Derailed

Derailed

My house burned down on the morning of Saturday, March 20, 2010. We lost almost everything, “we” being a post-double divorce blended family with my wife Kristina and our three daughters from prior marriages. Fortunately no one was burned or injured in anyway. Thankfully no one was killed in what the fire fighters called “a killer fire.” So far there are no lawsuits flying and we continue to work things out with our insurance company. A small number of items survived in the garage, which was the least damaged part of the house. Our two cars survived simply because they weren’t there. It was a horrible time. We moved five times through temporary housing until we settled down in a rental in early June. We were all stressed out and some of us had nightmares. One day all I had to wear was women’s clothes. We were humbled and awed by the generosity of many people including strangers. People gave us money, gift cards, clothes, food, utensils, pots and pans, and furniture. Lots of furniture. You should see our house now. It’s a crazy quilt of stuff. And it works.

This fire was an initiation. Although into what we’re still discovering. We thought we would bounce back fully by now. Oh no. People who have survived catastrophic house fires say it takes months, even years to get over the losses. Thank goodness it was in Washington State in the American Pacific Northwest and not in a remote place or an impoverished, war-torn developing country. We have much to be grateful for. And we are grateful. We’ve maintained our sense of humor, though sometimes it’s tough. People were very generous in many ways. It all felt so humbling to allow ourselves to receive after being such givers in the past.

My oldest daughter had celebrated her 16th birthday the night before and had a number of girl friends over for a slumber party. Eight of them were still home with her when they noticed smoke rolling out from the heat vents and up from the stairs below. My wife and I had just left about 11:00 am to run errands; she to the vet and me to pick up the two youngest girls from their own sleepover parties elsewhere. At first the teenagers thought it must be one of them burning something on the stove. But no, no one was even boiling water for tea. The stove was turned off.

Thick, toxic smoke rapidly filled the house. These kids couldn’t even get out the front door. So they dashed out to the back deck almost one story up and jumped off into ferns and bushes. Many of them were in underwear and tee shirts or in pajamas.

The fire was catastrophic. The whole structure was in flames in less than a half-hour. It was a beautiful, model solar energy home designed and built by local but now-deceased architects. Their two sons owned it. It was a two-story structure almost 4,000 square feet built on the edge of a bluff looking out down a long, wooded ravine toward the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains beyond. After losing our other two homes in the Recession we had hoped to eventually buy this house. Of course, that didn’t, couldn’t happen.

From a home office point of view our library was destroyed. Our computers were melted. A friend of mine did extract the hard drives from 3 of them and managed to save most of the data. I cracked open my melted Nikon, extracted the memory card, and happily discovered almost 800 photos on there. Now we back up “into the Cloud.” We lost almost a half-million dollars of personal possessions. Much of that were items Kristina and I had purchased over the years, but most of it was the accumulated wealth of generations from our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and many aunts and uncles and even great-aunts and uncles. A lavish but old Buddhist shrine from my wife’s Japanese side of the family vanished in the fire. Photography was a serious hobby of mine, so most of my photographs and slides, tens of many thousands of them, are gone forever. Baby books, mine, my parents, and those of my children, gone forever. High school and college yearbooks, gone forever. I was also the family historian, so I’d accumulated boxes and boxes of archives from family members back East. Miraculously some survived, such as the contents of the old Bass Family Bible Box, but most of these papers disappeared in the flames and smoke forever.

Our family was woefully underinsured. It was complicated by overlapping real estate transitions and by misleading information from a particular agent in over his head. We'll probably just receive a tiny fraction of the true value of what we lost after the insurance company depreciates and devalues our possessions. Certain staff have been kind and generous in serving us and it is not enough. I encourage everyone to video record all your possessions and store it offsite. Don't waste time writing down everything. It'll take forever and you won't do it.

We are still recovering. And still reeling from prior disasters. Furthermore, the aggregate of international companies my wife and I once worked for as self-employed independent contractors crashed in the recession back in late 2007-early 2008. Not only did we lost our high-paying positions, but to our horror all our savings and investments in this venture. We were shocked to discover that two men high up in the network allegedly embezzled almost two billion dollars from over 3,000 people. Greed got the better hand within an alternative structure designed to allow middle and working class families to pool resources to gain access to sophisticated financial structures. We were all defrauded. Including those of us who worked there. It was outrageous, embarrassing, and gut wrenching.

These two monsters are now in jail, but the money seems gone. We don’t know if we’ll ever see any of it again. The dominoes tumbled. We were unable to find high-paying positions although I did pick up a part-time retail job and some small free lance writing projects. Kristina worked as a business coach and consultant, but it was very intermittent. As our home near Lake Wenatchee slid into foreclosure and then our home in North Seattle, we entered into a tedious short-sale process that finally completed this August of 2010. We moved to Edmonds, then the fire happened that Saturday morning. We felt we were drowning.

The fire was estimated to be at least 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit at times because the nails remain straight. This meant the flames were so hot it burned the wood right off the nails faster than the nails could sag beneath the weight of burning wood. Investigators determined it most likely appeared to have been faulty wires in the wall downstairs in my oldest daughter’s bedroom or maybe the wires from an outlet in the same wall. Looked as if old aluminum wires separated from copper, they arced, sparked, and set the wood afire. The lack of sheetrock facilitated the spread of the flames. Nor did the fire alarms go off at first as the smoke rolled out. The fire fighters and the investigators mused that if it had happened in the middle of the night there certainly would’ve been fatalities. And I’m sure I would have been one of them as it would’ve been my nature to rush into the fire and fight it. But the toxic smoke would’ve taken us out first, it was explained to us.

As it was it took over 30 firefighters from Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mukilteo, and maybe Shoreline responding to a two-alarm fire. We were only there 3 months.

The fire was the latest in a series of crushing hammer blows to our family. We move on anyway. In working with a therapist and counselor we became familiar with the term “derailment.” We were derailed by the loss of our jobs, our savings, our homes, and especially by that fire and the constant moving around afterwards. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Now my wife's mother is moving into our temporary rental with us. The bank foreclosed on her condo, declined the offers from a short-sale attempt, and got zero offers at an auction. My mother-in-law had once retired early, thrived on a frugal lifestyle, and was to a degree financially free. Yet with the loss of her funds in the same embezzlement that hit us she found herself looking for work with little success and is now in dire straights. So another BAM! And we have to maintain our wits about us, laugh at all the funny things around in, appreciate our friends and family, and remember that our glasses are at least half-full and certainly not empty.

My apologies for the impact all of this has had on my blogging here. It’s taking me for longer to get back up on my feet than I thought. I also have a lot of train track to rebuild before even getting back on it, too. It’s going to take time. We have plenty of that. We hope. There’s much to do, much to be grateful for, much to still laugh about, life to live for with all its work and play. Aye, indeed, life goes on for us the living. Thank you.

William Dudley Bass

October 1, 2010

* This was jointly published on the author's autobiographical blog "Cultivate and Harvest."

(C) Copyright 2010 by William Dudley Bass.

Grassroots Global Democracy On-Line: Vote “Yes” for World Parliament Now

Almost a year after I first urged people to vote in the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government, humanity continues to blunder toward global collapse where worse case scenarios are fast becoming the most likely scenarios. Those who sound the warnings may as well be shouting into the hurricane for even more seem eager to ignore and deny the mountainside of complex troubles avalanching down upon us.

Those who are aware wonder what more can they do if anything. Many struggle alone or in small groups in the cause of their choices, large organizations have gone deep to stay alive but focus upon only one cause, with much of their energy diverted to fundraising, while the rest of us feel resigned, cynical perhaps, apathetic, demoralized, even depressed. I call this the “whatever syndrome,” as in when you tell someone that this time the sky really is falling or the wolves are actually killing and eating the sheep they just shrug their shoulders, mumble “Whatever,” and go back to doing whatever they happen to be doing. “Whatever,” right?

Folks, there IS something positive each one of us can do.

Vote “Yes!” for a Democratic World Parliament. And do it now. I voted “Yes.” Tell others to do it, too. Go to the website http://www.voteworldparliament.org and vote.

This is a grassroots, planetary movement. It is a worldwide internet-based voting via global referendum. You can find out more about it at its companion website http://www.rescueplanforplanetearth.com.

A recent book called Rescue Plan for Planet Earth: Democratic World Government through a Global Referendum advocates for the wisdom and practicality of building a unified planetary democracy. The author is Jim Stark of Canada. He lives in rural Quebec and served as a global anti-nuclear weapons activist during the Cold War.

His is a brilliant book. I have long struggled without success over what we can do to work with nation-state regimes, stateless nations, the UN and the Bretton Woods Three, or bypass all of them in some local-global grassroots initiative. Established institutions are inherently resistant to overtly surrendering power. Mr. Stark comes up with a brilliantly simple answer to a complex problem. The answer is to leverage telecommunications technology including the Internet as well as mail-in paper ballots from across Earth to launch, maintain, and sustain a Global Referendum for planetary democracy.

Jim Stark throws down a challenge for all of us, and it is a challenge any one of us capable adults can answer. Vote. Yes, vote. His Global Referendum is a way to involve all of us, even if we disagree with it.

Vote World Parliament is an NGO, a non-governmental organization, active in the pursuit and creation of transparent, democratic world government. While some people quibble over the wording of its ballot proposition as it currently exists, it is simple and direct. The ballot proposition asks:

“Do you support the creation of a directly-elected, representative and democratic world parliament that is authorized to legislate on global issues?”

That is it: “Yes” or “No.”

VWP works in alliance with WATUN, the World Alliance to Transform the United Nations as well as other global democracy NGOS and activists. Even though this grass-roots initiative seeks to bypass the UN, there are still sizable contingents who seek to radically reform what we already have.

Until recently VWP used to be called Vote World Government, short for Vote Democratic World Government. The name change, precipitated by coalition building with other pro-global democracy NGOs, stemmed largely in part from the unusually extreme fear and negativity wrapped around the term “world government.” The majority of Earth’s democracies maintain a parliamentary system, and while a world congress is clearly possible it was decided to go with the term “parliament.” Too many world citizens associated the term “world government” – even when preceded by the world “democratic” – with world dictatorship, far-rightwing conspiracy theories, and global empire. So many people, even if they laugh at the far-right wing conspiracy kooks, are still leery of the term “world government,” fear global tyranny, and view the term “One World Government” as scary and ominous.

The reality of the matter is that our alternative to Democratic World Government is planetwide collapse with all the horrors that entails or a worldwide empire. And we do have a world empire in the making right under our noses, the defacto Euro-American Global Empire dominated by the financial elite and their allies including the international bank cartels and the Corporatocracy. The emphasis of that neo-imperium is local-regional-national-global financial domination followed by economic domination followed by police and military domination with overt control of the political process, the most obvious process, being the last to achieve. The recent United States Supreme Court decision reinforcing the power of organizations including the principle of corporate personhood is a recent significant step in this direction.

At any rate, it was felt “world government” turned people off but “world parliament” proved enrolling. In addition getting an Earth Parliament or Congress established would be another crucial step in the creation of a true Democratic World Government. It is clear that such an enormous undertaking will take many steps even with the mountain coming down upon us.

I also take issue with assuming the best form of democratic government is going to be a European-style parliamentary form vs. the American three-way checks and balances system. I myself have not made up my mind which would be best for humanity. Both systems have their pros and cons. It would be best to leave that up to wisdom councils to sort out and a planetary constitutional convention followed by another referendum on that. I would imagine the best and brightest among us to evolve something even more evolved than what we have now. This is especially pertinent as we have experienced the paralysis and fragmentation inherent in parliamentary systems and the abuses and creeping “stealth” despotism that mar the American system. Jim Stark is upfront, of course, as favoring the Canadian system, which is indeed one of the better ones on Earth, as he is Canadian and thus more familiar with it. Nor is the fundamental issue of the people taking public control of the Money Power not addressed in these gatherings. Such an important economic and financial issue must be addressed. For now, however, let’s vote in this referendum! Let’s focus one step at a time and help build our Democratic World Parliament. We can move on from there.

These are all mere quibbles, however, quibbles. The greater priority is to get this referendum going worldwide. And that means starting locally.

Many will oppose us from all directions. There are those who desire world government alright, but are working hard to create a financial and political planetary dictatorship. There are racists, religious fundamentalists, nationalists, and those in the Corporatocracy and the military-industrial-intelligence complex who will oppose democratic world government as a threat to their power. There are the quasi-libertarian conspiracy theory kooks who recognize the above menaces as real, which they are, but collapse every move toward a democratic world federation as part of the One World Government conspiracy. These me-firsters make no distinction between the forces of what author/activist David Korten calls Global Empire and Earth Community. Instead these freedom-without-responsibility types denigrate concepts of universal human rights and universal social responsibility. There will be those who actually support the concept of Democratic World Government but may vote “No” because they don’t like parliaments. Come on, people!

There are also the capitalists who still cling to illusions of a free and unregulated marketplace and the communists who cling to the dictatorship of the proletariat as central state control who will oppose this. And there are the Anarchists who naively believe in no government or hierarchy at all but loose networks of individuals and neighborhoods cooperating together without competition and violence. I would imagine, however, that Jim Stark is right in his statistics-based assumption the majority of human beings would prefer a transparent, democracy world government of liberty, peace, health, and prosperity. And if the chance to vote in favor of such occurred most would vote “Yes.”

Let us set aside our differences to work together now. One step at a time, breathing as we go.

This Global Referendum to vote for a democratic world government is hands-down the best, most effective tool we have to leverage people and technology around the world in service of Earth and humanity. So go vote, and I encourage all of you to vote “Yes!”

Again, go here and vote: www.voteworldparliament.org and declare yourself for Democratic World Parliament that can legislate on global issues and help us meet our planetary challenges as one politically-united species. And join me in thanking Jim Stark and his team for such a great book, a brilliant concept, and a hands-on nuts-and-bolts approach to implement their vision. Jim Stark and all of you at Vote World Parliament, thank you.


William Dudley Bass
Friday, January 29, 2010

Sources:


Bass, William Dudley. “Vote Yes! For Democratic World Government,” At the Brink with William Dudley Bass. Seattle, WA: 2008. http://atthebrinkwithwilliamdudleybass.blogspot.com/2009/03/vote-yes-for-democratic-world.html

Stark, Jim. Rescue Plan for Planet Earth: Democratic World Government through a
Global Referendum. Toronto, Canada: The Key Publishing House, 2008.

Vote World Parliament, www.voteworldparliament.org

WATUN, http://transformun.org

© by William Dudley Bass

Faith vs. Data vs. What’s Really Important Here

A recent blog post by master blogger and bestselling author Seth Godin highlighted the tension between faith and data. First, allow me to distinguish between those two words.

I define “faith” as a belief in something without any evidence and often in the face of evidence to the contrary. Boiled down having faith is the desire to believe. And humans want to believe what they wish to be true.

Sometimes faith is a negative. Witness, for example, all the bloodshed committed and endured in the name of religions, notorious for demanding faith in many things for which there is no empirical evidence and with each religion claiming competing and opposing “truths” for faiths at odds with each other. Religious institutions demand faith from their followers.

And yet faith is what drives people to push on through great hardship and challenge to ultimately succeed. Faith inspires people to attempt and actually achieve amazing things often in the face of ridicule, harassment, even “proof” held up and waved in their faces to demonstrate their foolhardiness. People with such faith often seem to have the last laugh, though. And let us remember the many millions sacrificed, enslaved, tortured, murdered, injured, emotionally exploited, and financially manipulated in the name of religious faith. And, too, that faith propels people to rise above such horrors. Without faith people become resigned, cynical, and apathetic. They become embittered and give up or lash out.

“Data,” on the other hand, is evidence organized into information. All information is composed of data. Sometimes that data is clearly true and sometimes it’s clearly false and yet at other times it’s unclear, confusing, or at best anecdotal. As evidence, however, data and the information derived from it are held up as “proof.” Empirical evidence is evidence that is clearly, objectively, and quantifiably measured and holds up to scrutiny and testing especially via scientific, mathematical processes. In today’s Information Age, however, the sheer avalanche of data feels like too much to handle.

“Data crowds out faith,” blogs Mr. Godin. And yet, he says, without such data people won’t believe. Without anything to go on they won’t believe anything, or rather, they use that as an excuse not to believe something which challenges their current beliefs. Yet too much data overwhelms. Too much information becomes a flood that drowns out all listening. People want to run away from it. I’ve certainly been guilty of bringing forth a mountain of data to back up my arguments, and I’ve also been guilty of taking great leaps of faith without much data and sometimes even in spite of data.

The “real mission,” as Seth Godin sees it is “emotional connection.” That’s what’s really important here.

The bottom line is that people will believe whatever they want to believe regardless of what is put in front of them. It does not matter if the issue is sales and marketing, political and economic policy, historical controversies, religious doctrines, UFOs, ghosts, God, whatever. People may be influenced and manipulated in their belief structures, and ultimately they believe whatever they want. A successful belief is not based upon purported facts and figures or even faith. A successful belief is based upon the strength and power of the emotional connection between the person and the idea they choose to believe in enough to embrace. And when entire populations get caught up in that emotional connection to a belief critical mass occurs for good or evil. On of my history professors from Hampden-Sydney College used to say to us that “what people believed happened in history is often more important than what actually occurred.” Entire nations will make choices and take action based upon belief in various histories that later turn out to be false. It’s the emotional connection to any belief, even a false belief unsupported by the facts, that so drives a people into action.

Comments regarding President Barack Obama by Joe Klein in the recent issue of Time caught my eye. Obama, despite his charismatic oratory, is a cerebral “loner” away from the public pulpit. Klein noted that two other “arid” intellectuals who were elected president, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush, were each ousted after one term and followed by “world-class emoters.” Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were famous for their folksy ability to reach out and connect with not just the masses but with those in private meetings. Both were able to reach out across party lines to hold the center together. The American people threw out a Democrat and a Republican who were arid loners despite their intelligence and voted in a Republican and a Democrat, respectively, who manifested and displayed empathy and high emotional intelligence. Both Reagan and Clinton were reelected.

The best salespeople are those who enroll others to believe in products and services enough to buy them. As my former father-in-law, a highly successful salesman and former fighter pilot, once told me, “People buy what people want.” When I pointed out that advertising uses psychology to manipulate people to consume what they think they want, he merely shrugged his shoulders and stated again that ultimately “people buy what people want.”

As critical as health care reform and addressing catastrophic climate change are, just to name two pressing problems, President Obama is faced with an enormous problem: many Americans intellectually understand these are important issues, but they don’t care. They really don’t care. They don’t have an emotional connection to those problems. In fact the way American voters see their public servants addressing those issues actually repels them. The mangling of health care reform by both Democrats and Republicans particularly dismays Americans.

Without emotional connection the deepest faith and the most impressive spreadsheet or encyclopedia or scientific research or PowerPoint presentation means nothing. The same can be said for socio-political movements and their champions as well as for companies and their sales reps.

Emotions have often been ridiculed. Without mastering how to relate to one’s fellow human beings, however, even the mightiest fall.



William Dudley Bass
Thursday, January 28, 2010

Sources:


Klein, Joe. “Now What? Hitting the Reset Button/Starting Over,” Time. Vol. 175, No. 4, February 1, 2010: 22-29. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1955401,00.html

Godin, Seth. “Too much data leads to not enough belief,” Seth’s Blog. January 21, 2010. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/01/too-much-data-leads-to-not-enough-belief.html

© by William Dudley Bass

Corporate Power in a Planetary Democracy

Democracy lost on January 21, 2010. It is a significant loss in the on-going war (let’s cut to the chase here folks, this ain’t “tension” between factions within a national democracy; it’s a war for global domination between those favoring American democracy and the transnational corporate elite). The United States Supreme Court rule 5-4 in favor of Big Business and the financial elite. The Corporatocracy won another round in its efforts to not just influence but dominate the government of the most powerful nation-state on the planet. Little noticed in the outcry is that labor unions also achieved a victory, although unions have been in decline for decades now and are dwarfed by the financial elite.

This ruling gives more power to the principle known as “corporate personhood.” Corporations are created by human beings. They outlive people, often influence and dominate society at all levels from local neighborhoods to international, and are composed of people from numerous nation-states who are often not citizens of the countries in which corporate power is wielded. Corporate personhood is a fiction made real as the result of abuses by a California court in a 1880s dispute between local county and state governments versus the transcontinental railroad industry. The courts were sympathetic to the railroad barons and their corporations; a deliberate misreading of the records occurred after the Court reporter, a former railway executive, inserted his own pro-railroad comments into the record. This led to the U.S. Supreme Court upholding corporate personhood on behalf of the railroads in 1886. This success by Big Business, the Big Banks that loan money to and thus control Big Business, and their allies in Government achieved momentum over years and decades until the current Supreme Court again ruled in favor of corporate personhood.

The danger here is that organizations now have the same rights as the human beings who created them. Specifically, corporations (and labor unions, too, and indeed any organization) now have a legal right to free speech and this entails not just advertising and marketing on behalf of political candidates but donating money to various political parties and their candidates. Prodigious amounts of money. Human beings limit their personal financial structures for a reason. It was John D. Rockefeller, one of the iconic titans during the transition from “Big Business” to what we today call the Corporatocracy who said “Own nothing, control everything.” The wealthy as well as any middle class businessperson who can do so take advantage of laws favorable to the financial elite to shield their wealth as well as personal liability behind corporate structures.

Armed with such “rights” granted by the Supreme Court compounding a 19th Century error, corporations can now spend huge amounts of money to buy or buy off candidates for political office as well as elected officials. Candidates favored by the Corporacrats will have the financial support to make winning an election far more likely. Candidates not favored can be intimidated into line. Corporate control of the media further skewers the politics. Of course, we don’t even mention the potential in an otherwise developed nation for bribery, graft, kickbacks, and other forms of corruption here, corruption often associated with developing nations where transnational corporations often wield more power than governments. Nor have we considered corporate corruption of non-elected or appointed officials and other government employees. This will impact how other governments and businesses in other countries engage with the United States. Politicians, even those aspiring to “do good” and implement reforms will be reduced to dogs dancing for the biggest corporate hand-outs. The revolving doors between corporations, government, the military-industrial-intelligence complex, research institutes, big banks, and secret societies will spin easier and faster. And maybe even spin at a more relaxed pace.

My stand is this: Only humans have rights, not their organizations. No organization is to have the same rights as individual human beings. All governments, NGOs, corporations, unions, banks, clubs, even the marketplace operate at the discretion of people, not the other way around. Healthy businesses offer many wonderful services and help us generate wealth, but they have no business having the same constitutional rights originally reserved for their human creators.

It is clear, too, that more than ever democratic world government is required in the face of the complex challenges inundating our fragmented species. In fact, a global grass roots effort to by-pass both the failed United Nations and the emerging global empire and help establish a Democratic World Parliament is gaining momentum. Go to http://voteworldparliament.org/ and vote.

It is also clear that a constitutional, democratic, federal, planetary republic alone is not enough. Or rather, building such a government is not enough. We must have an integral, democratic capitalism that is sustainable, encourages entrepreneurship, and is socially and environmentally responsible. These are enormous challenges we face and face as a species, not merely any one nation-state.

For now, a perfect place to start, especially as an American voter is to go to and join http://www.movetoamend.org/ and support them. You can join Facebook and become a member of “Abolish Corporate Personhood Now.” If you are a citizen of any other country, you can do whatever you can to reduce control of your communities by transnational corporations and increase democracy in your governments and businesses. All can certainly vote for a Democratic World Parliament. In addition, large numbers of people working in and for corporations are basically good people. You know who you are. You have the power to help all of us change things, reclaim democracy, and help corporations focus on what they were originally designed to do: generate economic abundance and financial wealth.

Finally, I quote below from my own book in progress, We the People of Earth:

· “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.”



William Dudley Bass
Tuesday, January 26, 2010

© by William Dudley Bass

Global Disaster Response to Haitian Earthquake a Prelude to Moves toward Unification?

The Indian Ocean and Asian earthquake and tsunami of December 2004, which claimed about 230,000 lives and probably more from the East African coast to the Indian subcontinent to Indonesia and Thailand, caused the entire planet to vibrate. It also elicited the first truly global response to a humanitarian disaster. We even saw two former American presidents of opposing political parties, George H. W. Bush the Republican and Bill Clinton the Democrat, working together and working together as friends to help lead the relief and reconstruction efforts. The May 2008 Typhoon Nargis disaster in Myanmar/Burma was a potential international aid response but was thwarted by the military junta in power. There were and have been other significant disasters, many that did elicit aid from different countries responding to a crisis in another, including famines, but nothing of the scale of the global response to the 2004 tsunami.

In Haiti in the wake of the devastating January 2010 earthquake we see it again and in a more evolved fashion. The response to the quake was immediate, far more immediate by the United States, for example, than it’s response to its own 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster. In fact strong aftershocks continue as I write. Our response to Haiti’s crisis is beyond international; it is global. Fellow human beings from around the planet have rallied to support their own in a small nation-state ravaged even before the giant quake by decades of poverty, dictatorship, coups and low-level civil wars, military occupation, economic exploitation, and environmental destruction. This planet-wide response is just beginning to be noticed as we are still in the thick of it all. Reasons for the rapid and global response range from the ease of new technology to U.S. President Obama’s charisma and decisiveness to geographical ease of access (as opposed to the difficulties of helping remote areas of conflict-addled Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and China in the 2005 Kashmir earthquake.)

The Haitian earthquake is catastrophic and heart wrenching. The outpouring of aid is almost as overwhelming in its generosity and scale. Of course, controversies abound. Concerns are expressed about the militarization of aid, the intervention of American armed forces, outside exploitation by transnational corporations to rebuild Haiti on their terms instead of Haitian ideals, how to address environmental ruin, how to address political, drug, and gang violence and endemic corruption, and on and on. There is also infighting between different organizations. These are legitimate concerns even as much good is being done right now by some of the organizations others are denouncing. For the most part relief efforts appear to be running as smoothly as possible considering the horrendous challenges amid collapsed infrastructure and mounting death, injury, and disease tolls. It seems horror unites us in a crisis.

Many of the political, military, economic, and environmental issues raised in the wake of the Haitian earthquake would be non-issues if we had an established, democratic world government with an integral democratic capitalist economic system. Instead of nation-states and big corporations and lawless gangs jostling for power and influence we would have one unified planetary government responding with unified institutions all under world law. We would have an integrated global response to such a calamity just as China or America respond internally to their own local or regional disasters. We would be able as a democratic world government to go into areas that would otherwise be torn by warfare between countries, tribes, and religious groups. And as a planet with unified economic and financial systems based upon principles of integral, democratic, sustainable capitalism that are social and environmental responsible we would minimize any corporate exploitation or local corruption.

In Haiti, too, we have the collapse of yet another so-called “independent” nation-state. As a unified, democratic, federal planetary republic where we build interdependence that is transparent and effective. Of course, we have a long ways to go to achieve those goals. And more disasters will strike and often strike without warning. The world-wide self-awareness of global unity that stems from first the Indian Ocean tsunami and now the Haitian earthquake are promising steps on the way to achieve democratic world government.


William Dudley Bass
January 21, 2010


© by William Dudley Bass

Will Space Exploration Expedite the Unification of Earth?

The less than two hundred human nation-states of Planet Earth appear doomed to endless squabbling and bloodshed despite grand proclamations of international cooperation. And who can blame them? Our problems feel too vast and overwhelming for the average person including our politicians to understand. It is easier to go to war and kill each other. It is easier to pollute our environment. It is easier to bail out our faux economy with made-up money. It is easier to go shopping, buy shoes for the kids, and get drunk while watching the latest celebrity scandals on television. Nuclear disarmament in an age of terrorism? Biological warfare? Global warming and climate change? Global climate disruption? Global warming leading to ice ages? Fundamentalism and extremism on the rise in most religions? Poverty? Disease pandemics, hunger, bigotry and discrimination, pollution, deforestation, desertification, overpopulation and mass extinction of species along with weapons of mass destruction freak us out. What are we to do?

Go to Mars.

Explore the Solar System.

Yes. Launch probes beyond the Kuiper Belt toward the nearest stars. Build colonies out in space, on the Moon, and on Planet Mars. Prepare to study exobiology on Earth-like planets outside our Solar System. The current issue of The Christian Science Monitor: A Weekly Review of Global News & Ideas features on the cover an American rocket blasting off into the title “SPACE: Where Next? Why Now?” followed by the heading of a collective of articles entitled “Star Trek: This Generation.”

Peter Potts, staff writer for the Monitor, wrote “as exploration of space becomes increasingly expensive, many experts around the world think we have reached a hinge moment in history when joint ventures are the best – and perhaps only – way to undertake distant exploration, both manned and unmanned, of the cosmos.” Peter Potts goes on to give voice for many who “now believe it’s time for true collaboration….to push mankind to the next threshold of space exploration and to forge a new spirit of cooperation among nations. In other words, a sort of Star Trek Starfleet Command.”

Packing a doomsday punch, Potts quotes space historians Roger Launius and Howard McCurdy who write “An important bloc of the space community believes that humanity has a finite period of time to colonize other worlds before conditions on Earth no longer sustain human migration.” Folks, we are talking about the survival of our species and perhaps of Earth life itself … as we know it. This ain’t a disaster flick like the upcoming “2012.”

The challenges are many to overcome. National pride, suspicion between the Europeans and the Americans on one side and the Chinese on the other, the militarization of space with to us futuristic weaponry, funding amid roiling economic turmoil and an epic global recession, the spread of atomic weapons and ballistic missile technologies, and incessant warfare on the ground.

It is time, however, past time, to put aside our national, ethnic, and religious differences in the name of planetary unity and integration. Only a world government with world law can successfully address the next stages of world peace with space exploration and colonization. Science fiction including Star Trek is full of interstellar empires. Instead of these tyrannies let us remember the United Federation of Planets. Let us take a stand this world government, our world government shall be a constitutional, democratic republic and not a dictatorship or worse, a dictatorship cloaked as democracy. Vote “Yes!” in the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government at www.voteworldgovernment.org.

Space exploration gives humanity a singularity of purpose we can all grasp amid the magnitude of scientific evidence that our global civilization releasing so much carbon will negatively change the next 100,000 years of Earth’s climate.

The bottom line is world government of one kind or another is likely to be established if humanity survives. Let’s determine this government is a democratic world government. Or survival isn’t worth it.


William Dudley Bass
October 23, 2009

Sources

Archer, David. The Long Thaw: How Humans Are Changing The Next 100,000 Years of Earth’s Climate. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009.

Potts, Peter. “Star Trek: This Generation.” The Christian Science Monitor: A Weekly Review of Global News & Ideas. Volume 101/Issue 113, October 25, 2009: 13 – 18.

© by William Dudley Bass

The Challenges of Global Demilitarization

In a recent interview in Time Magazine, Kofi Anan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, was asked whether or not “the U.N. should be given the authority to intervene militarily in situations like Darfur.”

“I’m not sure the member states are ready to give the U.N. a standing army….It’s a question of will. And I don’t think you will see a U.N. army,” Mr. Anan replied.

As local crises converge into global crises and threaten to overwhelm us, as the movement to create a democratic world government continues to move forward, national and ethnic military forces will remain perhaps the greatest obstacle to such a government. There exist today a number of different global citizens and democratic world government parties, alliances, coalitions, and institutes. One of the most prominent is the World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, which was founded in 1947 in Switzerland but is now headquartered in New York City across from the U.N. building. There’s WATUN, the World Alliance to Transform the United Nations. There is even the Global Referendum for Democratic World Government where any citizen on the planet can vote in favor of establishing a representative, democratic world government (click on the link below in “Sources” and vote).

International laws and courts are in existence and others have been proposed. Constitutions for world governments of one kind or another have been written or proposed. Various debates have gone on for years over what structure should a world democratic government take. For example, would a European-style parliament or an American-style tripartite system of checks and balances be best for a united Earth? Would the global legislature be bicameral or tricameral? What role would a Supreme World Court have? Would each current nation-state become a state or province of the world, or would boundaries be redrawn to better reflect regional geography and local ethnicity? Would a democratic world government be a world federation of separate republics or a single federated world republic? These are important questions, but perhaps we put the cart before the horse here.

A number of leaders from around the world have recognized the benefits of democratic world government from scientists such as Albert Einstein to former U.S. presidents such as Harry Truman to the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. The latest world leader calling for global cooperation to address planet-wide crises is U.S. President Barack Obama. But not even Kofi Anan believes humanity is ready for standing U.N. armed forces. Even in an age of squabbling co-dependent nation-states and stateless-nations, the concept of national sovereignty, regardless of how archaic and obsolete it has become, still reigns supreme. It is a supreme illusion made even more ironic as so many groups of people who are dependent upon each other are so quick to kill and maim each other as global catastrophes loom.

To go further than Mr. Anan’s observation, how will we the citizens of Earth disarm our various militaries? What steps shall we take? There are almost two hundred armed forces from the various nation-states in addition to many thousands of armed gangs, paramilitaries, ethnic militias, religious militias, private militias, private security contract (mercenary) companies, militarized police and intelligence forces, rebel armies, secessionist armies, and terrorist groups. It will take a tremendous, almost unimaginable level of trust for a nation-state to stand down and demobilize their armed forces. A small nation may feel gobbled up by the larger ones, and the larger ones gobbled up by a swarm of smaller ones. For world powers with de facto empires such as the United States, the European Union, Russia, and China it will require a leap of faith of not just their leaders but also their citizens.

Certainly over long periods of time as the forces of globalization and unification continue to move forward with both positive and negative results, the many different nations of Earth will learn to cooperate together, work out disputes peacefully, and grow accustomed to living together in a federated world republic. The 13 original British colonies in America did, and eventually after several wars with themselves and their neighbors also learned to live peacefully with Canada, Mexico, and even Cuba despite many differences. Even more remarkably is the rise of the European Union after centuries of barbaric warfare.

Today the international focus is on the spread of nuclear weapons. The current nuclear powers struggle with the temptation to produce more weapons while attempting to gradually destroy their stockpiles without sacrificing a sense of security. Challenges arise with developing nations with unstable regimes acquiring atomic weapons such as North Korea and Iran. Serious concerns exist regarding India and Pakistan and the fact by sharing a common border negates any chance of stopping a nuclear launch. Israel has a stable government, unlike Iran, but keeps its nuclear weapons secret. Israel feels its very existence so at stake it is feared it may be prone to use those weapons. Other nations feel the need to catch up and hold their neighbors at bay, if not with nuclear weapons then certainly with mass chemical and biological weapons. A corresponding development is the spread of ballistic missile technologies and the beginnings of robotic and space-based weapons. And, of course, terrorists from the right and the left seem eager to get their hands on nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

In addition to weapons of mass destruction, we have the mass proliferation of guns, bombs, and ammunition. We have naval, amphibious, and air forces as well with massive arsenals of weapons. Our armies have tanks, artillery and batteries of rockets. So with the advocacy for global referendums with talk of world federalist meetings and world constitutions what else can we do? What do we really want? And what is our next step?

First, local, regional, national, and world-wide education is necessary to bring people’s awareness to the necessity for a democratic world government to 1) address our converging global challenges that threaten us with extinction, and 2) preempt a global dictatorship and empire in the making with the additional challenge of realizing that the so-called “One World Government” or “New World Order” would most likely be a neo-fascist, corporatocratic regime cloaked in the trappings of democracy, such as we saw happening in America under Bush-Cheney.

As part of this educational process people can be engaged as citizens in the Global Referendum for a Democratic World Government. Yes, we need a Constitution for We the People of Earth. We can have global referendums on that issue, too. We can vote yes, we want such a Constitution, and yes, we want to send delegates there to represent the many nations of Earth and design the architecture of a constitutional world democracy. We want to vote on accepting that Constitution. Engaging the average men and women around the planet in this manner furthers their education on the issue and awareness of the necessity for planetary unification and democracy. It instills civic pride and a sense of we are really all one people on one planet.

When the time comes for actual integration of the nation-states into a democratic world federation, two principles must be reiterated: 1) civilian control of the military and 2) public control of the money power.

Integration and unification will take time even after a world democratic regime is established. We will advance in stages. Perhaps not every nation-state will join right away or they may join in different degrees if we allow a wait-and-see approach. For example, there can be a mutual, simultaneous surrender of arms and demobilization of personnel by percentages among all the member nation-states. Perhaps the first reduction of military forces is by 10% to demonstrate good faith then by another 25% across the board. Smaller militaries will be phased out faster than larger militaries.

Integration of individuals from the armed forces of many nations into unified units will also facilitate this process. An issue here will be language and location of bases with ethnic sensitivity. For example one would not place a unit composed predominantly of Indian Hindus in a predominantly Pakistani Muslim area, but one could put Swedish or Brazilian or Kenyan forces there. Eventually troops may be so mixed around the planet that over time such issues become non-issues.

After a democratic world government is established with the acknowledgement that actual integration and unification will take time, years even, will we even want or need planetary military forces? Crime and terrorism may well persist indefinitely, and that can be handled by police forces and intelligence agencies working in concert. There may well be rebellions. It is widely believed, however, that under a democratic world government where all people are equally represented and disputes peacefully arbited in courts of law two things are likely to occur. One is that wars between nation-states with corresponding use (waste) of resources toward military build-ups will cease and become nonexistent. The other is that ethnic wars and secessionist wars for autonomy or independence will also cease as all people will be represented upon an interdependent and unified democratic world. There will be no longer any point as all ethnic groups and stateless-nations will be free within a constitutional democratic federation subject to representative republican government, local-global cooperation, and the rule of law.

So after a legally established and defined period of time after planetary unification begins, say 5, 10 or even 25 years after reunification all military forces are to be disbanded or converted to police and peacekeeping forces or perhaps pioneering space exploration and settlement. Demobilizing an integrated global military force will also take time and may well be best to accomplish in phases. Perhaps a small core volunteer force would be maintained.

The risk, of course, in getting rid of our military is it leaves all humanity defenseless in the face of any military assault from extraterrestrial alien forces from other worlds. At first this seems laughable as we have not experienced such an invasion in our known history. Yet, let’s face reality here, folks. Our scientific knowledge of the Multiverse continues to expand with vast numbers of galaxies, stars, and planets including Earth-like planets coming into our observable and measurable awareness. We now realize the probability of life existing elsewhere other than on Earth is well over 100% and that the probability of intelligent life developing civilizations is also quite high. Some may be so far advanced beyond us here on Earth that we would be to them as ants to us. And we may also encounter civilizations not as advanced as ours that we may end up destroying as the Spanish Empire destroyed the Aztec and Incan Empires. Note the use of the term probability not possibility. The unresolved issue of UFOs is also not to be dismissed as all hoaxes and nonsense as there have been too many anomalous events involving too many people and credible people at that. It would be dangerous and foolish to assume that simply because an alien civilization would be both highly advanced and non-human that it would automatically be peaceful even pacifist. Obviously, let’s hope interplanetary and interstellar wars remain the realm of science fiction, and…how wise would it be for humanity to be prepared for hostile encounters with intelligent beings from other worlds? In distinguishing probability from speculation what best serves the interests of humanity here on Earth?

Perhaps one of the biggest concerns I have for global democracy, a concern I’ve heard echoed elsewhere, is while world government of any kind is probably going to happen like it or not, a democratic world government will take even longer to establish. Even worse, people have trouble conceptualizing global issues and grasping how urgent matters actually are. We are in a serious situation. No one really wants to confront all of our problems as they merge together. We can barely handle one of these challenges. We may be overwhelmed into a breakdown of civilization worldwide or worse, a mass die-off or even extinction. We may be forced to accept a one world dictatorship imposed upon us in the wake of one crisis after another, or wait too long till the worst arrives and then it will be too late.

Debating a deliberate phased drawdown of armed forces and their weapons that would in turn allow the nations of the world to peacefully integrate themselves into a united republic may end up being nothing more than a rearranging of chairs upon the deck of a sinking ship. With all due respect my fellow citizens, let’s get moving!


William Dudley Bass
October 5, 2009


Sources

Editors. “10 Questions. Kofi Anan will now take your questions.” Time. October 12, 2009: 4.

The World Federalist Movement-Institute for Global Policy, http://www.wfm-igp.org/site/ .

Vote World Government, http://www.voteworldgovernment.org/ .

World Alliance to Transform the United Nations (WATUN), http://www.transformun.org/home .

© by William Dudley Bass