Viewing Message #27
Time : Sat 10-Mar-2007
From : newsletter admin
Subject : Newsletter No 23. 10/03/07
Message :
Issue No 23. 10/03/07
The newsletter of the Sapiens Movement.
Dear Friends,
Firstly an apology for a six week absence of newsletter – perhaps a pleasant relief! I have been on holiday – touring the South Island of New Zealand with my wife and our daughter, who had recently returned from a two-year stint England.
I have also been heavily involved in preparing to take the Simpol message to the country. I can see that task is going to be absorbing increasing amounts of both my time and my available funds and that it might involve a slippage in the interval between Sapiens newsletters.
Sadly, there is no shortage of depressing news to go round at the moment.
It remains very hard to convince oneself that Cheney is still not intent on war with Iran. (Though, given the increased anti-war pressure at home, he might content himself with sub-contracting to Israel Inc.) It stretches belief that he would attempt anything so stupid. However I have also to keep reminding myself that that was exactly how I felt in the extended run up to the invasion of Iraq. Surely he cannot be that stupid?!!
If the USA (despite on this second occasion, the wishes of the majority of its people) repeats the performance, we have to assume that, what we view as a disastrous outcome to the American invasion of Iraq, is regarded by Cheney and the Israeli leaders, who are ever more shrilly clamouring for war with Iran, as having been a success. We should therefore seriously question their motives. Is it profits for the industrial-military complex? Is it the destruction of Middle East society as a way of assuring Israel’s pre-eminence - like a pike let loose in a pond of minnows? Is it some nutty, religious-freak view of fulfilling God’s will?
To my mind, Cheney is one of history’s monsters. It is human society’s repeatedly demonstrated ability to endow such as these with political and military power, which will present the global governance constitution makers with their greatest challenge.
I don’t know if any of the readers of this newsletter are registered with Rasmus Tenbergen’s very interesting World Government Experiment www.world-parliament.org Anyone with any bright ideas as to how the problem might be resolved, should perhaps post them in that forum. The forum is an interesting experiment into how global democracy might be able to operate over the Web.
We have to accept that the leading guardian of our western “civilisation’s” political code of behaviour has, as we say in New Zealand “turned dog,” As an indication of the extent of the crisis in global governance that we now face, for those of you who haven’t already seen it, I attach an extract from an interview with the American general who formerly commanded NATO.
This is an excerpt of Gen. Wesley Clark in a Democracy Now interview <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/1440234> with Amy Goodman:
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"
AMY GOODMAN: I'm sorry. What did you say his name was?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I'm not going to give you his name.
AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19200
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
As mundialists, we face a world in which the fundamentals of politics, technology and economics are rapidly deteriorating.
In the world of politics, those whom we have originally been led to believe, were the founders of democracy, who were the driving force behind, and guardians of, international laws, which were designed to safeguard the individual units of humanity (through whose eyes, we each experience our lives on this Earth) have openly adopted a contrary creed. In the new world of their creation, the majority of human lives don’t matter and greed and might is all the right that is required.
In the world of technology and its consequences, I need say no more. We all know the strife that that is about to unleash upon us. As it’s latest manifestation, I have picked up reports in the last week of the first signs of political destabilisation in Mexico as the price of tortillas rockets in the face of the increased demand for cereal-derived ethanol as a replacement for oil.
Finally, in the world of economics we appear to be on the cusp of dramatic change. I have only a minimal understanding of the possible consequences, but I am nevertheless acutely aware that some mighty important sea change has occurred.
Since Bretton Woods and the end of WWII, the global economy has been based on the firm belief that the USA’s economy was the rock on which all improvements in humanity’s material well-being were founded. Last year the New York Stock Exchange was the 54th worst performing stock market in the globe. Had you invested $100 in New York and $100 in Shanghai, you would have ended the year with $102.50 in your pocket in New York and well over $200 in your pocket in Shanghai. Last week, when the Chinese government engineered a small intake of breath to slow down speculation on its stock exchange, their market lost the equivalent of the previous three weeks’ gains (which it had recovered by the end of the week.) That tiny correction resulted in a massive sell off in the USA and around those markets of the West that still believe that where New York goes, they go too.
Things don’t happen without a reason. Western investors have good reason to be jittery. The Bush Administration has been spending all its (and the rest of the world’s money) on war – and, by artificially keeping interest rates down, persuading the American public that war is for free. In consequence it has an annual deficit in excess of $700 billion and a total national debt of several trillion. It needs $70 billion of foreign funds to inflow each month just to stay in balance. Last December’s figures showed a net outflow of $11 billion. The US Dollar is now worth around 30% less than it was in 2003 and, as the Fed’s printing presses bite into the North American forest cover, the gurus are saying the fall in value is only just beginning
The Americans appear to have had done unto them by Al Qaeda (quite consciously: I recall Bin Laden’s No 2, in 2003, saying this was their plan) what the Soviet empire had done unto it by the Americans.
The key question is “who are the beneficiaries and what are they going to do with their benefit?” Last week’s stock exchange performance would indicate that it is going to be China that in future will call the shots in the global economy. While America has been falling over itself to lose friends around the world, the Chinese have been moving in the opposite direction. Their trading arms are enveloping one country after another, almost all of which gains, will prove to be America’s loss.
In marked contrast to the USA, the Chinese have foreign reserves of over $1 trillion. They remained a centrally controlled economy with the major function of preserving the Communist Party’s power through increasing the prosperity of the Chinese people. They have recently announced that they are allocating a third of their foreign reserves to overseas ventures – but no one yet knows how or where it will be invested. That sort of money in the hands of a single, intelligent, controlling office, placed on the world’s stock markets could result in huge instability, with, at the end of it, China ending up as the proud owner of key areas of the western economy and interests.
The idea of overcoming ones adversary with his own weapon, is not unfamiliar to Chinese strategic thought! Marxism, by adopting state-capitalism, defeats the free-enterprise capitalism of the individual libertarian West. How long since the Cultural Revolution? Having come from so far behind, to being so far ahead in such a short time – what performance! The only cloud on the horizon is that it is a performance that the Earth cannot possibly sustain.
Beyond all this, one cannot help but sadly remark, that the Americans have given the Chinese a very poor example as to how they should conduct themselves should they find themselves masters of the universe. If international law could be discarded at will by the USA when they were top dog, why should it now be expected to apply to the Chinese?
I am unaware of the existence of any mundialist movements in China – though I have heard recently of two Chinese students who might be interested! To date, we have singularly failed to convince the American people, the world champions of “democracy,” of any need for democratic global governance. How are we going to persuade the Chinese to accept the idea of global democracy, given that, to date, they have not demonstrated a conviction of the need for it even in their own country?
There is a very under-utilised forum of the Sapiens Website. If anyone cares to do some thinking?…
Let us rejoice that we live in such interesting times!
Hugh __
Determined
The newsletter of the Sapiens Movement.
Dear Friends,
Firstly an apology for a six week absence of newsletter – perhaps a pleasant relief! I have been on holiday – touring the South Island of New Zealand with my wife and our daughter, who had recently returned from a two-year stint England.
I have also been heavily involved in preparing to take the Simpol message to the country. I can see that task is going to be absorbing increasing amounts of both my time and my available funds and that it might involve a slippage in the interval between Sapiens newsletters.
Sadly, there is no shortage of depressing news to go round at the moment.
It remains very hard to convince oneself that Cheney is still not intent on war with Iran. (Though, given the increased anti-war pressure at home, he might content himself with sub-contracting to Israel Inc.) It stretches belief that he would attempt anything so stupid. However I have also to keep reminding myself that that was exactly how I felt in the extended run up to the invasion of Iraq. Surely he cannot be that stupid?!!
If the USA (despite on this second occasion, the wishes of the majority of its people) repeats the performance, we have to assume that, what we view as a disastrous outcome to the American invasion of Iraq, is regarded by Cheney and the Israeli leaders, who are ever more shrilly clamouring for war with Iran, as having been a success. We should therefore seriously question their motives. Is it profits for the industrial-military complex? Is it the destruction of Middle East society as a way of assuring Israel’s pre-eminence - like a pike let loose in a pond of minnows? Is it some nutty, religious-freak view of fulfilling God’s will?
To my mind, Cheney is one of history’s monsters. It is human society’s repeatedly demonstrated ability to endow such as these with political and military power, which will present the global governance constitution makers with their greatest challenge.
I don’t know if any of the readers of this newsletter are registered with Rasmus Tenbergen’s very interesting World Government Experiment www.world-parliament.org Anyone with any bright ideas as to how the problem might be resolved, should perhaps post them in that forum. The forum is an interesting experiment into how global democracy might be able to operate over the Web.
We have to accept that the leading guardian of our western “civilisation’s” political code of behaviour has, as we say in New Zealand “turned dog,” As an indication of the extent of the crisis in global governance that we now face, for those of you who haven’t already seen it, I attach an extract from an interview with the American general who formerly commanded NATO.
This is an excerpt of Gen. Wesley Clark in a Democracy Now interview <http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/02/1440234> with Amy Goodman:
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, "Sir, you've got to come in and talk to me a second." I said, "Well, you're too busy." He said, "No, no." He says, "We've made the decision we're going to war with Iraq." This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, "We're going to war with Iraq? Why?" He said, "I don't know." He said, "I guess they don't know what else to do." So I said, "Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?" He said, "No, no." He says, "There's nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq." He said, "I guess it's like we don't know what to do about terrorists, but we've got a good military and we can take down governments." And he said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail."
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, "Are we still going to war with Iraq?" And he said, "Oh, it's worse than that." He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, "I just got this down from upstairs" -- meaning the Secretary of Defense's office -- "today." And he said, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." I said, "Is it classified?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Well, don't show it to me." And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, "You remember that?" He said, "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to you!"
AMY GOODMAN: I'm sorry. What did you say his name was?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I'm not going to give you his name.
AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran.
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/19200
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
As mundialists, we face a world in which the fundamentals of politics, technology and economics are rapidly deteriorating.
In the world of politics, those whom we have originally been led to believe, were the founders of democracy, who were the driving force behind, and guardians of, international laws, which were designed to safeguard the individual units of humanity (through whose eyes, we each experience our lives on this Earth) have openly adopted a contrary creed. In the new world of their creation, the majority of human lives don’t matter and greed and might is all the right that is required.
In the world of technology and its consequences, I need say no more. We all know the strife that that is about to unleash upon us. As it’s latest manifestation, I have picked up reports in the last week of the first signs of political destabilisation in Mexico as the price of tortillas rockets in the face of the increased demand for cereal-derived ethanol as a replacement for oil.
Finally, in the world of economics we appear to be on the cusp of dramatic change. I have only a minimal understanding of the possible consequences, but I am nevertheless acutely aware that some mighty important sea change has occurred.
Since Bretton Woods and the end of WWII, the global economy has been based on the firm belief that the USA’s economy was the rock on which all improvements in humanity’s material well-being were founded. Last year the New York Stock Exchange was the 54th worst performing stock market in the globe. Had you invested $100 in New York and $100 in Shanghai, you would have ended the year with $102.50 in your pocket in New York and well over $200 in your pocket in Shanghai. Last week, when the Chinese government engineered a small intake of breath to slow down speculation on its stock exchange, their market lost the equivalent of the previous three weeks’ gains (which it had recovered by the end of the week.) That tiny correction resulted in a massive sell off in the USA and around those markets of the West that still believe that where New York goes, they go too.
Things don’t happen without a reason. Western investors have good reason to be jittery. The Bush Administration has been spending all its (and the rest of the world’s money) on war – and, by artificially keeping interest rates down, persuading the American public that war is for free. In consequence it has an annual deficit in excess of $700 billion and a total national debt of several trillion. It needs $70 billion of foreign funds to inflow each month just to stay in balance. Last December’s figures showed a net outflow of $11 billion. The US Dollar is now worth around 30% less than it was in 2003 and, as the Fed’s printing presses bite into the North American forest cover, the gurus are saying the fall in value is only just beginning
The Americans appear to have had done unto them by Al Qaeda (quite consciously: I recall Bin Laden’s No 2, in 2003, saying this was their plan) what the Soviet empire had done unto it by the Americans.
The key question is “who are the beneficiaries and what are they going to do with their benefit?” Last week’s stock exchange performance would indicate that it is going to be China that in future will call the shots in the global economy. While America has been falling over itself to lose friends around the world, the Chinese have been moving in the opposite direction. Their trading arms are enveloping one country after another, almost all of which gains, will prove to be America’s loss.
In marked contrast to the USA, the Chinese have foreign reserves of over $1 trillion. They remained a centrally controlled economy with the major function of preserving the Communist Party’s power through increasing the prosperity of the Chinese people. They have recently announced that they are allocating a third of their foreign reserves to overseas ventures – but no one yet knows how or where it will be invested. That sort of money in the hands of a single, intelligent, controlling office, placed on the world’s stock markets could result in huge instability, with, at the end of it, China ending up as the proud owner of key areas of the western economy and interests.
The idea of overcoming ones adversary with his own weapon, is not unfamiliar to Chinese strategic thought! Marxism, by adopting state-capitalism, defeats the free-enterprise capitalism of the individual libertarian West. How long since the Cultural Revolution? Having come from so far behind, to being so far ahead in such a short time – what performance! The only cloud on the horizon is that it is a performance that the Earth cannot possibly sustain.
Beyond all this, one cannot help but sadly remark, that the Americans have given the Chinese a very poor example as to how they should conduct themselves should they find themselves masters of the universe. If international law could be discarded at will by the USA when they were top dog, why should it now be expected to apply to the Chinese?
I am unaware of the existence of any mundialist movements in China – though I have heard recently of two Chinese students who might be interested! To date, we have singularly failed to convince the American people, the world champions of “democracy,” of any need for democratic global governance. How are we going to persuade the Chinese to accept the idea of global democracy, given that, to date, they have not demonstrated a conviction of the need for it even in their own country?
There is a very under-utilised forum of the Sapiens Website. If anyone cares to do some thinking?…
Let us rejoice that we live in such interesting times!
Hugh __
