Title: Re: A proposal for PFPC
Principles
NOTE: A copy of the post below was sent to WSN yesterday, but it
was not posted. Neither was Dr. Wagar's post, to which it responds.
For this reason I am sending the post below directly to
wsn@csf.colorado.edu.
I fully share Dr. Wagar's desire for an "integrated
planet-wide movement of progressive forces." The still very much
open question is how to achieve that goal.
Both he and I have postulated in our respective futuristic novels
(W. W. Wagar, A Short History of the Future; E. Prugovecki,
Memoirs of the Future) cataclysmic events of the type of a World
War III, which would move humankind in a totally new direction -
leading in his case to a socialistic World Government, in in my case
to a horizontally organized society, in which absolutely all decisions
are arrived at by means of computer-mediated coordinated group
decision making. We both realize, however, that a cataclysmic war
is not at all a desirable scenario - albeit, with so many weapons of
mass destruction in the hands of the US industrial-military complex,
and so many others scattered all over the world, it is still not a
totally unlikely one.
I argued last year in the Utopias Forum essay entitled On Some Future Social Effects of the
Communications Revolution, available now on the PFPC
website
http://www.rrojasdatabank.org/pfpc0000.htm ,
that such new means of communication as the Internet, which are
not completely controlled by special interests and enable two-way
communication, might lead to a less thorough brainwashing of the
public by the big-time media controlled by oligarchs, and therefore to
a heightened awareness of its users of the real problems that
are facing humankind and their causes, resulting in a spontaneous
desire not to have one's fate determined by those in power.
Right now the US government, and the neo-cons behind it, are
moving most aggressively in the direction of a world dominated by
US-Israeli special interests (see the articles on the above website).
Hence, the setting up of the PFPC is merely one of many reactions of
progressive people across the world to bring this great danger to the
attention of larger segments of the world population. As the
world-wide demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq have shown, the
world public opinion is no longer as docile as it used to be. Somebody
has even referred to it recently as "the second superpower in the
present world." Well, maybe not yet, but in the not too far
future, who knows?
The same way the Zionist imperialists face the problem that the
Arab masses outnumber them by many orders of magnitude, so the
American imperialists have the problem that the rest of the world
outnumbers them by huge numbers. Both these kinds of imperialists are
right now very close allies, but short of "nuking" all the
"unruly" masses of the world who do not obey their dictates,
they have only the option of concurring the world piece by piece:
today Iraq, tomorrow Iran, or perhaps Syria, etc. Some first-world
countries are sensing that some day their turn might come, and are
already making preparations for resistance.
In view of this, the PFPC Principles I proposed on May 5, 2003
have a very limited goal, namely to add to the chorus of opposition to
the US-Israeli imperialistic designs, to make people across the world
aware of the existence of the PNAC blueprint that spells a modern type
of slavery to most of them, and to point out the fact that alternative
points of view and better strategies for globalization do exist.
I therefore hope that many subscribers to WSN will add their
signatures to the May 5, 2003 statement "Project for the First
People's Century: Motivation and Declaration of Principles," by
e-mailing Dr. Robinson Rojas at robinson@rojas.net to that
effect.
Eduard Prugovecki
Professor Emeritus
University of Toronto
http://individual.utoronto.ca/prugovecki/
___________________________________________
On May 8, 2003 W. Warren Wagar wrote:
As an
incorrigible utopographer, I applaud Dr. Prugovecki's draft
statement of principles. The goals he sets for humankind are
probably
shared by most of us in this list. I would only suggest that we
cannot
make the transition from the new American century now emerging to
a
people's century without concerted efforts at the planetary level (as
well
as locally and regionally) to disarm national military
establishments
and dispossess corporate oligarchs. Dismantling the modern
world-system
and replacing it with a new, quite different, and more just world
order
cannot be achieved without the disciplined coordination of all
progressive
elements everywhere. Nor can the biosphere be rescued without
the
adoption and enforcement of a global plan that takes the needs of
all
peoples into account. This would require, at the very least,
the
transformation of the United Nations, to which the draft statement
assigns
great responsibilities, into a democratic world government elected
directly by the people. In such a government Luxembourg would
not be the
"equal" of China, nor, for that matter, would the United
States be the
"equal" of India. The size of national delegations
would be proportionate
to national populations.
But none of these tremendous deeds can be
accomplished, in my
judgment, without a well integrated
planet-wide movement of progressive
forces. Only after the modern
world-system is no more will it be safe
to transfer, steadily and with increasing speed, the exercise of
sovereignty from global authorities to local communities
practicing
participatory democracy as envisaged in the draft statement.
Warren
W. Warren Wagar
Department of History
Binghamton University, SUNY