Would a global government and a New World Order be a bad thing?

"A handful of men in the richest nations use the global powers they have assumed to tell the rest of the world how to live. This book is an attempt to describe a world run on the principle by which those powerful men claim to govern: the principle of democracy. It is an attempt to replace our Age of Coercion with an Age of Consent."

George Monbiot in his book ‘Age of Consent: A manifesto for a new world order’ argues that what the people of the world should be striving for is a democratically elected world government.

His ideas are basically to democratise international institutions so that for example the heads of the World Bank and IMF would not be appointees of the US and EU, but be democratically chosen.

(PS did you hear that Paul Wolfowitz has been short listed for the World Bank presidency?)

 

A review of the book

This is an extremely important book. The biggest single geopolitical issue today is the overweening power of the US in a unipolar world and the problem of how it should be handled by all other nations. No political leader can be said to have satisfactorily resolved this problem.

George Monbiot offers a searchingly rigorous analysis of the sources of American power and presents a package of proposals that would radically redraw the present world order. It is breathtaking in its radicalism, but for anyone who is serious about tackling the current US hegemony, it is difficult to fault the logic.

His basic thesis is that the institutions set up in the past 50 years to run the world in a democratic fashion are in fact deeply undemocratic. The UN General Assembly is dominated by the Security Council's five permanent members, who can veto whatever they don't like. If any attempt is made to remove their dominance, they can veto any attempt to remove their veto.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank are dominated by the G8 nations, which hold 49% of the votes, though that suggests that if all the other 176 nations voted together, they could still overturn the richest nations. However, all major decisions require an 85% majority, so the US, which alone possesses 17% of the votes, can veto any significant resolution it wishes, even if the resolution is supported by every other single country.

The World Trade Organisation has an aura of democracy in that every nation belonging to it has one vote. However, before a new round of trade talks begins, the agenda is fixed by the "Quad" - the US, EU, Canada and Japan. Together with a small and variable number of poorer countries, they decide all the main business of the new trade round in a series of "Green Room" meetings. The WTO is therefore as exclusive as the UN, with the Green Room acting as the WTO's Security Council and the Quad its permanent membership.

The consequences of this system are clear for all to see. The US goes to war with Iraq without a second resolution in the Security Council, defying three of its per manent members and most of its temporary members.

The World Bank and IMF have become the bailiffs of the world economy, putting the whole burden of maintaining the balance of international trade on the poorest debtor nations. Sub-Saharan Africa paid twice the sum of its total debt in the form of interest between 1980 and 1996, yet still ended up owing three times more in 1996 than it did in 1980.

Equally, the WTO enforces free trade on weaker nations according to rules with which the richer countries, especially the US, do not comply. Debtor nations are required to remove barriers to trade and capital flows, to liberalise their banking systems, reduce government spending on everything except debt repayments, and privatise assets for sale to foreign investors. By contrast, the US, after the so-called Doha development round in 2001 aimed to liberalise trade and increase access to western markets, raised farm subsidies to its own farmers by 80%, thus massively cutting world prices and bankrupting tens of millions of farmers in the poor world.

Monbiot's solution to this behemoth of growing world inequality in wealth and power is not tinkering with the existing institutions but replacing them wholesale. The key to his proposals is a return to the brilliant innovative insight of John Maynard Keynes in 1943 in preparation for the Bretton Woods conference, which determined the postwar international economic architecture that has prevailed ever since.

Keynes's idea was a new global bank called the International Clearing Union (ICU) with its own currency, the bancor. Every country would have an overdraft facility in its bancor account no more than half the average value of its trade over the previous five years. The system he devised gave a strong incentive to both deficit and surplus countries to clear their bancor accounts annually, ending up with neither a trade deficit nor a surplus.

Deficit countries would be charged interest on the overdraft, rising as the overdraft rose; they would have to reduce the value of their currency by up to 5% to promote exports and would have to prevent the export of capital. Keynes's innovation was to apply similar pressures to surplus countries too. Any such country with a bancor credit balance more than half its overdraft facility would be charged interest (or demurrage) at 10%. It would also have to raise the value of its currency and permit the export of capital. But if this was not enough and its credit balance at the end of the year exceeded its permitted overdraft, the surplus would be confiscated.

Keynes's system would, quite simply, maximise worldwide prosperity and level the power of nations. The ICU would entail no forced liberalisation, no penal conditions on the poorest countries, no engineered opportunities for predatory banks and multinational corporations, no squashing of democratic consent. But the obvious question remains: how can the rich nations, especially the US, be made to accept it?

Monbiot's answer is to turn the instruments of rich nations' power against themselves. The poor world's debt to the commercial banks and IMF and World Bank, at some $2.5 trillion, is nearly twice the combined reserves of all the world's central banks. In effect, as Monbiot himself puts it, "the poor world owns the rich world's banks". But he is not recommending a mass default. Rather, he proposes that the indebted nations, which can never repay their debt, should demand a conditionality for their compliance - exactly as the rich nations do - namely the replacement of the institutions causing the problem (IMF and World Bank) by arrangements that automatically achieve a balancing of trade (the ICU). Blackmail, of course, but if well orchestrated it might just conceivably work.

He rounds off this central theme with two other radical proposals. One is that a Fair Trade Organisation (FTO) is needed to govern the rules of trade very differently from the market fundamentalists of the WTO. Following the precedent of the rich countries, which in nearly all cases (certainly in the case of the US) got rich initially through protectionism, the FTO would permit the poorest countries to defend infant industries with tariffs, other import restrictions and export subsidies. Foreign investors would be required to leave behind more wealth than they extract and to reimburse for any destruction, environmental or otherwise, that their trading produces. Rich nations would be required to remove all barriers to trade - tariffs, import restraints and perverse subsidies that keep out imports from poorer nations.

Again, what hope in hell is there of such a radical (and utopian) system beng accepted? Monbiot's reply is unequivocal: a fair trading system should be added to an ICU as a condition of refraining from a mass coordinated default.

Linked to this is Monbiot's final major proposal - a democratised UN General Assembly where votes are weighted by size of population and in accordance with a global democracy index, to incentivise high standards of governance. This restructured assembly would also take over the functions of the UN Security Council which, as Monbiot says, has already largely been sidelined by US actions over Iraq.

Again, there is a breathtakingly radical sweep to all this. But before it is dismissed as the rabid fantasising of the Global Justice Movement, certain caveats are in order. This is not a whinge, but a very well argued statement of a positive alternative agenda. And if it is far too radical for some tastes, can they suggest any lesser options that will produce the same vast improvement in world justice and prosperity? The floor is theirs.

· Michael Meacher was environment minister from 1997-2003, and is MP for Oldham.

Published in the Guardian Review

 

I'm all for dropping subsidies, but not tariffs. Corporations should not be allowed to exploit the desperation of Third World countries and their lack of labor and environmental standards to artificially deflate prices compared to goods produced in countries with meaningful regulations. Tariffs seem like a reasonable way to offset the competitive advantage gained by raping workers and the environment.

By the way, I like your signature quote!

 

Monibot, like many liberals, fail to see the big picture that extends beyond the corrupt nature of nations themselves, to the see forces working behind the scenes to create this very corruption to begin with. This is why most liberals are always quick to blame the US and capitalism as the forces of all evil, without seeing the bigger picture of who controls these forces.

You never hear leftists like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and George Monibot mention the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the New World Order, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, and all these entities that exist above and beyond the United States government, who are the ones pulling the strings. The US (like the EU) is nothing more than the vehicle in which the globalists operate.

Many liberals are gullible and they believe that a one world government would equate to a utopia where there is no war or poverty, and everyone dances barefoot through fields of dasies without a care in the world. These people are unaware who would really stand to gain from a world government, and the people who would be in control of it, who would be the Illuminist world bankers I have been referring to.

This New World Order expands generations, and has been in the working for decades, if not over 100 years. The same people who are working to bring about this New World Order are the same people responsible for all the major wars of the past 100 years. And you trust these people to deliver you a utopian world?

These people create wars, then through the left, which they also control, they dispense all this phony talk of peace and unity via world government, which is exactly the plan. They want people to believe that if there was a world government there would be none of the wars THEY were ultimately responsible for creating.

They are right, there would be no more wars -- just a fascistic dictatorship controlled by power-hungry pigs who advocate world tyranny and population reduction.

 

Yes, a global government would absolutely be a bad thing. The people of this world are simply too culturally diverse to just bow down to the whims of an arbitrary majority.

Think of how divided this country often seems. In terms of ideology, Massachusetts and Idaho are a lot closer together than the United States and India.

Why would you want to give up local (federal) sovereignty to the whims of the Chinese and Indians?

 

Global government is a necessary step in providing two very important things. 1)Checks and balances on the interest of private enterprise (the objects of our conspiracy theorist). 2) A Global Civil Society.

With the renewed interest of civil society literature in the past few years, I am surprised I have not seen more threads like this permeating the politics forum.

The debate will rage on between neoliberals and socialists (please pardon the general terms) about the evils of globalization, but no one will deny the emergence of a global economy. Private enterprise now has the ability to transcend national borders. The effect of this transcendence is a dramatic shift in the balance of power between the three agents in societal relations. Corporations can only be kept in check by government, government can only be kept in check by civil society (us). Once one has gone global all must, hence the reemergence of global civil society literature, like Monbiot’s.

I’ll end here for now.

 

Balbus, you seem to be a fairly intelligent guy. Can you tell me what you think of these quotes and what they mean? I would be interested to hear what you think."

"The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England ... (and) ... believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established." -- Professor of History Carroll Quigley, Georgetown University, in his book "Tragedy and Hope"

"... the powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." -- Prof. Carroll Quigley

"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and communism under the same tent, all under their control...Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent." -- Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 (flight KAL007) that was shot down by the Soviets

"I think there are 25,000 individuals that have used offices of powers, and they are in our Universities and they are in our Congresses, and they believe in One World Government. And if you believe in One World Government, then you are talking about undermining National Sovereignty and you are talking about setting up something that you could well call a Dictatorship - and those plans are there!..." -- Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex)

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world-government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the National autodetermination practiced in past centuries" -- David Rockefeller in an address to the Bilderberg Group in June of 1991 in Baden Baden, Germany

"David Rockefeller is the most conspicuous representative today of the ruling class, a multinational fraternity of men who shape the global economy and manage the flow of its capital. Rockefeller was born to it, and he has made the most of it. But what some critics see as a vast international conspiracy, he considers a circumstance of life and just another day's work... In the world of David Rockefeller it's hard to tell where business ends and politics begins". -- Bill Moyers

"We shall have World Government, whether or not we like it. The only question is whether World Government will be achieved by conquest or consent." -- Statement made before the United States Senate on Feb. 7, 1950 by James Paul Warburg

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise their power from behind the scenes." -- Justice Felix Frankfurter, U.S. Supreme Court.

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson." -- U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a letter written Nov. 21, 1933 to Colonel E. Mandell House.

"The Trilateral Commission is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - Political, Monetary, Intellectual, and Ecclesiastical." -- U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater from his 1964 book "No Apologies"

"The invisible Money Power is working to control and enslave mankind. It financed Communism, Fascism, Marxism, Zionism, Socialism. All of these are directed to making the United States a member of a World Government ..." -- AMERICAN MERCURY MAGAZINE, December 1957, pg. 92.

"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated [emphasis mine], that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." -- Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1992

"My country's history, Mr. President, tells us that it is possible to fashion unity while cherishing diversity, that common action is possible despite the variety of races, interests, and beliefs we see here in this chamber. Progress and peace and justice are attainable. So we say to all peoples and governments: Let us fashion together a new world order." -- Henry Kissinger, in address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, October 1975

"From the days of Sparticus, Weishaupt, Karl Marx, Trotski, belacoon, Rosa Luxenberg and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last, this band of extraordinary personalities from the under-world of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." -- Winston Churchill to the London press in 1922.

"Give me the power of the money and it will not matter any more who is commanding" -- Mayer Amschel Rothschild

"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." -- Strobe Talbot, Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.

The world is governed by personalities very different to what people that cannot see further than their eyes believe" -- Benjamin Disraeli - (Statesman)

"We are not going to achieve a new world order without paying for it in blood as well as in words and money." -- Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., in Foreign Affairs (July/August 1995)

"The Technocratic Age is slowly designing an every day more controlled society. The society will be dominated by an elite of persons free from traditional values (!) who will have no doubt in fulfilling their objectives by means of purged techniques with which they will influence the behavior of people and will control and watch the society in all details". "... it will become possible to exert a practically permanent watch on each citizen of the world". -- Zbigniew Brzezinski - (Co-founder of Trilateral Commission)

"The current world situation has been deliberately created by these elites who manipulate both the so-called 'right' and the so-called 'left'. By controlling the resulting 'synthesis' - the end result of Hegelian 'thesis' and 'antithesis' - a Globalist New World Order is produced. You can call it techno-fascism or techno-feudalism, but the result is the same- a global consolidation and mega-corporate transnational centralization of power, capital and resources. And how does it work? By using 'managed conflict' or 'crisis management'. A crisis or problem is produced. Then the crisis is 'managed' and the problem is 'solved' with an outcome that is invariably favorable to the goals and agendas of the Global Power Elite." -- Antony Sutton, America's Secret Establishment

"The real menace of our republic is this invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen....At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties." -- New York City Mayor John F. Hylan, 1922

"The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies [marxism/fascism/socialism v. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other." -- Myron Fagan

 

Indeed, this is the case for a strong global civil society. Private interest gains in the balance of power through internationalization of the production process and emergence of transnational corporations.

This is what current civil society lacks, a strong and smart and reasonable voice. Someone with as much influence on you and me as Rockefeller has on his supporters. Who do we blame for lack of a reasonable voice? The university.

1950. Quite the analyst, don’t you think? We will have a world government whether or not we like it. The question is indeed whether the realist international relations theory will win or the cosmopolitan international relations theory will. Everyone is worried about which side is right because, well, no one likes to be wrong and everyone is forgetting about the third party that they ought to be worried about. We can debate about whether the government owns private interest or private interest owns government, don’t we care that they both own us?

See what I mean? Who owns whom? The president knows best the strength of private interest. If he doesn’t own, he is owned.

Dangerous. Taiwan and China. Which one is the real China?

Churchill could have been talking about anything. With that hint of sarcasm I have to wonder if he wasn’t talking about democracy.

 

Which one are you?

 

**

Rat

Once more your reply is an attack on the failing of others, which doesn’t seem to address the issues raised by the posts.

We all know your views on a conspiratorial global-elite, but a global democratic government seems to be one answer to curtailing multinational corporations, and bring such global-elite’s to account, as is pointed out by OSE.

Please give us your alternative suggestions on limiting unaccountable international institutions and powerful nationalistic powers with a global reach?

 

With an eye on the topic of the thread I have to say that I am neither.

Both the neoliberal position and the socialist position ultimately miss the point. Neither one emphasizes the role of strong civil society. Neoliberals, though, are more likely to accept a real civil society, though it will never be allowed to be strong. Socialists, on the other hand, refuse to allow real civil society to exist. They are more inclined towards corporatism (not to be confused with corporationalism or some other ignorantly manufactured ideology, indeed corporatism has nothing to do with the corporation and simply refers to the government legislation and execution of civil society, which effectively strips civil society of it’s actual definition).

It seems that a strong global civil society will be easier to attain with a global government that prizes the realist relation theory.

In that respect, and considering the thread, I can say I am more akin to Neoliberalism.

 

Balbus writes: "a global democratic government seems to be one answer to curtailing multinational corporations, and bring such global-elite’s to account"

Why are you so certain that this global government would necessarily be a democratically elected one? The World Bank and WTO appoint their own officials...not the American populace. And now, presidential elections are rigged. We have a president that wasn't elected by the majority of Americans (although the corporate media would deny this to the death). Considering all this, with GLOBAL power (read: UNIVERSAL power), who would they have to answer to? Who would they be held accountable towards? They aren't even held accountable for their despicable corruption now! As Pressed Rat quite adequately states, this would be a government by, of, and for corporations. And believe me, they wouldn't be curtailed. lol. The thought that corporations seeking world dominion would exercise self-restraint is a hilariously stupid one.

What we would have would surpass Orwell's nightmarish vision. This "global government" you so blithely mention would in fact turn out to be a Global EMPIRE. It would be Hitler's utopia. The corporate globalist's ultimate Dream Come True. It's what they are bent and intent on bringing to fruition. What's scary is how goddamn close they now are. Thankfully, there's a worldwide "counter-movement" that is pressing to stop these power-mad elitists from forging their world of complete totalitarian domination over all that lives on this tiny ball revolving around the sun called Planet Earth.

Something big is going to happen within the next generation. Something that's never happened before. Can you not feel it?

Read David Korten's "When Corporations Rule the World" and Naomi Klein's "No Logo".

 

well, OSF, considering your intelligent analysis combined with your horrifyingly ignorant conclusion, you'll be in my prayers...

 

The worst part about this is that people don't even know their power!

Global Civil Society.

Revo, you’re a protestor, why have you no notion of how to ‘actually’ (and I say actually because you support corporatist protest) provide checks and balances? I asked you once and I’ll ask you again ... have you no knowledge of the principles of democracy?

 

This certainly warrants discussion. What, precisely, is so ‘horrifyingly ignorant’?

Please keep in mind that I have offered nothing close to a “conclusion”.

 

perhaps you might elaborate then on what your view of corporate globalization is all about.

"have you no knowledge of the principles of democracy?"

I live on the principles of democracy. As someone who identifies with the principles of anarchism (or, "completist democracy"), um...yes, I do. Do you have a more specific question?

Oh, and something I failed to mention. This global world order...who would stand to protect it? A Globalized military police force, correct? With the new weapons technology (such as the "tazer" which is ALREADY in police hands), who do you think these police thugs would point their weapons toward? Their corporate masters? No buddy, it would be you and me. And for what? Probably for dissenting...disagreeing.

Anyone with half a brain and respect for democratic discourse would openly oppose this drive toward planetary fascist dictatorship.

 

Yes, because you refuse to answer for the principles, what is horrifyingly ignorant about my conclusion?

 

I refuse to answer for the principles? what do you mean? lol

 

This is not the first time I have asked you that. I have elaborated the question significantly elsewhere and you have not responded to the challenge.

I think it would be easier for us to begin our discussion on the horrifyingly ignorance of my conclusion from the precise point of ignorance, instead of reverting to a discussion on the nature of the global economy.

As I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread, the debate, about what global economy does and the justification of those ends, will continue. There are threads and threads about it. Balbus has brought us a question on civil society. We ought to be focusing on that notion. I assert that such a discussion is necessary and am shown to be right through your questioning of checks and balances.

There exists a concept of civil society as an entity more powerful than government and private enterprise. However the complacency generated by strong American civil society has generated hegemony with the status quo your forefathers granted you. That hegemony lasted a little bit but now is being questioned, as is evidenced by interest in books like Monbiot’s. That hegemony caused the concept to be lost in the minds of recent generations. Now civil society seems to be nothing more than government granted and ‘peaceful’ protests.

Civil Society is that set of institutions and principles that does not belong to the government and private enterprise. It belongs to you. It is enshrined in the principles of democracy. I supposed that anyone that claims to comprehend the principles of democracy would understand the role of civil society and the corporatism of current civil society (ie the protests you promote).

You told me you knew the principles of democracy, but then you asked what institution exists to provide checks on a global government.

Instead of discussing something with you that I don’t really think you comprehend, I am now asking you to point out the precise “horrifying ignorance” of my conclusions.





edit: principles of democracy and the bad civil society you help create: http://www.hipforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69047

post #8

 

Misery loves company...maybe it wants the whole world to join in.