the two Koreas, Taiwan, Ukraine, Poland, and the war-torn regions of Central Africa. The global economy not just collapses but ceases to exist. Radiation from nuclear explosions across South Asia and the Middle East spreads around the world. A global humanitarian crisis of epic proportions sweeps the planet and overwhelms even the richest states. Environmental, health, energy, food and water, energy crises all converge as epidemics mutate into pandemics and regional warlords and pirates carve out new empires.

China finds itself overextended. With its economy collapsing, China spirals into a centrifuge of regional violence and begins to break apart. Their economy in shock and the battlefields of Asia a nuclear wasteland, the North Americans withdraw from the rest of the world to hunker down. The Americans in particular resort to a fortress mentality and vent their frustrations upon each other. The economically-stressed USA fractures along racial and socio-economic lines. Obama’s dream of hope and change is destroyed and an authoritarian regime takes control over what is left of the United States and imposes martial law as radiation sickness and epidemics sweep the land.

Mumbai is the linchpin in all this. We can go another way. India and Pakistan, along with the Bangladeshis, Afghans, and even the Chinese can refrain from attacking each other. Any all-out military assault by either Pakistan into India over Kashmir or by India into Pakistan over that and especially over Mumbai will likely trigger and trigger fast all-out war. Any full-scale war between India and Pakistan will most likely degenerate into a nuclear tit-for-tat in which millions die. Such a war, instead of keeping horrified nations out, will likely merge with other wars and draw in even more countries. If dust from a sandstorm anywhere on Earth can sweep the planet, imagine the atmospheric consequences of massive and concentrated nuclear war. Imagine radioactive glaciers and rivers. Imagine immune systems suppressed by radiation poisoning succumbing to a plague of bacteria and viruses.

The monster here is not them or us or even religious Fundamentalists and nationalist idiots. The monster here is war. And war begins inside of each one of us. The tragedy of Mumbai is also a gift. It is an opportunity for the nations of Pakistan and India to work together in peace and harmony to resolve their differences. They share the same challenges: terrorism, threat of atomic destruction, separatist rebellions, border wars, environmental problems, economic, health, and energy problems, religious extremism, financial problems, structural challenges – in fact the rest of the world have many of the same problems.

By working together India and Pakistan can demonstrate to the rest of the world what is possible. Together with a new president in America and with reinvigorated allies and olive branches to our enemies we all can bring peace and unity to our Earth. Planet Earth is the one home we all share. It is all one land, one ocean, one atmosphere, one core, one biosphere, and one humanity.

Mumbai is a beginning. We can choose what it shall begin: war, tyranny, and death or peace, prosperity, liberty, and life.

William Dudley Bass
Tuesday, December 9, 2008

© by William Dudley Bass