Post Capitalist Free Market Society (Part VI) - Government Under Technological Democracy

In a capitalistic society, like that of the United States, the capitalist elite controls the economy through which it controls or highly influences government activities concerned in any way with its interests. The matter of power struggle, against this elite, by the people or the government has become more complex and difficult where no single country has either the authority or the power to regulate or investigate the total operation of a multinational or global corporation.

While a state is responsible to its citizens and rules with their apparent consent, a global corporation is a strict autocratic system ruled, not by its shareholders as it should have been according to its charter, but by a self-appointed and self-perpetuating members of the board of directors holding, collectively, only a small fraction of the corporate assets.

Under a socialistic system, like China, the state is controlled by a single political party which is controlled in turn by a few leaders selected and elevated to their position by the initial or senior members of the party. The socialist constitution usually prescribes a government by a democratic political process. But the execution of this electoral process is tightly controlled and supervised by the party through its instrumentalities. Consequently, the government and the society end up to be governed by a few holding leadership positions.

Thus, under both capitalist and socialist systems, individual freedoms, economic as well as political, has remained at the mercy and consent of a very small group which controls the means of production and distribution. All this suppression has occurred because the individual, under both systems, has been deprived of equality of opportunity as his basic human and democratic right. The government has played a substantial role in installing and maintaining the subjugation process making the individual life under either system exploitive.

The main objective in a technological democratic society is to grant, protect and foster the principle of equality of opportunity, to allow and provide opportunities for individual freedom and dignity in a way that no one is exploited economically, socially or politically. To accomplish this goal, the control over the means of production and distribution need to be taken away from the capitalist class and transferred to the working class by the application of the principles of equality of opportunity and prohibition of unjust enrichment.

Consequently, under technological democratic system, the role of the state becomes quite distinguished from those under capitalism or socialism. The government like any individual in society is obliged to abide by the principle of equality of opportunity. Thus, government cannot keep anything secret or classified. If secrecy is allowed, it would increase the government's opportunity to the detriment of the public. This openness extend everywhere in government and all other institutions in society. In the area of national security, as long as other nations have not complied with the principle of equality of opportunity, secrecy may be kept. But the term of national security must be applied in its narrow and strict interpretation. In technological democracy, a major part of present national functions are transferred down to the private production firms; other parts such as maintenance of law and order, supervision and enforcement of the principles and standards governing the production of goods and services, are all trusted on local and regional (states in U.S.) governments. There are no line functions left for the national government except for defense and foreign affairs. Defense and intelligence establishments are also highly curtailed since the U.S. will not interfere in internal affairs or economic resources of other sovereign nations. Because, in technological democracy, the essence of strength is not in military or intelligence power, but in the strength of its citizens' minds and commitment to peace and the extension of democracy and prosperity to other lands. No conquering force can rule in a technological democratic society without being assimilated into its way of life and culture in a short time. Any conquering force is soon conquered by the conquered society. Essentially, therefore, there is no need for military forces. The elimination of military establishment, a vestige from barbarian past, marks the disappearance of the greatest evil haunting humanity and its well being for centuries.

Many may consider this allegation idealistic even utopian. These are people who have failed to study and understand the essence of technological democracy governed by the principle of equality of opportunity. One cannot judge or evaluate the characteristic of this system by employing presently available bases for evaluation. A proper judgment requires a thorough knowledge and understanding of the system. Faulty judgments are often the result of haste or shallowness of information about the subject matter.

The National Government

In Technological democracy, all line functions of the national government are eliminated except for defense and foreign affairs. The size of the latter two is also substantially reduced. All current vast bureaucracies of the regulatory agencies and those concerned with education, health care, welfare programs, social security, commerce, justice, federal courts, transportation, agriculture and other similar departments are discarded. The whole Congress and its vast staff institutions are also eliminated.[1](For detailed description of this concept see the references at the end of this essay.)

The Structure and Functions of the National Government. The traditional representative system of government and its corresponding institutions employed at the present are far outdated for the fast-moving and self-contained technological society. The system presented here is quite new and fundamentally different. It is difficult to visualize the exact structure and function of a future system. Here only its basic features are considered. In real practice, some modifications may be required.

Considering the early stages of the system, besides defense and foreign affairs, the main functions of the national government are concerned with studying and establishing economic, social and political standards, all based on the principle of equality of opportunity. Therefore, there are national legislative and executive branches but substantially different from the present forms.It cannot be established by reforming the old system; it requires a full transformation.

The National Legislative Branch. This is the main policy making body of the national government and consists of a National Legislative and Coordinating Assembly, Economic and Production Council, Health and Education Council, International Affairs Council, and Judicial Council.

1. National Legislative and Coordinating Assembly. This body has three main functions. First, it gives final approval to regional laws. It has amending authority, as it is the guardian of the principle of equality of opportunity. This task is actually minimal. When a regional legislation is made, it is fed into the Technodem. If any part from it is contrary or in conflict with the national standards or laws, it is pointed out by the Technodem and is corrected by the regional authority accordingly. Assembly also functions to provide uniformity in regional laws when they relate to the application of the principle of equality of opportunity.

The second function of this body is to approve and coordinate the framework for actions proposed by all national councils. The main purpose is to streamline conflicts that may arise from the application of frameworks designed by different councils.

Third, this body receives, amends, and approves the national budget submitted to it by the National Executive Council; and approves the framework of functions proposed by the International Affairs Council for the operation of the executive branch including defense and foreign relations.

2. The National Economic and Production Council. This is the most important national institution. Its job is mainly to establish economic standards based on the principle of equality of opportunity and enact a framework of regulations for their implementation. The main functions of the council are:

a. To establish a framework for the rate of return for the use of capital. This is done through a commission and corresponding staff. It is similar to establishing of the interest rate.

b. To devise a framework for position classification and wage system through a corresponding commission and staff.

c. To develop a framework for the use of the natural resources and return of revenues from such use to the public treasury or the Social Consumption Fund. It must be noted that under technological democracy, the principle of equality of opportunity prohibits the ownership of any part from the natural resources by any individual or institution. All these resources belong to the people as a whole. The Natural Resources Committee establishes a framework for the use of natural resources and lease of land and resources. Any direct revenue from such use goes to the public treasury. For example, oil resources may be leased to an oil company for a determined period of time to explore, extract and market the product. However, the proceeds left after paying for all expenses of operation go to the public treasury. This constitutes the market value of oil itself as a resource.

3. The National Health and Education Council. In a technological democracy health care and education are two of the most important services in society. They are the basic requirements for social democracy and socio-economic development. It is obvious that without a healthy and educated society no progress can be expected. In an advanced technological society also, more than any other, the increase in the level of opportunity heavily depends on the level of knowledge one possesses. This increase in the level of opportunity not only relates to the area of work and production but also to the area of enjoyment of life. For example, one cannot properly enjoy and appreciate an opera, classical music, or modern art unless one has knowledge and understanding of it. It can materialize only through education. Thus, it is imperative that health care and education be fully available to every individual and the work schedule in society be established accommodating education into work hours making education continuous in both areas of technical-professional as well as social-cultural knowledge. Cultural and humanistic education must be made mandatory because it is absolutely necessary to maintain and advance a civilized democratic society. This class of education includes the areas of humanities such as art, music, philosophy, literature, history, foreign languages, and the normative aspects of social sciences. Equality of opportunity in health care and education can be materialize if they are available to the public free of charge. The money to provide these services comes from the Public Consumption Fund.

The first stage of education is the most crucial in preparing children for a democratic way of life, for its comprehension as well as enjoyment. Four years of semiformal yet full time education is required from age three to seven. It constitutes of grades one to four. It is quite similar to preschool education in the ex-Soviet Union, which was considered by many experts to be the best in the world, but more systematic and more comprehensive. Then comes eight years of full time general education from age eight to fourteen, consisting of grades five through twelve. It embodies three major areas of knowledge: social sciences, humanities, and general sciences, including mathematics, each area receiving equal attention in the curriculum. Six years of at least one foreign language is required.

After graduation from this stage, every person works part-time while studying part-time, from age 15 up to 22. He then receives his higher education degree (equivalent to over an M.A. in our present higher education standards) and starts full time work- 34 hours per week.. From there on until retirement at the age 52, each individual is required to continue a part-time education- 6 hours per week, making education a part from 40 hours work per week. The content of this education is equally divided between cultural and professional-technical depending on the nature of employment and job skills requirement. The main purpose of this education is to keep one up-to-date in his area of specialty and expand his knowledge into other desired specialty areas, as well as to improve worker's cultural and intellectual knowledge for a better understanding of human society, better enjoyment of life, and maintaining of democracy.

However, one is not restricted to this requirement in his education. This is only the minimum requirement, and one remains free to pursue his education further and to advance his knowledge as he desires. Under the required education, a worker generally reaches the level of knowledge equivalent to a Ph.D. within ten years, and his education beyond that for the next 20 years, would place the worker at the level of post-doctorate compared to the present knowledge levels. The basis for this concept is simple. Democracy can be established and sustained only in a society where people are fully informed and intellectually advanced. It must be noted that one's education does not stop with retirement. Free education is available to everyone for life.

Health Care. This essential service is rendered through the Technodem, local and regional health care agencies. The framework of their functions and required minimum standards are established by the National Health and Welfare Commission. All health care costs are paid through the Public Consumption Fund. The primary concern will be preventive medical services. The Technodem will be of great help in making such services available, providing preventive and general healthcare, medical information, and general medical consultation at home to every member of society. Particular attention are given to individuals with special and enduring health problems and those retarded or disabled.

4. International Affairs Council. This body has the important function of establishing the framework for international relations covering all its aspects: political, economic and social. These basic policy directions are based on the principle of equality of opportunity. With non-democratic nations the policy directions are based on reciprocal opportunity, gradually moving toward equality of opportunity as those nations incorporate technological democracy in their system.

However, there are certain areas that equality of opportunity will govern from the beginning, regardless of the nature of the other nation's system of operation. For example, in the economic area, equality of opportunity does not allow the exploitation of natural and economic resources of another nation. Because, under this principle, all natural resources of a nation belong to the people of that nation and ultimately to the people of the world. Thus, these resources cannot be owned or exploited by any private or public sector. Any firm, private or public, extracting material resources under a lease contract, is entitled to the full cost of operation and marketing. I takes from the revenues all such costs and pays the balance, which is the actual price of the extracted resources, to the public treasury at home or to the country where the resources were located. This policy, would actually encourage the firm not to exploit the workers but pay wages comparable to the duties of the work. It will cause a substantial increase in real per capita income of the working class in developing countries.

Labor is another important national resource and, based on the principle of equality of opportunity, it cannot be exploited within or outside the country. Thus, the production institutions in a technological democratic society, cannot exploit labor in another country if they move a part from their production of goods and services to that country. The wage system should be comparable to the level established by the domestic system stored in the Technodem. One important effect of this policy would be the elimination or substantial reduction of outsourcing of production and labor and healthy operation of the domestic economy. The equality of opportunity also mandates that no importation of goods or services would be allowed if they are produced by exploited labor compared to the importing country's domestic standards. One strongly beneficial effect of this policy would be substantial increase in wage system in countries which want to do business with a technological democratic nation while exploiting their labor force.

Pursuing equality of opportunity also foster international peace which is a dominant characteristic of democratic life where every claim is resolved by reason and logic than by force. Simply, any military or non-military action causing death, injury or destruction of property deprives the victim of equal opportunity for enjoyment of life or property. Therefore, no country can give or sell arms to another country where such action is to increase the military opportunity of one country over another or become a tool for suppression of its own people. Under the present systems, that of the U.S. in particular, arms sale appears to be the biggest global business. No democracy can be achieved by force and armament since it is inherently undemocratic. The military is presently used to sustain undemocratic conditions benefiting well armed nations such as the United States. Militarism, regretfully, is a remaining vestige from our savage and barbarian past. No nation can be considered civilized while ascribing to militarism.

As a result of international application of the principle of equality of opportunity, ultimately, the national boundaries will disappear, not by force or intimidation but by the consent of the people involved. As each nation develops toward a technological democratic system, it will become a sister state with those already enjoying such a system. The world will gradually move toward a universal technological democracy where national contradictions, in a highly culturally diverse world, will disappear. A permanent world peace will be achieved for the first time in history.

Dr. Reza Rezazadeh

1080 Eastman Street, Platteville, WI 53818

Phone: (608)348-7064

Reference:

For a detailed presentation and analysis of the materials presented in this and all other seven essays, see the following books and other writings by the author by visiting his website http://www.democracywhere.com Technological Democracy: A Humanistic philosophy of the Future Society; Technodemocratic Economic Theory: From Capitalism and Socialism to Democracy; Passage to a Just Society: Secrets of a Democratic Life, Leisure and happiness.

Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin System,and a Fulbright scholar, a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural, and multi-lingual scholar with background in Mechanical Engineering (B.S.M.E.), Continental and Islamic Law (Licenciate), J.D. in American Jurisprudenxce, LL.M. in International Law and International Economics, Ph.D. in Political Science, Economics and Administration, and Doctor of the Science of Law (S.J.D.) the highest law degree offered in U.S. Fluent in five languages: English, French, Spanish, Persian, Azeri-Turkish. Elementary knowledge of Arabic, Urdu, Russian and Italian. Patented inventions; an artist, a poet (oil and pastel), a musician (violin), with over 35 years of academic background in teaching, reseasrch and administration, research and cultural studies in many countries in Europe including USSR, Middle East, Central Asia, Northe africa, Central and South America. Author of 8 books and many scholarly articles listed in his website http://www.democracywhere.com

The Military Oriented Forums

Active military staff, veterans and civilians can now mingle and exchange their views through the military dedicated forums. These boards are built, own and run by veterans and military staff themselves. Every forum aims to reach out for other staff of the armed forces from various parts of the world.

The Internet is playing an important function in communication. It bridges the gap of distance and time of the people who have same interests and principles towards the agency that handles the veterans benefits as well as the current issues that involve our government and the staff of our armed forces. These boards can be easily access using an Internet connection. Hence, providing everyone with a fair share of the argument including the enemies of this country.

Event though there are hundreds of forums across the www that are readily available to listen to what its members have to say, these boards are still well maintained. Nearly all of these sites are maintained by a certain military group like retired soldiers, National Guards and active military groups. Other groups consist of ordinary people and family members of missing or deceased armed member. These groups are moderators of the boards. Their primary job is to eradicate unrelated discussions, foul words and monitoring as well.

Apart from the benefits and other compensations, different sites also discuss the "in and outs" of being an American military, the government and politics, hobbies and other interests. There are also dedicated boards for images, videos and movies about wars and significant happenings in history and forums that are specially built in memory of those service personnel who have lost their lives in different battles.

More than just discussion and private communication with the real defenders of this country, the sites also endeavor to impart facts and awareness to its civilian members and co-soldiers as well. It also provides information to confused member of the military and their loved ones about the benefits that they ought to have by conversing different related topics.

Certainly, forums like other sites are essential elements that complete the www. Its function in our everyday lives is to educate us and open our eyes with the events happening around us specifically for those people who are protecting our country. Any civilian members of these forums are undoubtedly, have interests in the welfare of our men and women in uniform. And these members are also known as supporters.

Liza Chua is a member of Veterans Advantage that supports and provides an excellent line of military benefits to US military. She is also a member of Liberty Fun Pass.

The Rationale Behind Military Interventions And The Analysis Of Ethnic Conflict Regulation Mechanism

1. Introduction

i. Conflict situations are situations of dynamic complexity. In order to solve the problem we will focus on understanding and representing the dynamics of a system. We will describe interactions among social structures and review processes in complex situations utilizing system dynamics. We will use causal loops identifying main elements and their interconnections focusing on feedback loops that will help explain system behavior.

ii. The main purpose of this article is to express as straightforwardly as possible a few key ideas and therefore bring forth more clearly the logic of reasoning, and in particular the assumptions being made concerning the interdependence of social networks and furthermore to exploit the possibilities of the application of system thinking and system dynamics in order to prevent military interventions. In addition we will question the rationale behind military intervention in the Western Balkans.

iii. A growing number of international conflicts represent a major challenge to international organizations. The track record of international community interventions shows that it is necessary to use additional analytical tools to apply different strategies for conflict solving; system dynamics and system thinking.

iv. Resistance to System Thinking in Conflict Situations is well known: Usually key players in conflicts situations are resistant to system thinking. The introduction of System Dynamics involves the overcoming of these resistances.

v. System Dynamics will contribute in increasing the awareness needed to deal with conflict in deal making.

vi. In order to understand international conflicts in it is important to understand that each conflict is a two stage process consisting of:

The Pre-conflict Phase - The interrelationship among actors in a group. These same actors develop and later on are referred to as opponents. This model will describe group dynamics and the process from group mobilization to group action.

The Conflict Phase: Once the groups are in action there are different constraints that arise such as internal support, resources and availability of resources, military action, and international military action.

2. The Pre-conflict Phase

vii. Ethnic Conflicts: Max Weber states that ethnic groups are those human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent... [which] must be important for the propagation of group formation's. Group differences then produce different social dynamic patterns. If this would escalate then we would describe this is an ethnic conflict.

viii. We will assume that ethnic identity is not changed often, however different importance might be assigned to different values over time. If the relative importance of ethnic identity is raised then this can be described as mobilization. Our model will consider technical progress that enables increased contact among the groups, the position of a group in the society, nd the leadership role that is involved.

ix. If increased mobilization evolves into an action it will depend on different factors such as a societal climate for change, or the leadership of ethnic entrepreneurs resulting from available resources, external influences, and other high-profile triggering events, etc.

x. Action depends not only on the characterization of the initial group but on the opposite side as well, this is especially true concerning the level of democracy, with transitional states being most conflict-prone, as well as the level of previous violence, which increases the probability of violent response.

xi. Key components are as follows:

- Political issues: bilateral issues in different areas, refugees, territorial and resource claims, support for separatist movements, government ideology, human rights, military involvement, political crime. - Economic Factors: energy, food, strategic resources, differences between south and north. - Ethnic Relationship: racial attitude, religion, culture. - Defense Capabilities: degree of militarization, weapons, mobilization potential.

xii. Ethnic, Economic and Political Differences will lead to stronger group actions. Moreover democracy will negatively influence the action planned by different groups. Successful actions will usually influence better self perception of a group. Furthermore ethnic differences will help each group develop its own identity. In the case a group being considered a nation (e.g. Balkan Wars) the boundaries between nations would lead to stronger government support and the furthering of group mobilization.

3. Pre conflict phase: Case Study of Western Balkans

xiii. The framework described matches experiences with conflicts in the ex-Yugoslavia. Its six republics were bounded by historical and ethnic reasons. Before 1991 Yugoslavia was under communist rule by President Tito. In 1990 Tito died, the economic situation deteriorated, the Soviet block democratized, and Milosevic became party chief in Serbia. Independence then became the political goal for Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia.

xiv. Western Balkans Background:

- Multiple ethnic conflicts in Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia, etc. - Political and Economic Instability (Transition Economies) - Multiple Strategies by different international organizations

4. Conflict Phase

xv. It is important to track the dynamics of conflict. Moreover the coordination of different sets of players is crucial.

xvi. The model will describe internal and external influences and also their interconnections. To illustrate the theory of lateral pressure will be used in international relationships. This theory defines that internal sources of conflict leads to potentials for external conflict and that this further depends on the population, level of technology, and access to resources.

xvii. In our model we see that resources have a positive influence on military actions and military action has a negative influence on the amount of resources. SDM will help in understanding possible and probable outcomes of conflict situations and will help in preventing unintended consequences uncovering hidden dynamics drive pre conflict dynamics in shaping the conflict phase.

xviii. Furthermore a hypothesis is represented that when resources decline while providing the population technological growth the result is an increase in the level of internal pressure. Sustained stress will lead to violence and moreover impacts the preliminary reasons for conflict. In addition increases in both technology and population influences external pressure and will therefore cause international conflict.

xix. Then further assumptions are marked. We see that an increase in technology and population will have a positive influence on GDP. GDP will then influence the military budget and this will usually lead to higher military spending and military action. When resources are limited international conflict and violence will lead to a lower labor force and worsening technology and result in a decline in the GDP. It is evident that this system is stable no matter the suffering of the population, and that the causes of each war are catastrophic. We must then conclude that military intervention would have a negative influence on GDP and that military action is necessary in the short term perspective.

5. Intervention of International Organizations in the Western Balkans and the Rationale Behind Military Action

xx. Classical Mechanisms of International Organizations: Structure a framework in which incentives for cooperation will outweigh the benefits from violent actions and confrontations.

In this instance we will use Schneckener's approach that is driven by a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable policies aimed at settling ethnic conflicts. Elimination strategies comprise genocide, ethnic cleansing, and forced assimilation; control regimes include coercive domination, co-opted rule, and limited self-rule. Besides the unacceptable policies there are policies of recognition.

Elimination Control Recognition

Genocide/ ethnocide Ethnic cleansing Forced assimilation

Coercive domination Co-opted rule Limited self-rule

Domestic and international minority rights regimes (MRR) Integrative/consociation power-sharing (PS) Territorial solutions (TS) Bi-/Multilateral regimes (BMR)

xxi. International Organizations used the following approaches in Western Balkans

MRR PS TS BMR Dayton - Bosnia, Kosovo UNSCR 1244, Macedonia Ohrid Agreement

xxii. International Organizations have been successful in the long run because they have used recognition strategies. In system dynamics terms this would imply:

- a higher level of democracy - lower political differences - lower economic differences (financial aid)

xxiii. However the main question remains whether they would be successful with the NATO interventions in 1995 and especially in 1999. The Model presented is a straightforward reply to this question.

6. Conclusion

xxiv. We have shown that recognition strategies can be successful in the long term. However there is still a need for military intervention providing that civil rights are not respected and people are suffering in order to secure a short term prospect of situational well being.

Creating a Global Political Party

Part I - Current Trends

As we become more globalized, is it time that the citizens of the world created a worldwide political party? Such parties exist in Europe, for example, under the umbrella of the EU. There are loose associations between the European wide Christian Democratic parties, Socialist parties and Green Parties. But there is no real sense of a truly international party, it is more like an association of like minded parties, but the membership is definitely national.

The democracies of the world have been able to reach very high levels of prosperity, especially since the end of the Second World War, but unfortunately the prosperity of the non-democratic countries has lagged tremendously. The most blatant examples are in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Countries like Argentina, Mexico, Ukraine or even Russia, when one takes into consideration the amount of natural and human resources; the only explanation for the gap in development with other nations is political.

Many have wondered at the tremendous economic success of the United States. Students from the United States are certainly no where near the top of the any ranking of curriculum.

The Washington Post reported "The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries."

Clearly people in the United States are not better prepared than there counterparts, nor more talented. The secret to the incredible and enduring prosperity of the United States is very simple but often overlooked. The key to American prosperity is the tremendously strong, almost sacred democratic institutions that have guaranteed the supremacy of constitutional rights of those of any person or party. The United Kingdom demonstrated the superiority of these institutions in the nineteenth century as the United States had done in the 20th. And as these two nations spread their ideals through Western Europe and Japan and Korea, prosperity has followed.

It is no surprise, that when the United States denied some groups within its borders the full value of these democratic rights, the economic prosperity of these groups lagged substantially behind the majority. In the Great Britain, the example of Ireland stands out. Where and when legal rights where denied, Ireland remained economically backward. Curiously, now that Republic of Ireland is a full member of the EU, and a strongly democratic country, its per capita GDP is actually significantly higher than that of the United Kingdom.

But there has never been the need or the desire to carry these values into the international arena. What was sacred at home was not considered crucial when dealing with foreign countries. In the case of the United States, suffice to look at our relationship with Iran, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Argentina, Chile, Vietnam, Guatemala or Nicaragua to see how little it valued sound democratic principles when dealing abroad. The example of Iran is particularly interesting, as the United States continually disregarded the democratic movements in Iran. Imagine Iran today if the United States had supported the same values in Iran that it does at home?

The Israeli example is perhaps the most blatant. Palestinians are not considered worthy of the same rights as Jews or Americans, all in an effort to safeguard Israeli prosperity. It seems the lesson is never learned, the key to security is prosperity, and the key to prosperity is sound democratic institutions.

More than any other media, the internet has given citizens of the world the possibility to freely communicate with each others and share information, data and media. One of the major benefits of the emergence of the English language as the 'de facto' international language is that joined with the internet, we have now practically overcome almost all the political and economic barriers to people communicating with each other. Basic english skills and access to a PC and the internet, and you can communicate with the world. Isn't it time that we began to use the internet to give the whole world, what until now, only the privileged few enjoyed.

The economics behind creating a world political party are miniscule. With a few thousand US Dollars, a robust website with an email and chat platform could be created. Leave the marketing to the buzz. If the message is the right, viral marketing will take the parties platform to all ends of the earth, and create a vital force to change the word, for practically nothing.

What do most of the people want in the world? The Financial Times will tell you they want mobile phones or BMW's. But the truth is, most people want a safe, clean, comfortable place to live with running water, food, clothes, safe and accessible education for their children and healthcare. Imagine a world political party that said the number one priority for all the world is that everyone has these things. Before one more fighter plane is built, before one more Mercedes rolls off the assembly line, every human deserves a clean bed, food, clothes, medical care, and education for their children. Maybe in the past it was difficult to imagine the world as one family; the obstacles between countries and peoples were tremendous. But now we are truly one.

Can you imagine a family, living in a beautiful house, where some members sleep in the bushes, some on the floor in the kitchen while others sleep comfortably in the master bedroom under clean cotton sheets? We are finally realizing that we really all are part of the same family. And with the same intensity that we use to organize and support world athletic tournaments, it is time we began organizing a world political party.

Part II - Structure

Considering the ease at which a world political party could be created with the Internet and the widespread knowledge of English, an important question must be asked and resolved before even ideology is discussed and that is how the party should be structured and how it will intervene in national politics.

One absolutely critical point is that in the party constitution, which will cover the structure and actions of the party, as well as the ideology, it must be made absolutely clear that the party will always act within the laws of the country it is acting in. This could and will be a major point of contention, but it is not negotiable. The viability of the party is based on the fact that it will never support violence in the pursuit of political power and will always act within the legal boundaries of the country where it is operating.

The party will be virtual on the international level, but on the national level it will have a structure similar to other political parties in the nation in which it acts. The website will be the hub of international activity. Members will sign up, have a message board, forum, virtual conventions twice a year, as well as volunteer and paid positions. The key to the structure of the website and the party in general is transparency. All monies coming in as well as going out will be made public on the website. Monthly statements will be made public. Initially, there will be a 6 person representation from each country elected to a international physical conventions of the party, which will take place twice a year. Considering that there are more or less 200 countries in the world and that each would have 6 representatives, there would be roughly a 1200 person World Congress. This World Congress will elect a 12 person Executive Committee, with no more than one person eligible per country. The entire world membership will elect the Chairperson of the Executive Committee which will be one of the members of the Executive Committee.

Once this has been completed at the World Congress, work will begin on drafting a constitution that will be ratified at the following physical World Congress. This is potentially the most challenging moment for the party. The Constitution will not only serve as overriding rule of law for the party, it will also become the keystone for the world constitution that will govern the New World Government. The six month debate the will ensue must be of the highest order, and as widespread among members as possible.

Once this constitution is drawn up and ratified, work can begin on bringing the local parties to power. While the ideological basis for the party will be discussed in the next article, it is important nonetheless to discuss the overriding goal of the party, and that is to create a one world government, bound by its own law to protect all member states and citizens. The most likely framework is a governance body that begins with a limited number of members, and grows slowly outward. This must be considered when drafting the initial constitution. All language, attitudes and spirit must be inclusive of those nations not operating under the charter.

The parties operating in each nation must work on all levels, national, regional and local, to gain political power. Once that political power is acquired, it must be used for two purposes: first two pursue policies that promote the values and ideals of the World Constitution, and second to bring the host nation under the charter of the New World Government. This pursuit must always follow the laws of the host nation and never, under any circumstances, promote or support any violent act.

While this may seem far fetched to discuss before even a website is started, we must not underestimate the speed at which these types of endeavors can progress with modern dissemination methods. This will be the first truly worldwide movement. No matter who gains leadership or protagonism within the party, the key to the success of the party is that it never becomes associated with one particular country, area, organization or culture. All people in leadership levels must act in the interest of the whole. Language, actions, or policies that are exclusive must be avoided.

First and foremost we are human beings. Within the context of the party, we will want to avoid any behavior or policies that are exclusive of anyone due to their gender, race, ethnicity, sexual identity, the language the speak or don't speak, financial position or any other reason. One of the fundamental reasons for the founding of the party is to stop those types of behaviors at least in as much as they hinder many humans from acquiring the very basic necessities of life.

A possible name for the party is the World People's Party, or WPP. And the congress's could be called the World People's Congress and the new government could be called the New World Body. These are simply suggestions; all would have to be voted on at the first World Congress. But in order to act sometimes it is important to have name.

Finally, the call action. For this to get off the ground, one donor must be found to fund the building of the website (programming, design, creative pieces, email service, and initial ad campaign). Depending on the donor, this could range from $10,000 at a minimum, to $10,000,000 at a maximum. The difference in quantities will be reflected in the speed of the campaign and the assurance of success. A $10,000 start could fail before it ever got off the ground, with $10,000,000 success is assured. Anywhere in the middle ands speed and success of the campaign is more or less certain. Before anything can be started, an international organization would have to be founded, to administer monies, payments, charters etc.

So we have the goal, it is time to get started, and have one person initialize funding, create the organization, and get the website and message out there. The rest the people will handle.

Part III - Ideology and Platforms

Three major challenges confront the world today, poverty, corruption, and sustainable growth. The first two particularly pertain to the underdeveloped and developing world. Poverty and corruption today is primarily a circumstance of undemocratic and corrupt government. With current technological advances, a government that works for the people, in their best interest, will quickly be able to raise standards of living. Poverty and corruption work hand-in-hand. Prosperity means strong democratic institutions, institutions that will put the government at the service of the people, not at the service of self-serving politicians and oligarchs who only pursue personal wealth and power through government service.

Sustainable growth is something that is equally difficult for all, developing countries as well as developed countries. Coordinating our consumption of raw materials as well as manufactured goods is vital to sustainable prosperity. Only a universal plan, free of greed and corruption, will be able to administer the world's resources in a responsible and sustainable way.

Many believe the environment will not be able to sustain a growing world population and economy. Clearly the earth's resources are strained, but there is also another threat looming that could be a more imminent danger. The possibility that the world is reaching peak oil has been openly debated. It is not clear how close that point is, but when it is reached, the price increases that will occur on the downside of the graph as our oil reserves go from their high points towards depletion will be tremendous. Though we do not know when this will occur, there is a possibility that it could occur within the next 10 years, and it is very likely to occur with the next 50 years.

While the deterioration of the environment is obviously a tremendous danger to the continued progress of humanity, the problem of peak oil could actually be more dangerous in the short term. So much of our current prosperity is based on oil and the economic growth that oil offers, that once it becomes prohibitively expensive, the world may have difficulty supplying basic needs to a population that grew so rapidly from abundant cheap energy.

The entire current world infrastructure, as well as the financial system is based on cheap oil. Once we begin the downward slope from peak, not only could we face real problems to feed and house the world population, there is also the danger of war over the ever declining supplies of oil.

The people of the world must unite under a group of institutions that will be given power by the nations of the world to administer the resources of the world, insure the basic human rights of the world's citizens, and be the arbiter of international relations.

Human rights are clearly the right to expression, basic private property, the right to work, the right to a clean safe home, the right to eat, the right to health care, and right that all children be given a complete education. Today this is possible. It may not have been possible even 25 years ago, but with advances in technology we can give every human these basic elements of life. It will not happen overnight, but with a concerted global effort, it is conceivable to achieve within ten years. How would this be paid for? Where would the resources come from?

All persons have the right to basic private property, which means a home, transportation, private belongings, investments, money, etc. But the ownerships of the world's natural resources must be property of all citizens of the world. This may be extremely difficult to implement in the short term, but the consequences of not doing this could be fatal for human culture. Initially, all nation states should take control of basic natural resources, water, wood, oceans, oil, minerals etc. The shareholders of the entities that now own these resources would be compensated. Once these resources were under control of nation states, a 10% tax would be placed on the international commerce of these natural resources to pay for the infrastructure needed in developing countries, this tax plus their own revenue generated from the sale of these resources would pay for the building of homes, hospitals, infrastructure, schools, universities etc.

The second source of revenue for the international governing body would be a membership tax on all nations that enter the international organization. This tax would be a 50% tax on military spending. This would generate revenue and drastically reduce the amount of world military spending. These would be the only sources of revenue for the world governing body. Any military operations would be carried out by the militaries of member nations. As the party begins to win control of nations, these nations would enter the world governing body by parliamentary vote or referendum, much the same as has occurred with the EU.

Another source of revenue to fund the development of infrastructure across the world would be the creation of a new world currency. This new currency will be backed by the world's natural resources. All national debts would be dissolved and reimbursed by the new currency. The freed tax revenue would be dedicated achieving the basic rights of men; food, housing, work, health care and education in the developing world, as well as creating a new, clean energy source and infrastructure in the developed world that can be quickly transferred to developing nations. New communities and energy sources will be created under a clean, sustainable, peaceful model.

The world governing body and world constitution will detail the legislative procedures to enact and realize the core values of the world constitution. War, corruption, oppression, and the unsustainable dissipation of the world's natural resources will not be tolerated in member nations. In exchange for the immense resources that the world governing body will allocate, completely transparent democratic institutions must rule all member nations, above all person or party.

The world governing body will leave the vast majority of culture governance to national and regional governments. World holidays will be created, as well as educational databases, exhibitions and international budgets for the promotion of the great world traditions. There will be a complete and total separation of the world governing body from any religious affiliation whatsoever.

To summarize the ideological foundation of the world governing body, life, freedom, peace, democracy and sustainability. Once these have been reasonably assured for all humans, a new age of peace, harmony and sanity will prevail.

Robert Bonomo is a journalist, blogger and internet marketer. He has recently published a novel, Cactus Land, available on Amazon. PURCHASE CACTUS LAND ON AMAZON.

He also has a blog, Cactus Land, and works as an internet marketing consultant. See Professional Services Link on his blog for details. Read Robert's blog CACTUS LAND BLOG.

What We Once Entrusted to God - We Now Demand From Politics

Politics is a repository where we dump everything ominous and uncomfortable that we don't want to know about, don't want to be responsible for, and don't know what to do with. We elevate certain persons to power far greater than we give to ourselves, expecting in return for them to handle what frightens and confuses us. As such politicians are small derivatives of what God once was worldwide. For most of human history what happened was God's will and doing. Politics thus has a great deal in common with religion in that it presumes to be in charge of everything, when actually it is in charge of far less ... mostly the military and spending our money.

Like heaven, politics promises everything while delivering very little, mostly an assurance of better times to come-the pretend-form of hope. We need to put the things that we can't handle somewhere so we can pretend they're being taken care of, in a lofty-far removed from us-place, managed by special people who are bigger and wiser than the rest of us. To consider that these elevated people know nothing more than we do about what's wrong, or what to do about it, or that most of the protection we're expecting to be in place, isn't really happening-is very frightening. These miserable results aren't anybody's fault, though we're fond of blaming specific politicians. Debates over which candidate is good and who is bad fuels our elections with some reason to be involved with what spends most of our resources, and accomplishes very little of real value to each one of us.

That is, unless we choose to regard the nation's defense-a powerful military-as saving our skin, when it wouldn't be necessary in the first place if politics did what it promises constantly to be doing-bringing peace and safety. Over time politics has been defined in various ways, as living god-ness, kingly rule, priestly powers, and presently as majority-mob- rule. By definition, politics is designed to assert power, not to bring peace. If it ever succeeded-which it can't-it would put itself out of business. And who in power wants, or knows how to do that? And yet we entrust most of our basic needs to this venerable institution. Let's examine where we've deposited the family jewels. The political arm of the public realm is a non-personal place where we hire people-actors-to stand in as representatives of our most vital needs. Politics decides how much personal opportunity and support society encourages and facilitates for each one of us in the course of our lives. There is no question that the quality of democratic opportunity has increased over hundreds of years. It's a question of how far it still must still go-which is very far.

Politicians pretend to solve problems by investing money in them, though the problems remain largely intact, revealing how little of what's dear to us can be obtained by spending money. Politicians are actors simply because no one can "represent" another person except by pretending what they're doing is "for your own good", is the usual way authority-figures put it. When like the rest of us, they only know how to represent themselves. They do this very effectively behind closed doors and between the lines, skimming off the extras that a public life offers/requires, which is what they, and most of us believe is necessary or we wouldn't so vigorously celebrate the fame of political figures. Our adoration, expressed either as love or hate, gives them special privileges.

Though it's almost never mentioned, politics is based upon the notion that people can say anything they want as long as they don't do very much about it. This is mostly what politics is made of-rhetoric-pretending to solve the world's problems by talking about them. The unwritten, unacknowledged purpose of politics is to prevent anything new from happening. This repressive attitude is called "patriotism," "loyalty" and "law and order." This view posits that the past is holier than the present. Something new that changes the way the system works is considered "un-American", and perhaps even treasonable. Politics sets up bureaucracy to administer its pseudo-decisions. These superstructures that govern key parts of our lives are designed to be moderately oppressive so we don't notice how ineffective they are in responding to our needs. The strategy is based on the notion that if someone is being annoyed and threatened, they'll be too busy defending themselves to notice how much we have failed to respond to what they've requested or complained about. We all have had this experience when we've called a bureaucracy.

They blame us for the problem. Most recently, phone systems have been employed in order to turn up the volume of our annoyance, making it Herculean to impossible to reach a live person, amplifying our resentment commensurate with the increase in public un-safety, and giving us something small to notice and complain about-telephone tag-instead of straight talk about terrorism and torture ... and why we're not all directly voting on how to spend our community property. Most of us would describe this awful experience as the perfidy of bad people doing bad things. The simple truth is that politicians are acting like this for our sake. We should feel sorry for them. In spite of how much money and opportunity they have access to-if they possess sufficient self-centered opportunism-they're our whipping boys that we regularly abuse. They're in public life to be complained about, so that we don't notice the lousy structure of our government, even in our wonderful-in-many-ways democracy.

Governments are structured to make sure nothing changes. If we keep pointing our fingers at a few people for being bad guys, we won't notice how much the whole bloody system needs to be overhauled. Thomas Jefferson strongly recommended that the structure of the government be changed every twenty-five years if need be. Though actually doing it would be very frightening to us. This was undoubtedly why we originally voted down his idea of a constitutional convention convening every generation (25 years). Instead, we venerate the Constitution as a holy relic, as if tradition was more important than people. Even if we admit that politics is too powerful, we still believe it's just another king who is now accountable to us. When it's actually much worse than the king was. Power is now centered in not one, but thousands of people who collaborate with each other far better than they do with us. How do you hold so many people accountable? Anybody who believes voting or the news media create accountability is seriously delusional. Not that they don't make excellent contributions. Both voting and the news used to be powerful, but like everything, they became a sham because they haven't changed.

News advertises one point of view. We all know that; which is why so many of us don't read much of it, don't vote, and don't watch the news. This only adds to our sense of helplessness and despair. The news should present to us all points of view in the same news program, so we would no longer pretend there's only one way of looking at anything. This would help us make up our own minds about what's happening in the world. It would most likely also frighten us to see regularly that there are no easy answers. It's safe to conclude that politics is where we pretend the most. Specifically, we pretend that people are inspired and enlightened by their vocation to look after the welfare of us all. But what is this pretence? It's primarily a passionate belief in the personality of the candidate. It's no different than believing a Hollywood actor is someone of note beyond the heroic, villainous or non-descript parts that they play in the movies. They begin to believe what their fans say about them, and act like big shots. Increasingly politics is personality worship. But what does personality have to do with the issues and problems besetting us? Personality is our public identity-persona-while character is everything we are, parts of which others see much easier than we do. Public appearance reduces who we are to caricatures exaggerating whatever aspects of us that particular public scene amplifies. They don't demonstrate who someone is.

We need to be alone with our politicians and challenge them in similar ways to how we test potential love partners, that is, if we test our lovers instead of perpetually trying to arrange the pretense of romance-our current wished-for relationship with politicians. Maybe then we would have some idea of who they are. In the meantime, "the show must go on" with its dodges and pretense. We all know that politicians and actors are like us, frail, unknowing in many ways, struggling to understand life, and subject to the same temptations of anyone who is confused and frightened. Politicians are vulnerable to the corruption that exists in any false-front society. They pretend to be "in charge" when they don't have any idea of what to do. In desperation, government has turned over the reigns of power to money, making bargains with big business in Machiavellian amoral ways, while spewing moral political rhetoric. Probably 90 percent of income available to politicians has been acquired dishonestly if one defines honesty rigorously. Knowing this we feel despairing. But we don't know what else to do.

Representative government liberated us from the King and his nobles, and partially from the Church and its presumptive holy pontifications, when we finally realized that nobody has a direct line to God. But we still ask ourselves, "Isn't representation what democracy is about? Isn't voting the only way the average citizen can participate in government?" The answer to both questions is no. But where do we go then when we feel that our political system isn't working? We usually blame the bad guys, as if only some of us created the problems. When we all are responsible for them. Any other assumption is patently undemocratic! In the true nature of democracy, we're all responsible for everything. So why have we been blaming politicians when they don't know anymore than we do about how to fix things? The problem isn't bad people. It's bad structure. Once again habit comes back to reveal its power. Social structure is just institutional habit. Every good idea eventually becomes a bad one.

It's called change. That's what happened to representative government. It was a profound and liberating solution. It's now become an oppressive and dehumanizing obstacle to the continued progress of democracy. We're not as naïve as we used to be. In fact, in the social realm the talents of the majority are grossly underused, in effect utterly ignored! We're far more capable of forming opinions than any of us imagine -and expressing them-in effect being in charge of our own lives. We're not so easily duped by misinformation, which is what politics has been giving us for centuries. We just never noticed this evolving truth about ourselves. In fact, we believed what we were told. Look at old movies and see how people relate to authority. Thank somebody that we are no longer so naïve. We can thank the Internet for giving us relatively free access to all information.

So what's wrong with the system? To begin with, money dominates modern life throughout the system with its amoral anti-philosophy-"it's just doing business"-that makes the world one huge criminal state. As evidence on the news, international crime is increasingly being reported. The anti-moral, anti-spiritual perspective of money has come to dominate the world. It's called "capitalism" and "modernization." The business of making money has become the underground world government. What's the crisis? It's a crisis of credibility. There is nothing in the world in which we believe passionately except for money, which has no credibility whatsoever, and openly brags about it. Business regards "profit" as superior to credibility, pretending there's something moral about making money at the expense of other people. One of our biggest pretenses is that profit doesn't hurt or deprive anyone. There's another whopper possessing enormous pretend-credibility hanging about-that certain people need to be very rich in order to keep the economy going. That's not true.

Projects need huge capital, but that does not require individual people having it. Perhaps we ought to consider putting consumers on the board of directors with equal voting power or limiting the wealth that any one person can possess and see how much good we can accomplish with all the extra resources. Call it "communism" if you like. What difference does it make what we call it? Lots of Karl Marx's ideas were bunk. Maybe this one wasn't. Capitalism has won, so why don't we try to assimilate some of our former opposition's best ideas? Nobody, even our enemy, is all-wrong. Though Marx was wrong about redistributing wealth. The real solution is to eliminate the possibility of great individual wealth. The limitation of wealth would actually accomplish something else far more important. It would take gambling-the big kill-out of the mainstream of life, rendering it more of a pastime than the core of our big dream to strike it rich.

On an emotional level, the legitimacy of this craving is the dream of having safe security. Unfortunately it's based on the cynical belief that money can buy anything. It's not that we entirely believed this in our conscious mind. But in experience we function as if we did. Once more, we are of two minds, and the truthful one is most easily discarded. We want to buy comfort, most of all, and as much safety as we can. If we provided everyone in the world the basics of life-food, clothing, a shelter of their own, protected aloneness, and warmth-there would be far less crime than there is and the cost to society would be much less than it is. That affluent Western civilization hasn't already done this, at least for its own people, is an utter disgrace! If we do this, dread will be removed from everyone's life, which derives from never knowing whether we will have enough to survive. The disgraceful term "poverty" defines all of us who aren't upper-middle class, meaning all those who worry about not having enough all their lives. We continue to inflict on ourselves the cruel, demeaning, and frightening belief that comfort and security must be worked for, must be earned monetarily, or we don't deserve it except as charity that insults the recipient. The humiliating bullet of that perfidious moral assertion is what we try to dodge by getting rich.

If we got used to the idea money isn't so terribly important except as a unit of measurement-in fact it's downright boring-we might consider the unthinkable: to relinquish ownership, that primitive relationship we have with parts of nature, and with each other, that spawns so much violence and abuse. We might replace ownership with choosing the right lifetime occupation, which is what we need far more. We would no longer say, "I can do what I want" and begin to say, "I am the steward of this place, and of my life, as long as I need to be." The idea horrifies us because we have invested so much of our comfort and security in the concept of ownership. Our firm conviction in the necessity of it prevails even though we know how much damage this belief has done to the environment and each other, both of which we have owned for thousands of years, most of human history. Perhaps we don't need to give it up entirely. But we should reexamine it. In change, nothing is sacred. We can either join the process of evolution or we can continue to fight it and probably lose in the end.

But what is most paramount to the well-being of humanity is the elimination of violence, which will only happen if we are far more resolute than we are now. It requires preventing any one human from ever being violent more than once. We'd like to entirely eliminate violence. But we can't restrain someone just because we think they might hurt someone, only after they've actually done it. Like everything else repetitive in human nature, violence is habituated. It is not a matter of personal choice. If someone is violent once, they'll be violent again. We must make sure that doesn't happen. Though most likely it will take fifty or a hundred years for us to move toward this solution, giving us time to figure out how best to do it, and people plenty of time to adapt to it before it becomes law. Instead of such visionary reaching, what are we doing? In this technological age we are highly over-identified with our machines because they seem so much more powerful than we are. We want to be a machine! We call these "bionic" wonders "superheroes." We give them magical superpowers-what most movies are about now.

A recent remake of the movie Manchurian Candidate appears to be a story about the evil uses of genetic engineering, when it's most fundamentally a story about bad mothers and fathers. Many parents still perceive their children as instruments of their own power instead of someone entrusted to them in order to assist them in releasing their (the children's) natural powers as independent agents. The movie also expresses what it's like to be dominated by others who pretend to be serving us. This exposes the ways in which family, society, and culture control our lives by keeping the vast majority of us anxious, insecure, about not having enough resources and by insisting we fill standardized identities and jobs. In other words, we've always been dominated by the machine we call "royalty," "the church," "society," the "majority," "the economy," or "the marketplace." Only recently have a great many of us begun to venture into "entrepreneurship," creating the shape and form of our own work. And yet, what still dominates this effort, what we must do in conformance to society's cultural capitalistic command, is to make money simply to survive. This gross necessity distorts the process of being what and who we are because of money's cynical amorality. The result is that we make money at the expense of others.

The care of service has become an advertiser's joke. Some would insist that we have to cooperate with each other, to which I would agree. But that cooperation is democratic only when individuals arrange to collaborate with others individuals because they want to. It's happening more and more all the time. But that mode of governance has barely begun to take over the human experience. Of course we don't know how to collaborate well because we've never seriously tried. These provocative ideas violate many sacred cows of democratic rights in their present form and are thus very unlikely. They're presented herein as illustrations of what we should consider and how much determination will be required for us to reach our goals. It will require the willing cooperation of the vast majority of people in the world, which will probably take fifty or a hundred years to achieve. But nothing will ever happen unless we get started in earnest. We believe politics requires politicians. It doesn't, only administrators of our common will.

It terrifies us to imagine ourselves as individuals taking over the world and being responsible for what happens in it ... perhaps by voting on the Internet. Undoubtedly the ideas presented herein are crazy and unworkable. Most certainly that will be the response of many. But they're not meant to be workable solutions. They are challenges that are meant to help us imagine that individuated forms of governance are possible, that is if we have the will and courage to make ourselves ready and available to such drastic change. By keeping ourselves safe in the status quo, we vote for the belief that everything's fine and force our children to solve the problems we have chosen to ignore. We needed the Internet in order to imagine such political heresy. We needed a way of communicating directly with each other that isn't controlled or policed by anyone. Let's look honestly at our nature, the good and bad of it. It's all displayed on the Internet. But please let's stop turning our security over to someone else. That's how tyranny was, and still is, built.

In its best form, politics is how we set things up in the large picture of human society in order to do only one thing: facilitate the education and the opportunity of individual people. Nothing should be more important than that. This includes money, economy, and defense. If we make anything else more important than the safe passage of individual effort, we will eventually produce a tyranny. In order to achieve these ends we must define human nature psychologically. We must come to see ourselves as we really are, with as little pretense as possible. We must learn to be unafraid of fear, so that we can learn how to keep it in bounds without killing or attacking each other.

Only individual humans can agree, and then instantaneously be committed to actualizing their agreement with the ruthlessness with which violence deserves to be treated. It isn't people toward whom we have to become determined in a vigorous way. It's violence that we must oppress-suppress, by preventing violent people from ever being violent again toward those who have successfully committed to nonviolence...whatever that comes to mean. However, in spite of the oppression that emanates from political decisions and from public bureaucratic practice, the primary obstacle to change in our times exists inside each one of us where personal habits and their institutional practices obstruct our capacity to think, feel, and imagine big!

Like the poor farmers of Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai, who cringe in terror at the prospect of raising up to face their tormentors, we too have been cowed by our childhood experiences to believe that to be supremely individual, rebellious in thought, word, and deed is a consummately selfish act of treason and a betrayal of the social group, most particularly our family. We were raised to believe such acts deserve the worst kind of punishment-banishment and death.

The family, as its presently structured, is as much an instrument of culture and society as it's an instrument of individual growth and development. It will always condemn rebellion-particularly from itself-before it will encourage individual creativity that might threaten the solidarity of family connections and traditions. This is the hardest lesson, perhaps, that we will ever learn. The prohibitive fears and inhibitions that family, in its present form traumatizes our habit structure will continue to prevent us from imagining ourselves capable of managing the world. For instance, all institutions, including the family do not allow for the arrangement of leadership always to be functional and project driven, which is the only social arrangement that will ever be fully democratic.

Project-leadership emerges spontaneously-the best person for the job-or by vote, but only after the project has been chosen and designed by all of us. Such leadership lasts only as long as the project does, and exists only to focus the efforts of the group of people who implement it. This will not happen unless we vigorously fathom the depths of our own potentially very powerful psyche-spirit, learn to cope with an ethereal, intangible identity, and free the extraordinary talents that lie almost completely unfulfilled.

Without such open transformation such change will never happen today...or tomorrow. For centuries the human spirit has been in bondage. That's where we put it for safekeeping. Unable to occupy it ourselves, we gave it first to every tiny aspect of nature, and then to the gods, and finally to God. We must learn to repossess it. It's who we are. What we do with it is our destiny. It's time to bring it out of cold storage from the next world, so that it can fully occupy, and educate this one.

My additional works can be seen at this website: http://donfenn.com

The Public Sector, Our Grandkids, and The Failure Of Our Political Class

An article by Mark Shields entitled, "The Public Sector And My Grandchildren," appeared in the December 26, 2010 issue of the St. Petersburg Times. In the article, Mr. Shields tries to make the case that government at all levels has and will make sure that his grandchildren have a better life as a result of government, and the politicians running that government, are on the case, effective, and looking out for their well being. To prove his point, he lists out what he perceives to be the good that government and politicians bestow on us everyday.

All Americans should certainly respect Mr. Shield's perspective that government and politicians are dong a good job. If that is his opinion and feels that his grandkids will have a better life as a result, then he probably sleeps better at night than many of us. However, using Mr. Shields' own examples, many of us end up with a diametrically opposite view, namely that government and the current political class that operates it will not create a better future for our grandkids:

- Mr. Shields asserts that his grandkids "will get an excellent education at superior public schools." What is interesting is that in the same section of the same paper on the same day, another article shows that United States teenagers, the vast majority of which went to these same public schools, ranked 31st relative to other nations when it comes 15 year olds performing at the advanced level in math proficiency. Only 6% of U.S. students perform at the advanced level compared to 28% of students in Taiwan that perform at advanced level in math proficiency. The top ten nations all had at least 15% of their kids performing at the highest levels compared to our meager 6%.

The article also broke down the United States performance state-by-state, which may help explain Mr. Shields' high opinion of our public schools. However, the very best state, Massachusetts, only has 12% of its 15 year olds at high proficiency in math, trailing seventeen nations. In fact, only two states had a proficiency at least 10%, the other 48 states were in the single digit range.

Continuing along this same theme, recent news reports showed that the United States trails trails dozens of nations in math, reading, and science and the Defense Department recently reported that almost a quarter (23%) of potential enlistees cannot pass the basic reading and math entrance examinations. A May 11, 2010 Associated Press article stated that about a third of incoming U.S. college students need to take at least one remedial course, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The results of a survey that was published in the July 16, 2010 issue of The Week magazine showed that 26% of Americans did not know that the United States won it's independence from England, with some people in that 26% naming Mexico, France and China. I am sorry I do not share Mr.Shields view of our public schools but based on hard results and experiences, they are anything but superior.

- Mr. Shields maintains that our national safety and defense is protected by the brave men and women of our armed forces, an assertion no one cannot disagree with. However, an important follow on question is needed: at what cost? The Defense Department budget is now in excess of over $800 billion or so, more than 20% of the entire Federal budget. We have hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops stationed all over the world, many serving a purpose that no longer exists. We have tens of thousands of troops in Europe to protect against a Communist military strike. However, that potential is now zero but we spend billions of dollars a year guarding against it.

We have tens of thousands of troops in Japan to guard against what? No one seems to have any idea but it is still billions of dollars wasted. We have almost 30,000 troops in South Korea, despite the fact that a vibrant South Korean economy is strong enough to provide the men and resources to protect itself. More billions of dollars wasted. We still have 50,000 troops in Iraq despite the fact the current President campaigned to get them all out long ago. More billions of dollars wasted annually.

Yes, Mr. Shields, we are thankful for the brave men and women in our armed forces. We are not thankful for the politicians that refuse to stop fighting the wrong and/or non-existent threats and potentially bankrupting the nation in the process with an over sized and inefficient military budget process.

- Most would agree with Mr. Shields that the air with breathe and the water we drink is cleaner and healthier than it probably was several decades ago. This is probably one of the few Federal government areas, pollution control and monitoring, where discernible progress has been made over the past several decades.

However, just how good is the EPA from a pollution mitigation perspective? An April 16, 2010 article in Newsweek magazine asserted that over 720 U.S. companies have been in "continuous violation" of air pollution laws for years. Does not sound like the government is really do all that great of a job if hundreds of air pollution violators can go unpunished for years.

And what about the BP oil spill disaster earlier this year? The government was caught totally unprepared to cope with such massive water pollution. Government employees responsible for oil rig safety have been shown to be preoccupied searching for pornography on their government computers, they did not conduct the required number of safety inspections, many of them admitted to drug addiction habits and usage while on the job, and many were so preoccupied with getting a private sector oil industry job that they may have been derelict in their safety job requirements. As a result of this faulty government oversight, we now have a likely ecological disaster for years to come that may have an impact on Mr. Shields' grandkids down the road from a food safety and recreation perspective.

- Most Americans would probably agree that current government employees and politicians do accomplish many worthwhile activities such as food safety, building safety, air travel safety, libraries, police protection and fire protection. However, they are supposed to to these kinds of activities, they should not be singled out for extraordinary commendations for simply doing their jobs.

- Most would also agree on many other points brought out in the article but Mr. Shields gives government credit for acts that took effect long ago. Ending segregation, passing ant-discrimination laws, maintaining copyright and patent processes, etc. were all done by past generations of government and politicians, not today's political class. This is what today's government and political class has given us


A political process that is riddled with earmarks and the corruption of money from unions, PACs, and corporations, money that overwhelms the needs and desires of ordinary American citizens.
Gerrymandered Congressional districts and primary processes designed to do what is best for the major political powers and the political incumbents, regardless of what is best for the voters in those Congressional districts.
Dozens of SEC employees that have been shown to be totally preoccupied with on-the-job Internet pornography searching as the financial infrastructure of the country melted down into the Great Recession.
A Federal Reserve Board, a Treasury Department, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, FHA, numerous Senate and House Of Representatives committees and subcommittees and droves of government economists that never saw the coming of the Great Recession until it hit them in the face, resulting in high levels of unemployment, the destruction of retirement wealth for millions of Americans, and the systemic destruction of the housing and mortgage industry.
A failure when it comes to the war on drugs as a violent, lawless state, consumed by the drug cartels, evolves just south of our borders.
A failure when it comes to developing a comprehensive and rationale energy policy, more than thirty years after the oil crises of the 1970s showed how much such a policy was needed.
A failure when it comes to national security, resulting in over three thousand civilian deaths on 9-11, years after such a threat was obvious from terrorism due to the first World Trade Center bombing, the African embassy bombings, and the U.S.S. Cole attack.
A failure when it comes to secure borders and a rationale immigration policy.
Extremely high taxation rates, rates that inhibit freedom of choice in this country. When a citizen is paying over 40% of their earnings to all levels of government in taxes and fees, the ability to start a new business, send one's kids to better schools, save for retirement, contribute to a favorite charity, etc. is severely limited. There cannot be political freedom without financial freedom and Mr. Shields' grandkids are heading into a future in this country where freedom is more or less a distant memory.
And worse of all, especially when it comes to Mr. Shields' grandkids, an ever growing and ever dangerous national debt has been thrust upon their future. Before his two grandkids hit second grade, they already are responsible for over $42,000 of the Federal government's national debt (dividing the $13 TRILLION of national debt by the 308 million or so current U.S.citizens). It does not matter how safe the Federal government makes our food or our drugs or our air safety. Unless skyrocketing the national debt is tamed, all other government functions become moot. At the point where the financials of the nation collapses, I am sure that patent protection and copyright protection and the like will not be pressing issues.

And what is our government and political class doing about all of these crises? Apparently not much. Consider a quote from President Obama that appeared in the August 10, 2009 edition of the New York Times: "I've got a lot on my plate and it's very important for us to sequence these big initiatives in a way where they don't all just crash at the same time." Obviously, those running the country now do not see any great urgency if they plan to tackle the major issues one at a time. Unfortunately, for Mr. Shields' grandkids, and the rest of us, these problems will get worse and worse before the political class ever gets to them, reducing our freedom and financial stability going forward.

We have truly entered into an era, of what David Brooks called in a recent New York Times article, of "immobile government." An era where incompetence, bureaucracy, and partisan politics results in a public sector whose successes get fewer and less impactful going forward. This is not due to the hard working government employees but to the insular and out-of touch political class that leads them. So, with all due respect to Mr. Shields position, I am less thankful "what government does for those whom we love." I am more scared by what government does not do or does wastefully or inefficiently for those whom we love.

Walter "Bruno" Korschek is the author of the book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class," which is available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com and online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Our daily dialog on freedom in America can be joined at http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com.

Three Social Theories Applied to Current Military Actions: A Transitional Process for U.S. Forces

INTRODUCTION

The United States entered Iraq in March 2003 in order to oust Saddam Hussein and bring order to the country after his removal. Insurgents poured into the country to wage warfare against the American military. The insurgents continue to learn American military tactics and utilize small firefights and other rudimentary tools to exploit guerilla tactics against American and Iraqi forces.

In December 2005, the Iraqi people freely elected a government to represent them. Unfortunately, the individual political blocs (the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds) have been unable to garner enough support among them to bring the permanent government into reality. The competition between the three is intense, for none of the three trust each other. This distrust stems from the prior regime and is also applicable to military issues as well.

This political disagreement has given a perceived carte blanche to the continued insurgent activities. The insurgents will continue their activities in the hopes of causing enough chaos that the Iraqi government is kept in perpetual infancy for a lengthened amount of time.

One aspect that can thwart the insurgents is the implementation of a plan that will shift the insurgents' activities and perhaps turn the tables on them. This plan must be formulated in order to get the Iraqi government established; a transitional time period needs to exist in order for the American military to leave; and American/Iraqi forces have to be able to leave the security of the country in capable hands. When faced with the inevitable implementation of the Iraqi government taking full power, the insurgents may taper their activities. The only way we can ensure this is the full training and gained confidence of the Iraqi military.

What will be discussed is not new. The watchword for Iraqi progress has to be cooperation. Without it, the country has no impetus to propel it forward. Iraq's desire to rejoin the international community on the world stage is extremely important. There are several personalities/groups that would like to stop this from occurring.

The American military is being asked to do humanitarian care at the same time that they are fighting the insurgents. This can cause confusion between the two paradigms: to find and detain the enemy and providing the means for Iraq to rebuild itself. If not explained to the personnel on the ground, this can be a rather bewildering notion.

This article was undertaken with the intent of spurring debate on the topic of possible interaction and integration of the military with an eventual economic success story. Few ever considered in the modern day that the U.S. military would be involved in the re-emergence of a new society that will shift from a primarily agrarian country to one that may assert some influence on the Middle East in the future. This dialogue will serve as an avenue for military and political leaders to ponder the Iraq question.

LITERATURE REVIEW

In searching through previously published articles, research found that no one had looked at the transition of the government to permanence through a sociological elite thought process. It had been looked at from a strictly Islamic view. There was no comparison of the three theories about to be presented.

This article will primarily build upon the sociological theories of C. Wright Mills, the municipal "growth machine" theory of Harvey Molotch, and the Urban Regime Theory advocated by Clarence Stone. These theories are based on local U.S. municipal research and are being expanded and exported to a foreign country. These theories keyed with financial growth can be the avenue to nation rebuilding. The theories will then expand on an economic development plan that will explore the real possibilities that can place the Iraqi people in an advantageous position using the three aforementioned individual's theories. We will attempt to explore the real possibilities of a fiscal expansion plan that can thrust the country into becoming a successful money-making entity.

To begin with, we have to explore the hypothesis advocated by C. Wright Mills concerning political elites in small, medium and large cities. Political elites are those individuals who have a vested interest in the community and themselves. These persons often are the individual business leaders, the land owners, and the "absentee elites," that is, persons who may own property in a certain city but live elsewhere. We also cannot forget the significance of the religious mullahs (clergymen) as well. The local populaces who do not fall in these categories have little influence on the decision-making process.

All of these leaders tend to pull their clout together for the greater good of the city, at least in speculation. There are many competing interests within the country. These competing interests are no different than any other country in the world. One major issue that we are encountering is the numerous political parties jockeying for control of the government. This is not seen as a problem in Iraq. Competition among the groups allows discussion, debate, and consensus to occur. This allowance of ideas is perhaps one of the greatest freedoms the Iraqi people gained.

In actuality, one can see that the people are finally able to voice their opinions without fear of retribution. The exchange of ideas was not a common occurrence within the country prior to U.S. involvement. The insurgents certainly hope that they can stop the political process from taking place through the use of fear. Over time, the Iraqi people will tire of this fear tactic. It is hoped that the new Iraqi military will keep the peace and displace the insurgents from utilizing this approach.

Sociologist Harvey Molotch, a New York University professor, extended the work of Mills by describing the theory of "growth machines" on the local level in the United States. These "growth machines" are utilized to help bring business and commerce to the local area. By consolidating the power base of the local elites, business and other commerce find an atmosphere of openness that permeates the surrounding areas. This consolidation of the power bases allows the elites to meet and consider the means to bring and sustain growth to the area. There are several ways to do this, but the obvious one remains.

Urban Regime Theory is considered the one social theory to explain how local politics are handled. It is derived from the work of Clarence Stone, a University of Maryland professor emeritus, that states that the two important tenets of this theory are the power that emanates from the elected body as the structure and the goals it desires to attain are understood. We have to consider the cooperation between the standing government and the private interests of others. Once this spirit of cooperation exists, the country will progress.

The maintenance regime that is currently in place is considered one that does little but maintains the status quo. Let us recollect that there was no status quo to begin with. To maintain what used to be in existence would return the country to political and world exclusion. The theory has a continuum, but that will not be discussed at this time. We have to allow the current regime theory to be in place for some time before there is a shift along the scale.

There is a perception that the business leaders abdicate their responsibilities in this theory, and allow the national government to determine its course. This seems highly unlikely considering that taxes i.e. their hard earned money is not being overseen. Business leaders, whether they are in Dallas or Baghdad, seem to look after their money well.

APPLICATION

The national elites (politicians, businessmen, religious men, and the absentees) realize that the country needs structure to continue moving forward. Cooperation must be the watchword for these individuals. So far, the infighting among these groups has gained considerable press and must be stopped to gain recognition from the international community. Once the world views the seriousness of the Iraqi government, then there will be a considerable shift in mindset.

Using the "growth machine" theory, it is fairly obvious that the control of the big cities, municipalities, and the whole nation must take place so that commerce can thrive. If not, there will be continued negative economic growth due to lack of engagement by those in power. The power structure must seek cooperation and cohesiveness so that the national plan can be implemented.

As seen in the United States, employment centers tend to be located in the municipal areas. Realizing this, the infrastructure must be rebuilt in order to get the economic engine running. With the merchants' spending money, then the local community will survive. New businesses will be located in an area that is conducive to them.

Enforcement of the new constitution is necessary for this cooperation to occur. For example, the country has to make the education plank of its constitution a concrete reality. The educational institutions must start producing the teachers, engineers, and nurses that the country needs. It has to make people employable and earning a fair wage in order for the local economy to thrive. In addition, the elites have to connect with the outsiders (those who left Iraq for safety) and bring them back so that they can share their educational and financial expertise.

If there is to be a viable work force, we have to gain control of the national streets and alleys in order to allow commerce to happen. If this does not occur, then the business concept that we are talking about will not occur anytime soon. The financial payoff is obvious: take command of the surrounding areas and the business will come.

International business needs to have a viable reason to expand their businesses in Iraq. The elite in power will attempt to woo them. The government needs to show that there would be financial rewards for them to enter the country. International business would also need a viable and trained local workforce that could be hired so that they could commence business transactions within Iraq.

Using the Urban Regime Theory one begins to understand that the Iraqi government has to cooperate with the local elites in order to implement change. Once the cooperative pact is in place, then the collegiality between the two (government and the business, plus the religious leaders) can begin. Collaboration between all the parties involved only brings progress and stability.

The most important thing in regards to this theory is to maintain what the Iraqis have gained. It is hard to fathom, but the Iraqi people only went to the polls for the first time in January 2005. The face of those first-time voters will not be forgotten soon. Having been in the country when these elections occurred, it was amazing what effect the election process had on the Iraqi people. Many Iraqi translators who worked on a Forward Operating Base showed the military personnel their right thumb with the purple mark that showed they had voted. It was remarkable to note that many had never voted before in their lives. We will continue to rejoice in the fruits of the labors of all involved.

CONCLUSION

The Iraqi people realize what they ultimately want--a return of their country. It is preferable that there be no interference from the international community. Whether or not this is feasible depends largely on the military aspect of the new government. The Iraqi government has to make security the priority if they wish to implement the plans being discussed. Any trade or industry that desires to start a business within the confines of the country has to make significant investments in order to produce goods. This will not occur without a sense of security. There will be no investment from outside countries until this occurs.

It is important to eradicate the insurgent activity so that the commonplace actions of life can begin once again. There is no recommendation that the Iraqi government capitulate to the insurgents. The populace of Iraq needs to be supported in their endeavors. It already appears that this is occurring. The nation is growing weary of the continued violence and the bloodshed. It is just a question of eliminating the insurgents from the periphery.

We have to recall that there will be a continual learning curve with regards to the government. This educational process is no different than any other country that has recently been allowed to make choices for itself. It may be painful for some, but in the end it will all be worth the effort.

Rene De La Rosa was commissioned in the Army in 2002. He has been assigned CONUS, Hawaii, Germany, Bosnia, Korea, and Iraq. He can be reached at rene.delarosa@us.army.mil